This trait of the American character is not uncatholic.An intelligent, free, willing obedience, yielded from personal conviction, after seeing its reasonableness, its justice, its logic in the Divine order--the obedience of a free man, not of a slave--is far more consonant to the spirit of the church, and far more acceptable to God, than simple, blind obedience; and a people capable of yielding it stand far higher in the scale of civilization than the people that must be governed as children or barbarians.It is possible that the people of the Old World are not prepared for the regimen of freedom in religion any more than they are prepared for freedom in politics; for they have been trained only to obey external authority, and are not accustomed to look on religion as having its reason in the real order, or in the reason of things.They understand no reason for obedience beyond the external command, and do not believe it possible to give or to understand the reason why the command itself is given.
They regard the authority of the church as a thing apart, and see no way by which faith and reason can be harmonized.They look upon them as antagonistic forces rather than as integral elements of one and the same whole.Concede them the regimen of freedom, and their religion has no support but in their good-will, their affections, their associations, their habits, and their prejudices.It has no root in their rational convictions, and when they begin to reason they begin to doubt.This is not the state of things that is desirable, but it cannot be remedied under the political regime established elsewhere than in the United States.In every state in the world, except the American, the civil constitution is sophistical, and violates, more or less, the logic of things; and, therefore, in no one of them can the people receive a thoroughly dialectic training, or an education in strict conformity to the real order.Hence, in them all, the church is more or less obstructed in her operations, and prevented from carrying out in its fulness her own Divine Idea.
She does the best she can in the circumstances and with the materials with which she is supplied, and exerts herself continually to bring individuals and nations into harmony with her Divine law: but still her life in the midst of the nations is a struggle, a warfare.
The United States being dialectically constituted, and founded on real catholic, not sectarian or sophistical principles, presents none of these obstacles, and must, in their progressive development or realization of their political idea, put an end to this warfare, in so far as a warfare between church and state, and leave the church in her normal position in society, in which she can, without let or hindrance, exert her free spirit, and teach and govern men by the Divine law as free men.She may encounter unbelief, misbelief, ignorance, and indifference in few, or in many; but these, deriving no support from the state, which tends constantly to eliminate them, must gradually give way before her invincible logic, her divine charity, the truth and reality of things, and the intelligence, activity, and zeal of her ministers.The American people are, on the surface, sectarians or indifferentists; but they are, in reality, less uncatholic than the people of any other country because they are, in their intellectual and moral development, nearer to the real order, or, in the higher and broader sense of the word more truly civilized.The multitude of sects that obtain may excite religious compassion for those who are carried away by them, for men can be saved or attain to their eternal destiny only by truth, or conformity to Him who said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life;" but in relation to the national destiny they need excite no alarm, no uneasiness, for underlying them all is more or less of catholic truth, and the vital forces of the national life repel them, in so far as they are sectarian and not catholic, as substances that cannot be assimilated to the national life.The American state being catholic in its organic principles, as is all real religion, and the church being free, whatever is anticatholic, or uncatholic, is without any support in either, and having none, either in reality or in itself, it must necessarily fall and gradually disappear.
The sects themselves have a half unavowed conviction that they cannot subsist forever as sects, if unsupported by the civil authority.They are free, but do not feel safe in the United States.They know the real church is catholic, and that they themselves are none of them catholic.The most daring among them even pretends to be no more than a "branch" of the catholic church.They know that only the catholic church can withstand the pressure of events and survive the shocks of time, and hence everywhere their movements to get rid of their sectarianism and to gain a catholic character.They hold conventions of delegates from the whole sectarian world, form "unions," "alliances," and "associations;" but, unhappily for their success, the catholic church does not originate in convention, but is founded by the Word made flesh, and sustained by the indwelling Holy Ghost.The most they can do, even with the best dispositions in the world, is to create a confederation, and confederated sects are something very different from a church inherently one and catholic.It is no more the catholic church than the late Southern Confederacy was the American state.The sectarian combinations may do some harm, may injure many souls, and retard, for a time, the progress of civilization; but in a state organized in accordance with catholic principles, and left to themselves, they are powerless against the national destiny, and must soon wither and die as branches severed from the vine.
