The Case Against Maurras
Lugan, Alphonse
May26, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 67 THE CASE AGAINST...
...nation the cause which these men have bound to the Mr...
...that religion is a grim sentinel in the service of the In The Figaro of November 22, 1925, M. Georges propertied classes and disdainful intellectuals...
...Let us affirmation in the second volume of my Enseignement suppose for an instant that Calvert, Carroll, Ireland, Social de Jesus, and still more in volumes four and and, above all, the immortal Cardinal Gibbons, in- five, which have just appeared, and in which I treat stead of inspiring and observing a policy of gradual the entire question of justice from the point of view adaptation, prudence, and separation of the spiritual of the Gospels...
...He will, no doubt, reply that he no less violent toward constitutional monarchies than has read Maurras, Daudet, and Bainville, geniuses all toward republics) is an essay in the direction of three, as he fondly believes, in politics, criticism, and futility...
...Today, Petit Democrate, who count fifteen deputies among on the contrary, it enjoys full liberty, and the respect their number...
...the opposition offered by such leaders as Paul de This movement of adaptation, of reality, of sepCassagnac and Drumont, by such journals as La Croix aration between politics and religion, has been resisted, (in somewhat seemlier fashion), and l'Action Fran- and resisted violently...
...ous and futile title of "empirical organization...
...I have At the Wedding even reproached certain groups with having made the A lean old lady connection between Catholicism and democracy too wears white, inherent...
...By laymen without any authority and often without any one means or another they contrived to kill l'Action theology, in more than one case without even faith, Liberale, which the eminent writer M. Piou had cre- have assumed the leadership of French Catholic poliated under the impulsion of Leo XIII, in order to ticians, with de Bonald, Louis Veuillot, Cassagnac, realize the views of the Pope in the domain of com- and Drumont...
...The rally was but one instant in a series as they are of gestures and traditions, is shaken of attempts, made over a period of 15o years, to neither by the fact that he remains constant to his separate Catholicism from a policy, worthy enough, atheism, his old hostility to Christ and the Gospels, but which had constituted itself an intransigent nor by the appearance on his right and left hand of guardian of sepulchres...
...They have compromised it in disciples, and the actual editor of our best Catholic their headlong adventures, they have tempted it away fortnightly organ, Le Correspondant, has declared from its fitting leaders, and they have stripped it of that to these men and to their friends we are indebted all the aspects that would have gained the hearts of for the sole victories gained by Catholics in the politi- the masses...
...In this connection, the rights of belief in France, depend on the triumph I would urge him to read a pamphlet written by M. of the Catholic Democrats...
...Democracy is a squared circle l Hence any effort at For these reasons (I say it with all due respect) Mr...
...But I declare solemnly that, in my sense and Christian sentiment in that country made eyes, religious peace and the possible realization of short work of their propaganda...
...He states that "these same things all things upon the measure in which they have made were said twenty years ago, with much garbling of their progress, definite and conscientious, and on the quotations, by some fanatics on the other side (in- education of the public by printed word...
...Unhappily, when they Coleman's master, as absolutely irreconcilable with abandon them, they leave without any defense in the Catholic doctrine-indeed, as its antagonist...
...But at least who, on the very morrow of the Armistice, demanded May26, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 69 from Germany an indemnity of 2,ooo milliards of individual rights and liberty, are eminently safefrancs in gold, coupled with what was, in fact, a system guarded...
...It is right that we should at all costs strive like a blackberry vine to save that religion, so marvelous an instrument of in blossom...
...The name is appeals of the Pontiffs for peace, for international fraone which they did not choose themselves...
...Of this nature, we are allowed to infer, was history...
...It is in their ranks that the Catholics" has been fastened upon them...
...I am one of those fanatics...
...A democrat rather for rational aspects of the question, which will be written for The Commonthan sentimental reasons, ignorant even whether I weal by ,bbe Felix Klein.-The Editors...
...Goyau wrote an article entitled The Dupanloup Law, They have permitted the blind sectaries of antiwhich began as follows religion to turn every generous national movement to their own profit, and to divert it from the path of During the nineteenth century the Church in France wisdom...
...the Church to their corpses, in France and elsewhere, Wherein does this violent prejudice, compact of quickly saw what a blow to their mortuary enterprises geometry and: lack of reality, differ from crass igno- was contained in the encyclical...
...Leo XIII saw far and saw profoundly...
...It was even ternity, have found the hardest hearts and deafest invented the better to combat their efforts...
...It would who possibly make less noise than 1 'Action Franbe what it is in France...
...Recently one of their most brilliant in their own manner...
...But one thing I am Daudet, will be followed shortly by an article giving other justified in saying...
...ties...
...From this Is it surprising to see the French masses turn their point of view I hold the doctrine of Maurras, Mr...
...Before him, de Tocqueville had written they fasten upon negligible happenings of no impor- that "Christianity was a living body, which must not tance in the mass of reality, and do them the honor be chained to any dead one...
...Coleman speaks of the' rally to the republic family domiciled for generations in America, so greatly desired by Pope Leo XIII, and which he enamored of I'Action Francaise...
...Ku Klux Klan...
...The name of a great Pope two lieutenants, one of whom, Daudet, is a notorious will always be associated with it...
...faces from men like these...
...But we Maurras has literally poisoned that section of French consent to bear it today only on condition that it does not Catholicism which has come under his influence...
...All I desire for them are Passlecq, an eminent lawyer and Catholic, of Brussels, clearer and more precise views on these possibilities and the enquiry upon Maurrasism carried out among and the way to realize them...
...Aspirations, quite legitimate, toward more acquired two liberties...
...Common join any of them...
...I avow it with all humil- (This view of policies attributed to MM...
...A. I. du P. Coleman (Old Un- disciples to its own image, no less sectarian, no less happy Far-off Things, The Commonweal, April 7 ) victims of their mathematical formulae, no more acon the other hand, strikes me as sophomoric in the cessible to reason and facts that do not jibe with the extreme (it is possible to be a child up to eighty years play they have set out to perform-in a word, no of age...
...gether with his alter ego, Bainville, he is responsible In any case results speak for themselves...
...If there be one formidits rather special public, with a watered edition of able and authentic legacy of Judaeo-Christian civilithe immoral nationalism of Maurras and Bainville...
...He saw the necessity for the Church to learn Terrible and bloody-minded Procrusteans, willing them, and, without any abdication, to adapt herself to, hack and saw from the social and political body to them...
...It is they so often, with an equivocal significance...
...It is too late ears...
...ceased with the alleged check attributed to it by Mr...
...Results will depend above by Mr...
...These they have succeeded in convincing cal sphere during the past century...
...zation, it is respect for the individual...
...He knew well (it is a distinguished Ameriof France, legs, arms, heart, and even head, if only can journalist, Mr...
...checks and balances," by which order and authority, PAUL SANDOZ...
...To own' no doubts-to neglect the total de- man-silent, disdainful, or satiric, to avert the threat sign and form-to ignore the multiple aspects of a which was menacing their political enterprises...
...the other, the liberty of toward tolerance in a society that has become so dihigher education, by Dupanloup...
...Now it happens that there are no three the gesture of Pope Leo...
...The pretenChristian thought has flourished for a hundred years in France are the work of two "liberals...
...In the doing his best to inoculate French history and intervery first rank I would name Ozanam and Lacordaire, national policy with the virus of Prussianism...
...audience around its side-show and has created many The article by Mr...
...Coleman may fail to recognize influence on the French masses...
...of the group of La Jeune Democrate, and prestige which this great churchman won for it...
...should be classed as a French Royalist or a French Republican, I nevertheless assert that I have never in my life placed democracy before Catholicism...
...Save among a few tyros, private capacity and by sentiment was a monarchist, such as exist in every province of knowledge, it would should have taken the pains to write an encyclical be hard to find elsewhere an equal fanaticism, an baldly ordering French Catholics to accept the repubequal audacity in ignoring the whole truth, an equal lic, is childish...
...What would be the views of two or three groups of Catholic democrats, situation of the Church in America today...
...May26, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 67 THE CASE AGAINST MAURRAS By ALPHONSE LUGAN I MUST avow that without accepting in every de- plexities to a few abstractions of a terrifying simplicity, tail the article by M. Jules Bois (French Catholi- is the mark of a sectary, often of the most third-rate cism: A New Era, The Commonweal, March order of intelligence-not of a true scientist...
...wisely and well, a vast majority, perhaps not yet of I have already written at some length, but I can- voters, but of sympathizers, will be won by them and not conclude without referring to one insinuation made will support their efforts...
...service in holding up the doctrines of Maurras for I stand quite apart from all of these groups, and, their acceptance and admiration...
...Here is the true inwardness of those immortal enTheir theory may be resumed in two apothems cyclicals which, one might say, put the changeless GosDemocracy can no more be reconciled with organi- pel at the service of so many an impressive reality...
...zation than a circle can be squared...
...One has only to recall societies, by pouring old wine into new bottles...
...And this situation would caise, that hollow engine of brass, braying in the midst have been its reward from the day it chose to abandon of a nation "en bloc"-I speak of the group of the the sane path which Gibbons had marked out...
...Current morality Those, however, who had some interest in binding has no place in politics...
...One, the liberty of secondary justice in politics, in the social and the economic realm, education, was won by Falloux...
...May one ask sions, ridiculous and terrifying at the same time, of just how much of tangible, practical, and durable benefit these men, have largely contributed to immerse some has been accomplished during the same period by the of our statesmen in an egotistical oblivion of the soliChristian adversaries of liberalism...
...But the errors of Lamennais and a few of perpetual servitude...
...Tolead careless or misinformed thinkers into grave error...
...Maurras finally has been clever enough mon law...
...If they play their part loo representative Catholics...
...need is for pressmen of live ideas and tenacious will...
...It is an his- in great measure for the difficulties with which France torical fact that the two great laws under whose aegis has had to contend ever since the war...
...With his puerile and pagan nationalism, Charles now to strike it from current nomenclature...
...Since the days of de Maistre, caise, from its first appearance about this time...
...headed by Marc Sangnier, which has an undeniable This, though Mr...
...I do not forget the it, is the sole question at issue...
...The writer is full of excellent intentions less ignorant...
...determination to see only a few weak spots where He took note of the new conditions of modern societheir sophistries can find a lodgment...
...Coleman will find abundant proofs of my chariot wheels of their political adventures...
...and temporal spheres, had flung themselves into the He will probably be surprised to learn that the political arena to combat everything that Americans views which I have propounded are, even today, the legitimately love and esteem...
...adaptation, no matter whence it comes, were it even Coleman remains ignorant of France, of her past through constitutional monarchy (Maurras has been and present alike...
...It is a puerile view of events to imagine to rally round his banner-that patchwork affair of that the famous rally was an isolated phenomenon, superficial science, classical but dry literature, and unconnected with the history of France since the Revo- hard-shell nationalism-all the mutes, mourners, senlution and even before it, or that the movement has timentalists, and sophists of alarmed conservatism...
...Coleman...
...Other admirers up to the present, have never seen my way clear to have attempted the same task in Belgium...
...Not only has the "bloc na- others do not excuse Maurras for amputating the tional" fallen under their tutelage, to its own undoing, Church from the Gospel, for presenting her as the but they have drawn into the orbit of their ignorance inveterate enemy of democracy, and seeking to preand passions the majority of French Catholics...
...It is not the fault of these two men if, despite the fact that they were Catho- verse, have always found many Catholic politicians lics first and liberals afterwards, the title of "liberal ranged against them...
...darity which rules a complex world, and to raise up for our country hatreds which only seek an opportunity I do not greatly like the last word, used, as it is to hurl themselves into the melee afresh...
...Under empt her authority on behalf of his own shameless their influence La Croix has succeeded in familiarizing disrespect for the individual...
...But it was the pre- Rabelaisian, while the other, Jacques Bainville, is occupation of many great minds before his...
...They rose as one rance...
...Morton Fullerton, who is my the amputated trunk may fit the torture-bed of their authority for the phrase) that the Church should atiaensate logicl Abusing and thrusting aside all facts tach herself to one dead body only-that which hung which do not square with their extravagant "a priori," on the Cross...
...One of their cluding unhappily two or three priests) who seemed great needs is an adequate press...
...It is more than doubt- Democrate, of Paris, nor the elite which is ranged ful that he renders America and his coreligionaries a under the banners of the Semaines Sociales...
...writers more ignorant than these three high priests Now, to imagine that this great Pope, who in his of "scientific" monarchism...
...He including Catholicism, through the eyes of his Dul- has seen this rally through the eyes of Maurras, hence cinea, just as a Frenchman, fanatically nationalist and he has failed to comprehend it, or, if he has undera visitor to the United States, might allow himself stood it at all, has insisted on denaturing it through to view its problems through the spectacles of the sheer compression in the mould of his own mind...
...he is, possibly as the descendant of an ancient French Mr...
...whom I regard as two of the most sanely balanced The ancestors of l'Action Francaise, its associates, and realistic minds of French Catholicism, in the nine- and the journal itself, have defended Catholicism, but teenth century...
...Here is the true reason of making them the basis of a truculent, overweening, for the intervention of the Pontiff in the political and self-conceited doctrine, decorated with the pomp- affairs of France, Spain, Portugal, and other countries...
...Maurras and ity, but with no shame at all...
...In problem-to reduce sociological and political com- France especially, where for a century and a half, and 68 THE COMMONWEAL May 26, 1926 often for the noblest of reasons (which should not I insist that when the term "liberal Catholic" is used, be held against them) they had striven to associate all those should be comprehended who, in the course this policy intimately with that of the Church, they of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, have striven either turned a deaf ear Romeward or openly resisted to keep their religious convictions alive in modern the instructions of the Pontiff...
...But a still greater to place their democracy before their Catholicism...
...17) which I find lacking in certain necessary dis- Thanks to the trumpetings and team-work of a few tinctions, and in which too many generalities are ut- charlatans, I'Action Francaise has attracted a vast tered, I find him justified in his general conclusions...
...He went to Paris, declares, on the rather surprising testimony of Abbc and, love being proverbially blind, he saw everything, Ernest Dimnet, to have "failed lamentably...
...The blind faith of these docile followers, easy dupes Coleman...
Vol. 4 • May 1926 • No. 3
