The Catholic Publicist

Extract

In the progressive alienation of the modern world from Christianity and the Church, in what is described as intellectual secularization, the publicist plays a decisive role.* The mere mention of the name of Voltaire suggests what the significance of anti-Church publicist work may be. In the name of reason it appeals against the superstition of religion, in the name of justice it covers with contempt and ridicule the claims of tradition, it directs its attacks against existing institutions, and it contrasts the light of secular philosophy to the darkness of Church dogma. All that is done in a facile, universally understandable way. The enlightened publicist does not seek to make an impression on the learned. He does not try to astonish by the fullness of his knowledge. He tries to draw the public opinion of good society to his side and to gain it for his cause. With such assurance does he proceed that he seems to achieve his goal. An educated man who has been shaped by eighteenth century France cares to hear nothing more about the Church as a divine institution. Enlightenment and public opinion became the same thing. Public opinion simply coincided with what the Enlightened publicist prescribed for it. Indeed, it was already apparent in the eighteenth century that it is not a simple thing to decide what corresponds to reason, justice, and untutored human nature. In the name of a sentimental inner religion Rousseau fought against the negative Enlightenment of the Encyclopedists, the circle of Voltaire and Diderot. But this struggle changed nothing in the general situation. Public opinion remained decisive. It was selfevidently opposed to tradition generally and, thus, also to the Church. If the reader of Voltaire jeered and ridiculed religion, the reader of Rousseau shed tears over the Savoyard Vicar, who, in metamorphosing Church dogma into a religion of feeling and humanity, thus deprived religion of its substance. Both would hear nothing of that fosterer of superstition and that oppresser of knowledge, that Church against which they had set themselves up as priests of public opinion, as publicists.