Preface (Cont.) (3)

Roman Catholicism cherishes the brightest hopes for its future in the United States. According to Roman Catholic publicists, the future of the North American republic belongs precisely to Roman Catholicism, which alone can lead the people to religious unity and make it as unified in religious respect as it is in political respect.[1] The extraordinary successes of Roman Catholicism in the country, which it has achieved in the course of one century, apparently justify such hopes. If in a single century it has risen from insignificance to nearly the first position in the country and developed an organization before which weakened Protestantism, torn by internal discord, trembles, then it is natural to expect that, relying already on this mighty organization, it can without difficulty spread its dominion over the small Protestant communities and absorb them into its mighty organism. But such a conclusion would be hasty and would not correspond to the actual significance of the premises. The principal source of the rapid spread of Roman Catholicism in the United States, as will be shown below, was emigration—that is, it owes its increase not to its own internal organic growth but to a purely external process—the accumulation or gathering of already formed Catholic masses. Such a process of increase did not occur at the expense of the American people but apart from it. Consequently, from this side, the past successes of Roman Catholicism, for all their extraordinary character, have no relation to the religious problem concerning us regarding which church can in the future become the one church of the united American people, and therefore do not provide grounds for concluding about future successes. But Roman Catholicism has another side to its development. It has not only arrived from Europe on American soil, but has also attempted to become acclimated on it, to take root in the organic environment of the American people themselves. In this respect, it directly approaches our problem and presents important data for investigation. The success of these attempts, as well as the general receptivity of American soil toward Roman Catholicism, constitute direct data for our question. This success, considered from its external side, does not have, as will be shown below, important significance, and numerically it far from constitutes a firm foundation for all the newcomer Roman Catholic population. But it has another—inner side, and in this respect it deserves serious attention. This is the moral side of success, and it can serve as an indicator of the general predisposition of the American people toward Roman Catholicism. What then is the expression of this predisposition and what degree of intensity does it have in this direction? We saw that the American people, both by their origin and by their present state—are a Protestant people. The principles of Protestantism have had wide development in them and have expressed themselves in wandering sectarianism. They have considerably become embodied even in the political institutions of the country and have penetrated into the character of social life. From this side, Roman Catholicism, as an opposite religious system, can encounter only opposition from the American people, which indeed has passed through their entire century of independent life and manifested itself both in indirect legislative measures against Roman Catholicism and in open anticatholic movements of the popular masses. But at the same time, in the very religious-Protestant character of the American people, through various turns of its historical development, there were increasingly revealed features of the inadequacy of Protestantism as a religious system corresponding to the people’s fundamental character. Its extreme individualism proved to be in contradiction to the healthy mediocrity of the American character, and when it reached the greatest development, it necessarily had to be followed by a reaction in favor of a process of centralization. The people began to be wearied by the fragmentation of their religious condition and, in view of the discrepancy of individualism with their character, began to seek a single church which could give authoritative rest to their religious feeling exhausted by fruitless labor and, removing from them the unbearable weight of personal responsibility, would appear as a mighty and infallible guide on the path of salvation. With the birth of the idea of a single church, religious consciousness sought that actual foundation around which ferment could settle and which would be capable of receiving the heterogeneous elements of ferment into its organism and thus creating a single church. If in this process many stopped at Methodism and the Episcopal Church, an even larger number began turning to Roman Catholicism. The latter presented in this respect important advantages over the first two. It had behind it such historical antiquity as neither Methodism nor the Episcopal Church could match; and for rational consciousness, wearied by the changeability of sectarian forms, this historical antiquity presented the chief guarantee of stability and immovability of the principle. It presented such a mighty organization as no Protestant community could develop. Finally, its confessional and disciplinary system had all the external signs of the “one” church which religious consciousness sought in vain in the systems of Protestant communities. In view of such undoubted advantages of Roman Catholicism over Protestant communities, it would seem an inevitable supposition that the inclination of the religious consciousness of the American people in seeking the single church would undoubtedly and irreversibly happen in favor of Roman Catholicism. In reality, however, this has not happened and cannot happen. Roman Catholicism, presenting immeasurable advantages compared to Protestant communities in the sense of an integral, unchanging, historical church, at the same time has in itself many aspects which contradict the religious, intellectual, and sociopolitical sense of the American people. If the American people are wearied by the burden of personal responsibility in the matter of salvation laid upon them by Protestantism, they nonetheless possess such a developed sense of personal independence that in no case will they tolerate its restriction to the extent that is inevitable in Roman Catholicism. They hunger only for such a church to which they could relate freely as to the supreme tribunal of their personal conscience. If the American people present a mediocre intellectual character, this mediocrity is not such as to tolerate the stubborn denial of progressive development of thought which is inseparably linked in their conception with the idea of the Roman Catholic Church.[2] Finally, they feel the complete discrepancy of the principles of Roman Catholicism with their political and social character. And indeed, in this respect, the Roman Catholic tendency toward extreme centralization, with its latest apotheosis in the person of the infallible pope, stands in complete contradiction to the historical sense developed and strengthened in the American people.[3] It will forever serve as an insuperable barrier on the path to Roman Catholicism. Individual people, especially those who deeply feel the inadequacy of Protestantism, will convert to the Roman Catholic Church, despite its discrepancy with the principles of the people’s sociopolitical life. But the sense of the whole people will never be able to reconcile this contradiction, and therefore Roman Catholicism cannot become that “one church” of the American people whose idea vaguely ferments in their religious consciousness.

Thus, despite the developing need in the American people to have one strong church which in religious respect would become parallel with its governmental system, among the present confessional forms it does not have one which could actually realize its idea. Methodism is too new and unstable in its form and is one of the extreme manifestations of Protestant individualism which wearies the people. The Episcopal Church itself lacks a firm foundation and still more cannot take upon itself the entire weight of the American people. Finally, Roman Catholicism, despite its historical stability, in turn sins by the extreme development of the principle of centralization and as such stands in an insoluble contradiction with the entire character of American worldview.

Where, then, is the desired solution?

II

Of the three major Christian denominations, the one most suited to the American character is undoubtedly the middle one—that is, the Episcopal Church. It is free from both the extremes of individualism and the opposite extremes of Roman Catholicism, and therefore if any of these named churches is destined to become the single church of a united American people, it is the Episcopal Church. In its history there was already a period when the golden dream was approaching realization. Even before the outbreak of the Civil War, which served as the definitive turning point in the consciousness of the American people, the people began to show signs of weariness with sectarian, fruitless ferment, and many of the most perceptive minds, attuned to the spirit of the age, sought rest in the great religious communities. The Episcopal Church, as free from the extremes of Roman Catholicism, was then more than any other suited to the emerging mood and began a bountiful harvest. “From 1850 to 1856 the numerical growth of its members far exceeded the growth of previous periods. Its clergy ranks strengthened both in numbers and influence. The spirit of unprecedented activity seemed to have arisen in it, and besides, there was a notable inclination to gather around itself the other Protestant denominations and unite them with itself into one church body. This inclination found approval even outside its own membership. Many of those who had never before called themselves by any particular Christian name, attracted by its dignity and order, began to look upon it as the most desirable of all Protestant communities. Distinguished dissenters turned their eyes toward it, seeking refuge from that schismatic abyss into which their various vessels had nearly capsized. Great mutuality from both sides and full sympathy with the movement from its side—that was all that seemed necessary for creating the unity which fractured Christianity has long desired. This was the most favorable moment for it. The iron was hot for forging. The wheat was ripe for harvest. Deep peace presented favorable conditions for deliberation and investigation. The spirit of organic life was kindled in the people and they showed an inclination toward the closest union with one another. Only a strong will and a skillful hand were necessary to remove certain remaining obstacles, and the triumph of Episcopalism in the country could have been secured.”[4] This important moment in the history of Episcopalism, however, did not lead to the results one might have expected. The Episcopal Church, thanks to this spiritual awakening within itself and the general demand of the age, of necessity, before undertaking the great mission of uniting Christian communities, had to carefully examine its own internal capacity for such a mission. This necessity was recognized by its best representatives and from them at the 1853 convention came a series of memorials of which mention was made above. From these memorials it is evident that if the religious consciousness demanded greatly a church that could satisfy the “great moral and social needs of the age,”[5] then all the more clearly appeared the inadequacy of the Episcopal Church in meeting them. The demand of the age forced deeper inquiry into the essence of Episcopalism and in this internal analysis the whole instability of its foundations was revealed. Resting as it did on compromise between two extremes, it could still maintain balance between them in ordinary quiet circumstances. But in the strong movement that began around it in the 1850s, it found itself in a difficult position. The foundations provided by compromise were too unreliable and unstable to withstand the strong thrust of the people’s spirit. It demanded solid positive foundations, which the Episcopal Church did not possess. And so it, recognizing the magnitude of the demand addressed to it and at the same time feeling its own weakness and inadequacy in meeting it, wavered in its very foundation. The more it needed positive foundations, the more strongly appeared before it the unreliability of its own foundations. Such an indefinite and abnormal condition could not be permanent. It had to find a way out. If its own foundations were weak, it was necessary to seek them elsewhere. Before it stood Protestantism on one side and Roman Catholicism on the other. The first could not serve as support for Episcopalism because it itself suffered from instability. Thus only Roman Catholicism remained. But to seek support in Roman Catholicism for Episcopalism meant to renounce itself and erase its own past history. It arose as a protest against the abnormal development of Roman Catholicism and therefore accepting what had once been rejected would be an unconditional denial of its right to exist. Yet it did have a right to exist even as an external balance for the extremes. If it was now unstable in its foundations, this meant only that it had not established balance between the extremes with sufficient precision and, denying both extreme Protestantism and extreme papalism, had not consistently carried through the principle of balance and therefore had not retained the essential elements that constitute the necessary condition for stable existence. Such an inevitable process of thought led the more consistent representatives of the Episcopal Church to careful analysis of its middle position and they discovered that the whole cause of Episcopalism’s instability lay in the fact that, having rejected Roman Catholicism, it had nonetheless retained certain truths that constitute the essential elements of church life, and thus had not held to the true middle point but had leaned toward Protestantism. As soon as the true cause of Episcopalism’s unstable position was found, there naturally arose the desire to remove it. If this cause lay in immoderate inclination toward Protestantism, then obviously the only means of establishing balance remained—to shift the center of gravity in the direction of Roman Catholicism. And indeed a process of such shift did begin and it expressed itself in the movement known as Ritualism.