Society And its Purpose
Book 2 - The End of Society
CHAPTER 13
An example of the violation of human rights
235. One example of grave violation of this extra-social right of the individual was the cruel abolition in modern times of religious orders. Individuals were forbidden the use of the most precious and sacred of their rights (the choice of a totally harmless way of life which, to their eyes, was of great help for acquiring virtue and personal moral contentment) on the pretext that those who withdrew from the multitude to dedicate themselves to the contemplation of heavenly things were useless to society.
I cannot in any way agree that people who separate themselves (never entirely, we should note) from the company of their fellows are useless to human society. The unvaunted benefits they bestow are well-known and shine clearly enough to be seen even by those who try to blind themselves to them. But I do not want to use this argument, and am content to suppose as proven that religious are indeed people who do not apply themselves directly and positively to the good of society. What I wish to know is whether, granted this supposition, the administration of civil society had any legitimate power to abolish such a way of life and drive those people, who belonged more to the other world than this, from their peaceful refuges.
236. First, I do not deny to government the power to punish crimes. If any of those who professed a way of life consecrated to religion committed crimes and violated others’ rights, their being judged guilty and condemned by the courts would in no way contradict the inalienable right they had as human beings to follow a way of life which seemed better to them and had been declared such by the competent authority of the Church. But this is not true for the entire body of religious; no one has said, nor could it ever be said, that their way of life has led to violence, robbery and the violation of others’ rights. They truly practised a life that was innocent in itself and inoffensive to all other members of society.
237. Second, it could never be said or proved that the temporal goods they possessed were unjustly obtained and held by them. The ownership of goods held by religious rested on titles of usucaption, donation, heredity, contracts of sale, and suchlike, that is, on the same titles possessed by others. The titles of acquisition were precisely those established by the natural, civil law of ownership. Hence, to despoil religious of all they possessed could only be a real infraction of the right of ownership. Government, however, is instituted above all for the defence and preservation of all ownership on the grounds that all members of society without any exception have social equality before the law. We have seen that respect for ownership not only limits government in its enactments, but individuals in the use of their extra-social right to use the best means conducive to their end.(78)
238. No legal reason existed therefore which authorised any secular government to destroy or impede a harmless way of life that tended to moral perfection, or to despoil such people of properties acquired and held by the same titles which all other members of the social body enjoy. Because the principle of `political equality before the law’ was not applied to those citizens who professed the religious life, they were considered outside society and excluded from favour of the law. More accurately, they were despoiled not only of their civil rights but of the rights they had as human beings. Every human being has the right not to be violated in his way of life, or robbed.
239. But what in fact was the pretext used to give an appearance of justice to the violation of human and civil rights? The pretext, we repeat, was that those who followed religious life (that is, who professed only to love God and their neighbour perfectly and to live only for the benefit of their fellows, sometimes with heroic sacrifices entirely repugnant to nature) were useless to society.
240. Here we see the great principle of a political system which, based on a material and entirely immoral philosophy, destroyed the ancient principle that `no government may do anything contrary to justice’. This sublime, liberal principle that forestalls every arbitrary act of government, was substituted by a new, unheard-of formula of extreme despotism: `Government can do all that it thinks useful for society; whatever it does with this end in view is just because it is useful.’(79) — a new political system of public utility has now replaced the ancient system of justice.(80)
241. It is all too clear that government will be granted entirely limitless authority if we destroy the universally accepted sources of justice and of rights rooted in justice, and if the greatest public utility is the only recognised source of what is just and upright. The great charter of human rights will be torn up; we will no longer recognise anything free in human beings or immune from the action of public authority. Public utility is of itself a vague idea, totally incapable of determining the principle of governmental authority or of what is just. If it means the utility of the majority, the minority is completely sacrificed and the weak irredeemably offered in holocaust to the strong, to Moloch; everyone is at war with everyone else. On the other hand, if public utility means the utility of each person, we have a reaffirmation of the equality of all before the law, the practice of justice and the return of the rights of individuals.
These rights, which precede the utility of the majority, must be respected by government. When we understand public utility in this way, government can no longer sacrifice the rights of individuals and defend itself with the meaningless expression, `public utility’. The rights of individuals are elements untouchable and inviolable by public utility. Hence, the justice or injustice of the recent enactment abolishing religious orders must be judged according to the ancient norms of justice which make nonsense of `public utility’, a phrase introduced to confuse ideas. Any government harming the private sphere, essentially harms the public sphere. `Public’, we should carefully note, must include all citizens, not the majority or the most powerful and influential. Otherwise, the public is a party, not society itself.
242. In the case of peaceful citizens who consecrate themselves to meditation on heavenly things, to the study of virtue and to works of every kind of beneficence, a civil government can require, according to the norms of antiquity, or better, the norms of immutable justice, that they commit no violence by murder or assault, and that they do not steal or encroach on the sphere of others’ rights. No one would contest these demands, but when applied to people consecrated to the religious life, they become ridiculous; no one has really thought that religious would be guilty of that kind of infraction of natural and civil laws, or at least certainly no more guilty than others.
It is also absurd for civil government to require that religious help their fellows more than they actually do and show great beneficence. If we grant the irrefutable principle that `all the members of society must be equal before the law’ and that certain people can be required to practise beneficence at a level determined by government, government can exercise the same power towards all citizens. An absurd consequence of this (perhaps never before thought of) would be that government has the right to determine the level of freedom and beneficence for each member of society!
243. We know that charity and beneficence can be commanded by God, but we contradict the proper notion of the duties of humanity and charity if we have the right to demand the practice of beneficence and to regulate it by law as we please. Such action would result in endless disputes and squabbles and even cause terrible wars which could end only in the destruction of the system or of humanity. If individuals themselves cannot require from their equals, as a right of justice, what pertains to beneficence, much less can a government, which is principally instituted to defend and preserve the right of all the individuals that compose the society.
If I am harmed by someone attempting to force a benefit from me, my right is violated, and the government must help me against those who violently attack me in this way. Clearly, a government which protects unjust and violent people is forcefully obliging me to do what in fact depends totally on my will and on the extent of my inclination to be beneficent. Not even civil society as a whole can change the natural duties of charity into duties of justice, nor all the members united together require one person to give, out of justice, what he is obliged (I am presuming he is obliged) to give out of affection. Otherwise, love would not be love, and beneficence, not beneficence.
244. Society, and those that govern, can indeed require that all who are equally subject to them do not harm each other and that no one invades the rights pertaining to another, but they cannot in any way constrain individuals to surrender their mutual rights, that is, their right to do good to one another. If they do so, they violate legitimate order and the purpose of association, with detrimental consequences.
How beneficence would be limited if society constrained the equal citizens that form it to be mutually beneficent? And if society made beneficent action a duty of justice, why could it not make all possible beneficent actions duties of justice? Furthermore, granted that society and government were able to determine the amount of beneficence to be obligatorily exercised by each citizen, how would it verify that the duty had been fulfilled by each? What kind of sanctions would such new laws apply?
Finally, can society command someone to exercise beneficence towards others before exercising it to himself, and if it cannot, who will determine the time, effort, attention and possessions needed relative to each person for his own perfection and know exactly which of all these things can be used individually for the benefit of others?
No one, nor any human society, can impose on others the undeterminable duty of beneficence; only God can suggest it in the depths of the human heart where its manner and extension of execution must be determined; here alone is it secretly promulgated, here alone does a tribunal exist competent to pass judgment on it. From whatever angle we view the example we have used of serious or public infraction of human rights, the infraction appears very ugly and repulsive.
245. We have seen that the end of civil society is ultimately the contentment of spirit of the individuals who compose it. Consequently, when a politician wishes to explain public happiness, that is, all the happiness present in reality in the people, he must take into account private, individual contentment whatever its source. There are some people who live alone, content with what they have without pursuing trade or similar enterprises for the purpose of accumulating material wealth; their study are works by which they daily increase the moral goodness of their heart and their own contentment and happiness. Why are politicians not pleased with such people and use their modest virtue to evaluate the increased number of happy persons and human well-being? Do the political evaluators consider themselves not bound to take account of these degrees of happiness simply because they are hidden and unseen by the public and not reflected in others?
246. Happiness is no less real because hidden. We should not be looking for it in market places, theatres, trading banks and on bloody battlefields but in the depth of the human spirit where alone it can be found. The public are only a collection of individuals, and if each individual were immensely happy in spirit without knowing how others feel, a body of happy people must surely be the result. Although our personal happiness is unknown to others and not reflected in them, we cannot consider our happiness as nothing. And if the happiness of some is reflected in the spirit of others, the latter are helped by knowledge of that happiness and would not consider themselves as devoid of a share in public happiness, even if their increase in happiness did not itself reflect on still more people and so on. We do not need to find an infinite number of reflections before including the happiness of one citizen in the happiness of the public as a whole. The opinion of politicians who think that we can rejoice in the happiness of a human being only when the happiness is visible and sought by others, is clearly blind, vain and of no value whatsoever. If a politician values a potential happiness, that is, the means capable of producing happiness in others, he should value much more the same happiness in act, that is, those who are already happy.
247. To drive people from their retreats and the contemplation of heavenly things, therefore, under the pretext that they have no influence on public happiness, directly contradicts the sublime end of politics. Even if they had no influence, they would form public happiness within themselves. The task of forming it is far greater than that of exercising a mere influence on it. — Society is not weakened simply because it has fully obtained its end in all these individuals, and nothing more remains to be done for them. — It is an illusion to reject true happiness for relative happiness. To think otherwise is to be like a mathematician who, while noting all the fractions, neglects the whole numbers. — Hence, the sum of public well-being of which the human race was despoiled by false political theory is as great as the number of people who, despite their innocence before the law, were driven without trial from their refuges where virtue had helped them attain a contented life (a number increased by the degrees of happiness of each individual). If all of us made ourselves happy, all misery would disappear from the world; if one citizen alone does this, we cannot claim anything further from him.
248. Another consideration makes the violation of human rights through abolition of religious orders even more unacceptable. A civil government which prevents human beings from choosing a way of life whose purpose is to preserve innocent customs and perform virtuous works applies two different measures: one to those who strive to obtain moral perfection and with it contentment of spirit (the purpose of society); the other to those who, without any morally high aspirations, live for material things, are very often given over to vice and are torn by passions depriving them of contentment. The first are viewed with deep hatred; the second are warmly accepted — indeed it would be considered extremely harmful to disturb their wayward, immoral life.
249. It does not cross the mind of such governments to ask those stagnating in laziness and dissolute living to help their fellow human beings and become truly useful to society. Much less do these governments take this way of life as a pretext for laying hands on the goods these people possess and abuse — provided they commit no crimes, such citizens are left in peace. If an administration suppresses the vices with which they infect the earth, it is accused of tyranny; simply to glance across the doorway of such people becomes an infringement.
Why are the same principles not applied to virtuous, sober and decent people who give the world an example of the highest virtue? Why does governmental power consider itself unlimited against these people alone? They are the only citizens excluded from the common right enjoyed by everyone else. They are governed by arbitrary judgment, not by law, and only they can be despoiled of their goods, expelled from their cells, from their caverns, and from the great buildings which have risen throughout the world so that all may benefit from the immense charity practised by religious. Finally, governments think they can forbid them the natural right to associate for good and achieve personal happiness (common to all human beings).
But even this is not sufficient: outrage is added to injustice. According to the pretext used against them by false legalism, they are useless to society. But those who maintain that these citizens are useless to society, suppose that society is formed simply by themselves. They expel from society and humanity those whom they want to despoil, and erase them from the ranks of the living.
250. Unbelievably, lawyers came to the aid of a political policy so openly opposed to natural laws and to the most elementary rights of humanity. They put together subtle formulas and cleverly drew up a new Statute for implementing the policy. Their first claim that religious were public officials under the power of the government simply demonstrates their crass ignorance of the nature of the religious state. In the Church’s eyes, this state is essentially individual; those who embrace it seek only their own moral perfection; they do not, and cannot think of becoming public officials. If a home is private, an individual’s conscience is much more so. The religious state is a matter of conscience; it is not therefore a social responsibility.
251. It may be objected that if the secular clergy are classed as public officials, the regular clergy must also be public officials. Once again, we are faced with ignorance and confused ideas. First of all, religious and clerical life must not be confused, although the latter is sometimes united with the former. Moreover, religious were not abolished as clerics but as religious. Thus, even if priests were public officials, government would have no right to prevent, much less to destroy, religious associations, which constitute a state of private life where individuals strive to exercise their inalienable right, namely, virtue and contentment of spirit.
252. Secondly, we must distinguish between public and government officials. Priests may indeed be public officials, but they are and can only be officials of the Church. Civil society must not be confused with society in general, that is, with society considered in the abstract which alone contains, ideally, every other special society, including the Church. On the contrary, civil society, as I have said elsewhere, is itself a special society where people associate for the mutual protection of their rights and for other ends. But the Church is a society instituted by Jesus Christ, not by human beings. Both societies have officials, but the Church’s officials are not those of civil society, nor civil society’s officials those of the Church. Consequently, the officials of one society can exist irrespective of the other’s; in fact, the Church’s officials exist in peoples still at the family stage, while officials of civil associations exist where the Gospel has not yet been preached. Moreover, government does not form and send priests to the ministry, as it would if priests were their officials; to say the opposite is to abandon Catholicism and the entire Christian system.(81) Civil government therefore cannot consider priests as such(82) as its officials, but only as citizens and nothing more.
253. It may still be retorted that civil government, which must acknowledge religious associations by issuing a decree necessary for their legal existence, can also suppress their existence. This reasoning is subtly deceptive. As we have shown, in humanity an extra-social element remains alongside civil society which is not absorbed by civil society. This element does not need so-called legal recognition in order to exist in reality; it exists per se, and no one can destroy it. An element existing without legality differs from an element existing against legality. The former must be respected by legality whenever legality comes up against it; if, however, legality comes up against its contrary element, it can destroy that element. Religious association is an element that can exist in humanity without need of legalisation. If a government acknowledges such an element, it must respect it — the element may be outside the civil society ruled by the government but it is not opposed to that society; on the contrary it is extremely useful to it. To claim that only what is legalised may exist in humanity is a principle which establishes the most universal, absolute despotism.
254. Because this argument cannot be taken any further, another is proposed: `Religious institutes were established for the public good. The intention of those who gave their possessions by gift or inheritance is the public good. Civil government therefore must assure that the intentions of these generous donors do not go unfulfilled.’
255. Here again we must begin by disentangling confusion. The religious state is in essence and origin a private state, chosen by the individual for his own perfection and moral contentment of spirit. This is the essential element of all religious Orders and Congregations; when they are destroyed, an individual’s imperscriptible right to the best means for procuring his perfection and happiness is violated.
256. Some religious associations assume different ministries of charity towards their neighbour, such as preaching, schools, hospitals, prisons, etc. They freely undertake these works out of pure charity, not as wage-earners. Thus, their members must be considered beneficent and charitable; their zeal is no cause for their classification amongst wage-earners. As I have observed, however, no one can prescribe a law governing charity nor determine its extent. The duty of citizens and civil government towards religious bodies is simply to express the gratitude which charity merits.
257. However, instead of pursuing this duty, it was deemed it better to divide religious congregations into two classes: contemplatives, and active congregations which exercise external charity. Some people then thought it good to destroy the former, and to debase the latter by considering their members as wage-earning servants in the employment of civil society and applying to them the laws proper to wage-earners. They believed that governmental power extended even further: wage-earners receive no reward if it is proved that they are not doing their duty; religious were dispersed en bloc without trial (which in any case would have been impossible for lack of evidence).
258. The goods themselves of religious did not all come by inheritance or the donations of laypeople. The Benedictines, for example, enriched themselves by their agriculture. However, it was not thought worthwhile to distinguish different goods; the testators’ intentions were considered applicable to all.
259. But even intentions were not interpreted correctly. In an age of religious indifference no government can be the accurate interpreter of the intentions of those who lived in times of religious fervour. Let us consider the kind of intentions possible to testators.
260. Their intentions must be deduced from the nature of the religious associations for whose subsistence they bequeathed their goods. As we have said, some of these religious associations had as their purpose contemplation; others, contemplation accompanied by the exercise of charity. Benefactors were fully aware of these kinds of association, and their clear intention in binding goods to contemplative congregations was to preserve this life of contemplation; governments, in order to conform with these intentions, abolished the life! When benefactors left goods to active congregations, their clear intention was the free exercise of charity by those congregations, as the nature of charity itself requires; governments, in order to conform with the intentions, considered the congregations as a body of wage-earners in the service of civil society in whose name they preferred to acquire the goods rather than have the work the congregations undertook! Those to whom society had given the responsibility of defending these goods purloined them on the grounds that they acted in conformity with the holy intentions of the long-dead benefactors!
261. Finally, others spoke more honestly. They said that religious possessed goods which their non-religious fellow-citizens wished to possess on the pretext that religious were unproductive, but their fellow-citizens, productive. The non-religious citizens however had forgotten the commandment which forbids us covet others’ goods, or perhaps they were convinced that it was no great sin to despoil the dead. Consequently their productive hands could despoil the hands of the religious over whom they had legally sung the De profundis. Although we grant civil society the right to make enactments regulating the way in which temporal goods are transmitted (for example, the right to abolish succession by fidei-commissa), we believe that where determined rights of ownership are to be altered or modified, the interested parties must be heard and due weight given to their case. Making laws which regulate the transmission of ownership differs, however, from changing ownership and arbitrarily disposing of it.
There is also a difference between the confiscation of the goods of religious congregations and the destruction of the congregations themselves. A robber can despoil a traveller, but does he have to kill the person who has been robbed and offered no resistance? Let those who rob in the name of society come out into the open and say they cannot resist the temptation of temporal goods. Let them take the goods quietly. but they should not commit the added crime of despoiling human beings of their natural freedom to form religious associations for a holy end and for achieving the ultimate purpose of the society whose administration has been entrusted to the despoilers.’(83)
262. Perhaps I have spent too much time on this matter. Nevertheless what I have said does not concern religious associations only; they are the first example that comes to mind. The danger is more general, and this example was chosen with wider implications in view. In my defence of human rights, I have defended the peace and happiness of all those upright families whose only ambition is peaceful virtue and loving, family affections. These families, although they do not sail the sea in search of treasure, nor desire to climb the social ladder, nor test the fortunes of war, deserve to be left in peace in their humble state by governments, and not driven from their homes, stripped of their goods and reduced to dependence. Content with their state, these families find contentment in the harmony and benevolence which unites all hearts in the association. They deserve infinitely better of civil society, and infinitely better of those who bang the big drum and ultimately dominate others. Such people are frequently called `beneficent’, but they have not even begun to benefit their own souls and bring themselves peace and happiness.
Notes
(78) Chap. 12.
(79) This formula is the expression of the imperial despotism that followed the revolution in France which, despite its declarations of human rights, was guided in its actions and claimed to justify its errors by the same wicked principle. I grant that the majority of those who readily espoused the revolution thought that `the freedom of the individual would be assured once government was in the hands of the people', but there is no government so absolute and tyrannical as that in the hands of the people or, to speak more accurately, of the uneducated masses. The fact that a government is moderate and not despotic depends on its foundation on principles of justice and moral virtue, not on its being in the hands of many rather than one. Napoleon came to a powerful government in the hands of the republic and kept it powerful. He himself did not make it powerful; in fact, he mitigated it to a great extent.
These observations do not mean we can go to the other extreme and think that the principle of despotism reveals itself simultaneously with human rights. On the contrary, the following passage shows how a respectable author justifies American democracy: `So far there has never been anyone in the United States who dared to hold the maxim that everything is permissible in the interests of society. This impious maxim seems to have been invented in an age of liberty in order to legitimise every future tyranny' (A. Tocqueville, De la Démocratie en Amérique, vol. 2, c. 9.
(80) I indicated the characteristics of these two political systems when I made a comparison between the conduct of the Holy See and that of the Napoleonic Court in my little work on Pius VII in a collection of writings published at Lugano, 1834.
(81) Individuals who profess the religious life have different relationships with the State and the Church. The State can consider them only as human beings and citizens. Relative to the Church's authority over religious bodies, we must distinguish the religious state in general from the religious state professed in determined societies with their own rules. The religious state in general takes its origin not from the Church but from Jesus Christ. The Church, therefore, cannot abolish it. The religious state professed in certain societies with their own rules is determined by the Church itself. Hence the Church has the power to suppress religious orders, modify them and institute new ones in accordance with the supernatural good of the faithful which is the end of the Church in all these enactments.
(82) Sometimes purely civil offices have been given to the clergy with the latter's consent, but this has led to great confusion of ideas. One thing must be mentally separated from the other. Any office accepted by the clergy from government is only accidental and does not change their original state. The government certainly acquires rights over the clergy in this way but only relative to the civil offices they accept.
(83) To speak the truth, we must say that the teachings we have refuted are far removed from the spirit of justice and religion which animates and guides the Austrian Government in all its actions. Our august Monarch, who defends the goods of the Church, also favours religious bodies, which continue to increase under his paternal rule.