Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/208

plicity, and often showing themselves less malicious than candid.

There is nothing less Catholic nor less rationalistic than to seize upon the rationalist and Catholic theories, taking from the former its ideas with all its contradictions, and from the latter its forms with all their magnificence. As to Catholicism, it will never consent to such scandalous proceedings, such shameful confusion, and such unworthy spoliation. Catholicism is capable of demonstrating, that it alone is based upon principles adequate to solve all political, social, and religious problems; that it alone possesses the secret of all great solutions; that it is useless to admit it in part and to deny it in part, or to make use of its expressions in order to cover the nakedness of other doctrines; that there is no other good and no other evil than that which it indicates; that things cannot be explained except as it explains them; that the God it affirms is the only true God; that man, as defined by it, is the only true man; that humanity is precisely what it proclaims it to be, and not otherwise; that when it affirms of men that they are brethren, equal and free, it at the same time explains how they are so, in what manner, and to what degree; that its words have been adapted to its ideas, and its ideas support its words; that it is necessary to proclaim Catholic liberty, equality, and fraternity, or to deny all these things as well as their names; that the dogma of redemption is exclusively a Catholic dogma; that it alone teaches us by whom and for whom redemption was effected, and the name of the Redeemer and of the redeemed; that to accept its dogmas, in order to mutilate them, is the act of a charlatan and a piece of low buffoonery; that he who is not with it is against it; that