Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/52

sorrow, and ignorance only exist in order to be subdued by faith, resignation, and patience.

It follows, then, that the Church alone has the right of affirmation and negation, and that there can exist no right to deny what she asserts, or to assert what she denies. When society forgot the doctrinal decisions of the Church, and consulted either the press or the pulpit, the magazines or the public assemblies, as to what was truth or what was error, then all minds confounded truth and error, and society was plunged into a region of shadows and illusions. Finding it to be an imperative necessity to submit to truth and withdraw from error, yet finding it impossible to define what is error and what is truth, she forms a catalogue of conventional and arbitrary truths, and another of pretended errors; and then she attempts to dictate as to what is to be believed, and what condemned. But she does not know, so great is her blindness, that in asserting some things and denying others, she neither believes nor rejects anything; or, if she condemns and adores anything, she condemns and adores herself.

The doctrinal intolerance of the Church has saved the world from chaos. It has placed political, domestic, social, and religious truths beyond controversy. These primitive and sacred truths are not subject to discussion, because they are the basis of all discussion. The moment there arises a doubt about them, that moment the mind becomes unsettled, being lost between truth and error, and the clear mirror of human reason is obscured. This serves to explain why society, whenever emancipated from the Church, has only wasted its time in ephemeral and sterile disputes, which can only result in complete skepticism, because complete skepticism is