The Rise And Fall Of A Prideful Man: The Story Of Robert Lamennais (Part 2)

 

To My Readers: This week's post is the conclusion of the story of Robert Lamennais by Joanna from Poland. If you have a comment or query specifically for me, I will answer as always, but it may take a bit longer this week for my response. I can't thank Lee and Joanna From Poland enough for having given me the longest break since 2014! 

I also have my third podcast (regarding the occult) coming out probably next week with Mr. Kevin Davis of Catholic Family Podcast (it was postponed). It will be a discussion on yoga and its inherent dangers. 

Next Monday, I return with a post of my own! 

God Bless you all, my dear readers---Introibo

The Liberal Offensive

By Joanna From Poland

In July of 1830 France was swept by yet another Revolution which deposed the Bourbons, the French dynasty which originated in 1272 when the youngest son of King St. Louis IX married the heiress of the lordship of Bourbon. The famous painting by Eugène Delacroix Liberty Leading the People with its bare-breasted female protagonist, holding in her right hand the Tricolour of the French Resolution and a musket topped with a bayonet in her left, spurring the mob on to rebellion was created that year as a visual outlet for liberal propaganda, being one of the most widely-recognized paintings today.

By that time, Lamennais who had had suffered some personal hardship due to the policy of the Bourbons and thus started to entertain feelings of deep resentment towards them, radically changed his political affiliation, burying once and for all his fervent love for the monarchy.  Although, much to Lamennais’ chagrin, France did not become a republic in 1830, the principle of hereditary right of the kings was replaced with that of popular sovereignty, advocated by Rousseau and his liberal ilk. Small wonder that it only took eighteen years for the Parisian mob to set France ablaze with yet another revolution.

On the wave of the social unrest culminating in the July Revolution of 1830,  Lamennais started to publish the newspaper L’Avenir, meaning The Future, which he co-authored, in October of the same year through which he intended to disseminate the ideas of liberal Catholicism. The motto of that journal read: Dieu et la liberté [God and liberty].

The Catholic Encyclopedia (1910) thus characterizes Lamennais’ journalistic zeal in trying to advance the welfare of the Church (as he perceived it) in France with liberally-tainted ideas:

“The force of his blows, the boldness of his ideas, his outspoken sympathy for every people then in a state of revolt, provoked new accusations against him and gave rise to suspicion of his orthodoxy. To set himself right in the face of all this hostility, he suspended the publication of ‘L'Avenir’ (15 November, 1831), and went to Rome to submit his cause to Gregory XVI. Though accompanied by Lacordaire and Montalembert [his fellow collaborators; Fr. Lacordaire would later humbly apologize to the Holy See for his writing published in L’Avenir, submit sincerily to the Pontiff’s decision condemning the journal, and deservedly gained the repute of ‘the greatest pulpit orator of the 19th cent.’] he did not find there the pronounced welcome of 1824. [that year Pope Leo XII welcomed him cordially in the Vatican, considering him at one time a likely candidate for the cardinal’s hat!]. He waited a long time, but received no definite answer: then some days after his departure from Rome, appeared the Encyclical ‘Mirari vos’ (15 August, 1832), in which the pope, without expressly designating him, condemned some of the ideas advanced in ‘L'Avenir’: liberty of the press, liberty of conscience, revolt against princes, the need of regenerating Catholicism, etc. At the same time a letter from Cardinal Pacca informed Lamennais that the pope had been pained to see him discuss publicly questions which belonged to the authorities of the Church.”

Pope Gregory XVI writes in Mirari vos (On Liberalism and Religious Indifferentism):

Now we examine another prolific cause of evils by which, we lament, the Church is at present afflicted, namely indifferentism, or that base opinion which has become prevalent everywhere through the deceit of wicked men, that eternal salvation of the soul can be acquired by any profession of faith whatsoever, if morals are conformed to the standard of the just and the honest … And so from this most rotten source of indifferentism flows that absurd and erroneous opinion, or rather insanity, that liberty of conscience must be claimed and defended for anyone.

Indeed, to this most unhealthy error that full and immoderate liberty of opinions which is spreading widely to the destruction of the sacred and civil welfare opens the way, with some men repeatedly asserting with supreme boldness that some advantage flows there from to religion itself. But ‘what death of the soul is worse than freedom for error?’ Augustine used to say. For, since all restraint has been moved by which men are kept on the paths of truth, since their nature inclined to evil is now plunging headlong, we say that the ‘bottom of the pit’ has truly been opened, from which John (Apoc. 9:3) saw ‘smoke arising by which the sun was darkened with locusts’ coming out of it to devastate the earth …

Nor can we foresee more joyful omens for religion and the state from the wishes of those who desire that the Church be separated from the State, and that the mutual concord of the government with the sacred ministry be broken. For it is certain that that concord is greatly feared by lovers of this most shameless liberty, which has always been fortunate and salutary for the ecclesiastical and the civil welfare.

Having embraced with paternal affection those especially who have applied their mind particularly to the sacred disciplines and to philosophic questions, encourage and support them so that they may not, by relying on the powers of their own talents alone, imprudently go astray from the path of truth into the way of the impious. Let them remember ‘that God is the guide of wisdom and the director of the wise’ (cf. Wisd. 7:15), and that it is not possible to learn to know God without God, who by means of the Word teaches men to know God. It is characteristic of the proud, or rather of the foolish man to test the mysteries of faith ‘which surpasseth all understanding’ (Phil. 4:7) by human standard, and to entrust them to the reasoning of our mind, which by reason of the condition of our human nature is weak and infirm. [see: Indifferentism (against Félicité de Lamennais) in: The Sources of Catholic Dogma paras. 1613-1616] 

Wounded Pride Takes Its Toll

Lamennais announced that he would not revive his journal, abolished his General Agency for the Defense of Religious Liberty, and seemingly subjected himself to Rome’s ruling. In his heart, however, there raged a furious battle, the last and decisive one, which ultimately sealed his inglorious fate and tragic end. He would voice his indignation and bitterness in private correspondence; Lamennais’ grudge towards the Church’s hierarchy finally reached Rome.

The Catholic Encyclopedia continues:                   

Rome was stirred by this behavior, and demanded frank and full adhesion to the Encyclical ‘Mirari vos’. After seeming to yield, Lamennais ended by refusing to submit without reserve or qualification. Little by little, he began by renouncing his ecclesiastical functions (December, 1833) and ended by abandoning all outward profession of Christianity. The amelioration of humanity, devotion to the welfare of the people and of popular liberties, dominated him more and more. In May, 1834, he published the ‘Paroles d'un croyant’[‘Words of a believer’], through the apocalyptic diction of which resounds a violent cry of rage against the established social order: in it he denounces what he calls the conspiracy of kings and priests against the people. In this way he loudly declared his rupture with the Church, and set up the symbol of his new faith. Gregory XVI hastened to condemn in the Encyclical ‘Singulari nos’ (15 July, 1834) this book, small in size, but immense in perversity, and at the same time censured the philosophical system of Lamennais.

The Pope thus exhorted the bishops of France in his encyclical Singulari nos:

But it is a very mournful thing, by which the ravings of human reason go to ruin when someone is eager for revolution and, against the advice of the Apostle, strives ‘to be more wise than it behooveth to be wise’ (cf. Rom. 12:3), and trusting too much in himself, affirms that truth must be sought outside of the Catholic Church in which truth itself is found far from even the slightest defilement of error, and which therefore, is called and is ‘the pillar and ground of the truth’ (I Tim. 3:15). But you well understand, venerable brothers, that We are here speaking in open disapproval of that false system of philosophy, not so long ago introduced, by which, because of an extended and unbridled desire of novelty, truth is not sought where it truly resides, and, with a disregard for the holy and apostolic tradition, other vain, futile, uncertain doctrines, not approved by the Church are accepted as true, on which very vain man mistakenly think that truth itself is supported and sustained.” [See: The False Doctrines of Félicité de Lamennais in: The Sources of Catholic Dogma para. 1617]

In the 1840s Lamennais would continue to openly tout blatant apostasy in his writings, denying “in formal terms the fall of man, the Divinity of Christ, eternal punishment, and the supernatural order (…). To this epoch, too, belongs the translation of the Gospels, with anti-Christian notes and reflections."

In the aftermath of the 1848 Revolution, Lamennais once again tasted of his former renown. Having won a seat in the French parliament, he expected to put his radically liberal political designs into practice. However, bitter disillusionment followed as his plans for a constitution attracted no attention of his fellow deputies. For a period of four month only he managed to publish yet another journal, “in which he met common cause with the worst revolutionaries”. Finally, the coup of 1851 orchestrated by Bonaparte’s nephew thwarted Lamennais’ political career for good. He would spend his last years in financial ruin, serving time in prison on account of one of his publications and financial debts until his death on February 27, 1854.

Death  of the Apostate

Although Lamennais did not take his own life, he truly can be said to have died the death of Judas inasmuch as he was lying on his deathbed in utter despair.

Around him would be gathered only the libertines, freemasons, and the worst enemies of religion; among whom the most prominent was one young man, one of the former co-editors of the radically liberal daily Le Peuple Constituant (Lamennais was the editor of that paper). The friends of the dying man from his former, better years would not be admitted – with Lamennais’ knowledge – to his deathbed. Many of them did not cease to offer fervent prayers for his conversion. Members of the Church hierarchy, including the archbishop of Paris and even Pope Pius IX himself would persevere in their efforts to save the soul of the poor wretch to the very end.

The response of the dying man was still the same: No, no, no, leave me alone! To one of his once beloved disciples who still retained his unique sentiment towards the old master, and would exhort Lamennais to at least make an effort to pray, he would say that he was not able to pray as prayer is a grace and he had no grace anymore. Lamennais was conscious till the last moment. He did not want to make peace neither with God nor with his Mystical Body – the Church.

This diabolical obstinacy in sin may have seemed almost unreal – it certainly left me astounded – until I learnt that many years before his death Lamennais had disposed of the statue of Our Lady that he had kept in his bedroom in a place of honor and placed there a bust of Marianne – a symbol of the Freemasonic, God-hating French Revolution – instead.

Father Dębicki thus characterizes Lamennais’ apostasy and its effect on the Church he would once defend with the zeal of the early Christian writers:

 The history of great apostasies is always tragic; shaking the minds with its horror, it teaches us also and says much. The falling away of Lamennais, in many aspects similar to the fall of Tertulian, is one of a kind. Rarely ever one falls from so high, in so direct, so sudden, and so profound a manner. Rarely ever is the fall an end to activity this rich in merits and so promising. Rarely ever has the fall of a man injured the Church so little. In the history of the Church Lamennais is the only example of a beloved master who, having apostatized from the Faith, did not drag into the abyss even one of his companions and disciples. Others, especially in more recent times, would win their sad fame only through their apostasy; Lamennais was highly esteemed by the public opinion as long as he stayed faithful to the Church. His star would fade away the moment he apostatized from the Faith. There was only one feeling that his friends and foes had for him – pity.

 

Conclusion

In the last years marked by financial ruin and personal failure, Lamennais’ chief source of income came from the copyrights of his translation of… one of the classics of Catholic spirituality – The Imitation of Christ – which he had rendered nearly thirty years before. Lamennais’ L’Imitation de Jésus-Christ first published in 1824, at the height of his ecclesial celebrity, with its author being esteemed by the princes of the Church and revered by his disciples, surpassed in popularity all of his other works. He furnished his Imitation with his own notes and reflections. Tragically, Lamennais did not heed the spiritual advice contained therein . It was at that time that he needed to be reminded of the danger of vainglory and praise, of the urgent necessity of humility, mortification, of renouncing the pomp of this world, and embracing the Cross of Christ. One cannot help but wonder how different his life might have been if only he would have made this small book (which let him buy his daily bread in his darkest years) truly, and most importantly, his spiritual food.

Woe to them that seek to learn many curious things from men, and attend but little to the way of serving Me.

I teach without noise of words, without confusion of opinions, without arrogance of ambition, without strife of arguments.

I am He who teacheth to despise earthly things, to scorn what is present, to seek what is unending, to relish what is eternal, to fly honors, to endure revilings,  to place all hope in Me, to desire nothing but Me, and to love Me ardently above all things.

[Of the Imitation of Christ, Book IV, Chapter 43 Against vain and worldly learning]