The Church and the infidels, with a special look at the Jews — Paquet, 1908

After surveying the history of Church - State relations, Bishop Louis-Adolphe Paquet explains what should be the relationship between infidels and the Catholic Church in modern times

“Undoubtedly, ‘we must not hate these remnants of unfaithful Jerusalem over which Jesus Christ wept.’ But neither must we, through ill-organized charity, unsuspectingly deliver into perfidious and rapacious hands the social body to which we belong, and the treasure of our religious and national traditions. The Jew, for us, is an enemy. Whether he still nourishes the ineptitudes of the Talmud with the age-old hatred that has never ceased to animate him against the disciples of the Nazarene, or whether, undergoing the corrosive action of free thought, he places his messianic hopes no longer in the restoration, taken in the literal sense, of the kingdom of Israel, but in the advent of a God-humanity gorged with gold and pleasures, his social influence is a threat to any people it penetrates, it is a calamity for any society where it dominates.”

Author’s Biography

Louis‑Adolphe Paquet (b. 1859) was born in Saint‑Nicolas, near Lévis, Quebec. He was the eldest son of Adolphe Pâquet (later mayor of the village) and Éléonore Demers. He belonged to an influential French‑Canadian clerical family. His uncles, Benjamin and Louis‑Honoré Pâquet, were prominent churchmen, and a cousin, Étienne‑Théodore Pâquet, served in the provincial legislature.

Louis‑Adolphe studied locally, then at the Séminaire de Québec before moving to Rome’s Pontifical Urban University. There he earned a Doctor of Divinity degree, presenting his thesis to Pope Leo XIII in June 1883. The same year on March 24, he was ordained to the priesthood. Upon returning to Canada, he began teaching theology at Université Laval, a position he held for nearly six decades. He served as Director of the Quebec Seminary (1902), dean of Laval’s Faculty of Theology (1904–1938), and was named apostolic protonotary in 1902 and elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1903.

Paquet was encouraged by Pope Leo XIII to promote Neo-Scholasticism in Canada, and became a central figure in the movement. He authored multiple works and in 1930 founded the Académie canadienne Saint‑Thomas d’Aquin to study the works of St. Thomas. As the official interpreter of papal pronouncements in French Canada, he intervened in major public debates, including the Manitoba Schools Question and Regulation 17 in Ontario. His 1902 address, La Vocation de la race française en Amérique, had a lasting effect on French‑Canadian nationalism, framing it as a missionary vocation.

Paquet’s most famous work, Le Droit public de l’Église, part of which will be presented below, codified and developed much of French‑Canadian Catholic thinking. It was characterized by its ultramontane and reactionary tone, unsurprising for a loyal son of the Church. He co‑founded the traditionalist L’Action Catholique newspaper in 1907 and voiced strong opposition to Bolshevism, mandatory public education, and women’s suffrage, correctly seeing them as dire threats to a Catholic social order. Unfortunately, his influence waned with the rise of secular, socially‑focused politics after the 1930s. Paquet died in Québec City on February 4, 1942, leaving behind a lasting legacy of faithfulness to the Church.

Now, without further ado, The Journal of American Reform is pleased to present the twelfth lesson from Bp. Paquet’s public law theses.

Text: Droit public de l'église principes généraux, (1908), pgs. 268-290

TWELFTH LESSON — THE CHURCH AND THE INFIDELS

Gentlemen,

Until now, in studying the Church and the complex question of its relationship with the State, we have placed ourselves and have wished to remain almost exclusively in the region of theory and principles.

Guided by the calm light that Catholic teaching sheds on sincere minds, we have seen what Christian society must be, on what religious and moral basis its organization must rest, in what fruitful alliance the Church and the State must join hands to preside with honor over the spiritual and temporal destinies of nations

But not everything is absolute in this world; the relative and the contingent play a very important role. We are therefore now forced to descend to the terrain of facts and consider, in order to establish their legal side, the various situations imposed on the Church of Christ by the ignorance or malice of men, by religious vicissitudes and political changes in States.

When the Church emerged from the fold, everything around her, apart from the Jewish people, was infidel and pagan: men, families, institutions, governments. She found herself facing a gigantic empire totally foreign to her faith, even professing doctrines and maintaining superstitions diametrically opposed to Christian beliefs and practices.

What a difficult task it was to conquer this empire, what a daring and colossal undertaking it was to bring about the religious transformation of Rome and the world! But a society founded by God, constituted according to God’s plan, supported by God’s help and invested by him with the broadest powers and the most sacred prerogatives, could not shrink from such a mission. It set resolutely to work.

Among the rights received from its author, it numbered, first and foremost, that of claiming a place within existing societies, of freely proclaiming the word of God there, of laying there the first roots of its organization and its life.

We do not wish to discuss here the theological question of the exact limits where, with regard to unbaptized persons, the jurisdictional powers conferred by Jesus Christ on his Church end. What is certain, what cannot be disputed, is that the infidels—and by this we mean idolaters of all kinds, Mohammedans, Jews, all those, in a word, who have neither the baptism nor the faith of Christ—these infidels owe full submission to the magisterium of the Church, that they are bound to respect her word and to lend an ear to her teachings. Did not our Lord, recalling and as if delegating his own jurisdiction over all creatures, tell her to go and evangelize all nations,¹ without making any distinction between Jews and Gentiles? Did he not command her to exercise among these peoples the august functions of a triple ministry, the doctrinal, sacramental and moral ministry, counting for this on divine assistance itself?²

These powers inherent in the Church entail, by correlation, on the part of the State the strict obligation to welcome, if not with favor, at least without hostility, Christian missionaries.

“The infidel State,” says Bishop Cavagnis,³ “has: first, the duty to admit the Catholic apostolate; second, the duty to allow its subjects the freedom to convert and profess the Catholic religion; and this without having to suffer in their civil and political rights. The prince, not converting because he is not convinced of the divinity of Christianity, must nevertheless admit that this religion presents itself in a truly praiseworthy aspect, and that it can appear divine to all or to some of his subjects.”

That is not all.

“Having established the right of the Church to its existence among infidel States, assuming the fact that it has members among them, we must conclude that it has the right to everything that is indispensable to its existence and does not harm the competence of others. It will therefore be able to open temples and schools, and acquire property

Not to be insulted in one’s limbs and to be respected in one’s possessions are inalienable rights for her.”⁴

In all of human history, there is no more moving spectacle than that of the humble Society of Christ, represented by a few illiterate people without fortune or prestige, undertaking, under the auspices of a crucified man, the conversion of the pagan world.

The new religion had appeared on the hills of Judea.

But, since Rome, through its armies, its consuls, its pontiffs, laid down the law for almost all nations, was it not a matter of great wisdom that, where the false gods of the Empire reigned, there too the true God, in the person of his vicar, should establish the seat of his visible kingdom and constitute the center of his religious action? Peter established the nascent papacy there, and it was from this center that growing Christianity would henceforth radiate out over the world.

The Christians of Rome, originally confused with the Jews, were able to enjoy for a few years the legal tolerance with which the Romans then covered all religions. Soon, however, with the help of the Jews themselves, this confusion ceased: it was on the occasion of the fire in the city, which Nero, to divert the suspicions hanging over himself, wanted at first to accuse the Jews of, but which he then falsely attributed to the Christians. This fact gave rise to the first act of the iniquitous and cruel legislation which, for nearly three centuries and in three different forms, was to unfold in a series of persecutory edicts.

Around the year 112, Trajan’s famous rescript appeared, the tenor of which established Roman jurisprudence relating to Christians for the entire second century. It boiled down to this: not to conduct an investigation to discover Christians; but to condemn those who, duly accused, acknowledge that they are, and to acquit those who, by an act of idolatry, prove that they are not or no longer wish to be. This legislation, hostile as it was, did not lack a certain moderation.

With the third century, the struggle against Christianity entered a new phase. It was open war, sparked by an edict from Septimius Severus and maintained or fomented by similar and increasingly rigorous edicts from other emperors

To bring the Christians to trial, one no longer waits for an accuser, at his own risk and peril, and following the regular forms of justice, to file a complaint against them; the magistrates are ordered to seek out the faithful to require them to recant.

However, persecution was rife; the number of Christians was constantly growing. The fourth century was first marked by a resumption of hostilities even more bitter and violent than the previous ones; then, with Maximinus, precursor of Julian the Apostate, a change of tactics took place. Brutal warfare was replaced by a struggle of pamphlets spread among the public, libels distributed in schools, slanderous trials, covert intrigues, and devious actions aimed at discrediting Christianity and losing it in public opinion. This was the last anti-Christian attempt by the pagan state before Constantine.

Throughout this period, through the storms of often renewed persecution, Christians had experienced brief respites here and there: simple administrative tolerance inspired sometimes by the weariness of the assailants, sometimes by the benevolence of emperors who were less cruel or truly sympathetic to new ideas. The Church had taken advantage of this to activate its propaganda, to develop its hierarchy, and to improve its material situation. Thanks to the freedom of associations, authorized by Roman law, and which citizens of different classes could take advantage of to form mutual aid societies and funeral colleges, some estates and rich patrimonies, belonging to wealthy families, had passed into the hands of the Church, which owned and administered them, not as a religious community, but as a common corporation.⁵ This was the origin of the first ecclesiastical buildings as well as the common cemeteries called catacombs.

But this situation of a Church not recognized by the State, and forced, in order to survive, to take on the appearance of a charitable society or a funeral association in the eyes of the law, was hardly normal. It could not last long: in the designs of Providence, it was only a transition and a step towards more favorable and stable conditions of existence.

The edict promulgated in 313 by Constantine was a true charter of emancipation not only for Christians, but for Christianity itself, embodied in the authority and institutions of the Roman Church. This legislative act, of such considerable scope, deserves special attention. It consists of two parts.

In the first, it is stated: “We have judged it salutary and reasonable to refuse to anyone permission to give preference to the worship of Christians, so that the supreme Divinity, whose religion we follow by free choice, may grant us in all things his accustomed favor and benevolence.”⁶ This is the faculty granted to individuals to freely profess Christianity.

The second concerns the body of Christians, the corporation, the Christian community, to which the stolen property must be returned. This is the civil recognition of the Catholic Church. “Its collective domain is clearly set apart from individual property; its right to exist and to possess, prior to the persecutions and superior to the laws that had contested it, is acknowledged by the retroactive effect given to the measures taken to reestablish it; the Church definitively acquires, vis-à-vis the State, that moral and civil personality which it once tried to shelter under the cover of laws relating to funeral associations, and which a solemn edict now allows it to assume without subterfuge, in broad daylight, in front of everyone. From now on, it will be able, in the immense sphere in which God calls it to move, to freely exercise all its rights and fulfill its entire mission.”⁷

It was therefore freedom, a full and frank freedom, granted to the Church by the civil power; it was not yet, officially at least, the protection of an allied power proscribing pagan worship and making Christianity the religion of the State. This legal union of the two powers was to be accomplished mainly under the sons of Constantine (Constance and Constans), then, after the reign of Julian, restorer of the idols, through the care of Gratian and Theodosius.

When we take in the whole of the persecutions violently unleashed against the Christian Church and ask ourselves what winds of discord raised such dreadful storms, it is undoubtedly permissible to see in the prejudices of the people and in the disordered passions of the princes two powerful causes of so much cruelty and so much hatred. In the eyes of the populations fixed and as if hypnotized in the worship of false gods, the Christians, stubbornly refusing to take part in these superstitions, were nothing but atheists capable and guilty of all crimes. Often, also, motives and pretexts of a purely subjective nature, such as greed, jealousy, the spirit of revenge, armed the emperors against the followers of Christ.

But a higher cause, especially from the third century onward, seems to have dominated all others: political prejudice, the persuasion that the new Church, opposed to the official cult of the Empire, to all of its morals, to a good number of its laws, was a threat to the security and very existence of the State.⁸

Certainly, nothing could be more ill-founded. If the Christian faith included a doctrine and rules of conduct incompatible with the official religion, no more in Rome than elsewhere did it show hostility toward existing civil institutions. We have as our guarantor the Apostle Saint Paul, whose teachings, after those of Our Lord Himself,⁹ on political power and the obedience due to it, served as the basis for uninterrupted Catholic traditions of frank loyalty and enlightened patriotism. The great doctor addresses the Catholics of Rome:¹⁰ Let everyone, he says, be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore, whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance established by God; and those who resist bring condemnation upon themselves. For princes are not to be feared for good works, but for evil. Do you want to avoid fearing the authority? Do what is right, and you will receive praise from it. For the prince is God’s minister for your good. But if you do evil, be afraid; for he does not bear the sword in vain. Indeed, he is God’s minister to avenge him, showing his wrath on the one who does evil. Therefore it is necessary to be in submission, not only for fear of wrath, but also for conscience’ sake. For this reason you also pay taxes; for princes are God’s ministers, serving him in this very thing. Render to all, therefore, their due: tribute to whom you owe tribute, taxes to whom you owe taxes, fear to whom you owe fear, honor to whom you owe honor.

These words admirably express what power is in society, what providential role it fulfills, in what way and for what reasons it must be obeyed. Read and commented on in the assembly of the faithful, they could not fail to deeply instill in their souls respect for civil authority and for all legislation, not contrary to faith or morality, in force in their country.

Thus the Empire never had more faithful, more devoted subjects than the Christians, and these, far from attempting anything against the established institutions, worked rather to strengthen them, first by praying for the emperors and the prosperity of their government,¹¹ then by setting the example of all private and public virtues which are the most solid support of nations. Interest, like conscience, made it their duty.¹²

It is even in this respect for established institutions, and in the fear of causing serious disturbances harmful to society, that we must seek the reason for the prudent reserve with which, in general, the leaders of the early Church treated the question of slavery. Following in the footsteps of the Apostle,¹³ they undoubtedly worked from the outset to improve the lot of slaves. As for the regime itself, which made this cruel serfdom one of the integral parts and the basis of the social organization of the pagan world, it would have been useless, even dangerous, to attack it immediately head-on.¹⁴

“To bring it down in one fell swoop, it would have been necessary to resort to revolutionary means, that is, to overthrow society itself along with it. Nothing could have been easier, perhaps, for, by relying on slavery, ancient civilizations took as their basis a mass of flammable materials, which had already caused partial fires, and which a powerful spark could have completely ignited without much difficulty. But nothing was more contrary to the spirit of Christianity, which was content to lay down, while allowing them to develop on their own, principles incompatible with the continuation of servitude: primitive equality, consecrated anew by the blood of a God shed for all men; universal brotherhood, recalled every day by the rites and sacraments of a religion offered to all without distinction of social conditions; dignity of work, become the duty of each instead of being the burden of a few; humility, chastity, mortification, new virtues, directly opposed to the vices that slavery encouraged and maintained. At the same time as it was thus preparing its distant but complete abolition, Christianity, through a just concern for present necessities, strove to make it provisionally bearable: it preached gentleness to masters, resignation to slaves, in order to bring hearts closer together and to inspire feelings of mutual tolerance in the two classes of men most divided by situation and interest.”¹⁵

It was thus little by little, by first preaching virtue, by Christianizing society, by introducing into the best-disposed families the practice of at least partial emancipation of slaves,¹⁶ then, when minds were prepared for it, by openly discussing the very principle of slavery, that the Church succeeded in definitively bringing down this barbaric and outdated institution.

Its prudent and discreet zeal, its loyal attitude towards the Roman Empire clearly shows that the unfaithful States have nothing to fear from its presence; on the contrary, history testifies that they can hope for the greatest benefits from the holy action of its ministers, from the moralizing and civilizing influence of its doctrines. And this is why it is the duty of Christian States to protect this action, to favor this influence in all the countries where it penetrates, and, where the doors are closed to it, to work with all their power to open them.

On this principle is founded the protectorate exercised, in infidel countries, by the Christian powers in favor of the pioneers of the Gospel. This is the reason for the noble mandate specially entrusted to France, to safeguard Catholic interests, whatever they may be, in the Levant and the Far East: a mandate which this illustrious nation seems to have merited the privilege of by the preponderant role it played in the Crusades and by other important services rendered to the religious cause; a mandate which for a long time, despite the vicissitudes and ingratitude of politics, the Holy See has not ceased to recognize and confirm.¹⁷

Let us hasten, however, to add: this protection on the part of the civil authority does not and cannot have as its aim to impose the faith on the faithful by constraint or by force of arms, but solely to favor, among souls docile to grace, its salutary expansion.

Nothing is clearer or more categorical on this point than the words of the angelic doctor Saint Thomas Aquinas:¹⁸ “There are,” he says, “infidels, like the Gentiles and the Jews, who have never received the faith; and these must in no way be forced to embrace it, because the act of faith must proceed from the will.”

If, nevertheless, the infidel State obstructs the preaching of the Gospel and the free functioning of ecclesiastical institutions, Saint Thomas agrees that the Church can then, quite legitimately, appeal to the arms of the Christian powers. “The faithful,” he adds,¹⁹ “must, if they are able to do so, use force against unbelievers to prevent them from harming the progress of the faith by blasphemy, perverse speech, or open persecution. This, in fact, is the reason for the wars that Christian peoples frequently undertake against the infidels; they do not pretend to force the latter to believe, since, when the fate of arms makes them fall into their hands, they leave them free to embrace or reject the faith; but what they want is to put them in the impossibility of preventing the development of the Christian faith.”

The Thomistic teaching on the freedom of faith is in perfect harmony with the doctrine of the most learned pontiffs who have governed the Church, from Saint Gregory the Great to Leo XIII. “Whoever,” writes Saint Gregory,²⁰ “sincerely desires to bring to the true faith those who are strangers to the Christian religion, must employ, to achieve this end, the means of gentleness and not severity, lest the infidels, whom the evidence of reasoning might perhaps convince, flee before constraint.” Leo XIII, speaking of the Church, says in his turn:²¹ “It is her custom to watch with the greatest care that no one is forced to embrace the Catholic faith against his will, for, as Saint Augustine wisely observes, a man can believe only of his own free will.”

In 1537, Paul III published a bull²² to solemnly declare to the Catholic sovereigns that it was not permissible for them to take away the liberty or property of the infidels of the New World, but that they must be invited to embrace the Christian religion by proclaiming the holy word and the example of good works, adding that he disapproved and condemned any contrary conduct.

In accordance with these principles, the Church enjoins its ministers not to baptize any adult without first instructing them in the truths of the faith and without having made sure that he truly desires to receive baptism.²³

Nothing, certainly, prevents the Catholic apostle; it is even a duty of charity for him, from exhausting all means of persuasion in order to win unbelieving souls to the true faith. Far from doing violence or insult to freedom, he rather removes the obstacles—simple ignorance in some, blinding passions in others—that could hinder its exercise, and he shows the uncertain conscience the sure path of doctrines that enlighten and practices that save.

Where the Church clearly shows all the respect she professes for freedom of conscience, soundly understood, is in the question of the baptism of children constituted under the power of unfaithful parents.

If the children are children who have reached the age of reason and who of their own accord, even against the will of their parents, request baptism, this sacrament, in principle, can and must be administered to them; because, according to the very apt remark of Saint Thomas, “in what pertains to natural and divine right, they begin to belong to themselves.”²⁴

As for the children of infidels in whom reason has not yet shed its first glimmers, Catholic teaching is categorical: it is not (except in a few exceptional cases, such as imminent danger of death) permitted to confer the sacrament of baptism on them against the will of their parents.

The Angel of the School, whose precise and sure doctrine so faithfully reflects the thought of the Church, condemns the contrary practice for three reasons.²⁵ One of these reasons is that the very interests of the faith are at stake; for, if these children received the baptism before enjoying the use of reason, they would later, under pressure from their parents, be exposed to abandoning the religion they had embraced without knowing it. But the holy doctor insists on two other reasons to which he seems to attach the highest value: “Firstly,” he says, “the custom of the Church of God, which must be followed in everything, has never approved this practice, not even at the time when it enjoyed the favor of the most powerful emperors, such as Constantine and Theodosius. Secondly, it is repugnant to natural justice: for, it is a natural right that the child, before having the use of reason, should be under the care of his father; from which it follows that it would be contrary to natural justice to dispose of him in any way contrary to the will of his parents.”²⁶

The Church herself, through the voice of Benedict XIV²⁷ and the decisions of the Roman congregations,²⁸ has repeatedly sanctioned these teachings. One cannot, therefore, without showing bad faith, deny the constant concern she has shown to respect in man the reserved sanctuary of conscience and to in no way infringe upon the faculty, which he holds from the Creator, to spontaneously embrace the true faith, or, against his duty and to his misfortune, to freely reject this salutary faith.

Should this Christian tolerance toward infidels extend to their doctrines and their religious ceremonies?

There is here, we believe, an important distinction to be made.

If these ceremonies and doctrines are openly repugnant to natural law, if they offend the most essential principles of morality and thereby affect society at its base, for example, by propagating impiety and atheism, or by giving credence to criminal customs and infamous practices, unworthy of peoples even slightly civilized, there is no doubt that the public authorities, by virtue of their social mission, are bound to put a brake on such licenses. Thus the Church has often consulted with Christian princes to proscribe idolatry, to make books of pagan theology disappear, to overthrow or to purify by sacred rites the temples of false divinities, theaters of so many abominations and so many disorders.

If, however, the infidels, while rejecting the Christian faith, do not mix into their beliefs and rites anything contrary to the fundamental precepts of the moral law, the State, whose immediate mission is only natural, and the Church, which seems to have received direct power only over the faithful, would not be justifiable in prohibiting the practice of their worship.

This is particularly true of the Jews, among whom the figurative rites,²⁹ the traditions based on the Holy Books, and above all these books themselves preserved with religion, bear unsuspecting witness to the truth of our faith. As Pascal said,³⁰ “they are visibly a people created expressly to serve as witnesses to the Messiah. They carry the books, and love them, and do not hear them. And all this is foretold; for it is said that the judgments of God are entrusted to them, but as a sealed book.”

This is why the situation of the Jews vis-à-vis the Church differs notably from that of other infidels. “The Church,” Philipps remarks,³¹ “has always treated them with more indulgence and gentleness than idolaters, and this is easily understood: the Jews were once God’s beloved people, and their faith, the beginning of truth, bears witness to Jesus Christ in spite of themselves. It is the Jews who preserved the prophets announcing the advent of the Messiah; they who, even in our days, claim for their fathers the torture and death of the Savior, thus attesting, against themselves and in spite of themselves, the truth of Christian tradition; they who, after having committed the crime, publish throughout the whole world the divine curse that has struck them. These considerations, the prayer of David, that which Jesus Christ addresses for them to his Father, and the promise of their future reunion in the kingdom of Christ fully explain and justify the Church’s leniency towards them.”

This is what we can call the theological side of the Jewish question. But there is also the social side, and we cannot lose sight of what Jews ordinarily are in the Christian environment in which they live: beings apart, creatures marked by a stigma of shame, a people hostile to all other peoples, mixed with each of them and identifying with none, making usury a profession, cunning a virtue, hatred of the Christian name a dogma and a duty.

What, in fact, does the Talmud say, this filthy commentary and this pharisaical depravity of the Bible dearer to the Jews than the Bible itself? “We decree that every Jew must, three times a day, curse all the Christian people, pray to God that He may confound and exterminate them with their kings and princes, and execrate Jesus of Nazareth.”³² — “God commands the Jews to work in every way, by cunning, by violence, by usury, by theft, to seize the property of Christians.”³³ — “Every Jew is commanded to consider Christians as brutes and not to treat them other than animals without reason.”³⁴

Can one push crude cynicism and sectarian fanaticism any further? Talmudism is, in truth, only a monstrous caricature of Mosaism.³⁵

Faced with this people who were God’s chosen and who, through a mysterious blindness, trample the divine work underfoot everywhere, the Church, in her wisdom, had to adopt an attitude and adopt legislation marked at once by charity and prudence, foresight and kindness. She protected the Jews, but by protecting herself against the danger of their contact and the contagion of their proselytism. It was a merciful and firm combination of welcoming Christianity and defensive anti-Semitism.

She first allowed the Jews to reside among Christians and offered them refuge in her own states (Rome, Ancona, Ferrara, Urbino). “Once admitted into a state, into a city, the Jews (according to canon law) must not be expelled lightly and for the first reason that comes along; as long as they faithfully fulfill their duties to the Church and the State, they have a right to the protection of the spiritual and temporal powers. One cannot, without making oneself criminal in the eyes of God, except in cases justified by truly legitimate reasons, kill them, mistreat them, despoil them of their property, or impose unjust burdens on them. The Church has always shown itself, in this respect, to be the guardian and protector of the Jews;³⁶ and its support was all the more necessary to them, since the legislation of a large number of States, in Germany for example, made their situation more intolerable, and since they had always suspended over their heads, like the sword of Damocles, this generally accepted principle, that the emperor had the right to exterminate all the Jews and to annul all the proceedings brought by them against their debtors.”³⁷

The authorization granted to Jews to reside among Christians nevertheless included certain restrictions designed to protect them from the dangers of a fundamentally hostile neighborhood. Thus, the law assigned them a specific street or neighborhood in the cities where they were admitted; it required them to wear distinctive clothing; and any commensality between them and Christians was prohibited.³⁸

Similarly, in consideration of the superiority of Christ’s disciples over this infidel and fallen race, and to better ward off any danger of seduction, the Church forbade Christians not only from contracting marriage with Jews, but also from entering their service³⁹ or to take them as servants themselves.⁴⁰ She even more strictly forbade Christian wet nurses from caring for Jewish children.⁴¹

Considering, moreover, the high influence, for evil as well as for good, that public offices confer on those invested with them, she believed it wise to forbid Jews from accessing these functions: they could not be, in Christian society, teachers, doctors, magistrates, or soldiers having any rank in the army.⁴² The events we have witnessed in recent years prove how opportune these precautions were.

Jewish commerce, without being prohibited, was nevertheless subject to special regulations to prevent it from degenerating into the odious exploitation of Christians. It was necessary to prevent fraud of all kinds to which Jews so easily indulge: the Church endeavored to do this by determining in advance the nature of the commercial transactions permitted to them, by forbidding them from charging interest higher than the legal rate,⁴³ and by requiring them to stipulate it in the borrowers’ language.⁴⁴ One could sign legitimate contracts with them, but not enter into cooperative societies that establish intimate and habitual relationships between the partners.⁴⁵

In religious matters, the legislation relating to the Jews bears the characteristics of a generosity that contrasts with the legal harassment to which Catholics in several countries are subject today, partly due to Israelite influence. Although this people no longer has any sacrifice, priesthood, or altar, and the faith of its fathers, under pharisaical and rabbinical influence, has evolved and has become, as it were, drowned in a mixture of incoherent doctrines and absurd superstitions, the Church did not want it to be deprived of the few religious practices to which it still devotes itself.

Ecclesiastical laws allow Jews to keep synagogues once authorized, but not to erect new ones or, ordinarily, to have more than one in the same locality. When a synagogue threatens ruin, it may be repaired or rebuilt entirely, provided that nothing is added to make it more beautiful or richer. Christians, moreover, are forbidden to take part in these constructions and repairs.⁴⁶

The synagogues, as well as the cemeteries, of the Jews are inviolable. And the protection with which the Church covers buildings dedicated to Mosaic worship, it extends it, all the more so, to this cult itself. It wants the Jews to be able to go about it freely, to be able to observe their religious rites and customs, to celebrate the Sabbath and the feasts of the old covenant, on the condition, however, that they refrain from giving these practices more than usual publicity, that they carefully avoid any cause of scandal, trouble, or discontent among Christians, and that they do nothing to harm Catholic worship.⁴⁷

Such has been in law, and such has also been in fact, the conduct, no less clement than prudent, of the Church towards the Jews. How did the latter respond to this benevolent attitude and this tutelary legislation? Gregory XIII will teach us:⁴⁸ “The Holy See,” he says, “working for their conversion, welcomed them mercifully and allowed them to live with its own subjects, striving to draw them to the light of truth by means of ever-pious industries, providing them with the necessities of life, protecting them against affronts and injuries, not to mention many other tokens of charity with which they ran to them. They, not allowing themselves to be softened by any benefit, omit nothing of the ancient proofs of their wickedness. They continue to persecute Our Lord Jesus Christ triumphant in the heavens, whether in their synagogues or everywhere else; and showing themselves to be the worst enemies of the members of the Savior, they do not cease to push their audacity further by horrible crimes;” which, then, the Pontiff paints the saddest picture. These words of a Pope of the sixteenth century have lost none of their relevance, and the great Catholic publicist Louis Veuillot was not wrong to see in the Jewish race, since it became guilty of a crime of which it bears the stigma everywhere, a people “servile when trampled, ungrateful when raised up, insolent as soon as it sees itself strong.”⁴⁹

Modern liberalism, emptied of Freemasonry,⁵⁰ has broken the ancient Christian legislation which held this suspect nation under the yoke of firm tutelage and which allowed it to live without giving it the freedom to harm. Almost everywhere today the Jews enjoy civil and political equality, at the same time complete religious freedom.⁵¹ Have we gained from it? Their complicity with the Lodges,⁵² in the vast social conspiracy that has formed, and which is being executed every day with such success, not only against Catholicism, but even against the most vague Christianity, provides a painful answer to this question.

We therefore believe that anti-Semitism, as understood by Saint Thomas Aquinas and as practiced by the Church, should be, to the extent permitted by current social conditions, the program of all Christian countries.

Undoubtedly, “we must not hate these remnants of unfaithful Jerusalem over which Jesus Christ wept.”⁵³ But neither must we, through ill-organized charity, unsuspectingly deliver into perfidious and rapacious hands the social body to which we belong, and the treasure of our religious and national traditions. The Jew, for us, is an enemy. Whether he still nourishes the ineptitudes of the Talmud with the age-old hatred that has never ceased to animate him against the disciples of the Nazarene, or whether, undergoing the corrosive action of free thought, he places his messianic hopes no longer in the restoration, taken in the literal sense, of the kingdom of Israel, but in the advent of a God-humanity gorged with gold and pleasures,⁵⁴ his social influence is a threat to any people it penetrates, it is a calamity for any society where it dominates.

It is therefore our duty, as Canadians, whether as Christians or as citizens, to make an effort to ward off this peril.

Christians, let us recall the ancient legislation of the Church, which, where it is still possible to apply it, cannot be, for us, a dead letter. Let us revive its spirit in our discreet zeal to shield our family, friendship, and even business relationships from Jewish contact.

Citizens and members of a Christian-based state, let us guard in our public actions against distorting its spirit, against imprudently basing our influence on the influence of the Jews, against opening the paths to power to them, against entrusting them with a share of authority, and thus compromising, through miserable party calculations, the interests of an entire nation.

There are necessary tolerances; but there are also culpable complacency. Complacency toward implacable enemies who, for nineteen centuries, have made a career of exploiting and hating us, deserves the name of weakness, blindness, or madness.⁵⁵

END.⁵⁶

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1. Matt. XXVIII, 18-20; comp. Acts XVIII, 6.

2. Matt., end quoted.

3. Notions de droit public naturel et eccl., trad. Duballet, pgs. 297-8.

4. Ibid., pg. 299.

5. Paul Allard, Hist. des persécutions, vol. II, chap. I: L’Eglise et le droit d’association. This author, whom we had before us when speaking of the persecutory legislation of the first centuries, must be placed in the first rank among the good writers of France.

6. Allard. op. cit., vol. V, p. 252 (2nd ed.).

7. Ibid., pg. 258.

8. Allard, Dix leçons sur le martyre, IV: Les causes des persécutions.

9. Matt. XXII, 21.

10. Rom. XIII, 1-7; Cf. 1 Pet. II, 13-14.

11. Athenag., Legat. pro christ. 37. — An ancient tradition, mentioned by Eusebius, attributes to the prayers of baptized soldiers the storm that one day saved the Roman army threatened with perishing from thirst in the Quadian War (Allard, Hist. des persécutions, vol. I, p. 395, 3rd ed.).

12. See above, lesson seven, p. 161.

13. Epistle to Philemon.

14. Slavery, born of sin, certainly constitutes a profound anomaly, a manifest imperfection in the state of society. But, if we strip it of the conditions which, among the pagans, deprived the slave of the rights inherent in human personality, is it essentially and in every way opposed to natural law? Eminent Christian philosophers, such as Saint Thomas Aquinas (4 S. D. 36, q. I, a. 1, ad 2 and 3), do not think so.

15. Allard, Julien l'Apostat, vol. I, pgs. 241-2 (2nd ed.).

16. To cite just one case, Melanie the Younger, a great Christian lady of the time of Saint Jerome, “freed those of her slaves who wanted to be free, about eight thousand” (ibid. p. 248).

17. See on this subject Questions actuelles, vol. LXXVII, n. 4, an excellent historical-legal study by a Roman prelate.

18. Sum. theol., II-II, Q. X, a. 8.

19. Ibid.

20. Epistol. 1. XIII, ep. 12.

21. Encycl. Immortale Dei.

22. Moulart, op. cit., pg. 300.

23. Roman Ritual, On Adult Baptism.

24. Op. cit., a. 12.

25. Ibid.

26. Ibid; Cf. III, Q. LXVIII, a. 10; also our Commentary (Disput. theol., vol. V) on this part of the Summa Theologica. Certainly another case is the case of the unfaithful child already baptized; by the fact of his baptism, he falls under the jurisdiction of the Church. (See above, lesson 6, the Mortara affair).

27. Const. 28 Feb. 1747.

28. Duballet, op. cit., vol. II, p. 297.

29. “Seeing the Jews observe their rites, which were intended to represent the truth of our faith, is not without advantage for the Christian people. This is because we thus have, among our enemies themselves, a living demonstration of our religion, and what we believe, they represent in some way before our eyes. This is why their worship is tolerated.” (St. Thomas, Sum. theol., II-II, Q. X, a. 11.).

30. Pensées, vol. II, art. 8, n. 16.

31. Du droit eccl. dans ses principes généraux, vol. II, § XCVII (2nd ed., trans. Crouzet). We summarize the author’s words.

32. Duballet, L’Eglise et l’Etat, vol. II, p. 317.

33. Ibid., end. cit.

34. Ibid., p. 318.

35. We believe we should reproduce what Pope Innocent IV wrote to the King of France in 1244: “Ungrateful to the Savior Jesus Christ, who patiently awaits their conversion, these unfortunates (the Jews), without shame of their fault, without respect for the Christian faith, have rejected the law, despised Moses and the prophets, to follow certain miserable traditions in which they instruct and nourish their children. These traditions are gathered in what they call in Hebrew the Talmud, which among them is a great book, more extensive than the Bible. It contains manifest blasphemies against God and his Christ and against the Blessed Virgin, absurd fables, illusions of all kinds, unheard-of nonsense.” The Pope concludes by imploring the king to have this collection of errors consigned to the flames. (Roman Bullarium).

36. Thus, when, by the edict of 1492, the Jews who refused to accept the Christian faith were expelled from Spain, Pope Alexander VI offered them hospitality in his states (Gaffre, Inquisition et Inquisitions, pgs. 65-6; Pastor, Hist. des Papes au Moyen Age, vol. VI, pg. 146).

37. Philipps, op. cit., vol. II, pgs. 295-6. This work contains all the texts of ancient legislation relating to the Jewish question.

38. Ibid., pgs. 298, 303, 306.

39. “However, the Church allows Christians to cultivate the lands of the Jews, because this does not entail the necessity of constant relations with them.” (St. Thomas, Sum. theol., II-II, Q. X, a. 10 ad 3).

40. Philipps, op. cit., p. 304.

41. Ibid., p. 305.

42. Duballet, op. cit., vol. II, pgs. 328-30.

43. On the attitude to be taken by the State towards the Jews in matters of usury, see the response of St. Thomas Aquinas (Opusc. XXI, ed. Vivès, 1857) to some questions posed by the Duchess of Brabant.

44. Philipps, op. cit., pg. 300.

45. Duballet, op. cit., pg. 328.

46. Philipps, op. cit., pg. 296.

47. Ibid., p. 297; Duballet, op. cit., pgs. 333-4.

48. Const. Antiqua Judæorum improbitas (Roman Bullarium).

49. Mélanges religieux, historiques, etc., 2nd series, vol. V, pg. 204.

50. See Denais-Darnays, Les Juifs en France avant et depuis la Révolution: comment ils ont conquis l'égalité, Paris, libr. Bloud, 1901.

51. The Constituent Assembly freed the Jews of France by its decree of September 27, 1791. England did not complete the emancipation of its Jews until 1849 and 1858; Denmark in 1849; Austria-Hungary in 1867; Germany in 1869 and 1871; Italy in 1860 and 1870; Switzerland in 1869 and 1874; Bulgaria and Serbia in 1878 and 1879. Russia, Romania, Spain, and Portugal are the only ones not yet to have followed France’s example (A. Leroy-Beaulieu, Israël chez les nations, 1893, pg. 2).

52. See Bertrand, La Franc-Maçonnerie secte juive, Paris, libr. Bloud, 1903.

53. L. Veuillot, op. cit., pg. 149.

54. Claudio Jannet, speaking of the Jews of the United States, says that most of them, especially the richest, belong to a sort of reformed party. For them, “the Messiah is only a symbol. Humanity, as an elevated, happy, prosperous race, enjoying long life, health, and earthly comfort, this is the Messiah they await, and whom, according to these modernized rabbis, Moses and the prophets designated with poetic metaphors. This is precisely the basis of the Masonic idea. The Jews of this school quickly move from deism to pantheism.” (Etats-Unis contemporains, vol. II, p. 372, 4th ed.).

55. On the character and feelings of modern Jews, see the statements of a Jewish author, Bernard Lazare (Questions actuelles, September 14, 1907, pgs. 181-2.)

56. The translation for this document was done with digital translation software and then (carefully) manually reviewed to ensure readability and coherence. The skeptical reader is encouraged to review the original French, in addition to the sense and style of the text, linked above, should he maintain doubts.