188 APPENDIX, 



f\Ue of Catholicism if it should persist in reconstructing itself. It 

 will be found, lie said, to degenerate into paganism. The pro- 

 phecy is coming true. The Neo-Catholicism or Marianism has 

 made itself dogmatically incompatible with scientific progress, as 

 well as with political and social progress. Loosing itself from 

 the enlightened classes, it will become the religion of the coun- 

 try people, where it will die out like the first Roman paganism. 

 Some choice spirits, beguiled by prejudices of habit or educa- 

 tion, some old-fashioned metaphysicians may still take shelter 

 under the shadow of the old sanctuary ; for the masses, the 

 springs of intellectual and moral life are dried up in that quarter. 

 The reign of Pius IX. will mark the fatal date of the last deca- 

 dence." 



Such was the effect of the Encyclical upon one honest and 

 earnest man. There is weighty instruction in it. M. Huet has 

 just been taken away from his multitude of friends, attended by 

 their most affectionate respect ; for one had only to know him, 

 to admire his firm love of justice and liberty. 



It seems as if the giddy infatuation which drove the papacy to 

 this act of folly, had at one moment infected the whole Catholic 

 church of France. In the year 1868, it undertook the most de- 

 plorable campaign — the best adapted to multiply defections like 

 that of M. Huet. The Peter the Hermit of this crusade was the 

 indefatigable Bishop of Orleans, whose zeal is truly formidable — 

 to his friends. The occasion of these new attacks upon the sys- 

 tem of public education, was a very innocent innovation on the 

 part of the Minister of Public Instruction, who, in order to en- 

 courage the education of girls, brought within their reach, in the 

 principal cities of France, excellent courses of instruction by the 

 professors of our Lyceums. There is really nothing so very ter- 

 rible in such an arrangement. jMothers arc free to send or not to 

 send their daughters to these Lectures, which, withal, are abso- 

 lutely neutral in a religious point of view. But the Church docs 

 not so understand it. It regards female education as its own 

 property — its private estate. To interfere with it, it regards as an 

 actual attack upon itself, an odious usurpation of power. This 

 is what Monseigneur Dupanloup felt profoundly. So he mulii- 



