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THE SOCIALISM OF TO-DAY.
Already in 1863, at the Munich Congress of Catholic
savants, the illustrious theologian Dœllinger maintained that
Catholic associations should grapple with the social question.
Soon afterwards, an eminent prelate, the Bishop of Mayence,
Monseigneur Ketteier, published a book upon the same subject,
which made a great stir, and which was entitled Die Arbeiter
frage und das Kristenthum (“ The Labour Question and
Christianity”). He showed that, upon certain points. Social
ism and Christianity were in accord. In reality the idea was
not altogether new. In the Middle Ages, the Jacquerie in
France, and the revolted peasantry of the sixteenth century in
Germany, invoked the Gospel. The men of the French Revo
lution, who dreamed of something more than the establishment
of liberty and civil equality, did the same ; and, in his cynical
language, Camille Desmoulins called Jesus the first of the
sans-culottes. After 1848 French Socialists frequently cited
the Christian Fathers in support of their doctrines; and a
Communist, Villegardelle, who was not wanting in intelligence,
compiled a whole volume of extracts from their writings to
prove that private property should be unhesitatingly abolished.*
In 1852, twelve years before the Bishop of Mayence,
François Huet, a Catholic philosopher of rare merit, issued a
volume. Le Règne Social du Christianisme, where may be found
explained, with greater clearness, method, and science, those
ideas which are to-day promulgated by the Catholic Socialists.
It is beyond question the best book upon the subject which
has yet appeared.
When the Gospel is appealed to in favour of Communism
or Socialism, this is at once right and wrong. If it be intended
that Christianity enjoins any particular social or political or
ganization, this is a mistake. What Christ preached was a
change of heart, internal reformation. He did not dream of
modifying surrounding institutions ; they were about to disa])-
pear in a cosmical revolution of which the Evangelists have left
us a terrible picture. It was “ in another world and under
* Histoire des idées sociales avant la Revolution, bv F. Villegardelle.
See also, for the same period and style of thought, VEvangile devant le
siècle, by Simon Granger.
