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754 s4s4s4s4s4 c h a p t e r 6a Of the Progress of Catholicism in the United States America is the most democratic country on earth, and at the same time the country where, according to trustworthy reports,b the Catholic religion is making the most progress. This is surprising at first view. Two things must be clearly distinguished. Equality disposesmentowant to judge by themselves; but, from another side, it gives them the taste and the idea of a single social power, simple and the same for all. So men who live in democratic centuries are very inclined to avoidallreligiousauthority. But, if they consent to submit to such an authority, they at least want it to be unitary and uniform; religious powers that do not all lead to the same center [or in other words national churches] are naturally shocking to their a. This chapter, which bears the number Vbis in the manuscript, as well as the one that follows, are not included in the list of notebook CVf. In the manuscript the first title is: how the progress of equality has favored the progress of catholicism. On the jacket of the manuscript you find this note: “Ask for some figures from Mr. Wash perhaps.” Probably this concerns Robert Walsh, American journalist, founder of the National Gazette. Tocqueville and Beaumont met him in Philadelphia (George W. Pierson, Tocqueville and Beaumont in America, pp. 475–76, 537). b. Several conversations with Americans had persuaded Tocqueville of the rapid increase of Catholicism in the United States. This fact has been contestedbycertainAmerican critics. On this subject, it can be recalled that, in his first letters from America, Tocqueville noted that if the lower classes tended toward Catholicism, the upper classes converted instead to Unitarianism (cf. alphabetic notebook A, YTC, BIIa, and Voyage, OC, V, 1, pp. 230–32. YTC, BIIa contains a note on conversions in India copied from the Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register, 4, April 1831, p. 316. It is not reproduced in Voyage). of the progress of catholicism 755 intelligence, and they imagine almost as easily that there is no religion as that there are several.c You see today, more than in earlier periods, Catholics who become unbelievers and Protestants who turn into Catholics. If you consider Catholicism internally, it seems to lose; if you look at it from the outside, it gains. That can be explained. Men today are naturally little disposed to believe; but as soon as they have a religion, they find a hidden instinct within themselves that pushes them without their knowing toward Catholicism. Several of the doctrines and practices of the Roman Church astonish them;d but they experience a secret admiration for its government, and its great unity attracts them. If Catholicism succeeded finally in escaping from the political hatreds to which it gave birth, I hardly doubt that this very spirit of the century, which seems so contrary to it, would become very favorable to it,e and that it would suddenly make great conquests. It is one of the most familiar weaknesses of human intelligence to want to reconcile contrary principles and to buy peace at the expense of logic. c. “Two very curious conversations could be done, one with a Protestant minister, the other with a Catholic priest. They would be made to uphold on all points opposed [sic] to what they are in the custom of upholding elsewhere. “These conversations would have to be preceded by a portrait of these two men and of their institutions. Very piquant details would result from all of that for the French public above all” (YTC, CVa, p. 55. See the appendix bearing the title sects in america). d. The manuscript says: “repulse them.” e. The chapter finishes in this way in the manuscript: “and that it would end by being the only religion of all those who would have a religion. “I think that it is possible that all men who make up the Christian nations will in the long run come to be no longer divided except into two parts. SomewillleaveChristianity entirely and others will go into the Roman Church.” In 1843, Tocqueville had a very different secret opinion about the relation between Catholicism and democracy. “Catholicism,” he wrote to Francisque de Corcelle, “which produces such admirable effects in certain cases, which must be upheld with all one’s power because in France religious spirit can exist only with it, Catholicism, I am very afraid, will never adopt the new...

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