Until the education bill was sent to Parliament, the editor of L’Univers, Louis Veuillot, kept his promise to Frédéric Alfred Pierre, Count de Falloux, to remain silent. After the submission of the bill, he began to lead the opposition. Indeed, the vast majority of Catholics shared Veuillot’s position.
Many non-liberal Catholics, such as the great Abbot of Solesmes, Dom Guéranger, were initially inclined to support the bill. After all, it did represent some improvement for free education. Furthermore, it was defended by Count Charles de Montalembert, head of the Catholic Party.
But Veuillot was increasingly influential with ultramontanes like Dom Guéranger. He showed that the bill conceived by Falloux clashed head-on with Catholic principles hitherto defended by Parliament. Furthermore, it would deeply harm France.
Desperate, Montalembert begged prominent Catholics to help defend the bill in public. Despite an open letter and other entreaties from the Count, Dom Guéranger remained silent.
This silence worried Montalembert, who wrote another letter to the great abbot. In it, the Count sidestepped the issue altogether. He tried to show that Veuillot’s opposition was not based upon fidelity to principles but was motivated by a spirit of revolt. Montalembert claimed that modern errors and a revolutionary virus had penetrated the heart of the Church. This was, the Count claimed, the spirit behind that controversy. He argued that Catholics no longer wished to recognize traditional principles. Legitimate authority, rather than merely the education bill, was at stake. Montalembert blamed Veuillot for promoting revolt against the former heads of the Catholic Party and the bishops who supported the law. Further, the Count claimed that Dom Guéranger could not withdraw his approval of the bill, arguing that his example had influenced Montalembert’s position.
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In his response, Dom Guéranger defined his position.
“Let us talk about the education bill. I did not advise you to attack it but only said, if I remember correctly, that it has aspects you may not defend. You accused me of having changed. If I erred when approving the law, I would owe you no apology because, fortunately, my letters came after the bill’s approval and thus did not influence your approval.
“Once again, here is my thought. I did not collaborate with the bill’s preparation. If it passes, I will consider it a good thing because it improves the situation by opening the way for Catholic schools. It is perhaps the only law possible despite its deplorable restrictions. But I indeed do not say that it [the bill] is good and that I would like to defend it in all its details. You say it is a trade-off, so it must contain disagreeable points for both parties. I would not directly defend these points, and I am sorry to see that you do. I cannot even conceive of the idea of seeing you approve the University [system] forever. My good friend, the University is evil; it is revolution and unbelief; you have demonstrated this to us eloquently.
“When the bill appeared, I immediately wanted to see the part where it defined the freedom of Catholic schools, and I found more than I expected. I was so pleased that I didn’t even think of delving deeper into the rest. I could see very well that the University was still standing and was not so foolish as to hope it would not. I resigned myself willingly and wrote you shortly afterward. If you reread my letters, you will find nothing that enshrines the entire project with its’ ‘recommendations,’ ‘approvals,’ etc. The letter published only insists on the real benefit of removing the obstacles that until then had prevented the Church from enjoying the right to educate its children. It also mentioned how it would be blindness to pretend to have all the means to do good and waste time on useless struggles for an abstract liberation. I still think like that and regret that L’Univers has not changed its orientation in this direction despite my efforts.
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“On my trip to Paris, without renouncing my first point of view, I finally understood the law and measured the sacrifices necessary to enjoy its benefits. That caused me great sorrow because I saw you compromised. For us Catholics, neither journalists nor congressmen, it is one thing to accept what is good in the law once passed; it is quite another for an influential man like you to defend an entire bill with as much evil as good.”
Later on, Dom Guéranger defended Louis Veuillot’s position, showing that the attitude of the editor-in-chief of L’Univers was indeed the more advantageous.
“My good friend, either you are not fair, or you are plunged into a grave delusion when you say that I went to Paris as a monk and came back as a journalist, influenced by Veuillot and [Melchior] Du Lac. Know, once and for all, that these excellent men have no different principles from yours and mine concerning authority, the revolutionary spirit, and the opposition and dangers of the modern spirit. They are Catholics, and so must be friends of authority. I am older, a priest, a religious, and more of a theologian than they are, and I do not fear getting caught up in their influence. On the contrary, I may have been useful to them. If I had been in Paris when they published the President’s miserable letter to Edgard Ney, I think Veuillot’s article about it would have been different.”
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“Dear friend, let us not accuse honest people of being revolutionary just because they do not think as we do in so delicate a matter as the teaching law. Say rather that they have remained men of the past, that their aversion to the University and its amalgamations shows honorable persistence in the principles which deep down are most secure and whose abandonment, even to a good end, will be fatal to us sooner or later. You find these men as you formed them, not in your occasional bouts of liberalism but in your most admirable moments of zeal and unpopularity. Although I think they go too far, I love their attitude. They retain the old maxims and have traditions, whereas L’Ami de la Religion, quiet and content with the law, has none.”
Dom Guéranger had made concessions. He was willing to accept the law but not to defend it. Many other Catholics took similar positions, such as Pierre Louis Parisis, Bishop of Langres, who had been the Catholic Party’s ecclesiastical head. Not all of them fully supported Veuillot’s campaign against the law. However, they radically disapproved of the attitude of the Bishop of Orléans, Félix Dupanloup, the Count de Falloux, and especially Montalembert.
A complete break between the two groups began. The teaching law became the watershed between ultramontane and liberal Catholics.