Back from the dead

Tocqueville ( The Ancien Rgime and the French Revolution , 16) describes the “fury” of the philosophes attack on the church: “They attacked its clergy, its hierarchy, its institutions,and its dogma, and, the better to demolish all these things, they soughtto undermine the very foundations of Christianity itself. But this aspectof eighteenth-century philosophy, being rooted in circumstances that theRevolution eliminated, was destined to vanish as they did and be buriedbeneath the Revolutions triumph.”

The root of the hatred was not dogma but the church’s role as a “political institution.” Because of the church’s role in the old society, it too had to be “dashed to pieces” to make way for the new society.

What catches Tocqueville’s eye, though, is that it didn’t work: “As the ancient political institutions that the Revolution attackedwere utterly destroyed; as the powers, influences, and classes that wereparticularly odious to it were progressively crushed; and ultimate signof their defeat as even the hatreds they had once inspired withered andthe clergy separated itself from everything that had fallen along with it,one began to see a gradual restoration of the power of the Church and areaffirmation of its influence over the minds of men.”

He finds the same pattern everywhere: “There is scarcely a Christian church anywhere in Europe that has notundergone a revival since the French Revolution,” and this, prescient as ever, he thinks is due to the compatibility of democracy with Christianity and Catholicism.