Sillonism

The word and the thing

The Sillon takes its name from a review founded by young Catholics in 1894^[14]; the word, borrowed from the vocabulary of ploughing, evokes the earth opened for the seed. The official 1910 text, published in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis of 31 August, speaks of the "Sillonists" and of "Sillonism" (Sillonisme), with a single n^[15][16]; the movement itself most often writes "sillonniste", with two n's^[17]. Both spellings denote the same reality.

The letter itself distinguishes three things that must be kept separate. The movement, the Sillon, active from 1894 until its dissolution in 1910; the persons, Marc Sangnier and his comrades, whom the pope says he loves^[18]; and the doctrine, which the pope judges contrary to Catholic truth: "the Sillon, carried away by a misunderstood love of the weak, slipped into error"^[19]. This article deals with that doctrine; Sangnier's life and the detailed history of the movement are told in the article Marc Sangnier (1873-1950).

The error in one sentence

Sillonism consists in making democracy, understood as the government of autonomous consciences, the necessary form of Christian society and the very content of justice: in it, authority rises from the people instead of descending from God, equality of conditions becomes justice, fraternity rests on common humanity rather than on charity, and the social action of Catholics ends by merging into an association open to all beliefs^[20][21][22]. Pius X sums it up in a formula:

"[...] the Sillon sets doctrine against doctrine, [...] it builds its city on a theory contrary to Catholic truth and [...] it falsifies the essential and fundamental notions which regulate social relations in every human society." — Saint Pius X, Our Apostolic Mandate, 25 August 1910^[23]

The error, then, is not an excess of social generosity, which the pope praises, but another idea of man, of authority and of fraternity, which the Sillon taught to Catholic youth as if it flowed from the Gospel^[24].

What Sillonism is not

Four confusions are frequent, and the 1910 letter itself sets them aside.

A condemnation of democracy. Pius X recalls with Leo XIII that, "justice being safeguarded", peoples are free to give themselves the government that suits them, that justice is compatible with the three classical forms of regime and that, in this respect, "Democracy enjoys no special privilege"^[25][26]. He specifies that every Catholic Sillonist "will remain free to keep, moreover, his political preferences"^[27]. The general subject is treated in Democracy according to the Church.

A refusal of social action. The pope does not blame the ambition to raise "the too despised condition of the working classes" and to make "just and perfect the laws of labour": such efforts "would be, in every respect, excellent" without the error of principle that accompanies them^[28]. He even asks the bishops to take "an active part in the organisation of society"^[29].

A sentence against persons. No excommunication, no proper name in the final measures: the letter praises "lofty souls" and asks of the leaders a "sacrifice" which it blesses in advance^[30][31].

Modernism. Modernism, condemned in 1907, concerns the nature of faith and dogmas; Sillonism concerns authority, society and the action of Catholics. Yet the two errors touch: Pius X reproaches the founders of the Sillon for not having guarded themselves "against liberal and Protestant infiltrations" and for invoking "a disfigured and diminished Christ"^[32][33]. Above all, Pius X traces the Sillon back to liberalism, which he names from the first page, along with the Revolution, among the doctrines that can "inflame hearts for seductive but fatal causes"^[34]; its 19th-century Catholic form has its own article, Condemned Catholic Liberalism.

Rerum novarum, the Ralliement and "Christian Democracy"

The Sillon was born within a precise doctrinal framework, which Pius X himself recalls: it appeared "in the wake of the memorable Encyclical" of Leo XIII "on the condition of the workers", Rerum novarum (15 May 1891), at a time when the Church seemed to call for "ever more numerous champions of the restoration of order and justice"^[35][36]. A year later, in the encyclical Au milieu des sollicitudes of 16 February 1892, written in French, the same pope asked the Catholics of France to accept the established republican regime, while fighting the laws hostile to religion, in what would be called the Ralliement^[37]. In it he laid down a principle which the Sillon would retain badly:

"It may also be affirmed with all truth that each of them is good, provided it go straight to its end, that is, the common good, for which social authority is constituted." — Leo XIII, Au milieu des sollicitudes, 16 February 1892, on the forms of government^[38]

Accepting the Republic, then, was not holding democracy to be the only Christian form. Leo XIII made things still more precise in Graves de communi re (18 January 1901), which admits the expression "Christian Democracy" on one condition: it must maintain "the distinction of classes which is, without question, proper to a well-constituted State", and it can have no political meaning^[39]. The text is clear:

"But it would be blameworthy to divert the term Christian Democracy to a political meaning. No doubt, democracy, according to the very etymology of the word and the use made of it by philosophers, denotes popular government; but, in present circumstances, it must be used only after stripping it of all political meaning, and attaching to it no other signification than that of a beneficent Christian action among the people." — Leo XIII, Graves de communi re, 18 January 1901^[40]

From the start of his pontificate, Pius X took up these rules in a motu proprio on popular Christian action, on 18 December 1903: Christian Democracy "must never meddle with politics", it must serve neither parties nor political ends, and it is under "the very strict obligation to depend on ecclesiastical authority"^[41]. These three requirements, no privileged regime, no political meaning, no autonomy with respect to the bishops, are exactly those on which the Sillon would be taken up again in 1910^[42][43].

A students' review grown into a national movement

The Sillon was born in 1894: a review of young Parisian Catholics, of which Marc Sangnier became the moving spirit, and which spread within a few years into study circles across France^[44]. Pius X himself places those "glorious days" in the wake of Rerum novarum, when the Church seemed to call for new champions of social justice^[45]. The workings of these circles, with no master, as "intellectual cooperatives", will be described below, in the section on Sillonism as lived^[46].

In 1905, Sangnier gave the movement its doctrine in two books. L'Esprit démocratique, published by Perrin, proposes the definition that would make the Sillon's fortune, and which Pius X would paraphrase in 1910^[47]:

"We propose the following definition: Democracy is the social organisation which tends to bring to its maximum the conscience and civic responsibility of each." — Marc Sangnier, L'Esprit démocratique, Paris, Perrin, 1905, p. 167 (in italics in the original)^[48]

The same year, Le Sillon, esprit et méthodes, in a 5,000-copy printing, specifies that the republic will be "more democratic than the monarchy" and cooperation "more democratic than wage labour", because in each case "conscience and responsibility increase"^[49]. The force capable of uniting the general interest and the particular interest, Sangnier names without evasion: "for us it is the social force of Catholicism"^[50]. The Sillon of 1905 was therefore still formally Catholic, and it claimed to be so.

Rome's encouragements, then the claim to autonomy

On 11 September 1904, a Sillon pilgrimage was received by Pius X, who declared to the young people: "let Us tell you that We love you, and that henceforth each of you may consider Us not only as a father, but as a friend", rejoicing "in the good you do and in that which you will do again"^[51]. The address read to the pope already affirmed, however, a reservation: the Sillon solicited "neither an exclusive preference for its own methods, nor a formal confirmation" of its confidence in the future of democracy^[52].

Two years later, Sangnier went one step further. In a letter to the editor of La Croix, dated 11 August 1906, he wrote that the Sillon "aims to realise in France the democratic Republic", that it is therefore not "properly speaking and directly a Catholic work", but "a lay movement", even if "deeply religious"^[53]. Pius X would answer precisely this thesis in 1910: the Sillonists "deceive themselves when they believe they move on ground at whose borders expire the rights of the doctrinal and directive power of ecclesiastical authority"^[54].

1907: the "greater Sillon"

In 1907 appeared the pamphlet Le "plus grand Sillon": the movement no longer wanted to make democracy "for Catholics alone", but "for all, even for those who know not the source of our social energies"^[55]. The regional congress of Rouen, on 5 and 6 October 1907, gathered some eighteen hundred listeners around Sangnier^[56]. Three weeks later, on 27 October at the Cirque de Limoges, Sangnier delivered the speech from which Pius X would quote two passages: authority which "rises from below to go upward" whereas in the Church "power descends from above to go downward", and the call to "walk hand in hand" with believers of every conviction^[57][58][59]. Let us note it exactly: the pontifical letter attributes these passages to a "Rouen speech, 1907", but the shorthand text recovered is that of Limoges; no text of the Rouen speech has been preserved, and the two speeches plainly dealt with the same themes^[60].

The very word "Sillonism" predates the condemnation: as early as 26 November 1905, Charles Maurras used it in La Gazette de France to denounce "the artifice of Sillonism", already quoting the definition of democracy by the "maximum" of civic conscience^[61]. Adversaries and sympathisers had thus disputed since 1905 over a doctrine which Rome would judge only in 1910, after the presentation, in Paris in May 1910, of a new organisation in which Catholics, Protestants and freethinkers worked each on their own side under the inspiration of the Sillon^[62][63].

A letter in French, addressed to the bishops of France

The letter is not an encyclical addressed to the world: it is a letter to the French archbishops and bishops, written in French, opened with the names of the three French cardinals, Pierre-Hector Coullié, Archbishop of Lyons, Louis-Henri Luçon, Archbishop of Reims, and Paulin-Pierre Andrieu, Archbishop of Bordeaux, then of "all our other venerable brethren the French archbishops and bishops"^[64]. It takes its name from its first words, after the usage of pontifical acts^[65]. Dated from Rome, "near St Peter's, 25 August 1910, the eighth year of our pontificate", it appears in number 16 of the Acta Apostolicae Sedis of 31 August 1910, on pages 607 to 633^[66][67]. The text runs to nearly nine thousand words.

Its authority is that of the pope's ordinary magisterium, exercised toward a particular Church: it defines no new dogma, but it judges a doctrine in the light of a constant teaching, which it quotes or invokes, Diuturnum illud (1881), Rerum novarum (1891), Graves de communi re (1901)^[68][69][70]. To this it adds measures of government, withdrawal of the leaders, regrouping of the members by dioceses, which belong to discipline^[71][72]. This twofold nature governs the reading: the principles recalled are those of the whole Church; the measures aimed at a French situation of 1910.

The plan follows a clear progression, from praise to practical measures:

This division shows that the condemnation bears first on ideas, then on the way they shaped a youth and an action, and only at the end on an organisation.

Praise before judgment

Pius X opens his letter with a general warning: the apostolic charge obliges the pope to preserve the faithful from error, "above all when error and evil are presented to them in a captivating language, which, veiling the vagueness of ideas and the ambiguity of expressions under the ardour of feeling and the sonority of words, can inflame hearts for seductive but fatal causes"^[85]. The theories of the Sillon, he adds, "beneath their brilliant and generous appearances, too often lack clearness, logic and truth"^[86].

But the first movement of the text is an avowal of affection. The pope says he "hesitated long" before speaking, and he explains why:

"For we love the valiant youth enrolled beneath the banner of the Sillon, and we believe it worthy, in many respects, of praise and admiration. We love its leaders, in whom we are pleased to recognise lofty souls, above vulgar passions and animated by the noblest enthusiasm for the good." — Saint Pius X, Our Apostolic Mandate, 25 August 1910^[87]

The praise is precise. In the wake of Rerum novarum, the Sillon, according to Pius X, "raised among the working classes the standard of Jesus Christ", fed its social activity "at the sources of grace", accustomed "the ignorant and the impious to hear God spoken of" and, in debates with opponents, dared "to cry aloud and proudly its faith" before hostile audiences^[88]. "Those were the glorious days of the Sillon", the pope concludes, and this "fine side" explains the encouragements which bishops and the Holy See did not spare it^[89][90].

The diagnosis follows, without harshness: the founders, "young, enthusiastic and full of self-confidence, were not sufficiently armed with historical science, sound philosophy and strong theology" to face social problems and guard themselves "against liberal and Protestant infiltrations"^[91]. Counsels, then admonitions, "slid over their elusive souls"; the pope says he now owes the truth to "our dear children of the Sillon", to the seminarians and priests whom the movement has withdrawn from the direction of their bishops, and to the Church, "where the Sillon sows division"^[92].

An impossible autonomy: the Sillon confronted with the Church's authority

The first reproach is not yet doctrinal: it bears on the Sillon's pretension to escape the direction of ecclesiastical authority. Its leaders affirmed they moved "on ground which is not that of the Church", pursued only temporal interests, and were, like every Catholic craftsman or economist, subject only to the common rules of morality^[93][94].

Pius X answers that this ground does not exist for the Sillon, because the Sillon teaches. Its leaders call themselves "irreducible idealists", they have "a social doctrine and philosophical and religious principles for rebuilding society on a new plan", a conception of their own of dignity, liberty, justice and fraternity, and they teach it in their study circles^[95]. They are therefore "truly professors of social, civic and religious morals":

"The aim of the Sillon, its character, its action fall within the moral domain, which is the proper domain of the Church, and, consequently, the Sillonists deceive themselves when they believe they move on ground at whose borders expire the rights of the doctrinal and directive power of ecclesiastical authority." — Saint Pius X, Our Apostolic Mandate, 25 August 1910^[96]

The rule was not new: the 1903 motu proprio had laid down that Christian Democracy is under "the very strict obligation to depend on ecclesiastical authority"^[97]. It does not forbid the laity temporal action; it recalls that a movement which forms consciences in the name of the Gospel falls, on that score, under those who have received the charge to teach. And the pope adds at once that the evil runs deeper than indiscipline: "the Sillon, carried away by a misunderstood love of the weak, slipped into error"^[98].

Pius X does not proceed by abstract sentences. So that none may accuse him "of judging too summarily and with unjustified rigour the social theories of the Sillon", he begins by setting them out himself, relying on speeches of Marc Sangnier which he quotes in notes, before examining them one by one^[99][100]. His starting point is a principle which he states with force, as he turns to the examination:

"No, Venerable Brethren, [...] the city will not be built otherwise than as God built it; society will not be edified unless the Church lays the foundations and directs the work; no, civilisation is no longer to be invented, nor the new city to be built in the clouds. It has been, it is; it is Christian civilisation, it is the Catholic city. It is only a matter of establishing and restoring it unceasingly on its natural and divine foundations against the ever-recurring attacks of unhealthy utopia, revolt and impiety: omnia instaurare in Christo." — Saint Pius X, Our Apostolic Mandate, 25 August 1910^[101]

The final Latin formula, "to restore all things in Christ" (Eph 1:10), is the motto Pius X had given to his pontificate from his first encyclical: "if We are asked for a motto expressing the very depths of Our soul, We shall give none but this: To restore all things in Christ"^[102]. It gives the key to the whole letter^[103]. The Sillon promised "a future city built on other principles", which it said were "more fruitful" than those of the Christian city; the pope answers that society already has foundations, natural and divine, and that one does not make a being progress by breaking "its essential organs"^[104].

The dream of a city "with neither masters nor servants"

According to the exposition of Pius X, everything starts from a certain idea of human dignity, which the Sillon understands "after the manner of certain philosophers of whom the Church is far from having to boast": its first element is liberty, understood in this sense, that "except in matters of religion, each man is autonomous"^[105]. From this principle follows a triple emancipation: political, for the people must free itself from an authority "distinct from itself"; economic, for it must shake off the yoke of the employers who hold its instruments of labour; intellectual, for it must withdraw from the "so-called ruling caste"^[106]. The levelling of conditions would establish equality, and this equality would be "true human justice"^[107].

Democracy thus understood is defined by "the greatest possible participation of each in the government of the commonwealth", in three orders: in politics, authority is multiplied "in such a way that each citizen will become a sort of king"; in economics, a system of cooperatives, which is not, the Sillon specifies, socialism, will make of each worker "a sort of master"; in morals, finally, love of professional interest and of the public good will little by little replace authority^[108][109]. Pius X sums up the outcome of this theory in these terms:

"Picture to yourselves a society in which, in the soul of each one, together with the innate love of individual good and family good, there reigned love of professional good and public good; [...] would not such a society be able to do almost without authority, and would it not offer the ideal of human dignity, each citizen having a soul of a king, each worker a soul of a master." — Saint Pius X, setting out the doctrine of the Sillon, Our Apostolic Mandate, 25 August 1910^[110]

The whole was to be realised by "the famous trilogy: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity", and to pass from conscience to economics, then from economics to politics, by what the Sillon called "the democratic education of the people"^[111][112]. "Such is, in summary, the theory, one might say the dream, of the Sillon", the pope concludes, before showing its flaws^[113].

An authority which "rises from below"

The heart of the dispute is the origin of authority. The Sillon, writes Pius X, "places public authority primarily in the people, from whom it then derives to the rulers, in such a way, however, that it continues to reside in the people"^[114]. Sangnier did not deny that authority comes from God; he made it pass through the people, and had said so at Rouen in 1907: it "rises from below to go upward, whereas in the organisation of the Church power descends from above to go downward"^[115].

The pope objects first from the very nature of a delegation: it is "abnormal for delegation to ascend, since it is of its nature to descend"^[116]. Above all he opposes the teaching of Leo XIII, who had already answered this attempt at conciliation. A simple image gives its meaning: an election resembles an appointment, it says who shall bear the charge, it does not create the right to command. Leo XIII wrote it thus:

"If the matter be the designation of those who must govern the commonwealth, this designation may in certain cases be left to the choice and preferences of the many, without the least obstacle from Catholic doctrine. This choice, indeed, determines the person of the sovereign, it does not confer the rights of sovereignty; it is not authority that is constituted, it is decided by whom it shall be exercised." — Leo XIII, Diuturnum illud, 29 June 1881^[117]

The consequence follows: if the people remain "the holder of power", authority becomes "a shadow, a myth; there is no longer law properly so-called, there is no longer obedience"^[118]. The same doctrine, which the article Political Authority according to the Church sets out for its own sake, is that of the 1992 Catechism, which expressly refers to Diuturnum illud^[119].

Obedience held for a degradation

The Sillon drew from its doctrine a consequence which it owned: in the future city, there would be "no more masters nor servants; the citizens will all be free, all comrades, all kings"^[120]. An order would become "an assault on liberty", subordination "a lessening of man, obedience a degradation"^[121].

Pius X answers with a series of questions, the first of which bears on the nature of things: "Does not every society of creatures, independent and unequal by nature, need an authority to direct their activity toward the common good and to impose its law?"; and if wicked men are found there, "must not authority be all the stronger as the selfishness of the wicked is more threatening?"^[122]. To oppose authority and liberty is "to be grossly mistaken about the concept of liberty"^[123]. The other questions come from faith:

"Does obedience to men as legitimate representatives of God, that is, in the last resort, obedience to God, lower man and debase him below himself? Would the religious state, founded on obedience, be contrary to the ideal of human nature? Were the saints, who were the most obedient of men, slaves and degenerates?" — Saint Pius X, Our Apostolic Mandate, 25 August 1910^[124]

The last question is Christological: can one imagine a social state in which Jesus Christ, returned to earth, "would no longer give the example of obedience and would no longer say: Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's" (Mt 22:21)?^[125] Obedience, in the Catholic tradition, is not the submission of a slave but a free act which joins the obedience of Christ (see what the saints say on obedience); the Catechism recalls that "the authority required by the moral order emanates from God" and quotes Saint Paul: "there is no authority except from God" (Rom 13:1)^[126].

Equality mistaken for justice

The Sillon wished to inaugurate "an era of equality which would thereby be an era of better justice"^[127]. Pius X notes the hidden premise: for the Sillon, "all inequality of condition is an injustice or, at least, a lesser justice! A principle sovereignly contrary to the nature of things, generative of jealousy and injustice and subversive of all social order"^[128]. He notes a second one, more political: if democracy alone realises perfect justice, the other forms of government are degraded to the rank of "impotent makeshift governments"^[129].

On the first point, Catholic doctrine distinguishes two things which the Sillon confused. Equality of dignity is absolute: all men, created in the image of God and redeemed by Christ, "enjoy therefore an equal dignity"; there exist "iniquitous inequalities which strike millions of men and women", and excessive economic and social inequalities "give scandal"^[130]. But equality of conditions is not justice: talents are not distributed equally, and these differences "belong to God's plan, who wills that each receive from others what he needs"^[131]. The Catechism quotes here the Dialogue of Saint Catherine of Siena, where God explains why he willed this diversity:

"I willed that they should need one another and be my ministers for the distribution of the graces and gifts they have received from me." — Saint Catherine of Siena, Dialogue, I, 6, quoted by the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1937^[132]

On the second point, Pius X leans again on Leo XIII: "justice being safeguarded", it is not forbidden to peoples to give themselves the government that best answers their character, and Rerum novarum showed how to restore justice in existing societies^[133][134]. Justice is therefore compatible with the three classical forms of government, and "in this respect, Democracy enjoys no special privilege"^[135]. Those who claim the contrary, the pope concludes, "either refuse to listen to the Church or form for themselves a concept of justice and equality which is not Catholic"^[136].

A fraternity without charity

The next error touches fraternity, which the Sillon founded on "love of common interests, or, beyond all philosophies and all religions, on the simple notion of humanity", embracing in one love and "an equal tolerance" all men with all their miseries, intellectual and moral as well as physical^[137]. Pius X answers in two stages. First, charity does not consist first in tolerating error: its "first duty [...] is not in the tolerance of erroneous convictions, however sincere they may be, nor in theoretical or practical indifference to the error or vice in which we see our brethren plunged, but in zeal for their intellectual and moral improvement no less than for their material well-being"^[138]. Then, love of neighbour has a source: love toward God, "common father and common end of the whole human family", and toward Christ, whose members we are "to the point that to relieve an unfortunate is to do good to Jesus Christ himself"^[139]. Hence the most quoted sentence of the letter:

"No, Venerable Brethren, there is no true fraternity outside Christian charity which, through love for God and His Son Jesus Christ, our Saviour, embraces all men to relieve them all and to bring them all to the same faith and the same happiness of heaven." — Saint Pius X, Our Apostolic Mandate, 25 August 1910^[140]

The pope does not oppose a restricted fraternity to a universal fraternity: the one he describes "embraces all men". He opposes two sources. The "universal solidarity" for which he calls supposes, he says, minds united in truth, wills united in morals and hearts united in charity toward God and His Son^[141]. Nearly a century later, Benedict XVI formulated the same truth in the vocabulary of the 21st century:

"Reason, by itself, is capable of grasping the equality of men and of establishing civic coexistence among them, but it cannot manage to create fraternity. The latter originates in a transcendent vocation from God the Father, who loved us first, teaching us through the Son what fraternal charity is." — Benedict XVI, Caritas in veritate, no. 19, 29 June 2009^[142]

A dignity founded on the autonomy of conscience

At the base of all these errors, Pius X places "a false idea of human dignity"^[143]. For the Sillon, man would be truly man only from the day he acquired an autonomous conscience:

"According to him, man will be truly man, worthy of the name, only from the day he has acquired an enlightened, strong, independent, autonomous conscience, able to do without a master, obeying only itself and capable of assuming and bearing, without failing, the gravest responsibilities." — Saint Pius X, Our Apostolic Mandate, 25 August 1910^[144]

"These are big words with which human pride is exalted", the pope answers: such an ideal leaves man "without light, without guide and without help", and the "great day of full consciousness" will never come, unless "human nature be changed (which is not in the Sillon's power)"^[145]. He then turns against the movement the very image of its name:

"And the humble of the earth, who cannot rise so high, and who content themselves with modestly tracing their furrow, in the rank Providence has assigned them, energetically fulfilling their duties in Christian humility, obedience and patience, would they not be worthy of the name of men, they whom the Lord will one day draw from their obscure condition to place them in heaven among the princes of His people?" — Saint Pius X, Our Apostolic Mandate, 25 August 1910^[146]

Christian dignity is not the independence of a conscience obeying only itself, but that of a child of God called to glory; the saints, the pope asks, did they have "dignity of that kind"?^[147] The Second Vatican Council would say the same of conscience in other words: man discovers in it "the presence of a law which he has not given himself, but which he is bound to obey", and "his dignity lies in obeying it"^[148]. Pius X notes finally that he does not claim to exhaust the subject: other points "equally false and dangerous" existed, for instance the way the Sillon understood "the coercive power of the Church", which he leaves aside^[149][150].

Catholicism bound to one form of government

In its action, the Sillon committed another fault, which Pius X sets out in the part of the letter devoted to its action within the Church: its Catholicism "is suited only to the democratic form of government, which it deems most favourable to the Church and as it were identical with it; it therefore subordinates its religion to a political party"^[151][152]. Yet the Church, the pope recalls, "has always left to nations the care of giving themselves the government they deem most advantageous for their interests", and there is "error and danger in subordinating, on principle, Catholicism to a form of government"^[153]. Leo XIII had taught it in general terms: sovereignty "is not in itself necessarily bound to any political form; it may very well adapt itself to this or that one, provided it be in fact apt for utility and the common good"^[154].

The pope notes a contradiction: it was in the name of the principle that religion must dominate all parties that the Sillon abstained from defending the Church under attack, in the France of the secularising laws and of the separation of 1905, while tying that same religion to one regime^[155]. Hence the formula:

"What does this mean, if not that there are two men in the Sillonist: the individual who is a Catholic; the Sillonist, the man of action, who is neutral." — Saint Pius X, Our Apostolic Mandate, 25 August 1910^[156]

This dissociation between private faith and "neutral" public action explains the turn which the letter next examines.

From the Catholic Sillon to the "religion more universal than the Church"

"There was a time, writes Pius X, when the Sillon, as such, was formally Catholic": it knew but one moral force, the Catholic force, and proclaimed "that democracy would be Catholic or it would not be"^[157][158]. Then it "changed its mind": for the formula "democracy will be Catholic" it substituted "democracy will not be anti-Catholic", "no more indeed than anti-Jewish or anti-Buddhist". "That was the era of the greater Sillon"^[159]. Sangnier had given the reason at Rouen, in 1907, in terms which the pope quotes fairly:

"The leaders of the Sillon place their religious faith above all. But can they take from others the right to draw their moral energy where they can? On the other hand, they want others to respect their right, theirs, to draw it from the Catholic faith. They therefore ask all those who wish to transform present society in the direction of democracy not to repel one another on account of the philosophical or religious convictions that may separate them, but to walk hand in hand, not by renouncing their convictions, but by trying to prove on the ground of practical realities the excellence of their personal convictions." — Marc Sangnier, Rouen speech, 1907, quoted in Our Apostolic Mandate^[160]

The "little Catholic Sillon" was to be "the soul of the great cosmopolitan Sillon"^[161]. Shortly before the letter, the name of the "greater Sillon" had disappeared in favour of a new organisation, presented by Sangnier in Paris in May 1910, in which Catholics, Protestants and freethinkers worked each on their own side, under the inspiration of a Sillon which "always remains a soul, a spirit", and a "democratic committee of social action" inherited the common task^{[162][163][164]}.

The objection of Pius X is precise. He does not target a neutral association for material interests, the Sillon's association appears to him on the contrary "a thousand times more dangerous" for young Catholics "than a neutral association", but an interdenominational association founded "to work at the reform of civilisation, a religious work in the first order; for no true civilisation without moral civilisation, and no true moral civilisation without true religion"^[165][166]. Two years later, he would moreover tolerate, under conditions, the mixed Christian trade unions of Germany, recalling that Catholics may, "with caution, work with non-Catholics for the common good", to obtain a better lot for the worker or a fairer wage^[167]. What he refuses in 1910 is the Catholic who, "on entering his study circle, leaves his Catholicism at the door, so as not to frighten his comrades", and the idea that the Church could not be a "beneficiary" of social action, "as if all that profits the Church did not profit humanity!"^[168][169].

The result, the pope warns, would be "a purely verbal and chimerical construction, in which will be seen shimmering pell-mell and in seductive confusion the words liberty, justice, fraternity and love, equality and human exaltation, the whole based on a misunderstood human dignity"^[170]. The Sillon "is escorting socialism, its eye fixed on a chimera", and the outcome would be worse still:

"The outcome of this promiscuity in work, the beneficiary of this cosmopolitan social action, can only be a democracy which will be neither Catholic, nor Protestant, nor Jewish; a religion (for Sillonism, the leaders have said, is a religion) more universal than the Catholic Church, uniting all men at last become brothers and comrades in 'the reign of God'." — Saint Pius X, Our Apostolic Mandate, 25 August 1910^[171]

It is here that the letter uses its gravest words: the "limpid and impetuous river" of the beginnings was captured and "henceforth forms but a miserable tributary of the great movement of apostasy", which tends toward "the establishment of a universal Church which will have neither dogmas nor hierarchy, nor rule for the mind nor bridle for the passions"^[172]. What this diagnosis targets is the content of that "universal Church": indifferentism, which puts all religions on an equal footing and dissolves faith in a common humanitarianism.

A "disfigured and diminished" Christ

The last reproach is the deepest, because it touches Christ himself. From the start, Pius X had noted that the leaders of the Sillon appealed "to the Gospel interpreted in their own way, and, what is graver still, to a disfigured and diminished Christ"^[173]. He returns to it at the end: it is "the fashion in certain circles", as soon as the social question is approached, to set aside the divinity of Jesus Christ, and to speak only "of His sovereign gentleness, of His compassion for all human miseries, of His pressing exhortations to love of neighbour and to fraternity"^[174][175]. The pope also reproaches the leaders of the Sillon for treating Our Lord "with a sovereignly disrespectful familiarity" and for drawing between the Gospel and the Revolution "blasphemous parallels"^[176][177].

His answer begins with the love of Christ, which he in no way minimises:

"Certainly Jesus loved us with an immense, infinite love, and He came to earth to suffer and die so that, gathered around Him in justice and love, animated by the same sentiments of mutual charity, all men might live in peace and happiness. But to the realisation of this temporal and eternal happiness He set, with sovereign authority, the condition of being part of His flock, of accepting His doctrine, of practising virtue and of letting oneself be taught and guided by Peter and his successors." — Saint Pius X, Our Apostolic Mandate, 25 August 1910^[178]

The portrait that follows refuses both possible mutilations. Jesus was good to the straying and to sinners, but "He did not respect their erroneous convictions, however sincere they appeared; He loved them all to instruct, convert and save them"; He raised up the lowly, but not to inspire in them "the sentiment of an independent dignity, rebellious to obedience"; He was "as strong as He was gentle"^[179]. And above all, He did not promise a society without suffering:

"Lastly He did not announce for future society the reign of an ideal happiness, from which suffering would be banished; but by His lessons and by His examples, He traced the path of possible happiness on earth and of perfect happiness in Heaven: the royal road of the Cross." — Saint Pius X, Our Apostolic Mandate, 25 August 1910^[180]

These teachings, the pope adds, concern not only individual salvation: they are "eminently social" and show in Christ "something other than an humanitarianism without substance and without authority"^[181].

Study circles with neither master nor hierarchy

The doctrines of the Sillon, Pius X observes, "do not remain within the domain of philosophical abstraction. They are taught to Catholic youth, and, what is more, the attempt is made to live them"^[182]. The movement regarded itself as "the nucleus of the future city" and wished to reflect it "as faithfully as possible"^[183]. Hence an organisation with no equivalent among the Catholic works of the time: there is no hierarchy; the ruling elite emerged "by selection", imposing itself through its moral authority; one enters and leaves freely^[184].

The pope describes with exactness the workings of the study circles, which made the strength of the movement:

"Studies are made there without a master, at most with an adviser. The study circles are true intellectual cooperatives, where each is at once master and pupil. The most absolute comradeship reigns among the members and brings their souls into total contact; hence the common soul of the Sillon. It has been defined as 'a friendship'." — Saint Pius X, Our Apostolic Mandate, 25 August 1910^[185]

The intuition had its grandeur: teaching young people to speak in public, to judge for themselves and to take responsibilities within a shared friendship. But it carried a consequence which the pope judges unacceptable for the priesthood: the priest, when he enters the Sillon, "lowers the eminent dignity of his priesthood, and, by the strangest reversal of roles, makes himself a pupil, puts himself on the level of his young friends and is no more than a comrade"^[186]. In the pope's eyes, the priest is not one facilitator among others: he has received the charge to teach and to guide, which is why the letter will want "the priestly militia to remain above lay associations"^[187].

"You are the past": a spirit of defiance

In these habits and in the theory inspiring them, Pius X sees "the secret cause of the disciplinary failings" which the bishops had so often had to reproach the Sillon with: among young people thus formed, "were they seminarians or priests", one no longer finds the respect and docility due to bishops, but "a silent opposition"^[188]. The pope lends the Sillonists the implicit reasoning of this attitude: "You are the past; they are the pioneers of the future civilisation. You represent hierarchy, social inequalities, authority and obedience: outdated institutions"^[189].

The most painful reproach comes next: Catholic youth is taught that the Church, "for nineteen centuries", has not yet succeeded in constituting society on its true bases, that she has understood neither authority, nor liberty, nor equality, nor fraternity, and that the great bishops and great kings who made France did not know how to give their people true justice, "because they had not the ideal of the Sillon!"^[190]. The pope's conclusion holds in one sentence:

"The breath of the Revolution has passed there, and we may conclude that if the social doctrines of the Sillon are erroneous, its spirit is dangerous and its education disastrous." — Saint Pius X, Our Apostolic Mandate, 25 August 1910^[191]

The judgment bears on a spirit and an education, not on intentions: the letter recognises to the end the generosity of the persons, but it notes that a pedagogy founded on defiance toward the Church ends by forming Catholics estranged from their own mother.

Forming the conscience of small and great

The letter does not confine itself to forbidding: it traces a programme, addressed first to the bishops. The pope asks them to continue "the work of the Saviour of men by imitating His gentleness and His strength", and this programme begins with mercy:

"Bend yourselves toward every misery, let no sorrow escape your pastoral solicitude, let no complaint find you indifferent. But also, boldly preach their duties to great and small; it belongs to you to form the conscience of the people and of the public powers. The social question will be very near to being solved, when both, less insistent on their mutual rights, fulfil their duties more exactly." — Saint Pius X, Our Apostolic Mandate, 25 August 1910^[192]

The pope does not stop at the conversion of hearts. He notes that, in the conflict of interests, a man's virtue, "his very holiness", does not always suffice to secure him his daily bread, and he asks that the "social machinery" be so organised that "by its natural play it paralyse the efforts of the wicked and make accessible to every good will its legitimate share of temporal happiness"^[193]. He "ardently" desires the bishops to take "an active part in the organisation of society to this end"^[194]. Catholic social doctrine, which Rerum novarum had inaugurated, is therefore not abandoned in 1910: it is placed again under the conduct of those who have charge of souls.

Priests trained in social science

For this work, the bishops will choose some priests "active and of well-balanced mind, furnished with doctoral degrees in philosophy and theology, and possessing perfectly the history of ancient and modern civilisation", whom they will apply to the more practical studies of social science before placing them at the head of works of Catholic action^[195][196]. The letter specifies their safeguard: that they not let themselves be led astray "by the mirage of a false democracy" nor by the rhetoric of the enemies of the Church, made "of promises as resounding as they are unrealisable"^[197].

The choice answers exactly the opening diagnosis: the founders of the Sillon had lacked "historical science, sound philosophy and strong theology"^[198]. The remedy is solid formation, not renunciation of action.

"The true friends of the people"

The letter recalls finally that the social question was not born yesterday, that Church and State, "happily concerted", have aroused in all times fruitful organisations, and that the Church "has not to disengage herself from the past"^[199]. She need only take up again the institutions broken by the Revolution and "adapt them, in the same Christian spirit which inspired them, to the new environment created by the material evolution of contemporary society"^[200]. The final word of this programme has remained famous:

"For the true friends of the people are neither revolutionaries, nor innovators, but traditionalists." — Saint Pius X, Our Apostolic Mandate, 25 August 1910^[201]

The word has not here the meaning of a school or a party: it opposes fidelity to a living tradition, which adapts its institutions to new times, to the utopia which claims to rebuild everything from nothing. Pius X wishes the youth of the Sillon, "freed from its errors", to bring to this work "a loyal and effective cooperation"^[202].

Yielding the place: leaders, Catholic Sillons and priests

The practical measures occupy the last two pages. The pope turns to the leaders of the Sillon "with the confidence of a Father speaking to his children":

"We ask them for their good, for the good of the Church and of France, to yield you their place. We measure, certainly, the extent of the sacrifice We solicit of them, but We know them generous enough to accomplish it, and, in advance, in the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ, whose unworthy representative We are, We bless them for it." — Saint Pius X, Our Apostolic Mandate, 25 August 1910^[203]

The members will range themselves by dioceses, under the direction of their bishops, in groups provisionally independent of one another; to mark the break with past errors, they will take the name of Catholic Sillons, and each will add to his title of Sillonist the qualifier Catholic^[204][205]. Their political liberty is expressly reserved: each remains free to keep his preferences, "purged of all that would not be entirely conformable, in this matter, to the doctrine of the Church"^[206].

For groups that would refuse, the letter distinguishes: if they confine themselves to "pure politics or economics", the bishops have no more to occupy themselves with them "than with the ordinary faithful"; if they persevere in their errors, they must act "with prudence but with firmness"^[207]. Priests will keep themselves outside dissident groups, and even of Catholic groups they will not be members, for "it is fitting that the priestly militia remain above lay associations, even the most useful and animated by the best spirit"^[208]. The letter ends on a prayer: that the Lord give these young people "docility of heart", and to the bishops, for them, "the sentiments of an altogether fatherly affection"^[209][210].

The dates below run from the encyclical that gave birth to the Sillon generation to the texts that take up its principles today.

The chronology shows that the 1910 letter is not an isolated thunderclap: it applies rules laid down by Leo XIII and by Pius X himself as early as 1892, 1901 and 1903.

The following table gathers, for each question debated in 1910, the thesis of the Sillon as the letter sets it out, the answer of Pius X, and the way the Church's teaching formulates it today.

The last column shows that the 1910 letter does not belong to a bygone moment: on each of these points, present teaching holds the same principle, often quoting the same sources.

An error on the source of authority

Placing authority in the people is making the will of number the source of the right to command. Leo XIII had shown the danger: in making power depend on the will of the people, "one commits first an error of principle, and moreover one gives authority but a fragile foundation without substance"^[256]. The 20th century verified the diagnosis. John Paul II, who yet celebrates the democratic system as the one which "ensures the participation of citizens in political choices", gave its condition:

"If there is no ultimate truth to guide and direct political activity, ideas and convictions can easily be exploited for power. A democracy without values easily turns into open or thinly disguised totalitarianism, as history shows." — John Paul II, Centesimus annus, no. 46, 1 May 1991^[257]

Sillonism did not deny God; it placed Him upstream of the people, as a distant source, and then made authority "rise" from below^[258]. Catholic doctrine, on the contrary, does not content itself with naming God at the start: it makes authority a participation in His authority, which limits it even as it founds it. Even the 1944 Christmas radio message, in which Pius XII notes that the democratic form appears to many "as a natural postulate imposed by reason itself", places the dignity of political authority in "its participation in the authority of God"^[259].

An error on the source of fraternity

The second error runs deeper still, because it touches love. A fraternity founded on "love of common interests" comes undone when interests diverge; Pius X notes it realistically: in the pagan or secular societies of all times, "consideration of common interests or of likeness of nature weighs very little against the passions and lusts of the heart"^[260]. Brothers suppose a Father: that is why the letter makes love of neighbour spring from love toward God, "common father and common end of the whole human family"^[261]. Francis restates it in Fratelli tutti: others drink from other sources, but "for us, this source of human dignity and fraternity is in the Gospel of Jesus Christ"^[262].

An error on man and on the Church

The third error joins the other two. An "autonomous" conscience obeying only itself no longer needs master or Church; a "neutral" social action no longer needs Christ; and an association in which all beliefs are equal no longer needs truth. The end of this road is the "religion more universal than the Church" which Pius X dreaded^[263]. The letter opposes to it a simple affirmation, which reverses the Sillon's suspicion of a "beneficiary" Church: all that profits the Church profits humanity^[264]. For the Catholic, serving men and serving Christ are not two competing commitments: "to relieve an unfortunate is to do good to Jesus Christ himself"^[265].

The letter on the Sillon became, in the 20th century, a disputed text: some see in it an outdated page which the Church supposedly turned, others a condemnation in advance of the Second Vatican Council. Both readings suppose a rupture. They deserve to be set out in their strongest form, then examined.

Objection 1: "The Church ended by proving the Sillon right"

The objection. In 1944, the Christmas radio message recognises that the democratic form appears to many as a requirement of reason^[266]; in 1965, Gaudium et spes leaves to citizens the choice of regime and rulers^[267]; in 1991, John Paul II writes that "the Church values the democratic system"^[268]; in 2020, Fratelli tutti means to concentrate on the "universal dimension" of fraternal love, "on its openness to all persons"^[269]. The Sillon, condemned too early, would have been right before its time, and the Church would have implicitly rehabilitated it; the future John XXIII himself greets Sangnier's submission in 1950^[270].

The answer. What changed is the prudential appreciation of a regime; what did not change is the principle in whose name the Sillon was taken up. Gaudium et spes 74 says exactly what Diuturnum illud said in 1881 and what Pius X opposed to the Sillon in 1910:

"It is clear, therefore, that the political community and public authority are based on human nature and therefore belong to an order established by God, though the choice of political regimes, like the designation of rulers, are left to the free will of citizens." — Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et spes, no. 74 § 3, 7 December 1965^[271]

The 1992 Catechism, which takes up this sentence, refers in the same passage to Immortale Dei and to Diuturnum illud, the very encyclical Pius X quoted against the Sillon^[272]. John Paul II values democracy only on condition it not be "without values"^[273]; Benedict XVI and Francis found fraternity on God the Father and on the Gospel^[274][275]. As for Archbishop Roncalli, the letter addressed to Mrs Sangnier in 1950 praises her husband's submission after the 1910 "admonition"^[276]: a tribute to obedience, not to the doctrine of the "greater Sillon" (see Marc Sangnier (1873-1950)). Benedict XVI gave the key to reading these texts:

"It was necessary to learn to recognise that, in such decisions, only the principles express the lasting aspect, remaining in the background and motivating the decision from within. The concrete forms, on the other hand, are not so permanent; they depend on the historical situation and may therefore undergo changes." — Benedict XVI, address to the Roman Curia, 22 December 2005^[277]

The measures of 1910, the dissolution of a movement, the diocesan form imposed on groups, belonged to a historical situation. The principles motivating them remained.

Objection 2: "Vatican II canonised Sillonism"

The objection. Since the Council, traditionalist critics read Our Apostolic Mandate as a condemnation in advance of Vatican II: Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre devotes to it, in Ils l'ont découronné (1987), chapter XVIII of Part II ("From Lamennais to Sangnier"), in which he quotes the letter at length^[278]. The religious liberty proclaimed by Dignitatis humanae, ecumenical and interreligious dialogue, the Church saying she serves the whole human family, all this would realise the "religion more universal than the Catholic Church" which Pius X denounced in 1910; the letter would thus have condemned conciliar teaching in advance.

The answer. The Council expressly professed what the "greater Sillon", become an interdenominational association, forbade itself to profess as such: the uniqueness of the true religion. The movement had ceased to call itself Catholic^[279]. Dignitatis humanae opens with these words:

"This one true religion, we believe, subsists in the Catholic and apostolic Church, to which the Lord Jesus entrusted the mandate of making it known to all men [...]." — Second Vatican Council, Dignitatis humanae, no. 1, 7 December 1965^[280]

The same paragraph specifies that religious liberty concerns "exemption from coercion in civil society" and that it "leaves intact the traditional Catholic doctrine on the moral duty of man and societies toward the true religion and the one Church of Christ"^[281]. A civil liberty protecting the search for truth is not the indifferentism holding all beliefs equivalent; Benedict XVI specified that a religious liberty understood as man's inability to find the truth, that is, as an "exaltation of relativism", would be deprived of its true meaning^[282]. As for collaboration with non-Catholics for the common good, Pius X himself admitted it in 1912, with caution, to obtain a better lot for workers^[283]. What the 1910 letter refused, a common morality without true religion, charged with building the new city alone, the Council did not teach. The dossier is developed in Religious Liberty and in Second Vatican Council (1962-1965).

Objection 3: "An ill-informed condemnation"

The objection. Historians judge the 1910 dossier severe and fragile. A review of Jeanne Caron's book on the Sillon notes that Pius X himself records a divided French episcopate, a plainly hostile minority facing a hesitating majority, and explains the condemnation "by the strength of the integrist group in Paris and Rome", adding that by "grouping Sillonist formulas, isolated from their context, it was possible to give them a heretical look"^[284]. One example gives weight to this remark: Pius X quotes the sentence on authority which "rises from below" without the passage in which Sangnier defended, in the same speech, the distinction of spiritual and temporal brought by Christ^[285][286]. The Sillonists, for the rest, "proved by their submission to the letter of Pius X how much the Christian spirit animated them"^[287].

The answer. Four qualifications are needed. First, the pope says himself he "hesitated long" before speaking, and he opens his letter with praise of the leaders^[288]: the trial is neither hasty nor hateful. Then, the letter quotes at length the doctrine of the Sillon, definition of democracy, triple emancipation, cooperatives, "soul of a king", before judging it^[289][290]: this is far from a montage of isolated formulas. Next, historians themselves qualify the manipulation thesis: Émile Poulat recalls that the integrist network "counted but some fifty members" and that, on essentials, "the Pope knew, approved, encouraged"^[291]; Charles Ledré wrote as early as 1954 that people had "generally ceased to believe that influences could have been decisive on the minds of willing men, jealous of their doctrinal mission", and that the letter would only take up again, accentuating them, "the severe limits" which Graves de communi re had imposed as early as 1901^[292]. Lastly, Jean-Marie Mayeur places the Sillon within the social Catholicism of its time: its true democracy, "organised", stood opposed to "the individualist democracy born of the Revolution"^[293], and its democrats "repudiated all liberalism"^[294]. The condemnation therefore strikes not a liberalism the Sillon supposedly professed, but the precise gap between its doctrine of authority and that of the Church, a gap which the movement's texts let anyone verify.

What the Church retains of 1910

Once the objections are examined, the 1910 letter leaves a clear teaching, which the Church never withdrew. Authority comes from God, and the people electing their rulers designate persons without manufacturing the right to command. No regime is imposed by the Gospel, and democracy, valued, remains subject to the moral law. Fraternity is born of the fatherhood of God and the charity of Christ. The dignity of man is that of a child of God whose conscience obeys a law it has not given itself. And the Catholic engaged in the city does not leave his faith at the door: he brings Christ there, because all that profits the Church profits humanity.

What Pius X opposed to the dream of a future city "to be built in the clouds" was not nostalgia for a past, but a higher hope: a city whose foundations are already laid, and which must be "restored unceasingly" in Christ^[295]. Benedict XVI gives its simplest reason: the fraternity men cannot give themselves "originates in a transcendent vocation from God the Father, who loved us first"^[296].

Sillonism belongs to a series of errors which the popes noted between 1832 and 1950, each with its own article. The table places each by the act targeting it and by its own angle.

Sillonism is distinguished from its neighbours by its ground: neither the theology of dogma like Modernism, nor spirituality like Americanism, but social and political doctrine and the action of Catholics in the city. Doctrinal relativism prolongs today one of its slopes, the equivalence of beliefs.

• The life of the founder of the Sillon, his 1910 submission and his work for peace: Marc Sangnier (1873-1950)
• The pope who signed the letter: Pope Saint Pius X (1835-1914)
• The pope the letter quotes most: Pope Leo XIII (1810-1903)
• The doctrine of authority for its own sake: Political Authority according to the Church
• Democracy in the Church's teaching, from Leo XIII to John Paul II: Democracy according to the Church
• The encyclical that opened the social question: Rerum novarum and Catholic Social Teaching
• The matrix of the 19th century: Condemned Catholic Liberalism
• The neighbouring errors: Americanism, Modernism
• The conciliar question: Religious Liberty, Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), The Hermeneutics of Vatican II: Rupture or Reform in Continuity?