Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/282

socialists, like the rest, after the most strenuous efforts to separate themselves from Catholicism, have only succeeded in becoming bad Catholics.

We have shown that socialism is an incoherent combination of thesis and antithesis, which contradict and destroy each other. Catholicism, on the contrary, forms a great synthesis which includes all things in its unity, and infuses into them its sovereign harmony. It may be affirmed of Catholic dogmas, that although they are diverse yet they are one. So perfect 1s the connection between them that no particular one can be designated as the first or the last in the great divine circle. The virtue which is inherent in them all to transfuse their most hidden essence into each other, renders 1t impossible to accept or reject any one dogma when isolated from the others. All must be conjointly accepted or rejected; and as their dogmatical affirmations comprise all possible affirmations, it follows that no affirmation or negation, when restricted to a particular or relative sense, can be directed against Catholicism. Only an absolute negation can be opposed to this wonderful synthesis. Things have been so disposed by God, who manifests himself in the Catholic word, that this absolute negation, which is logically necessary in order to