[A convert who is a Russian Prince should be extraordinary enough but one that also becomes a Catholic Priest and missionizes the USA is astounding! Here we see the Providence of God seeking his lost sheep. Below is the introduction to the book "LIFE AUGUSTINE GALLITZIN, PRINCE AND PRIEST", by Sarah M. Brownson. (free e-book link here) The introduction was written by another famous convert and member to the USA's forgotten Catholic past. He makes interesting historical comments of the times-- very interesting. The short preface is by Sarah outlining this remarkable priest. CFT--editor Bill Strom]
P R E F A C E.
IN the following pages will be.found the account of a young
prince, wealthy, brilliantly educated, of splendid appearance,
fascinating address, and full of genius, who, from the purest
and highest motives, became a Catholic priest, devoting his
life, and all it contained, to the salvation of souls.
Disgusted with the irreligion, the immorality, the laxity of
discipline, and the universal rising against lawful authority
of his time, in Europe, he conceived the idea of founding a
purely Catholic community in the unbroken forests of the
New World, wherein the true religion and correct discipline
should be taught and wrought into action untrammelled and
unimpaired ; he chose the highest point of the Alleghany
Mountains, in Pennsylvania, for his project, founded the vil-
lage of Loretto, and spent forty-two years of incessant labor
in evangelizing Western and Central Pennsylvania, convert-
ing its wild forests into a smiling garden.
He formed his character, or it formed itself, according to the
commands of the Church, the precepts of the Gospel,
the counsels -of the saints, and measured all his undertakings
and all his motives by the highest standard of Christian perfection,
so that like other great and holy men, he was beyond his age, mis-
represented and misunderstood ; the best strove to compass
his designs, bad men reviled and opposed him, common-place
people ridiculed and persecuted him, the "timid good" depre-
cated his rashness, bewailed his want of prudence, and in
their own way, and with the best of intentions, did their ut-
most to paralyze him, but the God of armies was his protector,
and he passed on in spite of all the world or the devil, open
foes or doubting friends could do, to a most successful and
blessed end.
INDRODUCTION.
MY daughter, very unnecessarily, has asked me to write a
few words by way of introduction to the work she now offers
the public on the Life and Character of the late Reverend,
the Prince Demetrius Augustine Gallitzin, the Russian mis-
sionary in America, and founder of the interesting colony of
Loretto in Western Pennsylvania. Of the merits or demerits
of her work it does not become me to speak, but I may be
permitted to say that she has labored conscientiously at her
task, and has spared neither time nor pains in collecting and
arranging the facts *bf the life and labors of the illustrious
missionary and humble priest, as far as they are now recover-
able, or in ascertaining and appreciating his character alike
as a man and as a missionary.
There are few personages connected, with the history of the
Church in this country more interesting, or more worthy to be
remembered, than the subject of this memoir, or whose faith
and devotion, whose charity and untiring labors in the cause of
Christ and the souls of men, are better fitted to inspire us with
gratitude to Almighty God who gave him to us, or to confirm
our trust in the power of divine grace to overcome every
obstacle the world here or elsewhere may interpose to prevent
its victory. Pew when Prince Demetrius was born could
have foreseen that he would ever become a Catholic, far less
a Catholic priest, far less still that he would live and die a
devoted Catholic missionary in the wilds of the Alleghanies .
in Pennsylvania. He was born of parents who had practically
lost their faith, or scorned to profess it, like so many of the
princes and nobles of the latter part of the eighteenth century,
and was brought up in early childhood and youth in profound
ignorance of religion, and the chances were that he would
grow up like his father a Voltairian, an unbeliever, if not a
scoffer. That the son of such a father, and of a mother in
whom faith was dead, born to high rank and great wealth,
and educated in the enlightened, or as now said, the "ad-
vanced" ideas of the age, which 'regarded, the Church as dead
and only waiting its obsequies, should become a Catholic, a
zealous priest, and laborious missionary could be no less than
a miracle of grace, a striking proof that miracles have not
ceased, and that God has not abandoned the world, or ceased
to care for the Church, which lie has purchased with his own
blood.
The circumstances of his conversion, and the providential
influences that led to it, will be found detailed in the memoir
itself; but a point of no little interest is the fact that his con-
version was that of a Russian of high rank, and belonging to
a family highly and honorably distinguished in the annals of
the Russian Empire. His personal connection with Russia
was indeed very slight, yet he was born a Russian subject,
and whatever is related in any degree to Russia, between
which and our own country there has always been, and it is
to be hoped there always will be good understanding, cement-
ed by the interchange of mutual good offices, is of itself of
deep interest to us Americans. Russia is really the youngest
and freshest of the nations of the Old World, and while she
is sometimes their dread, she, perhaps, should be looked upon
as their hope. The so-called Latin races at this moment seem
to have become effete, and the Germanic races, for the moment
apparently possessing the hegemony of Europe, have to a
fearful extent lost their faith, and become almost as unbeliev-
ing and as misbelieving as when they overran and supplanted
the Roman Empire, or as they were before St. Boniface car-
ried them the Gospel and civilization with it.
Unless the German people, especially their princes and
nobles return to the communion of the Holy See, and resume
.the work of Karl the Great and his Austrasian Franks and
Allemani, the newly reconstructed German Empire will fall
as rapidly as it has risen; for it has no support in religion
or in the traditions of the German people. According to all
human foresight the hegemony of the Old World is destined
to pass from the Teutonic to the Slavic race, from Germany
to Russia. Russia has not lost her religiosity, and there are
no people in the Old World among whom there is found so
much religious sentiment as the Russian, or that are so cap-
able of being moved by religious or Christian motives. The
late Emperor Nicholas may have had his faults, but let peo-
ple say what they will of his cruelty, tyranny, and despotism,
he was the wisest, the ablest, and the most beneficent secular
sovereign in Europe in his day, and the world lost in him one
of its greatest and noblest men. His son is not equal to him",
and I fear is 1 too much influenced by the desire of the applause
of the West, and to be regarded as a liberal and enlightened
prince, as was the case with Katharine II.
The Russian Church, too, is the best of all the churches not
in communion with the See of Rome. The Slavonians and
even the Russian branch of the Slavonian family, were con-
verted from idolatry to Christianity by missionaries from
Constantinople indeed, but before the schism between the
East and the West, and the Russian Church was an integral
part of the one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church during
many centuries. The Metropolitan of Moscow assisted .at
the Council of Florence in 1439, and gave in his adhesion with
the other Oriental prelates, to the reunion of the East and
West effected in that Council, convoked and its acts approved
by Pope Eugenius IV. The long dominion exercised over the
Russians by the Tartars under Gengiskhan and his successors,
had a disastrous effect on Russia in general and on the
Russian Church in particular, and for a long time After that
dominion was thrown off, the schools remained in sad condition,
and the great body of the clergy in extreme ignorance, and
it was not till the seventeenth century that any important
efforts were made to provide for their instruction, and then
chiefly, by professors from the West, and mainly through a
prince of the Gallitzin family. .
But the Revolution of Peter, called the Great, against the
Empress Sophia, chiefly through the bigotry of the Protest-
antizing Archbishop of Moscow, and the effort of Peter, after
his successful usurpation of the throne, to introduce the material
civilization of the West, and to subject the Church to the crown
as in all Protestant nations, interrupted the schools and the
education of the clergy, and prevented the Russian Church
from resuming her original and normal relations with the
Roman See. Alexander I. did something after the defeat of
Napoleon, to root out Protestantism from the national church,
and would have done more, if he had not been in the last years
of his reign too much influenced by the mysticism of that
extraordinary woman, Madame Krudener. Still more was done
to purify the Russian Church from heresy, which had crept in
under Peter I. and was more or less tolerated in the national
clergy down to the accession of Alexander I., by the late
Emperor Nicholas. Since then the Russian Church has been
steadily recovering its orthodoxy, and almost in spite of the
Holy Synod by which it is governed.
When I speak of heresies that crept into the Russian
Church, I must not be understood to mean that these heresies,
borrowed from Protestantism, ever found admission into the
official teaching of the Russian Church. They were enter-
tained not by the Church, but by individual churchmen. As
a church the Russian Church claims to be and always to have
been orthodox, and since the reunion of the East and the
West in the Council of Florence already referred to, I am
aware of no official act. of the supreme Ecclesiastical authority
pronouncing it, as a church, either heretical or schismatical,
consequently the sin of heresy or schism does not, unless I
am in error, attach to the communion, but solely to the
individuals who personally and voluntarily make. themselves
heretics or schismatics. In this respect there is a marked
difference between the Russian Church, and the several
Protestant Churches so-called, and which are simply establish-
ments and no Churches at all. In the case of these the sect
or establishment is under anathema; with the Russian Church,
the communion, as far as I am aware, is not under anathema,
but only the individuals in that communion, as elsewhere,
who make themselves guilty of heresy and schism, by refus-
ing due obedience to the supreme authority of the Catholic
Church.
The points of difference between the Russians and ourselves
are the supremacy of the Pope and the Procession of the Holy
Ghost. As to the first point, I know not what change in their
attitude the recent definition of the Council of the Vatican
may have effected, but previously their attitude was less that
of denial of the papal supremacy than that of wilful refusal
to submit to it. They admit the authority of the Greek
Fathers from the first, prior to Photius, as fully as we do,
and the supremacy of the Pope by divine authority is plainly
taught in them, and was so admitted by their prelates at the
Council of Florence, which asserts the supremacy of the Pope
in language as clear, as positive as it is possible to use, both
in teaching and governing the universal Church, and by
undeniable implication his infallibility, otherwise he might
by divine authority lead the whole Church into error, which
cannot be admitted, for God can neither teach error nor authorize
any one to teach it. To me the Orientals have seemed always
to persist in the act of disobedience rather than in the denial
of the authority itself or their obligation to obey it.
With regard to the second point, on which there have been
so many and such violent disputes, the Russian Church and
. the Western really agree, and there is only a purely verbal
difference between them.
The Russians accuse the Latins of
having added the words Filioque, " and from the son," to the
Creed, and inserted with it by so doing a heresy. The Latins
accuse the Greeks of teaching that the Holy Ghost proceeds
from the Father alone, which is a heresy, yet it was found at
Florence when each party explained its meaning, that neither
was right in its accusation against the other. The Latins
thought the Greeks excluded the Son from all share in
the procession; and the Greeks thought the Latins by their
Filioque made the Holy Ghost proceed from two principles
instead of one ; but the fact is the Greek holds that the Holy
Ghost proceeds from the Father as principle through the Son
as medium, which is strictly orthodox, and the Latin holds that
though the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son,
yet not as from two principles, but as from one principle only,
which obviates the objection of the Greeks, and is orthodox.
So there is really no difference between the two parties.
The Filioque when proposed by the Synod of Frankfort to
be inserted in the Creed was objected to by Pope St. Leo III.,
not because he did not hold the doctrine it was intended to
assert, but because the Fathers of Constantinople, probably
for good reasons, had omitted the phrase, and because its
insertion would give the Greeks a pretext for a schism, as we
see subsequently it actually did. The Holy Pope refused to
- sanction its insertion, and reaped a rich harvest of obloquy
and abuse, some individuals going even-so far as to accuse
him of heresy.
The phrase was first inserted, I believe, by
- Spanish and Gallic prelates who could ill appreciate the
Greek mind, and thought the Greeks must be heretics because
they did not accept it. It became very extensively inserted
in the Creed in Spain and Gaul, and as it expressed what
- was undoubtedly of faith, the popes were finally obliged to
sanction its insertion in order to guard against the heresy
which it was alleged its omission favored, but which the
Greeks in reality were as far from holding as were the Latins
themselves. In point of fact the phrase unless explained,
would to a Greek mind imply that the Holy Ghost proceeds
from the Father and the Son as from two primordial principles,
for the Greek always understands by principle what the Latins
understand by primordial or first principle, and never a
medial principle. The true doctrine is expressed by St. John
Damascene, if my memory serves me, and as both Greek and
Latin theologians hold it, namely:
"The Holy Spirit proceeds
from the Father through the Son," or from the Father as
principle and from the Son as medium, or the medium of the
procession. This accords with the view that in the Blessed
Trinity the Father is principle, the Son is the medium,
- and the Holy Ghost is the end, the completion,
the consummator.
On all other points there is no controversy that I am aware
of, between the East and West on matters that either holds
to be of faith. The Russian Church has valid orders, real
bishops and priests, who offer really the unbloody sacrifice,
who really consecrate the body and blood of our Lord in the
sacrament, and can give valid absolution. It has not only
sound doctrine which Anglicans might have, but the seven,
sacraments, and all the constituent elements of a church,
though out of its normal relations with the Church Universal;
which Anglicans have not, whatever their pretensions, for
they have neither orders nor jurisdiction.
The causes which separated, and which keep separate the
East and the West ought not to prevent a solid and permanent
reunion. The obstacles to be overcome seem to me to grow
less and less every day. The original causes of separation
such as the rivalry of new Rome with old Rome, the ambition
of the bishops or patriarchs of Constantinople, and the inter-
meddling of the Byzantine Emperors with Catholic dogma
and ecclesiastical government, have passed away, and the
ignorance of the great body of the Oriental clergy of Christian
antiquity, and the real merits of the controversy between the
East and West, occasioned by the Tartar invasion and
conquest of Russia, and the Ottoman conquest of the Greek
Empire, is passing away in Russia, and will pass away with
the Christians under Turkish rule, when Russia is permitted
to fulfil what seems to be her providential mission in putting
an end to the Ottoman Empire, and the Mahometan power,
hitherto upheld by the Western powers both Catholic and
Protestant, to the scandal of Christendom, in the interests of
trade and the so-called balance of power.
Yet signal vengeance seems already to have overtaken the powers
that waged, or favored it without engaging in it, the unprovoked
Crimean war against Russia in support of Turkey, and the subjection
of the Christians of the East to a Mahometan despotism.
Napoleon is a fugitive,- and France lies prostrate under the
armed heel of the Prussian conqueror, and convulsed and torn
by intestine divisions; Austria has lost her Italian provinces,
been driven out of Germany, rent asunder by the Dualism
which renders Hungary practically an independent kingdom,
while her Slavonic provinces are ill-at-ease under a Germanic
rule, which is no longer German; England is no longer a
power in Continental Europe, and she has fallen so low that ,
nobody fears or heeds her threats ; only Sardinia has escaped,
but her day of reckoning will come when the measure of her
iniquity is full.
In the Ottoman Empire, the great obstacles to the reunion
are the civil as well as ecclesiastical power exercised by the
bishops over their Christian flocks, which they would lose, or
find greatly restricted if the reunion were effected, and the
opposition of the Porte which prefers to deal with a chief
who is its subject and within its power, than with a spiritual
chief who is independent of it, and beyond its reach.
In Russia there are some old prejudices created in former times
by quarrels between the Russians and the Poles, and some
fears of the Russian people that if the reunion were effected
their beautiful and gorgeous Greek Liturgy, to which they
are very much attached, would be abolished, and the briefer
and simpler Latin Liturgy be substituted in its place. But
these are not insuperable, and the chief obstacles are probably
in the Czar, who fears he would lose his control over the
Church in his dominions, and the Russian bishops who fear
that they would lose their spiritual independence by being
subjected to the See of Rome. This fear on the part of the
bishops is- idle, and even absurd; for they have already lost
their spiritual independence, not to the Pope indeed, but to
the civil power. Ivan IV. very nearly destroyed the inde.
pendence of the Russian Church, and subjected it to the
imperial power; what he left undone, Peter I. completed, when
he suppressed the metropolitical power of the Archbishop of
Moscow, and organized a Synod with himself at its head, and
usually presided over by a member of the Emperor's staff, for
its government. The bishops would regain their spiritual
independence by the reunion, and find in the Supreme Head
of the Universal Church on earth a powerful and steady
defender of their ecclesiastical rights and authority. The
Russian bishops and prelates have everything to gain and
nothing to lose by reunion.
The real interests of the Czar or Emperor, the Autocrat of
all the Russians, demand the reunion. His Imperial Majesty
holding his crown as his sacred and inviolable inheritance, is
necessarily a conservative, and the uncompromising foe of
revolutions and revolutionists. And yet the existing order
of things in Russia is not free from peril. The Church being
his slave can add nothing to his power, and give his govern-
ment no aid against a revolution. Large numbers of the
Episcopacy sigh for independence, and there is the whole
party of Old Russians amounting to many millions, who
absolutely refuse to be governed by the Holy Synod instituted
by Peter I., and demand the restoration of the metropolitical
power he suppressed. Dangerous sects are, also, springing
up in various parts of the Empire, which neither the national
Church, nor the national government is able to suppress, and
these will make common cause with attempted revolution
against the government.
Russia is open to revolutionary ideas through her Baltic
provinces, Courland, Esthonia and Livonia, as also in Finland
in which Protestantism is the prevailing religion, and Pro-
testantism is the very consecration of the revolutionary
principle. She is open to them on the side of Poland, which
has not ceased to regret her lost national independence, and
which it will require many generations to Russianize com-
pletely. Western ideas, that is, the ideas of the heretical
and unbelieving West, find their way in spite of the police,
into the Russian universities, and young Russia already
aspires to imitate young Germany or young France, and
already Russia is covered over with a network of secret
revolutionary societies. The only reliance of the government
against the revolution when it breaks out, is the army; but
the army may be infected with the revolutionary fever, and
join the rebels, as we have seen more than once in France
and elsewhere.
A national Church can afford no assistance
to the government; for the national Church will itself be
carried away by the national sentiment, arid be able to offer
it no effective resistance. No: the interest of the Czar is not
in having a Church that he controls, but a Church that has
an independent existence, holds not from him but from God,
that governs men's consciences by the law of God, and when-
ever he is in the right, can bring the consciences of the people
to his support and against his foes.
His real interest then is in reunion with Rome; for the
firmest and only real support of civil governments in their
rights, as well as the people in their liberties, is the papacy,
which is catholic, dependent on no nationality, but present
in the precise respect needed in all nations. The papacy has
not, indeed, prevented revolutions in Catholic nations, but
precisely because the sovereigns of these nations have tried
each to make the papacy national, and subject to the national
authority, as the Czar must know from the history in modern
times of Austria, France, Italy and Spain.
The papacy if allowed its freedom and independence, and sincerely co-
operated with by the secular authorities, would have saved
Europe from its century of bloody and devastating revolutions.
The fault was not in the papacy, nor indeed in the people, for
the era of modern revolutions was opened by the sovereigns
themselves; chiefly by Frederic II. of. Prussia, Catharine II.
of Russia, and by Joseph II. of Austria. They set the people
the example of rebelling against the laws by trampling on
the laws of nations, Frederic in his invasion and annexation
of Silesia, and all of them in the first and second partition of
Poland.
The Czar using his power and influence to reunite the
Russian Church with the universal Church, and cooperating
with the papacy in the effort to reorganize the now dis-
organized nations of Europe, would prove himself a benefactor
of his race for ages to come, place Russia at the head of the
civilized world, and deserve well of the Church of God. Events
have removed from his path the political rivalries that might
have deterred him from any action of the sort. Were he to
do so now the realization of the dream of Panslavism would
be then not a thing to be dreaded, but welcomed as the har-
binger of a new and better era under the hegemony of a
newer, fresher, and more vigorous race than the worn out
Latin races, or the misbelieving and unbelieving Teutonic
races.
It is because I firmly believe the reunion of the Russian
Church with the Universal Church will be effected, and that
Russia is destined to make an end of the Ottoman power,
and take her turn as the future leader of the civilized world,-
that I regard with such deep interest everything connected
with her.
0. A. BROWNSON.
