It may strike as it will, the root of the tree is beyond its reach, and, in the unjust war which it wages against an institution as vital as itself, it often ends in getting the worst of it.
Unfortunately, the Assembly, in this as in other matters, being preoccupied with principles, fails to look at practical facts; and, aiming to remove only the dead bark, it injures the living trunk .-- For many centuries, and especially since the Council of Trent, the vigorous element of Catholicism is much less religion itself than the Church.
Theology has retired into the background, while discipline has come to the front.

Believers who, according to Church law, are required to regard spiritual authority as dogma, in fact attach their faith to the spiritual authority much more than to the dogma .-- Catholic Faith insists, in relation to discipline as well as to dogma, that if one rejects the decision of the Roman Church one ceases to be a Catholic; that the constitution of the Church is monarchical, that the ordaining of priests and bishops is made from above so that without communion with the Pope, its supreme head, one is schismatic and that no schismatic priest legitimately can perform a holy service, and that no true faithful may attend his service or receive his blessings without committing a sin .-- It is a fact that the faithful, apart from a few Jansenists, are neither theologians nor canonists; that they read neither prayers nor scriptures, and if they accept the creed, it is in a lump, without investigation, confiding in the hand which presents it; that their obedient conscience is in the keeping of this pastoral guide; that the Church of the third century is of little consequence to them; and that, as far as the true form of the actual Church goes, the doctor whose advice they follow is not St.Cyprian, of whom they know nothing, but their visible bishop and their living cure.

Put these two premises together and the conclusion is self-evident: it is clear that they will not believe that they are baptized, absolved, or married except by this cure authorized by this bishop.

Let others be put in their places whom they condemn, and you suppress worship, sacraments, and the most precious functions of spiritual life to twenty-four millions of French people, to all the peasantry, all the children, and to almost all the women; you stir up in rebellion against you the two greatest forces which move the mind, conscience and habit .-- And observe the result of this.

You not only convert the State into a policeman in the service of heresy, but also, through this fruitless and tyrannous attempt of Gallican Jansenism, you bring into permanent discredit Gallican maxims and Jansenist doctrines.