When Tocqueville decided to become politically active, he himself described it as his “most beautiful dream” to contribute to the reconciliation between the spirit of freedom and the spirit of religion, the new democratic society and the Catholic clergy in his homeland, France (OT VII, 212). However, due to the massive conflict lines that had emerged in the wake of the French Revolution, this reconciliation seemed hardly possible at the time, and the Catholic Church proved to be primarily a stronghold for reactionary currents throughout the nineteenth century, which could gain little from the achievements of liberal-democratic constitutionalism and often passionately fought against them.