Inhabit COillif
Wr51
No. 11.
SUBIACO, THURSDAY, MAY 6, 1875.
:itel.aIitttt The Archbishop's Reply to Mr. Gladstone. The Vatican Decrees in thew hearing on Civil Allegiance.-By II EDW AHD, A rchbishop of Westminster. (Longman, Green, and Co.) THK Archbishop's replyls, in many wars, worthy of his Grace. In its meaning, from flint and last, it is as clear as crystal. In answer to a passionate; and, speaking for ourselves, we must be permitted to say, an unmannerly and almost insolent attack, absurdly called an Expostulation, it is throughout in its tone calm, and dignified, and temperate
In its arrangement, again, as the logical.un folding of an argument, it is mymmetrical and seqeuntial. By way of " Preface" his Grace contents himself with saying simply as follows:" A task both difficult and unlookeil for has suddenly fallen to my lot ; that is, to gain a fair hearing an subjects about which the opinions, and still Ilion! the feelings, of so many men are not only almerse. lint even liestile. I must therefore, ask for patience
from those who may read these pages. " The topics here treated have not been chosiin by me. They have been raised by Mr. Gladstone, and, perhaps, in all the range of religion and politics, none can he found more delicate, more beset with misconceptions or more prejudged by old traditionary beliefs and antipathies. Solite of them, too, of an odious kind ; other revive nieniories we would fain forget. Anti yet, if Mr.
Gladstone's appeal to me is to be answered, treated they must be. My reply to the argilmeat of the Expostulation on the Vatican Council will lie found in the first, second, and fifth chapters ; lint as ilr. Gladstone has brought into his impeachment the present ounflict in Germany, Red has reviewed his own conduct in respect to the Revolution in Italy, ham! felt myself oblidgial to follow hint. This 1 have done in the third and fourth chapters. Apart from this reason, I felt m3 self bound to do so by the terms of the two letters printed at the opening of the following pages. 1 hold myself pledged to justify their cements. Moreover, these two topics fall a ithin the outline of the subjects treated by Mr. Gladstone, which is, tie relation of the Supreme Spiritual Power of the Heal of the Christian Church to the Civil Powers of all countries. So such for the neater of these pages. " A, for the manner, if it be faulty, the fault is mine ; and 3 et there ought to be no fault imputed where there has been no intent ion to wound or to offend. I can sat with; truth that, to avoid offence, I have wtiglied my words, and if there be one still found which ought not to have lieu') written, I wish it to be blotted out. The subject -matter is beyond my control. I can blot out words, but I cannot blot out truths. 1What I believe to be truth, that I have said in the clearest words and whitest that I could find to give to it adequate expression." The Preface thus given in three pages is followed hr an Introduction lucidly setting forth the nature of the challenge suddenly flung down before tIm Catholics by the ex 1
Prime Minister. " Mr. Gladstone," says his Grace, " in his Expostulation with the Catholics of the Empire oa the Decrees of the Vatican Council writes as follomms " ' England is entitled to ask and to know in what wa3 the obedience is required by the Pope and the. Council of the Vatican is to be reconciled with the integrity of Civil Allegiance.' " When I read these words, I at once recognized the right of the English people, speaking by its legretti mate authorities, to know from me what, I believe and what I teach ; but in recognizing this right I am
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compelled to decline to answer before any other tribunal, or to any other interrogator. If, therefore, I take the occasion of any such interrogation, I do not address myself to those who make it, but to the justice and to the good sense of the Chriiitaan people of this
country.
" Mr. Gladstone followed up this demand
upon his fellow -country ty an elaborte argument to prove that it is impossible for Catholics, since the Vatican Council, to be loyal except at the cost of their fidelity to the Council, or faithful to the Council except at the cost of tit eir loyalty to their country. I therefore etinsidertal it to be my duty to lose no time in making the sub-
joined declaration in all our principal journals " itme Archbishop then ,aires, by way of historical record, as part anti parcel of his
reply the famous letter which appeared, as he says truly, in all the leading journals of the day, and which, as having been given at full length in our omn columns need not, as a matter of course, be here reprinted. This remarkable document, which appeared wit li wonderful promptness on the very morrow of the publication of Mr. Gladstone's pamphlet, his Grace supplements here in his reply, as he supplemented it originally at the time in the public newspapers of England and America by giving again, in extenso, verbatim et literatim his well -remembered letter to the New York Herald, penned by him on the loth of November, in answer to other questions which had been opportunely submitted to his (the Archbishop's) consideration. Immediately upon giving this his Grace adds
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" !laving thus directly contradicted the
main error of Mr. Gladstone's argument, I thought it my duty to wait. I was certain that two timings would follow : the one, that far better answers than any that I could make would be promptly wale ; the other, 'that certain nominal Catholics, who upon other occasions have done the. same, would - write letters to the newspapers. " Both events have come to pass. " The Bishops of Birmingham, Clifton, and Salford have atitindantly pointed out the mistakes into which Mr. Gladstone has fallen on the subject of the Vatican Council ; and have fully vindicated the loyalty of Catholics. " The handful of nominal Catholics have done their work and those who hoped to find or to make a di vison among Catholics have been disappointed. It is now seen that those ho reject the Vatican Council may be told on our fingers, and the Catholic Church has openly passed sentence on them. " Slaving made these declarations, I might have remained silent ; but as in my first letter I implied that I was prepared to justify what I hail asserted, I gave notice that I would do so. Having passed my word, I will keep it ; and in keeping it I will endeavour to deserve again the ackowlemignient Mr. Gladstone has already made. He says that, whatever comes, so far as I am concerned, it will not be ' without due notice.' I will be equally outspoken now ; not because he has challenged it, but because, so far as I know, I have always tried to speak out. In all these years of strife I have never consciously kept back, or explained away, any doctrine of the Catholic Church. I will not begin to do so now, when my time is nearly run. I am afraid that in these pages I shall seem to obtruae myself too much, and too often. If I think so, I would ask them to remember
that Mr. Gladstone has laid me under this necessity in these three ways
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" 1. He has made me the representative of the Catholic doctrine since 1870, as Bishop Doyle, he says, was in better days.
"2. He has quoted my writings four times in censure,
"3. He has appealed to me as Head of
the Papal Church in England ;' I may also add The Oracle.' My words, however, shall not be ambiguous.
"The two letters given above contain four assertions. " First, that the Decrees of the Vatican Council have changed nothing in respect to the civil obedience of Catholics. " Secondly, that their civil obedience is neither more nor less divided than that of other men.
"Thirdly, that the relations of the Spiritual
and Civil Powers have been fixed from time immemorial, and are, therefore, after the
Vatican Council what they were before. " Fourthly, that the contest now waing abroad began in a malevolent and rnischiem ous intrigue to instigate the Civil Powers to oppress and persecute the Catholic Church. " The two first propositions shall be treated in the first chapter, the third in the second chapter, and the last in the third. " I will, therefore, endeavour to prove the following propositions, which cover all the assertions I have mate
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" 1. That the Vatican decrees have in no jot or tittle changed either the obligations or the conditions of Civil Allegiance.
"2. That the relations of the Catholic Church to the Civil Powers of the
world have been immutably fixed from the beginning, inasmuch as they arise out of the Divine Constitution of the Church, and out of the Civil Society of the natural order. " 3. That any collisions now existing have beet, brought on by changes, not on the part of the Catholic Church, much less of the Vatican Council, but on the part of the Civil powers, and that by reason of a systematic conspiracy against the Holy See.
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" 4. That by these chaugEs and collisions the Civil Powers of Europe are destroying their own stability. " 5. That the motive of the Vatican Council in defining the Infallibility of the Roman Pontiff was not any temporal policy, nor was it for any temporal cud but Ciat it defined that truth in the face of all temporal dangers, in order to guard the Divine deposit of Christianity, and to vindicate the Divine certainty of faith." ;
Although in the first of Isis five chapters the Archbishop finds himself, upon the very threshold of his argument, constrained to touch upon the seemingly thankless task of proving a negative, his mode of doing this is at once interesting, and, as far as it can be, He enters upon the task by exhaustive first examining what proofs have been offered to show that the Vatican Council has made the alleged change. Those soi-disant " proofs" be scatters to the wind like chaff before the winnow. lie shows that the phrase, so seemingly strange to Mr. Gladstone, as though it were some startling novelty-ad disciplinant et regimen Ecclevice-is as old as the Church itself, dating back nearly two thousand 'ears to the period of its original organization. Mr. Gladstone, in defiance of all Ecclesiastical History, calls the introduction of this, to him, remarkable phrase, " the new version of the principles of the Papal Church." Whereupon the Archbishop est:tabu-, " When I read this, I asked, Is it possible that Mr. Gladstone should think this to be any thing new ? What does lie conceive the Primacy of Rome to mean ? With e hat eyes has lie read history ? Can he have read the tradition of the Catholic Clierch.' As one of the ' astute contrivers; I will answer that these words will be introduced because the Pontiffs and Councils of the Church have always so used them. 'limey may be remarkable' and new' to Mr. Gladstone, but they are old as the Catholic Church." Of the literal truth of this assertion the Archbishop gives proofs then in abundance. He refers the ex -Premier to an enactment of Nicholas I., A.D 863, in a Council at Rome to the recognition of this amen, A.D. 867, in the Eighth General Council, held at Constantinople-to the language of Innocent III. somewhere about the beginning of the thirteenth century-to the words of Sixtus IV., A.D. 1471-to the decision, nearly thirty years previously, of the Florentine Council, aim. 1442-and finally to the authoritative teaching of the Council of Trent --all of which will be found given chapter and verse, as the phrase is, in the Archbishop's argument. " The Vatican Council," says his Grace, "has left the authority of the Pontiff precisely where it found it. The whole, therefore, of Mr. Gladstone's argument falls with the misapprehension on which it was based. " What, then, is there new in the Vatican Council ? What is to be thought of the rhetorical description of " Merovingian monarchs and Carlovingian mai ors,'Iut that the dist in_uisliel author is out of his depth? The Pope 'eel at all times the power to rule the Miele Church not only in faith and morals, but also in all things which pertain to discipline and government, and that whether infallible or not. " Such is literally the only attempt made by Mr. Gladstone to justify his assertions. But what has this to do with Civil Allegiance? There is not a syllable 9n the subject, there is not a proposition which can be twisted or tortured into such a meaning. The government of the Church, as here spoken of, is purely and strictly the spiritual government of souls, both pastors and people, as it was exercised in the first three hundred years bef ire any Christian State existed." Further than this, his Grace finds himself constrained to say, not as if lie wereraddressing adult statesmen and grey-haired amateurs in theology, but-so gross is the blundering he has to dissipate-as if he were talki. g to so many dull-headed children "'The Vatican Council did not make the Pope infallible. Was he not infallible before the Council ? He is, therefore, not more infallible after it than before. If a handful of writers, here and there, denied his infallibility, the whole Church affirmed it." Adding," Proof of this shall be given in its place. For the present, I affirm that all acts ex cathedra, such as the Bull Unam Sanctum, the Bull Unigenitus, the Bull Auctoreni Feder*, and the like, were held to be infallible as fully before the Vatican Council as now. "'ro this it will be said, ' Be it so ; but nobody was bound under Anathema to believe them.' I answer that it is not the Anathema
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that generates faith. The infallibility of the Head of the Church was a doctrine of Divine Faith before it was defined in 1870,
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and to deny it was held by authorities to be at least proximate to heresy, if not
actually heretical. The Vatican Council has put this beyond question ; but it was never lawful to Catholics to deny the infallibility of a Pontifical act ex catliedrii. It is front simple want of knowledge that men suppose every doctrine not defined to be an open question. The doctrine of the Infallibility of the Church has never been defined to this day %VIII any man pretend that this is an open question among Cathodes ? The infallibility of the Pope was likewise never defined, but it was never an open question. Even the Jansenists did not venture to deny it, and the evasion of some of them, who gave obsequious silence' instead of internal assent to Pontifical acts, was condemned by Clement XI. The definition of the Vatican Council has made no change whatsoever except in the case of those who denied or doubted of this doctrine. No difference, therefore, whatsoever has been made in the state of those who believed it If the integrity of their civil allegiance was unimpeded before 1870, it is unimpeded now.
" If Mr. Gladstone means," says the Archbishop, "'That the Vatican Council has made a difference Mr the few who denied the doctrine, and fur the authors of Janus' and Qui ri nus,' and the professors of ' obsequious silence,' his contention is most true. But then he must change his whole position. The title of his pamphlet nmst be amended and stand, 'The Vatican Decrees in their Bearing on the Civil Allegiance of those who before 1870 denied the Infallibility of the Pope.' But this would ruin his case ; for he would have admitted the loyalty of Catholics who always believed it before the definition was made."
If there be any doubt as to what constitutes an act ex cathedra, that doubt has been set at rest before'and. as his Grace points out. by the Council distinctly giving five tests or conditions by which an act es cathedra can be distinguished. The Vatican Council has declared in its fourth chapter that the Supreme Pontiff speaks cx cathedra when he speaks under these five conditions : (1) a Supreme Teacher, (2) to the whole Church, (:3) defining a doctrine, (4) to be held liy the whole Church, (5) in faith and morals. When giving these five tests, later on in his argument, the Archbishop says quietly, and almost contemptuously-" If disputants and controversialists had read and marked these five conditions we should have been spared much senseless clamour." Reverting, however, to what in this earlier portion of his pamphlet he is more particularly insisting upon, his Grace remarks
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" I affirm. then, once more, that the Vatican Council has not touched the question of Civil allegiance, that it has not by a jot or tittle changed the relations in which the Church has ever stood to the Civil Powers ; and that, therefore, the Civil allegiance of Catholics is 'its full, perfect, and complete since the Council as It was before."
Why it has comae to pass, nevertheless, that has been confidently asserted that the Council did touch the Civil Powers, when, in point of fact, it did nothing whatever of the kind, he goes on to explain " It is because," he says, " certain persons, a year before the Council met, resolved to say so. They wrote the book ' Janus' to prove it ; they published circulars and pamphlets before and during the Council to re-assert it. They first prophesied that the Council would interfere with the Civil Powers, and now they write scientific history to prove that it has done so. I am not writing at random ; I carefully collected at the time their books, pamphlets, and articles. I read them punctually, and bound them up into volumes, which are non' before me. Mr. Gladstone has reproduced their arguments. But for this systematic agitation before the Council, no one, I am convinced, would have found a shadow of cause for it in its Decrees. Now, that I may not seem to write this as prompted by the events of the present moment, I will repeat what I published in the year 1869, before the Council assembled, and in the year 1870, after the Council was suspended." This excerpt we regard in many ways as so remarkable, as showing, beyond the possibility of any gainsaying, the Archbishop's extraordinary prescience, that we cannot resist. the satisfaction of laying it before our readers in extenso. Recollect it was written, printed, and published before the Council met Archbishop Manning then said (see part ii., pp. 131.35, of " The CEcumenical Council and infallibility of the Roman Pontiff," Petri Privilegium, published by the Messrs. Long-
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" Whilst I was writing
these lines a document has appeared purpoting to be the