matters.

reply which, though not on all-fours with these provisional dogmas, appeals in a special way to English readers, and is sufficiently apposite for my purpose. I stated in my article that in 1825, when the question of Catholic Emancipation was before the public, and fears were entertained that the Pope might claim a right to interfere in politics, several of our bishops and archbishops declared upon oath before a Select Committee of the House that the Roman Pontiff possessed not the shadow of a right to meddle in political questions. Archbishop Murray, and I might have added Bishop Doyle, went so far as to depose that bishops and priests were under no obligation to obey his Holiness in any but purely religious and ecclesiastical I deliberately reiterate that statement now, reinforcing it by the reminder that these declarations were again brought forward in the Times newspaper during the Pallium discussion last autumn, for the express purpose of dispelling the reviving fears of English Protestants. On the faith of these solemn assurances, the Catholic Emancipation Bill became law. And now the accredited spokesman of the "teaching Church," a member of our most learned order of priests, smiles away the oaths of our bishops as if they were but the idle gossip of garrulous costermongers. In point of fact, he suggests that the whole story is apocryphal. "Where and when Archbishop Murray gave expression to this error we know not," he observes; and then courteously adds, " and according to all . appearances the anonymous writer' is equally in the dark on the subject."

This flippant attitude towards momentous questions and solemn actions is repellent to the moral temperament of Teutonic and AngloSaxon Catholics, who have been taught to listen with trust to the assurances of a national episcopacy and to speak with respect of the sacredness of an oath.

There is one other aspect of the question which, in the interests of the Church, we cannot afford to make light of. The people who claim this novel right of erecting new dogmatic barriers between the "crowd of the faithful" and heaven, the dogmatopoeic agency, if I may be permitted to coin a word, are exclusively theologians. They alone claim the right which they alone would exercise. And if we reflect that at the present moment all Catholic theologians, without exception, are taught, guided and influenced by the Fathers of the Society of Jesus, who now put forward this strange claim, we must be prepared to admit, should the claim be allowed, that nothing but the well-known tact, sagacity and fine moral sense of this one body

1 This is one of the names by which Father Brandi alludes to me. He declares his belief, however, that I am a member of the Austro-Hungarian Diplomatic Corps (p. 3), and generally speaks of me as a diplomatist. The Hungarian and Austrian press is equally certain that I am an Austro-Hungarian prelate.

2 P. 21. "Wo und wann der Erzbischof Murray diesen Irrthum ausgesprochen hat, wissen wir nicht, aber allem Anschein nach scheint der Anonymus es auch nicht zu wissen."

of men will stand between us and a deluge of doubtful dogmas imposed without a due regard for their bearing upon the broad facts of every-day life. That this fear does not spring from a timorous imagination will be painfully evident when I come to speak of the dogmatising action of the "teaching Church" in questions appertaining to Biblical criticism. At this stage one instance will suffice of the intellectual slovenliness with which articles of belief are formulated for the benefit of the whole "crowd"; slovenliness which reminds one of the mental attitude of the absent-minded lecturer who eloquently descanted upon the unutterable feelings of joy with which Columbus's father and mother must have been filled on the day of his birth at finding themselves the parents of the renowned discoverer of half the terrestrial globe. Father Brandi, writing in 1893, declares that Pius VII., who died in 1823, Pius IX., who departed this life fourteen years ago, and our present Holy Father, decided that in the present conjuncture the temporal power of the Pope is indispensable to the freedom of the Church.' "teaching Church" tells us that Moses, when he divided the limits of fields which the Israelites did not yet possess, and gave minutedirections about the leprosy of their houses while they were yet. living in tents, spoke by anticipation, as a prophet. But shall we likewise place Pius VII. and Pius IX. among the prophets, or would it not be more respectful to their memory to elevate the Rev. Father Brandi's dogma to the dignity of an Irish Bull?

The same

·

And we should have ample reason to congratulate ourselves if the accredited champion of our venerable Pontiff had laid himself open to no more serious charge than that of perpetrating Irish Bulls. No dogma prescribes logical acumen or precision of thought as a condition of admission to the kingdom of heaven. Unfortunately, every candid,open-minded man or woman who reads Father Brandi's pamphlet, and compares it with my article will be struck with a characteristic, the classification of which charity impels me to leave to my readers. when they have become acquainted with some of its concrete manifestations. That same charity moves me to give expression to heartfelt regret that any member of the learned and pious Order of the.. Jesuits should, in these days of carping criticism, when motives are-inferred from actions and the character of public bodies judged bythe motives of their individual members, have resorted to such doubt.. ful tactics as the deliberate and systematic attribution to any writerof words and phrases which he never penned, the better to refute opinions which he never put forward. Father Brandi sees no harm in stringing together detached sentences and even isolated phrases and words of mine, in order that I should seem to say what no Catholic, nay, what no honest man, would dream of asserting. On pages 4, 5, 6, 8, 14, and 15 of his pamphlet he has the ethical hardihood

1 P. 17.

to place in inverted commas statements alleged to have been written by me, some of which he himself has invented, while others acquire in the new combination a meaning widely different from that which belonged to them in my paper. On the last page of my article, for instance, I wrote: "These are some of the reasons why we view with intellectual distrust the well-meant efforts of the Pope to recover his lost inheritance, and why we wince and groan on beholding those appearances which lend colour to the accusations of his enemies who represent him as a mere diplomatist," &c. The Rev. Father Brandi translates that as follows: "That is the ground of those visible and tangible effects which inspire the simple spectator with fear, and afford warrant and support to the accusations of his (the Pope's) enemies who represent him as a silly diplomatist. Will it be believed by those who have not seen it with their own eyes that a pious priest of the respected Order of the Jesuits should venture to employ such doubtful methods at the very time when we Catholics are striving hard to convince our opponents that our priests are the only persons capable of imparting a sound, moral education to our children, and are moving heaven and earth in Germany to induce the Government to rescind the unjust law which forbids Jesuits to reside in that Empire? And against whom are these underhand thrusts directed? Against a Catholic and a brother. And the venerable clergyman who wields these dangerous weapons asks us to believe that he and those who do likewise are invested by God with power to regulate our beliefs, without the right of appeal on our side or the weight of responsibility on theirs, in matters left undecided by the Church! And the sacerdotal word of these inaccurate writers is to drown the voice of God-given reason, outweigh the evidence of our senses, and curtail the freedom guaranteed us by the Church! Surely these things are not, cannot be, after the heart of our Holy Father, who would not willingly allow Cardinal Vaughan's gigantic task to be needlessly rendered more gigantic still. And yet the facts are there; they cannot be reasoned away; and not only are the words attributed to me put in inverted commas, and the

2

3

1 "Sie ist auch daher der Grund jener sichtbaren und fühlbaren Wirkungen, welche dem einfachen Beobachter Furcht einjagen,' und 'den Anklagen jener Feinde Stütze und Halt geben, welche den Papst als einen einfaltigen Diplomaten hinstellen'"' (p. 5). 2 The Rev. Father Brandi himself took a prominent part in the agitation in favour of Catholic schools in the United States. His well-meant efforts, now a matter of public history, will long be remembered by English-speaking Catholics of America. It is all the more to be regretted that he should have so soon forgotten the cordial recognition which they, pastors and people alike, are wont to bestow upon candour and straightforwardness even in an adversary and a lavman, and the contemptuous ostracism with which they visit shuffling and double dealing even in an ally and a priest.

3 The doctrine of our neo-theologians in its most concise form is this: the beliefs of the teaching Church, even when not formally declared to be dogmas, are absolutely binding upon all Catholics, who must not merely accept. but also firmly believe, them. The teachings may, however, prove false, and then the infallible Church can, without compromising her authority, repudiate and, if needs be, condemn them. Subject to correction, I venture to doubt whether the frame of mind which this practice presupposes or produces, is especially favourable to the cultivation of a genuine love of truth.

page given from which they are alleged to have been taken, but they are actually printed in leaded type in order to attract the special attention of the reader.

On the same page I remarked: "If the Pope's temporal dominions were an island, and we could purchase it for him by going into exile or slavery, by giving up our property or our lives, how eagerly would we not seize the opportunity, and rescue our Church and our people from the dangers that threaten and the calamities that have overtaken them!" The Rev. Father Brandi selects as many of these words as are needful to make me appear to claim to be a man "sent by God in order to rescue the Church and the people from the dangers that threaten and the calamities that have overtaken them."1 And lest his readers, the "crowd of the faithful," should doubt the word of a priest, and fancy that I had merely claimed to be a blunt, outspoken Catholic who scorns to use the poisoned daggers of disingenuous controversy, he does not hesitate to quote the page from which he claims to have taken this astounding pretension on my part! And these are but two samples, strikingly characteristic, of his system of refuting my contentions, as any one interested in the methods of modern theological controversy can see by referring to his pamphlet.

2

And yet, incredible as it may seem, the writer who thus deliberately says the thing that is not, has the assurance to express his regret that liars are not punished in Austria with hard labour, aggravated by enforced fasts, though he neglects to inform us how he would reconcile with his patriotism the implied exclusion of Italy and the Italians from the benefits of this salutary measure. And if, as he hopes, the Papal States are ever resuscitated, has he carefully counted up the ruinous cost of such wholesome legislation?

One last test of the reverend gentleman's candour, and I will dismiss this uninviting branch of the subject. I asserted in my article that Austria is so uncompromisingly Catholic that Freemasonry of every rite is rigorously forbidden there. "This," jeeringly replies the Rev. Father Brandi, "is the reason why the Freemasons of every rite possess numerous lodges in every portion of the entire monarchy." Respect for the priestly office of my opponent forbids me to characterise that statement by any harder name than that of the "truth in masquerade"; but I do publicly call upon him to retract it, or else to prove it by naming any one of the numerous lodges of any rite in any one portion of Austria proper, whether in Vienna, Galicia, Bukovina, Dalmatia, Upper Austria, Bohemia, Styria, or Tyrol, &c.; and to deny the fact that every Austrian official (not excluding priests when they become professors, &c.) must solemnly swear that he belongs to no secret society whatever.

The contents of the Rev. Father Brandi's reply being what they are, the tone is perhaps what it should be; and when, among the

1 P. 5.

2 P. 55.

3 P. 54.

epithets lavishly showered upon me by a venerable priest of our common Church I notice " malicious, sly, "dishonourable, "deceitful," " "4"most treacherous," I am only reminded of St. Paul's words to his brethren: "Let your speech be always with grace." This enumeration, however, far from exhausting the list of my qualities, as they are reflected in the ethical mirror of the Rev. Father Brandi's mind, is but the overture to the real distribution of the "sweet food of sweetly uttered knowledge"; for the other characteristics charitably attributed to me include "coarseness, "6"crass ignorance," "lying," "impudent audacity, outrageous calumny,' "occasional insanity," "" and "forgery "; 2 in a word, I am a "Janus redivivus," and my procedure "deserving of the profoundest contempt of every reader, Catholic and Protestant.""

11

12

"10

&

13

At the best of times it is no easy matter to deal effectively with theological arguments of this character. It is peculiarly difficult in the case of a Catholic whose disapproval of the insuavity of a vigorous antagonist must be tempered by his reverence for the sacred character of the priest. But in spite of the circumstance that Father Brandi takes me severely to task for having published my article in a "Protestant Review, read mostly by Protestants and members of other non-Catholic Churches, ,"15 I trust I may venture without discourtesy to call his attention to the remark of a very Protestant prelate, Bishop Hall, which all good Catholics, and even all good priests, would do well to lay to heart: "Moderation is the silken string running through the pearl-chain of all virtues"; to which the commentary might appropriately be appended, that one might do worse than strive for the string while waiting for the pearls.

I confess my friends and myself were disappointed on reading those passages of the Reply in which the writer, as the spokesman of the Vatican, might have been reasonably expected to allay a Catholic's grief at past mistakes and present prospects, by raising hopes

of future improvement; and more than once have disquieting doubts flitted across my mind whether the pamphlet was indeed the work of a serious apologist, and not a masked attack levelled by a cynical satirist against his Holiness the Pope. Thus, to my complaints that Catholics in Russia are the object of a malignant persecution, our episcopacy humiliated, our clergy insulted and imprisoned, and the rank and file of the faithful driven in batches into the Orthodox Church or to Siberia, while Leo XIII. is exchanging friendly courtesies.

1 P. 3.
8 P. 13.

2 P. 3.

3 P. 3.

5 P. 5.

6 P. 3. 12 P. 63.

7 P. 22.

13 P. 53

4 P. 3. 9 P. 26. 10 P. 26. 11 Pp. 22 and 24. 14 P. 62. Father Brandi makes a deal of needless fuss over a printer's error, which (p. 61 of my article) transformed Gregory XVI. into Gregory XIV., while he himself twice describes Ireland as a Protestant and persecuting nation (pp. 31 and 36), forgetful of the useful maxim :

"Qui ne tuberibus propriis offendat amicum,
Postulat ignoscet verrucis illius";

or as the English people tersely put it: "Never point at your neighbour's spots with a foul finger.'

15 P. 4.