The Catholic World, Vol. 10, October, 1869 to March, 1870

VOL. X. OCTOBER, 1869, TO MARCH, 1870.
NEW YORK: THE CATHOLIC PUBLICATION HOUSE, 126 Nassau Street. 1870.
S. W. GREEN, Printer, 16 and 18 Jacob St., N. Y.

CONTENTS.
POETRY.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

THE CATHOLIC WORLD. VOL. X., No. 55.—OCTOBER, 1869.
We notice in this review the article on the Spirit of Romanism for a single point only, which it makes, for as a whole it is not worth considering. Father Hecker asserts in his Aspirations of Nature , that, Endowed with reason, man has no right to surrender his judgment; endowed with free-will, man has no right to yield up his liberty. Reason and free-will constitute man a responsible being, and he has no right to abdicate his independence. To this and several other extracts from the same work to the same effect, the Christian Quarterly opposes what is conceded by Father Hecker and held by every Catholic, that every one is bound to believe whatever the church believes and teaches. But bound as a Catholic to submit his reason and will to the authority of the church, how can one assert that he is free to exercise his own reason, and has no right to surrender it, or to abdicate his own independence? Father Hecker says, Religion is a question between the soul and God; no human authority has, therefore, any right to enter its sacred sphere. Yet he maintains that he is bound to obey the authority of the church, and has no right to believe or think contrary to her teachings and definitions. How can he maintain both propositions?
What Father Hecker asserts is that man has reason and free-will, and that he has no right to forego the exercise of these faculties, or to surrender them to any human authority whatever. Between this proposition and that of the plenary authority of the church in all matters of faith or pertaining to faith and sound doctrine, as asserted by the Council of Trent and Pius IX. in the Syllabus , the Christian Quarterly thinks it sees a glaring contradiction. Father Hecker, it is to be presumed, sees none, and we certainly see none. Father Hecker maintains that no human authority has any right to enter the sacred sphere of religion, that man is accountable to no man or body of men for his religion or his faith; but he does not say that he is not responsible to God for the use he makes of his faculties, whether of reason or free-will, or that God has no right to enter the sacred sphere of religion, and tell him even authoritatively what is truth and what he is bound to believe and do. When I believe and obey a human authority in matters of religion, I abdicate my own reason; but when I believe and obey God, I preserve it, follow it, do precisely what reason itself tells me I ought to do. There is no contradiction, then, between believing and obeying God, and the free and full exercise of reason and free-will. Our Cincinnati contemporary seems to have overlooked this very obvious fact, and has therefore imagined a contradiction where there is none at all, but perfect logical consistency. Our contemporary is no doubt very able, a great logician, but he is here grappling with a subject which he has not studied, and of which he knows less than nothing.