LETTER OF MONSEIGNEUR DUPANLOUP, BISHOP OF ORLEANS, TO M. GAMBETTA.
FROM L’UNIVERS.
Sir: After having read the speech which you have recently delivered at St. Quentin, I waited a few days to see if some one would come forward and do justice to the words you uttered. But since they have been allowed to pass without protest from any one, I will, albeit I have not much taste for it, say what I have to say about them.
Your speech treats both of politics and religion, and you deal with these two great matters as if you were bound very shortly to become their lord and master. I shall not say much about your politics, although their threatening character adds to the already grave anxiety with which our poor country is burdened; but, as a bishop, I have a right to call you to account for the war which you declare against the church and against religion.
For war, indeed, it may be called, and accompanied with such accusations and such outrageous insults, that, if your words were true, we should deserve to be driven not only out of the school-house, as you demand, but out of the church itself.
I must admit to have been at first misled by the apparent moderation of your words. Taking interest, as I do, in conversions when they are sincere, I asked myself, while reading your discourse, in which you appeared to me so calm, so insinuating, and so circumspect, though at the same time so devoid of modesty—I asked myself if the time
had come when the National Assembly was about to present the spectacle of a reconciliation of parties in the presence of the image of an ideal republic. What abundance of honey flowed from your lips! Even at times, how much toleration in your maxims!
In this statement, this programme, this message, the manifesto, or by whatever name it should be called, which you addressed to your assembled guests at St. Quentin, you proceed in this wise:
You call for “a strong and stable government, that will vigilantly protect the interests of all, and be able to regenerate the morals of the French family.” On this point, sir, we certainly all agree. This government, you go on to say, will pacify souls, bring the social classes closer to one another, and will restore to France her rank in Europe. This is also very fine. But let us see further.
To bring about this end, you appeal even to the disabused voters of the plébiscite; even to the legitimists, who, by their wealth and education, are to be the ornament of the state; even to the conservative men, who are to be as a bridle of restraint on a policy which your friends are to urge forward.
And what is to be this policy? The policy of labor, very different from the policy of conquest, the triumph of the idea of justice in the fulfilment of social duties. I cannot forbear remarking here that these
expressions, policy of labor, idea of justice, are in daily use by the Internationale, and not in a sense particularly intended to tranquillize society. But let us go on.
But this form of government, this policy, how is its establishment to be brought about? Why, by universal suffrage, that foremost of rights, that sole and sovereign tribunal, that army of peace. And how is universal suffrage to be persuaded and drawn to the desired end? By giving to public opinion, through democratic intermingling, proofs of the morality, the political value, and the adaptation for business of the republican party; by demonstrating that the republican government is the most liberal of all forms of government, etc.
Really, sir, all this must have appeared admirable to your audience, and, if your republic is of that sort, many of our most upright conservatives will tell you: Let us clasp hands, for that is the very republic which the National Assembly, acting with and through M. Thiers, is endeavoring to realize at the cost of so much self-denial, disinterestedness, and honesty.
But let us be frank.
You have no right to claim that your republic answers this description. Your sweetness is purely oratorical and Platonic; for two sentences of your address reveal you and show who you are.
“No one,” you say, “must ever give his opinion except as a means of adding to the general good; and each one must convert his mind into, as it were, a memorandum tablet for himself, in which he puts down, with a view of obtaining them, the institutions which the people have a right to expect from the democratic republic.”
If a priest had uttered these words, which seem more befitting the lips
of an Italian than of a Frenchman, he would be charged with hypocrisy and mental reservation. It would be said that he is playing saint; that he is concealing his game by not revealing his innermost thoughts. But everything is forbidden to the cleric, while to the radical any and everything is allowed. This everybody knows. I confine myself to merely quoting this first sentence, without further dwelling on its merits; and I pass on to a second one, which gives me a right, not only to suspect you, as in the case of the former one, but to make a direct attack on you; its tenor is as follows:
“What I have done in the past is the true pledge of what I will do in the future, toward definitively establishing the republic.”
It is here, sir, that I must challenge you.
In the first place, I have to express my amazement that, having to account to your country, under so grave a responsibility, and for misdeeds for which you might have been rendered far more seriously liable, you can be so ready to accuse others and to glorify yourself, that you go so far as to dare to say: “What I have done in the past is the true pledge of what I will do in the future.”
What have you done in the past?
You were a young lawyer, and were turned all of a sudden, and in consequence of a tumultuous lawsuit, into a political character. The audacity of your revolutionary opinions enabled you to become a candidate for the Corps Législatif, and in the next place to take your seat as a deputy by the side of your friends Blanqui, Raspail, and Rochefort.
On the 4th September, you seized upon the governing power, and, without consulting with your colleagues, you assigned to yourself the Ministry
of the Interior. Did you, as soon as you got into the ministry, extend to all good citizens those arms which you seem now to be opening so widely? Not at all. In the Hôtel de Ville,[162] you installed such men as Etienne Arago, Ferry, and Rochefort; in the mairie, such characters as Delescluze, Mottu, Bonvalet, Clémenceau; in the préfectures, such as Duportal, Engelhard, and Jacobins of all sorts. You filled these places with your friends—your friends only, and these of the most excitable kind. Afterward, when your colleagues, in order to get rid of you, were so signally weak as to give you the entire realm to operate upon, when, through a fortunate contingency, you had suddenly entrusted to you that magnificent part which, to a heroic and truly patriotic heart, would have been unsurpassable, what did you do? You sought rather to force the republic—your republic—on the country than to save France. It is well for you to talk about universal suffrage. You have treated it as naught. By a first decree, you broke up the conseils-généraux, and did not re-establish them. By a second decree, you adjourned the elections. By a third decree, you abridged the legal qualifications for election. What have you, sole ruler everywhere obeyed, done with the treasure, the men, and the blood of her children which the nation lavished upon you? Was it not a republican who called your fatal rule the dictatorship of incompetency?
Though only three months in power, you had become almost a greater burden upon us than the late Imperial Government; and when you assert that the National Assembly
has completed its work, which was to put an end to the war, you forget that the Assembly had received from France not one mandate only, but three. The Assembly had, and has still, given it the charge to rid our country of the Prussians, of demagoguism, and of yourself.
After the dreadful catastrophes in which the Empire sank to ruin, do you know, sir, what proved to be France’s greatest misfortune?
It was that just then, in that so terrible a crisis, you stood the absolute master of France. I make no reference to the two aged men who were at Tours with you. It was from you, a lawyer, that our generals received their orders; it was you who dictated plans for campaigns; it was you who scattered our forces, and blindly hurled our armies right and left, multiplying your lying bulletins, and at the same time and to the same extent as our reverses.—But I must turn away my thoughts from those disasters, as also from the remembrance of those poor soldiers, without clothes, without shoes, without food, without ammunition! How great an organizer, my dear sir, you proved yourself to be! How fortunate you turned out to have been in the selection of your contractors for supplies!
Nevertheless, the nation, ever generous, might have measurably accepted, as an offset to this, your personal activity, and your efforts, although unsuccessful; it had given you credit for having withdrawn yourself momentarily; but you reappeared too quickly, only a short time before the day when the Commune of Paris was putting forward your friends, your lieutenants, your teachers, or your disciples, such as Delescluze and Millière, Rigault and Ranc, Cavalier and Mottu, all those fellows who have made themselves as
ignominious and ridiculous as possible, some of whom are still around you; in fine, all that party which you have never, even to the extent of a single word, disavowed, and the members of which you called upon to give evidence of their morality, their political worth, and their aptitude for the business of government! That evidence has been given, and really, sir, you rely too much on the frivolity, the folly, or the credulity of the public. You preach to it about a debonair republic, but that public has not forgotten the grotesque, ruinous republic, accompanied with bloodshed, which during six months was fastened on France.
You have avoided with prudent care to call your republic social as well as democratic; and why? In order to enjoy the happiness of a fleeting hour of dictatorship, I suppose it is worth your while to run the risk of more calamities. Alas! unfortunate land, fated to be thus perpetually the dupe and the victim of most guilty ambition!
No, in spite of all that you may say or leave unsaid, your promises are contradicted by our memories. We need, in order to be persuaded, something else than sonorous words. It is true that, in one point only, you depart from the vague style of your programme. You declare that you seek, above all things, to lay the foundation of the future of democracy on a reform, to wit, in education; and with this idea, you proclaim that you and your friends are alone capable, alone worthy, to bring up youth. You seek to turn out just, free, strong-minded and able men. This is very fine. But how? By means of a national education given after a truly modern and truly democratic manner.
And here you dare to affirm that the church and preceding governments
have done nothing for public instruction, that they view every person who knows how to read as an enemy, and you claim to reform the world with your schools.
Allow me to reply that in this matter you are taking advantage of ignorance instead of combating it. For it argues a singular reliance on the ignorance of an audience to attempt to make it swallow at one and the same time, and in the same sentence, calumny and nonsense.
The governments that have ruled France for the past sixty years have in that period established more than 50,000 schools, and have trebled the appropriations for primary instruction.
As to the church, she is founded on two things: a book, the Gospel, and a divine command, to wit: Ite et docete, Go and teach. This sentence, which has become commonplace, “Ignorance is the source of all evils,” was uttered by a pope, and he added besides, “particularly among the working-classes.” These were the words of Benedict XIV., uttered more than a century before you were born.
The calumny is consequently shown to be dull-witted, and the nonsense still more so. It would seem that you also, M. Gambetta, hope, by means of schools, to stamp your effigy on future generations, just as if they were coin. But men versed in the subject know, and experience shows, that such a design is absurd, and may become a horrid tyranny. The instruction, whether primary or secondary, even with as much as you can add to it of the higher sciences, such as algebra, chemistry, etc., will not produce morals; and the parties who flatter the teachers expect, after all, much more from their influence on voters than from their action on their scholars.
Would you like to know what above all things, exerts an influence on the family and on society? It is education, whether it be moral or immoral, religious or atheistic. And do you know why I mistrust your reform? Because it will be neither a moral nor a religious one.
In sober truth, what sort of tuition is a really modern, a really democratic, one? Is there such a thing as modern geometry? a democratic grammar? moral teachings of recent growth, and a geography not yet published? All these big words are but windy oratory, empty and obscure, which affords no meaning to the mind when it attempts to analyze it.
Nevertheless, after having thrown off these sentences to your hearers, you go on and recite the mottoes of the party, the watchword of the day. It is a pity that you left out tithes and forced service under feudal law. You say tuition is to be free of cost—that is equivalent to adding thirty millions to our budget of expenditure; but what does that signify? You have managed to spend a large sum besides. The poor will pay for the rich; but the lower classes will delude themselves with the belief that they are not paying at all, and that they are indebted to you for the benefaction. Tuition is besides to be compulsory. Well, let it be so, if you can devise some adequate sanction for the contemplated enactments, a reliable protection for the liberty of families, and, in particular, a reliable guarantee for the teachers, so that you can feel sure enough of them to venture, without practising the most abominable of all tyranny, to compel parents to entrust to them, what they prize most in this world, their children. But then, minor details do not stop you. To conclude, the
tuition is to be by laymen—and now the cat is let out of the bag.
It is an easy matter to attack and calumniate absent priests, religious who make no defence. To do so is neither fair nor generous, but much popularity is to be got in that way in your party, and the hard flings at the church will offset the sweetness displayed toward other persons. So let us strike hard on this spot. The church is henceforward to be separated from the state—that is not enough, the church is besides to be separated from the school, and the school from all religion.
You have said, sir, that your republic would be a liberal one. If you accordingly begin by excluding from the common right to teach an entire class of citizens and of women, solely because their religious belief is not the same as yours, do not call yourself liberal, and do not charge the church with being intolerant, or else be logically consistent, and separate the state from the school. For the state, in this connection, means the budget; that is to say, the moneys which are got of all of us by taxation. You cannot, without being tyrannical, compel families to send their children to the school of the state. Lay aside these high-sounding phrases, and call things by their right names. By the church you mean us. By the state you mean yourself. To deprive us and our doctrines of our money, in order to bestow it on yourself and your doctrines—that is what is called separating the church from the state. But I feel pretty easy as to the choice families will make when I learn from you what the programme of this teaching is to be.
The programme is this: “It is an extensive and varied one, so that, instead of mutilated learning, man will have dealt out to him entire truth,
so that nothing which the human mind can grasp will be concealed from him.” De omni re scibili! Well, that is wonderful indeed! No doubt you will have the power to create minds capable of taking in this encyclopædia! You are equal to so many undertakings! So that which you have in view, gratuitous, compulsory, lay tuition, integral besides for every one and complete to an impossible degree—this is the formula of socialism, and is also the formula of absurdity.
“In the schools,” you add, “children will be taught scientific truth in its rigor and its majestic simplicity,” and by this process “you will have reared citizens whose principles will rest on the same bases on which our entire society is founded.”
What do you mean by these big words? What are these principles? what are these bases? Whether it be that those principles rest on these bases, or that these bases are fast to those principles, how much of this will you teach to children from the ages of seven to eleven years? I call upon you to give me plainly the text of the programme of science which our worthy village teachers, who are to seek to instil into children of from seven to eleven years the sense of duty and sacrifice, will have to substitute for the Ten Commandments of God, and for the sublime and popular Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.
What is it, pray, sir, that renders you so ungrateful towards the voters of Paris or of Lyons, who nearly all have been educated by the Brothers, so severe on the priests, who perhaps have done something for your early education, and so unjust towards the church?
It is my duty to insist on this point, and to protest against your calumnies.
What! though the clergy of
France have devoted themselves, as they have done, to the service of our soldiers and our prisoners, and though when, only four months ago, our chaplains and our Brothers of the Christian Schools had served and died on the battle-fields, and though all our female religious have devoted themselves to the care of our ambulances, you have the heart to come and tell us that we are no longer French! And it is immediately after the massacre of the hostages that you repeat these calumnies, and represent us as constituting for modern society “the greatest peril.” Such are your very words, and you hold us up anew to the blind fury of our enemies.
And you direct your calumnies not against us alone, but, besides, against the Pope. Ah! I admit, the horrors, treachery, meanness, and falsehood by which he has been surrounded during the past twenty-five years have not brought him to look with favor on the charms of that sham liberty which you promise him, and he may well fail to admire that Garibaldi for whose sake you, perhaps, sacrificed our army of the East. But in the Encyclical which your hearers have never read, the Pope has not condemned the various forms of government as they exist in the laws of various nations. He has condemned liberty unrestrained, rights without countervailing duties, and societies that know not God. As to the family and property, sir, is it becoming your friends to style themselves their virtuous defenders?
But what is singular in this pell-mell gathering of confused and incoherent ideas, is your alleged motive for denying to French priests the right to teach which belongs to them in common with all their fellow-countrymen: “When you have appealed to the energies of men reared
by such teachers, when you seek to arouse in them ideas of sacrifice, of devotedness, of patriotism, you will find that you have to deal with an emasculated, debilitated class of men.” And the reason you assign for the emasculation and debilitation of this class reared under our care is still more singular: it is because we teach them to believe in Providence, and because teachers that believe in Providence are only fit to emasculate and debilitate the human race. At this point, sir, you set “the doctrine which accustoms the mind to the idea of a Providence” in opposition to “revolution, which teaches the authority and responsibility of the will of man and free agency.” But, sir, these things are not incompatible with one another. Both are taught by Christian doctrine, and, by setting them in opposition as you do, you show that you neither understand yourself nor the matters of which you are treating.
But you, who do not believe in Providence, and who are consequently neither emasculated nor debilitated, do you know of any other belief that can better teach mankind to bear with life and brave death? You have this year ordered many men to rush to destruction. Would you have dared to recommend our soldiers to go forth to meet death, mocking God? And do you believe that the souls of the Pontifical Zouaves, and of the Breton francs-tireurs, were enervated by their faith in Providence?
But be cautious. In order that your reasoning be consistent, a belief in Providence appertains not to priests alone, but to whoever professes the Christian faith; consequently, if priests are to be banished from the schools because they teach that emasculating dogma, then all Christians must be kept out as well, and henceforward
you must exact from every teacher and every professor not to believe in Providence.
Avow, sir, that seldom have calumnies and absurdities been mixed up together with greater facility than you have done in these words of yours.
Nevertheless, you manage to go on still further, and you attempt to create a division between the higher clergy, whom you traduce, and those whom you call the lower clergy, whom you flatter, by endeavoring to excite them to envy. You labor in vain, sir; and, besides, I do not recognize any lower clergy as such. The rank of the priesthood is the highest to which we can attain; no bishop, not even the Pope himself, has a sacerdotal character different from that of the most humble priest. All ecclesiastical dignities are, in one sense, beneath the title of priest, which leads to the highest offices and dignities of the church. So that, in this regard, it may be said that no institution is so democratic as the church. Sprung from the people as we nearly all of us are, educated together and fed together on the words of him who died for the people, we will suffer ourselves to be neither divided nor deceived.
Our fraternity is of the right sort. Our God is the true God, and you are without any. Be sincere, sir: come out of this mere talk, and answer me plainly and without oratorical precaution, whether, yes or no, the free thought in which you are a believer, and human science, which, according to you, has nothing to equal it, recognize the existence of a personal and living God? Candor leaves you no alternative but to reply. Either dare to declare to your friends that you do believe, or dare to proclaim to our land that you do not believe, in God.
If indeed your sham science denies
God, I pity you, sir; but you must admit that it hardly becomes you to talk about religion, and to endeavor to beguile and divide priests who have consecrated their lives to him. You assert that, if they dared to disclose their convictions, they would own themselves democrats. Do you know what our village priests would tell you if they were to make disclosures to you? They would inform you that in every hamlet is to be found a handful of petty rhetoricians, tavern orators, fellows who lead municipal councils, who drive away the Christian Brothers and Sisters of Charity, and do their best to deprive the curate of the small pittance without which he cannot subsist, who forbid teachers to take children to Mass, refuse to have churches repaired that need it most, recommend mutual-guarantee-association marriages and burials, and know no better way of serving a republic than by hating priests and by persevering in a low and silly infidelity. Now, in every village these very rhetoricians are your friends.
It is with their assistance that you contemplate establishing that education, “national and truly modern,” in which, in order to teach children “their duties as citizens, to excite in them ideas of sacrifice, of devotion to country, to make out of them an unemasculated race,” you will have not only to avoid speaking to them of God and of Providence, but besides to combat and root out of their minds the idea of Providence, and, in fine, to force upon French youth a teaching without religion, and a moral instruction without God.
Well, would you have me tell you what such education will turn out for you? Instead of rearing men, it will give us monsters, and a learned barbarism, armed with abundant means of destruction, barbarism in the
heart and in manner—in a word, just what we have witnessed during the reign of the Commune; young men and girls from eighteen to twenty-three years old ruling Paris and destroying it by incendiarism; and, lo, it is after having witnessed such scenes of horror and the lessons which they teach, that you have nevertheless ventured to deliver the address to which I am replying, and your audience went so far as to applaud your words!
In my view, this latter fact is an indication of the disorder in which at this very moment we still are. No, the end of France’s afflictions is not yet!
But I have said enough, sir. I have sought, as the only reply to your harangue, to put facts in opposition to words. I have sought, while replying to you, to defend the church; and I think I have at the same time defended public peace. In theory, as against this or that government, neither my faith, my reason, nor my patriotism would raise great objections, were it not that I have seen your party at work, and that my sight is still filled with those sombre scenes, and my memory with the recollection of your deeds. In vain do you try to cover them over with clever words and honeyed insinuations. My knowledge of the preacher spoils the effect of the sermon on me. And my recollection of the whilom dictator puts me on my guard against the impressiveness of the candidate who is aspiring not to establish liberty, as he pretends, but to destroy religion and to get into power. You are not an apostle, you are a pretender. The republic is I!—that is your programme and the sole object of your discourse. Well! depend upon it, France has a republican government now, the need of a change to another, even though accompanied with the
advantage of having you for its president, is not at all felt.
Please accept, sir, with the expression of my regret to be compelled to thus combat you, that of the sentiments of respect which, as your colleague, I have the honor to offer you.
✠ Felix, Bishop of Orleans,
Deputy at the National Assembly for the Department of Loiret.
[162] The Hôtel de Ville is the seat of head municipal authority for the city of Paris; the mairies are the subordinate seats of local authority for the arrondissements into which Paris is divided.—Translator.
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
The Arians of the Fourth Century. By John Henry Newman, formerly Fellow of Oriel College. Third Edition. London: E. Lumley. For sale by The Catholic Publication Society, New York.
This work was written in 1832, and saw the light in the following year. The author had already made his mark in Oxford as a keen and deep thinker, as a scholar of wide and accurate erudition, and as a clear and vigorous writer. He was a prominent leader in the Oxford or Puseyite movement, and was, as we know from his Apologia, a stanch Anglican. The work, looked for at the time with interest, was received as fully equal to the high reputation of the author. Its singularly lucid treatment of a subject involving the most abstruse questions of ancient theological controversy, as well as the intricate and shifting phases of a very eventful period of ecclesiastical history, was a valuable addition to English theological literature. The author had evidently thrown his soul into the work. The history he was treating seemed to him to present many points of parallelism to their own living struggle in the Anglican Church. The Anomœans and kindred Arian sects were representatives of the Socinianism which had reached even the highest dignities, and the rationalism and humanitarianism which were beginning to spread among the clergy and the laity of its fold. The Semiarians with their compromises
and varying phrases and formulas of faith, which might mean much or little, as each one chose to understand them, were equally good representatives of the modern Broad Church compromisers. The Eusebians, ever seeking to bask in the imperial favor, and to guide or to wield the civil power for their own interests, were the type of the modern Erastians, who look for nothing higher than an act of parliament or an exercise of the royal supremacy. And the continual assumption of ecclesiastical authority by the Arian and Semiarian emperors in the fourth century, and their often tyrannical action towards faithful bishops and clergy, who would not give to Cæsar the things that are God’s, made the Puseyites think of the enthralled condition of their “own branch,” in which the sovereign claims and exercises the exclusive right of appointing the archbishops and bishops, and of deciding finally all questions of doctrine, discipline, or church law, and without whose sanction convocations cannot meet, nor synods be held or pass decrees. In the fourth century, the church, though long and sorely pressed, ever struggled on, and finally succeeded in vindicating her own liberty, and casting the heresy out of her fold. It was hoped that the example might teach them how their English Church might similarly struggle and eventually triumph.
A few years sufficed to convince
Dr. Newman that such hopes were futile, and that his position was false. He and others sought refuge in the fold of the true church. Meanwhile, within the Anglican Church, the successive decisions in the Gorham case and in several other cases that have since come before the Privy Council, show that the evils he lamented and feared have increased in strength, while the power of opposing them has grown gradually weaker.
The present is a third edition of the work under the care of the author; we can scarcely say, revised by him. German professors, in publishing successive editions of their works on any subject to which they devote continuous study, have no scruple in retracting, cancelling, or directly confuting what they had previously published, as often as they may be led to change their opinions on material points, so much so that you must be sure you have the right edition before you can quote it. We turned to this edition to see if Dr. Newman had followed such a course. He has not. With him, litera scripta manet. The book is the same now as when it first appeared. In a few instances he changes the structure of a sentence, that his thought may stand out more clearly. He has added a few more references in the foot-notes, scrupulously indicating such additions by enclosing them in brackets. He has enlarged the table of contents at the beginning and the chronological table at the end of the volume. No change has been made affecting the opinions, sentiments, or speculations of the original edition. There are expressions which now, of course, displease him as a Catholic; but he lets them hold their place. He has cast out only two sentences, as needlessly put in originally, and even these he has, in signal humility, pilloried, as it were, in a page by themselves at the end of the appendix. This appendix, at the close of the volume, is mostly made up of extracts from
subsequent works of his own, and are intended to throw further light on several points touched on in the original work.
The volume presents an admirable critical, theological, and historical summary of the whole Arian controversy in the fourth century, and was a turning-point in English Protestant literature on the subject. Dr. Newman was the first to establish what has since been generally accepted, that Arianism was connected, historically and intellectually, with the Judaic Aristotelic schools of thought prevailing at Antioch and through Asia Minor, and not, as had been previously held by many, with the Platonic schools of Alexandria.
The work deserves and will amply reward a careful study. The Catholic reader will, of course, find himself in something of a Protestant atmosphere. The authority and action of the Roman Pontiffs is scarcely glanced at. Twice or thrice reference is made to the important support which the Roman See gave to St. Athanasius, and to the determined resistance which honorably distinguishes the primitive Roman Church in its dealing with heresy, and the ground is taken that the acute and sophistical training of the Eastern intellects led them to indulge in abstruse distinctions and discussions which the calmer and more practical minds of the Western Church entered into with difficulty, and could scarcely express in their Latin tongue, so much less pliable than the Greek. Theologically speaking, as well as historically, the controversy in the fourth century was Eastern, rather than Latin. Still, we are sure that, were Dr. Newman to write afresh this history, now that he is a Catholic, the important part acted by the Roman Pontiffs would be more strongly set forth. Writing as a Protestant, he was sufficiently emphatic on the case of Liberius—so much so that he has added a footnote to say that there is a difference
among writers which was the Sirmian formula that Liberius subscribed; and the appendix further shows that there is also a discrepancy as to the number and the chronological order of the various formulas, and that in some cases alterations and additions were subsequently made in the original text. It might also be added that there are grave reasons for doubting the fact of any such subscription by Liberius, inasmuch as the charge seems to have been first put forth by heated controversialists long after his death, and is scarcely reconcilable with the undoubted facts of his life after the date of the alleged subscription.
Here and there the Catholic will meet phrases implying or stating some special Anglican view or Protestant principle. To all these Dr. Newman’s present position is a practical and sufficient refutation. In the clear and lucid arrangement of the topics, in accurate and subtile tracing of the various and varying forms of the Arian heresy, and in the vivid portraying of that greatest and most earnest battle in the early life of the church, the work is worthy of Dr. Newman, and claims a place in every theological library.
Memoir of Ulric Dahlgren. By his Father, Rear-Admiral Dahlgren. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1872.
Though war, in whatever light we may view it, cannot but be considered a national calamity, it must be admitted that it has a tendency to generate certain mental and social qualities which are unknown or of slow growth in civil life. Personal courage, disinterested friendship, and patient self-sacrifice, no mean qualities in themselves, are doubly valuable when enlisted in the cause of one’s country on the side of law and justice, and hence we consider the soldier, no matter what may be his rank, who bravely and intelligently risks and loses his life in defence of his nation’s integrity, deserving of a high meed of praise.
Young Dahlgren, the subject of this memoir, was one of this character, and though he had scarcely attained the years of manhood at the time of his death, in his attempt to liberate the Union prisoners in Richmond, in 1864, he had risen from civil life to the rank of colonel, and had repeatedly distinguished himself for his skill, tact, and heroism. The account of his short but eventful career was written by his father, the late Admiral Dahlgren, and is now published under the auspices of his stepmother, the gifted widow of that naval hero. It is very minute in details, and composed with a richness of coloring and a warmth of affection such as might be anticipated of a fond and gallant father in describing the deeds of a son in every way worthy of him. During his short military career, Colonel Dahlgren made many friends, some of whom survive him, who will be glad to be put in possession of the particulars of his brilliant and edifying career.
The Internationale—Communism. A Lecture by Rev. F. P. Garesche, S.J., of St. Louis University. St. Louis: P. Fox. 1872.
This is a lecture both logical and eloquent. The learned Jesuit traces Communism to Protestantism through materialism and false civilization. He shows its horrid and dangerous nature, and administers a well-merited castigation to that arch-agitator and firebrand of mischief, Wendell Phillips, who has made himself its apologist. All persons ought to read this, and especially those who pretend to call themselves Catholics, and yet, by joining Masonic or other condemned societies, have renounced their allegiance to the church and become accomplices in the conspiracy against religion and society. Every good Catholic who reads it will have his horror deepened against this conspiracy in all its forms, and will learn what estimate is to be placed on those who seek to palliate and extenuate doctrines
and acts which have been condemned by the Holy See.
Lenten Sermons. By Paul Segneri, of the Society of Jesus. Vol. I. 12mo, pp. 361. New York: The Catholic Publication House, 9 Warren St.
This is a translation of a portion of the celebrated Quaresimale, or course of forty sermons for Lent, of Father Paul Segneri, S.J., who was one of the most remarkable missionaries that the church has produced, and also a man of great sanctity and austerity of life. These discourses are models of eloquence, and lose but little of their original force by the translation, which is a very good one. They are fourteen in number; but it is intended that the remaining ones shall be published, should the present volume meet with sufficient encouragement. They are admirable examples of what sermons for Lent, or for a mission, should be, and will be of great assistance to clergymen. They are now for the first time made easily accessible to the American public. The volume is of a convenient size, and well printed, and such as we can in every way commend to the attention of our readers.
The Spouse of Christ: Her Privileges and Her Duties. Vol. I. By the author of St. Francis and the Franciscans, etc., etc. Boston: Patrick Donahoe. 1872.
This is a volume of spiritual conferences or reading, specially intended for female religious. The piety and talent of its authoress are well known to the Catholic world. The present work has the imprimatur of the Bishop of Kerry, accompanied by a handsome tribute to the writer.
The Vessels of the Sanctuary: A Tale of Normandy.—The Inheritance. New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co. 1872.
Two charming little stories, translated from the French. We can heartily recommend them as affording pleasant and instructive reading for children.
“The Catholic Publication Society” has just published in Tract form the Pastoral Letter of the Archbishops and Bishops of Ireland on the School Question. The price of this document is $3 00 per 100 copies. The same Society will also publish in pamphlet form Several Calumnies Refuted, or Executive Document No. 37. This will also be sold at $3 00 per 100. No less than 100 copies of either of these pamphlets will be sold at any one time.
“The Catholic Publication Society” has just issued a list of new books to be published by the Society this spring. It comprises fifteen books altogether. These are: Lenten Lectures, by Father Segneri; The Liquefaction of the Blood of St. Januarius; Sermons on Ecclesiastical Subjects, Vols. II. and III., by Archbishop Manning; French Eggs, in an English Basket; Little Pierre, the Pedlar of Alsace, illustrated by twenty-seven first class woodcuts; Maggie’s Rosary; Constance Sherwood, by Lady Fullerton, illustrated; The House of Yorke, with illustrations; The Eighth Series of Sunday-School Libraries, illustrated; The Life and Letters of St. Francis Xavier, by Rev. H. J. Coleridge, S.J.; Madame de Chantal and Her Family; St. Jerome and his Correspondents; Bibliographia Catholica Americana, by Rev. J. M. Finotti—this book is published by subscription; and The Men and Women of the Protestant Reformation in England. All these books, as soon as ready, will be announced in our Literary Bulletin, as well as all other new Catholic books published in this country or in England.
Mr. P. O’shea, New York, announces as in press, Lectures on the Church, by Rev. D. W. Merrick, S.J., of St. Francis Xavier’s Church, New York.
Received: Landreth’s Rural Register and Almanac—1872. Published for gratuitious distribution. David Landreth & Son, 21 South Sixth St., Philadelphia, Pa.
Transcriber’s Note:
Volume 14 contains six monthly issues of the publication. At the bottom of the first page of each issue is a notice that it was entered into the Library of Congress. This notice was moved to follow the issue number and date.
Page numbers are displayed in the right margin. (This feature may be disabled in some e-readers.) Footnotes and anchors were renumbered sequentially. The footnotes were moved to the end of the article, poem, or item. There are three anchors for Footnote [113].
A column header key was added before the table on page [513] so that the display of the table would fit many e-reader screens.
Unprinted punctuation and accents, missing spaces between words, and missing letters were added where appropriate. Duplicate letters and words, where text continued from one line to the next, were removed. On page [404], ‘Pharao’ was changed to ‘Pharaoh’ for consistency with other instances in the article. In the Contents, under the entry of ‘Catholicity and Pantheism’ the page number was changed from 829 to 830. On page 504, the anchor for Footnote [110] is missing; it was added where it may likely have belonged. On page [530], italic markup was twice added to ‘aqua fortis’ for consistency with the remaining text. Obsolete, archaic, and other misspelled words were not changed.