New Publications.
Elements of Logic. Designed as a Manual of Instruction. By Henry Coppée, LL.D., President of the Lehigh University. Revised edition. Philadelphia: E. H. Butler & Co. 1872.
President Coppée has carefully excluded from this edition of his Logic everything which could give offence to a Catholic. The main part of the work, treating of formal logic, is of course substantially the same with other treatises of this kind, and is written in a clear, simple style, well adapted to an elementary text-book. But here our approbation must cease. The history of logic is altogether defective. The author advocates the doctrine derived by Hamilton from Kant, that our rational knowledge is merely “conditioned,” which is pure scepticism, and confounds Christian philosophy [pg 286] with theology, which is effectually to subvert both sciences. Teachers may find some useful assistance from this book in explaining the laws of thought; but it is altogether unfit to be placed in the hands of Catholic pupils. We reiterate the desire we have so often expressed, that some competent person would translate one of our standard Latin text-books of logic, for the use of pupils and teachers who cannot read them in the original language.
The Pocket Prayer-Book. Compiled from approved sources. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1872.
This is certainly the most complete little manual we have seen, and, although it contains 650 pages, is small enough for the pocket; and gives, among other things, the three indulgenced litanies, the entire Mass in Latin and English, Vespers, and the Epistles and Gospels for the Sundays throughout the year. The type, moreover, is singularly large and good. Thus the book supplies a long-felt want; and ought to become very popular amongst Catholic men, for whose especial benefit it was compiled. There is another edition without the Epistles and Gospels, which fits the vest pocket, and can therefore be made emphatically a daily companion.
England and Rome. By the Rev. W. Waterworth, S.J. London: Burns & Lambert. 1854. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)
A Commentary by Writers of the First Five Centuries on the Place of S. Peter in the New Testament, and that of S. Peter's Successors in the Church. By the Very Rev. J. Waterworth, D.D., Provost of Nottingham. London: Richardson. 1871. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)
The reader will perceive, if he takes notice of the titles of these two books, that they are by two different authors, both bearing the name of Waterworth. They are brothers, and one of the two is a Jesuit, the other being a dignitary of the Catholic Church in England. The work whose title stands first in order at the head of this notice, is not a recent publication, having been issued as long ago as 1854. We think it, however, not unsuitable to recall attention to it as a work specially useful at the present time. About one-third of the volume is taken up with a very solid and scholarly disquisition on the general topic of the Papal supremacy. Its principal and special topic is, however, the relation of the church in England to the Holy See from the year 179 to the epoch of the schism of Henry VIII. It is handled with great learning and ability, and the sophisms and perversions of those disingenuous or ill-informed controversialists who pretend to establish the original independence of the British Church are scattered to the winds.
The work of Dr. Waterworth, the Provost of Nottingham, was published last year. This learned divine is the author of the celebrated treatise entitled The Faith of Catholics, and is well known as a most profound and accurate patristic scholar. The present volume was prepared by him for the press before the publication of the Decrees of the Vatican Council; but its issue having been delayed by an accident, the author took the opportunity of making a re-examination of its contents, with special reference to the objections raised by Dr. Döllinger, and of adding some new prefatory remarks. The result of his revision did not suggest to him the necessity of any alteration whatever, or show anything in the cavils of the petulant old gentleman, who has so completely stultified himself by retracting the deliberate convictions of his better days, worthy of any special refutation.
As for Dr. Waterworth's work itself, it is quite unique in English Catholic literature, and different from the other works on the Papal supremacy, able and learned as [pg 287] these are, which we have hitherto possessed. It is literally an exhaustive collection of all the sayings of fathers and councils on the two topics discussed, during the first five centuries of the Christian era, by one who has mastered the whole of this vast body of literature. One hundred and seven fathers and councils are quoted, and copious tables at the end of the volume place the whole array of authorities in a convenient order for reference under the eye of the reader. It is needless for us to expatiate on the value of such a work, or to say anything more to recommend it to the attention of all who wish to study this great subject of the Papal supremacy.
The Troubles of our Catholic Forefathers, related by Themselves.First Series. Edited by John Morris, Priest of the Society of Jesus. London: Burns & Oates. 1872. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)
One of the outward and by no means the least significant signs of the revival of religion in England is the appearance in rapid succession of a most useful class of books, having for their main object the vindication of the character and constancy of the Catholics of that country during and subsequent to the so-called Reformation. We have had occasion elsewhere to refer to Father Morris' work on the Condition of Catholics under James I. The book before us may be considered a continuation of that exceedingly interesting contribution to history, and, as it is the first of a series, we may expect at an early day others equally valuable from the same painstaking and indefatigable student.
Until lately, with very few exceptions, historical works relating to Great Britain have been the composition of prejudiced, anti-Catholic writers, each in his turn guilty of the same omissions while servilely copying the misrepresentations of his predecessors; so that the public mind has at length become impressed with the conviction that, when the tocsin of rebellion against God's law was sounded by Henry Tudor, the people of the whole of his dominions arose in hostile opposition to the authority of the church. None but a critical few, familiar with foreign contemporary authorities, were aware that, while the nobles who hungered for the spoils of convents and monasteries, and the suppliant courtiers, lay and ecclesiastical, whose fortunes depended upon the smiles of the sovereign, basely bowed down before the brutal passions of Henry and Elizabeth, the mass of the people, particularly the educated and moral middle class, held firmly to the faith, braving persecution, poverty, imprisonment, and even death, in defence of Catholicity. England, in fact, can count her thousands of uncanonized martyrs, priests and laity, men and women, who, in common with their co-religionists of the Continent, fell victims to the lust, cupidity, and inhumanity of the “Reformers.” Some of their most glorious achievements will probably never be recorded in this world, but there is every hope that, through the exertions of such conscientious searchers as this learned Jesuit, a flood of light will be thrown ere long on the darkest, but not least edifying, days of the Christian Church in England. Heretofore this noble work has been delayed for various reasons. Contemporary documents were either in the hands of the Government, or were scattered among many convents and private libraries, and from long neglect had become almost forgotten; and it required so much industry as well as knowledge to search for and utilize them, that until lately no one was found equal to the task. Besides, the English Catholics of the last generation were so few and so lukewarm that it was difficult to find a publisher willing to risk his money and his reputation in bringing out books that were considered neither profitable nor politic. A change has come over the spirit of their dream, [pg 288] as the appearance of late of so many Catholic works, well printed and handsomely bound, from some of the first publishing houses in Europe, amply testifies; and the ancient faith is fast regaining its power in what, for three centuries, has been considered the stronghold of dissent. While of primary interest to English readers, works of this character will also have peculiar attractions for Americans, many of whom by blood and affinity are as much heirs to the virtues and courage of the British Catholics of the XVIth and XVIIth centuries as those born on that soil. No historical library in our language would be complete without such works as those of F. Morris, containing as they do original, authentic documents which hitherto have never appeared in print, in whole or in part. Such documents, carefully annotated, and modernized only as regards their obsolete orthography, are the true materials of history, worth an infinity of commentaries and second and third hand statements filtrated through the minds of ignorant or partial writers.
The present volume contains the memoirs of Mother Margaret Clement; a sketch of the history of the Monasteries of SS. Ursula and Monica at Louvain; an account of the dissolution of the Carthusian Monastery of the Charter House, London, and the execution of several of its monks, in the reign of Henry VIII.; a detailed narrative of the imprisonment of Francis Tregian for sixteen years; some additional particulars relating to the missions of Fathers Tesimond and Blount; the trial of the Rev. Cuthbert Clapton, chaplain to the Venetian ambassador, as related by himself, and the correspondence of that official with his government from a.d. 1638 to 1643; with several interesting details of the sufferings and persecution of some noble Catholic families. These documents were procured in various places—in the Public Record Office; S. Mary's College, Ascott; Stonyhurst; the Archives de l'Etat, Brussels; S. Augustine's Priory, Abbotsleigh; Archives of the Archbishop of Westminster, and in numerous private MS. collections; each original being preceded by a short but comprehensive introduction from the pen of the learned editor.
Peters' Catholic Class Book: A Collection of copyright Songs, Duets, Trios, and Choruses, etc., etc. Compiled and arranged by William Dressler. New York: J. L. Peters.
The first half of this work is a reproduction of ballads of sentiment of no special merit, issued, as the foot-notes ingeniously advertise to the purchaser, “in sheet-music form, with lithograph title-page,” by the publisher. The latter half is chiefly a reprint of so-called religious songs which persistently return to us under one or another guise in publications of this class, like poor relations, and with as hearty a welcome as such visitors proverbially receive.
The Catholic Publication Society has fixed upon the 5th of November as the publication day of The Illustrated Catholic Family Almanac for 1873: over 35,000 copies have already been ordered by the different booksellers. The Society has just published an edition of The Little Manual of Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and Spiritual Bouquet, formerly published by John P. Walsh, of Cincinnati; and will soon issue in book-form Fleurange, by Mrs. Craven; Col. Meline's translation of Hubner's Life of Sixtus V.; Myrrha Lake, or Into the Light of Catholicity. All-Hallow Eve and Unconvicted will appear early in November. Canon Oakeley's work on Catholic Worship is in press, and will be published uniform with his excellent treatise on The Mass.
The Catholic World. Vol. XVI., No. 93.—December, 1872.
The Spirit Of Protestantism.
Recent events in Europe, particularly in Prussia and Italy, have done much to awaken the attention of thinking men in this country to the true spirit of what is known as Protestantism. While they have once more presented to our view humiliating spectacles of human weakness, injustice and downright tyranny under the guise and in the sacred names of religion and liberty, they have confirmed with remarkable force all that has been alleged against the spirit that actuates and has always governed the enemies of the Catholic Church.
When the revolt against Catholic doctrine and the spiritual authority of the See of Rome was first inaugurated in the XVIth century under the banner of liberty of conscience and freedom of thought, it was asserted by those who then upheld the ancient faith that these were specious pretexts invented to cover ulterior designs, which, by giving full scope to the worst passions of our nature, would inevitably fix in the minds and in the hearts of mankind a moral slavery more debasing, and a servitude more irradicable, than even the most astute pagans of ancient times ever dreamed of; that dissent from the dogmas and discipline of the universal church did not in itself constitute a creed, but simply the negation of all Christian truth, and that the right of private judgment in matters of faith meant in reality the right, when seconded by the power, to pull down and destroy, to persecute and proscribe, to desecrate and desolate the Christian temples and charitable institutions which pious hands had reared and richly endowed throughout Europe. How sadly prophetic were the sagacious champions of true liberty and divine authority, the history of the last three centuries fully attests.
Whoever has studied the career of modern civilization, either in the detached records of nations and dynasties, or by following the course of the church herself from her foundation to the present day, cannot fail to discover [pg 290] that the advance of Europe from the epoch of the disruption of the Roman Empire until the commencement of the XVIth century was a steady, constant, and rapid march towards true civil polity and enlightenment; frequently checked, it is true, by wars and local schisms, but ever flowing onward in an irresistible and majestic flood.
From the barbarism and chaos incident to the disappearance of the central authority of the empire, Europe emerged into the preparatory condition of feudalism, at that time another name for order; and, through this state of order, the first necessity of freedom, she was fast acquiring that second essential element of political excellence—liberty. Already the humble peasants of Helvetia were as free as the air of their romantic mountains; Italy was dotted with republics; the Spanish peninsula was ruled more by its cortes than by its sovereigns; France had her several “estates”; Poland her elective monarchy; and Germany and the North were fast becoming imbued with liberal and constitutional ideas; England, the last to adopt the feudal system, had by degrees abrogated its slavish restraints and commercial restrictions, and, with justice, boasted of her great charters and independent parliaments; while over all a species of international law was established, the chief executive of which sat in the chair of S. Peter, before whose moral power warriors sheathed their swords and crowned kings bowed their heads in submission. Municipalities, the germs of which had first clustered around the monasteries, had become numerous and powerful enough to defy and, on occasion, to curb the power of the feudal nobles, and, under the protection of the guilds, the mechanical arts had acquired a degree of perfection fully equal if not superior to that of our own time. Those workers in wool, cotton, and silk, stone, metal, and wood, have left us lasting monuments of their skill not only in the productions of the looms of Flanders and Italy, and the forges of Spain and England, but, better still, in the multiplicity of magnificent cathedrals and basilicas, in the contemplation of which the artisan of this generation, with all his supposed advantages, is lost in silent admiration. Poetry, painting, architecture, and sculpture, the four highest developments of creative genius, may be said to have reached, at the period immediately anterior to the Reformation, the acme of glory and greatness, never before nor since excelled or even equalled by man; while the discovery of the art of printing had given a new impetus to literature, and commerce spread her white wings in the Indian Ocean and along the shores of the New World.
Now, all these beneficent results were directly and indirectly the work of the Catholic Church. From the details of ordinary life to the more profound schemes of state policy, her animating presence was felt, and her influence cheerfully recognized and obeyed, for it was always exercised for the benefit of humanity and the greater glory of God. From the forging of the Toledo blade that flashed in the dazzled eyes of the Saracen, to the rearing aloft of that wonder of the Christian and pagan world, S. Peter's; from the humble Mechlin girl meshing a robe for a statue of the Virgin, to Columbus exploring unknown seas in search of treasure to ransom the holy shrines; from the poor friar teaching the child of the degraded villein, to Archbishop Langdon framing Magna Charta; from the enfranchisement of a serf, to the organization of the crusades, there was no step in human progress that [pg 291] was not inspired and directed by the church for the wisest and most exalted purposes. Guided by the spirit of religion, the amount of solid happiness, simple virtue, and rational liberty enjoyed by the people of Europe at the opening of the XVIth century was greater, far greater, than their descendants possess at the present time, after nearly four hundred years' experience, and countless attempts at religious, social, and political revolutions.
Yet, under the name of Reformation and greater liberty, this grand march towards human perfection and eternal bliss was to be stayed, and even for a time turned backwards, so that morally and politically Christendom has not yet, nor is it likely for a long time, to recover from the shock which it experienced at the hands of the Protestant reformers, their aiders and abettors. The motives which actuated these reactionists were neither new nor doubtful. Under various names and pretences, bodies of fanatics or knaves swayed by the same inducements had appeared from time to time in different parts of the world, generally causing much local disturbance, but always suppressed by the authority of the church or the strong arm of the state. They were simply detached efforts on the part of the worst portion of the population to throw off all spiritual restraint as well as temporal authority, and, by being thus freed both from moral and civil law, to give full scope to their passions, undeterred by either religious or social considerations. The history of fanaticism, of the Albigenses, the Fratricelli, and the Lollards, proves that the leaders in such movements were invariably the enemies of existing civil authority, and that profligacy and plunder were the lures by which they drew around them their deluded followers. The “Reformation,” as the last and greatest rebellion is called, forms no exception to the rule.
In the early part of the XVIth century it broke out in Germany under the auspices of three or four Saxon ecclesiastics, principal among whom were Luther and Melanchthon. The former schismatic, who was a preacher of some eminence, commenced by inveighing against the abuse of indulgences, and by rapid transitions ended by totally denying the authority of the church in every point of doctrine and discipline. He bases man's salvation on faith alone regardless of works, proclaimed the right of every individual to make his own religion according as it seemed best to himself, and boldly advocated the massacre of priests and bishops and the pillage of churches and religious homes—the existence of all of which he declared to be contrary to Holy Writ. “Now is the time,” he wrote, at the commencement of his crusade, “to destroy convents, abbeys, priories, and monasteries”; to which advice he added a little later, “These priests, these Mass-mumblers, deserve death as truly as a blasphemer who should curse God and his saints in the public streets.” A system of belief at once so convenient and so conformable with the greatest license, so free from all moral responsibility and so suggestive of rapine and spoliation, could not but attract followers, and Luther became so popular with the more debased of his countrymen and with the rapacious among the nobles, that rivals soon sprang up, who, accepting his premises, quickly outstripped him in the race of fanaticism. The Anabaptists under Münzer, thinking that they also had a right to private judgment, declared against infant baptism, demanded a reorganization of [pg 292] society on what would now be called a socialistic basis, and proceeded to put the heresiarch's theory into practice by overrunning the fairest provinces of Germany with fire and sword, destroying alike feudal castles and Catholic churches, and slaughtering with unheard-of barbarity every one who opposed them, whether layman or cleric.
This practical commentary on the new doctrine affrighted even its founder, so he hastened to implore the interposition of his friends among the German nobility. Accordingly, Philip of Hesse, in 1625, marched an army against them, and, meeting their main body under Münzer, a quondam friend and pupil of Luther, at Mülhausen, cut them to pieces and subsequently hanged their leader. About thirty thousand peasants are stated to have been slaughtered on this occasion, when the new Reformation may be said to have been baptized, and the right of private judgment according to Luther fully vindicated. Nearly at the same time another scene of even greater barbarity was enacted at the other extremity of the Continent. Attracted by reports of rich spoil to be obtained in Italy during the wars of the emperor and the French king for the possession of that lovely but unfortunate country, sixteen thousand German Lutheran mercenaries crossed the Alps and joined the forces of Constable de Bourbon, himself a traitor in arms against his country. Under the command of that gifted apostate, they marched on Rome, and, though their leader fell in the attack, the city was captured. Had he survived, the fate of the Eternal City might have been sad enough, but, unrestrained by superior authority, the conduct of the victors was simply diabolical. For weeks and months the city was given over to plunder, and the inhabitants to every species of outrage by those wretches, who, true to their master and his teachings, even went to the extent, in mockery of the church, to formally suspend Clement VII., and elect in his stead their new apostle. How Luther must have chuckled at the news!
“Never perhaps, in the history of the world,” says a distinguished historian, “had a greater capital been given up to a more atrocious abuse of victory; never had a powerful army been made up of more barbarous elements; never had the restraints of discipline been more fearfully cast aside. It was not enough for these rapacious plunderers to seize upon the rich stores of sacred and profane wealth which the piety or industry of the people had gathered into the capital of the Christian world; the wretched inhabitants themselves became the victims of the fierce and brutal soldiery; those who were suspected of having hidden their wealth were put to the torture. Some were forced by these tortures to sign promissory notes, and to drain the purses of their friends in other countries. A great number of prelates fell under these sufferings. Many others, having paid their ransom, and while rejoicing to think themselves free from further attacks, were obliged to redeem themselves again and died from grief or terror caused by these acts of violence. The German troops were seen, drunk at once with wine and blood, leading about bishops in full pontifical attire, seated upon mules, or dragging cardinals through the streets, loading them with blows and outrages. In their eagerness for plunder, they broke in the doors of the tabernacles and destroyed masterpieces of art. The Vatican library was sacked; the public squares and churches of Rome were converted into market-places, where the conquerors sold, as promiscuous booty, the Roman ladies and horses; and these brutal excesses were committed even in the basilicas of S. Peter and S. Paul, held by Alaric as sacred asylums; the pillage which, under Genseric, had lasted fourteen days, lasted now two months without interruption.”[130]
Having disposed of his rivals the [pg 293] Anabaptists and set afloat his anathemas against the church, Luther proceeded systematically to disorganize society and obstruct the efforts of the sovereign pontiff and the Catholic princes to save Europe from the horrors of a Mahometan invasion, at that time most imminent. He formed a league among the semi-independent German princes favorable to his views, particularly on the matter of confiscation, and the power he had denied to the pope and bishops of the church he assumed to himself by forthwith creating a number of evangelical ministers to preach the new gospel. In 1529, the members of this league, with other nobles of the empire, were summoned by the Emperor Charles V. to a diet at Spires to concert means for the general defence of Christendom against the Turks, then threatening it by the way of Hungary. The Lutherans, taking advantage of the critical condition of affairs, and not being particularly adverse to the success of any movement that would destroy Christianity, demanded the most unreasonable terms as the price of their active co-operation. On the part of the emperor, it was proposed that all questions of a religious nature should remain in statu quo pending the struggle against the infidels, and be submitted as soon as practicable thereafter to a general or œcumenical council of the church, at which all parties were to be represented. “The edict of Worms,” they proposed, “shall be observed in the states in which it has already been received. The others shall be free to continue in the new doctrines until the meeting of the next general council. However, to prevent all domestic troubles, no one shall preach against the sacrament of the altar; the Mass shall not be abolished; and no one shall be hindered from celebrating or hearing it.” But these concessions to heresy for the general good, this weak recognition of an unlawful assumption of ecclesiastical and political authority, were not what the reformers desired. Not even toleration or equality would satisfy them. They wanted the right to persecute, to eradicate by forcible means and as far as their power extended, every vestige of Catholicity. They declared that in their opinion “the Mass is an act of idolatry, condemned by a thousand passages of Sacred Scripture. It is our duty and our right to overthrow the altars of Baal.” Thus protesting their duty and right to persecute, they retired from the diet, left the Mahometans, as far as they were concerned, free scope to destroy Christianity wherever they pleased, and Lutheranism, or rebellion, was henceforth known by the generic title of Protestantism.
So far from Protestantism being, as popularly represented, the assertion of liberty of conscience in religion, it originated in the denial of that liberty, by asserting the right to persecute those who differed from them in religion.
From this time the Reformation under its new and more comprehensive name made vast strides on the Continent, its path being everywhere marked by the same spirit of fanaticism, sacrilege, and destruction of property devoted to religion, learning, and charity; the insane dissensions of the Catholic rulers granting it immunity, if not positive encouragement. Geneva and part of Switzerland first embraced the gloomy doctrines of Calvin, and made active war on the church; spreading into France, the Netherlands, and the northern countries, their adoption by the ignorant and venal was invariably followed by the greatest atrocities and the wildest anarchy. Europe was shaken to its centre, and wars, [pg 294] the worst of wars, because waged in the name of religion, desolated the entire Continent for over a century with but pause enough to enable the combatants to rest and recruit their strength. The destruction of life during this period must have been immense, morals degenerated, industry languished, and the principles of rational freedom, which had been steadily gaining ground, were lost sight of in the clash of arms and the angry conflict of contending systems. From this epoch we may date the rise of modern Cæsarism and revolutionary ferocity which at the present moment are contending for supremacy in the Old World.
But it was not continental nations alone that suffered from the blight of this stupendous curse. Great Britain and Ireland soon experienced its baleful influence. Henry VIII., in order to be able to divorce his lawful wife and marry a mistress, cut himself loose from the See of Rome, and became, by act of parliament, head of the church in his own dominions. Henry was no mean reformer, as the record of his life testifies. He married in succession six wives, two of whom he repudiated, two beheaded, and his sudden demise alone prevented the execution of his surviving consort, whose death-warrant had been signed by his royal and loving hand. “For the glory of Almighty God and the honor of the realm,” he seized upon all the churches in England, as well as nearly four hundred religious houses, and confiscated their property “for the benefit of the crown”—that is, for his own use and that of his facile courtiers and parliament. With the same pious purpose, we suppose, he ordered for execution, at different times, besides his wives, a cardinal, two archbishops, eighteen bishops, thirteen abbots, five hundred priors and monks, thirty-eight doctors, twelve dukes and counts, one hundred and sixty-four noblemen of various ranks, one hundred and twenty-four private citizens, and one hundred and ten females. If all of those did not suffer the fate of the Charter-house monks, Sir Thomas More, Bishop Fisher, and the Countess of Salisbury, it was not his fault, but theirs who were ungrateful enough to fly their country and perish in poverty and exile, thus robbing the Reformation in England of half its glory.
Under his daughter Elizabeth, nearly two hundred ecclesiastics are known to have suffered for their faith on the scaffold, besides laymen, and the multitude who died in prison: and if her successor, James I., does not present as striking a record of his zeal, it was because there were very few priests left to be hunted down, and very little Catholic property to be confiscated. To do that light of the Reformation justice, wherever he could catch a priest he hanged him, and, with a keenness eminently national, wherever a penny could be squeezed out of a recusant Papist he or his friends were sure to have it. Still he was only a gleaner in the field so cleanly reaped by his predecessors; for even in unhappy Ireland Elizabeth's captains had done their work so thoroughly that he had nothing to seize upon or give away but the uninhabited and desolated lands.
However, lest the traditions of the early fathers of his church—Luther, Calvin, and the royal Henry—should be forgotten, and having no longer any Catholics to persecute, he turned his attention to the Presbyterians, Covenanters, and Puritans with some effect. The humanizing custom of cropping the ears and slitting the noses of those dissenters became greatly the fashion in this [pg 295] reign; for, though James acknowledged the right of private judgment in the abstract, the exercise of the right was found by his subjects to be a very dangerous pastime. The Puritans, who also based their religion on the same right, improved on the lessons thus taught; for, when in the next reign it became their turn to persecute and punish, instead of cutting off the ears or the nose of his son and successor, they took off the entire head, and gave to the English Church its first and only martyr. Oliver Cromwell and the Long Parliament interpreted “King James' Version” too literally, and of course, believing in freedom of conscience, swept away episcopacy, kings, bishops, and all. After the Restoration, the English Church was again in the ascendant. Then they dug up the bones of the Puritan regicides, scattered them to the winds, and ever since the followers of John Knox and the believers in the Westminster Catechism have held a very subordinate place under the feet of “the church as by law established.”
If the fell spirit of Protestantism, which, as we have seen, was bloody and cruel in its inception and growth, had been confined to the eastern hemisphere, we, as Americans, feeling grateful to Providence for the exemption, might have less cause of complaint against it. But unfortunately it was not so. The virgin soil of the New World, from the first consecrated to freedom, we are often told, was destined to be polluted by the evil genius evoked by the apostate monk of Wittenberg. Every breeze from the east that wafted hither an immigrant-ship bore on its wings the deadly moral pestilence of intolerance and persecution. It accompanied the Huguenots to the Carolinas, landed at Jamestown with the royalists, went up the Delaware with the Swedes and Quakers, up the Hudson with the Hollanders, and pervaded the hold of the Mayflower from stem to stern. Whatever physical, mental, and moral qualities those early adventurers, of many lands and divers creeds, may have possessed, Christian charity was certainly not of the number, and though they each and all proclaimed the right of every one to be his own judge in matters of religion—and most of them claimed to have suffered for conscience's sake—not one had the consistency or the courage to tolerate, much less protect, the expression of an opinion or the observance of a form of worship differing from his own. So completely had the rancor of the founders of Protestantism eaten up whatever of Christianity it retained of the church's teaching, that each of the sects, having no common enemy to prey upon, turned round, and, like hungry wolves, were ready to tear and rend each other. With the exception of one small settlement, there were no Catholics in the early colonies; but still, the Puritan found it as unsafe to live in Virginia as the Episcopalian did in New England, while the non-combatant Friend dared not risk his life in either locality. There was one little bright spot in the darkened firmament that hung over the infant settlements, and that was near the mouth of the St. Mary's, on the Potomac. Here Lord Baltimore had planted a colony of Catholics which soon showed signs of life and vigor, worshipping according to the old faith, and proclaiming the doctrine of charity and religious toleration to all Christians. But it was not long allowed to enjoy its honors in peace. Its very existence was a reproach to its bigoted neighbors. Taking advantage of its humane and equitable laws, Protestants of the various denominations, persecuted in [pg 296] the other colonies, flocked to it as to a city of refuge, abused its hospitality, when strong enough in numbers changed its statutes, and actually commenced to persecute the very people who had sheltered them.
As the colonies grew in population and extent, we do not find that they increased in equity or liberality. Many of them were even at the pains of passing laws prohibiting the settlement of Catholics within their limits; and now and then we hear of some solitary priest being executed or a group of humble Catholics driven into further exile. The dawn of our Revolution created some change in religious sentiment, but it was more on the surface than in the heart. England, the oppressor, was the champion of Protestantism; France, the ally, was as essentially Catholic; so it was not considered politic to manifest too openly that bigotry of soul which pervaded all classes of society in those days, though even in the continental congress there were found some candid enough to object to asking the assistance of Catholic Frenchmen to help them to wrest their liberties from their Protestant enemy. These patriots preferred the Hessians and their Lutheranism to Lafayette and Rochambaud.
Our independence once gained by the efficient aid of the troops of the eldest son of the church, a pause appears to have occurred in the persecuting progress of the sects. Common decency required as much, but commercial interest demanded it. Our finances were in a ruinous condition, and it was only among the Catholic nations of Europe that we could look for sympathy and support. Then the new states very generally repealed the colonial penal laws, and finally the amended constitution prohibited the interference of the general government in matters of religion. Still, though we owe much to French sympathy and influence in placing us, as Catholics, free and equal before the law, we owe more to those of our own countrymen who actually had no religion at all. We would rather, for the honor of human nature, that the benefits thus received had been derived from another source; but it is an historical fact that the minds of many of the leaders of the Revolution, before and during that struggle, had become deeply imbued with the false philosophy then prevalent among the intellectual classes in Europe, and, believing in no particular revelation, dogma, or religion, they could see no reason why one party calling itself Christian should ostracise another claiming the same distinction. To their credit, be it said, our countrymen never carried their theories to the same extent as their fellow-philosophers across the Atlantic, and their impartiality, which we would fain hope to have been sincere, took a direction in accord with the spirit of justice and impartial legislation.
If, then, our young Republic has not been disgraced by such penal enactments against Catholics as have long disfigured the statute-books of England, and which are yet in force in Holland, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, the Protestant sects, as such, deserve neither credit nor gratitude. The active Protestants of that day—the ministers, deacons, and politicians—were just as narrow-minded and as bigoted as were their ancestors, and as would be their descendants if it were not for certain good reasons best known to themselves. Witness the periodical outbursts of Nativism or Know-Nothingism which have from time to time disgraced our national character. These have been directed invariably against Catholics—not against foreigners as [pg 297] such, for with a Protestant or even infidel foreigner their promoters have never professed to find fault. The occasional destruction of a convent, the burning of a church—and we have had many so dealt with—or the mobbing of a priest may only show that depravity exists in certain sections of the country, but the news of such atrocities has been received with such ill-concealed satisfaction—certainly with nothing like hearty condemnation—by the clerical demagogues and the so-called religious press, that we are forced into the conviction that to the absence of opportunity and power on their part we alone owe our exemption from such villanies on a larger and better organized system.
We are told, in a tone of patronage, if not menace, that we ought to be content as long as the Catholics of America are free and enjoy equality under the law. We grant the freedom and equality, but only so far as the letter, not the spirit, of the law is concerned. Let any one look at the way our Catholic missions in the far West have been defrauded for the benefit of Methodist and Baptist preachers of the Word and cheaters of the Indians, and tell us are they free and equal? How many Catholic chaplains are there in the army and navy, the bone and sinew of which are mainly Catholics? For how many foreign consuls are we paying merely to act as agents for the Board of Foreign Missions, Bible Societies, and Book Concerns? How are our numerous state institutions—penitentiary, reformatory, and eleemosynary—attended to in the interests of their Catholic inmates? When these questions are satisfactorily answered, we will be able to estimate the extent of the legal equality we possess. For so much of freedom and equality as we actually enjoy, we are thankful. Grateful not, however, to the Protestant sects, but to a benevolent Providence who has vouchsafed it to us; and, under him, to our Catholic predecessors who helped to found, and our co-religionists who have bravely defended, our institutions, and who now stand ready to oppose with might and main any attempt to infringe upon our liberties.
But even as to the letter of the law we are not without just cause of complaint. For instance, we object most emphatically to the present school law of this state as unjust and inequitable in its provisions and method of administration. The state has no right to prescribe how or what our children shall be taught, and then make us pay for its so doing. We Catholics are unanimously in favor of educating our own offspring according to our conception of the demands of religion and morality, and, as the artificial body called the state is a judge of neither, it is manifestly incompetent to direct the training of our children. We are also willing to pay, and are actually expending, large sums of money in this good work; and while we are doing so, we hold it not just to tax us for the support of schools we do not require. Our duty to the state and society is performed when we teach our children to obey the laws of one and respect the usages of the other, and, if parents and the ministers of religion are unable to do this, mere officials and strangers certainly cannot. However, if the state will insist on levying a school-tax, let it in justice give us a pro rata share of the money, and let the Evangelical Alliance of the sects take theirs and bring up their children in their own way. We ask nothing for ourselves that we would not willingly see granted to others, but, until one or other [pg 298] of these measures be adopted, we maintain that a large class of the citizens of the United States is deprived of one of its most vital and dearest religious rights.
Then, again, look at the treatment meted out by the legislative authorities to Catholic institutions, to our hospitals, foundling-asylums, reformatories, and orphanages, which save annually to the state hundreds of thousands of dollars, and are daily conferring on society incalculable advantages. What begging, petitioning, and beseeching must we not resort to, to get the least legislative favor for them, even to a bare act of incorporation! For a quarter of a century or more, irresponsible bodies under the names of the sects, or even in no names but their own, have been fattening on the public money, our money, and no word of remonstrance has been uttered; but, as soon as anything is asked for our institutions, the cry of “sectarian appropriations” and “Romish designs” is immediately raised and repeated along the line. Every petty bigot who misuses a pen gets up a howl about the “Papists,” and “Romanism the Rock Ahead,” etc.; the pigeon-holes of the religious newspaper offices, and of newspapers the contrary of religious, are ransacked for stale calumnies against the church, and slanders over and over refuted are launched at the most gifted and reputable of our citizens. This must all be changed before we can consider that, as Catholics, we stand on an equality with non-Catholic Americans, and before we are prepared to admit that Protestantism, mollified by time and distance, has lost any of its pristine love of persecution and proscription. We would prefer to live at peace with every shade of Christians, but, if they will not let us, they must take the responsibility.
In stating our grievance in this manner, we do not address ourselves specially to the sense of justice or fair play of the leaders of Protestant opinion, but rather to the manhood and intelligence of our co-religionists who, by a more determined effort, might easily remove the evils of which we complain. We are more confirmed in this view by a recent event which happened at the national capital. The force of well-regulated public opinion will always be very powerful in this Republic, and we are satisfied that the opposition very generally expressed by the Catholics of the country to the scheme of compulsory education by the general government, some time ago introduced into Congress by some distinguished members, had a powerful effect in defeating, for a time at least, a measure fraught with the greatest danger to our rights, and to the general liberties of all the states.[131]
We expect little from the Protestant press or pulpits. The manner in which the revival of religious persecutions in Europe has been looked upon by them precludes the faintest hope that they will listen to the appeals of humanity or justice where their passions, prejudices, or interests are concerned. Not very long since, the schismatic king of Sardinia wantonly levied war on the most defenceless and venerable sovereign in the world, and despoiled him of the larger half of his small dominions; yet there was not a single Protestant voice heard among us in reprobation of the foul act. Two years ago the same royal filibustero, with, if possible, less pretence, and without any warning, stealthily advanced his army on the Eternal City, took possession of its churches and their sacred furniture; [pg 299] its convents, and turned them into barracks and stables; its treasures of art and literature, and sold them to the highest bidder; its colleges and schools, and drove out the students and poor children to wander on the face of the earth. Then the Protestant churches and meeting-houses rang with acclamations; and public assemblies were held by freedom-loving American citizens to congratulate the modern vandal on his “victory” over—justice, religion, and civilization.
Rome has again been sacked, this time not by the rude Lutheran Landsknechte, but by a more ruthless and more insidious foe, the Garibaldini, the enemies of all forms of revealed religion, the men who swear on the dagger and the bowl because they have no God to swear by. The sovereign pontiff is virtually a prisoner in his Vatican; monks and priests, passing along the streets to comfort the afflicted or administer the sacraments to the dying, are set upon and slain at noon-day; weak and delicately nurtured ladies are turned out of their peaceful retreats into the highways, to be insulted and derided by a crowd of vagabonds gathered from every quarter of Europe; the libraries, statuary, paintings, castings, and all the treasures which made Rome the centre of Christian art, and the depository of the world's store of classic literature, lie at the mercy of a horde of ruffians, the very offscourings of Italian society, called together to that devoted city by the hope of plunder and the certainty of immunity for their crimes. All this and more is matter of public notoriety, yet no word of execration, no wail of sorrow, at this worse than vandalism rises up from a country that boasts its love of civilization, its chivalry to women, its respect for sacred things, and its patronage of the arts and letters. Why? They are only priests that are assassinated, only helpless nuns that are jeered at, only Catholic treasures that are stolen, shattered, or destroyed; right, justice, liberty, and even ordinary humanity, can afford to suffer and be forgotten, so that Catholicity be thereby weakened and checked in its onward course. The force of bigotry can go no further.
Late European mails bring us an account of a general election throughout “United Italy” on the universal suffrage plan—that supposed panacea for all political ills. The Catholics in certain portions of the country, it seems, who had hitherto abstained from voting, resolved this time to take part in the contest. As soon as this became known to the ministry, a circular was sent to even the local government officials, mayors of cities, magistrates, police captains, poll-clerks, returning officers, etc., warning them of the danger, and threatening the severest penalties if steps were not immediately taken to prevent the Catholics from electing their candidates. The result was what might have been expected. The officials have done their duty to the government, and now feel secure in their places. The Catholics of one city, and that the largest, Naples, did, however, despite of all official precautions to the contrary, carry their election by an overwhelming majority; but, being only Catholic voters, the election has been set aside without even the mockery of an investigation or the least show of reason. Now, if such a thing had occurred in France, or any other country governed under Catholic auspices, we would be treated by nine-tenths of the press of this country to a dissertation on the inability of the Latin nations to understand free institutions, and the folly of expecting [pg 300] an ignorant and slavish multitude to be able to appreciate the right of suffrage; but, as this gigantic fraud was perpetrated by a government in direct hostility to the head of the church, it is passed over in dignified silence. Not a syllable of remonstrance is uttered by our freedom-shrieking friends—our Beechers, Fultons, and Bellowses—who are so fond of interlarding their sermons with political appeals against ballot-stuffing and intimidation at the polls.
Let us turn for a moment to the present sad condition of Germany, the cradle and the victim of religious dissent and doubt. Prussia emerged from the late war not only the victor of France, but the conqueror of the several independent states and cities of the late Germanic Confederation. Her capacious maw has engulfed them all. Prince Bismarck, whose absolutist tendencies have long been recognized, not content with his success in creating an empire one and indivisible, desires to found a German church, to be conducted on strictly military and autocratic principles. Having disposed of a good many of the bodies, and taken possession of a large share of the property of the subjects of the new empire, he is now anxious to take care of their souls, and, whether they will or not, guide them in the way of salvation and the Gospel—according to Bismarck. Obedience to the central civil head in Berlin is to be the leading feature in his new religious system, and the emperor, like his brother of Russia and the Grand Lama, is to unite in himself absolute political and spiritual power, tempered by Bismarck.
A large portion of the Germans, having great doubts as to whether or not they have such things as souls to be saved, feel philosophically indifferent; the sects, being weak and without popular support, can make little resistance to the encroachments of the state; but the Catholic body, powerful not less from its intelligence and independence than from its numbers, utterly refuses to recognize the right or the authority of the chancellor to interfere in their spiritual affairs. That astute statesman first tried to frighten them by abolishing the denominational schools, then by patronizing a few dissatisfied professors who call themselves “Old Catholics,” but without avail; and now, like a genuine follower of the teachings of Luther, he is resorting to expatriation and persecution. He has already attacked the religious orders, and, as is generally known, has procured a law to be passed expelling the Jesuits and all religious in affiliation with them from the empire. It is not pretended that the members of that illustrious body, individually or collectively, have committed any offence against the state, nor is it even proposed that a semblance of a trial should be granted them before condemnation; but they have been guilty of opposing the designs of a confirmed despot, and their removal from home, country, and the sphere of their duties is forthwith decreed, and effected with all that mean malignity which subordinates who hope for future favor so well know how to exercise towards the victims of official oppression. The summary expulsion of so many learned and studious men from their schools and colleges has filled Europe with disgust and amazement; and even the more enlightened class of German non-Catholics, who at least know the value of their acquirements and wonderful skill in training youth, have denounced, in the most forcible terms, an act so detrimental to the true interests of their country.
In England, a meeting of prominent [pg 301] Catholics was lately held, to protest, in the name of religion and learning, against this exhibition of high-handed authority; but Protestantism, true to its instincts, took the alarm, and, lest the Prussian Government might in the slightest degree be influenced, hastened to send an address to Berlin to assure Bismarck of English sympathy and support. This precious document was signed by fifty-seven persons, including the Marquis of Cholmondeley, the Bishops of Worcester and Ripon, Lord Lawrence, Sir Robert Peel, Mr. Arthur Kinnaird, the Archbishop of Armagh, the Moderators of the Established Church of Scotland, of the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland, of the English and Irish Presbyterian Churches, and the President and Secretary of the Wesleyan Conference. The reply of Bismarck, who is not remarkable for his “religiosity,” is full of sanctimonious cant and what, under the circumstances, seems to us very like grim irony:
“Most warmly do I thank you and the gentlemen who were co-signatories of the address you were good enough to present to me for this encouraging mark of approval. Your communication, sir, possesses a greater value, coming as it does from a country which Europe has learnt for centuries to regard as the bulwark of civil and religious liberty. Rightly does the address estimate the difficulties of the struggle which has been forced upon us contrary both to the desire and expectation of the German governments. It would be no light task for the state to preserve religious peace and freedom of conscience, even were it not made more difficult by the misuse of legitimate authority and by the artificial disturbance of the minds of believers. I rejoice that I agree with you on the fundamental principle that in a well-ordered community every person and every creed should enjoy that measure of liberty which is compatible both with the freedom of the remainder, and also with the independence and safety of the country. God will protect the German Empire in the struggle for this principle, even against those enemies who falsely use his holy name as a pretext for their hostility against our internal peace; but it will be a source of rejoicing to every one of my countrymen that in this contest Germany has met with the approval of so numerous and influential a body of Englishmen.”
Now, all this simply means that the man who controls the affairs of Germany for the present is determined to destroy or to subject the spiritual order to the state; to enforce compulsory education, and prescribe forms of faith according to his ideas of what the “independence and safety of the country” demand; the penalty of resistance, as in the case of the Jesuits, being banishment, persecution, and perhaps worse, should the necessities of the case, in his individual judgment, require it. In this as in every other respect his word is all-powerful in the empire. Still, we have yet to learn that one advocate of the higher law in America, one enemy of the union of church and state, one stickler for the rights of conscience, one believer in private judgment and religious freedom, has raised his voice against this violation of every right said to be so dear to the Protestants of the United States. Not one Protestant has protested against this assumption of absolute power over the minds and consciences of forty millions of people. Why? The answer is simple: the blow, in this instance, is aimed at Catholicity. Yes, the Republic is silent when even monarchical England feels herself constrained to speak. In a late number of the Manchester Examiner, a paper, we believe, anything but favorable to Catholics on general grounds, we noticed a very pertinent article on the address alluded to, of which the following is an extract, and we recommend it to the serious consideration of the conductors of the sectarian newspapers:
“We cannot understand why bishops and deans of the English Church should go into ecstasies over a united Germany, or why it should furnish a theme for the pious applause of Wesleyan presidents and Presbyterian moderators. Political changes concern politicians and political societies. When the kingdoms of this world adopt a different principle of grouping, all who take an interest in the political concerns of mankind may find in the altered arrangements abundant reason for gratulation or for dismay, but theological creeds and spiritual interests have no direct concern in the matter. If the unity of Germany were likely to give a great impetus to Roman Catholic doctrine, and aid the extension of Papal authority, Mr. Kinnaird would hardly have found in it a subject of thanksgiving, though, as a political change, it might have been equally desirable. Is it Prince Bismarck's assumed hostility to the dogma of papal infallibility, and the trenchant steps he has taken with the Jesuits, that constitute the real merit of his policy in Protestant eyes? Well, then, to begin with, it is not at all clear that Prince Bismarck has any absolute aversion either to papal infallibility or to the Jesuits. If the pope had only thrown his influence into the scale of German unity, and employed it to further the new political policy in Fatherland, he might have made himself as infallible as he pleased without provoking any hostility from Prince Bismarck. If the Jesuits, instead of fighting against him, had fought for him, he would have made them welcome to as much power as they liked to grasp. At present, he finds them in his way, and he sends them off about their business; but our Protestant friends must not make too sure of him. He has fourteen millions of Catholics to govern, and he has no wish whatever to be at variance with the Pope. Besides, the necessity for getting rid of the Jesuits by depriving them of their civil rights is a thing to be deplored; since, so far as it does not spring from political considerations, the acts to which it leads are acts of persecution, and entitled to our regret, if not to our reprehension. We like the Jesuits just as little as the Germans do, but we allow them to settle amongst us, feeling sure that the law is strong enough to keep them in order. The thing really to be deplored is that Germany cannot afford to do the same, and it is a proper subject for commiseration rather than for eulogy.”
We have said more than enough to convince the most supine Catholic that Protestantism in this country has lost little if any of its anti-Christian renown, and, if it cannot persecute here, it is in full sympathy with those in Europe who can; that, while it has lost much of its capacity, it has given up none of its desire for proscription. Split, as it is, into so many antagonistic sects, and constantly losing large numbers who are following out its teachings logically and gliding into indifferentism and infidelity, it is comparatively powerless to work us new injuries; but it is for us, by continued harmony, labor, and self-sacrifice, to put beyond peradventure the question of our right to full and unqualified religious liberty and perfect impartiality in the administration of the laws.