IV.—THE MEETING.
But we have wandered off somewhat from our present point, which is the proceedings of “the tenth annual meeting” of the free-religionists in Boston. What is singularly remarkable among so intellectual and cultivated a class of men as assemble at these gatherings, and especially among its select speakers and essayists, is that they should display so great a lack of true knowledge of the Catholic Church. If the Catholic Church is not worthy of serious study, then why make it a subject for speeches and essays in so important an assembly? But if it be worthy of so much attention, why not give it that investigation which its significance demands? We dare not say that the leaders among the free-religionists are not intelligent men, that they have not read considerably. But when they charge the Catholic Church with heresies which she has condemned; when they attribute to her doctrine which she always has detested and does detest; and when they blacken her with stale and oft-refuted calumnies, and recklessly traduce her dearest and best, her holiest children, we dare not trust ourselves to give expression to what comes uppermost in our thoughts. Shakspeare gives good advice in this matter:
“Though honesty be no Puritan,
Yet it will do no hurt.”
We recommend this to the consideration of our free-religionists. It will do them “no hurt” to show more of this virtue when speaking of the Catholic Church. It becomes those who talk so much about science to talk a little less about it, and, when the Catholic religion is concerned, to give more evidence of scientific study. Especially does this course become men who claim to be public teachers belonging to a body whose object is “to encourage the scientific study of man’s religious nature and history.”
The first essay, delivered by William R. Alger, entitled Steps towards Religious Emancipation in Christendom, and published in their tenth annual report, will serve to illustrate our meaning. Mr. Alger is a scholar of repute, a man who has travelled abroad, written and published several books displaying extensive reading, refined tastes, and high literary culture. He is, moreover, a distinguished minister of the Unitarian denomination. His essay, we have reason to believe, was prepared with the usual care bestowed upon such papers; for the president of the association, in introducing the author, said: “The discussion will be opened by an essay by Mr. William R. Alger, of New York, who has made this matter in its historical aspects the study of years, and is carefully prepared to present the result of his deepest thought and investigation.”[[26]]
In its fourth paragraph the essay proposes to give a rough sketch of the “doctrinal thought” on which in mediæval times the “intellectual unity” of the church rested. Our limits will not allow us to quote it entire, but it is enough for our purpose to say—and we weigh our words before putting them on paper—that scarcely any one sentence of this paragraph contains a correct statement of the “doctrinal thought” of the Catholic Church either in the middle ages or in any other age.
Here are some of the statements: “The whole human race, descended from Adam, who lived five thousand years before,” etc. Mr. Alger would convey new information to the readers of The Catholic World, if he would give his authorities for this assertion. Thus far, if our authorities do not deceive us, the Catholic Church has, in her wisdom, left the question of the date of man’s appearance upon this earth to the discussion of chronologists and to the disputes among scientists.
Again: “The Bible, a mysterious book dictated by the Spirit of God, containing an infallible record of what is most important in this scheme of salvation, is withheld from the laity.” It would also increase the knowledge of our readers if the author had given his authorities to prove the above charge. The testimony of Catholics, if we be a judge, is precisely the contrary to this accusation. They entertain the conviction that it was the most earnest desire of the church in the period of which Mr. Alger is speaking to render the Bible accessible to all classes of men. Her monks devoted themselves to the severe manual labor of copying the Bible, and engaged in the noble toil of translating it into the vulgar tongues of various nations, that the people might become readers of the Bible. She exposed the Bible publicly in her libraries, and chained it to their walls by the windows, and to desks in her churches, in order that it might be read by everybody and not stolen. The charge is simply an old and oft-repeated calumny quite unworthy a man of reputed intelligence.
“The actual power or seal of salvation is made available to believers only through the sacraments of the church—confession, baptism, Mass, and penance—legally administered by her accredited representatives.” There is such an inextricable confusion pervading this statement that it is difficult to discern its meaning. No one, we venture to say, who had mastered the “doctrinal thought” of the church would have ever penned so distracted a sentence on so important a point. One would suppose that, according to Mr. Alger, there were two sacraments, one “confession” and the other “penance”; whereas every Catholic who has learned the little catechism knows that “confession,” the popular term, means, in the language of the church, the Sacrament of Penance. Then what is meant by “baptism legally administered by her accredited representatives”? This is not clear; but the whole statement is so confused in thought and tangled in expression that the only hope of understanding the author’s meaning is to give him an opportunity of trying again. It would be, among ourselves, interesting to read from non-Catholic authors the “doctrinal thought” of the church on what is essential to salvation and what is ordinarily necessary to salvation. It would also, we are inclined to think, clear up many of their misconceptions and do them no little good to have correct ideas on so important a matter.
“Those,” says Mr. Alger, “who humbly believe and observe these doctrines shall be saved; all others lost for ever.”
This sentence follows the preceding one, and the same confusion and error underlie both. When the ingenuous author of this essay has corrected the former sentence by reading up on the point involved, he will, as a matter of course, correct the error contained in the latter.
Passing now over several paragraphs containing many charges, we regret to say, in unusually bitter words, we come to the following: “The revival of the Greek learning, the study of the works of Plato, Aristotle, the classic poets, orators, and historians, with their beautiful and surprising revelations of genius, virtue, and piety, entirely independent and outside of the church and Bible, exerted an immense force in liberalizing and refining the narrow, dogmatic mind of the Christian world, refuting its arrogant pretensions to an exclusive communion with God and heritage in Providence.” If the cultivated writer of this essay had qualified the phrase “outside of the church” as I understand it, “exclusive communion” as I view it, this sentence might pass; but, as it stands, the position in which the Catholic Church is placed is entirely false, and we refer our readers to what is said on these points under the heading of “The Mission of the Latin Race,” commencing on page 5, in the last number of this magazine.
“Now the Pope,” says Mr. Alger, “excommunicates the emperor, sets up a rival, foments a rebellion among his subjects, or launches the terrible interdict on a whole nation, shutting the churches, muffling the bells, forbidding confession to the penitent, unction to the dying, burial to the dead.”[[27]] Either the author has been imposed upon by his authorities, or perhaps he has not weighed sufficiently his words. The effect of an interdict of the Pope is inaccurately stated. These are “terrible” matters, and one who is reciting history should be careful and exact in his specifications. Here, as before, he is bound to give his authorities, and learned and credible ones, or change his language.
“The repeated gross contradictions of bishops, councils, and popes, their inconsistent decrees reversing or neutralizing each other, infallibility clashing with infallibility, begat irrepressible doubts.”[[28]] This sentence may pass for a rhetorical flourish, but it involves a grave, a very grave, a most grave charge, and is backed up by no example, or proof, or relation of authorities! These cutting and slashing assertions where conscientious accuracy is required and sound scholarship ought to be displayed, place the intelligence and education of his Boston audience in no enviable light. Let us have some specimens of “infallibility clashing with infallibility” by all means:
“Luther sprang forth with one-third of Christendom in revolt at his back.... But the fundamental doctrines of the church scheme otherwise remained essentially as they had been, unchallenged.”[[29]] What a pity that the theologians of the sixteenth century had not known that “the fundamental doctrines of the church scheme remained essentially” the same! The Council of Trent, if it had only understood this, might have saved its anathemas.
“After Luther, then, we see Christendom, with fundamental agreement of belief, differing, for the most part, only in affairs of polity and ritual, split into two bodies—those who rest their belief on the inspired authority of the church, and those who rest it on the inspired authority of the Bible.”[[30]] Here again we have another fundamental erroneous idea of the church. “Inspired” authority is not what Catholics believe. This language shows poor theological training or a loose way of handling delicate and important points. But on this point we shall have more to say.
“Third,” says Mr. Alger, “a revolt of common sense against errors with which the teachings of church and Scripture were identified, but which, by the simple lapse of time, had been demonstrated to be false. For example, in the twentieth chapter of the Book of Revelations it is recorded: ‘And he laid hold of the dragon, that old serpent, which is the devil, and cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal on him that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled; after that he must be loosed a little season.’ This passage was thought to fix the date of the Day of Judgment. And as the time drew near the terror was profound. Throughout the generation preceding the year one thousand the pulpits of the Christian world rang with this frightful text and with awful descriptions of what it implied. The fear was as intense as the belief was general.”
Has not the author of this essay taken some romancer of history or some idle tale for his authority in the above charge? When and where did the church identify her teachings with this error? We grow uneasy in asking for authorities and examples; and when we are given an example of things which are said to have taken place eight hundred years or more ago, no authority is cited to authenticate the fact. The author may have given his hearers “the result of his deepest thought,” but he is too chary of the authorities for his “historical study of years.”
“The priests,” he tells us, “from the first hour scented this enemy from afar, and declared war against it [physical science], as the meaner portion of them still do everywhere. In the twelfth century the Council of Tours, in the thirteenth century the Council of Paris, interdicted to monks the reading of works on physical science as sinful.”[[31]] We retract having said that Mr. Alger cites no authorities; he does in the above accusation, but fails to quote the decrees or give their language, or tell what kind of councils these were and what their weight. We feel suspicious, and have grounds for this feeling, and we demand more definite proofs. The charge is precise; let the proofs be equally so. Let us have the authentic decrees and ipsissima verba. This is asking only fair play. It would not be pleasant to find this accusation, on serious investigation, a misconception, or a misinterpretation, or perhaps an invented calumny, but not by our author. We take real pleasure in finding a point in which we agree with him. Here is one: they are the “meaner portion,” if there be such “priests,” who “war against” the study of “the physical sciences.” We know of priests who are devoted to the study of the physical sciences, and some who are distinguished in these studies; but we have no acquaintance with the “meaner portion” who have “declared war against physical science.” Perhaps Mr. Alger has, and, if so, he will inform us who they are.
“Ethnology,” he asserts, “multiplies the actors in its drama [that of history], and takes the keystone from the arch of the church theology by disproving the inheritance of total depravity from one progenitor of all men.”[[32]] Here the author shares the error in common with almost all, if not all, Unitarians and free-religionists. They seem not to be able to grasp the idea that the Catholic Church, in the œcumenical Council of Trent, condemned the doctrines of Protestantism concerning original sin; and, whatever may be said to the contrary, the Catholic Church never goes back on her authoritative decisions. Mr. Alger well says that the doctrine of original sin is “the keystone of the arch of theology”; so much the more reason, therefore, that there should be no mistake on a point which shapes theology almost entirely. And if he and his brethren, free-religionists and Unitarians, could be got to understand and acknowledge that the Catholic Church has condemned the doctrines of Protestantism on original sin, as well as “the five points of Calvinism”—for they go together—then there would be some hope that the gross error of identifying Catholicity and Protestantism as “fundamentally and essentially the same” on this most important subject would be corrected. The error is an egregious one, which is constantly appearing in their addresses, sermons, tracts, essays, books, weekly papers, and journals, and with that error a thousand dependent errors would disappear. But, alas! we fear that we shall have to regard this as hopeless, and resign ourselves, for the present generation at least, to placing this, with other radical errors, among the points of “invincible ignorance”! May we just here be allowed, without being stigmatized as one of the “meaner portion” of the priesthood, to put in a humble demurrer to the unsustained assertion that “ethnology” has “disproven” “one progenitor of all men”?
If the reader is weary of following up with us this labyrinth of error in this not very long essay, he will pity the present writer; for he has not touched upon one-tenth of the errors which the same short essay holds. We have been careful, too, to be silent on language which might have come from Exeter Hall ranters or from the late Dr. Brownlee, a notorious anti-popery lecturer of former days. Indeed, we can scarcely allow ourselves the freedom of expressing our feelings of indignation at reading such language coming from men who have a reputation for polite culture. “Men,” we say; for at the close of its delivery Mr. Alger’s essay was endorsed by the president of the association as “the admirable essay by Mr. Alger, at once a history and an argument, a summary of facts and also a summary of apprehensions and suggestions, etc.”[[33]] Another speaker pronounced it a “most magnificent and masterly essay.”[[34]] We are not over-sensitive in matters of this kind, and before concluding our remarks we give a specimen of the language and spirit of the “most magnificent and masterly essay.”