NEW PUBLICATIONS.
The Knowledge of Mary. By the Rev. J. De Concilio, Pastor of St. Michael’s Church, Jersey City, author of Catholicity and Pantheism. New York: The Catholic Publication Society Co., 9 Barclay Street. 1878.
We must apologize to Father De Concilio for being late with our notice of his book. Our excuse is, simply, lack of time for its perusal—anything but lack of desire; for, on learning that the author of Catholicity and Pantheism—a work that has won unstinted and generous praise from all competent critics, and established the fame of its author as a profound philosophical thinker—was engaged upon a work about the Blessed Virgin, we hailed the promised boon as a feast, both intellectual and devotional, of the rarest kind. And are we disappointed? On the contrary, our most sanguine expectations are surpassed.
Father De Concilio tells us in his preface that this new book is “a necessary part” of his former work on Catholicity and Pantheism, “though it may seem to have very little to do with it.” “For Mary,” he says, “is the best refutation of pantheism, the universal error of our time. The substance of this error is to absorb the finite in the infinite, and, consequently, to abolish, to do away with, all created agency. Now, Mary, as we shall prove, represents created agency in its grandest, sublimest, and most magnificent expression. She represents created agency in all the mysteries of God relating to the creature. She is, therefore, the best and most convincing refutation of pantheism, the rock against which the mighty waves of this universal error must exhaust their force.” Again: “Pantheism, in pretending to exalt humanity, degrades it and deprives it of everything that causes its glory. Mary, the grandest specimen of human nature, exhibits human personality in its most colossal proportions, and is the glory, the pride, the magnificence of our race.”
We quote these passages from the author’s preface, because they furnish the key-note to the whole work.
The volume opens with an admirable “Introduction,” showing how Christianity was needed to bring fallen man to the knowledge and love of God, and how “the world owes Christianity, along with its results, to Mary”; also, how the same instrument must bring back the knowledge and love of God to-day, lost again as they have been in great part; whence “the necessity of true, accurate, solid knowledge of Mary.” Then follow the five books into which the essay is divided, the chapters of each book being subdivided into articles. This arrangement at once gives conciseness to the argument, and much relieves the strain upon the reader’s thought.
The first, second, and fourth books are the most important: the first dealing with “Mary’s place in the divine plan of the universe”; the second with “the grandeur of Mary’s destiny”; and the fourth with “the consequences of Mary’s dignity relatively to God, to the human race, and to herself.” The third book treats of “the perfections of Mary in general,” and its arguments will be readily admitted by the reader who has accepted those of the preceding books; the fifth, again, elucidates “Mary’s merit and glory,” which no one will question who agrees with the fourth book.
Father De Concilio shows himself a master by the easy strength with which he expounds the divine plan of the universe, and the place which the Incarnation holds therein. The eight articles of his first chapter are thus recapitulated:
“End: The greatest possible manifestation and communication of divine goodness.
“Preliminary means: Creation of substances, spiritual, material, and composite—angels, matter, and men.
“Best means to the object: The hypostatic union of the Word with human nature.
“Effects of the Incarnation with regard to God: Infinite glory and honor.
“With regard to created nature: Universal deification.
“With regard to personalities: Deification of their nature in Christ, and beatific union with the Trinity through their union with Christ by sanctification.
“God foresees the fall, and permits it in order to enhance these effects by redemption.”
We do not at all wonder at a reviewer in the Chicago Interior complimenting our author on “profound scholarship in Catholic theology.” “The book,” he says, “is bold to familiarity in describing with scientific particularity and clearness of outline the constitution of the Holy Trinity as defined by Catholic theologians.” We do, however, wonder that this writer, if a believer in revelation, should go on to compare Father De Concilio to a chemist analyzing “a pyrite of iron,” and still more that he should declare his “ideas as grossly anthropomorphic as it is possible to be”(!) Would this critic call the Bible anthropomorphic? He says nothing about our author’s theology of the Incarnation—unless he means to hit at that as “anthropomorphic.” It is precisely about the Incarnation that Protestants are utterly at sea. When the reviewer adds: “We can understand, after examining this book, the character of Catholic devotion to Mary as we never understood it before,” we are compelled to reply: “Then your understanding of it is a greater mistake than ever before, unless you have first come to realize the Catholic doctrine of the Incarnation with its bearings; and if that were the case you would avow it, for you could not remain a Protestant another hour.”
Let any Protestant of sufficient education read the first of these five books earnestly and prayerfully, and he will have to acknowledge that his hitherto Christianity, be it what it may, is divided toto cœlo from Catholic Christianity—the totum cœlum being precisely his lack of that “knowledge of Mary” which is inseparable from an intelligent belief in the Incarnation.
The Catholic student will be specially interested by the way in which Father De Concilio treats of Mary’s “co-operation.” She is set forth—and in a clearer light than ever before by any book in the English language—as the great “representative personality” of our race. It is in this capacity that she consents to the Incarnation and Redemption. “A God-Man was necessary to expiate for the sins of mankind. But that was not sufficient. According to the law of wisdom, mentioned in our last argument, God was ready to help human nature to that extent as to effect the Incarnation and produce the God-Man; but God required, also, that mankind should do all it could towards its own redemption. It could not give the God who was to divinize the acts of human nature; it could not actually effect the union between human nature and the divine person of the Word; but it could freely and deliberately offer the nature to be united for the express purpose and intent of suffering; and this offering could only be made by means of a representative human person fully conscious of the necessity of expiation, of the conditions required by it, and of the consequences resulting therefrom” (pp. 77, 78).
Again (pp. 78, 79): “The consent of Mary was required in the plan of God in order to elevate created personality to the highest possible dignity, and thus to fulfil the end which God had proposed to himself in exterior work.” This purpose, he goes on to say, was not completed by God “taking human nature to be his own nature, and to be God with him.” ... “Human personality does not exist in Christ, and receives no honor from him. There is one person in him, and that is divine.” ... “Mary, therefore (p. 80), fulfils the office of creation, and especially of created personality, in its most sovereign act—the act which this personality would have elicited in Jesus Christ, if it had been in him. Human nature, such as it was in Christ, could not give itself, because to give is a personal act, and God wished to carry to its utmost extremity the communication of goodness, that human nature should give itself in order to be made partaker of the responsibility and attribution of the effects of that mysterious union.”
Having thus shown the inestimable importance of Mary’s consent to the Incarnation, our author proceeds to point out “the extent or comprehensiveness” of that consent—to wit, that “in giving her consent to the Incarnation and redemption” she “not only agreed to become the Mother of Jesus Christ the Redeemer, ... but also to become a co-sufferer with him; so that Mary’s Compassion was to accompany, to go hand in hand with, Christ’s Passion, both being necessary for the redemption of mankind, according to the plan selected by God’s wisdom.”
Here is something new to us, but very delightful to discover, since it glorifies Our Blessed Lady so much more than the ordinary view of her Dolors. We knew that “she consented to undergo all the anguish and sorrow and martyrdom consequent upon her from the sacrifice and immolation of her divine Son,” and thus “join her Compassion to his Passion, in order to redeem mankind”; that, in this sense, she “consented to become the corredemptrix of the human race.” But it had not occurred to us that “all this, implied in her consent, was necessary as that consent itself.”
Our author here quotes Father Faber’s theory about Mary’s privilege of being “corredemptrix”—the term by which saints and doctors call her—and shows that the gifted Oratorian, in his exquisite book on Mary’s sorrows (The Foot of the Cross), “has not done justice to the subject.” He even quarrels with Faber’s “co-redemptress” as a “substitution” for the ancient “corredemptrix,” whereas it would appear but a translation—that is, as Faber uses it. We feel sure, too, that the English word may mean the full equivalent of the Latin. But, at all events, Father Faber’s theory is that Mary’s dolors were among the unnecessary sufferings of the Passion. “Indeed,” he says, “they were literally our Lord’s unnecessary sufferings.... Her co-operation with the Passion by means of her dolors is wanting, certainly, in that indispensable necessity which characterizes the co-operation of her maternity.” To this Father De Concilio remarks that Father Faber “had an incomplete idea of the office of Mary as to redemption,” and objects to the doctrine of “unnecessary sufferings” as “theologically inaccurate, to say the least.” “The Passion of Christ,” he says, “must be considered as a variety of sorrows co-ordained by the unity of the sacrifice—the beginning of which was the maternal womb, in which the Incarnate Word placed himself in the state of a victim, and the termination Calvary, where the grand holocaust was consummated.” And, after establishing this point, he proceeds to prove that Mary’s Compassion was “among the necessary elements of the redemption.” He brings to light, both from the Fathers and from reason, “a principle in the economy of our redemption,” whereby God had to supply, indeed, a means of infinite merit (through the Incarnation), but, equally, had to exact from humanity all that itself could do towards atonement. From this principle he deduces three consequences:
First. That “our Lord’s humanity was to suffer as much as ... would bear a kind of proportion to the offence and realize the principle that human nature was to do as much as possible towards its own redemption.” Whence, obviously, “the distinction of necessary and unnecessary sufferings in the life of our Lord” is untenable.
Second. That “human nature was required to do more than suffer in Christ. It was required to deliberately and willingly offer up that human nature to be united to the Word of God for the purpose of redemption, by means of a representative of the whole human race.” Whence “the necessity of Mary’s consent to the Incarnation and redemption.”
Third. That “it was necessary that the highest representative of human personality, the human head of the race, should be subject also to the highest possible martyrdom which a human person may be subject to, as a reparation coming from a human personality, and unite it with the sufferings of the humanity of the Word, and thus bring its own meed of suffering required by God’s wisdom for our ransom.” “This was necessary,” he adds, “because in our Lord humanity suffered as a nature, not as a personality.”
From these deductions, then, the author concludes that “Mary’s Compassion is a necessary element of the redemption, and Mary is really and truly the corredemptrix of the human race.” But, of course, he is careful to add that “Christ alone redeemed us truly, really, and efficaciously, because he alone could give infinite value to those sufferings, and, therefore, he is the only Redeemer. Mary is the corredemptrix, but only in the sense just explained.” “Those,” he says, “who are afraid to think Mary’s sufferings necessary for our redemption are thinking only of the infinite value required for our sacrifice. Mary has nothing to do with that. In speaking of her co-operation we limit ourselves to speaking of what was required from human nature and human personality as their mite towards redemption, independent of the infinite worth to be given only by Christ’s infinite personality.”
To us, we must joyfully avow, this elaborate argument for Mary’s greater glory appears irrefragable.
What specially delights us in the fourth book, again, is to see our heavenly Mother proved the “channel” and “dispenser” of all grace. This, also, is an unspeakable gain to us. And we need not say that if, on the one hand, our learned theologian has invested his Queen with a sublimity and an awe that makes us feel how unworthy of her notice is our best of love and service, he has inspired us, on the other hand, with more confidence than ever in her tenderness and power.
Those, too, of our readers who have a turn for contemplation and have thought much on Our Lady will meet in these pages with many an idea which has come into their minds before, and which, perhaps, they have been afraid to disclose, or even harbor. Such will join with us in revelling over the logic which makes blessed certainties of these exquisite guesses.
In conclusion, we are quite unable to express our thanks to Father De Concilio for his magnificent book. But he does not need our gratitude. She whose champion he is will not fail to fulfil in his regard the promise which to him must be so precious: Qui elucidant me vitam æternam habebunt—“They who make me shine forth shall have life everlasting.”
Why a Catholic in the Nineteenth Century? By William Giles Dix. New York: The Catholic Publication Society Co., 9 Barclay Street. 1878.
The author of this essay once contributed to The Catholic World a thoughtful article called “The Roman Gathering.” (See Catholic World, May, 1868.) He was then a Protestant. It is consoling to find him no longer among those who, while forced to envy the Catholic Church, remain outside her communion on the strength of some hazy theory or from a superstitious dread of using their reason. Having come, by God’s grace, to see the truth himself, he aims at making others see it equally clearly. He shows very forcibly, and in simple language, “that the New Testament, and the Protestant version of that, proves these propositions:
“I. Christ founded a church.
“II. Christ founded one church, one only: not a corporation of national churches, not a federal union of churches, but literally one church.
“III. That one church of Christ was intended to be the only spiritual guide, on earth, of Christians.
“IV. That [this] church had the promise of endurance and of guidance until the end of the world.
“V. That [this] church was the beginning of the church known historically as the Catholic Church.”
Of course this is very old ground; but Mr. Dix goes over it in a way that ought to induce earnest Protestants of any denomination to follow him.
Here is an excellent hit:
“A word is in many mouths—Ultramontane—intended to represent extreme views of papal rights. Now, I care not whom you select among the defenders of the powers of St. Peter and his successors, you will find the attributes ascribed by any such writer to the successors of St. Peter not so strong as the single commission of our Lord to his apostles recorded in the New Testament. The most ultramontane writers that I know of are Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The only difficulty which any one finds in the interpretation of the words of our Lord referring to his church is because those words are so plain and direct. They so clearly set forth the amplest prerogatives ever claimed for the Church of Christ that many people seem to believe that they cannot mean what they seem to mean, and, therefore, must be explained away.”
We hope this short essay will meet with the success its ability deserves. We regret, however, to say that while the plainness of its language is a great point in its favor, its style is open to improvement.
The Mirror of True Womanhood. A Book of Instruction for Women in the World. By Rev. Bernard O’Reilly. New York: Peter F. Collier. 1878.
Dr. O’Reilly continues to lay Catholics under obligation to his fluent and versatile pen. He has a keen instinct for what is wanting in Catholic popular literature, and this large and handsome volume fills a niche in the Catholic household that was too long left empty. Women in the world are apt to be overlooked by spiritual writers, or the works intended for them are of a character not well adapted to attract the average woman of the world, however good she may be. They need something to take hold of their homes and their hearts, and to enter into their ordinary daily life. This Dr. O’Reilly’s excellent volume aims at doing, and, we trust, will succeed in doing. It is a work of practical suggestion, illustrated and annotated, so to say, by examples from the lives of women in all ages and in every station of life. A tender heart, a practical mind, and a pious soul speak in every line. It is the mother first of all who is chiefly instrumental in shaping the life of man. If she is good and pure and high-minded, a constant example of the height and greatness of those noblest of estates, wifehood and motherhood, the chances are altogether in favor of her children following her example. She is their great safeguard, their earthly guardian-angel until they are properly launched upon the sea of life, and even after that period her heart follows them and her virtues live in their memory and their lives. It is because so many women neglect this high office that so many children go astray. Virtue belongs to no class; it is common to all Christians. The truest nobility is a Christian life, which is open to all. The object of his book is well described by Dr. O’Reilly in the “Introductory”: “It is precisely because women are, by the noble instincts which God has given to their nature, prone to all that is most heroic that this book has been written for them. It aims at setting before their eyes such admirable examples of every virtue most suited to their sex, in every age and condition of life, that they have only to open its pages in order to learn at a glance what graces and excellences render girlhood as bright and fragrant as the garden of God in its unfading bloom, and ripe womanhood as glorious and peerless in its loveliness and power as the May moon in its perfect fulness when she reigns alone over the starry heavens.” We cannot too earnestly recommend The Mirror of True Womanhood to women of every class, station, and time of life.
Shakspeare’s Home: Visited and Described by Washington Irving and F. W. Fairholt. With a letter from Stratford. By J. F. Sabin. With etchings by J. F. and W. W. Sabin. New York: J. Sabin & Sons. 1877.
This is an interesting little volume. A fair idea of its contents may be gathered from the title. The etchings are carefully executed, and are full of promise.
What Catholics do not Believe. A Lecture delivered in Mercantile Library Hall, on Sunday evening. Dec. 16, 1877. By Right Rev. P. J. Ryan, Bishop of Triconia, and Coadjutor to the Archbishop of St. Louis. St. Louis: P. Fox. 1878.
It was a happy thought to publish this lecture in pamphlet form; for the matter which it contains is worthy of wide dissemination and close study. Bishop Ryan has here presented some admirable points in an admirable manner to the consideration of fair-minded men who are interested in the doings and the faith of the Catholic Church. He has taken up a few of the chief current objections against the church, set them strongly forward, and then disposed of them in a manner that wins admiration as much for its honesty and calmness as for its completeness and skill. We understand that it has provoked much discussion in St. Louis, in the public press and elsewhere. Such discussion can only do good. We strongly recommend the pamphlet to Catholic and Protestant alike. It is interesting for its own sake; it will be of great use to the Catholic who is thrown into non-Catholic society; it will relieve the fairly-disposed Protestant mind of some inherited darkness and much foolish misconception.