Fifty Years in the Church of Rome

by Charles Paschal Telesphore Chiniquy

The bees go to the flowers to make their precious honey. They wisely choose what is more perfect, pure and wholesome in the flowers to feed themselves. Dr. Newman does the very contrary: he goes to those flowers of past ages, the Holy Fathers, and takes from them what is impure for his food. After this, is it a wonder that he has so easily put his lips to the cup of the great enchantress who is poisoning the world with the wine of her prostitution?

When the reader has followed with attention the history of the religious opinions of Dr. Newman in his “Apologia pro vita sua,” and he sees him approaching, day after day, the bottomless abyss of folly, corruption, slavery and idolatry of Rome, into which he suddenly falls (page 261), he is forcibly reminded of the strange spectacle recorded in the eloquent pages of Chateaubriand, about the Niagara Falls.

More than once, travelers standing at the foot of that marvel of the marvels of the works of God, looking up toward heaven, have been struck by the sight of a small, dark spot, moving in large circles, at a great distance above the fall. Gazing at that strange object, they soon remarked that in its circular march in the sky, the small, dark spot was rapidly growing larger, as it was coming down towards the thundering fall. They soon discovered the majestic form of one of the giant eagles of America! And the eagle, balancing himself in the air, seemed to look down on the marvellous fall, as if absolutely taken with admiration at its grandeur and magnificence! For some time, the giant of the air remained above the majestic cataract, describing his large circles. But when coming down nearer and nearer the terrific abyss, he was suddenly dragged by an irresistible power into the bottomless abyss, to disappear. Some time later the body, bruised and lifeless, is seen floating on the rapid and dark waters, to be forever lost in the bitter waters of the sea, a long distance below.

Rome is a fall. It is the name which God himself has given her: “There come a falling away” (2 Thess. ii., 3). As the giant eagle of America, when imprudently coming too near the mighty Fall of Niagara, is often caught in the irresistible vortex which attracts it from a long distance, so that eagle of Oxford, Dr. Newman, whom God had created for better things, has imprudently come too near the terrific papal fall. He has been enchanted by its beauty, its thousand bright rainbows; he has taken for real suns the fantastic jets of light which encircles its misty head, and conceals its dark and bottomless abyss. Bewildered by the bewitching voice of the enchantress, he has been unable to save himself from her perfidious and almost irresistible attractions. The eagle of Oxford has been caught in the whirlpool of the engulphing powers of Rome, and you see him to-day, bruised, lifeless, dragged on the dark waters of Popery towards the shore of a still darker eternity.

Dr. Newman could not make his submission to Rome without perjuring himself. He swore that he would never interpret the Holy Scriptures except according to the unanimous consent of the Holy Fathers. Well, I challenge him here, to meet me and show me that the Holy Fathers are unanimous on the supremacy of the power of the Pope over the other Bishops; that he is infallible; that the Priest has the power to make his God with a wafer; that the Virgin Mary is the only hope for sinners. I challenge him to show us that auricular confession is an ordinance of Christ. Dr. Newman knows well that those things are impostures. He has never believed, he never will believe them.

The fact is that Dr. Newman confesses that he never had any faith when he was a minister of the Church of England; and it is clear that he is the same since he became a Roman Catholic. In page 282 we read this strange exposition of his faith: “We are called upon not to profess anything, but to submit and be silent,” which is just the faith of the mute animal which obeys the motion of the bridle, without any resistance or thought of its own. This is—I cannot deny it—the true, the only faith in the Church of Rome; it is the faith which leads directly to Atheism or idiotism. But Christ gave us a very different idea of the faith he asks from his disciples when he said: “The time has come when the worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth.” (John vi., 23.)

That degraded and brutal religion of Dr. Newman, surely was not the religion of Paul, when he wrote, “I speak as to wise men; judge ye what I say.” (1 Cor. x., 15.) Dr. Newman honestly tells us (page 228), when speaking of the worship of the Virgin Mary: “Such devotional manifestations in honor of our Lady had been my great Crux as regards Catholicism. I say, frankly that I do not fully enter into them now ... they are suitable for Italy, but are not suitable for England.” He has only changed his appearance—his heart is what it was formerly, when a minister of the Church of England. He wanted then another creed, another Church for England. So now, he finds that this and that practice of Rome may do for the Italians, but not for the English people!

Was he pleased with the promulgation of Papal infallibility? No. It is a public fact that one of his most solemn actions, a few years since his connection with the Church of Rome, was to protest against the promulgation of that dogma. More than that, he expressed his doubts about the wisdom and the right of the Council to proclaim it.

Let us read his interesting letter to Bishop Ullathorne—“Rome ought to be a name to lighten the heart at all times; and a council’s proper office is, when some great heresy or other evil impends, to inspire hope and confidence in the faithful. But now we have the greatest meeting which ever has been, and that at Rome, infusing into us by the accredited organs of Rome and of its partisans (such as the Civilta, the Armonia, the Univers and the Tablet) little else than fear and dismay! When we are all at rest and have no doubts, and—at least practically, not to say doctrinally—hold the Holy Father to be infallible, suddenly there is thunder in the clear sky, and we are told to prepare for something, we know not what, to try our faith, we know not how—no impending danger is to be averted, but a great difficulty is to be created. Is this the proper work of an Œcumenical Council? As to myself, personally, please God, I do not expect any trial at all; but I cannot help suffering with the many souls who are suffering, and I look with anxiety at the prospect of having to defend decisions which may not be difficult to my own private judgment, but may be most difficult to maintain logically in the face of historical facts.

“What have we done to be treated as the faithful never were treated before? When has a definition de fide been a luxury of devotion, and not a stern, painful necessity? Why should an aggressive, insolent faction be allowed to ‘make the heart of the just sad, whom the Lord hath not made sorrowful?’ Why cannot we be let alone, when we have pursued peace, and thought no evil!