Sermons of the Rev. Francis A. Baker, Priest of the Congregation of St. Paul / With a Memoir of His Life

by Francis A. Baker

The author says: "I open the 'Book of the Mission,' and I find, intermixed with much that is better, such wretched directions as that *** the wearing of 'the Virgin's Scapular' around the neck (shall) guarantee the fulfilment of a promise made to one Simon Stock, an English Carmelite friar, of six centuries ago, that 'whoso should die invested with it should be saved from eternal fire.'" If this statement is to be taken in the sense of the lecturer, as a real exposition of our belief, it is very strange that we should not dispense with the confessional, as well as with preaching repentance toward God, and a holy life, and confine ourselves to the easier task of investing all Catholics with the scapular. Nothing would be further necessary then, except to keep the strings in good repair, and we might all of us take our ease, eat, drink, and be merry, while this short life lasts, secure of going to heaven at last. Human nature always settles down to the lowest optional method of escaping perdition, according to our author. It is very singular, that after hearing our sermons on the mission, and then stumbling upon this account of the scapular in a book published under our own direction, he should not have thought that there was some explanation of which it was susceptible, which would give it a meaning in harmony with our doctrine, and should not have asked for that explanation. I will give it, however, unasked, lest it should seem that his objection is unanswerable.

The scapular is a small article, made to imitate a part of the religious habit, and worn as the badge of a pious confraternity affiliated to the Carmelite Order. According to the proper and ordinary use of it, it is conferred on persons intending to live a devout life, as an exterior sign of their special consecration to the service of God under the protection of the Blessed Virgin, and of certain special graces which are given through the prayers of the holy religious of Mount Carmel, to those who fulfil the conditions faithfully. These conditions are, to observe a strict chastity according to one's state, whether married or single, and to perform certain acts of devotion. It is understood that in order to be capable of receiving these graces, a person must take care to live always in the love and fear of God, and avoid all other mortal sins as well as those which are specifically renounced by the reception of the religious habit. This implies a diligent use of the means of grace, such as prayer and the sacraments. The advantage attributed to membership in the confraternity, and gained by fulfilling its conditions, is merely, additional grace to assist one to live a Christian life, and thus to escape perdition and gain heaven. The scapular is only a symbol of this, and the only consolation a person who wears it can receive from it at the hour of death is, that it is to him a badge and emblem of the holy life he has led, and of the promise of special grace in his last moments. There is, besides this, the "Sabbatine Indulgence," as it is called, by which it is generally held, as a matter, not of faith, but of opinion, based on a private revelation, that a person may obtain a remission of the punishment of temporal pain in the other world, on the Saturday after his decease. Presupposing now the Catholic doctrine of Purgatory, and also the doctrine of Indulgences, according to which no one can enter the first unless he dies free from mortal sin, or obtain the second fully unless he is free from every stain of sin, however small; there is nothing in this pious belief prejudicial to strictness of piety or virtue. In order to escape eternal perdition, one must truly repent of every grievous sin. In order to be free from temporal punishment, one must satisfy the divine justice for past sins already remitted, and repent of all sins whatever, even the least and most trivial. The soul can never enter heaven until its holiness is consummated. Therefore the pious belief respecting the Sabbatine Indulgence cannot, without contradicting Catholic doctrine, mean more than this: that one who faithfully accomplishes all that he promises on receiving the scapular, and earnestly endeavors to purify himself from all mortal and venial sin, may hope that the removal of the stains which his soul may have at death will be accelerated by a special grace, and that, if without this special grace he would still have some short time to suffer, it may be remitted to him, or shortened, as God may see fit.

The language of Catholic books, of devotion is often free and unguarded, and therefore easily susceptible of misunderstanding when taken out of its connection and pressed into a hard literalness by those who do not understand the Catholic system in its harmony. These books are written for Catholics, who are supposed to be instructed, and to have the practical sense of their religion which enables them to take up their meaning rightly. It is also presupposed that pastors and confessors will instruct and direct those under their charge in all matters relating to practical religion, and guard them against hurtful errors or mistakes in substituting minor and subsidiary practices of devotion for solid piety and the fulfilment of the weightier matters of the law. Let anyone candidly examine into the spirit and scope of the sermons contained in this volume, and into those of the Mission Book, and he will see that those weightier matters are the ones which are insisted on. These are urged and enforced as essential with all possible earnestness; and how can it detract from the force of these exhortations, that an occasional recommendation of some particular devotions is also thrown in, which is like our Lord's counsel not to leave undone the paying tithes of mint, anise, and cummin?

Let it be remembered that the point is not now to prove the truth of the Catholic doctrine respecting the sacraments or any inferior rites, practices, or pious works. It is to refute the charge that by these things we subvert sound morality, solid and spiritual piety, and faith in Christ as the Author of grace and justification. This charge is untrue, irrespective of the question of the claim of the Catholic Church on faith and obedience. The author of the "Price Lecture" has made it without due study and examination, on the faith of the writers of the Church he has recently joined, and into whose views he has thrown himself by a voluntary effort, without waiting to mature the results of his own theological principles. He is capable of better things than this hasty and superficial lecture. Let him be true to the dying declaration of the great Anglican divine which he quotes with so much approbation (p. 6), "I die in the faith and Church of Christ, as held before the separation of East and West," and he will no longer be found in unworthy companionship with the revilers of the Roman Church. How much more dignified and noble is the position taken by such men as the great philosopher Leibniz, in the past, and, in the present, by the great statesman and champion of the truth of revelation and Protestant orthodoxy, Guizot! The latter does not hesitate to avow that he considers the cause of which he is a champion essentially identical with that of the Church of Rome. I agree with him, in the sense that the whole of the Christian tradition which is found in the various Christian bodies, and which constitutes the positive and objective creed which they cling to, is all preserved in the Catholic Church. I know the doctrine of Luther and Calvin, in which I was brought up, thoroughly, and I can testify that the positive portion of it, respecting the mystery of Redemption and the inward sanctification of the Holy Spirit, I retain unchanged. I know thoroughly, also, the Church principles of Reformed Episcopacy, and I retain all these unchanged. I have found also all that true and sound rationality, or respect for human reason and its certain science, together with all that high estimate of the moral virtues, which is professed by Unitarians, in Catholic theology. I have never lost any thing or been required to abdicate any thing which I had previously acquired in the intellectual or spiritual life, by embracing Catholic doctrine but have only added to it that which makes it more integral and complete. The real question of discussion is about that which is positive in the Roman Church, in addition to that which is common to her and Protestant communions, and not about those more primary articles of the Christian creed which form the basis of all religion and Christianity. It is the question, whether the Catholic Church is really the one, only Church, founded by Christ on the Supremacy of St. Peter and his Apostolic See of Rome; and is an infallible teacher in faith and morals. We do not ask other Christians to admit this before they have examined the evidence, or been convinced by its force. We ask them simply, ad interim, to do us justice, to give us a fair hearing, to observe the rules of honorable warfare in their controversies with us, and to concede our rightful claims as Christians and as free citizens. Those bigoted leaders of religious factions and their great "Fourth Estate" of unemployed clerical followers, whose occupation of hanging around the skirts of our armies is gone, and who seek to stir up a religious war, by representing Catholics as the enemies of civil and religious liberty, and the progress of the Church as dangerous to our political welfare, are beyond all reason or remonstrance. Their plans are well characterised in some of the secular papers, as more nefarious than those of the men who plotted to burn the hotels of New York. They would be better employed, and make a much more efficacious war on infidelity, if they would give missions, establish churches, and make other efforts for the instruction in some principles of religion and morality of the half-million of Protestants in the city of New York, and the other millions elsewhere, who never enter a church-door. Those Protestants who may read these pages will undoubtedly, for the most part, belong to that large class who repudiate indignantly all sympathy with men of this sort, and their schemes. And on such readers I rely confidently to judge justly and generously the pure and noble character and apostolic works of the subject of this Memoir, from his life and from his own writings. I rely on them to believe my testimony, that they will find in these a specimen of the genuine character and doctrine of the Catholic priesthood, modelled after the form proposed by the Church herself. I think they will give their approbation and sympathy to all that is done by the Catholic clergy to stem the vast and swelling torrent of impiety and immorality which threatens our political and social fabric on every side, and will acknowledge the service done to the state and society, apart from the directly religious benefit to the souls of men, by the only Church and body of clergy that has a powerful sway over great masses of the population in our country.

This long digression will, I fear, have seemed tedious, and irrelevant to the proper subject of this biographical narrative. I have thought it necessary, however, as a background to my portrait, to paint the missionary work from which the life of Father Baker receives its principal value and significance. I return now to resume the thread of his personal history, which I left at the point where he was about to commence his public sacerdotal and missionary career.

Father Baker came to the assistance of the little band who were toiling in their arduous missionary labors, in November, 1856. His first mission-sermon was preached in St. Patrick's Church, Washington, D. C., on "The Necessity of Salvation." This sermon was also the last one which he ever preached, at one of the weekly services of Lent, in the parish church of St. Paul's, New York.

The debut of Father Baker as a missionary is noticed at the Records of the Missions in the following words, which were written by the faithful friend who watched over his last moments.

"The Rev. Father Baker, a convert from Episcopalianism, and most highly respected and beloved as a Protestant minister in Baltimore, had been just ordained, and came for the first time to assist at this mission. He preached the opening sermon, which gave great satisfaction to all who heard it, and a promise that he will hereafter be a truly apostolical missionary."

One pleasing little incident of this very interesting mission was, that the President and his lady gathered and arranged a beautiful bouquet of flowers, which were sent to decorate the altar at the ceremony of the Dedication to the Blessed Virgin, which took place near the close of the mission.

After the conclusion of this mission, Father Baker was sent by his superior to Annapolis, to assist the rector of the House of Novices located there (on one of the ancient manors of the Carroll family, which had been given to the congregation by the daughter of Charles Carroll, of Carrollton), in the care of the little Catholic parish in that place. The other missionaries went South, for a series of missions to be given during the winter, and finding the work there too great for their small band of four, telegraphed from Savannah to the provincial, requesting him to send Father Baker to assist them. In compliance with this request, Father Baker was sent on immediately to Savannah, and took part in the mission given in the cathedral, at that time under the care of the saintly and apostolic Dr. Barry, then administrator, and afterward bishop of the diocese. There was but little episcopal splendor to be seen about the Savannah cathedral and residence at this time. Until within a few years previously to the mission, Georgia had been included in the diocese of Charleston. Dr. Gartland, the first bishop, had procured a suitable residence for himself and his clergy, and had purchased property with a view of erecting a handsome cathedral. A short time after his consecration, Savannah was visited by a destructive tornado, which destroyed the greater part of the fine old trees which formed the principal ornament of the place, otherwise injured the city very seriously, and unroofed the bishop's house. The yellow fever broke out about the same time, in a very virulent manner; and the bishop, as also Bishop Barron, who came there to assist him, fell a victim to the epidemic. These disasters, and the debts which pressed on the congregation, put a stop for a time to all efforts to establish matters on a suitable footing. After Dr. Barry's consecration, the old church was refitted and furnished in a way to make it quite respectable for the cathedral of a new diocese, and a spacious mansion was purchased for the episcopal residence. But at this time Dr. Barry was living, like a bishop in partibus infidelium, in a small and poor frame dwelling-house, containing only four or five rooms, and the clergy were putting up, in the best way they could, with rooms over the sacristy of the church. Just round the corner, an aged negro, with a long white beard, who was a Methodist preacher, might be seen sitting all the day long in the sun on a little stool, holding a cow by a rope around her horns, while she nibbled the grass which grew along the streets; and the old gentleman chatted with the passers-by, or prepared his sermons for the next Sunday, highly delighted at the friendly salutations which the fathers always gave him as they passed by. Every now and then a black nurse passed along the street, carrying or wheeling the little white infant of her charge; or a troop of negro boys and their young masters, playing together with the utmost familiarity. The sunny, Southern atmosphere was vocal with the merry, free-and-easy sounds of laughing, chatting mirth, or work carried on like a play without much care or hurry, so characteristic of a city in the far South. Savannah is a very beautiful and picturesque place, where, at that time, Southern life and manners could be seen at the greatest advantage; and the novelty of the scene gave it a great zest to those of our number who had not seen it before. The clergy were, most of them, old veteran missionaries, brought to this country by the celebrated Bishop England, full of rich and piquant anecdotes of their past experience among the wild, sparsely-settled regions of Georgia and the neighboring States, related with inimitable wit and humor. [Footnote 6] The mission was still further enlivened by a visit to Savannah from Archbishop Hughes, accompanied by his amiable secretary, who were making a tour of recreation to restore the archbishop's shattered health; and from Dr. Lynch, soon after appointed to the see of Charleston.