"But scornful men have coldly said
Thy love was leading me from God;
And yet in this I did but tread
The very path my Savior trod.
"They know but little of thy worth
Who speak these heartless words to me;
For what did Jesus love on earth
One half so tenderly as thee?
"Get me the grace to love thee more;
Jesus will give, if thou wilt plead;
And, Mother, when life's cares are o'er,
Oh, I shall love thee then indeed.
"Jesus, when his three hours were run,
Bequeathed thee from the cross to me;
And oh I how can I love thy Son,
Sweet Mother, if I love not thee?"
4. Thus we are brought from the consideration of the sentiments themselves, of which you complain, to the persons who wrote, and the places where they wrote them. I wish you had been led, in this part of your work, to that sort of careful labor which you have employed in so masterly a way in your investigation of the circumstances of the definition of the immaculate conception. In the latter case you have catalogued the bishops who wrote to the Holy See, and analyzed their answers. Had you in like manner discriminated and located the Marian writers, as you call them, and observed the times, places, and circumstances of their works, I think they would not, when brought together, have had their present startling effect on the reader. As it is, they inflict a vague alarm upon the mind, as when one hears a noise, and does not know whence it comes and what it means. Some of your authors, I know, are saints; all, I suppose, are spiritual writers and holy men; but the majority are of no great celebrity, even if they have any kind of weight. Suarez has no business among them at all, for, when he says that no one is saved without the Blessed Virgin, he is speaking not of devotion to her, but of her intercession. The greatest name is St. Alfonso Liguori; but it never surprises me to read anything unusual in the devotions of a saint. Such men are on a level very different from our own, and we cannot understand them. I hold this to be an important canon in the lives of the saints, according to the words of the apostle, "The spiritual man judges all things, and he himself is judged of no one." But we may refrain from judging, without proceeding to imitate. I hope it is not disrespectful to so great a servant of God to say, that I never read his "Glories of Mary;" but here I am speaking generally of all saints, whether I know them or not; and I say that they are beyond us, and that we must use them as patterns, not as copies. As to his practical directions, St. Alfonso wrote them for Neapolitans, whom he knew, and we do not know. Other writers whom you quote, as De Salazar, are too ruthlessly logical to be safe or pleasant guides in the delicate matters of devotion. As to De Montford and Oswald, I never even met with their names, till I saw them in your book; the bulk of our laity, not to say of our clergy, perhaps know them little better than I do. Nor did I know till I learnt it from your volume that there were two Bernardines. St. Bernardine, of Sienna, I knew of course, and knew too that he had a burning love for our Lord. But about the other, "Bernardine de Bustis," I was quite at fault. I find from the Protestant Cave that he, as well as his name-sake, made himself conspicuous also for his zeal for the holy name, [{84}] which is much to the point here. "With such devotion was he carried away," says Cave, "for the bare name of Jesus (which, by a new device of Bernardine, of Sienna, had lately began to receive divine honors), that he was urgent with Innocent VIII. to assign it a day and rite in the calendar."
One thing, however, is clear about all these writers; that not one of them is an Englishman. I have gone through your book, and do not find one English name among the various authors to whom you refer, except, of course, the name of that author whose lines I have been quoting, and who, great as are his merits, cannot, for the reasons I have given in the opening of my letter, be considered a representative of English Catholic devotion. Whatever these writers may have said or not said, whatever they may have said harshly, and whatever capable of fair explanation, still they are foreigners; we are not answerable for their particular devotions; and as to themselves, I am glad to be able to quote the beautiful words which you use about them in your letter to the "Weekly Register" of November 25th last. "I do not presume," you say, "to prescribe to Italians or Spaniards what they shall hold, or how they shall express their pious opinions; and least of all did I think of imputing to any of the writers whom I quoted that they took from our Lord any of the love which they gave to his Mother." In these last words, too, you have supplied one of the omissions in your volume which I noticed above.
5. Now, then, we come to England itself, which after all, in the matter of devotion, alone concerns you and me; for though doctrine is one and the same everywhere, devotions, as I have already said, are matters of the particular time and the particular country. I suppose we owe it to the national good sense that English Catholics have been protected from the extravagances which are elsewhere to be found. And we owe it, also, to the wisdom and moderation of the Holy See, which in giving us the pattern for our devotion, as well as the rule of our faith, has never indulged in those curiosities of thought which are both so attractive to undisciplined imaginations and so dangerous to grovelling hearts. In the case of our own common people I think such a forced style of devotion would be simply unintelligible; as to the educated, I doubt whether it can have more than an occasional or temporary influence. If the Catholic faith spreads in England, these peculiarities will not spread with it. There is a healthy devotion to the Blessed Mary, and there is an artificial; it is possible to love her as a Mother, to honor her as a Virgin, to seek her as a Patron, and to exalt her as a Queen, without any injury to solid piety and Christian good sense: I cannot help calling this the English style. I wonder whether you find anything to displease you in the "Garden of the Soul," the "Key of Heaven," the "Vade Mecum," the "Golden Manual," or the "Crown of Jesus?" These are the books to which Anglicans ought to appeal who would be fair to us in this matter. I do not observe anything in them which goes beyond the teaching of the fathers, except so far as devotion goes beyond doctrine.
There is one collection of devotions, beside, of the highest authority, which has been introduced from abroad of late years. It consists of prayers of various kinds which have been indulgenced by the popes; and it commonly goes by the name of the "Raccolta." As that word suggests, the language of many of the prayers is Italian, while others are in Latin. This circumstance is unfavorable to a translation, which, however skilful, must ever savor of the words and idioms of the original; but, passing over this necessary disadvantage, I consider there is hardly a clause in the good-sized volume in question which even the sensitiveness of English Catholicism would wish changed. Its anxious observance of doctrinal exactness is almost a fault. [{85}] It seems afraid of using the words "give me," "make me," in its addresses to the Blessed Virgin, which are as natural to adopt as in addressing a parent or friend. Surely we do not disparage divine Providence when we say that we are indebted to our parents for our life, or when we ask their blessing; we do not show any atheistical leanings because we say that a man's recovery must be left to nature, or that nature supplies brute animals with instincts. In like manner it seems to me a simple purism to insist upon minute accuracy of expression in devotional and popular writings. However, the "Raccolta," as coming from responsible authority, for the most part observes it. It commonly uses the phrases, "gain for us by thy prayers," "obtain for us," "pray to Jesus for me," "speak for me, Mary," "carry thou our prayers," "ask for us grace," "intercede for the people of God," and the like, marking thereby with great emphasis that she is nothing more than an advocate, and not a source of mercy. Nor do I recollect in this book more than one or two ideas to which you would be likely to raise an objection. The strongest of these is found in the novena before her nativity, in which, apropos of her birth, we pray that she "would come down again and be re-born spiritually in our souls;" but it will occur to you that St. Paul speaks of his wish to impart to his converts, '"not only the gospel, but his own soul;" and writing to the Corinthians, he says he has "begotten them by the gospel," and to Philemon, that he had "begotten Onesimus in his bonds;" whereas St. James, with greater accuracy of expression, says "of his own will hath God begotten us with the word of truth." Again we find the petitioner saying to the Blessed Mary, "In thee I place all my hope;" but this is explained in another passage, "Thou art my best hope after Jesus." Again, we read elsewhere, "I would I had a greater love for thee, since to love thee is a great mark of predestination;" but the prayer goes on, "Thy Son deserves of us an immeasurable love; pray that I may have this grace --a great love for Jesus;" and further on, "I covet no good of the earth, but to love my God alone."
Then, again, as to the lessons which our Catholics receive, whether by catechizing or instruction, you would find nothing in our received manuals to which you would not assent, I am quite sure. Again, as to preaching, a standard book was drawn up three centuries ago, to supply matter for the purpose to the parochial clergy. You incidentally mention, p. 153, that the comment of Cornelius à Lapide on Scripture is "a repertorium for sermons;" but I never heard of this work being used, nor indeed can it, because of its size. The work provided for the purpose by the church is the "Catechism of the Council of Trent," and nothing extreme about our Blessed Lady is propounded there. On the whole, I am sanguine that you will come to the conclusion that Anglicans may safely trust themselves to us English Catholics as regards any devotions to the Blessed Virgin which might be required of them, over and above the rule of the Council of Trent.
6. And, now at length coming to the statements, not English, but foreign, which offend you in works written in her honor, I will frankly say that I read some of those which you quote with grief and almost anger; for they seemed to me to ascribe to the Blessed Virgin a power of "searching the reins and hearts" which is the attribute of God alone; and I said to myself, how can we any more prove our Lord's divinity from Scripture, if those cardinal passages which invest him with divine prerogatives after all invest him with nothing beyond what his Mother shares with him? And how, again, is there anything of incommunicable greatness in his death and passion, if he who was alone in the garden, alone upon the cross, alone in the resurrection, after [{86}] all is not alone, but shared his solitary work with his Blessed Mother--with her to whom, when he entered on his ministry, he said for our instruction, not as grudging her her proper glory, "Woman, what have I to do with thee?" And then again, if I hate those perverse sayings so much, how much more must she, in proportion to her love of him? And how do we show our love for her, by wounding her in the very apple of her eye? This I said and say; but then, on the other hand, I have to observe that these strange words after all are but few in number, out of the many passages you cite; that most of them exemplify what I said above about the difficulty of determining the exact point where truth passes into error, and that they are allowable in one sense or connection, and false in another. Thus to say that prayer (and the Blessed Virgin's prayer) is omnipotent, is a harsh expression in everyday prose; but, if it is explained to mean that there is nothing which prayer may not obtain from God, it is nothing else than the very promise made us in Scripture. Again, to say that Mary is the centre of all being, sounds inflated and profane; yet after all it is only one way, and a natural way, of saying that the Creator and the creature met together, and became one in her womb; and as such, I have used the expression above. Again, it is at first sight a paradox to say that "Jesus is obscured, because Mary is kept in the background;" yet there is a sense, as I have shown above, in which it is a simple truth.
And so again certain statements may be true, under circumstances and in a particular time and place, which are abstractedly false; and hence it may be very unfair in a controversialist to interpret by an English or a modern rule whatever may have been asserted by a foreign or mediaeval author. To say, for instance, dogmatically, that no one can be saved without personal devotion to the Blessed Virgin, would be an untenable proposition: yet it might be true of this man or that, or of this or that country at this or that date; and if the very statement has ever been made by any writer of consideration (and this has to be ascertained), then perhaps it was made precisely under these exceptional circumstances. If an Italian preacher made it, I should feel no disposition to doubt him, at least as regards Italian youths and Italian maidens.
Then I think you have not always made your quotations with that consideration and kindness which is your rule. At p. 106 you say, "It is commonly said, that if any Roman Catholic acknowledges that 'it is good and useful to pray to the saints,' he is not bound himself to do so. Were the above teaching true, it would be cruelty to say so; because, according to it, he would be forfeiting what is morally necessary to his salvation." But now, as to the fact, where is it said that to pray to our Lady and the saints is necessary to salvation? The proposition of St. Alfonso is, that "God gives no grace except through Mary;" that is, through her intercession. But intercession is one thing, devotion is another. And Suarez says, "It is the universal sentiment that the intercession of Mary is not only useful, but also in a certain manner necessary;" but still it is the question of her intercession, not of our invocation of her, not of devotion to her. If it were so, no Protestant could be saved; if it were so, there would be grave reasons for doubting of the salvation of St. Chrysostom or St. Athanasius, or of the primitive martyrs; nay, I should like to know whether St. Augustine, in all his voluminous writings, invokes her once. Our Lord died for those heathens who did not know him; and his mother intercedes for those Christians who do not know her; and she intercedes according to his will, and, when he wills to save a particular soul, she at once prays for it. [{87}] I say, he wills indeed according to her prayer, but then she prays according, to his will. Though then it is natural and prudent for those to have recourse to her who, from the church's teaching, know her power, yet it cannot be said that devotion to her is a sine quâ non of salvation. Some indeed of the authors whom you quote go further; they do speak of devotion; but even then they do not enunciate the general proposition which I have been disallowing. For instance, they say, "It is morally impossible for those to be saved who neglect the devotion to the Blessed Virgin;" but a simple omission is one thing, and neglect another. "It is impossible for any to be saved who turns away from her;" yes; but to "turn away" is to offer some positive disrespect or insult toward her, and that with sufficient knowledge; and I certainly think it would be a very grave act if, in a Catholic country (and of such the writers were speaking, for they knew of no other), with ave-marias sounding in the air, and images of the Madonna at every street and road, a Catholic broke off or gave up a practice that was universal, and in which he was brought up, and deliberately put her name out of his thoughts.
7. Though, then, common sense may determine for us that the line of prudence and propriety has been certainly passed in the instance of certain statements about the Blessed Virgin, it is often not easy to prove the point logically; and in such cases authority, if it attempt to act, would be in the position which so often happens in our courts of law, when the commission of an offence is morally certain, but the government prosecutor cannot find legal evidence sufficient to insure conviction. I am not denying the right of sacred congregations, at their will, to act peremptorily, and without assigning reasons for the judgment they pass upon writers; but, when they have found it inexpedient to take this severe course, perhaps it may happen from the circumstances of the case that there is no other that they can take, even if they would. It is wiser then for the most part to leave these excesses to the gradual operation of public opinion--that is, to the opinion of educated and sober Catholics; and this seems to me the healthiest way of putting them down. Yet in matter of fact I believe the Holy See has interfered from time to time, when devotion seemed running into superstition; and not so long ago. I recollect hearing in Gregory the XVI.'s time of books about the Blessed Virgin which had been suppressed by authority; and in particular of a representation of the immaculate conception which he had forbidden, and of measures taken against the shocking notion that the Blessed Mary is present in the holy eucharist in the sense in which our Lord is present; but I have no means of verifying the information I received.