That mighty engine is, on the whole, an auxiliary to the Catholic cause in England. If it promulgates many falsehoods respecting us, it is almost always ready to publish their confutation also. It reproduces our primate's pastorals and all other documents of public interest that emanate from our bishops. It helps us, in the main, in the battle we are fighting for the attainment of equal political privileges, and employs the pens of many Catholic writers. No respectable periodical taboos a contributor because he is a Catholic, nor excludes him from its staff if his writing be up to the required mark, and his conduct in reference to controversial matters be discreet. Many non-Catholic journals are edited or sub-edited by Catholics, and this accounts in part for the altered tone of the press toward us of late.
Our own literature has recently been marked by fewer controversial books and pamphlets than it was some twenty years ago. Then, every convert of distinction, when admitted into the church, thought it incumbent on him to publish those reasons which had influenced him most powerfully in so momentous a change. The library tables in Catholic families were covered by the writings of Wiseman, Newman, Faber, Renouf, Lewis, Dodsworth, Northcote, Allies, Ward, and Thompson. Each presented his plea for Catholicism from a different point of view, and each added something to the aggregate of arguments derived from Scripture and antiquity. The controversy is now taking another turn. The church's historical ground is less violently contested, and she is drawing from her inexhaustible armory weapons to meet subtler foes. She faces the sceptic; she probes liberalism with Ithnriel's spear; she establishes from the very nature of things the necessity of an infallible standard of faith and morals. She draws up her line of arguments with a more compact front and extended wings. She appears at the same time more unbending and more liberal. She recognizes more freely and joyfully than ever the workings of the Holy Spirit in communions external to her pale, while she insists with extraordinary earnestness on her exclusive possession of the entire and incorrupt deposit of the faith. Such was the purport of a remarkable letter addressed to the Rev. Dr. Pusey by Dr. Manning, now Archbishop of Westminster, in 1864. Never were orthodoxy and liberality more happily united than in this pamphlet. Never did a Catholic prelate and divine make larger admissions without sacrificing a particle of Catholic theology. It is marked by the charity of an apostle and the accuracy of a logician. The same remarks apply to the archbishop's work on England ana Christendom. "We will venture to say that there is no one Roman Catholic writer of eminence in the world who has spoken more emphatically than he—we doubt if there is one who has spoken with equal emphasis—on the piety and salvability of persons external to the visible church." [Footnote 116]
[Footnote 116: Dublin Review, July, 1867, p. 110]
The life of Catholicism in England is evinced by its numerous associations. In every place where it has taken root, Catholics enrol themselves in societies, confraternities, or institutes for social, intellectual, and religious purposes. In no diocese do these flourish more than in that of Westminster. The Archbishop personally promotes social intercourse by throwing open his drawing-rooms every Tuesday evening, during the London season, to such gentlemen as may think proper to attend his receptions. There, may be met, from time to time, prelates from distant countries, ambassadors, members of parliament, noblemen, heads of colleges, artists, men of science, converts, and old Catholics, with now and then a non-Catholic guest, whom curiosity, respect for the primate, or yearning toward a calumniated church, draws into company to which he is little used. The Stafford Club is another centre of union, comprising about 300 members, and including among them a large part of the titled and moneyed Catholics of England, Wales, and Scotland. The archbishops and bishops of England and Ireland are ex-officio honorary members, and they frequently avail themselves of the privilege. A middle class club has lately been opened in the city under the primate's patronage, and at this lectures are delivered, to which, as well as to all other advantages, non-Catholic members are admissible. The only condition required of such members is, that they shall observe the rules of courtesy, and abstain (together with Catholic members) from unbecoming controversy on religious and political questions. Lecturing is not so popular a form of instruction in England as in the United States, yet it is much more generally in vogue than it was, and it is destined, we believe, to exert a wide influence hereafter in propagating anew the Catholic faith through the British empire.
What we need and hope for is the reaction of Catholic Ireland on Catholic England. Centuries of cruel misgovernment have retarded the civilization of that unhappy country, and the loss which it sustains is not its only, but also ours. In knowledge, education, manners, commerce, industry, liberty, in all that constitutes national maturity, it is behind England. Reading, lecturing, mental activity, in Ireland are all in the back ground; and consequently the church, which there keeps alive the faith in the heart of a peasant and small farmer population, does not act indirectly on English Catholic society with that force which would belong to it under more favorable circumstances. "The centuries which have ripened England and Scotland with flower and fruit, have swept over Ireland in withering and desolation;" [Footnote 117] she has therefore little to give us, much to receive from us. If England had been bountiful to her, she would, in return, have been bountiful to England. If we had shared with Ireland our material prosperity, she would now be imparting to us more spiritual blessings, communication between the two churches would be more brisk, and their relations would be marked by more complete unity of feeling and purpose.
[Footnote 117: Archbishop Manning's Letter to Earl Grey. p. 17.]
The time is probably drawing near when this healthy and reciprocal action of the Irish and English Catholic Church will be fully restored. If England is to retain Ireland at all as a part of the empire, it must be by establishing equal laws, repealing all penal enactments against Catholics and their religion, resolving the national system of education into denominational schools, disestablishing and disendowing the Protestant Church, and placing on Irish landlords such restrictions in the tenure of land as will secure the tenant from misery and hopeless serfdom. She must stanch the bleeding wounds of emigration, and wipe away the tears of ages. Then, and then only, can we hope to see Ireland a prosperous nation, her people thrifty and happy, her civilization raised to a level with other Christian countries of Europe, and her church putting forth all its native might to console and instruct its own congregations, and to aid in the work of recovering England to the faith of the Apostles. Political and social degradation, such as that which afflicts Ireland, is incompatible with a free and flourishing church, with a high moral tone, religious zeal, and exemplary lives on the part of its victims. Cottiers, and "tenants at will" of absentee landlords, having no security that their outlay is their own, and that they will ever reap the advantage of it; barely earning their potatoes and buttermilk by the sweat of their brow, and looking wistfully across the Atlantic to the comparative wealth and luxury enjoyed by five millions of their fellow-countrymen in America; liable at any moment to be evicted for political motives, or that their rent may be raised; galled and maddened by the remembrance of 50,000 evictions in one year; [Footnote 118] such persons, we say, deprived of the protection of the law, must be more than human if they do not in many instances prove themselves lawless. But the day of redress is at hand, we trust. May the day of retribution be averted!
[Footnote 118: 1849. Butt's Land Tenure in Ireland, p. 34.]