NEW PUBLICATIONS.
The Roman Index and its late Proceedings. A Second Letter, etc. By E. S. Ffoulkes. American edition. Pott & Amery.
After the publication of Mr. Ffoulkes's letter, entitled, The Church's Creed or the Crown's Creed? he was refused the sacraments, as it was perfectly plain he must be according to the certain rules of moral theology by which priests are guided. Archbishop Manning submitted the letter to the examination of four theologians, who, separately and without mutual consultation, gave in their opinion that it was heretical. The archbishop, with the greatest delicacy and kindness, began to treat with Mr. Ffoulkes, for the purpose of inducing him to make a sufficient retractation, in order that he might repair the scandal he had given and be restored to the enjoyment of his privileges as a member of the church. On the 22d of March, 1869, Mr. Ffoulkes submitted the following letter to the archbishop:
"Having learned from my bishop that a pamphlet, lately published by me, entitled, The Church's Creed or the Crown's Creed? has been examined, and pronounced by him to be heretical, I desire hereby to submit myself to that judgment, and to express my sorrow that I should in any thing have erred from the Holy Catholic and Apostolic faith. Although I trust I have not intentionally erred from the truth, nor wilfully opposed myself to the divine authority of the church, nevertheless I am well aware how easily I may have done so. I therefore hereby, without reserve, retract all and every thing that I have written, there or elsewhere, which is contrary to what the church has defined as of faith.
"Having learned also from him that scandal, offence, and pain have been given by my writings, and especially by the pamphlet above named, to the faithful; and that the same pamphlet has been used by those who are separate from the Catholic and Roman Church as an excuse or argument for not submitting to its divine authority, I hereby desire to explain myself categorically on two points in particular, the most likely to have caused such results of any that occurred to me, from not having been brought out as prominently there as they might have been, but on which it never was my intention that my meaning should be ambiguous.
"1. Whatever I may or may not have been called upon to profess fourteen years ago myself, I nevertheless believe, and believe heartily, in the inerrancy, by perpetual assistance of the Holy Ghost in all ages, of the one Catholic Church in communion with the pope, and of which the pope is head by divine right, 'in fidei ac morum disciplinâ tradendâ,' as the Catechism of the Council of Trent teaches. And 2, as regards matter of fact, my own personal investigations enable me to affirm the verdict of history to be, that the see of Rome, as such, has been preserved in all ages from upholding or embracing heresy. I say this more particularly with reference to the doctrine of the procession of the Holy Ghost, on which I fear my meaning may have been misapprehended. Therefore, negatively, should I have ever seemed to say or imply that the true church has ever ceased to be one visibly, or that the see of Rome was not constituted its centre of unity upon earth, so that communion with the one should be the indispensable condition of participating in the unity of the other, I hereby declare my heartfelt sorrow at having, in any of my writings, so expressed myself on these points as to have offended any or misled any by seeming to say or imply, in language injurious to the Holy See, what I never meant to assert, and hereby repudiate.
"And as the best reparation now in my power, I willingly undertake that this explicit declaration of mine shall be printed and distributed gratuitously by my publisher, and appended as a fly-leaf to all copies of my pamphlet, of which the copyright is not in my own hands, and other published works of mine that may hereafter be sold, should it be desired. Lastly, I freely, and from my heart, renew my assent to what follows, taken from the profession of Pope Pius IV.: 'I acknowledge the Holy, Catholic, Apostolic, Roman Church for the mother and mistress of all churches; and I promise true obedience to the Bishop of Rome, successor to St. Peter, Prince of the Apostles, and Vicar of Jesus Christ.'" (Pages 37, 38.)
On the 18th of December, 1868, a work, entitled Christendom's Divisions, by the same author, had been placed on the Index, and, on the 26th of March, the letter was placed there likewise. The archbishop made some further suggestions to Mr. Ffoulkes on the 2d of May, which he accepted, and, on the 4th, wrote to Mr. F., "I have received with sincere pleasure the declaration as last amended, and I trust it will complete what I have daily prayed may be accomplished." On the 17th of May, Mr. F. wrote to a clergyman of the Church of England, "I would be excommunicated a dozen times a day sooner than retract my pamphlet; and Archbishop Manning, to his credit let it be said, never proposed any such thing. What he proposed, however, I rejected; and substituted for it a declaration of my own, which is merely justificatory.[174] This, slightly altered, he has since accepted; so that my part is over." This letter was made known by the person who received it, and came to the knowledge of Archbishop Manning, who requested Mr. F. to obtain the letter and hand it over to him, a request which the latter gentleman considered as insulting to his "English feelings," and refused. He himself writes to the archbishop, and to the public also, (p. 43,) "Your grace was apprehensive lest this loose statement of a well-known tale-bearer, duly reported to Rome, should give rise to your being inhibited from accepting my declaration. Though I thought this extremely probable, I contented myself with assuring your grace, by letter, that, if the individual in question had reported me to have said, 'I would rather be excommunicated than retract, (sic,)'[175] he had either misrepresented me wilfully, or stated what was not the fact. My English feelings would not allow me to do more." The archbishop may certainly be excused for not accepting this statement, since the Anglican clergyman had read the first paragraph of the letter to the person designated, we hope unjustly, as a "well-known busybody," and had communicated its contents to several other persons "in strict confidence." The archbishop had communicated Mr. F.'s retractation or justification to the Congregation of the Index, and, on the 6th of August, a letter from Mgr. Nardi to the archbishop was read to Mr. F., in which his document was pronounced insufficient, particularly because not containing an expression of submission to the decree of the sacred congregation. A general form of retractation of every thing which the congregation had condemned in his writings, and of submission to its judgment, was sketched out for his guidance in preparing a proper statement, and he was informed that when such a declaration had been sent to Rome and accepted, no public notice would be taken of it except to append to the censure in the Index the words, auctor laudabiliter se subjecit—the author has submitted in a laudable manner. Mr. F. refused to make this submission, and was, accordingly, notified by the archbishop that he could not be admitted to the sacraments. Mr. F. also notified his grace that if any official sentence was pronounced upon him, he should appeal to the civil tribunal. At the conclusion of his pamphlet he says, respecting the "arbitrary sentence of a foreign court," "Please God, I shall live to contribute my quota toward being the death of the system from which it proceeds.... Please God, one of two things—for which I shall continue to labor through life—either that Christianity and Rome may become convertible terms, which it is my sincere wish that they should be; or else that fresh halting-places for sober, ordinary Christians, between Rome and infidelity, maybe developed amongst us, and new life be vouchsafed to those which exist already." Finally says Mr. F., in his last paragraph, "All we of the west are lying under more than one solemn anathema of more than one pope, speaking as head of the church—if popes have ever spoken as heads of the church—for having changed a syllable in the creed authorized by the Fourth Council."
This is Mr. F.'s case. It is evident that he became a member of the Catholic Church under a great misapprehension of her doctrine and law, and has never been any thing more than an Anglican. He is disposed to blame those who received him; but it is plain that they had no reason for suspecting that his misconception of the obvious meaning of the profession he made of submission to the Roman Church was so fundamental, and that he has only his own confused state of mind to blame for it. He has never really believed in the ever-living, supreme, infallible authority of the church, or had any other principle than the Protestant one to guide him. Hence, he has bewildered and lost himself in a maze of historical difficulties which he is unable to understand or remove. His letters are the most conclusive proof possible that the bogus Catholicity of unionists is fit only to complicate instead of solving the controversies among Christians. It shows the necessity of the most explicit teaching of the principle of infallible authority in all its practical applications, and proves that it is only by fully understanding and submitting to the doctrinal supremacy of the Roman pontiff as the vicar of Christ we can have any sufficient and certain criterion by which to distinguish genuine from spurious Catholicity.
One other point remains to be noticed. Mr. F.'s complaint that the sacred congregation violated its own rule, by failing to give him notice of the errors in his writings and the opportunity of explaining himself and making corrections. This is a mistake on his part. When erroneous statements are found in the works of a Catholic author of high repute for learning and orthodoxy, he receives this notification, and, in any case, when a book is placed on the Index merely on account of some particular errors, the phrase donec corrigatur is added. Mr. F. is not an author of high repute for learning and orthodoxy. His writings are thoroughly unsound and mischievous. There was no occasion to cite him for a formal hearing or defence of himself, since the whole question was in reference to his writings, which speak for themselves. The only thing necessary for a judgment was an examination of his books, and that they were not hastily condemned is evident from the fact that the censure was pronounced three years after they were published. M. Renan has just as much reason to demand a hearing as Mr. Ffoulkes.
Across America and Asia. By Raphael Pumpelly, Professor in Harvard University, and sometime Mining Engineer in the service of the Chinese and Japanese Governments. New York: Leypoldt & Holt. 1870.
Mr. Pumpelly has given in this volume an account, some parts of which are interesting even to fascination, of a five years' journey round the world, by way of Arizona, California, Japan, China, Tartary, and Siberia, whence he returned across Europe and the Atlantic to New York. His accounts of what fell immediately under his own observation during his travels are no doubt accurate, and give an excellent idea of the natural features of the regions and people through which he passed—particularly of the former; for the author's profession and tastes made him observe nature closely, and detect and describe things which an ordinary traveller would have left unnoticed. His description of the plateau of Central Asia is specially striking and valuable, and the strictly scientific information contained in this as in the other parts of his work important; but he has, of course, treated purely professional subjects more fully elsewhere.