This is another book calling attention to the efficiency of woman’s co-operation in the regeneration of the human race. It dwells on the necessity of trained lay-helpers in the work, and says the church should be a training-school for aggressive warfare against evil. And “as but few male communicants seem willing to give out the socializing power which God has entrusted to them for the benefit of those less favored, it is well to employ the agency of godly women.” It finds less difficulty in training workers in this country than in England, where “few persons of good social position attend Sunday-school or Bible-class.” This statement rather excites a wonder who do attend, for the poor seem to hold themselves equally aloof. The Protestant Archbishop of York, quoted in this work, says that in one district in London not one person in a hundred attends church. These people are in a state of heathenish darkness, though “the Church of England has emitted a pure Gospel light for centuries,” and are in the lowest state of degradation. “Who are these people?” asks the archbishop, and, as if conscious of the great gulf that separates them from those he addresses, he adds, “They are of the same flesh and blood as we.” The Catholic is unconscious of any such gulf. In the great republic of the church, the poor are the most tenderly cared for. The church has ennobled poverty by making it one of the evangelical counsels. Bossuet says: “Let no one any longer scorn poverty or treat it as a base thing: the King of Glory having espoused it, he has ennobled it by this alliance, and henceforth he grants the poor all the privileges of his empire.” “The poor of Christ have lineal rights,” says Faber, and it is because the Catholic Church recognizes these rights that it is emphatically the church of the poor.
We are glad to see any attempts made to elevate and socialize the poorer classes by visiting them, disseminating good books, and bringing them together for social and religious purposes. One association of ladies engaged in this work is stated to have made over six thousand visits the past year, and a committee of twelve ladies made seventeen thousand visits in the course of six years. The publication of their labors does not seem exactly on the principle of not letting the left hand know what the right hand doeth, though, if it excites emulation, it may not be unjustifiable. Any good resulting from such labors is a more enduring record, and will “survive all paper.” “For,” as Carlyle says, “the working of the good and brave, seen or unseen, endures literally for ever and cannot die. Is a thing nothing because the morning papers have not mentioned it? Or can a nothing be made a something by ever so much babbling of it there? Far better, probably, that no morning or evening paper mentioned it, that the right hand knew not what the left was doing.”
We are unwilling to criticise any sincere efforts to do good, and will forbear commenting on the memoranda of the ladies which compose the greater part of this work, however unattractive much of their piety may be to a Catholic; but we need not be equally forbearing to the editor, who detracts from the effect of incidents sometimes touching by his frequent interlardings and would-be wit about “portable fire-extinguishers” (meaning the fire of sin) “anti-incrustators,” etc. His bitterness against the Catholic Church makes him look with an envious eye at her success among her cherished poor ones. He speaks of her as “a corrupt church, whose spirit is hostile to republican institutions, now actively drilling the lay force in sodalities and other associations, and using their power to the utmost in educational, political, and proselyting schemes!” But such insinuations cannot harm us. He himself observes: “The Church of Rome, with all her obvious errors, suffers but little from the violent opposition to which she is constantly subjected. It will be well for all religious bodies closely to scrutinize her educational success, her tender care for the sick, and all the other modes by which she generates and uses spiritual power. Surely no well-organized church with a pure Scriptural faith, claiming to have divine authority, can in this Protestant nation be content any longer to yield ground to a foreign church with a foreign ministry.”
We can afford to be forbearing, and heartily forgive such language, in view of the tribute he pays to our superiority. The best thing in the book is his extract from the Abbé Mullois’ work entitled The Clergy and the Pulpit in their Relations to the People, which he rightly calls invaluable, and says “should be carefully and prayerfully studied by the clergy and laity of our church, as it is eminently spiritual and practical”—a recommendation not quite in harmony with the preceding complimentary allusions. The Abbé Mullois’ work (issued by “The Catholic Publication Society”), though only a fourth of the size of Women Helpers, is worth a thousand such. It is full of charity, zeal, and genuine piety, and sparkling with vivacity. No cant or lackadaisical piety there. It is a book that should be in every priest’s hands at least. The Abbé Mullois is fully sensible of woman’s adaptation to self-denying labors in the cause of religion and charity. “Woman is called the feeble sex,” says he. “True, when she does not love; but when love takes possession of her soul, she becomes the strong, the able, the devoted sex. She then looks difficulties in the face which would make men tremble.”
The co-operation of woman in evangelizing the world is nothing new in the church. Woman was instrumental in the fall of man; the second Eve had a large share in his redemption. The ministrations of women date from apostolic times, and the church has always availed herself of them. France was said to have been won back to Christianity by the Sisters of Charity. The utility of lay co-workers, both men and women, is evident from the good done by the Conferences of St. Vincent of Paul among men, and the various female associations among women. Wherever there is a priest, there should be some such organization for the religious and social elevation of the poor. Women Helpers shows how the masses hunger for spiritual aliment. Let us hasten to give them bread instead of a stone!
The Offertorium. A complete Collection of Music for the Sunday and Holyday Services of the Catholic Church, containing Masses, Vespers, Anthems, Hymns for Offertory, Benediction, and all Special Occasions, a Requiem Mass, Holy Week Services, Responses, etc. By William O. Fiske. Boston: Ditson & Co.
Why this collection of music is called “The Offertorium” we cannot understand. There is only one Offertory in the whole book. It might with equal fitness be styled “The Introit” or “The Kyrie Eleison.” Claiming, as it does, to be a collection of music for the services of the Catholic Church, we looked at once for the imprimatur of the proper ecclesiastical authority, but, after examining its contents, we were not surprised at its absence. It is, in fact, a poor rehash of books already well known to our country choirs. A number of pieces are called “Gregorian.” If this be Gregorian chant, we want none of it. It would lead us in charity to believe the compiler never saw a volume of Gregorian chant in his life. Again, we think no one capable of writing or compiling music for the church who does not know how to read, or at least pronounce, Latin. We have the following pronunciations given in this work: luciférum, spiritúi, usqué, gloría, filiorúm, confidúnt, descendúnt, etc., etc. In a Gloria in Excelsis abridged from Concone, the name of our Lord, “Jesu Christe,” is left out after “altissimus.” The author likely got up his musical phrase first, and, finding it too short, sacrificed the integrity of the sacred text to either his musical poverty or professional vanity. This and a few other cuttings of the text are, however, amply made up for by the frequent repetition of words and parts of sentences to be found on every page of the musical masses. The clergy are on all sides lamenting the degradation of church music, but let them not complain so long as they permit their choirs to furnish a market for productions like this.
The Chateau Morville; or, Life in Touraine. From the French. By E. R. Philadelphia: Claxton, Remsen & Haffelfinger. 1872. 1 vol. 12mo, pp. 366.