In the Introduction to his treatise the reverend author gives the reasons which called it forth, the last being the promise made on the tomb of a friend[179] to leave nothing untried which might promote the return of the Greco-Russian Church to Catholic unity; an unexpected opportunity being given for fulfilling this promise by the reference made more than once by Mr. Gladstone, in his recent publications, to the organization of the Eastern as contrasted with that of the Catholic Church. Moreover, the sympathy displayed by Mr. Gladstone for the Old Catholics and their Conference at Bonn serves to complete the argument.
There are two passages in Mr. Gladstone’s Vaticanism with which Father Tondini has more especially dealt. One is the following:
“Of these early provisions for a balance of church power, and for securing the laity against sacerdotal domination, the rigid conservatism of the Eastern Church presents us, even down to the present day, with an authentic and living record.”[180]
These valuable “provisions” are set forth at length in the second edition of a former work by Father Tondini, The Pope of Rome and the Popes of the Oriental Church.[181] In a special preface he there says: “There is much to be learned from them, especially if we take into consideration their recent date, and the ecclesiastical canons of which the Eastern Church has not been indeed a rigid conservator.”
In the quotations there given at length from the original documents, we find abundant evidence of the manner in which the ancient canons have been set aside, wherever convenient to the czar, for his own regulations.
The second passage requiring comment is the following:
“The ancient principles of popular election and control, for which room was found in the Apostolic Church under its inspired teachers, and which still subsist in the Christian East.”[182]
This, as we shall see, is disposed of in the third chapter of the present essay, into which has been collected trustworthy information as to the non-popular mode of election of bishops resorted to in the Oriental Orthodox Church.[183]
Towards the close of the Introduction the writer remarks that if the statements made by Mr. Gladstone respecting the Catholic Church were true, she could not be the true church of our Lord, and, if not, he asks, where then is the true church to be found? The Oriental Church could not solve the question, because she is in contradiction to the doctrine contained in her own liturgy,[184] and also for other reasons, to which for some years past he has been directing public attention.[185] There remain to be considered the Anglican Establishment—this being the church to which belongs the writer who accuses the Catholic Church of having changed in faith, and deprived her children of their moral and mental freedom—and the newest sect of all, namely, the so-called Old Catholics, owing to the same writer’s admiration of those who figure in its ranks.