“Though honesty be no Puritan,
Yet it will do no hurt.”
We recommend this to the consideration of our free-religionists. It will do them “no hurt” to show more of this virtue when speaking of the Catholic Church. It becomes those who talk so much about science to talk a little less about it, and, when the Catholic religion is concerned, to give more evidence of scientific study. Especially does this course become men who claim to be public teachers belonging to a body whose object is “to encourage the scientific study of man’s religious nature and history.”
The first essay, delivered by William R. Alger, entitled Steps towards Religious Emancipation in Christendom, and published in their tenth annual report, will serve to illustrate our meaning. Mr. Alger is a scholar of repute, a man who has travelled abroad, written and published several books displaying extensive reading, refined tastes, and high literary culture. He is, moreover, a distinguished minister of the Unitarian denomination. His essay, we have reason to believe, was prepared with the usual care bestowed upon such papers; for the president of the association, in introducing the author, said: “The discussion will be opened by an essay by Mr. William R. Alger, of New York, who has made this matter in its historical aspects the study of years, and is carefully prepared to present the result of his deepest thought and investigation.”[[26]]
In its fourth paragraph the essay proposes to give a rough sketch of the “doctrinal thought” on which in mediæval times the “intellectual unity” of the church rested. Our limits will not allow us to quote it entire, but it is enough for our purpose to say—and we weigh our words before putting them on paper—that scarcely any one sentence of this paragraph contains a correct statement of the “doctrinal thought” of the Catholic Church either in the middle ages or in any other age.
Here are some of the statements: “The whole human race, descended from Adam, who lived five thousand years before,” etc. Mr. Alger would convey new information to the readers of The Catholic World, if he would give his authorities for this assertion. Thus far, if our authorities do not deceive us, the Catholic Church has, in her wisdom, left the question of the date of man’s appearance upon this earth to the discussion of chronologists and to the disputes among scientists.
Again: “The Bible, a mysterious book dictated by the Spirit of God, containing an infallible record of what is most important in this scheme of salvation, is withheld from the laity.” It would also increase the knowledge of our readers if the author had given his authorities to prove the above charge. The testimony of Catholics, if we be a judge, is precisely the contrary to this accusation. They entertain the conviction that it was the most earnest desire of the church in the period of which Mr. Alger is speaking to render the Bible accessible to all classes of men. Her monks devoted themselves to the severe manual labor of copying the Bible, and engaged in the noble toil of translating it into the vulgar tongues of various nations, that the people might become readers of the Bible. She exposed the Bible publicly in her libraries, and chained it to their walls by the windows, and to desks in her churches, in order that it might be read by everybody and not stolen. The charge is simply an old and oft-repeated calumny quite unworthy a man of reputed intelligence.
“The actual power or seal of salvation is made available to believers only through the sacraments of the church—confession, baptism, Mass, and penance—legally administered by her accredited representatives.” There is such an inextricable confusion pervading this statement that it is difficult to discern its meaning. No one, we venture to say, who had mastered the “doctrinal thought” of the church would have ever penned so distracted a sentence on so important a point. One would suppose that, according to Mr. Alger, there were two sacraments, one “confession” and the other “penance”; whereas every Catholic who has learned the little catechism knows that “confession,” the popular term, means, in the language of the church, the Sacrament of Penance. Then what is meant by “baptism legally administered by her accredited representatives”? This is not clear; but the whole statement is so confused in thought and tangled in expression that the only hope of understanding the author’s meaning is to give him an opportunity of trying again. It would be, among ourselves, interesting to read from non-Catholic authors the “doctrinal thought” of the church on what is essential to salvation and what is ordinarily necessary to salvation. It would also, we are inclined to think, clear up many of their misconceptions and do them no little good to have correct ideas on so important a matter.
“Those,” says Mr. Alger, “who humbly believe and observe these doctrines shall be saved; all others lost for ever.”
This sentence follows the preceding one, and the same confusion and error underlie both. When the ingenuous author of this essay has corrected the former sentence by reading up on the point involved, he will, as a matter of course, correct the error contained in the latter.