Under the head of this controversy about investitures, of which we have given the true, as Mr. Maury has given a false and garbled, history (principally from Mosheim, who seems to have manipulated every event simply with a view to favoring Protestantism), he has made incidentally several random and several false assertions. Observe that we do not attribute to him wilful falsehood; but his zeal outruns his judgment, and, if a statement seems to make in his favor, he is not sufficiently careful in verifying it; e.g., “In view of the fact that this church (the Catholic) is making rapid advances in the acquisition of political influence in the United States,” etc.
Here is a statement very glibly uttered and flatly untrue. The church, as such, neither has nor desires to have any political influence in this or in any other country; and we challenge the assertor to the proof of his slander. Her members have votes like other people; and there are probably in the United States within her communion (taking the ordinary statistics and ratio of voters to population) about a million voters. But they vote on both sides, like their neighbors; and whenever there are three parties the third always presents a sprinkling of Catholic voters. The proportion of Catholic office-holders in our country never has been in any sort of proportion to the Catholic population; nor do we mention the fact to complain of it. Our prayer is that they may be long kept out of the foul wallow. The only prominent official that we can for the moment recollect was Judge Taney. We believe there is one Catholic in the present Senate, but we doubt very much whether the present House of Representatives contains ten Catholic members. Men like James T. Brady and Charles O’Conor are not apt to be chronic office-holders. These alleged advances toward political aggrandizement, if made at all, have not been made in the dark or in a corner. They must be capable of being pointed out. Put your finger on them; show them to us. What are they? Where are they? Where were they made? We had occasion lately in these pages to insist that the statement was false by which Catholics were represented as all voting one way, or as voting under the direction of their priests and bishops; and we reproduce the words then used, viz.:
“But we appeal to the Catholic voters of this country, of American or foreign birth, to answer: Has your bishop or parish priest ever undertaken to dictate to you how you should vote? Has your vote, on whatever side given, interfered in the slightest degree with your status in the church? Do you know of a single instance in which one or the other of these things has taken place? We cannot lay down a fairer gage. If such things happen, they cannot occur without the knowledge of those among and with whom they are done. Had the proof been forthcoming, the country would have rung with it long ere this. We demand and defy the proof.”
We stand now by what is therein said, adding that people who are unwilling to be brought to law should not assert, at least in print, what they do not know to be true, or might, with very little pains, ascertain to be false. It will not do to make hap-hazard assertions, merely on the ground that they will be well received by a portion of the community, whether small or large. There are people who do not think that it is honest, and who characterize such conduct by a very harsh name. If a writer in the Church Review chooses to address Episcopalians, and those alone, on matters connected with their own special organization, we shall care but very little what he says, and shall certainly not interfere. With them be it. But he shall not make sweeping, false statements about the Catholic Church, without being informed that, however it may have happened, these utterances lack the essential element of truth.
Again, he says: “They (the bishops and abbots) assumed the leadership of the soldiers of the district over which they had jurisdiction,” etc.
We did not imagine that there was any man at this day, pretending to an inkling of education, who did not know that it has at no time been lawful for a clergyman of the Church of Rome to bear arms. Clergymen bearing arms are excommunicated by the law of the church. Mr. Maury, in another part of his article, undertakes to give a definition of canon law which is misleading, and bears every appearance of having been culled from some writer who knew as little of the canon law as does Mr. Maury. The drill-master needs only to see a recruit take up a musket in order to state positively: “My lad, you never had a lesson on musket-drill in your life.” To us Mr. Maury’s uncouth and largely false definition of canon law is proof positive that he never opened a book on the subject in his life. And yet he undertakes deliberately to enlighten people upon its nature in print. Fie, Mr. Maury! Let us give you your first lesson on canon law, and it is this: Those clerics who enlist are irregular, and it is prescribed by canon law that “they shall be punished by loss of their grade, as contemners of the holy canons and profaners of the sanctity of the church.” Of course we, like others, have frequently read that little story, well befitting a Protestant ecclesiastical history, in which it is stated that a certain bishop of Beauvais was taken prisoner in arms, and that, on the pope’s interceding for him, the coat of mail in which the prisoner is said to have been clad was sent to His Holiness with the message: “Discerne an hæc sit vestis filii tui.” It is more than probable that the story was made for the sake of the supposed jest. Certain it is that the attempt to trace it deprives it of any authority, while even as a fiction it shows on the part of its author what Mr. Maury has not—viz., a knowledge of the canon law on the subject. Did not a late bishop of Louisiana act as a major-general in the army? Now, canon law is not binding on members of that sect, nor are its ministers at all bound to know the canons, unless, indeed, they undertake to instruct others upon them, and then we humbly submit that things are different.
Once more: “It (the state) expressly limited its right to the temporal advantages belonging to the endowments, and made no claim to conferring the spiritual functions,” etc.
What the state actually did was this. It said: “We have sold to the highest bidder this see or that abbacy. We know full well that to be simony, and that the person on whom we have conferred the crosier and ring is ipso facto excommunicated by reason of that simony. We also know him to be an unfit, and even a grossly immoral, person. But there he is; and you must either consecrate him or that prelature shall not be filled. At all events he shall have the revenues. He has bought and paid for them.” How any man of ordinary honesty, how any one not previously determined by his prejudices to make out a case, should talk of its “not suiting the views of the ambitious pontiff that the church should be subjected to the state even to this limited (sic!) extent,” is one of those things that must remain a mystery till the day when we shall be able to look back on the affairs and actions of this world with a clearer mental vision than any we have borne while in it. Mr. Maury’s sect, founded by a king, the doctrines of which (if it have any) are in England defined by a parliament and its practice decided by the courts, the convocation of which has for two hundred years not ventured to cheep, and then hardly above its breath, can of course endure, in view of the loaves and fishes, to be subject to the state in all matters. But the church of God can only, like her Master, render to Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s; and she does not deem conscience to be one of his perquisites. Instructive, if not edifying, reading in regard to the results brought about by the secular power’s appointment of bishops, deans, etc., may be found in the lives, autobiographic and otherwise, of the prime ministers of England. The doctrines of Anglicanism are now, notwithstanding parliaments and courts, just what they have been from the beginning—a series of incomprehensible shifts and evasions, a set of enigmas with no fixed response to any of them. The columns of the London Times will show how “livings” are disposed of, canted at public sale, puffed into fictitious value by representations of the age of the present incumbent and the short-livedness of his family. If we must take instructions from anybody, surely ministers of such a sect as this are not the persons to be listened to either in matter of religion or of taste.
Further on, and in relation to the decree of Pope St. Gregory, we find: “It is impossible to conceive of (sic) presumption surpassing that which inspired this, or to imagine a more absolute disregard of the rights of sovereigns. It was a declaration of war by the church upon the state. Disobedience to it was absolutely unavoidable under the existing system of feudal tenure,” etc.
After what has been given of the history of this controversy it is but a work of supererogation to show that each one of the statements in these three sentences is a separate and distinct falsehood. St. Gregory excommunicated and debarred from entrance into the church the simoniacal holders of bishoprics or abbacies, as also every emperor, duke, marquis, count, knight, or other person who should presume to confer the investiture of a bishopric or other ecclesiastical dignity; he finds no fault with the temporal homage or service due on account of secular estates, whether pertaining to the incumbent or to the prelature. Being head (not of a sect nor of a church, but) of the church, he was not, like a titular archbishop of Canterbury, a mere figure-head, whose presence served to give a false show of authority to ecclesiastical decrees made by a collection of laymen, perhaps not even Christians; and his excommunication must consistently strike all the accomplices in a most nefarious work. It is impossible for a Catholic to conceive how the pope could have acted otherwise than he did, since the church knows to this day, and will till the end of time know, no different rules to apply to those of her members who are highest in temporal dignity from those which affect the poorest inmate of the almshouse. The state had now for nearly a century been making war upon the church; and as to the impossibility under feudal tenure of anything but disobedience to the decree of His Holiness, we see in point of actual fact that the matter was quietly and satisfactorily settled by the withdrawal on the part of the state of the offensive and impious claim to confer investiture in spiritualibus. No one found any fault with the purely temporal homage, and it was only when, by seizure and sale of cross and crosier (with which, according to the rude ideas of many people in that age, was involved the spiritual authority), the king put forth a claim to the power of appointing bishops, that the church withstood him to the face. He strove to usurp a spiritual power which never belonged to him or to any other temporal authority. We can all see in history what has been the fate of those sects of Protestantism which, for the sake of mere existence or of temporary courtly favor, have given up the rights and powers that would have been inherent in them, were they a church. Their doctrines are a mass of doubt and contradiction. Their ministry, having neither authority nor message to the world, consists of dumb dogs that bark not. Perhaps Anglicanism has been the most successful of them. Is there any thoughtful man, even among its own members, that can in reason look hopefully forward to its future?