CURRAGH CHASE, ADARE, IRELAND, Nov. 24, 1874.
REV. AND DEAR SIR: The public has taken recently such deserved
interest in the _Memoir and Letters of Sara Coleridge_ that it has
struck me that the last of the letters which I wrote to her before
making my submission to the Catholic Church, in which I stated fully
my reasons for taking that step, might be of use to many enquirers.
Readers of Sara Coleridge’s _Letters_ have often asked me, “But
where is your part of the correspondence?” They may perhaps be glad
to read at least one of those letters, to which many of hers were
replies.
That letter I send you, with some preliminary remarks, this day, by
book‐post. It is quite at your service, if you think it worth
publishing in THE CATHOLIC WORLD....
I remain very truly yours,
AUBREY DE VERE.
150 This statement is ambiguous. There are doubtless many persons, who
have been brought up Catholics, who have never formally renounced
the Catholic profession, and who are ready to declare their belief
of many Catholic doctrines, but who doubt or disbelieve some one or
more articles of faith, and have ceased to give unreserved
allegiance to the authority of the church. Such persons have lost
faith, and are not really Catholics, though they may call themselves
by the name, and still enjoy some of the rights of members of the
church. But every baptized member of the church has, at least, the
habit of faith, if he has not destroyed it by a contrary act,
_i.e._, by a formal sin against faith.—ED. C. W.
151 _Lehrbuch der Universalgeschichte_, von Dr H. Leo, 3d edit., vol. i.
pp. 13, 14.
152 As a case in point, we may cite the law of the Pontifical States,
which leaves the regulation of marriage among Jews to their own
synagogue.