proceedings of “the tenth annual meeting” of the free-religionists in
Boston. What is singularly remarkable among so intellectual and
cultivated a class of men as assemble at these gatherings, and
especially among its select speakers and essayists, is that they should
display so great a lack of true knowledge of the Catholic Church. If the
Catholic Church is not worthy of serious study, then why make it a
subject for speeches and essays in so important an assembly? But if it
be worthy of so much attention, why not give it that investigation which
its significance demands? We dare not say that the leaders among the
free-religionists are not intelligent men, that they have not read
considerably. But when they charge the Catholic Church with heresies
which she has condemned; when they attribute to her doctrine which she
always has detested and does detest; and when they blacken her with
stale and oft-refuted calumnies, and recklessly traduce her dearest and
best, her holiest children, we dare not trust ourselves to give
expression to what comes uppermost in our thoughts. Shakspeare gives
good advice in this matter:
“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.
Passing now over several paragraphs containing many charges, we regret
to say, in unusually bitter words, we come to the following: “The
revival of the Greek learning, the study of the works of Plato,
Aristotle, the classic poets, orators, and historians, with their
beautiful and surprising revelations of genius, virtue, and piety,
_entirely independent and outside of the church and Bible_, exerted an
immense force in liberalizing and refining the narrow, dogmatic mind of
the Christian world, refuting its _arrogant pretensions to an exclusive
communion with God and heritage in Providence_.” If the cultivated
writer of this essay had qualified the phrase “outside of the church”
_as I understand it_, “exclusive communion” _as I view it_, this
sentence might pass; but, as it stands, the position in which the
Catholic Church is placed is entirely false, and we refer our readers to
what is said on these points under the heading of “The Mission of the
Latin Race,” commencing on page 5, in the last number of this magazine.
“Now the Pope,” says Mr. Alger, “excommunicates the emperor, sets up a
rival, foments a rebellion among his subjects, or launches the terrible
interdict on a whole nation, shutting the churches, muffling the bells,
forbidding confession to the penitent, unction to the dying, burial to
the dead.”[27] Either the author has been imposed upon by his
authorities, or perhaps he has not weighed sufficiently his words. The
effect of an interdict of the Pope is inaccurately stated. These are
“terrible” matters, and one who is reciting history should be careful
and exact in his specifications. Here, as before, he is bound to give
his authorities, and learned and credible ones, or change his language.
“The repeated gross contradictions of bishops, councils, and popes,
their inconsistent decrees reversing or neutralizing each other,
_infallibility clashing with infallibility_, begat irrepressible
doubts.”[28] This sentence may pass for a rhetorical flourish, but it
involves a grave, a very grave, a most grave charge, and is backed up by
no example, or proof, or relation of authorities! These cutting and
slashing assertions where conscientious accuracy is required and sound
scholarship ought to be displayed, place the intelligence and education
of his Boston audience in no enviable light. Let us have some specimens
of “infallibility clashing with infallibility” by all means:
“Luther sprang forth with one-third of Christendom in revolt at his
back.... But _the fundamental doctrines_ of the church scheme otherwise
remained _essentially_ as they had been, unchallenged.”[29] What a pity
that the theologians of the sixteenth century had not known that “the
fundamental doctrines of the church scheme remained essentially” the
same! The Council of Trent, if it had only understood this, might have
saved its anathemas.
“After Luther, then, we see Christendom, with _fundamental agreement of
belief_, differing, for the most part, only in affairs of polity and
ritual, split into two bodies—those who rest their belief on the
_inspired_ authority of the church, and those who rest it on the
inspired authority of the Bible.”[30] Here again we have another
_fundamental_ erroneous idea of the church. “Inspired” authority is not
what Catholics believe. This language shows poor theological training or
a loose way of handling delicate and important points. But on this point
we shall have more to say.
“Third,” says Mr. Alger, “a revolt of common sense against
_errors with which the teachings of church and Scripture were
identified_, but which, by the simple lapse of time, had been
demonstrated to be false. For example, in the twentieth chapter
of the Book of Revelations it is recorded: ‘And he laid hold of
the dragon, that old serpent, which is the devil, and cast him
into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal on him
that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand
years should be fulfilled; after that he must be loosed a little
season.’ This passage was thought to fix the date of the Day of
Judgment. And as the time drew near the terror was profound.
Throughout the generation preceding the year one thousand _the
pulpits of the Christian world rang with this frightful text and
with awful descriptions of what it implied. The fear was as
intense as the belief was general._”
Has not the author of this essay taken some romancer of history or some
idle tale for his authority in the above charge? When and where did the
church identify her teachings with this error? We grow uneasy in asking
for authorities and examples; and when we are given an example of things
which are said to have taken place eight hundred years or more ago, no
authority is cited to authenticate the fact. The author may have given
his hearers “the result of his deepest thought,” but he is too chary of
the authorities for his “historical study of years.”
“The priests,” he tells us, “from the first hour scented this enemy from
afar, and declared war against it [physical science], as the meaner
portion of them still do everywhere. In the twelfth century the Council
of Tours, in the thirteenth century the Council of Paris, interdicted to
monks the reading of works on physical science _as sinful_.”[31] We
retract having said that Mr. Alger cites no authorities; he does in the
above accusation, but fails to quote the decrees or give their language,
or tell what kind of councils these were and what their weight. We feel
suspicious, and have grounds for this feeling, and we demand more
definite proofs. The charge is precise; let the proofs be equally so.
Let us have the authentic decrees and _ipsissima verba_. This is asking
only fair play. It would not be pleasant to find this accusation, on
serious investigation, a misconception, or a misinterpretation, or
perhaps an invented calumny, but not by our author. We take real
pleasure in finding a point in which we agree with him. Here is one:
they are the “meaner portion,” if there be such “priests,” who “war
against” the study of “the physical sciences.” We know of priests who
are devoted to the study of the physical sciences, and some who are
distinguished in these studies; but we have no acquaintance with the
“meaner portion” who have “declared war against physical science.”
Perhaps Mr. Alger has, and, if so, he will inform us who they are.
“Ethnology,” he asserts, “multiplies the actors in its drama [that of
history], and takes _the keystone from the arch of the church theology
by disproving the inheritance of total depravity from one progenitor of
all men_.”[32] Here the author shares the error in common with almost
all, if not all, Unitarians and free-religionists. They seem not to be
able to grasp the idea that the Catholic Church, in the œcumenical
Council of Trent, condemned the doctrines of Protestantism concerning
original sin; and, whatever may be said to the contrary, the Catholic
Church never goes back on her authoritative decisions. Mr. Alger well
says that the doctrine of original sin is “the keystone of the arch of
theology”; so much the more reason, therefore, that there should be no
mistake on a point which shapes theology almost entirely. And if he and
his brethren, free-religionists and Unitarians, could be got to
understand and acknowledge that the Catholic Church has condemned the
doctrines of Protestantism on original sin, as well as “the five points
of Calvinism”—for they go together—then there would be some hope that
the gross error of identifying Catholicity and Protestantism as
“fundamentally and essentially the same” on this most important subject
would be corrected. The error is an egregious one, which is constantly
appearing in their addresses, sermons, tracts, essays, books, weekly
papers, and journals, and with that error a thousand dependent errors
would disappear. But, alas! we fear that we shall have to regard this as
hopeless, and resign ourselves, for the present generation at least, to
placing this, with other radical errors, among the points of “invincible
ignorance”! May we just here be allowed, without being stigmatized as
one of the “meaner portion” of the priesthood, to put in a humble
demurrer to the unsustained assertion that “ethnology” has “disproven”
“one progenitor of all men”?
If the reader is weary of following up with us this labyrinth of error
in this not very long essay, he will pity the present writer; for he has
not touched upon one-tenth of the errors which the same short essay
holds. We have been careful, too, to be silent on language which might
have come from Exeter Hall ranters or from the late Dr. Brownlee, a
notorious anti-popery lecturer of former days. Indeed, we can scarcely
allow ourselves the freedom of expressing our feelings of indignation at
reading such language coming from men who have a reputation for polite
culture. “Men,” we say; for at the close of its delivery Mr. Alger’s
essay was endorsed by the president of the association as “the admirable
essay by Mr. Alger, at once a history and an argument, a summary of
facts and also a summary of apprehensions and suggestions, etc.”[33]
Another speaker pronounced it a “most magnificent and masterly
essay.”[34] We are not over-sensitive in matters of this kind, and
before concluding our remarks we give a specimen of the language and
spirit of the “most magnificent and masterly essay.”
V. FREE-RELIGIONISTS AND THE MONKS.
“Few men,” says our estimable writer, “duly feel what a debt the
nineteenth century owes to the illustrious founders and
cultivators of science, Aristotle, Archimedes, Kepler, Newton,
and the hundreds of lesser lights in many departments. What a
beneficent and herculean task they have accomplished in breaking
the chains of _false_ authority, opening the dungeons of
_superstition_, removing the _incubus_ of religious terror!
Their sunlit and open-air minds, in harmonious working
connection with nature and their race, have done much to dispel
the _baneful_ power of a _celibate_ church, the cloistered and
_mephitic minds of monks and hermits, introspective dreamers,
tyrannical theorizers_, who, set apart from the living interests
of men, had woven over Christianity _a horrid web of diseased
logic spun out of the entrails of their own morbid brains_.”
Let free-religionists honor Aristotle, Archimedes, Kepler, Newton, and
other great masters in natural science; they are worthy, and we also pay
them honor. Let them be grateful to those “cultivators of science” for
all the hidden truths which, by their genius and toil, they have brought
to light, and in this we also sympathize. Let them join with this class
the men of our own day distinguished in this line of studies: the
Herschels, the Faradays, the Agassiz, the Quatrefages, the Darwins, the
Secchis, the Huxleys, the Tyndalls, the Drapers, etc.; they are all
worthy of honor and gratitude for every new truth which they have
discovered and made known to the world. Not to love all truth
unreservedly is to renounce the light of reason and to repudiate God;
for he was God who said, “I am the truth.” But this grateful
acknowledgment for the labors of cultivators of the sciences by no
manner of means implies the acceptance of every hypothesis or theory,
put forth by some of them, which for the most part are based upon
insufficient data or spun out of misconceptions of religion with secret
hostility to Christianity. For there are men who pass for scientists who
seem to be actuated more by a spirit of opposition to religion than a
sincere desire for the discovery of the secrets of nature. Hence genuine
science has to suffer no less than true religion from bigots and
hypocrites, who erect their untenable opinions into final decisions of
scientific investigation, and cloak themselves with the honorable livery
of science to put forth the ignoble doctrines of materialism.
Speculations, however brilliant, ought not to pass for science, and one
must be on his guard in our days, lest he allow the authority of great
names to impose upon his credulity the romance of science for real
science.
But could not the author of this essay honor the really great men of
science and be content, without dishonoring another class of men who
devoted their gifts and gave their toil as enthusiastically at least,
and with an equal self-sacrificing spirit, to the contemplation and
discovery of another, and even, in degree, a higher, class of truths?
Could he not pay Paul without robbing Peter?
Then, again, why this bitterness of expression towards the monks? Have
these monks no aspirations that are holy? no convictions that are
sacred? no rights worthy of respect? Why could not the monks with equal
liberty lead such lives as the highest feelings in their souls called
them to do as well as a Bronson Alcott, a Ralph Waldo Emerson, a Henry
Thoreau, or William R. Alger? What or who has given to these Americans
the liberty to lead such lives as they chose, and deprived men of other
climes of this same personal privilege? Is it a commendable thing for a
Sir Isaac Newton to lead a celibate life out of devotion to mathematics,
and a sin for a St. Benedict to lead a single life out of as pure a
devotion, at least, to the religion of Christ? If Reverend Ralph Waldo
Emerson throws up his pastorate over a respectable Unitarian
congregation, and retires to a remote country village to devote himself
to the cultivation of literature and whatever he may please to think a
more useful calling, in fidelity to his best aspirations, why may not a
Bernadotti of Assisi retire from the business of a silk merchant,
renounce his gay companions, and, in obedience to the voice of God in
his soul, practise poverty and turn a religious reformer under the name
of Francis? If Henry Thoreau repudiates the calling to be a clergyman
not to be false to his highest convictions, devotes his leisure hours to
the study of nature and the Greek poets, and, living for the most part
on bread and water, takes up the manual labor of making lead-pencils to
meet the cost of his scanty support, and in so doing not lose cast among
the literary brahmins of Boston, why not let, with equal freedom,
Anthony retire to the deserts of Egypt and give himself to divine
contemplation and the making of baskets and mats for his innocent way of
life, without being loaded with a heap of most abusive epithets? Was it
heroic in Mr. Bronson Alcott to make an attempt to realize his ideal of
a pure and holy life with a few choice spirits at Fruitlands, in the
State of Massachusetts, while it was only the “mephitic” action of a
“morbid brain” in a saintly Bernard actually to realize the ideal at
Clairvaux, in the province of Burgundy in France? Are we to praise and
never be weary of praising the Pilgrim Fathers for abandoning their
country, their homes, their friends, and their relations to come to the
wilds of inhospitable New England, in order that they might worship God
according to the dictates of their consciences, and must we condemn the
first pioneers in the wilderness who plunged into the solitudes of Egypt
for precisely the same reason, in order to fulfil the great aspiration
of their souls to God—the pilgrim saints of the desert? Who can read the
riddle why the aspiration or effort of the soul to perfect itself is the
result of “mephitic minds” in a Hebrew, or an Egyptian, or a Latin, or a
Celt, and the same aspiration is religious, sacred, holy, when found in
the soul of a New-Englander?
Did it not suggest itself to the mind of the author of this essay, when
he perused the passage quoted against the monks, that he exposed himself
to a flank movement? For where could you find better specimens and more
plentifully of “introspective dreamers” and “tyrannical theorizers” than
in the State, in the very city, nay, in the actual audience which
assembled at the time to listen to Mr. Alger’s essay?
“O wad some power the giftie gie us,
To see oursels as others see us!
It wad frae monie a blunder free us,
And foolish notion.”
Why is it that a certain number of New England authors, whenever they
can find an occasion or make an opportunity, are sure to cast a fling at
monks and nuns and a celibate priesthood? Even the genial author, Dr.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, not to mention Whittier and others, from some yet
unexplained cause, will turn bitter and his temper grow ruffled when he
encounters in his literary excursions a monk or speaks of the celibate
clergy of the church. There is no difficulty in acquitting such authors
of intentional malice, but men so well bred and of such broad experience
ought and do know better, and should not blot their otherwise pleasant
pages with foul abuse.
But whence does this acrimony spring? Does it spring from the bully who
strikes a victim, knowing himself safe from a return blow? or is it that
the intellectual faculty of insight is lacking in these highly-gifted
authors? Is this rancor to be attributed to their environment? or,
finally, is it to be classified by some future clerical Darwin as an
instance of Puritanical “inherited habit”? Be that as it may, Catholics
ask no favors from the opponents of the church, but they have good
reason to look for, and the right to demand, fair play, sound
scholarship where scholarship is needed and claimed, and at least an
average amount of intelligence.
These monks—and let us add also nuns, for their aim is identical—who
have as a distinctive principle of life the resolve always to tend
towards perfection, are not perfect and make no pretension to being
saints, for although human nature is immanently good, there is
notwithstanding much evil in the world, and no class of men or women,
whoever they may be, is wholly free from the possibility of deviating
from the path which leads to their true destiny. That there have been
among monks and nuns hypocrites, fanatics, and those who have forgotten
the sacredness of their calling and given public scandal everybody
knows: “Canker vice the sweetest buds doth love.” Had these incurred the
severe animadversion of the author of this essay, his abusive language
might have passed unnoticed; but no qualification is made between
innocent and guilty—the exemplary and scandalous, one and all, are
passed upon as the same by a most unsparing and unjust sentence.