Toward individuals whom he mentions he is careful to observe the rules
of courtesy. In respect to his historical and polemical statements and
arguments on Catholic matters in his first volume, we presume he speaks
according to his opinion and belief; and if that were correct, his
strong expressions would be justifiable, even though they might
sometimes, on the score of rhetoric and good taste, lie open to
criticism. To call the Papacy “a colossal lie” is not very elegant or
even forcible, and is irreconcilable with the author’s own statements
regarding mediæval Catholicism, as well as with the views of history
presented by such men as Leo and other enlightened Protestants. All the
efforts of the Jesuits to bring back schismatics to their former
obedience to the Holy See are called “intrigues.” The author relies a
great deal on strong language, vehement assertion, and a vague style of
depreciation of the mental and moral attitude of Catholics, which is not
sustained by reasoning, and, in our view, indicates the presence of much
prejudice, as well as a want of adequate knowledge and consideration.
Men who have a great aptitude for history and what may be called
book-knowledge, among whom Dr. Döllinger is a notable instance,
frequently fail signally in treating of matters where logic, philosophy,
and accurate theology are required. Dr. Schaff seems out of his proper
line when he leaves his purely literary work and begins to reason. His
polemical argument against infallibility and the Immaculate Conception
is a pretty good _résumé_ of what has been said by others on that side,
and of what can be said. It is all to be found in Catholic theologies,
under the head of objections, and has all been answered many times over.
The author adds nothing to his own cause by his own reasoning, and
requires no special confutation. On the contrary, he weakens his cause
and detracts from its plausibility by the futility of his assertions. We
will cite one instance of this as an example. Speaking of the Immaculate
Conception, he says: “This extraordinary dogma lifts the Virgin Mary out
of the fallen and redeemed race of Adam, and _places her on a par with
the Saviour_. For, if she is really free from all hereditary as well as
actual sin and guilt, she is above the need of redemption. Repentance,
forgiveness, regeneration, conversion, sanctification are as
inapplicable to her as to Christ himself” (p. 111). This is one of the
most illogical sentences we have ever met with. Let it be given, though
not conceded as true, that the dogma places the Virgin Mary above the
need of redemption. The illusion that she is therefore placed _on a par
with the Saviour_ is illogical and false. Adam, before the fall, was
above the need of redemption, and the angels are above it. Are they _on
a par with the Saviour_? He is God, they are creatures. Whatever he
possesses, even in his humanity, he has by intrinsic, personal right;
they possess nothing except by a free gift. Moreover, it would not
follow that regeneration would be as inapplicable to her as to Christ
himself. By the hypostatic union the human nature of Christ shares with
the divine nature the relation of strict and proper filiation toward the
Father, for he is the natural and only-begotten Son of God. But angels
and men are only made sons by adoption, and by a supernatural grace
which in men is properly called regeneration, because the human
generation precedes, which merely gives them human nature. The Virgin
Mary received only her human nature by her natural generation, and
therefore needed to be born of God by spiritual grace to make her a
child of God, and a partaker with Christ in that special relation to the
Father which belonged to him as man by virtue of his divine personality.
Moreover, sanctification is not inapplicable even to Christ, whose soul
and body were made holy by the indwelling Spirit, and therefore, _à
fortiori_, not to Mary, on the hypothesis that she needed no redemption.
Repentance, forgiveness, conversion, are indeed inapplicable to her.
They are, likewise, inapplicable to the angels, were so to Adam and Eve
before the fall, and would have been so to their posterity, if the state
of original justice had continued, unless they sinned personally and
were capable of restoration to grace.
The freedom from original sin does not, however, imply that the Virgin
Mary was above the need of redemption. The covenant of the first Adam
was abolished, and therefore no right to grace could be transmitted from
him to his descendant, the Virgin Mary. The attainder by which he and
all his descendants were excluded from the privileges of children and
the inheritance of the kingdom of heaven was reversed only by the
redemption. If Christ had not redeemed mankind from the fall, the
kingdom of heaven could not have been open to Mary. She owes, therefore,
all her privileges as a child of God and an inheritor of the kingdom of
heaven to the redemption. Some of these are special and peculiar to
herself, and one of these special privileges is that she was prevented
from incurring the guilt of original sin by receiving sanctifying grace
simultaneously with her conception and the creation of her soul. She
was, therefore, redeemed in a more sublime mode than others, and is more
indebted to the cross and Passion of Christ and the free grace of God
than any other human being, and not at all on a par with Christ, who is
indebted to no one but himself. Let this suffice in respect to the
polemics of Dr. Schaff’s work. The reunion of all who profess
Christianity on a new basis is as far off as ever—as remote as the
discovery of a way of transit to the fixed stars. The learned doctor has
prepared a valuable collection of documents useful to the student, but
he has not proposed any substitute for the faith and law of the Catholic
Church which is likely to supplant them, or even to prove acceptable to
any large number of Christians under any name. Nevertheless, we regard
amicably both himself and his work, and we are confident that it will
have the good effect of promoting a wider and more catholic range of
investigation among Protestant students of theology.
THE STANDARD ARITHMETIC, FOR SCHOOLS OF ALL GRADES AND FOR BUSINESS
PURPOSES. No. 1. By James E. Ryan. New York: The Catholic Publication
Society Co.
Important changes have been made in arithmetical text-books within the
last twenty years. Each new series of books presented a special claim
for patronage. One contained several chapters previously omitted;
another divided the subject into mental and written arithmetic; others
followed the inductive to the exclusion of the analytic method. Each
series may have been an improvement in some respects; but the gain has
been theoretic and artistic rather than practical. The result has been
to separate oral from written arithmetic; to increase the average number
of books in a series to five; and to load the elementary works with
intricate detail and useless puzzles.
As a rule, a child spends an hour a day of school-life in the study of
arithmetic. This amount of time should suffice to teach the arithmetical
processes necessary in ordinary business. Yet the majority of pupils
never advance beyond the ground rules. This results from making the
text-book the guide. So general is this custom that few teachers desire
to run the risk of changing it, and the pupil is compelled to leave
school before fractions have been reached. He carries with him the
belief that there are two kinds of arithmetic, one mental, the other
written; and while he may be able to explain an oral example, he can
simply tell how the written example is done. The small number of pupils
who reach the higher branches suffer from an overdose of commercial
economy which can only be mastered when they come face to face with
business affairs.
The text-books prepared by Mr. James E. Ryan afford a remedy for most of
these defects. The elementary course contains all that can be taught to
the mass of pupils. It includes the fundamental rules, fractions,
decimals, denominate numbers, and percentage. Each division contains
oral and written work, the same analysis being used in both cases. The
mode of treatment is excellent. The book includes no more practice work
than is absolutely necessary to secure facility and accuracy in
calculation, while the analysis of each step is so clear that any pupil
can easily comprehend it.
The chapters treating of fractions are cleared of obscure subdivisions,
thereby dispensing with a mass of unnecessary rules for special cases.
In addition to this improvement the rules for common and decimal
fractions are made to correspond. Denominate numbers are treated with
marked ability. Obsolete weights and measures are excluded. The various
tables of the metric system are introduced in connection with the
English standards.
A close examination of Mr. Ryan’s treatise will convince the most
exacting teacher that it is an excellent arithmetic.
THE STANDARD ARITHMETIC, FOR SCHOOLS OF ALL GRADES AND FOR BUSINESS
PURPOSES. No. 2. By James E. Ryan. New York: The Catholic Publication
Society Co., 9 Barclay St.
This volume begins with simple numbers and carries the pupil through the
commercial rules. The amount of arithmetical knowledge requisite for
business purposes has grown with the enormous growth of insurance,
annuities, etc., so that it has become necessary to define the limits of
school instruction. The author includes percentage, interest, discount,
partial payments, exchange, profit and loss, commission or brokerage,
insurance, duties, taxes, equation of payments, proportion, involution,
evolution, mensuration, and progression in the regular course. The
discussion of the equation, mechanics, specific gravity, builders’
measurements, gauging, alligation, life insurance, annuities, stocks and
bonds, freights and storage, etc., is reserved for the appendix.
In the advanced portions of the work analysis and synthesis, or
induction, as it is now called, are combined. The treatment of each
subdivision is so unique that it is hardly fair to single out one for
special praise. Equation of payments, however, is made somewhat
conspicuous by the amount of condensation it has undergone. In six pages
we obtain the information which is usually spread over twenty. It is
safe to say that the best scholars leave school without a clear
comprehension of this subject, partly because of the senseless rules
laid down, but chiefly because of the number of them. The chapter on
mensuration is remarkable. By it the author proves that a student may
obtain all the knowledge of mensuration requisite for surveying without
studying geometry.
Oral and written exercises are given under every rule, and the examples
are so shaped as to test the pupil’s knowledge of principles. The
appendix contains a mass of important work of the highest value to
students qualifying themselves for active business. For this reason the
volume is well adapted to the wants of high-schools and academies.
RECUEIL DE LECTURES, A L’USAGE DES ECOLES. Par une Sœur de St. Joseph.
New York: The Catholic Publication Society Co. 1877.
This is a very useful addition to the Catholic Publication Society’s
excellent series of school literature. There is probably no living
language from which so much pleasure and profit can be derived as the
French. Even if a person does not speak it with ease and fluency, it
requires no vast amount of study to be able to read it as readily as
one’s native tongue. The first requisite towards a knowledge of French
is a good text-book and grammar. The little volume before us answers
admirably the first of these requirements. It is interesting, clear, and
constructed on an intelligent plan. The instructions for pronunciation
at the beginning are short but excellent, and likely to rest in the
memory. The exercises begin in a very simple manner. They are always
sensible, and do not confuse words and phrases, and jumble them together
after the Ollendorff plan, although they effect the same end, so far as
the interchange of words, phrases, and ideas goes. As the lessons
proceed, they gradually increase in difficulty, as they do in interest,
the simpler exercises giving place to extracts from the best French
authors.
We think the book in every way well adapted for youthful students of
French who have a teacher.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
---------------------
VOL. XXVI., No. 153.—DECEMBER, 1877.
---------------------
MR. FROUDE ON THE “REVIVAL OF ROMANISM.”[66]
“Why is Protestantism standing still while Rome is advancing? Why does
Rome count her converts from among the evangelicals by tens, while
she loses to them, but here and there, an exceptional and unimportant
unit?” (“Revival of Romanism,” sect. i. p. 95).
These questions, asked by Mr. Froude in his latest-published volume, are
not new. They have been asked by many any time within the last quarter
of a century. They are being asked with more urgency, if not more alarm,
every day. They are questions worthy of an answer, if an answer can be
given to them; worthy, certainly, of all consideration from
serious-minded men. For, if founded in fact, they point towards a
reversal of the three centuries of Protestant history; to the failure of
Protestantism as a satisfactory system of belief; and, if not to a
general return of Protestant nations to the Catholic Church, at least to
the speedy and final approach to what keen writers and observers have
long seen coming—to wit, the general recognition that between
Catholicity and infidelity there stands no debatable ground for
Christian men.
The suspicion has been gradually growing up in the Protestant thinking
world—a suspicion that is fast hardening into a certainty—that
Catholicity is advancing with giant strides, while Protestantism is
surely, if sullenly, receding; worse still, that in spite of all
Protestantism can do, in the pulpit, in the press, in the government, in
the world at large, Catholicity is bound to advance, and the process of
damming it up and shutting it off seems hopeless. “How to compete with
the aggressions of Romanism” was, in various forms, one of the chief
subjects of debate before the Evangelical Alliance assembled a few years
back in this city. A similar subject excited the recent Pan-Presbyterian
assembly at Glasgow. Indeed, it is safe to say that, wherever a
Protestant assembly of any kind meets for amicable consultation and
discussion, that everlasting skeleton in the closet, “Romanism,” will be
exposed to view to remind the pleasant gentlemen assembled that they are
doomed to die.
This is only a sign of the times. The times were, half a century ago,
when such a sign was not visible; when Catholicity, as a real, living,
active power, was, so far as Protestant countries were concerned, dead
and damned beyond hope of redemption. There was a horror at the very
mention of the name of Rome; a universal Protestant shudder at the
thought of the pope; but Rome and the pope were things exploded with the
Gunpowder Plot and other dark horrors of a by-gone day. In England the
chief vestige of Catholicity and Catholic memories left showed itself in
the annual celebration of Guy Fawkes’ day and the loyal burning of the
pope in effigy.
To-day how changed is the position of Catholicity, not in England
only, but in all English-speaking peoples; not in all English-speaking
peoples only, but throughout the civilized world! Catholicity has
experienced a vast “revival,” to use Mr. Froude’s expression; and to
any one who has read Mr. Froude it will be easy to imagine how that
writer would handle such a theme. Mr. Froude dislikes many things in
this world, but of all things he dislikes Catholicity. It is hard for
him to write calmly on any subject; on this particular subject he
raves, even if he raves eloquently. His admirers, among whom for many
things—particularly for the good service his peculiarly violent temper
has done the Catholic cause—we beg to be numbered, will scarcely
accuse him of that passionless tone that is supposed to belong to
blindfolded and even-balanced justice. It is not passing beyond the
bounds of fair criticism, but simply stating what ought now to be a
sufficiently-established fact, to say that whenever Catholicity or
anything belonging to it crosses Mr. Froude’s vision that vision is
seared; the man is at once attacked by a species of literary
insanity—a _Popomania_, so to say—that renders him incapable of cool
judgment, and leads him to play havoc with all the instincts of good
sense, the laws of logic, the impulses of good nature, and, we are
sorry to add, the rules of honesty. Indeed, no man better than he
affords an example of the remark of a keen French writer that “it is
the happiness and the glory of Catholicity to be always served by its
adversaries; by those who do not believe in it; ay, by those who
pursue it with the bitterest animosity.”[67]
These, however, are only so many assertions on our part. Mr. Froude will
afford us ample opportunity of justifying them.
We have no desire to be unjust to Mr. Froude. Indeed, he is so unjust to
himself that an avowed enemy could wish for no better weapons of attack
than those supplied by Mr. Froude against himself. It is singularly true
that Mr. Froude is generally the best refutation of Mr. Froude. Still,
to a man of his way of thinking, the questions set at the head of this
article, which he so boldly puts and honestly attempts to face, must be
in the last degree not only exasperating but seriously alarming. To a
man who can see nothing more fatal in this world than Catholicity, the
confessed advance of Catholicity, in face of, in spite of, and over all
obstacles, must seem like the spread of a pestilence of the deadliest
kind—a mental and moral pestilence: a darkness of the understanding, a
deadening of the heart, a numbing of all man’s fine, free, and ennobling
qualities, a wilful renouncing of
“The mighty thoughts that make us men.”
Of course we laugh at so preposterous an idea; but Mr. Froude has
persuaded himself that Catholicity is all this, and we are trying our
best to regard him honestly and as being honest. Nor does he stand alone
in his persuasion. There are many who go with him in his estimate of
Catholicity, and we have them in view quite as much as he in whatever we
may have to say. And the first thing we have to say is this: Is there
really a “revival of Romanism”? In what and where is it reviving? Of
course we reject the term Romanism, as applied to Catholicity. Still, a
wilful man may as well have his way, especially where his wilfulness
costs nothing. We have a more important controversy with Mr. Froude than
a quarrel over names and a haggling over words. If Romanists we must be
from his point of view, why Romanists, in the name of peace, let us be,
to the extent at least of an article. Some statisticians estimate us at
200,000,000. We can afford to be called names once in a while.
Surely Mr. Froude is mistaken. If it be true, as a very high
authority[68] assured us a few years ago, that “in the kingdom of this
world the state has dominion and precedence,” Catholicity, as a whole,
fares very badly in the kingdom of this world, however high it may rank
in the next. And strange as it may appear to Mr. Froude and to Prince
Bismarck, Catholics have a singular liking for their own place in this
world; they lay claim to at least as lawful a share of the things of
this world as do Protestants; and they utterly and stubbornly refuse to
live on sufferance. The attempt to make Catholics exist on sufferance,
go a-begging for their lives, so to say, and eat and drink, and work and
sleep, and play and pray by the gracious favor of certain princes of
this world, occasions all the trouble between Catholics and the states
governed by such princes. So when a “revival of Romanism” is talked
about we naturally look to see how Catholics stand in the world; and the
look is not encouraging.
The “kingdoms of this world” are all, or mostly all, dead-set against
Catholicity. The Catholic Church is proscribed in Germany; proscribed in
Russia; tied down in Austria and Italy; hounded in Switzerland; vexed
and tormented in Spain and the states of South America. Looked at with
the eyes of ordinary common sense, and from a merely worldly
standipoint, the Catholic Church, under these governments, which are so
strong and powerful, and play so large and important a part in the
world, is in about as bad a condition as its worst wisher could desire.
By the governments mentioned, with some inequality in the degree of
severity, Catholicity is regarded and treated as at once a secret and an
open foe, whom it requires every device and strain of the law and the
resources of government to put down. What Emerson, in one of his latest
and best utterances, has said of the assertion of “moral sentiment” is
here exactly true of Catholicity: “Cities go against it; the college
goes against it; the courts snatch at any precedent, at any vicious
forms of law to rule it out; legislatures listen with appetite to
declamations against it, and vote it down. Every new assertion of the
right surprises us, like a man joining the church, and we hardly dare
believe he is in earnest.”[69]
The press is not only against it of its own accord, but is suborned to
be against it. Its supreme Pastor has literally scarcely a roof to cover
him in the states that through almost all the centuries of the Christian
era belonged to the church, and such a roof as he has hangs on the word
of a royal[70] robber, who, in turn, holds what he has and what he has
so ill-gotten by the slenderest of tenures—the breath of a mob. The city
that witnessed the divinization of paganism, its awful and just
overthrow, the long agony of the Catacombs, the building up of
Christendom on the pagan ruins, the glories of the “ages of faith,” is
to-day one of the chief centres of the new paganism, which has for its
deity nihilism. In all the world to-day no royal crusader is to be found
to draw his sword for Christ and Christ’s cross. The race of Charles
Martel, of Pepin, of Charlemagne, of Pelayo, of Godfrey de Bouillon, of
St. Louis of France, of Scanderbeg, of Sobieski, of Don Juan of Austria,
the race of heroes whose swords wrought miracles at Poitiers, at
Jerusalem, at Acre, at Rhodes, at Malta, at Vienna, at Lepanto, seems to
have died out, though a foe as terrible to Christianity as was ever the
old pagan North and the Moslem South and East besieges and threatens now
the citadel of the city of God. It is, perhaps, characteristic of the
age that the only one to assume the title of royal champion of the cross
should be the present Russian emperor. It is, perhaps, equally
characteristic of the wicked assumption that it should have met with so
fearful and unexpected a response at the hands of the wretched remnant
of a power that true Christianity had crippled, and would have smote to
the dust had not the division of Christendom lent allies from within the
camp to the ancient foe. Does it not look like a just retribution?
The Catholic Church stands between two revolutions—the revolution from
above and the revolution from below. Both alike have decreed its death.
The Herods, the Pilates, and the rabble, foes in all else, are friends
in this. _Delenda est Roma Catholica!_
This is no fancy picture. We are not speaking now of the church in
herself—that consideration will come later—but of the church as she
stands towards governments, or rather as they stand towards her. Even
where some comparative freedom is allowed her it is doled out gingerly
and grudgingly, or given under silent or open protest. The erection of a
free Catholic university in France—that is, a university independent of
the government: a government accused, too, of “clericalism”—is the
signal for the French “republicans,” as writers on this side of the
water insist on calling them, to be up in arms. Men laugh to-day at the
English Ecclesiastical Titles Act and the turmoil created by it. Yet it
moved liberal England in 1850 till the country rocked with the tumult of
it. Its author was a liberal leader. He is still living, we believe,
though it is hard to think of Earl Russell living and not using his
well-remembered voice. At all events he was living a few years ago, and
we heard him then—liberal as ever. He had promised to preside at a
meeting at Exeter Hall, London, to express sympathy with Prince Bismarck
and the German government in their contest with the Catholic Church—a
contest that we shall have occasion to refer to in another place. At the
last moment Earl Russell “caught a bad cold” and could not appear, but
his place as chief speaker was nobly taken—by whom? By a free American
citizen, the Rev. Joseph P. Thompson, D.D., formerly of the Church of
the Tabernacle in this city; and his closing advice to Prince
Bismarck—an advice thrice repeated—was to “stamp out” Catholicity.
These individual instances are only straws, but straws that betoken a
great deal of wind somewhere. Such liberty as the Catholic Church has is
only conceded to it when and where the very character and stability of
the governments necessitate its concession. Under such circumstances,
then, does it not sound strange and startling to be alarmed at a
“revival of Romanism”?
So much for the dark side of the picture; and there is no denying that
it is dark indeed. There is light, however, and the light is very strong
and lovely. If the race of royal men and heroes whose swords were ever
ready to be drawn in the cause of Christ seems to have quite died out,
the race of true Catholics has not died with them. Royalty, at its best
even, was generally and almost necessarily a treacherous ally to the
church. The kings have gone from the church, but the people remain. In
face of this universal, protracted, bitter, and resolute opposition to
Catholicity on the part of so many great states, we find the church, as
in the days of the apostles, adding daily to her number “those that
should be saved.” Here, too, we find, as in all Christian history, the
greatest and sharpest contrasts—those contrasts that it baffles human
ingenuity to explain. The Catholic Church is to-day strongest where,
according to human calculation, she ought to be weakest, and weakest
where she ought to be strongest. She flourishes best in what three
centuries of almost total estrangement have made to her foreign soil.
This it is that so puzzles Mr. Froude.