dealing with “Mary’s place in the divine plan of the universe”; the
second with “the grandeur of Mary’s destiny”; and the fourth with “the
consequences of Mary’s dignity relatively to God, to the human race,
and to herself.” The third book treats of “the perfections of Mary in
general,” and its arguments will be readily admitted by the reader who
has accepted those of the preceding books; the fifth, again, elucidates
“Mary’s merit and glory,” which no one will question who agrees with
the fourth book.
Father De Concilio shows himself a master by the easy strength with
which he expounds the divine plan of the universe, and the place which
the Incarnation holds therein. The eight articles of his first chapter
are thus recapitulated:
“End: The greatest possible manifestation and communication of divine
goodness.
“Preliminary means: Creation of substances, spiritual, material, and
composite—angels, matter, and men.
“Best means to the object: The hypostatic union of the Word with human
nature.
“Effects of the Incarnation with regard to God: Infinite glory and
honor.
“With regard to created nature: Universal deification.
“With regard to personalities: Deification of their nature in Christ,
and beatific union with the Trinity through their union with Christ by
sanctification.
“God foresees the fall, and permits it in order to enhance these
effects by redemption.”
We do not at all wonder at a reviewer in the Chicago _Interior_
complimenting our author on “profound scholarship in Catholic
theology.” “The book,” he says, “is bold to familiarity in describing
with scientific particularity and clearness of outline the constitution
of the Holy Trinity as defined by Catholic theologians.” We do,
however, wonder that this writer, if a believer in revelation, should
go on to compare Father De Concilio to a chemist analyzing “a pyrite of
iron,” and still more that he should declare his “ideas as grossly
_anthropomorphic_ as it is possible to be”(!) Would this critic call
the Bible anthropomorphic? He says nothing about our author’s theology
of the Incarnation—unless he means to hit at _that_ as
“anthropomorphic.” It is precisely about the Incarnation that
Protestants are utterly at sea. When the reviewer adds: “We can
understand, after examining this book, the character of Catholic
devotion to Mary as we never understood it before,” we are compelled to
reply: “Then your understanding of it is a greater mistake than ever
before, unless you have first come to realize the Catholic doctrine of
the Incarnation with its bearings; and if that were the case you would
avow it, for you could not remain a Protestant another hour.”
Let any Protestant of sufficient education read the first of these five
books earnestly and prayerfully, and he will have to acknowledge that
his hitherto Christianity, be it what it may, is divided _toto cœlo_
from Catholic Christianity—the _totum cœlum_ being precisely his lack
of that “knowledge of Mary” which is inseparable from an intelligent
belief in the Incarnation.
The Catholic student will be specially interested by the way in which
Father De Concilio treats of Mary’s “co-operation.” She is set
forth—and in a clearer light than ever before by any book in the
English language—as the great “representative _personality_” of our
race. It is in this capacity that she consents to the Incarnation and
Redemption. “A God-Man was necessary to expiate for the sins of
mankind. But that was not sufficient. According to the law of wisdom,
mentioned in our last argument, God was ready to help human nature to
that extent as to effect the Incarnation and produce the God-Man; but
God required, also, that mankind should do all it could towards its own
redemption. It could not give the God who was to divinize the acts of
human nature; it could not actually effect the union between human
nature and the divine person of the Word; but it could freely and
deliberately offer the nature to be united for the express purpose and
intent of suffering; and this offering could only be made by means of a
_representative human person_ fully conscious of the necessity of
expiation, of the conditions required by it, and of the consequences
resulting therefrom” (pp. 77, 78).
Again (pp. 78, 79): “The consent of Mary was required in the plan of
God in order to elevate created _personality_ to the highest possible
dignity, and thus to fulfil the end which God had proposed to himself
in exterior work.” This purpose, he goes on to say, was not completed
by God “taking human _nature_ to be his own nature, and to be God with
him.” ... “Human _personality_ does not exist in Christ, and receives
no honor from him. There is one person in him, and that is divine.” ...
“Mary, therefore (p. 80), fulfils the office of creation, and
especially of created personality, in its most sovereign act—the act
which this personality would have elicited in Jesus Christ, if it had
been in him. Human nature, such as it was in Christ, could not give
itself, because to give is a personal act, and God wished to carry to
its utmost extremity the communication of goodness, that human nature
should give itself in order to be made partaker of the responsibility
and attribution of the effects of that mysterious union.”
Having thus shown the inestimable importance of Mary’s consent to the
Incarnation, our author proceeds to point out “the extent or
comprehensiveness” of that consent—to wit, that “in giving her consent
to the Incarnation and redemption” she “not only agreed to become the
Mother of Jesus Christ the _Redeemer_, ... but also to become a
_co-sufferer_ with him; so that Mary’s Compassion was to accompany, to
go hand in hand with, Christ’s Passion, _both_ being _necessary_ for
the redemption of mankind, according to the plan selected by God’s
wisdom.”
Here is something new to us, but very delightful to discover, since it
glorifies Our Blessed Lady so much more than the ordinary view of her
Dolors. We knew that “she consented to undergo all the anguish and
sorrow and martyrdom consequent upon her from the sacrifice and
immolation of her divine Son,” and thus “join her _Compassion_ to his
Passion, in order to redeem mankind”; that, in this sense, she
“consented to become the _corredemptrix_ of the human race.” But it had
not occurred to us that “all this, implied in her consent, was
_necessary_ as that consent itself.”
Our author here quotes Father Faber’s theory about Mary’s privilege of
being “corredemptrix”—the term by which saints and doctors call her—and
shows that the gifted Oratorian, in his exquisite book on Mary’s
sorrows (_The Foot of the Cross_), “has not done justice to the
subject.” He even quarrels with Faber’s “co-redemptress” as a
“_substitution_” for the ancient “corredemptrix,” whereas it would
appear but a translation—that is, as Faber uses it. We feel sure, too,
that the English word _may_ mean the full equivalent of the Latin. But,
at all events, Father Faber’s theory is that Mary’s dolors were among
the _unnecessary_ sufferings of the Passion. “Indeed,” he says, “they
were literally our Lord’s unnecessary sufferings.... Her co-operation
with the Passion by means of her dolors is wanting, certainly, in that
indispensable necessity which characterizes the co-operation of her
maternity.” To this Father De Concilio remarks that Father Faber “had
an incomplete idea of the office of Mary as to redemption,” and objects
to the doctrine of “unnecessary sufferings” as “theologically
inaccurate, to say the least.” “The Passion of Christ,” he says, “must
be considered as a _variety_ of sorrows _co-ordained_ by the _unity_ of
the sacrifice—the beginning of which was the maternal womb, in which
the Incarnate Word placed himself in the state of a victim, and the
termination Calvary, where the grand holocaust was consummated.” And,
after establishing this point, he proceeds to prove that Mary’s
Compassion was “among the necessary elements of the redemption.” He
brings to light, both from the Fathers and from reason, “a principle in
the economy of our redemption,” whereby God had to supply, indeed, a
means of infinite merit (through the Incarnation), but, equally, had to
exact from humanity all that itself could do towards atonement. From
this principle he deduces three consequences:
_First_. That “our Lord’s humanity was to suffer as much as ... would
bear a kind of proportion to the offence and realize the principle that
human nature was to do as much as possible towards its own redemption.”
Whence, obviously, “the distinction of necessary and unnecessary
sufferings in the life of our Lord” is untenable.
_Second_. That “human nature was required to do more than suffer in
Christ. It was required to deliberately and willingly offer up that
human nature to be united to the Word of God for the purpose of
redemption, by means of a representative of the whole human race.”
Whence “the necessity of Mary’s consent to the Incarnation and
redemption.”
_Third_. That “it was necessary that the highest representative of
human personality, the human head of the race, _should be subject also
to the highest possible martyrdom which a human person may be subject
to_, as a reparation coming from a human personality, and unite it with
the sufferings of the humanity of the Word, and thus bring its own meed
of suffering required by God’s wisdom for our ransom.” “This was
necessary,” he adds, “because in our Lord _humanity suffered as a
nature, not as a personality_.”
From these deductions, then, the author concludes that “Mary’s
Compassion is a necessary element of the redemption, and Mary is really
and truly the corredemptrix of the human race.” But, of course, he is
careful to add that “Christ alone redeemed us truly, really, and
efficaciously, because he alone could give infinite value to those
sufferings, and, therefore, he is the only Redeemer. Mary is the
corredemptrix, but only in the sense just explained.” “Those,” he says,
“who are afraid to think Mary’s sufferings necessary for our redemption
are thinking only of the infinite value required for our sacrifice.
Mary has nothing to do with that. In speaking of her co-operation we
limit ourselves to speaking of what was required from human nature and
human personality as their mite towards redemption, independent of the
infinite worth to be given only by Christ’s infinite personality.”
To us, we must joyfully avow, this elaborate argument for Mary’s
greater glory appears irrefragable.
What specially delights us in the fourth book, again, is to see our
heavenly Mother proved the “channel” and “dispenser” of all grace.
This, also, is an unspeakable gain to us. And we need not say that if,
on the one hand, our learned theologian has invested his Queen with a
sublimity and an awe that makes us feel how unworthy of her notice is
our best of love and service, he has inspired us, on the other hand,
with more confidence than ever in her tenderness and power.
Those, too, of our readers who have a turn for contemplation and have
thought much on Our Lady will meet in these pages with many an idea
which has come into their minds before, and which, perhaps, they have
been afraid to disclose, or even harbor. Such will join with us in
revelling over the logic which makes blessed certainties of these
exquisite guesses.
In conclusion, we are quite unable to express our thanks to Father De
Concilio for his magnificent book. But he does not need our gratitude.
She whose champion he is will not fail to fulfil in his regard the
promise which to him must be so precious: _Qui elucidant me vitam
æternam habebunt_—“They who make me shine forth shall have life
everlasting.”
WHY A CATHOLIC IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY? By William Giles Dix. New
York: The Catholic Publication Society Co., 9 Barclay Street. 1878.
The author of this essay once contributed to THE CATHOLIC WORLD a
thoughtful article called “The Roman Gathering.” (See CATHOLIC WORLD,
May, 1868.) He was then a Protestant. It is consoling to find him no
longer among those who, while forced to envy the Catholic Church,
remain outside her communion on the strength of some hazy theory or
from a superstitious dread of using their reason. Having come, by God’s
grace, to see the truth himself, he aims at making others see it
equally clearly. He shows very forcibly, and in simple language, “that
the New Testament, and the Protestant version of that, proves these
propositions:
“I. Christ founded a church.
“II. Christ founded _one_ church, one only: _not a corporation of
national churches, not a federal union of churches_, but literally one
church.
“III. That one church of Christ was intended to be the only spiritual
guide, on earth, of Christians.
“IV. That [this] church had the promise of endurance and of guidance
until the end of the world.
“V. That [this] church was the beginning of the church known
historically as the Catholic Church.”
Of course this is very old ground; but Mr. Dix goes over it in a way
that ought to induce earnest Protestants of any denomination to follow
him.
Here is an excellent hit:
“A word is in many mouths—_Ultramontane_—intended to represent extreme
views of papal rights. Now, I care not whom you select among the
defenders of the powers of St. Peter and his successors, you will find
the attributes ascribed by any such writer to the successors of St.
Peter not so strong as the single commission of our Lord to his
apostles recorded in the New Testament. _The most ultramontane writers
that I know of are Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John._ The only difficulty
which any one finds in the interpretation of the words of our Lord
referring to his church is because those words are so plain and direct.
They so clearly set forth the amplest prerogatives ever claimed for the
Church of Christ that many people seem to believe that they cannot mean
what they seem to mean, and, therefore, must be explained away.”
We hope this short essay will meet with the success its ability
deserves. We regret, however, to say that while the plainness of its
language is a great point in its favor, its style is open to
improvement.
THE MIRROR OF TRUE WOMANHOOD. A Book of Instruction for Women in the
World. By Rev. Bernard O’Reilly. New York: Peter F. Collier. 1878.
Dr. O’Reilly continues to lay Catholics under obligation to his fluent
and versatile pen. He has a keen instinct for what is wanting in
Catholic popular literature, and this large and handsome volume fills a
niche in the Catholic household that was too long left empty. Women in
the world are apt to be overlooked by spiritual writers, or the works
intended for them are of a character not well adapted to attract the
average woman of the world, however good she may be. They need
something to take hold of their homes and their hearts, and to enter
into their ordinary daily life. This Dr. O’Reilly’s excellent volume
aims at doing, and, we trust, will succeed in doing. It is a work of
practical suggestion, illustrated and annotated, so to say, by examples
from the lives of women in all ages and in every station of life. A
tender heart, a practical mind, and a pious soul speak in every line.
It is the mother first of all who is chiefly instrumental in shaping
the life of man. If she is good and pure and high-minded, a constant
example of the height and greatness of those noblest of estates,
wifehood and motherhood, the chances are altogether in favor of her
children following her example. She is their great safeguard, their
earthly guardian-angel until they are properly launched upon the sea of
life, and even after that period her heart follows them and her virtues
live in their memory and their lives. It is because so many women
neglect this high office that so many children go astray. Virtue
belongs to no class; it is common to all Christians. The truest
nobility is a Christian life, which is open to all. The object of his
book is well described by Dr. O’Reilly in the “Introductory”: “It is
precisely because women are, by the noble instincts which God has given
to their nature, prone to all that is most heroic that this book has
been written for them. It aims at setting before their eyes such
admirable examples of every virtue most suited to their sex, in every
age and condition of life, that they have only to open its pages in
order to learn at a glance what graces and excellences render girlhood
as bright and fragrant as the garden of God in its unfading bloom, and
ripe womanhood as glorious and peerless in its loveliness and power as
the May moon in its perfect fulness when she reigns alone over the
starry heavens.” We cannot too earnestly recommend _The Mirror of True
Womanhood_ to women of every class, station, and time of life.
SHAKSPEARE’S HOME: Visited and Described by Washington Irving and F. W.
Fairholt. With a letter from Stratford. By J. F. Sabin. With
etchings by J. F. and W. W. Sabin. New York: J. Sabin & Sons. 1877.
This is an interesting little volume. A fair idea of its contents may
be gathered from the title. The etchings are carefully executed, and
are full of promise.
WHAT CATHOLICS DO NOT BELIEVE. A Lecture delivered in Mercantile
Library Hall, on Sunday evening. Dec. 16, 1877. By Right Rev. P. J.
Ryan, Bishop of Triconia, and Coadjutor to the Archbishop of St.
Louis. St. Louis: P. Fox. 1878.
It was a happy thought to publish this lecture in pamphlet form; for
the matter which it contains is worthy of wide dissemination and close
study. Bishop Ryan has here presented some admirable points in an
admirable manner to the consideration of fair-minded men who are
interested in the doings and the faith of the Catholic Church. He has
taken up a few of the chief current objections against the church, set
them strongly forward, and then disposed of them in a manner that wins
admiration as much for its honesty and calmness as for its completeness
and skill. We understand that it has provoked much discussion in St.
Louis, in the public press and elsewhere. Such discussion can only do
good. We strongly recommend the pamphlet to Catholic and Protestant
alike. It is interesting for its own sake; it will be of great use to
the Catholic who is thrown into non-Catholic society; it will relieve
the fairly-disposed Protestant mind of some inherited darkness and much
foolish misconception.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.
THE WRITTEN WORD; or, Considerations on the Sacred Scriptures. By
William Humphrey, Priest of the Society of Jesus.
THE CHRISTIAN REFORMED IN MIND AND MANNERS. By Benedict Rogacci, of the
Society of Jesus. Translation edited by Henry James Coleridge, of
the same Society.
THE ART OF KNOWING OURSELVES; or, The Looking-Glass which does not
Deceive. By Fr. John Peter Pinamonti, S.J. With Twelve
Considerations on Death, by Fr. Luigi La Nuza, S.J., and Four on
Eternity, by Fr. John Baptist Manni, S.J.
LIFE OF HENRI PLANCHAT, Priest of the Congregation of the Brothers of
St. Vincent de Paul, etc., etc., One of the Hostages Massacred by
the Commune at Belleville, May 36, 1871. By Maurice Maignen, Member
of the Congregation of Brothers of St. Vincent de Paul. Translated
from the French, with an Introductory Preface, by Rev. W. H.
Anderdon, S.J.
A VISIT TO THE ROMAN CATACOMBS. By Rev. J. Spencer Northcote, D.D.
MEDITATIONS. From the Spanish of Rev. Fr. Alonso de Andrade, S.J.
ERLESTON GLEN. A Lancashire Story of the Sixteenth Century. By Alice
O’Hanlon.
[All the above are published by Burns & Oates, London, and are for sale
by The Catholic Publication Society Co.
PENITENTIARY SERMONS. By Rev. Theodore Noethen, Catholic Chaplain.
Albany: Van Benthuysen Printing-House. 1877.
THE TOWER OF PERCEMONT. A Novel. From the French of George Sand. New
York: D. Appleton & Co. 1877.
THE SCHOLASTIC ALMANAC for the year of our Lord 1878. Compiled by J. A.
Lyons. Notre Dame, Ind.: The Scholastic Printing-Office.
TO THE SUN. A Journey through Planetary Space. From the French of Jules
Verne. By Edward Roth. Illustrated. Philadelphia: Claxton, Remsen &
Haffelfinger. 1878.
IRELAND: As She Is, As She Has Been, and As She Ought To Be. By James
J. Clancy. New York: Thomas Kelly. 1877.
NEW IRELAND. By A. M. Sullivan, Member of Parliament for Louth.
Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1878.
LIVES AND TIMES OF ILLUSTRIOUS AND REPRESENTATIVE IRISHMEN. By Thomas
Clarke Luby, A.B., T.C.D. Part II. New York: Thomas Kelly.
HOLY CHURCH, THE CENTRE OF UNITY; or, Ritualism Compared with
Catholicism: Reasons for Returning to the True Fold. By T. H. Shaw.
London: R. Washbourne. 1877.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XXVI., No. 156.—MARCH, 1878.
IRELAND IN 1878.
I.
A history of Ireland still remains to be written; nor has there been
even an attempt to collect some of the chief materials for such a work.
Ten centuries of almost continuous conflict since the Danish
incursions, or seven since the Anglo-Norman settlement and the
destruction or dispersion of the national archives, are sufficient to
account for the absence of any full, authentic, or valuable Irish
history. From Giraldus Cambrensis in the twelfth century to Froude in
our day, there have never been wanting subsidized, and even able,
writers to defame and revile the native population and laud the English
rule in Ireland. Nor, on the other hand, has there been any lack of
enthusiasts whose patriotism, more ardent than their erudition is
profound or exact, is ever ready to excuse or defend the natives and
execrate the Anglo-Norman and Saxon tyrants and despoilers. Even in
Ireland it is difficult to obtain reliable information regarding the
country; while outside of it such aim is impossible of attainment. The
dispersion of the Irish race during the last thirty years has been
greater in extent and over a larger area of the globe than any exodus
of humanity known to history. These millions have carried the
traditions of their country’s wrongs, and the dismal tales of the
misgovernment of Ireland, to the uttermost ends of the earth,
exaggerating, perhaps, the oppression of their persecutors, and
depicting in touching sympathy the glowing virtues of the victims. The
largest contingent of this Irish emigration has enriched the United
States of America, where partiality has culminated in alternate praise
and censure of the Irish race. The circumstances under which most of
these people reached the American shores were truly tragic and
appalling, and are well-nigh forgotten by the older portion of the
generation now passing away.
The estimated population of Ireland in 1845 was 8,295,061, which made
it then one of the most densely peopled countries in Europe. In the
autumn of that year the potato crop, one of the chief products of the
country and the staple food of three-fifths of the people, failed,
involving a loss estimated by Mr. Labouchere, the British minister, of
eighty million dollars, or sixteen millions sterling. This failure in
1845 was followed by successive blights of the potato-crop in 1846 and
subsequent years, causing what is called the Irish famine, and with it
the great emigration, which brought an increase of millions of citizens
to the United States. There had been an Irish immigration in America
from the earliest days of the colony—to Maryland, for example, in the
seventeenth century; but the Irish famine of 1845–49 marks the opening
of the great influx of Irish into the United States and Canada.