"But I am not willing," continues the preacher, "that this effrontery [what effrontery?] of this question should be let go even with this answer." We can easily believe it. "I am ready to call witnesses." Well, dear doctor, your witnesses; we are ready to hear their testimony. "Whoever heard of a Catholic Bible Society multiplying copies of the Bible?" Nobody that we know of. But how long is it since Protestants had a Bible Society? Prior to that, did they prohibit the use of the Holy Scriptures? "Popes have fulminated their bulls against Bible Societies, denouncing them as an invention of the devil." Not unlikely; but it is one thing to denounce Bible Societies, and another to prohibit the use or the reading of the Bible. Your witnesses. Rev. sir, do not testify to the point. Besides, all the facts, or pretended facts, you bring forward are too recent for your purpose. The accusation that the Church prohibits the use of the Scriptures was made by Protestants long before any of them are even said to have occurred, and therefore could not have originated in them.Ex-post factocauses are not admitted in catholic philosophy. The charge brought against the Church betrays no little folly and ingratitude. If the Church had prohibited the use of the Scriptures, how could the Reformers have got a copy of them? They certainly purloined them from her, and could have got them from no other source.
The preacher concludes his first sermon by saying: "I am glad the time has come when it is understood on both sides that, if the Roman Church is to commend itself to the American people, it must begin by repudiating, as horrible and detestable, the teaching and practice for three hundred years of the church." What has for three hundred years been falsely alleged by her enemies to be her teaching and practice, agreed; but what has really been her teaching and practice, denied. "Let it but make good this new claim, and we thank God for the new reformation, and welcome it to the platform of Protestantism." There is no new claim in the case; what the tract asserts has always been the doctrine and practice of the church; she has always encouraged the use and opposed the abuse of the Holy Scriptures. That the preacher should desire a new reformation can be easily understood, for the old has well-nigh run out; that he will ever be able to welcome the church to the platform of Protestantism is, however, not likely; for she is not fond of standing on platforms, and prefers to remain seated on the rock. The reverend gentleman may be shocked to hear it; but it is, nevertheless, a fact, that the Bible and reason are not special Protestant possessions; they were ours ages before Protestantism was born, and will be ours ages after Protestantism is dead and forgotten.
2. In his second sermon—in a note to which he corrects his assertion that it was the Catholic version of Martini, and states that it was the Protestant version of Diodati, that was used by the godly family of the Madiai—the preacher confines his efforts to questions raised by the tract with regard to the worship of images and pictures, and of the Blessed Virgin and the saints. The tract asks:
"Is it honestto accuse Catholics of paying divine worship to images or pictures as the heathen do—when any Catholic indignantly repudiates any idea of the kind, and when the Council of Trent distinctly declares the doctrine of the Catholic Church in regard to them to be, 'that there is no divinity or virtue in them which should appear to claim the tribute of one's veneration;' but that all the honor which is paid to them shall be referred to the originals whom they are designed to represent?' (Sess. 25.)
"The answer to this question," the preacher says, "is to be found by asking two others: 1. What sort of honors do the heathen pay to images? 2. What sort of honors do Roman Catholics pay to them? When we have got answers to these two, we can compare them, and shall be able to say whether they are the same."
We respectfully submit that neither of these questions need be asked; for so far as pertinent, both are answered in the tract itself. The accusation against Catholics which the tract implies cannot be honestly made, is that we paydivineworship to images and pictures, as the heathen do; what the tract then denies is that Catholics paydivineworship to images and pictures; and what it asserts is, that the heathen do pay them divine worship; but this assertion is simply illustrative, and should it be found inexact, it would not affect the formal denial that the worship Catholics pay them isdivine. As to what sort of worship Catholics do render to images and pictures, the answer in the tract is explicit, that it is a "certain tribute of veneration paid them in honor of their original. The worship is not divine worship, and the honor paid is not paid to them for any virtue in them, but is referred solely to their originals." The catechism puts this clearly enough. "Q. And is it allowable to honor relics, crucifixes, and holy pictures? A.Yes; with an inferior and relative honor, as they relate to Christ and his saints, and are the memorials of them.Q. May we then pray to relics and images? A.No; by no means, for they have no life or sense to hear or help us."
The preacher labors to show that this inferior and relative honor is precisely what the heathen pay to the images of their gods; but this, if true, would not prove that we do, but that the heathen do not, pay divine honors to images. He cites various authorities, Christian and heathen, to prove that it is not the brass and gold and silver, when fashioned into a statue, that the heathen worship, but that through the statue or image they worship the invisible gods; that is, they worship the image as the visible representation of the invisible divinity. This is, no doubt, in some respects, the actual fact; nobody pretends that they worship precisely the material statue, but the numen or god, the prayers, invocations, incantations, and the other ceremonies of the consecration of the statue by the priests compelled to enter the statue and take up his abode in it. But to this image, which for them contains the god, the heathen offer sacrifices and other acts of worship which are due to God alone, which makes all the difference in the world, though we have no doubt that the type copied, perverted, corrupted, and travestied in heathen worship is the Catholic type; as all heathenism is a corruption, perversion, or travesty of the true religion, or as Protestantism is a corruption, perversion, or travesty of the Catholic Church.
The heathen images and pictures represent no absent reality, and are not memorials of an absent truth, like our sacred images and pictures; and the heathen, then, can honor only the material substance or the supposed indwelling numen or daemon. The gods they are supposed to bring nigh, represent, or render visible, are either purely imaginary, or evil spirits; hence the Scripture tells us that "all the gods of the heathen are devils." And finally, to these idols, which are nothing but wood and stone, brass and silver, or gold, which represent, if anything, demons or devils, the heathen pay divine honors; while we simply honor and respect images and pictures of our Lord and his saints for the sake of the originals, or the worth to which they are related.Here is a difference which we should suppose even our Protestant doctor capable of perceiving and recognizing.
The preacher forgets that what is denied by the tract is, that we pay divine honors to sacred images and pictures, and cites ample authority to prove that we do not pay divine honors to them or through them. We offer them no sacrifices, and we offer them no prayers or praises, even as symbols or as memorials of a worth they represent. They are never the media through which we honor that worth; but we honor them for the sake of the worth to which they are related, as the pious son honors the picture of his mother, the patriot the picture of the father of his country, or the lover the portrait of his mistress. The respect we pay them springs from one of the deepest and purest principles of human nature, and can be condemned only by those who hold that there is nothing good in nature, and condemn as evil and only evil whatever is natural.
The minister thinks that, even should enlightened and intelligent Catholics understand the question as explained by the catechism and defined by the Council of Trent, yet ignorant Catholics may not; and with them the honors paid to images and pictures actually degenerate into idolatry. He asks:
"But how in this respect do the people of modern Italy differ from those of ancient and heathen Italy? Do the practices of the people there correspond to the doctrines of the theologians, or have they, as of old time, 'bettered the instruction?' Do they pay no special veneration, as if there were some special virtue in the image itself, to those images that are reputed to bleed or sweat, or to the pictures that wink? If it was only as a guide of the thoughts toward the person represented that the image or picture served, then one image would serve as well as another, except that those in which the skill and genius of the artist had most excelled to represent in touching and vivid portraiture the object of the worship, might be preferred above ruder and coarser works. But as I have passed from church to church in those lands in which the Roman system has had unlimited opportunity to work itself out into practice, and have 'beheld the devotions' of the people, I have seen certain statues frequented by a multitude of worshippers, and visited by pilgrims from afar, who had come to bow down before them, and hung with myriads of votive offerings—waxen effigies of arms and legs and other members that had been healed in consequence of prayers to that particular image. And one fact, which I did not then appreciate the bearing of, was constantly observed by myself and my companion—that these objects of special worship and veneration wereneverworks of superior art, but commonly rude, and sometimes even grotesque. The inexpressibly beautiful and touching statue by Bernini, of the Virgin holding upon her knees the body of the dead Jesus, is in the crypt of St. Peter's, and admiring critics go down to study it by torchlight. But the image which isadoredis a grimy bronze idol above it in the nave of St. Peter's, which is so venerated as the statue of that apostle that the toes of the extended foot have been actually kissed away by the adorations of the faithful."
It is very evident that the preacher, whatever opportunities he may have had, knows very little of the Catholic people in general, or of the Italian people in particular, and his guesses would deserve more respect if made in relation to his own people. Protestants have no distinctive worship which can be offered to God alone, and are therefore very poor judges of what they may see going on before their eyes among a Catholic people. The Church is responsible only for the faith she teaches and the practices she enjoins, approves, or permits. If the people depart from this faith and abuse these practices in their practical devotion, the fault, since she takes away no one's freedom, is theirs, not hers.The worship that Catholics render to God, the honor they pay to the saints, and the respect they entertain for sacred images, differs not, as all worship with Protestants must, simply as more or less, but in kind, and not even a Protestant community can be found so ignorant as not to be able to distinguish between an image or a picture and the saint or person intended to be represented by it. For the many years we lived as a Protestant we never met any one of our brethren who mistook his mother's portrait for his mother herself, or the statue of a distinguished statesman for the statesman himself. Who ever mistakes the equestrian statue of George Washington in Union Square for George Washington on horseback, or confounds Andrew Jackson himself with Mill's ugly equestrian statue of him in one of the squares of Washington? Who could mistake the bronze horse on which the image of the old General is placed, and which you fear every moment is going to tilt over backward, for a real horse? Well, my dear doctor, however ignorant these Italian people may be whom you see kneeling before an image or a picture of the Madonna, they know more of the doctrines of the Gospel, more of God, and of man's duties and relations to him, more of his proper worship, than the most enlightened non-Catholic community that exists or ever existed on the earth. They may not know as much of error against faith and piety, of false theories and crude speculations as non-Catholics; but they know more of Christianity, more of what Christianity really is, what it teaches, and what it exacts of the faithful, than the wisest and most learned of your sectarian ministers, not even excepting yourself.
With regard to bleeding, sweating, or winking pictures, if you find people believing in them, you will never find among Catholics any who believe that they bleed, sweat, or wink by any virtue that is in the picture itself; but that the phenomenon is a miracle, which God works by the saint pictured. You may doubt the miracle, but not reasonably, unless on the ground that the evidence in the case is insufficient. Whoever believes in God believes in the possibility of miracles, and there is nothing more miraculous in a picture of the Madonna winking, sweating, or bleeding, than there was in Balaam's ass speaking and rebuking his master. It is simply a question of fact. If the proofs are conclusive, the fact is to be believed; if insufficient, no one is bound to believe it.
If you find the people flocking to a particular image or picture and bringing to it their votive offerings, it certainly is not, as the preacher takes notice, on account of its merit as a work of art; for the Italian people, with all their love and exquisite taste for art, do not, like so many non-Catholics, confound artistic culture with religious culture; nor is it because they hold that there is any hidden virtue in that particular image or picture itself, but because the saint whose it is, has or is believed to have specially favored those who have invoked him before it. They may or may not be mistaken as to the fact, but the principle, on which the special devotion to our Lady or a saint before a particular shrine is a correct one; and there is in the practice no special honor to the image or picture for its own sake, and consequently nothing necessarily superstitious or idolatrous.
Even if, as there is no reason to believe, the statue of St. Peter in St. Peter's at Rome, and which the preacher calls a "grimy bronze idol," was originally, as he tells us some say it was, a statue of Jupiter, the honor paid to it by the faithful would not be paid to Jupiter, while intended to be paid to St. Peter.But the toes of the image have been worn away by the kisses of the worshippers; and do not these kisses prove that Catholics adore the image? The heathen adore their gods by kissing the feet of their statues; and when Catholics kiss the feet of the images of their saints, how can it be said that they do not worship or adore images as the heathen do? The heathen use incense in the worship of idols; Moses prescribes incense, and the Jews use it in their worship of the true God; therefore the Jews are idolaters! The preacher forgets that what the tract declares to be dishonest is the accusation that Catholics paydivineworship, that is, the worship due to God alone, to images and pictures, as the heathen do. To kiss the feet of the statue of St. Peter, from love and devotion to the saint himself, the prince of the apostles, on whom our Lord founded his church, is not to pay divine worship to the image, nor even to Peter himself. Were we so happy as to find ourselves at St. Peter's in Rome, we are quite sure that we should kneel before the statue of St. Peter, and kiss its feet, running the risk of its having been once a statue of Jupiter, and we should do it as a proper method of expressing our love and veneration for the great apostle, and as simply and innocently as the mother kisses the carefully preserved portrait of her beloved son slain in battle for his faith or his country. As to using the forms used by the heathen to express affection or devotion, if proper in themselves, we have as little scruple as we have in using the language which our ancestors used in the worship of Woden or Thor, in our prayers and praises to the One Ever-living and True God.
3. The sermon next takes up the false accusation that Catholics pay divine worship to the Blessed Virgin and the saints. The tract asks:
"Is IT HONESTto accuse Catholics of putting the Blessed Virgin or the Saints in the place of God or the Lord Jesus Christ—when the Council of Trent declares that it is simply useful to ask their intercession in order to obtain favor from God, through his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who alone is our Saviour and Redeemer—"When 'asking their prayers and influence with God,' is exactly of the same nature as when Christians ask the pious prayers of one another?"
The preacher says, "At the outset let me remark, that the question what Roman Catholicsdois not conclusively answered by quoting what the Council of Trent declares." This supposes that the same rule must be applied to Catholics, who have an authoritative church, that is applicable to non-Catholics, who have none, or to people among whom every one believes according to his own private judgment, and does what is right in his own eyes. But this is not permissible. Our faith is taught and defined by authority, and to know what we as Catholics believe or do, you must be certain what the church authoritatively teaches or prescribes. We cannot go contrary to that and be Catholics. No doubt Catholics may depart from the faith of the church, and disobey her precepts; but when they obstinately persist in doing so, they cease to be Catholics in faith and practice, and their belief or their practice is of no account in judging what is or is not Catholic doctrine or practice. They who believe or do anything contrary to what is declared by the Council of Trent, arepro tantonon-Catholics. To know what is Catholic faith and Catholic practice, you have only to consult the standards, of the Catholic Church—not every individual Catholic, as you must every individual Protestant when you wish to ascertain what is Protestant opinion and practice.Our standards speak for themselves; and in determining what Catholicity enjoins or allows, you must consult them, and them only.
Mr. Bacon and his brethren have as free access to our standards as we ourselves have, and they must remain under the charge of dishonestly misrepresenting us, or prove by our standards that the church offers or authorizes or does not forbid her children from offering divine worship to the Blessed Virgin. Their surmises, their conjectures, their inferences from what they see among Catholics, but do not understand, must be thrown out as inadmissible testimony. There are the standards: if they sustain you, well and good; if not, you are convicted, and judgment must go against you. This is the case presented by the tract, and which Mr. Bacon and his friends are to meet fairly and squarely.
Now, the tract shows from the standards, from the Council of Trent, which is plenary authority in the case, that the accusation against Catholics of "putting the Blessed Virgin or the saints in the place of God or the Lord Jesus Christ," is an accusation so manifestly untrue that no one can honestly make it. Here also is the catechism, which the church teaches all her children. "Q. Does this commandment [the first] forbid all honor and veneration of saints and angels?No; we are to honor them as God's special friends and servants, but not with the honor which belongs to God." The Council of Trent declares that "it is good and useful to ask the saints who reign together with Christ in heaven, to pray for us," "or to ask favors for us from our Lord Jesus Christ, who alone is our Redeemer and Saviour." We ask the saints in heaven, as we ask our friends on earth, to pray for us. Here is the whole principle of the case. The Council of Trent, Sess. 22, c. 3, defines that, "though the church is accustomed to celebrate masses in honor of the saints, yet she teaches they are never to be offered to them, but to God alone."Non tamen illis sacrificium offerri docet, sed Deo soli, qui illos coronavit.Now, with Catholics the distinctively divine worship, the supreme worship due to God alone, and which it would be idolatry to offer to any other, is sacrifice, the highest possible sacrifice, the sacrifice of the Mass, which our priests offer every day on the altar; the one unbloody sacrifice which was offered in a bloody manner on Calvary. This is offered to God alone; all else that is offered to God in worship, prayer, praise, love, veneration, may, in kind at least, be offered to men. We honor the chief magistrate, whether called king or emperor, president or governor; we honor the prelates whom the Holy Ghost has placed over us in the church; we pray to or petition rulers and men in authority; we chant the praises of the great and the heroic; we love our country, our family, and friends; we venerate the wise and the good, who, in services to the cause of truth, morals, and religion, prove themselves godlike. That Protestants, who have no sacrifice, no priest, no altar, no victim, should mistake the nature of ourcultus sanctorum, is not surprising, for they have nothing in kind to offer God that we do not offer to the saints, especially to the queen of saints, the Blessed Mother of God. But this is their fault, not ours; for it is easy for them to know—for our standards tell them so—that we as Catholics place the supreme act of worship in the sacrifice of the Mass—holding that only God is an adequate offering to God, and that the sacrifice of the Mass is never offered to the saints or to any but God alone.There is a marked difference between ourcultus sanctorumand that with which men like Mr. Bacon, of Brooklyn, seek to identify it. The heathen offered sacrifices, the highest form of worship they had, to their idols, their demigods and heroes; we offer the highest worship which we have—and we have it only through God's goodness—to the one, living, true God only. This proves that the accusation against Catholics of putting the Blessed Virgin and the saints, as objects of worship, in the place of God, is a false accusation, so well known or so easily known to be false, that no one of ordinary intelligence can honestly make it.
But the preacher supposes that Catholics, in other respects, put them in the place of God. This is impossible. Catholics hold that the saints, with the Blessed Virgin at their head, are men and women—creatures whom God has made, has redeemed with his own blood, and has elevated, sanctified, and glorified by his grace, and therefore they cannot identify them with him or substitute them for him. We hold that Mary is the Mother of Christ, and that he is her Lord as well as ours, and that it is through his merits alone, applied beforehand, that she was conceived without original stain; and can anybody, so believing, mistake her for her Son, in any respect put her in his place, or assign to her his mediatorial work? The very fears expressed by our Protestant friends that we do or are liable to do so, prove that even they are able to discriminate between her and her Son; why not then we?
The reverend gentleman continues:
"We are invited to several inquiries. First: Is it true that the prayers that are offered by Roman Catholics to departed saints, and especially to that holy woman whom we with them in all generations unite to call the blessed, are only of such a nature as we might offer to a fellow-Christian here upon the earth in soliciting his prayers in our behalf? Secondly: Are these supplications only for favor and influence, or are they for the direct gift of blessing and salvation? Do they put Mary into the place of Christ, the one Mediator between God and man; making of the All-Merciful Saviour who inviteth all to come unto him, an inaccessible object of dread and terror, whom we dare not approach except through the mediation of Mary? Do they ascribe to her the glory due to Christ, the only name given under heaven among men whereby we may be saved? Do they profess faith in her alone for salvation? Do they put the saints in the place of the Holy Ghost, by supplicating from them directly the divine gift of holiness and the renewal of the sinful heart?"
We have answered these questions by anticipation. It is probable that Catholics believe somewhat more distinctly and more firmly in "the one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus," than do the sects, and are less likely to forget it, seeing that all their practical devotions, public and private, the great honors given to Mary and the saints are founded on it and tend directly to keep us from forgetting it. Catholics do not pray to Mary because they regard the All-merciful Saviour as inaccessible, or as an object of dread and terror; nor because she comes in between them and him, represents him, or enables them to approach him through her, as is evident from the fact that we not unfrequently directly beseech him to grant that she and other saints may pray for us. We honor her as the mother of God in his human nature. We pray to her to pray to him for us, not only because she is our mother as well as his, but because she is dear to her Son our Lord, and he delights to honor her by granting her requests.For a like reason we invoke the saints, that is, ask them to pray for us. We must then be more ignorant and stupid than even our sectarian ministers believe us, if, in praying to them because as his friends they are dear to him, we substitute them for him from whom what we seek can alone come. If we believe they themselves give it, why do we ask them to pray him to grant it? Cannot our acute and ingenious doctor see that the invocation of saints renders the error he supposes Catholics fall into utterly impossible in the case of the most ignorant Catholic, and that it tends to fix the mind and the heart directly on the fact that every good and every perfect gift is from above and cometh down from the Father of lights? Can he not see that the intercession we invoke is a clear confession of the truth he thinks it obscures or obliterates? If we think the good comes from them, why do we ask them to intercede with Christ to bestow it? Why not ask it of them? But is it true, as the tract affirms, that we ask nothing of Mary and the saints in heaven that it would be improper to ask of our fellow-Christian? This is not precisely what the tract asserts. It asserts that asking their prayers and influence is exactly of the same nature, that is, the same in principle, with what Christians do when they ask the pious prayers of one another. To this the preacher replies:
"I hold here a volume of 800 pages, almost every one of which contains an answer to these questions, so far as I honestly read it, in the affirmative. It isThe Glories of Mary, by St. Alphonsus Liguori, approved by John, Archbishop of New-York. I scarcely know where to begin quoting, or to cease."'O Mary, sweet refuge of miserable sinners, assist me with thy mercy. Keep far from me my infernal enemies, andcome thyselfto take my soul and present it to my eternal Judge.' 'All the mercies ever bestowed upon men have come through Mary.' 'Mary is called the gate of heaven, because no one can enter heaven if he does not pass through Mary, who is the door of it.' 'As we have access to the eternal Father only through Jesus Christ, so we have access to Jesus Christ only through Mary.'"'Mary is the peacemaker between sinners and God.' 'My Mother Mary, to thy hands I commit the cause of my eternal salvation. To thee I consign my soul; it was lost, but thou must save it.' 'Thou art the advocate, the mediatrix of reconciliation, the only hope, and the most secure refuge of sinners.' 'I place in thee all my hopes of salvation.' 'She is the advocate of the world and the true mediatrix between God and man.' 'Blessed is he who clings with love and confidence to those two anchors of salvation, Jesus and Mary.' 'Deliver me from the burden of my sins; dispel the darkness of my mind; banish earthly affections from my heart.' 'O Lady, change us from sinners to saints.'"
Tastes differ, and not every Catholic would employ every expression used by St. Alphonsus in hisGlories of Mary; but none of these expressions convey to the Catholic mind what they do to the Protestant mind; for Catholics have a key to their meaning in their faith in the incarnation. The strongest of them is justified by the relation of Mary to that great mystery in which centres and from which radiates the whole of Christianity. From her was taken that flesh, that human nature, in which God redeems and saves us; and being taken from her, she has a relation to God, our Saviour, and consequently to our redemption and salvation, which no other woman, no other creature, has or can have. This relation explains the passages in the Litany of our Lady of Loretto, and those passages of St. Alphonsus and other Catholic writers which assert that all mercies and graces come from God through her. They all come from God in his human nature; and as that nature was taken from her, they must in some sense come through her.They come through her, because they come from God as born of her. They also come through her, because God, her divine Son, who gives them, loves her as his mother, and delights to honor with the highest honor a creature can receive; he therefore confers the favors mortals pray for only through her intercession. But as all the special honor done to her is done only in consequence of her relation as his mother, the higher we carry that honor the more clear, distinct, and energetic our conviction of the fact of the incarnation, and the more impossible it must be for us to put her in the place of the Incarnate Word, or to substitute her for her Son, who is the one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus. To do so would be not only to rob him of his glory, but to deny her title to that very honor given to her as the mother of God. Catholics are not capable of anything so illogical and absurd.
The key to the other expressions objected in St. Alphonsus is in this same relation to the incarnation and the confidence of the Saint in the power and efficacy of Mary's prayers or intercession for us with her divine Son. He confides to Mary, leaves in her hands the cause of his eternal salvation, as the client confides his cause to his advocate or counsel. "My soul," he says, "was lost, but thou must save it"—by thy intercession with thy Son, who will deny thee nothing thou dost ask, because thou canst never ask but what he inspires thee to ask, and what is agreeable to his will, and he delights to honor thee before heaven and earth by granting thy requests. In the same way understand the expressions, "the advocate," "the mediatrix of reconciliation," and all the rest. The term mediatrix is not the best possible, because it is liable to mislead not a Catholic, but a non-Catholic, who believes little in the incarnation, and refuses to interpret the language of Catholics by the official teaching of their church. The Catholic always knows in what sense it is said, and for him the explanations are never necessary; still less are they necessary for Him who sees and knows the thoughts and intents of the heart before they are even formed. It is the duty of non-Catholics to consult the standards of the church and to explain what seems to them difficult or inexact in the warm and energetic expressions of Catholic love and devotion by them; and it is not honest to found a charge against Catholics on such expressions without having done so. The preacher continues:
"'Is IT HONEST to accuse Catholics of putting the Blessed Virgin or the saints in the place of God or of the Lord Jesus Christ? You have the answer. You know the place which God claims for himself the 'honor which He will not give to another.' You have heard from the very words of the Roman Catholics themselves the place to which they exalt the spirits of departed men and women."
Yes, you have the answer such as your minister gives; and we have shown that his answer misinterprets facts which he does not understand; that it refuses to interpret them by the key furnished in the official teaching of the church; that it contradicts itself, and proves, if anything, the falsity of the very charge it undertakes to establish, and therefore clears neither him nor you, if you accept it, from the charge of dishonestly bringing false accusations against the church of God.
"Is IT HONESTto assert that the Catholic Church grants any indulgence or permission to commit sin—when an 'indulgence,' according to her universally received doctrine, was never dreamed of by Catholics to imply, in any case whatever, any permission to commit the least sin; and when an indulgence has no application whatever to sin until after sin has been repented of and pardoned?"
The preacher has the air of conceding that this charge is unfounded, and says, "If it is made, it does not appear to be sustained yet he maintains that indulgences really remit the punishment due to sins committed after the indulgence has been bought and paid for; for they are alleged to preserve the recipient in grace till death, in spite of subsequent sins." And he cites the case of Tetzel, in the sixteenth century, in proof He adduces what purports to be a form of absolution published by Tetzel, and offered for sale in the market-places of Germany. The form of absolution alleged is manifestly a forgery, and a very stupid forgery; and besides, absolution and indulgences are very different things, and the indulgence affects only a certain temporary punishment that remains to be expiated after the absolution is given or the eternal guilt is pardoned, and is rather a commutation than a remission of even that temporary punishment, which, if not commuted or borne here, must be expiated hereafter in purgatory. There is noformof indulgence; there areconditionsof gaining an indulgence; but there is no certificate given to the effect that we have obtained it. If we have sincerely complied with the conditions prescribed by the pope, we gain it; but whether we have gained it neither we nor the church can know in this life without a special revelation. Every Catholic knows that to offer money for it would argue a disposition on his part that would render it impossible, while he retained that disposition, to gain an indulgence. No one can gain an indulgence while in a state of sin, and hence indulgences are not at any price profitable things to purchase. That Tetzel exaggerated the virtue of indulgences was asserted by Luther and his friends; but that he offered them for sale in the market-places, was never, we believe, even pretended until after his death—was and never has been proved. Luther and his friends complained that he was causing a scandal, and procured his arrest and imprisonment in a convent of his order, where he died two years after, without the matter, owing to the troubles of the times, even undergoing a judicial investigation. As for Luther's own testimony, in a case touching his hatred against Rome, it is of no account.
"The only sense," continues the preacher, "in which the Roman Church has ever sold licenses for crime, has been in this, of announcing (not in America, in this century) a tariff of cash-prices at which (withcontrition) all evil consequences of certain sins, whether in this world or the world to come, would be cancelled. The price-current in Germany in the sixteenth century, ranged as follows: for polygamy, six ducats; for sacrilege and perjury, nine ducats; for murder, eight ducats. In Switzerland, at the same period, the price was for infanticide, four francs; for parricide or fratricide, one ducat."
This seems to us quite enough. The Catholic will perceive that our learned friend is not very well posted on Catholic matters. He evidently confounds sacramental absolution with indulgences, and indulgences with the dispensations which the church grants in particular cases, not from the law of God, nor the law of nature, but from her own ecclesiastical law; and supposes that the fees paid to the chancery for the necessary legal documents in the various causes that come before it, are the fees paid by the faithful for indulgences and the pardon of their sins. [Footnote 53]A man who speaks of matters of which he knows nothing is liable to say some very absurd things. Nevertheless, the preacher says expressly, and we doubt not means to concede the point made by the tract, that indulgences are not licenses to commit sin, but he has labored to make his concession as little offensive to his Protestant brethren as possible. Still he concedes it. "I think, therefore," he says, "that the author of this tract is right in claiming that it is not just to assert that the Catholic Church grants any indulgence or permission to commit sin." No, she does no such thing, she only "intimates beforehand her willingness, if such and such crimes are committed, to make it all right with the malefactor both in this world and the world to come, for penitence—and CASH." He who should offer cash to pay for absolution would receive for answer, "Thy money perish with thee!"
[Footnote 53: For a full proof of the forgery of the above passage in the book calledTax-Book of the Roman Chancery, see Bishop England's Letters to Dr. Fuller, Works of Bishop England, vol. iii. p. 13.]
"Is IT HONESTto repeat over and over again that Catholics pay the priests to pardon their sins—such a thing is unheard of anywhere in the Catholic Church—when any transaction of the kind is stigmatized as a grievous sin, and ranked along with murder, adultery, blasphemy, etc., in every catechism and work on Catholic theology?"
The preacher thinks it is very honest, because, if the church prohibits and punishes it as simony, it is very evident that it sometimes happens. If the offence had never been committed, the church would never have had occasion to legislate on the matter. It was argued that for a long time the crime of parricide was unknown at Rome, because there was no law prohibiting and punishing it. This is his answer, and a proof, we suppose, of his candor of which he boasts, of his readiness to die rather than knowingly repeat a false charge against the church! The real accusation against the church, which the tract denies can be honestly made, is that Catholics are required to pay, or that the priest can lawfully exact pay, for the pardon or absolution he pronounces in the sacrament of penance. It does not necessarily deny that the thing may sometimes be done, but, if so, it is unlawfully, is a sin, and ranked along with murder, adultery, etc. The sin of simony, in one form or another, has in the history of the church often been committed, and those who committed it are, in general, favorites with Protestant historians, who seldom fail to brand as haughty tyrants and spiritual despots the noble and virtuous popes who struggled energetically against it, and did their best to correct or guard against the evil. But honest men will not hold the church responsible for the misdeeds of unprincipled men, which she prohibits and exerts all the power of her discipline to prevent and punish. The case is too plain to need argument. Penance, the church teaches, is a sacrament, of which absolution is a part, and to sell any sacrament or part thereof is simony, a grievous sin; and though there is no sin that may not have been committed, yet the fact of a priest, however depraved, demanding pay for sacramental pardon or absolution is not known to have ever occurred. The church prohibits it, indeed, but only in prohibiting simony, and we are not aware that she has ever passed any special law against this particular species of simony, and therefore the argument of the preacher falls to the ground, and for aught he shows, it is true to the letter that the thing is unheard of.
"Is IT HONESTto persist in saying that Catholics believe that their sins are forgiven merely by the confession of them to the priest, without a true sorrow for them, or a true purpose to quit them—when every child finds the contrary distinctly and clearly stated in the catechism, which he is obliged to learn before he can be admitted to the sacraments? Any honest man can verify this statement by examining any Catholic catechism."
"Nothing," says the preacher, "could be more conclusive than this logic, if we could constantly presume that the belief and practice of the people always coincide exactly with the teaching of the catechism." If the coincidence were perfect, there would be no sins to confess, no need of the sacrament of penance, and no question as to the condition of ghostly absolution or pardon could ever be raised. But as the preacher finds nothing to object to under this head in the teaching or official practice of the church, we must presume that he finds the logic of the tract, whatever may be the deceptions, if any, practised upon the priest, is quite conclusive, and he certainly concedes quite enough to show that the accusation against the church which the tract repels, cannot be honestly repeated. We would remind the preacher that no one is forced against his will to go to confession, and the very fact of one's going is presumptive proof of sincere sorrow for his sins, and a resolution, weaker or stronger, God helping him, to forsake them. Why should he seek to deceive the priest, when he knows that if he seeks to do so, he would not only receive no benefit from the absolution, but would commit the grievous sin of sacrilege by profaning the sacrament?
"Is IT HONESTto say that Catholics believe that man, by his own power, can forgive sin—when the priest is regarded by the Catholic Church only as the agent of our Lord Jesus Christ, acting by the power delegated to him, according to these words, 'Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them, and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained?' St John xx. 23."
The preacher has offered no reply, or, if he has, we have overlooked it, to this grave accusation; perhaps he has none to make. The journals, however, attempt a reply, the purport of which is, that, though the tract states truly the official teaching of the church, yet Catholics practically believe, as every one knows who has had intercourse with them, that it is the priest, not God, who they believe pardons sin. This, too, is in substance the reply of Mr. Bacon throughout. The tract states the doctrine of the church correctly on all the points made, but then that, it is pretended, is not the doctrine of the Catholic people, the practical doctrine of Catholics, and gives no clue to the practical workings of the Roman system—a clear confession that they really have nothing to object to Catholic doctrine and practice, though they have much to object to in what is no doctrine or teaching or practice of the church. The reason of this, we suppose, is, that they have no conception of the church. Now, we think it is very likely that there are many Catholics who cannot define very scholastically the distinction between efficient cause and instrumental or medial cause; but put the question to the most ignorant Catholic you can find. "Do you believe the priest as a man in confession pardons your sins?" as soon as he gets hold of what you are driving at, he will answer: "No; he pardons or absolves them as a priest." This answer means that the priest does not absolve by a virtue in him as a man, but by virtue of his priestly office, to which he is appointed by the Holy Ghost; that is, as the minister, or as the tract says, the agent of our Lord Jesus Christ. All Catholics unhappily do not conform their life to their faith; but you will find that the faith of the people is that of the church, that which the church officially teaches; and there is no room for the distinction which non-Catholic ministers and journals, try, as their best resort in self-vindication, to make between Catholicity in the formularies of the church and the Catholicity that works practically in the faith and lives of the Catholic people, whether learned or unlearned.All this talk about the practical workings of the system is moonshine, at least outside of the record, to which no Catholic is bound to reply. We are required to believe and defend only what the church teaches and requires of her children:
8. The tract concludes with the question,
"Is IT HONESTto make these and many other similar charges against Catholics—when they detest and abhor such false doctrines more than those do who make them, and make them too, without ever having read a Catholic book, or taken any honest means of ascertaining the doctrines which the Catholic Church really teaches? AMERICANS LOVE FAIR PLAY."
In spite of all that sectarian preachers and journals can say, the unprejudiced and fair-minded American will answer, to each question the tract puts, No! it is not honest, but gravely dishonest; for every one is bound to judge Catholics by the standards of the church, open to all the world. And these manifestly disprove the accusations.
We have attempted no defence in this article of our holy religion itself. We have only attempted to show our Protestant accusers that their efforts to prove themselves honest, in their false charges against the church and her faithful children, are unsuccessful. They have not successfully impeached the tract in a single instance, nor vindicated themselves from a single one of its charges; nor can they do it. Many things may be said against the immaculate spouse of Christ; the daughters of the uncircumcised may call her black, may rail against her, and call her all manner of hard names; but she stands ever in her loveliness, all pure, and dear to her Lord, who loves her, and gave his life for her, and dear to the heart of every one of her loving children, and all the dearer from the foul aspersions cast upon her by the ignorant, the foolish, and the malicious.
We have not taken much notice of the professions of candor and independence of the preacher; for we have never much esteemed professions which are contradicted by deeds; nor are we easily won by fine things said of individual Catholics by one who in the same breath calumniates the holy Catholic Church. Few sermons have we read that show a more decided hostility to our religion than these of the Rev. Leonard W. Bacon, of Brooklyn, which are unredeemed from their low sectarian character by any depth of learning, extent of historical research, force of logic, richness of imagination, flow of eloquence, or sparkle of wit. We have found them very commonplace and dull; we have found it a dull affair to read and reply to them; and we fear that our readers will find our reply itself very dull, for dulness is contagious.