THE TABLET
A W eekly Newspaper and Review.
D u m VOBIS GRATULAMUR, ANIMOS ETIAM ADDIMUS UT IN INCCEPTIS VESTRIS CONSTANTER MANEATIS.
From the Brief oj H is Holiness to T h e T a b l e t , June 4 > 1870,
Voi. 42. No. 1762. L ondon, D ecem ber 27, 1873.
P R iC E s d . B y P o s t sJ^d.
[R e g is t e r ed a t t h e G e n e r a l P o s t O f f ic e a s a N ew s pa p e r .
•Ch r o n ic l e o f t h e W e e k : —
Page
The Archbishop of Westminster on “ Caesarism.”— The “ Manchester Guardian" on Coercion.— Lord Russell’s Sympathy with the Persecution.— The Prussian Civil Marriage Bill.— Posen, Munster, and Alsace.— Ecclesiastical Frontie rs in Germany.— The Emperor William.—The Persecution in the Jura.— Roman Churches and the '•Vatican.— The New Cardinals.— The New Peers.— Mr. Horsman 'a t Liskeard. —The Virginius —The Siege of Cartagena.— Circumven
tion of Moriones by the Cariists.— The Report on the September Government.— The Convention with the Empress, &c., &c. . . 801
CONTENTS .
L e a d e r s :
Page
Capitalists and Workmen . . 805 The Bazaine Verdict . . . 805 The Esquiline .... 806 Ireland in 1873 .... 807 The Girls’ Offering to the Holy
Father ..... 808 O ur P r o t e s t a n t C o n t em po r a r ie s :
German Persecutors and English
Apologists ..... 809 R e v ie w s :
The Revival o f Priestly Life in the
Seventeenth Century in France . 810 The Life of the Most Rev. M. J.
Spalding, D .D ., Archbishop of B a l t im o r e .................................... 811 Nancy ...... 812 The Catholic Directory for 1874 . 813
S h ort N o t i c e s :
Lays and Legends, &c.
Tom’s Crucifix, &c.
The Miller and his Man
Page
D io c e s a n N ew s :
Westminster .
. 814 Southwark
Page
. 818
. 818
, 814 Salford .
. . 819
. 814 Scotland— Western District . . 819
C o r r e s p o n d e n c e :
I r e l a n d :
Letter from our Dublin Corre
The Appreciation Day at Salford . 814 spondent
Home Rule in Relation to Catholic
. 819
Interests .... .815 F oreign N ews : The Persecution in Germany . 815 France
Corpus Christi Church .
. 815 Russia .
The Mission at Victoria Docks . 815 Ecuador
. , 820
. . 820
. . 821
R ome :
M em o r an d a
Religious
Letter from our own Correspondent 817 Educational .
Peter’s Pence
. 818 G e n e r a l N ew s
. . 82T
. 821
. 82
CHRONICLE OF THE WEEK.
THE ARCHBISHOP 'OF WESTMINSTER ON “ ChESARISM.” I
N its comments on the Archbishop’s
Paper on “ Cmsarism and Ultramon“ tanism,” read at the meeting of the Academia of the Catholic Religion ” on
Tuesday evening, the limes writes as follows:— “ Dr. “ Manning’s hallucination reaches its extremity when he “ alleges that the English ‘ theory of investing the Prince "“ ‘ with supreme legislative and judicial power over all “ ‘ persons and in all causes, ecclesiastical and civil, has “ ‘ been followed in every country where it has taken root “ ‘ by civil despotism and religious persecution.’ We ask, “ again, where is the civil despotism in this country?” The ■ answer is plain. Nowhere now, because the State has renounced the forcible application of that theory to the spiritual concerns of its subjects. No one need be subject to the ecclesiastical supremacy of the State unless he chooses to belong to the official religious communion. But when the State did apply that theory, as Prussia is now applying it, there was plenty of civil despotism. And the Times might have found an answer to its question in the words of the Archbishop himself. His Grace continues in the very next sentence: “ The most ample “ exhibition of this is to be found in the Tudor legislation, “ and in the enforcement of a legal religion in England and “ Ireland by penal statutes. The religious history of Eng“ land, Scotland, Denmark, Sweden, and the North of “ Germany in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is the “ history of the revival of Ctesarism, and of a reaction “ against the liberty of religion and of conscience with “ which Christ has made us free. What is chiefly to be “ noted is, that this oppression of Christian freedom has “ been accomplished to the cry of liberty of religion and “ of conscience. For proof of this it is enough to refer to •“ a book entitled A History o f the Free Churches of Eng“ land, in which the sufferings of Catholics and Noncon“ formists under the Caesarism of the English Crown are “ fully described.” And that the Archbishop did not intend— as the question of the Times implies that he did— to assert the existence of Caesarism in this country at the present day, is apparent from the paragraph which follows : “ The effect of this mixed civil and religious despotism has “ been to obtain for one-half of the English people and the “ whole population of Ireland a complete religious liberty.
Scotland has always rejected the interference of Kings in “ matters of religion; and in our day one-half of the Scot“ tish population has rejected even the remnants of civil in■“ terference lingering in the law of patronage.” the “ man- We take up from last week the thread of the
Chester few remarks which we have to make on the guardian ” article in the Manchester Guardian on ost coercion. reijgious coercion. That paper, in a former
New Series Vol, X. No. 268.
article on which we commented, contained the following words : [Rome] “ has ever recognized herself as the city set “ upon a hill to which all nations must do homage— by “ simple persuasion, if possible, but by force, i f necessary The italics are our own. We would now first premise that on characterizing the words so printed as “ a distinct mis“ statement,” we were far from intending to use the term in an offensive sense, or as in any degree implying intentional mis-representation. We say this by way of additional precaution against a possible, though scarcely probable, misconception of our meaning— scarcely probable because we have already spoken of our contemporary as falling “ into a confusion very common amongst Protestants.” But to proceed to the pith of the matter, the Guardian accuses us of “ a tactical mistake ” in “ giving prominence “ at the present moment ” to “ the coercive jurisdiction ” of the Church. Now in the first place we confess that we were thinking of anything but tactics when we made the plain straightforward statement, which we cannot but think the Guardian has misunderstood. And in the second place, instead of “ giving prominence at the present moment ” to the coercive jurisdiction of the Church, the effect of our remarks was precisely to show that this coercive jurisdiction was not applicable “ at the present time,” or to the persons to whom the Guardian implied that it was applicable. Let us take the Guardian's own illustration. “ Suppose,” it says, “ the “ Protestants of England were to declare that Protestantism “ ‘ has undoubtedly a coercive jurisdiction,’ and that as ‘ the “ ‘ mass of the nation is united in that faith ’— for Protes“ tantism is a faith as well as a principle— the State is en“ titled to use compulsion to prevent the destruction of that “ ‘ unity ’— or, in other words to suppress Catholicism.” “ In that case,” we are asked, What should we say ? We answer that we should not content ourselves with the argument which the Manchester Guardian puts in our mouths— that “ the Papacy has a distinct Divine mission,” in other words, that we arerightandour adversaries are wrong. Butwe should also say that for Protestants to combine to “ suppress Catho“ licism” because they are in a majority in this country, would be utterly indefensible as a retaliation against our supposed claims, because we should not ourselves claim to do anything of the sort. Suppose the relative numbers of Protestants and Catholics to be reversed, and Catholics to be in the majority, Protestants in the minority. Would the Catholic Church attempt to bring that minority into her fold “ by force, if necessary” ? Certainly not. And that for the reason which we originally gave in the remarks which called forth the article with which we are now concerned. Faith is a free act of the intellect and of the will, and it is not allowable to use force to generate it. And if compulsion is not permissible in order to bring Pagans to the truth, neither is it to be applied to those who have inherited from successive generations a system of religious error. We should