THE TABLET

A W eekly Newspaper and Review

D u m VOBIS G R A TU LAM U R , AN IM O S e t i a m a d d i m u s u t i n i n c c e p t i s v e s t r i s c o n s t a n t e r m a n e a t i s .

Front the Brief of H is Holiness to The Tablet, June 4, 1870

Vol. 44. No. 1809. L o n d o n , D e c e m b e r 12, 1874.

P r ice 5d. B y P o st s ^ d .

[ R e g is t e r ed a t th e G e n e r a l P o st O f f ic e a s a N ew s p a p e r .

C h r o n ic l e o f t h e W e e k :—

Page

The Papal Right of Defence.— Writing to the “ Times.”— Two “ Messages.”— Spain. — Germany and the Church.— Count Arnim.— “ Not Shy in Politics.”— Protestant Sympathies with Dr. Dollinger.— French Universities. — French Provincial Journals.— Garibaldi.— Mr. Mackonochie.— Broad Churchism.— The Dogmatism of Error. — Britanniae Grata Gallia.— The late Prince Consort . . .. . . . . 737 L e a d e r s :

The Reply of the “ Centre ” to

Prince Bismarck .. . . . . 741 Irish Training Colleges . . .. 741

C 0 N T

L ea d e r s (continued) :

Nullity of Oaths in Italian Par­

Page liament . . . . .. .. 742 O ur P r o t e s t a n t C on tem po r a r ie s :

Two Statesmen . . . . .. 743 R e v ie w s :

History of the Church of Corea .. 745 Commentary on St. Thomas .. 746 Half a Life . . . . . . .. 748 S hort N otices :

The Prisoners of the Temple . . 748 Grapes and Thorns.. .. . . 748 The Benedictine Almanack .. 748 N ew M usic :

Laudes Pueriles .. .. .. 748 C o r r e s p o n d e n c e :

Lord Acton and Urban II. .. 749 Writing to the “ Tim es” . . 750 False Coin .. .. . . . . 750

E N T S .

Page

“ Who Would not Weep, if Atticus Were H e ? ” . . . . .. 751 The Deposing Power . . . . 751 St. Thomas of Canterbury on

Civil Allegiance . . . . . . 755 Ancient Charters and Seals . . 755 English Benedictine Martyrs . . 755 R ome :— Letter from our own Cor­

respondent . . . . .. 753 R ecord of G erm an P er secution ;

Letter o f the Archbishop o f Co­

logne to the Italian Bishops . . 754 Inquiiy Concerning the Apostolic

Delegate o f Posen . . .. 754 St. Conrad’s Feast in Paderborn.. 755 The Progress of Old-Catholicism.. 755 A Church and State Decree .. 755 I

M r. G ladstone’s E x po stu lation :

Pag«

Lord Acton’s Accusations.. . . 756 English Catholic Bishops at Rome 756 D io ce san N ew s :—

Westminster......................... .. 756 Beverley . . . . . . .. 757 Birmingham . . . . . . . . 757 Clifton . . , , . . . . 737 Salford . . . . . . .. 758 Scotland—Northern District . . 758 I r e l a n d :

Letter from our Dublin Corre­

spondent . .

. . . . 758

F oreign N ews :—

France., .. . . . . . . 759 Austria .................................... 760 i G en e r a l N ews ........................... 761

CHRONICLE OF THE WEEK.

TIIE PAPAL RIGHT OF DEFENCE. I

N the desire to compress as much as possible our answer to Lord Acton’s charge against St. Pius V. we omitted last week four words which were necessary to the full expression of our meaning. After saying that certain sentences quoted by Lord Acton do no more than urge upon the established authorities a vigorous and unflinching execution of the ancient laws “ for the defence of life and property,” we should have added— “ no less than religion.” The omission was accidental, though at the moment we had in view a point which is too much forgotten. The Popes were bound, indeed, to strive in the first place for the defence of the faith, but they were scarcely less stringently obliged to protect their flock to the utmost of their power from robbery, outrage, and murder. Now the object of the French Protestants— as o f their brethren elsewhere— the very reason of their being, was to extirpate the Catholic faith, and to exterminate or reduce to slavery its professors. Their great apostle Calvin— like Luther, Zwingle, Bucer,Cranmer, andBullinger— declared the Catholic religion heresy, and that death was the punishment due to heresy. They would not even hear of toleration; nothing would content them but the utter destruction of the Catholic Church; and this destruction was begun in very many instances by wholesale massacres, especially of priests and monks, outraging of nuns, and every conceivable profanation of the churches and (worst of all) of the Most Holy Sacrament. These being established facts, it is no wonder that St. Pius regarded the heretics of his time as “ impious ” and as criminals of the worst kind, and that he believed their crimes to be the direct and inevitable result of their doctrines. “ He was,” as Dr. Newman has so well said, “ emphatically a soldier “ of Christ in a time of insurrection and rebellion, when, “ in a spiritual sense, martial law was proclaimed.’’ He would not have lifted a finger to save himself from martyrdom ; but he felt it an imperative duty to prevent, if he could, the further commission of such enormities upon the Catholics of France ; and to save them from the miserable fate of their brethren in England, who had been forbidden every practice of their religion, even of the most private kind. It was not the mere heresy of the Huguenots which Gregory X III. condemned in that celebrated Bull for a Jubilee which Lord Acton has quoted, but “ the injuries and outrages “ done to God and His Catholic Church,” and “ the “ sanguinary and implacable rage,” with which they had for years “ troubled, pillaged, and spoiled the kingdom of “ France by murder, robbery, sacrilege, and devastation.” No sooner, however, had the worse than Mahomedan fury of the reformers subsided, and the movement been got well under the control of their statesmen, than the Popes entirely

New Series. Vol, XII. No. 318.

ceased from urging any extreme measures of defence. So far as England was concerned, St. Pius V., if he had been the “ Old Man of the Mountain” that Lord Acton has endeavoured to make him out, and if the Catholics of his time had believed in the doctrine of assassination, which we are now told that he held, he could have had Queen Elizabeth cut off any day in any year since he came to the Pontificate. There remain a few points to be noticed as bearing on this matter, and we propose to sum up the evidence next week.

A respected Correspondent in a letter published in another column complains that “ Catho“ times.” “ ^CS have lately shown themselves deficient in

“ self-respect in choosing the columns of the “ lim es as the vehicle of their communications with their “ Protestant countrymen.’’ We cannot endorse this complaint. It is manifest that by writing to the lim e s Catholics command a far larger number of Protestant readers than they would by sending their communications to the Catholic journals. In confuting the misrepresentations of Mr. Gladstone and of Lord Acton and others we must endeavour to get as large an audience as possible, and this can only be done ordinarily through the columns of the lim es. We may be thankful that they are, to a certain— perhaps limited— ■ extent, open to us. In some circumstances it is “ bad strategy “ to give your enemy battle on the field chosen by him“ self.” But it is surely the part of good generalship to storm the positions occupied by the enemy if you have sufficient force. We cannot say, “ Come over here, and we | “ will fight you ; but we cannot stir from our camp.” The | battle of the Alma would never have been won if the allied | forces had waited in the valley and not rushed up the heights j from which they drove the Russians. I f we can, through | the lim es, show the Protestant world that we are misreprej sented and falsely accused, it is clearly a gain. A t the ! same time we deprecate, as much as our correspondent,

the evil of toning down our statements to suit the tastes of the Protestant public. A victory gained at such a price is no victory, but a defeat. We also fully admit the truth of | the charge brought against the lim es, that it prints letters which support its own line of argument in leader type, j and puts others in small type and in out-of-the-way corners. |We must expect this as long as injustice prevails upon the | earth. I f our correspondent could induce the lim e s to reprint the replies to Protestant attacks, which appear from time to time in our columns and those of our Catholic contemporaries, he would be doing a good service. We are not, however, sanguine of his success.

The gist of the Message of Marshal

1( TW0 „ MacMahon, which was read ten days since messages. the Asssembly, was to the effect that I the Marshal intended to hold power for the remaining