VII. Inaugural Address

This is the first time it has fallen to me to address the Academia since its lamented founder was taken from us. Last year it would have been my duty to open its proceedings, but I was out of England at the time of its first meeting.

I well remember the moment when, in his great illness in Rome, the Cardinal gave me commission to begin this work; and with what interest he watched over it, even when declining strength hindered his taking part in its acts. The importance of the Aca demia as a centre round which we may unite, and as a help to the formation and spread of sound Catholic opinion, becomes every year more evident; and I trust that we shall all do our utmost to sustain it and to promote its efficiency.

In opening the sixth year, it might seem needless to speak of the end for which the Academia was instituted, and of the subjects which are proper to it. I have indeed already once before endeavoured so to do. Nevertheless it appears to me that an opening address ought to be directed rather to the Academia itself than to any particular topic. Its aim is not so much to treat any subject as to excite others to write, and to suggest such matters as the circumstances of our times seem to require. Such I take to be my present office:

4 Ergo fungar vice cotis, ncutum Reddere qurc fcrrum valet, exsors ipsa secandi.'

I hope that other members of the Acadcmia, who have more resources and more leisure, will, for our future meetings, make a special study of such particular topics as bear upon our present religious and intellectual tendencies.

The end of the Acadcmia is the maintenance and defence of the Catholic religion, both positively in itself, and in its relation to all other truth; and polemically, as against all forms of erroneous doctrines, principles, and thought. It is within its scope, therefore, to keep a note of the state of floating opinion, and of the contemporaneous intellectual movements both within and without the Church. I would suggest to the mem bers to take some of the following topics for our future sessions:

1. The present state and tendencies of religious thought among the Protestant Dissenters of England and Scotland. •2. The progress of Rationalism among English Protestants, noting their published writings. •S. The points of opposition between the philosophy of

Hamilton, Mill, and Mansell, and the philosophy of the

Church.

4. A Catholic criticism of Buckle's book on civilisation, of

Froude's history of Henry VIII., and of Macaulay's account of James II., in its bearing upon the Catholic Church and the acts of the Holy See.

5. An examination of the principles of 17HO, and especially of the pretended sovereignty of the people, fi. The political aspect of the Temporal Power of the Pope;

its foundations in political right, and the public order of nations.

7. The office of the Temporal Power as the providential condition, not of the spiritual power, as some foolishly impute to us, but of the freedom of the spiritual office of the Pontiffs.

8. An exposure, of the pretended donations of the Temporal

Power by Constantine, Pepin, Charlemagne. 0. A treatment of the proposition that, ' Given the Christian world, the Temporal Power of the Pontiffs is the legitimate expression of the supremacy of the Christian law in both the spiritual and temporal order.'

10. The freedom of the Church in its Head as the condition of its purity in doctrine and discipline, illustrated by the heresies and schisms of the Greeks and the Protest ants.

11. The propositions of the Syllabus.

12. The Baconian Philosophy in its relation to Catholic dogma.

13. Examination and refutation of the modern objections to the historical narratives of Holy Scripture.

14. The rise, formation, and characteristics of the Canon law, and its relation to the interior life of the Church.

15. The ancient Canon law of England, and its relation to the common and statute law of the realm in Catholic ages.

16. The rise, growth, and final outbreak of the rebellion against the authority of the Holy See from the Conquest to the Reformation.

17. The perpetual expansion of the Church proved by the history of the Catholic missions.

For the present, all I can do is to. touch generally upon one point in the crisis of religious thought through which the Anglican religion is now passing, and on our duties towards it.

The three hundred years since the separation of England from the Catholic unity present two very remarkable tendencies in religious thought. Let us take as a starting-point the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth, for until then the Anglican Reformation had not obtained its last form. From that time till the early part of the last century, the positive doctrines of Christianity which survived in the Anglican religion were steadily declining. Notwithstanding the hierarchical development from the time of Bilson to the time of Laud, the recognition of episcopacy as of Divine institution was gradually hut surely departing from the English people. The Revolution of 1688 greatly weakened its hold. It lived on for n while in the narrow body of the Nonjurors, and with them the higher and more spiritual perceptions of the Episcopal order passed away. A curious proof may be seen in a leading article of the Times newspaper, which describes the Archbishop of Canterbury in Scotland as a Dissenter. The same decline is to be traced in the doctrine of sacramental grace, and of the operations of the Holy Spirit. The lowest time in the religious thought of England may be put at about the middle of the last century. The perfect outline of Faith had been broken at the time of the separation; but many doctrines, more or less truly understood and professed, still sur vived, not only in the books but in the minds of men, through the end of the sixteenth and the whole of the seventeenth century. But after that time the warmth had departed from the body. There was a continual downward tendency until the pietistic revival which arose both in Germany and in England in the last hundred years; then came a reaction.

From the middle of the last century the truths which had been lost began one by one to return, lleligious belief began to reasceud. It was like the first rising of the sap after the winter; and the new life has continued to expand to this day. This resurrection of religious thought, and the return of Catholicism to England in our day, had its beginning in causes far beyond our time and country. It is the effect of no individual mind and of no isolated event, but of a current which, like the Gulf Stream, has forced its way through the colder waters. The free-thinkers of George I. and George II.'s time called forth a host of defences of Christianity; these were followed by de fences of the inspiration and truth of Holy Scripture; these again by proofs of the doctrines of redemption and of grace; next, from 1790 to 1820, came the doctrines of justification and of regeneration; afterwards, from 1820 to 1830, the doctrine of baptism; next, from 1830 to this day, the apostolical succession; then of episcopacy, of tradition, of the Keal Presence, of absolution; then of unity and authority in the Church; then of seven sacraments, of purgatory, of devotion to the Blessed Virgin, of the religious life; then of vestments and of ritual. I might go still further into detail, but this is enough. Bishop Warburton, in writing the Divine Legation of Moses, little thought that in a century men would be reading the Eirenicon; nor, when, as Dean of Durham, he threw off the copes which are there still shown in glass cases, that at this time a Church Congress at York would be exhibiting chasubles upon lay figures for the use of the Anglican clergy. I do not indeed believe that this current is a flood, but only a stream; it is not the sweep of the ocean, but only of a path in the waters. The populaVOL. i.

tion of England is steadily setting away from these things, hut there is a broad movement of men's minds towards a more perfect faith and worship. It seems contradictory to say that, with this return towards the truth, the hold of faith over the people has grown continually less; hut it is most certainly true. The masses are moving away, hut individuals in great numbers are returning upwards to the light of faith.

No one can have watched this, year by year, with out a strong sympathy with those who are disengaging themselves from error, and trying to lift the Anglican system towards the truth. Their zeal and self-denial can be ascribed to no human power. Nothing but the Spirit of God can produce such a steadfast and uniform return towards the light. And though it is not possible to sympathise in many of their imitations of Catholic doctrine and worship, still less in their language and attitude towards the Catholic Church, we cannot but recognise in these strange and unprecedented phenomena the working of the Spirit of Truth, drawing men, step by step, out of the illusions and falsehoods of the Anglican separation into the unity of the only Church.

I can well remember how, at the time of Catholic Emancipation, it was thought impossible that the Catholic Faith should ever regain its hold in England. Men used then, as I well recollect, to say, the superstition of Romanism cannot revive in the light of the nineteenth century. This was the sincere belief of the majority of Protestants. They were so sure of their own position, the Catholic controversy had been for centuries so powerless, the number of Catholics had

, been so thinned by penal laws, that the Emancipation was conceded to Ireland for fear of civil war, to Eng land for pity upon a helpless and pitiable handful, whom nobody cared to persecute because nobody thought of fearing. In those days it was believed that Romanism had nothing more to say for itself; that the great Anglican controversialists, whose works are to be found embalmed and forgotten in Gibson's Tracts, had swept it away by overwhelming proofs of antiquity, Scripture, and reason. It was believed to be superstitious in its premises, and inconsequent in its logic. Protestants were as confident against Catholics as Christians are against Mahometans. The Anglican Church described itself always as 'pure and apostolical,' and the Thirty- nine Articles were a mild form of the daily language used by preachers against the Church of Rome.

It was of no use then for a Catholic to write in defence of his faith. Nobody paid any attention; nobody would buy his book; nobody would read it, or, if read it, believe it. The clearness of it was only speciousness; the difficulty of answering it was only proof positive of deceit. The whole world in England had settled that Protestantism was right, Catholicism wrong; and every house and all ears were closed against it.

Another remarkable feature of those times — not more than thirty years ago — was that the Catholic Church was hardly anywhere to be seen. It existed in a few old families, and was represented by their chaplains. The mountain that filled the whole earth was here under a cloud. No man saw it, as now, rising above his head.

We can hardly conceive a more complete annihilation than the state to which three hundred years of penal laws had reduced the Church in England. It was neither visible nor audible. It had no literature, no influence on public opinion, no hold upon the legislature, no recognition in the country. It was tolerated because it was powerless, and permitted to go at large only because it was despised.

A more wonderful and visibly supernatural change than that which these thirty years have produced can hardly be found in history.

The Church in France was destroyed seventy years ago, and has risen again with an increase of vigorous life; but then the French people were a Catholic people; the traditions of the Catholic faith pervaded the whole population; and the Government by its public action restored the Church and its worship; and that too within a period so near to the original overthrow that the life had never been extinct. It was rather the passing of a delirium than a resurrection from death.

Not so in England. The Church had disappeared for three hundred years. The whole weight of the Tudor supremacy had crushed it, and still lay upon it. Some nine generations of Protestantism, with strange vicissitudes of terrible penal laws, had, as it is the fashion now to say, stamped it out.

Now, in estimating the present position of the Catholic religion among us, I make no parallel between the universality and visibleness of the Church in France and of the Church in England. In France it over spreads and contains, or claims at least, almost the whole population. In England it counts but one mil lion upon twenty, and that million for the most part not of English blood.

The Hierarchy and the Priesthood are withdrawn from the public, and even the private, life of England; the churches are few and scattered, and with the exception of a small number, are obscure and out of sight. Certainly nothing can be less imposing or less sensible than the Catholic Church in England. Its 'bodily presence is weak,' but its speech is not < contemptible.' It has engaged the ear, if it does not fill the eye of English society. It hasan influence upon public opinion, and upon private life, which cannot be shaken off. It is like a small garrison which will hold a city, or a column of occupation which retains its grasp upon a territory, not by a material presence everywhere, but by a moral force which reaches far beyond its canton ments.

Thirty years ago any one who introduced religion into conversation caused a silence. He was a methodist, or a madman, or both. Nowadays there is hardly a private house in which it is not uppermost, or any occasion on which it is not introduced. I will not say that art, literature, and poetry are become religious; but I may say that religious art, religious literature, and religious poetry, still more that all these in their highest Catholic forms, are to be found throughout England. In families where a Catholic priest has never entered, Catholic books find their way; in others where Catholic 'hooks have never entered, Catholic engravings precede the faith. Even the newspapers have taken the infection. Eldad and Medad prophesy in the camp; Saul also is among the prophets. They describe all our doings; and thousands who would not for the world set foot in a Romish church read photographic descriptions of High Masses and Requiems, and consecrations, and openings of churches, pro cessions at Boulogne, pilgrimages in the Pyrenees, canonisations in S. Peter's. The air is full of it. Call it a plague of frogs, of flies, or of boils. It is upon man and beast. Throw ashes into the air, they come down Popery.

I do not think I am exaggerating. Certainly I am not describing this as the achievement or the work of any individuals, nor even of the Bishops and priests of the Catholic Church in England. Such a change in the intellectual and religious habits of society, and that too in spite of such inveterate prejudices of the intellect and persistence of the will, can be ascribed to nothing less than to an influence of the Holy Spirit of truth and peace, which is, after so long a time, cleansing again the eyes that were filmed, and opening the • ears that were shut up. The intellectual and spiritual sight of men is once more fixing itself clearly and calmly upon the illumination of faith. The disproportionate influence exercised by the Catholic Church in England upon society, when compared with the narrow material presence of the Church and its signal disadvantages of poverty and obscurity, can be in no way accounted for but by the working of a Divine agency casting up the way by which the truth shall hereafter advance. It is like the warmth of spring coming before the summer — the harbinger of its approach.

And this sensible change which has passed over the surface of our country is only the early indication of a far deeper change which has passed upon a smaller number of minds, but with a greater depth. I have already said that the tendency to unbelief is wide and extending. Nevertheless the reaction towards faith is also steady and constant. There was never a moment when, notwithstanding all contrary symptoms, the Dis senters were more inclined towards the Establishment, and never a moment when the Establishment was more inclined towards the Church. I speak of it as an inclination; for I neither expect that Dissenters will be absorbed by Anglicanism, nor Anglicanism by the Catholic Church. The tide, however, is in that direction; and it is a tide of which no law,of sufficient force can be found except a momentum of the will and grace of God.

But the return of Catholic truth is not confined to this vague,, popular, superficial, and esthetic- fashion of men's minds. It has taken a more definite and energetic form. In the last thirty years there has sprung up in the Anglican Establishment an extensive rejection of Protestantism, and a sincere desire and claim to be Catholic. Ever since the Reformation, indeed, the writers of the "Anglican Church have claimed to be Catholic, but none that I know disclaimed to be

Protestant. They assumed that a Protesting Christian was ipso facto a Primitive Catholic. Not so now. Protestantism is recognised as a thing intrinsically untenable and irreconcilable with the Catholic faith. The school of which I speak claim to be Catholic because they reject Protestantism with all its hetero doxies. In this school are to be found many Catholic doctrines, not exactly or fully expressed or believed— for such are not to be found either full or exact out of the Catholic Church — but more or less near to truth. For instance, the Church of England forbids the use of the term transubstantiation by declaring the doctrine to be an error. The doctrine of the Pieal Presence, less transubstantiation, is like the doctrine of one God in three Persons, less the doctrine of the Trinity. Not only is the term rejected, but the conception is correspondingly inaccurate. This runs through all the Catholic doctrines which a1 e professed out of the unity of the Church, and apart from the traditions of its sacred terminology. It is under this limitation that I go on to say that at this time the doctrine of the sacra ments, their nature, number, and grace; the intercession and invocation of saints; the power of the priest hood in sacrifice and absolution; the excellence and obligations of the religious life, — are all held and taught by clergymen of the Church of England. Add to this, that the practice of confession, and of works of temporal and spiritual mercy, in form and by rule borrowed from the Catholic Church, are all to be found among those who are still within the Anglican communion. I must also add the latest and strangest phenomenon of this movement— the adoption of an elaborate ritual, with its vestments borrowed from the Catholic Church.

On all these things I trust a blessing may descend. I see in them many things. First, they are a testimony in favour of the Catholic Church, which has al ways unchangeably taught and practised these things; secondly, a testimony against the Anglican Keformation, which has always rejected and cast them out. I joyfully recognise the zeal and piety of those (excepting, I fear, a few) who promote them. I believe for the most part they are sincere, and that multitudes are in an ignorance which is invincible. I can say with the Apostle: < Some, indeed, even out of envy and contention; but some also for good-will preach Christ: some out of charity,... and some out of contention preach Christ, not sincerely.... But what then? So that every way, whether by occasion or by truth, Christ be preached, in this also I rejoice, yea, and will rejoice.'1

I do not include in this, as I have already said, those — few in number, I believe — who use these things as a stumbling-block to keep back souls from the truth, and imitate the Catholic Church with a formal servility, that they may pass themselves off as Catholics even to our Catholic poor. For such men we can have no sympathy and little hope. Every parish priest happily knows how empty and foolish is the boast they make of keeping souls from conversion. The public facts of every day refute it. They may keep back the handful who surround them, and hide the truth from their own hearts; but the steady current of return to the 1 Phil. i. 15-18.

Catholic and Roman Church throughout the whole of En gland is no more to he affected hy them than the rising of the tide hy the palms of their hands. Against their will, certainly, and perhaps without their know ledge, they are sending on immherless souls into the truth, which they prohably will never enter. But the number of those whose good faith is doubtful is not great. The multitude of those who are drawn by a natural and simple reverence to clothe what they sincerely believe with a becoming ritual, and who worship piously and humbly in churches which might almost be mistaken for ours — if it were not for the one great blank, the absence of life, which is like a beautiful countenance without sight — is very great, and is perhaps continually increasing. They are coming up to the very threshold of the Church. They have learned to lean upon it as the centre' of Christendom, from which they sprang, and upon which their own Church is supposed to rest. They use our devotions, our books, our pictures of piety; they are taught to believe the whole Catholic doctrine, and to receive the whole Council of Trent, not indeed in its own true meaning, but in a meaning invented by their teachers. This cannot last long. Such teachers are, as Fuller quaintly and truly says, like unskilful horsemen. They so open gates as to shut themselves out in letting others through.

Now no one can have watched this wonderful movement. especially if he has ever been borne along by it himself, without a profound sympathy, and a desire to clu rish and to direct it with tenderness and fidelity.

He will not indeed sympathise with it as a superficial imitation of the profound and internal adoration of the Church of God, still less as a means of supplanting the Church, and deceiving the people to their hurt. All this is intrinsically evil. But dismissing this very restricted abuse, the movement as a whole can be regarded no otherwise than as an impulse of the Spirit of God, preparing the hearts of men beforehand for the advance of His Church.

And now, what attitude ought we to assume towards this aspect of the religion of England?

First, that of hope and kindness: of hope, that it may lead on to better things; and of kindness, lest we should throw back those who are moving upwards and onwards painfully and doubtfully towards a perfect know ledge of the truth. It seems to me that souls are in more peril now than thirty, or twenty, or even ten years ago. They were then in a state of which we might presume that their ignorance was invincible. The great masses of the English people were either physically or morally unable to find the true faith and the true Church. The same may be said still of the poor, of children, and of those who, being under a domestic control and seclusion, are unable to obtain books or teachers, or in any way to come in contact with the truth. But such is no longer the case of the educated who have none to control them. No physical or moral impossibility keeps them from the truth. They are in contact with the Church, with its priests, with its writings. They oppose it face to face, and therefore can plead no ignorance which is not in itself vincible.

The rise and expansion of the Church, the restoration of the Hierarchy, old friendships with those who have submitted to the Church, the conversion of kinsmen, even of children, and of brothers and sisters, — all these things bring the Church home to their dwellings, to their every-day life, and to their conscience. Every year the doctrine of invincible ignorance has a narrower application to the people of England; and for that reason we have need to be all the more patient, tender, and considerate. Thousands around us are in a crisis of life and death. If anything on our part ruffle or disturb the calmness of heart on which candour depends, we should have much to answer for. Sarcasm and ridicule are dangerous tools; they may make us feared, and win a literary name, but they do not draw souls to the truth. Jesus and His disciples never used these weapons. Let the use of them, together with all personalities, be with your adversaries. They are like the Carthaginian elephants, fatal to the ranks' of those who use them. And in this I think a great advance has been made — the controversies of the day are direct and hand to hand; but they are less personal and more courteous. Here and there an exception, sadly conspicuous, may be seen — there must be a Thersites in every camp — but these exceptions would not be so conspicuous if they did not stand almost alone. Our office is to help, to uphold, to fill up and to perfect the fragmentary faith of those who are out of the truth; and that is not to be done by a theologia dcztructiva, by controversial or polemical theolog}, but by a calm, a charitable exposition of the perfect truth which tells by its own light, and is its own evidence to sincere and humble minds.

2. But of this charity one high part is to be precise and clear in the full enunciation of Catholic truth. There can be no more pernicious mistake than the theory that truth is to be spread by fusion or accommodation. Truth only needs to be stated; but it demands to be stated in full. Anything less than its full outline is a suppression of truth, and suppressio verl is suy- (jestio falsi. We have, moreover, the guidance of a Pontiff who has gone before us in every controversy of the day. What is there in respect to the sanctity, the dignity, or the Immaculate Conception of the Mother of Gcd, the temporal power of the Holy See, his own prerogatives as teacher of the faithful, the relation of faith to science and to society, which Pius IX. has not gone before and beyond us in asserting? Has any one enunciated on any of these topics anything which Pius IX. has not first declared? The most ultramontane assertions among us fall within the range, and therefore under the shelter, of authoritative documents emanating from the Holy See. It is remarkable that such critics as the Times newspaper and BlacJcwoocVs Magazine clearly perceive the identity of what is denounced as ultramontanism and the teaching of the Sovereign Pontiff. The attempt to distinguish between the declarations of the Holy See and the mind of the Church is the animus of heresy. If England is ever to be reunited to Christendom it is by submission to the living authority of the Vicar of Jesus Christ. The first tep of its return must be obedience to his voice, as rebellion against his authority was the first step of its departure. In dealing with souls the same is the only sure and solid method. We have had for a twelve month before us a saddening example of vacillations, of alternate acceptance and rejection of the Council of Trent. At one time, Trent as the basis of unity; at another, not all its decrees, but Trent less the indissoluble unity of the Church, and the authority of the Roman Pontiff. Then Trent with interpretations; that is, explanations which explain it away: anything but childlike submission. All our anxious and charitable hope is that the author of these private fancies may find them to be illusions in the noonday light of the infallible Church of God. But we cannot fail to note with fear the eccentric movements of the private spirit which is carrying him, and those who hang upon him, visibly back again into the old anti-Catholic attitude and spirit. To believe the whole Council of Trent with interpre tations and glosses of private judgment will not bring a soul into the Catholic unity.

Now I have made these remarks as a ground for the assertion with which I shall conclude. The return to faith which we have traced from the middle of the last century — that is, for now about a hundred years — steadily ascending, doctrine after doctrine, first within the Anglican Establishment, then reaching beyond it into the regions of antiquity and of Catholic truth, has now received its complement in the full re-entrance of the Catholic Church, and the authority of the Vicar of Jesus Christ. It is no longer a question of fragment ary doctrines or isolated truths, of a little more or a little less of this devotion or that opinion, but of the whole Catholic faith upon the principle of Divine certainty and of Divine authority through the Church and in its head. And it is visibly providential that at this moment the supremacy of the Crown, which is the Reformation in concreto, has literally come to nought. From the beginning, Ireland would never submit to it. Scotland rejected it. In half a century after its usurpation England began to cast it off. Half the people of England formally reject it at this day. Of the other half the great majority know nothing of it; of the remaining minority the most enlightened only tolerate it as an obsolete law, explain it away, limit it on every side, write against it, speak evil of it, or reject it alto gether. Still worse than this, its own lawyers curtail its pretensions; and worst of all, it has lately pronounced its own acts to be invalid in a large field of its supposed jurisdiction — that is, it has died by felo de se. The providence of God has poured shame and confusion on the Tudor statutes. The royal supremacy has perished by the law of mortality which consumes all earthly things. And at this period of our history the supremacy of the Vicar of Jesus Christ re-ent jrs as full of life as when Henry VIII. resisted Clement VII., and Elizabeth withstood S. Pius V. The undying authority of the Holy See is once more an active power in England; the shadow of Peter has fallen again upon it. The people of England are as conscious — nay, more conscious — of the presence of the Catholic Church among them than of the Anglican Establishment. The last thirty years have wrought a change of which human agencies can give no adequate cause. The expansion of the Church and the penetrating spread of the faith in the last fifteen years has heen in geo metrical progression. What the next thirty years may bring forth if the same forces and the same velocities continue to multiply, no one can venture to foretell. But one thing is evident. ' Sapieutia rcdificavit sibi domum;' the Son of God has been again building His temple, and we shall best complete His work by following the order of His own procedure; and we shall best learn the plans of the Master-builder from the declara tions of His Vicar upon earth.