Joseph McCabe

“ Most of the other priests in the diocese had rather more souls to provide for, but rarely sufficient to support themselves. They were poor and could not travel much; they had few parishioners with whom they could have congenial intercourse; they were widely separated from each other and had neither books nor inclination for study. The life of an Anglican clergyman in a small country parish is not enviable, but a priest has the additional disadvantage of no family and usually antipathetic neighbours. ”

“ It is usually assumed that Newman was a traditionalist, [3] but his poetical and unscientific method seems rather attributable to the effect of a wholesome dread of Kant; not that he shows evidence of intimate acquaintance with Kant’s ‘Critique,’ but he seems to have been vaguely convinced that Kant had undermined all metaphysical research, and his own unrivalled literary power enabled him to make a plausible defence of his opinions without the aid of philosophy. He is obviously no guide for a serious scientific mind. ”

“ Add to this that most of them are Irish, and the happy buoyant Celtic temperament does not take religious doubt very seriously; no one knows into what depths of study and seas of trouble it may lead. In the educated layman, of course, the temperament is sceptical enough, though it is a careless, light-hearted scepticism, not obtrusive and not very consistent; in the priest the same disposition leads to a natural reluctance to take any steps that may lead to a violent dislocation, and to a habit of deprecating a Quixotic striving after mathematical precision and consistency of thought. ”

“ A conference in a populous diocese is a very exciting ceremony: rival schools of theology are represented, young priests are pitted against old ones, and the more ambitious are eager to make an impression. ”

“ Ambrose, ‘Not by logic hath it pleased God to save His people.’ Newman was religiously penetrated with that edifying sentiment, hence it is not surprising to find how faithfully he acts upon it in constructing the existence of God and the divinity of Christ. His one witness to God’s existence is conscience (he says in one of his sermons that without it he would be an atheist) , and under his ceaseless attentions conscience becomes a faculty which few ordinary human beings will recognise ”

“ It mattered little, for the ‘parish’ would consist of an enormous extent of territory containing three Catholics known and three or four suspected. The town of Buckingham (containing 3,000 inhabitants) boasts of one Roman Catholic, who, in his rustic diplomacy, attended early service at the parish church and Mass afterwards at the college. Indeed, the whole diocese of Northampton is of the same character: it is the most extensive in England, and only contains a few thousand Catholics. ”

“ The life of a priest in a country parish is usually very dull and monotonous: in our diocese it was not unlike the life of a foreign missionary, so few Catholics there were in the vast territory. I had one parishioner in the town, a poor ignorant creature whose faith was very closely connected with his works ”

“ Mivart is the most influential living writer on the Roman Catholic side, and the most competent to discuss those great problems, ‘ever ancient and ever new,’ in the light in which they present themselves to the actual generation. ”

“ In my younger days I had been taught to shelter myself under the authority of the great Newman: it was a few years before I found that that was rather a compromising position for a philosopher. There is an old adage in the schools that ‘in philosophy an authority is worth just as much as his arguments, and no more.’ Newman is the last guide in the world to choose in philosophical matters: the key to his line of thought is found in the inscription (epitaph, one feels tempted to say) of his one philosophical work, ‘The Grammar of Assent’—the inscription is a text from St. ”

“ The fact that the actual seceders from the Church are usually men who have had special opportunity and a well-known tendency for study is significant enough; the fact that few emerge from the ordinary ranks of the clergy with convictions firm enough to face the painful struggle of secession should not be surprising. Active external occupation banishes doubt from consciousness ”

“ On other points, such as the freedom of the will, the evolution of ethics, and the origin of the universe, he is conspicuously feeble; and he has a disposition to waste his strength upon the criticism of accidental phases and features of monism and agnosticism rather than upon their essential destructiveness. ”

“ The friar lived in the vicinity during the progress of the building, which was erected principally on borrowed funds, as is usual with Roman Catholic institutions. Knowing that the financial prospects of the college were precarious, the good friar set himself to live with great economy and store up a little against the opening of the establishment. ”

“ Like Plato, Kant, Newman, or Balfour, he seems to think it desirable that humanity should cling to certain opinions, and therefore seeks evidence in support of them. Of Cardinal Manning's apologetic efforts little need be said. He was a man of action, not of speculation—certainly not a philosopher. His cast of mind is well illustrated by his words to one who was urging certain scientific statements in conflict with Genesis: without listening to them he blandly replied, like the Anglican bishop whom Mr. ”