Michael Muller

“ The Church teaches the truth, and all truth is intolerant, and refuses to tolerate even the semblance of error. The popularity or the unpopularity of a principle or doctrine has nothing to do with its truth or with one’s obligation to stand by it. Where Catholics are in a minority, as with us, worldly prudence may seem to counsel the advocacy of what is called, but falsely so called, the freedom of conscience, that is, the right of every man to form or to choose for himself his own religion and abide by it ”

“ Hence the intolerance of Protestants to Catholicity is not inspired by love of truth or by zeal for the word of God, but by their want of faith, and wish to feel themselves free from all obligation to believe and hold fast the truth, to follow either reason or revelation, contented with their own opinions, whatever they may be, and satisfied to live and die in their religious indifferentism, or simple religious subjectivism. This they cannot do so long as confronted with the Catholic Church. They must destroy her or not be able to enjoy with a quiet conscience their own beliefs or no beliefs. ”

“ There are, no doubt, Protestants in large numbers who hold the principal Christian mysteries as taught by the Church and handed down by tradition; but they, as we have said, hold them, not as Catholic truth, but as opinions, which do not bind the intellect or conscience, and which they are free to hold or reject as suits their pleasure, their convenience, or their caprice. In the popular language of the day, they are called simply religious opinions, not dogmas, and rarely articles of faith. ”

“ All these things prove, first, that the Protestant party do not, as they pretend, oppose the Church for purely political reasons, for she has no political power or connection; and, second, that they really, here and everywhere, oppose her because she is Catholic in her teaching, asserts truth as binding on the intellect and the conscience, in direct contradiction to their doctrine of the indifference of truth and falsehood, or that every man has the natural right to be of any religion, if not Catholic, or of no religion, as he pleases. ”

“ It seems to us much more important to strip them of all Christian pretensions, to deprive them of their prestige and the power of seduction which their Christian profession gives them, by showing them up in their utter nakedness as downright infidels, than to labor to make them accept the Catholic doctrines they avowedly reject. Infidels they are, and it is of no little importance to let it be seen that no man can be a Protestant and be at the same time a Christian or follower of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. ”

“ There is no denying the fact. The variations of Protestantism, even during the lives of the reformers, the multiplication of Protestant sects, all appealing alike to the sacred text, and the experience of three hundred and more years, render it indubitable. Hard pressed by their Catholic opponents, Protestants were driven to the sad alternative of either condemning their separation from the Church and returning to her communion, or of giving up dogmatic religion as unessential and falling back on interior feeling or sentiment. ”

“ We owe it also to those who, in the ranks of Protestants, feel themselves bound to be Christians, and would fain be Christians. Both classes should be made to understand what is true, that Protestantism is not Christianity, is not religion, but is, when pushed to its last consequence, the denial of revelation, the denial of reason, the denial of God, the author of reason, and only a disguised atheism, or subtle form of universal negation or nihilism. ”

“ The hostility to the Church does not arise from her special doctrines or dogmas, or from any intellectual conviction that they are false or unreasonable, but from the fact that she teaches that truth is objective, independent of the believer, and is obligatory, and no one has or can have the right before God to resist it. Protestants hate the Church for two reasons: 1. because she claims to teach infallibly by the divine assistance, and 2. because she maintains that truth is Catholic and binds both reason and conscience. ”

“ No man has the right before God, however he may before the state, to hold any religion but the one only true Catholic religion, and no one can adhere to any other but at his own peril.
"Yet, with all their boasted liberality, Protestants assert only the liberty to deny the truth, and if their intolerance to Catholicity has changed its form, it has not diminished in its intensity. Their hatred of the Church has in no degree abated. ”

“ There are, we like to believe, among Protestants, many individuals who are far superior to their Protestantism, who have not yet learned to distrust reason, who hold that truth is obligatory, that religion is the law of conscience, who are honest, upright, kind-hearted, and benevolent according to their light, and who mean to be true Christian believers. ”

“ And how can they have faith or believe in God who commune with those who resolve all faith, all belief, all truth, indeed, into a mere opinion, or an inward sentiment, varying with each individual? If Catholicity in Christian, if reason is authoritative in its own province, nothing is more certain than that Protestantism is in no sense Christian, and that persons living and dying Protestants cannot be saved. ”

“ They are part and parcel of the one Catholic faith, and belong to Catholics only. Protestants can rightfully claim as Protestant only those things wherein they differ from the Church, which the Church denies, and which they assert; that is, what is peculiarly or distinctively Protestant. We cannot allow them to claim as theirs what is and always has been ours; we willingly accord them their own, but not one whit more. All which they profess to hold in common with us is ours, not theirs. ”

“ It were a sin against charity to leave them to think that they can be saved out of it, or by any other way. It would alter nothing in the law, which is, independent alike of them and of us, were we to do so. A man may be as liberal as he pleases with what is his own, but to give away what is another’s is an injustice. God is just and merciful, and he loves all the works of his hands, for never would he have made anything, if he had hated it. ”

“ We have seen that the Protestant denials, in both their logical and historical developments, lead to the denial of all dogmatic religion, of all objective truth, and reduce the truths of reason and of revelation to mere personal opinions, and therefore involve the denial of those very doctrines which Protestants profess to hold in common with us. ”

“ They feel this; they feel that Catholicity is the assertion of Catholic truth, and therefore that the Church differs from them, not simply in degree, as more or less, but in kind, and directly contradicts their whole order of thought. ”

“ Our Divine Saviour, Jesus Christ, came to break the power of the devil over mankind; he came to banish idolatry, the worship of the devil, from among men, and lead them back to the worship and service of his heavenly Father by his holy example and divine doctrine. But no sooner had he begun to teach men his saving doctrine, than Satan opposed him. Satan is called, in Holy Scripture, the father of lies. ”

“ The presence and influence of the Church are opposed to this interior freedom from truth, which unbelievers call freedom of mind, and Protestants religious liberty, and both make war on her, and war to the knife, because she does not and cannot favor it: They, unbelievers, and Protestants, form an alliance against her, and seek, by all the arts and devices in their power, her total destruction from the face of the earth ”

“ Like the London Protestant bishop, Bishop Coxe, too, knows that many non-Catholics have fallen into bad hands and became very edifying Catholics. He knows that good Catholic books, that clearly explain the Catholic religion, are also bad hands by which many non-Catholics have been converted to the Catholic Church. He knows that Familiar Explanation of Christian Doctrine is also one of those bad hands. ”

“ If it is the law of God, it is true; if it is what the Church teaches, we have nothing to do with the question of its liberty or illiberality, of its severity or its leniency. All we have to guard against is against asserting it in a harsh or illiberal spirit, in a severe and cruel temper, or with any uncharitableness towards those who expose themselves to the terrible consequences of rejecting Christ and his law, or who refuse to suffer him to reign over them. ”

“ Protestant nations do not now persecute Catholics, as they did in the beginning, from fear of the intervention of foreign Catholic governments, for, strictly speaking, there are no longer any Catholic governments on earth; yet their dread of the Church and hostility to everything Catholic are as great as ever, and precisely because the term Catholic is directly opposed to their denial of objective truth, and their resolution of religion into a subjective sentiment or emotion, varying with place and time, and from individual to individual. ”

“ It is obvious, then, that to carry on a controversy Protestants, as if they were Christians simply erring as to some portions of the Christian faith, can effect nothing. They cannot be convinced by argument, for they hold firmly nothing which can serve as the basis of an argument. ”

“ The immense majority of Protestants will give up these doctrines, or consent to hold them simply as opinions with no objective authority, sooner than desert the Protestant movement or reject the denials which are the essence of Protestantism, if we may speak of the essence of a negation, which has no being in itself or elsewhere. A few of the laggards may be occasionally captured, but most of them will quicken their pace and close up with the main body. ”

“ We know nothing more reprehensible than the mambypambyism babbled by sentimental Catholics about the good faith of ‘our separated brethren.’ There may be persons in good faith amongst Protestants, but, if so, they do not lack opportunities of showing it, and of coming out from the Babylon in which they have been reared. Men cannot be saved without Christ, for there is no other name given under heaven whereby they can be saved. Without faith it is impossible to please God, and he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and is the remunerator of them. ”

“ Yet, wherever the age is in earnest, it is as intolerant as any preceding age. There may be individuals who honestly detest intolerance in every way or shape, but these are chiefly to be found among Catholics who take seriously the popular doctrine of religious liberty, and go out of their way to disclaim all solidarity with the past history of their Church, and to protest against the spirit, if not the very letter, of the Syllabus. ”

“ It is a stultification of common sense to maintain the contrary, and besides, it practically neutralizes all our efforts to convert Protestants, and to bring them to a living and saving faith in Christ.
"We know what theologians say of invincible ignorance and we do not contradict them: Invincible ignorance excuses from sin in that whereof one is invincibly ignorant; but it gives no faith, no virtue; and without faith, without positive virtue, no man can be saved. ”

“ But the temper of her enemies towards her is that of hatred, and hatred without cause; they are not moved by charity, by love of souls; for, if they believe in salvation at all, they believe that souls can be saved in the Church at least as well as out of it, and hence, the dupes of their own hateful passions, there is no extreme of violence or cruelty to which, where they have the power, they will not go, if they judge it necessary or useful to their cause. ”

“ She is moved by love for her enemies, and seeks at all times, by all the means in her power, to do them good, - good for time and for eternity. Her temper towards them is that of infinite tenderness and compassion. ”

“ We may love and pray for them, but to seek to alter the divine constitution of his kingdom is to incur ourselves the guilt of rebellion. There is but one right way; and while it is our duty to walk in it, it is also our duty to do our best to show it to those who are out of it, and induce them to come into it. ”

“ Adopting this rule, which is just and unimpeachable, nothing in fact is theirs but their denials, and as all their denials are, as we have seen, made on no Catholic principle or truth, they are pure negations, and hence Protestantism is purely negative, and consequently is no religion, for all religion is affirmative. ”

“ Bishop Coxe is well known as a famous exorcist. He does all in his power to prevent the devil (that is what he takes the Roman Catholic faith for ) from taking possession of Protestants. He knows that, if this possession should really take place, he would have no power to expel the devil of idolatry. An ounce of preventive is, in his opinion, better than a pound of cure. ”

“ Some may hold them to be essential doctrines of Christianity, but Christianity itself is held to be an opinion, or an interior sentiment, not a law which no one has the right to dispute, and which everyone is bound to obey. ”

“ It is worthy of remark that in the war which Protestants and infidels have hitherto waged against the Church neither has nor pretends to have any truth or principle to oppose to her. They do not fight for the truth, nor for any affirmative or Catholic principle that she denies or neglects ”