Catholic hierarchy

“ The more history is studied honestly, investigated closely, and viewed impartially, the more plainly does the great fact shine forth that the Catholic hierarchy, in the various European nations, constituted the vanguard of true freedom and order. ”

“ In seeing this exact episcopal succession, this unaltered symbol, this inviolable discipline, these sacraments which Rome herself recognizes, we ask if an error, respecting so long and so well the limits which it traced when it first arose, does not seem like those rocks which an irruption has thrown from their foundations and which remain immovable under the eye and the action of ages? Whilst in the West, Protestantism is unable to create either dogmas or discipline or hierarchy, and floats as a wandering cloud from mind to mind, the East, on the contrary, sees produced the fixity of error. ”

“ What is called Catholic liberalism, and has been denounced by Pius IX. as more dangerous [432] and mischievous among Catholics than any open heresy could be, is a system of independence of Catholic authority, and of separation from the Catholic common doctrine and sentiment, of disrespect, disloyalty, irreverence, disobedience, and opposition to the hierarchy and the Holy See, in those things which are not categorically defined as articles of faith, yet, nevertheless, are doctrinally or practically determined by authority. ”

“ When he does come to particulars, the hierarchy are directed to teach that kingdoms rest on the foundations of the faith; that kingly power is bestowed, not only for the government of the world, but still more for the protection of the Church; that nothing can be more glorious for rulers than to permit the Catholic Church to govern according to her own laws (i.e. canon law) , not allowing any one to impede her free action, and not setting the regal will above that of the priests of Christ. Here is touched the great question in government. ”

“ It is true that each nation has a national clergy and hierarchy—a principle not too Catholic—and also that each exercises some slight pressure—greater in societies of Catholic culture than of Protestant—upon the appointment of the church's ministry—particularly of bishops. ”

“ The different grades of the hierarchy, established between the primacy and episcopacy, is the result of a historical development, whereas divine institution can only be claimed for the primacy and episcopacy themselves. [210]
What difference is there between bishops as to power and jurisdiction over one another by divine right? If patriarchs, primates, and metropolitans have exercised certain prerogatives greater than those enjoyed by other bishops, will Janus tell us that this is owing to divine origin? ”

“ More and more the bishops of the great cities, especially Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch, exercise a parallel supervision in larger divisions of the empire. This is the patriarchal system. As early as the closing part of the second century, the catholic or universal church presents itself before us, conceived of as a unity which is made such by the hierarchy of bishops, and by connection with the apostolic sees,—the churches founded by the apostles in person. ”

“ The ardor of Catholics all over the world for Pius IX., and the close union of the whole ecclesiastical hierarchy with his see, constitute a plain and lasting fact which will surely be the greatest glory of this age in the annals of Christianity. It is a glory due chiefly to the Revolution, which has been providentially permitted and ordained by God, chiefly for the end of better strengthening and confirming unity in the hierarchy of his church. ”

“ The principle of religious authority having been rejected, individuals felt free to frame their own standard of orthodoxy, and were it not for the civil rulers, who interfered to preserve their states from the temporal dangers of religious anarchy, and to supply by their own power some organisation to take the place of the Catholic hierarchy, Calvinism and Lutheranism would have assumed almost as many forms as there were individuals who professed to accept these religious systems. ”

“ I have found well informed Roman Catholic ecclesiastics ignorant that we possess a ritual, use fixed prayers, have a regular hierarchy; while scarcely any one is aware that we have a form of absolution as categorical as their own, and one {3} which presupposes special confession. They are in the habit of taking for granted that we have no succession, besides asserting that our orders are invalid through defect of the formularies. ”

“ But there still remains the cumulative force of such a vast number of probable evidences, all of which coalesce and integrate themselves in the doctrine of the supremacy. The true way is to interpret and complete the earlier tradition, by that which is later. This is done by our adversaries in regard to the canon, to sacraments, to episcopacy, to the authority of councils. It ought to be the same in regard to the papacy. The grand fact of one Catholic Church, centred in Rome as the See of Peter, stares us in the face. ”

“ The example of the Protestant states, where the rulers were supreme in religious as in temporal affairs, could not fail to encourage Catholic sovereigns to assert for themselves greater authority over the Church in their own territories, in utter disregard of the rights of the Pope and of the constitution of the Church. ”

“ But his doctrine is today repudiated alike by philosophy and history. The State must, therefore, be separated from the Church, and the Catholic from the citizen. Every Catholic, from the fact that he is also a citizen, has the right and the duty to work for the common good in the way he thinks best, without troubling himself about the authority of the Church, without paying any heed to its wishes, its counsels, its orders - nay, even in spite of its reprimands. ”

“ The unity of the Church, he claimed, does not depend on the unity of the Pope, but on that of Christ. The Church has a natural and divine right to its unity and self-preservation; hence it can, even without the Pope's sanction, assemble in a general council. ”

“ Patriarchs, primates, metropolitans, archbishops, and bishops throughout the world are all armed with the plenitude of this authority; all derive from this source their jurisdiction and the legitimate exercise of their rights; all, as they love to acknowledge, govern their own churches "by the grace of God and of the apostolic see." And this is why throughout the church there is the same government, the same doctrine, the same administration of the sacraments and divine worship. There is but one rule of government ”

“ In a much more pardonable spirit, because in accordance with their historical antecedents, their hereditary temper, and their ecclesiastical logic, the Roman Catholics in this country are, in many states, and every great city of the Union, using the tremendous power they possess as the make-weight of parties, to turn the public treasure in a strong current into their own channels, and thus secure an illegitimate support as a religious body. ”

“ I said I rested our defence entirely on the difference between Primacy and Monarchy. There were two great powers in the Church of divine origin—the Papacy and the Episcopate. In the earlier centuries the latter had been most sensibly felt: but in modern times the former. "With regard to discipline," he said, "I might allow that; but as to the hierarchy, and as to dogma, the relation has always been what it is now: the hierarchy, even the Eastern patriarchs, always were as strictly bound to the Roman chair as the bishops now. They felt the Pope was their superior." ”

“ However, to prevent all domestic troubles, no one shall preach against the sacrament of the altar; the Mass shall not be abolished; and no one shall be hindered from celebrating or hearing it.” But these concessions to heresy for the general good, this weak recognition of an unlawful assumption of ecclesiastical and political authority, were not what the reformers desired. Not even toleration or equality would satisfy them. They wanted the right to persecute, to eradicate by forcible means and as far as their power extended, every vestige of Catholicity. ”

“ Such being the law in the case, it is evident that the church does and can prescribe no particular form of civil government, and Catholics are free to be monarchists, aristocrats, or democrats, according to their own judgment as statesmen. ”

“ In the Catholic church the Jesuits were allowed unhindered to foster ultramontane hierarchical principles, and in the evangelical church the troubles about constitution, union, and confession could not be surmounted either by its own proper guardian, the episcopate, or by the superior church councils created in 1850. ”

“ It is, no doubt, true that in France, Belgium, and Italy, and perhaps in other old Catholic states, Catholics, even where they are the immense majority, permit the public offices to be filled, and themselves to be ruled by Protestants, Jews, infidels, and such secularized Catholics as hold the state should govern the church; and we have often felt not a little indignant to find it so; but modern society in all Catholic states recedes from the old aristocratic constitution of Europe, and tends to democracy ”

“ These worshippers of success have for allies the Catholics who are not willing to submit to the decrees of the Council of the Vatican. In the jargon of the liberals, these Neo-Protestants are designated as old Catholics, while the immense majority of Catholics who now, as formerly, consider the authority of the Pope and bishops in religious things as higher than that of certain professors, are styled Neo-Catholics, absolutely as if they had abandoned the faith of the church. ”

“ Here are the words of the bull, "According to the canonical sanctions of the holy fathers, no faith ought to be kept with those who do not keep faith with God, or are separated from the communion of the faithful"—Papists. "We release, by our apostolical authority, all those who deem themselves bound to them by any oath, either of alliance or fealty; we permit every Catholic man to seize their persons, to take their lands, and keep them for the purpose of extirpating heresy." ”

“ That the Holy Catholic Church is artfully constituted to subjugate all secular and ecclesiastical power under its authority, and that its object is not to advance the interests of moral goodness, but to acquire temporal dominion, must be admitted by every one that fully comprehends the principles upon which its religious Orders are organized. These Orders were founded by Catholic saints and Bishops. ”

“ In the first place, one must be endowed with a marvellous credulity to believe that a private collection of canons could have had the power to convert the bishop of Rome from a pastor of a particular city or country into the ruler of the whole church, the possessor of prerogatives before unknown to the Christian world. And the marvel is increased when we consider that this great change must have taken place without any protest by the patriarchs or councils who were thus called upon to pay obedience to a new ecclesiastical superior. ”

“ All that I have shown to be the religion of the state, which is indeed nothing more than a portion of the universal common law of Christendom, is involved in the religion of Catholics and taught by it with an authority which they acknowledge as unerring and supreme. Here is, therefore, a principle of stability to the state, and to the rights of all classes of citizens, which is involved in the education and popular instruction which is given by the Catholic clergy. ”

“ At that time he wrote several treatises, in which he maintained, among other doctrines, that bishops and priests hold their jurisdiction from Christ, not from the Pope, that the Pope is inferior to a general council, that neither the Pope nor the council is strictly infallible, but only the universal Church. ”

“ Many to whom the Catholic way of thinking is foreign, look upon the duty of obedience which ties the Catholic to his Church as a sort of servitude; to the Catholic it is the tie of love, uniting free people to a sacred authority. Many look upon the Church of Rome as a tyrannical curia, where Umbrian prelates are cracking their whips over millions of servile and ignorant souls; to the Catholic the Church is the divinely appointed institution of truth, that possesses his fullest confidence. He knows that history has given the most magnificent justification to the Catholic principle of authority. ”

“ On questions of doctrine we find, then, that the convention has done nothing, save that the bishops have asserted, on their own authority, that Christ's commission has been committed to a fallible instrumentality; that communion with the body of Christ is necessary, while no instructions are given as to what and where that body is to be found; that the pope is the great obstacle to catholic unity; that the vicar of our Lord on earth is the Holy Ghost; that the Anglican reformation is good and to be imitated; that there is no presence whatever of Christ in the Holy Eucharist ”

“ Let us now turn away our gaze from the Orthodox Church, in which the terrible declaration of Jesus Christ finds only too fully its accomplishment. Another church appears before us. She is not a divided kingdom: on the contrary, if there be one characteristic mark by which she may be at once recognized by [pg 820] all who seek for her, it is the imposing unity of her exterior organization. The pope forms this unity. Let us ask of history what the pope has done for the church. ”

“ If the supremacy we claim for the pope is established, the obligatory force of all the doctrines and laws proclaimed by him as head of the universal church is established also, without need of further argument, or possibility of appeal to any other tribunal on the earth or in heaven. ”