Catholic reaction

“ The pealing tones of the organ resound under the touch of the highest masters of art for his simple ear. Listening to those strains, his mind forms a conception of the harmony and beatitude of Heaven!
Even death is not looked upon with horror by the Catholic. If he lose a friend in this life, unlike the Protestant, he does not abandon him in oblivion, but his sympathies still extend to him by offering masses for his soul. And it is because it is so adapted to man’s spiritual nature that the Catholic religion has withstood the shock and surge of ages! ”

“ For from hence we may learn, first, That a Catholic spirit, is not speculative latitudinarianism. It is not an indifference to all opinions. This is the spawn of hell, not the offspring of heaven. This unsettledness of thought, this being driven to and fro and tost about with every wind of doctrine, is a great curse not a blessing; an irreconcileable enemy not a friend to true Catholicism. A man of a truly Catholic spirit, has not now his religion to seek. He is fixt as the sun in his judgment concerning the main branches of Christian doctrine. ”

“ Deep down in my heart I knew that, with the Catholic Church eliminated from Christianity, the whole fabric tottered and fell, and Christ was stamped with the mark of an impostor and a failure—His life, His wonders, and His death, shams. Instinctively I knew, too, that without the Catholic Church the Christian world would fall to the level of Rome at its worst, and that every enemy of Christ turned his face against her priests. I knew that every real atheist, every licentious man, most revolutionists, every anarchist, hated a priest. ”

“ The worship of the Saints has done harm, not only in the case of the false reverence of the market place, but whenever it has led men to turn from the source of the saint's power to the accidentals of his life and character, and to imitate the man, rather than to get into touch with his spirit. But the words of the old Creed, "I believe in the Holy Catholic Church," express a great reality. ”

“ The prevalence of such a literature, so erroneous in doctrine, so false in principle, and so debasing in tendency, must be deplored by Catholics, not only as injurious to morals, and too often fatal to the life of the soul, but as ruinous to modern civilization, which is founded on the great principles of the Catholic religion, and has been in great part created by the Catholic Church, chiefly by her supreme pontiffs, and her bishops and clergy, regular and secular. ”

“ Catholics hold that Protestants who have these dispositions, and who have no suspicion of their religion being false, and no means to discover, or fail in their honest endeavors to discover, the true religion, and who are so disposed in their heart that they would at any cost embrace the Roman Catholic Religion if they knew it to be the true one, are Catholics in spirit and in some sense within the Catholic Church, without themselves knowing it. ”

“ Excuse me for flatly contradicting you, but the Catholic Church does not hold the doctrine of the total depravity of the human race; on the contrary, she ever teaches that man did not lose by the Fall the image of God, or his own free will, or the powers of his reason. But you asked me how I became a Catholic. I am more interested in telling you that than in refuting what her enemies say of the church, because that you can find in books any day; but you must allow me to echo your surprise when I see a large, earnest soul like yours satisfied with a simple negation of faith. ”

“ How many of our Catholics, though holding Protestantism to be an error against faith and antagonistic to the Church, hold that the mass of Protestants are out of the way of salvation, and can never see God in the beatific vision, unless before they die they become Catholics, united to Christ in the Church which is his Body? If we assert the contrary, are we not met with theological distinctions, logical refinements, subtle explanations and qualifications, which place us all in the wrong? ”

“ If, instead of comparing the crimes, we should consider the respective virtues of Catholic and Protestant nations, we should at once be struck by the difference in their standards of morality. The most practical way of determining the real standard of morality of any religion is to study the character of its saints. There we find religious ideals made tangible and fully discernible. Here at once we perceive that there is an essential difference between the Catholic and the Protestant standard of morality. The lives of our saints, even when understood by Protestants, generally repel them. ”

“ No Catholic will misunderstand us. We appreciate as much as any one can the external authority of the church, her supremacy, her infallibility; we accept ex animo the supremacy and infallibility of the successor of St. Peter in the See of Rome, as defined in the recent Council of the Vatican, and should be no better than a Protestant if we did not; but that external authority is not alone, or alone sufficient, as every Catholic knows, for the soul, and its acceptance is not sufficient for salvation. The Holy Ghost must dwell in the individual soul, forming “Christ within, the hope of glory.” ”

“ As well might the world think that the worship of Pan or of Jupiter would spring again into life as that the poor, despised, dying Catholics could expand and grow once more into a position of respect and influence, reasserting and publicly upholding the principles of the Catholic Faith, for which their forefathers in England and Ireland had suffered persecution and even death. ”

“ One who disdained the thought of diluting Catholic doctrine to suit the delicate palate of the age, who was regardless of the opinion of men, who plumed his pinions for a kind of audacious flight into the lofty ether in which saints alone are wont to soar and poise in contemplation, who threw off all drapery from the glorious form of Catholic truth, and loudly called on all men to gaze and worship, is the one who wins the confidence and captivates the hearts of the greatest number of the church’s lost and estranged children. ”

“ But enough crops out in these decrees to show that the Catholic Church is not willing to let the merits of Christ be regarded as the only thing that justifies the sinner. He must cooperate with the Holy Spirit to the end of being justified. He must prepare and dispose himself for receiving justifying grace, and this grace is infused into him, and manifests itself in holy movements of the heart and by good works, in acts of love. The Roman Catholic Christian is taught to believe that he is justified partly by what Christ has done, partly by what he himself is doing. ”

“ Does one attain the same depth of view from the Catholic stand-point? All doubt on this point must disappear on thorough consideration of what we have above named, the inner side of Catholicism.
There is another ground for the favor with which this ideal theory of the Church is at present received. Protestant theology regards it as a means of its own resuscitation. The old doctrine of justification by faith alone has in great part lost the charm it once exercised over the hearts of the German people. The once mighty battle-cry of inward, subjective faith is no longer to the taste of our age. ”

“ The church, therefore, was not taken by surprise, when the “Syllabus” appeared, however much its publication may have struck with astonishment and alarm the party of revolution and unbelief. Catholics, at least, could not fail to be swayed by such a masterly exposition of Catholic theology on so many subjects, all intimately connected with human conduct in private life as well as in affairs of public [pg 270] import. And there were Catholics everywhere—among the rulers of the world and its leading statesmen, no less than in all classes and grades of society. ”

“ And what are we to say of those who confess to us, as some do every day, that even in the olden days they had long been wishing to be Catholics; but they were living among men among whom those who wished to be Catholics could not be so through the infirmity of fear, seeing that if any one there said a single word in favour of the Catholic Church, he and his house were utterly destroyed at once? ”

“ Hence it is that Catholics, in all emergencies, even in the most calamitous, nay, even in those caused by the worst iniquities of unscrupulous men, do not fail to adore the goodness and justice of Almighty God, and to acknowledge the inscrutable dispositions of his most holy will. ”

“ Giving loose rein to passion under the specious names of liberty of conscience and the preaching of licentious doctrines, modern society is plunging into the abyss of iniquity. Hence, the Catholic associates must rise courageously in the midst of this generation, confess Christ openly, publicly affirm his doctrines, and defend them in the face of his enemies. The Catholic associates must revive the praises of Christ; to them are his divine promises addressed, to them belong the irrevocable guarantees of being placed near the throne of his Father. ”

“ In spite of all the shocks which the feeling of a good Catholic has in this Protestant country inevitably to undergo, in spite of the contemptuous insensibility to the grandeur of Rome which he finds so general and so hard to bear, how much has he to console him, how many acts of homage to the greatness of his religion, may he see if he has his eyes open! ”

“ But if this be so, those who profess to be convinced of the truth of Catholic doctrines ought to be regarded as sincere and conscientious, which we think most of our non-Catholic friends will also admit. Every one must see, then, how contrary to every right and honorable principle it is to attempt to act on the minds of those who desire to become Catholics by any other means than argument and persuasion. How dangerous, how unjust, how mean it is to strive to terrify or wheedle them into a forced acquiescence in the will of others through human and worldly motives! ”

“ This was natural, though in many respects deplorable, and it can be safely said that adverse criticism of the Catholic Church today is based only on qualities it acquired during the period of Renaissance autocracy and revived paganism; qualities that do not affect its essential integrity or authority but do misrepresent it before men, and work as a handicap in its adaptability and in its work of winning souls to Christianity and re-establishing the unity of Christendom. ”

“ In pursuance of this accommodating doctrine, they dissected the Catholic faith till they reduced it to a mere skeleton; they lopped off the reality of the body and blood of Christ in the Holy Eucharist, the divine Christian sacrifice offered in the Mass, confession of sins, most of the sacraments, penitential exercises, several of the canonical books of Scripture, the invocation of saints, celibacy, most of the General Councils of the Church, and all present Church authority; they perverted the nature of justification, asserting that faith alone suffices to justify man ”

“ The Christian religion must be held by us, and the communion of that church which is Catholic, and is called Catholic, not only by its own members, but also by all its enemies. For, whether they will or no, the very heretics themselves and the offspring of schisms, when they talk not with their own friends, but with people outside, call the Catholic Church nothing else but Catholic. ”

“ No man will be condemned on account of his ignorance, neither Protestant, nor heathen, nor, I may add, Catholic either. He can be condemned only because, when knowing Christ, he has refused to accept Him, to believe in Him, to do His will and keep His commandments. Instead of our Lords’ saying that to Protestants, who never knew the truth of his doctrines as taught by the Catholic Church, it is those Catholics he threatens to disown who, knowing Him, have denied Him by their sinful lives, —who, knowing the will of the Lord, did it not. ”

“ The infallible Church Catholic is, really, the prophetic soul of the wide world dreaming of things to come; the whole human race, in its onward progress, discovering truth more complete than the parcel of truth any momentary individual can seize. ”

“ Do Protestants believe this divine fact?
"Reason, it is true," says the Roman Catechism, "and the senses, are compelled to ascertain the existence of the Church, that is, of a society of men devoted and consecrated to Jesus Christ; no faith is necessary to understand a truth which is acknowledged by Jews and Turks; but do Protestants believe the privileges and dignity of the Church as Catholics believe them? By no means, because they have not the light of faith, which alone enables us to say I believe the Catholic Church." ”

“ These waverers, these men who lack force of character, whose hearts are charged with diluted Catholicism, know and believe, and by listening to sermons and religious instructions can completely convince themselves, that the Catholic Church is divine in her origin, holy in her founder, infallible in her doctrines, apostolic in her organization, glorious and wonderful in her saints. ”

“ There is a large floating body of Catholic truth in the world. It comes down by tradition from age to age; it is carried forward by preaching and profession from one generation to another, and is poured about into all quarters of the world. It is found in fulness and purity in the Church alone; but portions of it, larger or smaller, escape far and wide, and penetrate into places which have never been under the teaching of divine grace. Now, men may take up and profess these scattered truths, merely because they fall in with them. ”