FATHER HYACINTHE'S PROTEST.

Southland Times, Issue 1197, 18 January 1870, Page 3

FATHER HYACINTHE'S PROTEST.

Father Hyacinthe, the Barefooted Carmelite, has written the following letter to the General of hia Order in France : — " My Very Reverend Father. — During the five years of my ministry at Notre Dame de Paris, and, notwithstanding the open attacks and secret accusations of which I have been the object, your esteem and your confidence have never for an instant failed me. I preserve numerous proofs of them, written in your own hand, which apply to my preaching qnite as much as to me personally. Whatever may happen I shall always retain a grateful recollection of them. Now, however, by a sudden change, the cause of which I do not seek in your heart, but in the intrigues of an all-powerful party at Rome, you accuse wbat you encouraged, you blame wbat you approved, and you command me to speak a language, or maintain a silence, which would no longer be the full and faithful expression of my conscience. "I do not hesitate an instant. I could not reascend the pulpit of Notre Dame with language perverted by a command or mutilated by reticence. I express my regret to the intelligent and courageous Archbishop, who opened the pulpit to me, and who has maintained me in it in spite of the ill-will of the men of whom I have just spoken. I express my regret to the imposing auditory who bestowed upon me its attention, its sympathies, I had almost said its friendship. I should not be worthy of that auditory, of the Bishop, of my conscience, or of God, could I consent to enact such a part before them. I withdraw at the same time from the monastery I live in, and which, under the new circumstances in which I am placed, is changed for me into a prison of the soul. In acting thus I am not unfaithful to my vows ; I promise i monastic obedience, but within the limits of the integrity of my conscience, and the dignity of my person and ministry. I promised it, subject to that higher law of justice and ' royal liberty,' which, according to St. James the Apostle, is the proper law of the Christian. It wai the most perfect practice of that holy liberty which I came to ask of the cloister more than ten years ago, in the ardor of an enthusiasm free from all human calculation ; I dare not add free from all the Ulusions'of youth. If, in exchange for my sacrifices, I am now offered chains, it is not merely my right, it is my duty, to reject them. " The present moment is a solemn one. The Church is passing through one of the most violent, the most obscure, and the most decisive crises of its existence here below. For the first time in 300 years an (Ecumenical Council is not only convoked, but declared necessary. These are the expressions of the Holy Father. It is not at such a moment that a preacher of the Gospel, even the humblest, can consent to. keep silence, like those dumb dogs of Israel, faithless guardians, whom the prophet reproaches because unable to bark : canes muti, non valentes latrare. The saints never keep silent. I am not one of them, but nevertheless I am of their race— -filii sanctorum sumus ; and I have always longed to leave my footsteps, my tears, and if need be my blood, in the traces where they have left theirs. I raise therefore before the Holy Father and the Council my protest, as a Christian and a priest, against those doctrines and those practices which are called Roman, but which are not Christian, and which, by their encroachments, always more audacious and more baneful, tend to change the constitution of the Church, the basis and the form of its teaching, and even the spirit of its piety. I protest against the divorce, as impious as it is insensate, sought to be effected between the Church, which is our eternal mother, and the society of the nineteenth century, of which we are the temporal children, and towards which we have . also duties and regards. I protest against that opposition, more radical and more frightful still to human nature, attacked and outraged by these false doctors in its most indestructible and most holy aspirations. I protest above all against the sacrilegious perversion of the Gospel of the Son of God himself, the spirit and the letter of which are alike trampled under foot by the Pharisaism of the new law. "It is my most profound conviction that if France in particular, and the Latin races in general, are given up to social, moral, and religious anarchy, the principal cause undoubtedly is not Catholicism itself, but the manner in which Catholicism has lor a long time been understood and practised. I appeal to the Council which is about to assemble to seek remedies for the excess of our ills, and to apply them with as much force as gentleness. But if fears which I will not share were to be realised — if the August assembly had no more liberty in its deliberations than it already has in its preparations ; in a word, if it were to be deprived of the essential character of an (Ecumenical Council, I would cry aloud to God and man to claim another, really assembled in the Holy Spirit, not in the spirit of party ; really representing the universal Church, not the silence of some and the oppression of others. " For the hurt of the daughter of my people am I hurt. I am black j astonishment hath taken hold on me. Is there no balm in Gilead ? Is there no physician there ?

Why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered?" (Jeremiah viii.) " And finally I appeal to your tribunal, oh Lord Jesus ! Ad tuum JDomine Jesji, appello. It is in your presence' that I write these lines ; it is at your feet, after ' much prayer, much reflection, much suffering, much waiting, it is at your feet that I sign them. I have the confidence that if men condemn them upon the earth, you will approve them in heaven. That sufficeth me both in life and in death, "Fr. Htacinthe, Superior of the Barefooted Carmelities of Paris, Second Definitor of the Order in the Province of Avignon.