The times on the Romish Church.

Thames Star, Volume XI, Issue 3558, 22 May 1880, Page 1

The times on the Romish Church.

In a recent article on the now celebrated Clause 7 in the Ferry Education Bill, recently rejected by the French Senate, the London Times writes as follows :—

It is very easy and very popular in some quarters to represent the Boorish Church and its emissaries, especially the Jesuits, as active enterprising aggressive, and withal preternaturally subtile. We were very familiar with a bugbear of'this kind in England a generation ago. Exeter Hall'rang with denunciations of the wiles of Rome. The Romish priest was everywhere; the Jesuit was abroad, generally in disguise, and for that reason peculiarly insidious, insinuating, and per* suasive. But somehow or another, in spite of his sacred wiles and open aggression, the Roman Catholic . propagandist did very little harm. Here and there he .made a convert, but when the history of his efforts came to be written and understood, it was generally found that the convert was already half-converted before he sought the counsel of the wily priest. The fear of Papal aggression convulsed the conntry for a moment, bat Exeter Hall is now silent, and is even threatened with extinction. Nor is it very difficult to account for this result. The average Romish priest is by no means so formidable in reality as the popular imagination used to paint.him. Even the dreaded Jesuit is hardly in real life the theological Machiavelli depicted by M. Ferry and M. Pa«l Bert. The time is long gone by, in fact, when a young man's mental outlook was confined to that which bis priest or his priestly teacher chose to tell him. The modern world is all around him, with its science, its onward progress, its speculation probing the inmost recesses of life and knowledge, and he cannot with* stand its influence, if he has any capacity or mental rigour. He soon discovers that the priest is the only man who is ignorant of the way the world is going, and he takes his measure accordingly. If the Romish Church had made any effort to absorb or assimilate the learning, the culture, the science, the scholarship of the modern world, there might be greater reason to fear its influence. There was indeed, a time when the classical scholarship of the Jesuits was formidable, because while it wan at least passably learned it was perverted to a polemical and didactic purpose. But that time has long since passed away, and. now the average Romish ecclesiastic instead of being fairly abreast of the culture of his age, is falling in the rear of it. His theologj* is obsolete, his philosophy is scholastic, his scholarship is of the slenderest, his science would hardly satisfy a School Board in this country. This is'the man whose influence is dreaded as though he was a paragon of learning and a miracle of craft. In this country we hare long since takeu his measure ' and' ceased to fear him. We know that time is against him, and the whole spirit of a restless and inquiring age. Tbere are moments, of course, when a tide of reaction seems to set in hi* direotidn, but the general current of the "World's movement is all the other wayj and from, generation to generation the modern spirit of freo knowledge makes fresh advances which the whole force of the Romish Church is powerless to withstand. . . . But it is paying him a' very high and a very undeserved compliment to regard him as so very formidable an opponent. He has had his opportunity in the last few years, and even if he has done his worst, it has not come to very much. France has not yet shown any very perceptible signs of a Catholic reaction, nor is it very likely to do so. In fact, this unworthy fear of the priest and the Jesuit in education is a sign either of weakness lor intolerance. It is weakness if it springs from a belief that the j priest, with the feeblo and antiquated weapons at his command, can do much to resist the whole influence of that modern knowledge which now stirs the world and penetrates every man of .intelligence even in spite of himself. It is intolerance if its purpose is to repress by force an influence which is certain to succumb sooner or later to reason and common sense. Indeed, a law 'against the influence of the Jesuits will soon be almost as obsolete and futile as a law against witchcraft. 'They may still exercise a power, such as.it is,, over the young and foolish, but the time and the world are on the side,of the young and will soon make them wiser, and we fear that no law of repression will do very much for the incurably foolish. We

believe, in fact, that as much as has been found in England, so it will be found in France, that the Jesuits are very little to be feared ; and we are quite sure that tlie most effective way of strengthening their waning influence would be to attempt to repress ifc by force.