THE CATHOLIC HIERARCHY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume I, Issue 60, 3 May 1873, Page 4

THE CATHOLIC HIERARCHY.

The following pastoral letter of the Archbishops and Bishops of Ireland, assembled in Dublin on the 21st and 22nd of January, 1873, to their flocks, was read on February 3rd of this year in the different Churches and Chtipels of that Archdiocese :—: — " Taught by the authority of St. Augustine, (a) that love for the Church of Christ is a proof and pledge of close union with the Holy

Spirit, we cannot but account as a great grace from Heaven that intense love of the Catholic Church which has at all times been cherished in Ireland. Of the depth and tenderness of this love in your hearts, dearly beloved brethren, our own daily intercourse with you furnishes us with many and striking proofs. How often have we seen theafflicted among you forget their owa sorrows in reflecting on the sorrows that have come thick upon the Vicar of Christ ? How often have the very poorest held out to us the alms with which their generous poverty sought to make some compensation to the Church for the sacrilegious outrages of which she had been made the victim ? How. many acts of prayer and penance have been performed by you to moveGod to shorten the Church's trials by converting and humbling her enemies? And whenever the defence of Catholic interests called fora public expression of feeling, no class or rank among you was founds wanting in Catholic spirit : the noble and the peasant, the learned' and the unlearned, the rich and the poor, were of one mind- and of one heart in grieving over the Church's losses and rejoicing at her gains. But it no time, perhaps, have your religious sentiments been more plainly outraged than at the present day, when, throughout the world,, iniquity seems to have reached the height of its triumph. Lest, however, the harrowing spectacles of the Church's trials should utterly dishearten you, our Holy Mother addresses you to-day, through us, in the words of the Apostle St. Paul to the Ephesians— ' Wheretore I pray you not to faint at my tribulations for you, whichas yoar glory. For this cause I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ . . . That he would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened by His spirit with might unto the inward manthat Christ may dwell bj faith in your hearts.' " \b) "And in truth, beloved bretheren,. there would be much to discourage us in the tribulations at present endured by the Catholic Church, were it not for the strengthening power of our faith in thepromises made to her by Christ, her founder. For, as our Holy Father has recently, declared, (a) « the entire church is groaning under the vexation of a protracted and savage persecution,' which seeks to ■ compass • her total destruction, and the- blotting out cf the name of Christ living and reigning in her.' Not, indeed, that those who assail the Church everywhere and under all circumstances openly avow that their purpose is utterly to destroy her, for it is a special feature of this • persecution that with violence the most audacious they couple the most subtle hypocrisy; Henoe, the better to secure success, they veryfrequently mask their attacks, and by professing to secure some interest of country or of modern enlightenment they abuse the good faith of " the simple or unwary. But, however various the form of attack,, however specious the advantage ostensibly aimed at, the one ultimate objecjb of all their efforts, to which all! are directed beforehand, » nothingness than the final. overthrow of the Christian religion. " Three things are essential for the good estate of the Church here' below. First, the preservation of the Christian faith, which is theprinciple of her life ; second, the maintenance of the authority of the hierarchy, which is her vital organization ; third, her free action on the souls of men by the word of God and the Sacraments, which' action is the condition of her growth. To destroy any one of these is to destroy the Churoh herself. Now, it needs but a glance at the - state of the world to be convinced that against each and all of themassaults are now daily made, which for their duration, their continuity, their extent, and their variety, are not surpassed in all the bloods tamed annals of persecution. " And, first of all, what mighty forces are at present at work in ■ the world with the object of overthrowing the Christian faith t Thereis no need to dwell upon the hostility to Christianity, of which the signs are apparent in the apostacy of so many modern politicians, or half Bhrouded-in the machinationa of secret societies ; amongst which that of Freemasons notoriously exists in our own country, and isabetted by those who ought to discourage it. But the appalling list of errors condemned in the Vatican Council (d) proves that even in the fundamental doctrines, God,. the soul, rational certitude, Jand the entire supernatural order, what is called the thought of the age,, has assumed a position directly antagonistic to the teachings of the-

pathohc Faith. &o doubt, not now for the first time in the world's history has the fool said in his heart there is no God ; nor now for the first time has tho materialist found in hi* unbelief a reason tvhy he should rush on sensual pleasures. But never before has infidelity been found so thoroughly organised, so aggressivo, so powerful to destroy. It neglects no Channel by which ami-Christian influences can be made to reach men's souls. It is master of the press ; in the newspapers which he even upon the tables of Catholics ; in the periodicals edited by infidels, which have free circulation ; in the works of fiction wherein they seek their pleasure ; in the handbooks which .popularise the discoveries of science ; and in the learned treatises which are the boaat of universities : its baleful forces are constantly at work, now subtly impre B nating men's minds with dislike of creeds, now crushing faith at a blow, and now again sapping it by underlining tho natural truths upon which the Christian demonstration rests. It assumes to be the dictator of the physical sciences; and its apostles though they superciliously disdain even the bare knowledge of wliac revelation teaches concerning the origin and destiny of man and of the world, loudly proclaim to the youth, who, obeying the Materialist tendencies of the age, throng in eager crowds to their schools, that iaitn cannot be reconciled with science. It aims at political power, and when it secures it opposes an iron barrier to all legislation, however ju«t, which might favour the religious interests of the people; while it forces upon millions of believers social institutions based on principles condemned by the Christian faith. And thus the name of Jesus— that name which is above every name, and than which no other under Heaven has been given to men whereby they may be saved- is made a sign to be contradicted and blaEphemed, and the Catholic Church, which, with adoring love, ever has that name in her heart and on her lip-, has been doomed by an aggressive inUdelity to perish beneath its blows. J * But, in spite of all these exertions, the sacred name of Jesus still commands the love and awe of millions. Never has the Church exhibited a unity more perfect than that which now binds throughout the world the faithful to their bishops, and the bishops to the sacred Head of the Church, the >oman Pontiff. This majestic spectacle of two hundred millions of believers, held together in the unity of one mystic body by the living power of the authority of the Infallible See, maddens the enemies of Christ into an auger mired with fear. On the one hand, fieir rage again*t the Church urges them to open violence against her ; on the other, the dread of arousing formidable opposition counsels more guarded proceedings. Hence, for the most part, they prefer indirect attacks upon the Church. Professing to tolerate nay even to respect the Catholic Church for its many services to society they declare their aim to be merely the destruction of priestcraft or of Ultramoatanism, by which names they designate the Divine authority giveu by Christ to the pastors of His Church. This hypocrisy can deceive no oue. The Emperor Deems was undoubtedly one of the moat deadly enemies who have at any time sought utterly to annihilato the Church. And yet, when St Cyprian would describe in a single phrase the implacable rage that drove this man to drown, iv the blood ji the faithful, tho very name of Christ, he could find none more htting to portray the crusl persecutor than this -that he was • tyrannm miensus Dei sacerdotibus " (c) -a tyrant who hated the priests of G-oJ. And do not the same words most truthfully depict the .Decuues of our own day, who seek to justify ev.-ry iniquity to which their hatred of tho Church urges them by the plea that it is intended lor the repression of priestcraft ? And as in the third, so also in the nineteenth century, the first blows of tlu haters of God's pri«st* should naturally fall upou the great High Priest of the Vatican, sitting at Boine "in the place of 1 eter, aud in the rank of the sacerdotal chair." When St. Cyprian( f) praises Pope St. Cornelius, who « sat fearless iv the sacerdotal chair at Kome at tne moment when the tyrant who hated God's priests uttered very horrible threats, and with much more patience and endurance heard the rise oi a rival prince than the appointment of (rod s priest at Koine," does not the holy martyr paiut to tho life the successor of St. Cornelius, the glorious Pontiff Pius IX. ? Fearless, he sits at Rome in the infallible eh iir of St. Peter, confronting the ra»e of the haters of God's priests ; fearless, he listens to them as they utter their terrible threat—'- fanda et nefmda ;" fearless, he smites with the authority ot i'eter and of Christ each fresh attempt agaiust the authority of the Church. Nay, more, he warns hid enemies that the femes of evil which they have let loose against that authority will infallibly svveop away iv their recoil the authority of civil government ; but his words are unheeded, and the ru'ers of the world— dupes or accomplices of a darkly secret power standing behind their thronesare lorced, like Deems, to witness with patience tho rise of the revolutionary nva!s who hurl them from their plucd of pride. " But, though impervious to fear, the heart of Pius IX. is but too open to sorrow, not indeed (or his own sufferings, or for the loss of sovereignty, or for the loss of personal liberty, but for tiio desecration ot bion, lor the abominations he is forced to see standing in the holy places oi Koine, and, above all, for the persecutions indicted on the Church by the attacks made on ecclesiastical authority. Like JVlatathms beholding the evils come upon the conquered Jerusalem he cries out :-'Woo is me, wherefore was I born to see the ruins of my people, and the ruin of the holy city, and to dwell there, when it is given into the hands of tho enemies ? The holy places are come into the hands of strangers; the temple has become as a man without honour. All her ornaments are taken away. She that is free is made a slave. And behold our sanctuary, and our beauty and our elorv is laid waste, and the Gentiles have defiled them.' QJ In the two years that have elapsed siuce the capture of Eome, Pius IX. has seen his palaces rifled, churches and ecclesiastical buildings seized for profane uses, mimeroucs charitable institutions in his States confiscated the enforced alienation of the property of religious orders, religion 'completely banished from the schools, episcopal authority even over . fe) Epiat. 52. ~ — . (/) Epiat. 52, 1 Hachabees. ii, 7, et aeq. (}) Phil. 21.

ecclesiastical seminaries set at naught, and the possession of their own houses refused to the Bishops themselves. He has seen clerical students, even when in priests' orders dragged by the druel conscriotion from the ultur of the G-od of Peace, and forced to serve as soldiers in the army, and lie now has the crowning sorrow of beholding the final ruin coming upon religious orders by the suppression of thei* principal houses. AH these outrages against the authority of the Church are so many attempts to destroy the Church herself. " These pretensions on the part of the State," thus write the Bishops of Tuscany to King Victor Emmanuel, 'to grant or refuse its sanction to our evangelical mission, and fetter at its discretion the liberty of our ministry, which is the liberty of God, constitute an offence against the Divine autonomy of the Church and high treason against G-od. This is what the royal Placet and Exequatur amount to, which, in religious matters, your Majesty's Government grants or withholds at pleasure. It is not now n question of mere ecclesiastical discipline, which is changeable, but of principles and dogma, and it i 9 a dogma of faith that the Catholic Cliurch has the full right of self-government, and this is the right tlxat is outraged. It is not in our power to alter in any degree the constitution of tho Church, such as it came to us from the Apostles, and to the Apostles from Christ, and to Christ from His Father: "Bcclesiae ab Apostolis, Apostoli a Christo, Ohri.tus a Deo." (h.) " Notwithstanding these truths, which are the basis of Christian' ity, and deeply rooted in every Catholic conscience, we have been deprived not only of the liberty of providing pastors for the flock entrusted to us, but we are not free to give parochial jurisdiction even for an hour to priests whose services may be necessary for the spiritual wants of the faithful. This being so, you, Sire, as a child of the Catholic Church, will feel in the depths of your heart that we are but doiug our duty when we firmly, but respectfully, tell you that there is not and cannot be any hesitation as to the line of conduct we shall pursue in such cases, for it is written :— 'But Peter and the Apostles answering, saith, we ought to obey God ritlier than men.' (?) "For the discharge of our duty, curse.*, imprecations, insults, have been heaped upon us, and we bore them with resignation, reflecting that, before us, Christ our L>rd had been loaded with curses, imprecations, and insults. We were threatened with confiscation and exile, and we took comfort, as we thought how sweet on the one hand was the liberty and sanctity of evangelical po.verty, while, on the other, wo considered that the whole earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof. And if we shall be threatened even with death, with God's help we will meet it with calmuess an I serenity; reflecting that our life ought to be Christ, atid that at times death is a gain, '^for to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain." (/.) '• We have never paltered with error 5 we have not burned a single grain of incense to the iuol of popularity ; we have never allowed the pastoral staff to stoop to the meanness, or the injustice, or the prejudices of the age. So muy God give us help to continue in the path of suffering and of duty.' So far the bishops of Italy on the sad condition to which they have been reduced. Equally harassing is the persecution of which the Church is at present the object in the German Empire. Fluohed by their newlyacquired power, those who have put themselves at its head, and taken on themselves to speak and act for the Empire, have assnmed towards the Catholic religion the same attitude precisely as that of the Pagan Jtinperora ot Rome towards Christianity in the earliest age of the Church. The capital offence of which the primitive Christians wore guilty in tho eves of the law was this, that they refused to admit the omnipotence of the State in religious as well as iv civil matters. 'We are charged,' says Tertullian, (k) « as being guilty of sacrilege auu of treuso 1 : this is the chief, nay, the only accusation against us. " Ie is plain, from even a cursory view of the recent acts of hoitility towards the Church which have occurred in Germany, that the German Catholics may repeat this statement, and say : tho only" offence of which we are guilty is, that we cannot give to the State in religious matters the ready and lojjl obedience which we yield to it iv civil affairs

" i'hus, iv the question concerning the so-called Old Catholics, w.ien a handful of proud professors and their pupils refused to submit to the dogmatic definition of the Vatican Council, and separated themselves from the faith of the entire Catholic Church, the State insisted that they should still be aocounted as Catholics, and strove to compel its Catholic subjects to receive from them, as from Catuolics, religious instruction, and even the Sacraments themselves. Does not such a proceeding involve the usurpation by the State of the Church's authority to decide matters of doctrine, by defining what i 3 heresy and what is not ? And when the State, by virtue of this usurped authority, forbids the Bishops to excommunicate apostates, does it uot thereby equivaleutly forbid the very existence of the Church itself? ' The eu, ne principle of persecution underlies the action taken by tho Government ag.dnst the Bishop Chaplain-General of the Army, for haii-ig placed under interdict the military Church of Cologne, upou the altar of which an apostate piijst had sacrilegiously dared to offer the saedQce of Mass. For this act the Bishop was subjected by the mi'itary authorities to a niilitary court, and forbidden iv any way to exercise his episcopal office. Nay, more, his priests were commanded to break off ull official relations with him, and some were even dis-mi-sed becuuse they declared themselves bound in conscience to ot>ay their Bishop in things spiritual. Could religious liberty be more flagrantly violated than in this instance ? " Agaiu, the expulsion of the Society of Jesus and of kindred orders and congregations, including tho itedemptbrists, the Laztrists the Trapists, and the Christian Brothers, U an act of revolting tyranny and injustice towards tho Church. It assails her doctrine, for it is an article of Catholio faith that the observance of the evangeli-al counsels is part of Chiistim perfection, aud that God does really call men to this state. To prohibit the religious life, therefore, amounts to a (h ) Tertull, de Prescript, 37. (i) Acts v. 29 (*) 2 Apol. 10.

prohibition of the free exercise of the Catholic religion. It assails her jurisdiction, for it forbids to priests belonging to religious orders all exorcise of the sacredotal functions. It assails her sacred right, of property, for it inflicts upon her the loss of so many religious houses built and mantained by the alms of the faithful. Finally, it inflicts the penalties of confiscation and of exile upon men who have never been brought to trial, much less convicted of any crime against the State And in the common ruin are involved the convents even of religious ladies, who are now condemned to spend in exile the lives they so nobly risked in tending tho wounded on the battle fields and in the hospitals, or which they had consecrated to the education and service of the poor of Christ. We will not dwell upon others of the penal laws lately passed, such as that against preachers, wl-ose discourse may bo interpreted to be antagonistic to the policy of the empire, or the law forbidding the young to become members of religious confraternities ; or the decree forbidding the dedicatior of an ecclesiastical province to the Sacred Heart of JVsus Christ. Nor will we speak of the still more stringent measures, which, with growing shamelessness of persecution, are now openly announced as to be put into operation against Catho'ics. We have said more than enough to Bhow the violence of the German persecution. (To he Continued.)