THURSDAY, MARCH 28, 1901. THE TITLE ' CATHOLIC.'

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXIX, Issue 13, 28 March 1901, Page 17

THURSDAY, MARCH 28, 1901. THE TITLE ' CATHOLIC.'

y 4J%n^L N Sunday next, the parting day of the present fmm^m month, it will be the duty of our householder*^s&ffi!k readers to fill in the particulars required for the $S§||sr census enumeration of the Colony for the year j&Sm 1 ' The time is therefore opportune for *^5f9 reminding them that the only designation by c^o§** which our co-religionists are officially known to * the State in these countries is that of ' Roman Catholics." The title is the last of a variegated series of terms which mark as with mile-posts the course of legislation affecting Catholics living under the British tlag. In the 50th of her Injunctions Queen Elizabeth ' straitly commands all manner her subjects' 'not to use in dispute or rebuke of any person these convicious words, papist or papistical heretic' In the statutes of her time Catholics were referred to as ' recusants ' or ' persons in communion with the Church of Rome.' During the long agony of the penal days — from 1692 till the closing years of the eighteenth century — Catholics were officially known by the nickname of ' Papists ' and ' Popish people.' In 1793, after the days of the French Revolution, these epithets were somewhat mellowed down, and Catholics came to be known as ' persons professing the Popish or Roman Catholic religion.' And in later statutes they were finally and definitely designated ' Roman Catholics.' Social usage had in the meantime so far softened towards the Catholic body that in 1812 Denys ScULiiY could say in his Siaiemcnt of the Penal Lairs that ' the reproachful epithet of " Papist," " Romish," "Romanist," was no longer applied to Catholics by any gentleman or scholar.' • • • The term 'Roman Catholic' is none of our creation. And Catholics, while acquiescing in it as a legal formula, have never taken kindly to it, very rarely use it, and in no wise regard it as their proper title. On this account there lies a danger that individual Catholics here and there may omit the term ' Roman ' and merely write the word ' Catholic ' in the column set apart in the census-paper for information as to the religious belief of the people. It so happens that — for some reason which we do not profess to

be able to fathom — returns are published in this Colony for ' Catholics (undefined). 1 And thus the omission, by Catholic householders, of the word 'Roman' from our full l?gal desgnation would render the return of members of our Fold in New Zealand incomplete and misleading. It is the duty of Catholics to aid intelligently and to the best of their power in furnishing this and all other information required according to the intention of the civil authority. And we would respectfully urge the clergy to impress upon their congregations the need of faithfully discharging this important civic duty. • • • No Pope, no General or (National Council, no Father or Doctor of the Church, not one of her approved creeds, rituals, or liturgies has ever used the term ' Roman Catholic' as the official title of our religion. Its genuine official title is ' the Holy Catholic Church,' or ' the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church,' or briefly, ' the Catholic Church.' We c ] aim the title ' Catholic 'as ours exclusively. No other creed or sect claims this exclusive right. At most, they would share the title with us. Fifteen hundred years ago St. Augustine — who was certainly a ' Roman Catholic ' and in full communion with the Holy See — made light of all such claims to partnership in the title ' Catholic ' in his book Be Vera Rflif/icne. 'We must,' he writes, 'hold the Christian Religion and the Communion of that Church which is Catholic, and is not only called so by her own children, but by all her enemies. For heretics and schismatics, whether they will or no, when they speak not to their own people, but to strangers, call Catholics, Catholics only. For they cannot be understood if they give them not that name which all the world gives them.' The same great Saint concludes as follows the statement of his reasons for remaining in the Catholic Church : ' Lastly, the very name of Catholic holds me, of which tbis Church alone has, not without reason, so kept the possession that though all heretics desire to be called Catholics, yet if a stranger asks them where the Catholics meet, none of the heretics dare point out his own house or church.' A similar test was recommended by St. Cyril, who was Bishop of Jerusalem early in the fourth century. He tells the stranger in a strange city to ' ask which is the Catholic church, because,' he adds, ' this title belong to our holy mother.' The term was used by these two Saints as a test to exclude those who were not in communion with the Holy S<*e. In the same sense it was used by St. Pacian. ' Christian is my name,' said he, ' Cathelic is my surname. By the former lam called ; by the latter I am distinguished. By the name of Catholic oifr society is distinguished from all heretics.' • • * It is the same to-day as it was in the far-off times of Aumstine and Cyiul and Pacian. The title 4 Catholic ' is now, us it was then, the distinguishing mark of our Church, and not a vague general term which is intended to include a hopeless salmagundi of non-coalescent and mutually repellent Christian creeds. The well-known lines of Horace have been metrically translated as follows :—: — Yes». wordß long faded may again revive, And words may fade now blooming and alive, If usage wills it so, to whom belongs The will, the law, the government of things. AriiUß (JeMjIUS puts the same idea in the following words : ' Custom is the mistress of everything, and, in a most especial manner, regulates the use of words.' And custom is quite agreed that the word 'Catholic' is the peculiar designation of the Church which has for its visible head on earth the Pope or Bishop who sits upon the chair of St. Peter in Home. The very street-arab finds only one meaning in the words of a stranger who inquires for the Catholic church, the Catholic priest, the Catholic sisterhood. Standard English writers —we need only instance Lord Macaulay, Edmund Burke, James Martineau, Lecky, — agree in using the word ' Catholic ' to designate the Church which is in communion with Rome. Lecky, when taken to task some years ago in Dublin for having used the word ' Catholics ' to designate members of the papal Church, refused to employ the compound word ' Roman Catholic,' which he regarded as a solecism in language. This noted Unionist and rationalistic historian cannot be suspected of any leaning towards our faith. But in all his learned and voluminous writings he habitually applies the term ' Catholic

Church ' to that great religious organisation which has its centre in the City of the Seven Hills. The great Encyclopctdic Dictionary .states that the word 'Catholic' is by general usage applied to those in communion with the See of Rome—-or, as its Protestant compilers put it, ' the Roman Catholic branch of the Christian ChurcL' Webster's great standard dictionary defines the term ' Catholic,' when standing by itself, as meaning ' Roman Catholic' Briefly, the word ' Catholic ' means just what practically universal usage has decided that it shall mean. And that meaning is inseparably associated with what is officially known among us as ' the Roman Catholic Church.' It is too late now for any Bmall creed or section thereof to attempt to alter the long-fixed and settled meaning of venerable words that are still in everyday use. Such attempts have been made. But from the days of Horace and Aulus Gellius down to our time they have nob met with any conspicuous measure of success. * * * In the languages of Continental Europe no term is known corresponding to the official designation of ' Roman Catholic * by which we are known in English-speaking countries. In French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, and other European languages the title * Catholic ' is applied to, and only to, the Church of Rome. Were the word ' Roman ' added it would be understood to mean the Catholics of the city of Rome. The same statement holds good in the East. In his Visit to the Russian Churchy Rev. W. Palmer (Anglican) tells how, to his great annoyance, the ' Orthodox ' Russians persisted in calling the adherents of the Church of Rome ' Catholics ' pure and simple. The Russian Orthodox American Messenger — as in in its issues of January 1-13, 1898— does likewise. And the following paragraph appeared in the Catholic Times a few years ago from a correspondent resident in Cairo (Egypt) : ' In the East no one is called a Catholic if noi in communion with Rome. If a man called himself "an Anglican Catholic " here he would be at once considered a *• Roman Catholic" from England. All Churches united with Rome are called Catholic, such as the Catholic Copts, Greek Catholics, Syrian Catholics, and Latin Catholics. Those in schism are called Orthodox. Ihe Anglicans are simply English Protestants/ • • • No creed outside ' the Roman obedience ' claims the exclusive right to the word ' Catholic' When they apply it to themselves at all it supposes the acceptance of a • branch' theory or other form of Church polity which is opposed to the words of the New Testament and contradicted by all ecclesiastical history and tradition. Moreover, the official title of none of them is ' the Catholic Church.' It is (as in the Coronation Oath) ' the Protestant Religion as by Law Established ' ; or ' The Church of Scotland ' ; or • The Free Church of Gotland ' ; or ' The Protestant Episcopal Church ' ; or ' The Methodist- Episcopal Church *;or * The Methodist-Protestant Church ' ; or 'The Freewill Baptists'; and so on. In the ordinary and long-fixed usage of the words, the overwhelming body of Christian people understand by the designation ' Catholic Church ' the Church of Rome and no other. The word ' Roman ' is not used as an identifying prefix, and therefore, outside legal formalities, its use is unnecessary. When Catholics employ the superfluous word ' Roman ' in reference to themselves they do so either in accordance with official requirements, or merely to emphasise the Roman headship of the Church. People outside our Fold sometimes use the term • Roman ' in this connection by way of denial that the Church in communion with the Pope is the one and only universal Church. Apart, therefore, from legal requirements, Catholics should ever call fcheir Church by her unique and long-con3ecrated title, * the Catholic Church,' and should avoid bestowing upon her a designation which is not of our creation, and which is nowhere recognised in her official formulas.

A list of the winning: numbers in the Hawera Art Union will be found in our advertising columns, — %* It is expected that there will be a large audience present in the Agricultural Hall on Easter Monday night on the occasion of the oonoert by Miss Anita Moss, who will be assisted by Mrs. Von Look, Messrs. F. H. Young, A. Vallis, W. Wright, W. E. Taylor, eto. Miss Moss has only come recently to Dunedin from Australia where as a vocalist she occupied a leading position. — *%