Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, 18 January 1912, Page 17

Current Topics

The Beginning of the End • - Protestantism started on its stormy career a few hundred years ago with a belief in our Lord’s Divinity and in the inspiration of the Sacred Scriptures; now-a-days it looks as if belief in both of these vital doctrines is rapidly going—among the masses from indifference, among the educated from excess of ‘ learning.’ In the early days of controversy between Catholics and Protestants, the historical character of the Scriptures was at any rate taken for granted; the battle was fought on the meaning of particular passages. -But a little over . a hundred years ago, a new position was taken up by the Rationalists, who then and since have merely pushed the Protestant principle of private judgment to its logical issue. Reimarus wrote a book in 1778 to show that Christ was a mistaken fanatic, and His disciples were swindlers. Others attempted to prove that most of the Gospel narratives were myths and legends, that Christ was the dupe of His own sentimental fancy, if not a deceiver of men, that He worked ho miracles, and that He certainly was not- divine. It was easy to arrive at these conclusions, when the historical character of the Gospels was" denied ; it was only necessary to take one Gospel or a part of one Gospel and deny the genuineness or accuracy of the rest, to take a bit here and a bit there, and ignore the remainder, in order to draw a picture -of Christ, in accordance with a theory already formed by the imagination. The net result of this so-called critical study of the Gospels is that most of the leading professors in the Universities of Germany openly deny the Divinity of our Lord. The conclusion does not startle them or lead them to think that there must be something wrong with the method that leads to it. On the contrary, Schweitzer, a, professor ; at the University of Strassburg, recently wrote to the following effect; ‘When, at some future day, our period of civilisation shall be closed and completed, before the eyes of later generations, German theology will stand out as a great, a unique phenomenon in the mental and spiritual life of our time. For nowhere, save in the German temperament, can there be found in the same perfection the living complex of conditions and factors —of philosophic thought, critical acumen, historical insight and religious feeling—without' which no deep theology is possible'. And the greatest achievement of German theology is the critical investigation of the life of Jesus. What it has accomplished here has laid down the conditions, and determined the course of the religious thinking of the future (The Quest of the Historical Jesus —English trans., p. 410— quoted in Dublin Review , April, 1911). * But once more the situation has changed, and for .the past two years the burning question in Germany among Rationalists and Protestants is not whether Christ did this or that, taught this or that, but whether there was any such person as Christ! A number of books have been written to prove that He never existed, and one man, Kalthoff (who, by the way, is engaged in pastoral work in Bremen’), considers the .result of the ‘ quest - of the historical Jesus ’ to be the certainty that no such person ever existed. Replies have been forthcoming from Protestants in Germany, England, and America, but (and to a Catholic this is the sad part of the whole subject), these replies are not very convincing, because they came from men, professing Christians, ' who had themselves already denied the substantial accuracy of the Gospels and reduced our Lord to a mere man. The ‘ advanced thinkers ’ could justly say in return that if so much in the Gospels was untrustworthy, the ■whole story might be unreliable, and if so many inaccuracies, myths, and legends have gathered round the name of a man, it might well be that the man himself was as great a myth as the seaserpent. To . this rejoinder, v Protestants can , give no crushing reply; the , Rationalists have - been simply using Protestant weapons. These controversies have, notwithstanding sovmuch that is deplorable about them,

this good result: they narrow the issue between believers and unbelievers, and lead us to,-hope that in time .a reaction will .come, f and that men of. religious feeling . and fair mind- will see in the Catholic Church the fearless defender of ,our.; Lord’s Divinity, and consequently the custodian of ; revealed : truth. . Indeed, there are - many signs that -men of learning in Europe are flocking back to Holy Church—Brunetiere, Coppee, Huysmans, Bourget; , Von Euville have led the way. According ,to the editor of Von Ruville’s book, on his conversion, that distinguished professor of history found that ‘ Protestantism tends to have its gates open towards worldly and down-grade elements, and sets-up barriers only between the soul’s devotion and God. Catholicism, on the other hand, by countless , avenues flings open roads to God. , . The . pilgrim, however, loving Jesus Christ as God, sought now only that community in which Jesus Christ was best loved and adored, and in which He was most accessible. He found it then in Catholicism ; and he found what at once astonished and delighted him, that the Catholic Church was not merely a society for worshipping Jesus Christ, but, in a sense, was Himself— the -Incarnation is actually extended in Catholicism, and’that in His Mystical Body our Lord is still literally with us all the days, even to the consummation of the world.”’ v The ‘ Ne Temere ’ Again Another letter on the above subject from the Rev. R. Wood was published in the Otago Daily Times a. few days ago; and the following reply thereto appeared in Saturday’s issue of the same paper: Sir, —Lt is satisfactory,to. note that the Rev, Mr. Wood has shown a little more regard' in his last communication for the obligations imposed upon him by -his ministerial calling; and, while his epistle is still very far from being modelled on the lines of the polite letter-writer, . it is at least largely free from the mere personal vituperation which disfigured and disgraced his previous contribution to your columns. It is never too late to mend ; and it is possible to hope that, under the influence of frequent, chastening, your correspondent, from being, as he has hitherto shown himself, a sort of literary Apache, may yet develop into a quite tolerable and respectable controversialist. In this, as in previous letters, your correspondent reveals himself as the man who is always ‘ going ’ to do things. In his very first letter he announced that he was going to reveal the nature of the Ne Temere decree in all its awfulness. In letter after letter he has missed or wasted his opportunities ; and now, when this discussion has extended over nearly two months, he has effected nothing; He is still prosing garrulously about what he is going to do, and is still as far off as ever from the realm of actual accomplishment. A man who bores so long without striking oil, ought, as a famous wit happily puts it, to stop ‘ boring.’ Instead of doing what he was called upon to do, and meeting the issues raised, your correspondent has wasted’ his own time and that of your readers by giving us the number of words or of inches contained in my letters, or by favoring us with the confidences of a particular friend of his— sort of ministerial ‘ Mrsr ’Arris ’ —regarding the controversial methods of the; past editors of the Tablet. It is my duty now, kindly but firmly, to bring him back from his meanderings and to recall your readers’ notice to the original points that were in issue between us. This controversy originated in a letter. contributed by me to your issue of November 21, in which my expressed object was to correct certain misstatements made by the . two zealots who alone took the trouble to speak on the Ne Temere deliverance submitted to the Assembly. The points which I then raised are the points, and the only points, which are at present, and which have all along been, in issue between us; and until the statements which I then called in question are either substantiated or withdrawn; all else is surplusage and irrelevance. It will be interesting at this stage to review the position, and ■to ; see .what attempts, if any, your correspondent'has made to deal with the questions really at issue; in this discussion. ’ V •.; x ' ;

‘ ‘l.. Mr. Wood Bad said, in his address to the Assembly, that ‘ the truthfulness of the McCann story had never been shaken ’ —the implication being that there was only one side, and that the Mrs. McCann side to the story. I pointed out, in reply, that the other side had been presented on the floor of the House of Commons by (among others) Mr. J. Devlin, who submitted written statements from McCann and from the three priests in the district in emphatic contradiction to the version given by Mrs, McCann. This statement Mr. Wood has been utterly unable either to deny or to refute. I added the further fact that the Orange exploiters of Mrs. McCann were given the opportunity of testing the truth of their story, in the only way in which the facts could be finally and conclusively elicited, by repeated challenges from Mt. Devlin to publish the name of the priest, with an assurance that the publication would be immediately followed by the issue of a writ for libel. At once the courage of the fire-eaters oozed out at their finger-tips; and from that day to this the cowardly libellers have never attempted to take up these challenges. After many weeks’ cogitation your correspondent has at length vamped up an excuse for the shirkers ; and it is worth drawing attention to as ■ being certainly oue of the most childish statements ever put forward by a grown man. According to him the reason why Mrs. McCann’s exploiters refrained from facing the ordeal of a law case was ‘because the one corroborative witness in the case (the man McCann) was kept in hiding by the priests.’ McCann ‘a corroborative witness!’when v-in the written statement forwarded 'by him through a . friend to Mr. Devlin and read in the Souse of Com- - mons he categorically and emphatically denied absolutely every statement and allegation which Mrs. McCann had made. If your correspondent really himi. self believes this imbecile excuse his capacity for swallowing no-Popery absurdities is even greater than that with which he is generally creditedand that is saying % a good deal. It is symptomatic of the change of feeling -which has "come over Irish Protestants —except, of course,- the Belfast worthiessince Messrs. Devlin and Dillon’s crushing refutation of the slanders in the House of Commons x that at the Presbyterian General Assembly held in Dublin oh June 8 a resolution to the effect that the McCann case be again, referred to Parliament was voted down. Even such a sturdy Protestant as Dr. Hanson insisted that there should’ be no abuse of the Catholic ’’Church on the score of this decree, the object of which was commendable; and his statement that ‘ it ’ might be as well if Protestant churches looked as carefully after the married welfare and pre-nuptial morals of their members ’ was received with applause. It stands, then, that there are emphatically two sides to the McCann story; and so long as the retailers of the cowardly slanders against the priests refuse to face a thorough legal investigation of the case the presumption is all against them. ' *

2. Your reverend correspondent has entirely failed, in spite of repeated challenges, to name the Canterbury .priests who, according to his statement at the Assembly, have used the Ne Temere decree as ‘ a weapon of conversion. by coercion.’ In this connection he endeavours to 1 make something of "a 'grievance out of the fact that in a sentence containing several quoted epithets I inadvertently inserted quotation marks also about the words ‘certain Canterbury priests.’ It was an error —quite inadvertent, as I have said, and such as might easily go undetected in the writing of a long letterto insert inverted commas in connection with these words, because, as a matter of fact, this precise expression does not occur in anything that Mr. Wood said -or wrote. Apart from the question of quotation or non-quotation, however, the words represent with absolute accuracy the plain meaning of what Mr. Wood did say. Here are his actual words, as given in the Otago Daily Times report:—The decree showed itself as a weapon of conversion : by coercion. The speaker said he knew of cases in Canterbury, and also locally, where the decree had had this effect.’ Obviously, if coercion were applied it could only be by the priests;

and your correspondent’s attempt to wriggle out of the charge he made is either a mere verbal quibble utterly unworthy of serious controversy or it is an ignominious climb down. In any case, as I pointed out in my first letter, since Ne Tentere declares that a mixed marriage; celebrated by a priest, is just as valid as if both parties were Catholics, the decree not only is not, but cannot be used as a ‘ weapon of conversion by coercion ’ — and this your correspondent has not so much as attempted to refute. 3. The statement made by one of the speakers at the Assembly to the effect that Germany was exempted from the Ne Tern ere decree because of ‘ Kaiser Wilhelm and his warriors ’ has been allowed to go entirely by the board. Its absurdity has, indeed, been unintentionally displayed by Mr. Wood himself, when he pointed out that the exemption extended to several smaller European provinces. No one who was not qualifying for a mental hospital could suggest that the Power which forced Bismarck to his knees, was now cringing to Croatia and Slavonia.’ 4. Mr. Wood has not denied, because he cannot deny, that in this decree the Pope has legislated purely and simply for his own spiritual subjects, and that in any case in which a non-Catholic party becomes indirectly affected the responsibility rests not with the Church, but with the non-Catholic party himself. If he does not like the decree he is perfectly free to stay outside its rangethe matter is entirely in his own hands. No religious body, and least of all the Catholic Church, can be expected either to abstain from legislation or to modify its laws, intended for the welfare and guidance of its own subjects, to suit outsiders who voluntarily bring themselves within their scope.

5. Not a tittle of evidence has been brought to justify the strange and evidently ill-considered action of Presbyterian ministersmembers of a Church which has always prided itself on its spirit of. independence and self-reliance— crying for State ' protection ’ against Ne Temere. The existing law, it is admitted, m no way recognises the decree. ‘Deserters’ can be legally brought to book, and if they attempt to remarry will be liable to the pains and penalties provided for the offence of bigamy. In respect to the matter of ‘ slanderous statements ’ regarding any member of the community, the present provisions of the law are quite ample. The suggestion that the Government should ‘ make it hot’ for a, Christian pastor who lays before his parishioner a view as to the validity of certain marriages not in harmony with that adopted by the State is a, betrayal of the rights of the Christian ministry which comes ill indeed from a member of ‘the cloth.’ Under such a proposal, Presbyterian ministers in Scotland who still adhere to the Confession of Faith enactment regarding marriage with a deceased wife’s sister would certainly be liable to be ‘ laid by the heels,’ to a.dopt Mr. Wood’s elegant diction; and conscientious Anglican clergymen all the world over would be liable to the same fate for their well-known uncompromising attitude towards these same perfectly legal unions. Mr. suggestion would be repudiated with * scorn by ministers of every persuasion who have a real sense of the dignity and responsibility of their office. The above five points were, and are, the points in issue between us; and in respect to every one of them your correspondent has failed utterly to ‘make good.’ During the election period your Wellington correspondent informed us that the practice, was adopted in the metropolis of cpunting out ’ speakers who made statements that were unsubstantiated or that obviously would not hold water. In respect to each and all of the above points Mr. Wood must be unmistakably and emphatically ‘counted out.’ r 6. Judging by the comments which has come to me from many quarters the feature of this discussion which has aroused most interest and which has most impressed those who have taken the trouble to follow the long-drawn-out correspondence, is the way in which the Rev. Mr. Wood has been impaled on the legislation and practice of his own Church in regard to marriage The entertaining figure which he has cut in this connection is the one- circumstance which has helped to

prevent . this discussion from becoming tedious, and we have reason to be grateful for the acrid zeal which led him thus to overstep himself. ■ ... He digged a pit, he digged it deep, He digged it for his brother; But for his sin, he tumbled in The pit he digged for t’other. As has been shown, the Church of which Mr. Wood is a minister, claimed the right during portion of its history to have one law regarding marriage north of the Waitaki and another law south of it. At the present day it claims the right to have one law in Scotland and another in New Zealand. For more than 200 years it claimed the right to say absolutely that certain marriages, by whomsoever contracted or celebrated, were not only null and void and ‘ incestuous,’ but were such as could never be made lawful ‘ by any law of man or consent of parties.’ Then it claimed the right to, annul this law, and left its ministers and members free, according to their consciences, to do the thing which could never be made lawful ‘ by any law of man.’ To-day, in Scotland, it still claims the right to say that these marriages are null and void, and that the parties thereto ‘ not married at all,’ but are living in sin of the most odious kind. I mention these facts —which Mr. Wood has had the opportunity to controvert, but has not done so —not to impute blamefar otherwise to the Presbyterian Church for having her own marriage legislation, but to show the ridiculous inconsistency of a Presbyterian minister, with a knowledge of the history of his Church, who comes forward to censure the Catholic Church for claiming the right to prescribe the conditions of valid marriage for her children. ‘ Inconsistency ’ is, indeed, too mild a term to apply to the situation. When the pot, with noisy and raucous vociferation, declaims against the kettle for being black, the pot is, by common consent, regarded as making a laughing-ctock of itself. *

As I indicated in my first letter, I have written not for the bigots, who are beyond the reach of argument, nor for the theologians, who should not need it, but for the average fair-minded citizen, who is neither deceived by empty swagger nor carried away by mere declamation and abuse, but who is anxious to take a reasonable, common-sense view of the question. In view of the fact that the Ne Temere enactment is intended solely for Catholics, that no outsiders are affected unless they voluntarily obtrude themselves within its scope, and that other Churches (and notably the Presbyterian) have adopted much more drastic marriage legislation and nothing said, I think the average. citizen will unhesitatingly endorse the verdict of your disinterested contributor ‘ Civis ’ when he says: * Of all the “ no-Popery ” cries in my time, and I have heard a few, this about Ne Temere is the shabbiest, hollowest, least intelligent. am, etc., Editor N.Z. Tablet. ...