FAITH OF OUR FATHERS

New Zealand Tablet, Volume LII, Issue 52, 30 December 1925, Page 51

FAITH OF OUR FATHERS

(By the Right Reverend Monsignor Power, V.F., for the N.Z. Tablet.)

: ; (25) PROTESTANTISM HAS NOT THE 1 ;.VV LACKS UNITY OF FAITH safe The Protestant Church is not the true Church of Christ, since it has not all or even one of its essential marks. Unity of faith and government cannot be discovered in the .'sects taken collectively. It is notorious that u the Lutheran will not have part with the Anglican, and that both gnash their teeth at the Calvinist. - It is equally notorious .that the members of each individual sect .differ vitally amongst themselves in matters of faith, worship, and government. The --smaller sects do not even pretend to unity; 'they worship private judgment, which in-' evitably spells disunion. •> The Established - Church of England, based on a principle of . _ disintegration, lias already given birth to close on three hundred antagonising creeds, C rot one of which can speak with one voice -." upon any point of Christian Doctrine, even :; though it be the Divinity of Christ. Notice - li'i.w even the secular press delights to circulate and scoff at the vagaries of tho sev- • eral Protestant bishops of England. 'J ho ~ Archbishop of Canterbury, unhappy man, cannot keep peace within the Anglican ; Church though it numbers only three million souls, for he admits that he has no power either to decide points of belief, or to com- :.:.. pose conflicting forms of worship. Fancy 'one of the pre-sixteenth century Archbishops ';"„ of Canterbury making such an admission: The Anglican Church lacks the unifying J power that would come from one supreme ffi'l , ruler, and so it must be content to witness the horrible spectacle of a divided Episcopal vote in the House of Lords on the question of divorce. Each following his own private • judgment, they were bound to differ on the interpretation of the words: "Whom God % J hath joined together, let no man put asunder." One Bishop looks upon as entirely • ; out of date the divine injunction that mar- ■' riages should be fruitful, while a Dean ad- - vocates birth-control from the pulpit of London's Protestant Cathedral. - Hopeless of unity, they make boast of the comprehensiveness of their sect, and mightily comprehensive it is. It contains some ,- who deny the Divinity of Christ, and others who accept the Divinity but deny the Resurrection; and yet others who are so " advanced " that they dress themselves as priests . at their worship, and end by persuading -; v themselves and their followers that they are .priests in reality. A Protestant clergyman stated a little while ago that he could write ■V; on his finger nail all the points of Christian teaching on which they could all agree. The only time they are united is when they meet ; ; ; to. oppose the Catholic "Church, but here they , succeed only in showing their own folly, while they leave the Church's unity still intact. ; What St. Hilary wrote in the fouth century " true to-day: "All, indeed, array them- ; ; selves in hostility to the Church, but as all heretics fly at one another's throats, they . derive no benefit from their victory. For by their victory the Church triumphs over

HARKS OF THE TRUE CHURCH: IT AND GOVERNMENT, ■••'.. all, because one heresy contends against another for what the faith of the Church condemns." Tertullian also seemed to have them in view when he wrote: "What is allowable to Valentinus, is allowable also to his followers; and the Marcionites claim the same privilege." . • A common hatred marshalls them against the Bride of Christ; but unity of doctrine, of worship, of discipline, of government is as much beyond their grasp as are the stars of heaven. Mallock prophesied the disruption of their baseless creed thirty years ago,, and the daily press witnesses that he was a true prophet. Contemplate once more the Church's marvellous unity amid the strife of tongues around it; one faith binding the whole world, and men of every race and color, while one small island called England, with every human aid to unity, is torn asunder by hundreds of conflicting creeds. One divine worship for the Catholic universe, while that island witnesses daily rioting round its altars. One supreme government binding Catholics of every nation to one another and to their divinely-appointed head, while in that same small island no man is found with right to quell the babel or compose the strife. The majesty of Catholic Unity proclaims the Holy Spirit that lives within the Church and binds her to Himself. Christ and His Church are not two beings, Christ and the Church are one—He the Head, they the members. PROTESTANTISM IS NOT CATHOLiC. Of course it is not catholic in time, since it began only in the sixteenth century. Nor is it catholic in space, for though it should be said that Protestantism is found everywhere, it must be also said that it is everywhere different. It is universal unity that is a mark of the Church of Christ, not universal disorder. If we link together the three hundred antagonistic sects that go to make up Protestantism, and concede that they have between them from one hundred million to one hundred and fifty million adherents, we shall see that this is too small a total to warrant the title universal. I have said if we concede, because we in New Zealand only too well know how unreliable the religious census is. If we compare the number of Anglicans in the census returns with the record of attendance at the Anglican churches, we shall know how to value the census. : Protestantism is not territorially catholic. It is practically confined to the Englishspeaking countries and to Prussia and Scandinavia ; and even in these lands it has made no headway since its first outbreak. During the past fifty years it has lost to the Catholic Church in Germany practically two-fifths of its flock, while in England it is losing many to Catholicism, but many more to Scepticism and Infidelity. "The Reformed Churches," writes Macaulay, "were merely national

Churches. The Church of England existed for England alone. It was an institution as purely local as the Court of Common Pleas.•• The Church of Scotland existed for Scotland alone, while the operation of the Catholic Church took in the whole world;'' ; Had Macaulay had the opportunity of reading New Zealand History, he might have made his statement much stronger, for he would:; have seen that in England's colonies the socalled Church, of England was a distinct Church from that in the motherland. The Protestant Bishops, the heads of the Church/ in New Zealand, are not appointed by the King. . s\^ Cardinal Newman has shown how the roots of Protestantism must die if transplanted, from their local soil; and events have demonstrated that even in their national soil: they lead but a dying life. Now that travel has become easy, Protestants find themselves frequently in the great world centres, but in every place they feel their isolation from the religious life of the people. They are: merely insular. Protestantism, therefore, is not catholic either numerically, socially', or by vocation. It can never possess the heart of the people, for its principle of private judgment is a seed, not of vigorous conquest, but of inevitable dissolution. '•.:.- PROTESTANTISM IS NOT APOSTOLIC^ Protestants do not claim this mark. Indeed they scoff at it. The Ritualists,' however, do claim it; but their claim was rejected' in the well-known letter of Leo XIII. He pointed out that their Orders were invalid, had never been recognised, and could never be recognised. As for Apostolic jurisdiction; they admit that they are without it. This small party in the Anglican Church put forth a peculiar theory of religious unity! They think that Catholics, Easterns, and Anglicans make up between them the one* Church of Christ. They think that these are three living branches of one Church, each supreme in its own domain, but schismatic outside that domain. .This is verv foolish and fantastic, and is rejected by Catholics, Easterns, and Protestants, including ninety per cent, of Anglicans. How could Churches' diametrically opposed be one and the same? How could contradictory doctrines come? from one and the same Spirit of Truth | Institutions that teach contraries may take the place of a Pythian Priestess in a Delphin Oracle, but cannot be the ambassadors of God. ;.. : ;

. It would be easy to make fun of the Ritualists, and they do cause much mirth. Their sincerity and their personal sacrifices are, however, beyond question. They form religious Brotherhoods and Sisterhoods, they honor Our Lady, they say Mass, or rather' mistakenly think they do; they march through the streets in what they believe to be processions of the Blessed Sacrament.! The Erastian Bishops hamper them in everypossible way, while they tolerate in their pulpits clergy who deny the Divinity of Christ. But the Ritualists carry, on what they believe to be God’s holy work/ 7 ! May God give them light to see their present folly | and lead them into their proper home within the bosom of the One, Holy, Catholic, ! and Apostolic Church of Christ. :