1
10
2
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/f88e6bef2d7dcff3d14f3552a7d6ba66.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=pokTqQ1t-P%7EeoB13fI9xGzP3OiYdo7n97Ub3CzV7mvV0iPIjLFgKpFLx0Q9H4XjSU4W5FGAs5TQK3lP0vuJVVAS8ZH6gT9KDxblVa6pOQvKqh74GFzhKgDpsEvfKtGPvb0sLQ%7Eph%7E00HyRpMq%7EjeKIN62WmffRAbqc6tr-cqClQ9DXk8VTvQaBZHMTXXsqzTQHQvXtLBfpMXjEaroSH5BWJiHndVGbPYkIssz6iq94MJl5IZsCVSir1M3Cs7O7GzkaaSQWIFgw5r1nKhc6XMqJ3RaGZEpV616aA5MLwZM6qsAced22xcdTg%7E-iNYtiaMbbPypOOn2dty7fJBoVuF0g__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
1ab8aaeeb79862238851f5873ec20850
PDF Text
Text
Z'K/V
•
VATICAN DECREES
AND
THE “EXPOSTULATION.”
BY
ROBERT RODOLPH SUFFIELD,
Minister of the Free Christian Church, Wellesley Road, Croydon; formerly
Apostolic Missionary and Prefect of the “Guard of Honour;"
Author of several Pamphlets in this Series.
PUBLISHED
BY
TEUBNER AND
CO.,
57 AND 59 LUDGATE HILL ; AND
THOMAS SCOTT,
11 THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD, UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E.
1874.
Price Sixpence.
•’V
�■t
f
LONDON:
PRINTED
BY C. W. REYNELL, 16 LITTLE PULTENEY STREB'
HAYMARKET, W.
�PREFACE.
Since the appearance of Mr. Gladstone’s “ Expos
tulation,” I have been repeatedly asked to express my
opinions as to the political bearing of the Vatican
decrees. The subject is of an extent and complication
beyond the limits of a pamphlet; but as some friends
are partial enough to urge me to make known, at
least in a general way, something of the result of my
thoughts and experience, I can no longer consistently
maintain the silence which I should prefer. Though
after the thoughtful and accurate statements which
have emanated from Mr. Gladstone, Lord Acton,
Lord Camoys, the Right Rev. Monsignore Capel, the
Very Rev. Monsignore Patterson, and the able com
ments upon the same in our leading periodicals, I
have little to add beyond the expression of my per
sonal experience ; the quotations, which at the request
of the same parties are appended to this brochure,
will explain to strangers my profound personal inte
rest in a question which has so intimately affected
my own life.
��THE VATICAN DEGREES
AND
THE “EXPOSTULATION.”
EOPLE cannot be allowed the pleasure of at the
same time affirming and denying a conviction.
The Neo-Catholics, headed by the Pope, and in
England by Archbishop Manning, declare the Vatican
decrees to be an undoubted expression of the Divine
will. The Old Catholics, represented by such men
as Bishop Reinkins, Dr. Dollinger, and Lord Acton,
declare them to be merely the utterances of what
Dr. Newman designated “ an aggressive and insolent
faction.” The Vatican Council is either ecumenic or
schismatic. Skilful men can find reasons on either
side, and consistent men may act out either conclu
sion. The Old Catholics deny the infallibility of
the Vatican Council. The Neo-Catholics affirm its
infallibility. Learning has ranged itself on the side
of the “ Old ” Catholics; diplomacy on the side of the
“ New.” The Roman Catholic Church has disappeared;
the Vatican Church has supplanted it. We have
too much appreciation of the learning of the “ Old ”
Catholics, and the diplomatic ambition of the ecclesi
astical rulers of the “ New,” to be able to regard as a
nonentity that momentous revolution. When men
the wealth of whose virtues and learning had enriched
the Papal cause could, in advanced years, sorrow
fully permit the Pope and some millions of adherents
to leave them, at once warning and anathematized—
P
�4
^he Vatican Decrees
warning those who leave, anathematized by those
who have left;—when acute diplomatists like Dr. Man
ning urge on a revolution with all the ardour
inspired by ambition, and in presence of the sorrow
ful laments and pathetic warnings of men who had
grown old in the service of a cause then about to
die,—surely a nonentity was just the last event
contemplated by anyone. The Old Catholics and
New Catholics alike beheld in that revolution the
inauguration of a new era of individual absolutism,
to be established as the embodiment of the Divine
will; and in the name of religion, of liberty, of
humanity, the Old Catholics raised their protest. In
the name of Pius IX. and of possession, the New
Catholics raised the war cry, which died off into
a perpetual anathema. Those men who contended
on the battle-field of thought, of history, of diplo
macy, until the fatal victory of July, 1870, were not
children contending for baubles : they were men who
entered the lists. Some contended for truth, others
fought for power. The triumphant faction being in
possession of the Vatican, in possession of the
Episcopal Sees, in the possession of the ecclesiastical
edifices, retained easily power over the masses. What
they sought, they have obtained. Whenever their
chief ruler issues any declaration which he means to
be infallible, it is infallible. Should any voice,
retaining a ring of the accents of liberty, dare to say,
“The subject on which you have decreed is out of
- the range of faith and morals, so you only therein
.decree as a man;” the Ruler replies, “You have
; accepted as Divine the Vatican decrees; you therein
-declared that you will be accursed, and forfeit your
eternal salvation, unless you inwardly believe and
heartily accept, and outwardly in practice conform to
that belief, that the jurisdiction of the Roman Pontiff
is over all the Faithful individually and collectively;
that his authority compels your entire and unreserved
�and the “Expostulation.”
5
obedience, not only in matters appertaining to faith
and morals, but also in all those that.appertain to the
discipline and government of the Church. You
have declared your internal assent to the Divine
decree, whereby you learn that this power is from
God, represents God, is full and supreme, and not
merely of inspection and direction; that it is superior
to all other power, extends everywhere, must never
be controlled, must always enjoy free and immediate
communication with its subjects wherever they may
be; that its judgments may never be reviewed, appealed
against, or disregarded; that to it alone it apper
tains to declare what belongs to its jurisdiction and
what domains of thought and of action (if any) are
exempt from its infallible utterances.”
Obviously the Vatican faction could not regard as
meaningless and powerless such expressions, cau
tiously worded and decreed after mature deliberation.
Their promulgation was enjoined. The Vatican party
must not be surprised if those who protested against
their formation desire their promulgation. What can
be done, what was meant to be done, what will be
done, we want all men to know I Vatican diplomacy,
having obtained the weapons, would rather that the
Faithful alone, and they but gradually, should realise
the weight of the sceptre which they have forged and
feebly yielded to an Italian priest. But we would
rather know and feel the metal of the weapon pre
pared for us. A sword sheathed in velvet is still a
sword. Chains concealed in the intentions of a pre
late, still are chains. They are meant for us, and we
should like to handle them. We have been recently
somewhat naively told that they will be “ convenient.”
Doubtless ; therefore the more that is known about
them the better. In a docile school the boys collect
the birch rods, and with wondering fear feel their
substance, and speculate on their effects. If the scholars
become too frightened, should panic threaten an in
�6
Hhe Vatican Decrees
convenient outbreak, the master and ushers will pru
dently explain that the rods will be hardly ever used;
that they are merely symbols of authority, quite
harmless, almost pleasant; that obviously it can make
no difference whether the rods are in the school-room
or on the trees ; they were only gathered at the urgent
request of the boys. All very good ; but still a boy
might like to know that they are there, are meant to
be used, and will be used.
In former times we English people knew what the
Popes could effect amongst those who revered in him
a Divine primacy, but not a Divine individual, irre
sponsible infallibility. What is prepared for ns now,
when the Papal authority is declared to be absolute,
immediate, personal—when his utterances must be
believed as well as obeyed ? Now that a circle of hell
fire is drawn around the Papal subject, he must either,
like the Salamander, kill his mental liberty, or live for
ever in the flames. People have said, Why in this
country, at a time of profound peace, when all the
Vatican Catholics are living in undoubted loyalty—
why call attention to the Vatican decrees when they
are consoling Roman prelates and harming no one ?
We reply, It is just the time when we should examine
the weapons forged for emergencies. If the English
people were in times of excitement to realise the mag
nitude of the triumphant revolution, we cannot tell to
what excesses some amongst them might be driven.
Those principles of religious equality which we have
been slowly conquering by the patient energy of men
whose passion is for justice might have been pushed
back for generations into the dregs of a cowardly and
insane persecution. All men, of whatever creed,
Roman or the opposite, ought to rejoice that this sub
ject should have been brought to the front and can
vassed at a moment when it appeals to no triumphant
bigotries. I am convinced that nothing can better
secure our Roman countrymen in England than what
�and the “Expostulation.”
7
is now taking place. Let all men realise what must
and ought to be the line of action of a consistent sup
porter of the Vatican Church, as contrasted with the
position of the Old Catholics; let all men, having rea
lised it, know what to expect; let all then renew within
their minds the intense conviction that under no cir
cumstances whatsoever must opinions be punished;
that the State has only to deal with actions, and
amongst actions only with those which obviously
affect the commonwealth ; then we shall be strong to
resist and to suppress that hurricane of anti-Roman
indignation which will soener or later arise, and which
might carry away many of our great principles of
liberty, if we were not prepared to meet it by a recog
nition of the causes exciting it.
No controversialist could have caught the public
ear and instructed the public mind. The foremost
man in England alone could do it; the statesman,
rich in scholarship and in thought, representing in
his own person whatever is the highest in culture,
the most illustrious in our national traditions, the
most reverent, religious, and tolerant in character;
he, the near relative of one Roman Catholic, the inti
mate friend of many, was, above all others, the man
to speak. Judging by the standard of expediency,
his words may politically injure him; judging by the
standard of rectitude, his Expostulation ” will be
recorded amongst the most honourable deeds of an
honourable career. Many will have cause to rejoice
at it; but, above all, must we, the disciples of Reli
gious Equality, rejoice that the people of England
should have been instructed in the words and bearing
of the Vatican Decrees when that instruction could
be received quietly, take its place in the public mind
harmlessly and prepare us against contingencies
wisely.
As to explanations, there are none to give.
Some Roman Catholics, like Sir George Bowyer,
�8
The Vatican Decrees
may not as yet understand the Decrees, and may,
in consequence of their known spirit of submission,
be allowed to write condemned propositions publicly,
trusting to their private repentance in the Con
fessional. But the common sense of the people of
England will easily perceive that the question is not
whether now the Pope may be enforcing loyalty or
not, but what all consistent subjects of the Vatican
Church must do when the Pope may enforce another
course. Regarding that, there can be no question.
Catholics will divide between those who accept the
Vatican Decrees and those* who reject them; the
latter will practically be in the same position as all
the Episcopal Churches, independent of Rome, e.g.,
the Greek, Russian, English, American, and German.
In saying that, we can easily surmise the future
action of Neo-Catholics as to Papal Decrees hostile
to our national interests. I do not mean to state that
their constant obedience to the Pope can be always
depended upon by him. Men do not always act in
accordance with their convictions, even under pain of
certain eternal damnation. But we must not forget
that no Neo-Catholic can approach the Sacraments if
he be engaged in any line of action forbidden by the
Pope; and all Catholics deem the Sacraments essen
tial to salvation ; moreover, disobedience to the Pope
in a grave matter would be understood to be invariably
a mortal sin. A soldier dying in a forbidden service
knows that he perishes for ever in Hell. It may be
said, practically, the Pope will probably not frequently
interfere—that will depend—one fact let us remem
ber, the Pope does not show much interest in matters
of merely personal or public virtue—he seldom thinks
it worth his while to issue a Decree against drunk
enness and such like faults. When dignified eccle
siastics in this country have taken up such merely
moral questions, it has been well known that it has
been chiefly to prevent the cause falling into the
�and the “Expostulation”
9
exclusive hands of Protestants. But the questions
connected with Papal power have never been allowed
to sleep. During the last years, Boman Catholics have
felt as if all religion and morality depended upon the
success of Papal political schemes. All the action of
the Pope has been to concentrate power in himself,
and to make it daily felt. His chief representatives
in England and Ireland have been appointed by the
Pope, in defiance of the wishes of the Faithful and
their clergy, and without the concurrence of one single
national vote. Regulations of a most arbitrary cha
racter as to marriage and education have been insti
tuted and enforced, in opposition to the wishes, in
terests and customs of the Faithful concerned.
It rends one’s memories to think of the noblehearted Roman Catholics of England, representatives
of ancient traditions of religion and of loyalty, their
lives as blameless and as beautiful as the poetic
legends of their Faith—they truthfully, through their
vicars apostolic, disowned all those Papal claims
which though often advanced and often recognised,
were not those “ Of Faith ”—on the strength of their
honest disclaimer they were restored to rights which
they ought never to have lost, and all the Liberals of
England rejoiced on that day when, in the Palace of
Westminster, the Roman Catholic nobles re-entered
the ancient hall, on each side of which the peers arose
to greet, them, the bearers of historic names, the re
presentatives of great traditions,—a principle greater
than all traditions arose and bade them welcome—it
was the principle of Religious Equality 1 What have
those men done, to use the eloquent plaint of Dr.
Newman, that the hearts of the just should be made
sad ? Rome, ever reckless of honour when power can
be grasped 1 what was it to Rome, that these sons of
crusaders and of martyrs had, on the strength of her
silence, plighted a word higher than the word of any
creed—the word of an English gentleman—and by
�IO
The Vatican Decrees
that word disowned and denied all the usurped pre
tensions of Rome. When the convenient time
arrived, a power that has never kept its word, com
pelled English gentlemen to violate theirs, to recant
all that they had said—it was the very triumph of the
Priest over the Man I—like the tyrant general who
seduced the honour of a virgin, and then presented to
her dishonoured gaze the corpse of the father she had
fondly hoped to have saved. The Roman Catholic
gentlemen yielded their honour to save their Church
—the Pope has presented to them as a corpse the
Church for which they interceded.
It is idle to point to the deeds of English Roman
Catholics in the days of old. In July, 1870, Italian
Priests and their coadjutors slew the old Church, and
intoned over it the Requiem. You find that Requiem
in the Vatican Decrees. Formerly, in periods of
discord, many Roman Catholics always sided with
the Pope, because they revered the primacy of his
dignity, the sacredness of his origin, and recognised
him as the centre of the Church’s unity ; other Roman
Catholics disobeyed him, resisted him, besieged his
capital, and yet, approaching the Sacraments, lived
and died in union with the Roman Church and its
creed, but resisting as exaggerated, or criminal, or
unpatriotic, actions and commands of the Roman
Pontiff. All that is past. The Pope was not
satisfied with the willing service of the free—some
to obey, others to oppose—and yet all to be one
with him in Faith and Sacraments. Those mystic
rites, tokens of spiritual memories, must wait
upon diplomacy, and be subject to his temporal
ambitions. Have all, or none. No wonder that in
many an English Roman Catholic home—many an
old home of chivalry, faith,.and honour—a sorrowful
choice presented itself; accustomed to regard visible
unity with the Pope as essential to salvation, some
accepted the Papal Sacraments and slavery, others
�v^ppaF*' • .. A't^V^.’T*.
- • <f ’ '*..- ' »/??,
and the “Expostulation.”
•’.*\;'/"r 7£ W
11
sought Free Sacraments and personality, and in so
seeking they deemed the “ Free ” more Christian, more
Catholic than the “ Papal.” The men on each side
we honour, but let us not amidst our sentiments of
homage to conscientiousness—nay, may I add, to
memory and to affection—let us not forget that the
Catholics, divided now into the Vatican and the Old,
represent different principles, opposing positions.
The Vatican faction has triumphed, and has suc
ceeded in establishing all the principles the most
fatal to the development of the human mind, of
human society, of religion, -of morals, of science, of
rational liberty. There is no explaining away what
has been done—either embrace it or disown it. Mr.
Gladstone’s “ Expostulation ” may display to view a
few of those on either side. But the side taken is
really to be easily discovered by a more obvious test.
Who receives Sacraments from a Neo-Catholic priest ?
Who refuses so to do ? The statements in Mr. Glad
stone’s “ Expostulation ” are so cautiously accurate,
that I need only refer to them; but we must remem
ber that the Vatican Decree is retrospective. The
“ Encyclical ” has become a compendium of articles
of faith; and every cause dear to a patriot and a
man of justice is cursed by its inhuman decrees.
You mock us with Italian irony, when in the presence
of the civilised world you first solemnly anathematise
science, civilisation, progress, and equal rights, when
you refuse your Sacraments and paternal fellowship
to those who cannot mentally believe the truth or
justice of your anathemas. When you declare that
those who cannot worship with you have no right to
worship anywhere; have, in fact, no rights outside the
walls of a prison or the steps of a scaffold, to which
you declare that your Church has divine power to
commit them; and then, when we read your decrees
and your admonition to civil governors to aid their
execution, and we read your own solemn utterances
�12
The Vatican Decrees
and tremble for the liberties which may be subjected
to your keeping—the liberty of the individual, the
liberty of the family, the liberty of the State, the
liberty of education, of science, of conscience—and
deliberate how we can preserve our liberty and
honour without violating yours, you assume the air of
injured innocence and wonder that we should call
attention to what really meant nothing at all, but
that, as we seem annoyed, you will put your heads
together, give us a nice explanation—a pill so care
fully sugared that even a Cardinal could swallow it.
But we say, we have had your explanations, you
thought about them well enough, you have promul
gated them to the world, we will learn your mind
from the words which you say are inspired—the
words of your Encyclicals and Vatican Decrees—not
from words which you can repudiate as soon as they
have succeeded in blinding. The indignant mind of
Europe has caught you “in flagrante delicto,” and
you turn round with a surprised smile and tell us you
meant no harm; you have taken bigotry, and into
lerance, and arrogance into your counsels, and com
bined together in a conspiracy against humanity—we
detect you, and you say, “ be quiet—what have we
done ? ” You send over your prelates to this England
of ours, and they talk glibly about liberty of worship,
and liberty of conscience, and liberty of speech, and
liberty of the press, and liberty of education, and
liberty of investigation, when they know—and now we
know—that they mean liberty for their own worship,
conscience, speech, education and press, but ana
themas against any one who dares even to think that
such liberty ought to belong to others. You forget
that our passionate devotion to the liberties you
anathematise are alone the cause why the Liberals of
England, headed by their great Statesman, declare
—“ Your equal liberties shall remain inviolate, by
virtue of the very principles you declare to be
�and the “Expostulation?
13
accursed.” Having said that, and meaning to act
upon it, and determined not to be driven from it by
any foreign or domestic influence, we have surely
proclaimed all that the very chivalry of principle can
demand. But you can expect no more.
If a body of Puritans had existed in Rome in the
days of the Papal sovereignty; if they had in solemn
conclave declared that they regarded the Pope as
anti-Christ, and all his followers accursed by God and
to be repudiated by man, that no Roman Catholic
ought to be allowed any religious educational liberty—
that the Puritan conclave had a Divine right to extir
pate all such liberties—that it was the duty of the
civil power to enforce whatever action the aforesaid
conclave deemed prudent to enact, with the view of
forcibly destroying the existence of the Roman
Catholic religion—that Roman Catholics possess no
rights, but may be tolerated when toleration becomes
a regretable necessity. Suppose these Puritans to
have received civil rights because the Pope imagined
their principles of hostility to have merged into merely
religious and theoretical difference, the Puritans de
claring such to be the case, and repudiating the state
ments attributed to them which had been subversive
of civil loyalty; supposing that a few years afterwards
these Roman Puritans met together, and declare that
all the opinions ever taught by their wildest divines
were part of the Gospel message; that they now
solemnly proclaim them as absolutely true, and held
firmly by all who join them ; that they have placed
themselves, for the protection of their principles,
under the control of the Emperor of Germany; that
at present they are perfectly satisfied with their posi
tion, and perfectly loyal. What would have been the
attitude of the Pope ? Prisons and scaffolds would
reply. But suppose the Pope to have been a secret
heretic, and, therefore, at liberty to follow the nobler
inspirations of conscience—suppose him to have an
unbounded confidence in the strength of his position
�14
’The Vatican Decrees
and the final, though often remote, triumph of the
Right; but suppose him also to be a man capable of
appreciating what is demanded by self-respect and by
regard to the feelings of the loyal. What then would
have been his policy ? Would he have invited to his
more secret counsels Puritans known to maintain
the entire and universal supremacy of the German
Emperor ? Would he have recognised the Puritan
emissaries appointed by the Emperor for the super
vision of his Roman subjects, especially if the Em
peror had publicly claimed him as his own subject ?
Would he invariably have taken the dictation of the
German emissary as to the chaplains for the Roman
army and Roman prisons P Would the citizens of
Rome have felt anxious to show special social con
sideration to the German emissary, whose chief func
tion it would be to keep the Puritans thoroughly
loyal to the Emperor, and ready to obey him when
ever occasion might demand ? If the Pope had so
acted in moments of weakness and romance, he would
have retraced his steps as soon as he recovered his selfrespect ; if a secret heretic, and so able to act nobly,
he would not begin to persecute the Puritans; he
would permit the Emperor to appoint his own emis
saries over the Puritan schools, Puritan institutions,
Puritan chapels, Puritan conclaves ; but he would not
permit the Emperor to appoint his own nominees to
public institutions, and then undertake to pay them ;
such refusal would not necessarily be the result of
fear, but of consistency and self-respect, and from a
conscientious desire not to encourage by favouritism the
further encroachments and pretensions of the German
Emperor. He would feel it due to his own subjects,
not to go out of his way to place in office of power
and of public trust those who continued obviously to
treat him as inferior to the Emperor. But if he
perceived other Puritans who maintained their inde
pendence of the decrees of the conclave, and though
�and the “Expostulation.”
15
sympathising with the Emperor on account of simi
larity of creed, yet obviously regretting his claims to
supremacy in all causes over the Emperor, the Pope
would treat such Puritans like any other of his
subjects, without adverting in public action to their
difference of creed.
Such, I presume, ought to be our line of action ,
as to the foreign potentate who has recently claimed.
Supremacy over all the baptised amongst our country
men. We ought to ignore utterly and entirely all the
Papal claims, and Papal emissaries, as such. A Papal
Archbishop should be to us simply an English citizen,
or, if a foreigner, a foreign visitor, and nothing more;
we ought not, on the ground of his being a Papal
prelate, to confer with him, and to arrange appoint
ments, or accept his appointments, and ask the wishes
of his foreign sovereign. To do so is contrary to
self-respect—to the national honour. If we had been
as anxious to consult the feelings and wishes of the
Irish people, and of the labouring classes of England,
as we have been anxious to defer to the wishes of an
Italian prelate, we should have but little discontent
in either country. Statesmen of large sympathies
have thought that they would be above all things
pleasing the English Roman Catholics and the Irish
people by finding out what would please the Pope,
and doing it. Oh, marvellous simplicity! Do not
the Irish remember full well that a Pope gave Ireland
to an English conqueror. That a Pope sent over a
Cardinal to help the English Government to suppress
national aspifations which were regarded with
apprehension at Rome ? Cardinal Cullen does not
enjoy the confidence of the Irish people; the prelate
they adore is the one who voted against the Papal
infallibility, an Archbishop whom the Pope would
depose if he dared. When he dies, he will probably
be succeeded by some docile canonist forawhom no
Irishman has voted. Dr. Cullen was appointed’by
�i6
The Vatican Decrees
Rome without the concurrence of the Irish clergy.
His objects are of a very matron-like character, and
not at all representative of the wishes of the Irish
people. If we want to legislate with a view to the
wishes and feelings and real living interests of the
Irish people, we must not ask the guidance of any
Roman Cardinal. The Irish ask for national equality,
and we offer them a “ concession ” about the normal
schools, or invite a Papal prelate to meet a Princess,
and give him precedence over whatever might have
represented the national aspirations. The Irish
people ask for liberty, and you give them chaplains.
The Irish ask for extension of the franchise, repeal
of penal enactments, a national militia, and a local
Parliament, and you say we cannot do those things
for you, but we will pay your chaplains, and confer
with your venerated Bishops as to any other conces
sion they may deem desirable. I do not venture on
this occasion an opinion whether or not the real
wishes of the Irish people can be accepted or not; I
merely, for my present purpose say, if you want to '
conciliate the Irish people you will not do so by fawn
ing upon the Pope and the clergy: they have their
objects; the Irish people have other objects. When
shall we give to nations the equal rights which we
more than give to the emissaries of a foreign power ?
Surely the loyalty of a nation is of more consequence
than the purchased conventional loyalty of a priest
hood.
But it may be said, anyhow in England, the way to
conciliate the gentry is to make much of the Papal
prelates. First of all I would say the English Roman
Catholic gentlemen needed no conciliation ; they were
loyal to the backbone; they had everything to lose
and nothing to gain by any change—any possible
change. When the Vatican Decrees were issued, about
two dozen men, distinguished by intellect, character,
and culture, refused submission, and thus virtually
�and the “Expostulation.”
*7
assumed the position of “ Old Catholics,” like, for
instance, Lord Acton, the best-read Catholic in Eng
land. But most of the Catholics adopted the new
dogma. Thus the Roman Catholics recognised by
Catholic emancipation are now represented by only
a few honoured names, but very small in number,
probably such as Lord Camoys, Lord Acton, Petre,
Trevelyan, Simeon, Riddell, Oxenham, Thynne,
Wetherall, Hernans, Blenherhasset, Maskell, Charlton,
and some others. The Catholics who have embraced
the new Catholicism are numerous and submissive;
they deserve our high personal admiration, for their
change, along with all their prelates, was most natural
to expect, and undoubtedly as conscientious on their
part as the action of the more learned of the laity who
remained “ Old Catholics.” But it must not be sup
posed that the New Catholics are, generally speaking,
grateful to Dr. Manning and the Papal faction for
the revolution brought, numerically, to so successful
an issue by their ecclesiastical tactics. English
Catholics have undoubtedly been more interested in
ecclesiastical matters than in political or national,
and thus they have been easily led over into the Papal
camp which their fathers renounced at the emancipa
tion ; but they inherit, along with all the old English
virtues, the old English contempt for Italian domina
tion. Our Government would have pleased English
Catholics better if there had been less courting of
ecclesiastics appointed by Rome, less seeking to carry
out mere ecclesiastical polity. Any one intimate with
the English Roman Catholic tone of thought must
be full well aware how bitterly English gentlemen
have bent beneath the yoke. It is worthy of note
that Dr. Manning was nominated Archbishop by the
Pope against the wish of the whole of the Diocesan
Chapter. Not one vote was given for him. The
English Roman Catholic families, grieved at his
appointment, knew what it meant, feared the results,
�i8
'Dhe Vatican Decrees
dreaded the priestly yoke and the papal absolutism ;
but, taught to submit, they did submit. It does not
follow that we need submit likewise. Truthfulness,
dignity, consistency, demand from us that we ignore
a Neo-Catholicism which we have never nationally
recognised. I am aware that for a time we may be
hampered by the grave political difficulty of being
bound to show special favour to the Episcopal Church
of England, and that the Neo-Catholics may
justly say, as you devote large sums of money to
promote worship and education, according to the
principles of Protestant or Ritualistic Anglicanism,
as the case may be, why should you not continue to pay
the Vicars Apostolic appointed by the Pope in some
of our colonies ? Why not continue the payment of
Neo-Catholic chaplains throughout India, in the Army,
and elsewhere ?—why not'perpetuatefor the promulga
tion of Neo-Catholicism the favour and the funds you
devoted for the Roman Catholicism which your Par
liament recognised ? Doubtless it is always difficult
to rise out of a false position; but unless these anoma
lies are rectified, dangers await us far more serious
than the transient unpopularity obtained by touching
existing abuses.
Protestants have not yet realised the momentous
character of the Revolution crowned at the Vatican.
No wonder; how could it be expected when intelli
gent Roman Catholics of lofty character and integrity,
like Lord Herries and Sir George Bowyer, do not
understand it ? I understand it, because as a Dominican
and theologian I studied the whole question during
the period of restless thought preceding the close of
the conflict in July, 1870. It was that study which
opened my eyes to the fallacy of the entire dogma of
infallibility. Heretofore, Roman Catholics were
only bound to bejieve in the infallibility of the
Church in union with the Pope and speaking through
the Pope. It was quite another question as to what
�and the 11Expostulation.”
19
was needed to constitute an ex cathedra decree.
Some affirmed that no decree was infallible unless
issued in presence of a general council and with its
concurrence; others affirmed that a decree was
proved to be ex cathedra when accepted by the
council dispersed; others affirmed that a decree was
ex cathedra if issued with great solemnity after
conferring with, and in union with, all the consul
tive congregations of the Roman Church. A Roman
Catholic vacillated amongst these views according to
the exigencies of history, conscience, common sense,
or controversy. The most opposing opinions could
be and were maintained by Bishops, scholars, and
laymen. But now the Vatican Decrees have declared
the Pope to be infallible whenever he intends to be
so, and on whatever subject he declares to fall within
the province of infallibility. Heretofore, the exercise
of the Papal power was limited in action as well as in
theory. National Churches and their Episcopate
disputed his decisions and refused to obey his
mandates. Those mandates could be only imposed
under peculiar circumstances, but the present Pope
has, during his long Pontificate, been concentrating
power in himself. He commenced by utilising the
prestige of his acknowledged position, and the
affection inspired by the kindness of his disposition :
but having attained an unprecedented power over all
National Churches through such means, he culminated
the strategy by first committing Bishops and the
Faithful everywhere to bombastic declarations as to
his divine and supreme prerogatives, and then taking
them at their word, and requiring the exaggerated
utterances of affectionate reverence to be formularised
into articles of faith. They were caught in the trap
they themselves had guilelessly fashioned. The Pope’s
well-known smile, half artful, half cheery, must have
welcomed the accomplishment of his long cherished
scheme. During the period of twenty years I was
�20
The Vatican Decrees
Apostolic Missioner throughout England and Ireland
I saw this power growing; we all dreaded it, for
we saw what an agency would be lodged in the
hands of a Pope abler than Pio Nono and less good,
yet what could we do ? The growing power was
not generally being used for criminal objects, it
was being exercised in England through eccle
siastics for the most part amiable and good. Thus
there was nothing suddenly done of a nature to
arouse and combine opposition; like the walls of the
Temple, the chains were forged amidst a silence only
disturbed by the reception of countless adulatory
addresses, and blessings, and indulgences prodigally
bestowed upon herds of people who listened to the
Holy Father as he repeated again and again the
story of his wrongs, his sufferings, his prerogatives,
and his similarity to Jesus Christ, after a fashion
which would have aroused the ludicrous in any minds
not sunk too low to be capable of appreciating the
ridiculous. But the result is far from being ludicrous.
The Pope has established over the millions of adhe
rents of the Vatican Church a two-fold tyranny—
over every man, woman, and child, within his Church—
the absolutism of a teaching which may never be
even interiorly doubted; the absolutism of a rule
which may never be with impunity disobeyed. This
two-edged weapon hangs like the sword of Damocles
over every one who dares to think, to write, to act, to
rule, or to serve. At present, the Pope has only one
great object of anxiety—the recovery of his former
provinces—but hereafter other objects may arise.
But more than the political and national consequences
I do acutely mourn over the crushing mental and
moral effect of such an absolutism over all conscience,
all lifp, all energy, all thought. My intimate acquaint
ance with the personal excellence of English and
Irish Boman Catholics, lay, cleric, and conventual,
makes me deplore the more bitterly a despotism,
�ana the “Expostulation.
which must gradually destroy all the higher develop
ments of character, and turn the descendants of the
fine old English Catholic families into abject Jesuit
ical serfs. In the name of God, may such never be.
Anyhow, may the people of England not expedite
that fall by the imprudence and injustice of a per
secution which would speedily unite those who may
otherwise partially dissolve; or, on the other hand,
by the misleading encouragement of patronage and
compromise. We have no right to help minds and
consciences into a bondage which, when embraced,
separates the bondsman from humanity—the Church
with its theocracy on one side : Humanity with the
devil on the other side: such is the Papal concep
tion. And, alas ! the separation between the Papal
subject and Humanity is complete: the outward
tokens of courtesy or affection may be observed ; but
what love worth anything can exist between the
blessed and the accursed; what even are the ministra
tions of mercy, if they are so designed, as out of
men’s affections and afflictions to forge the rivets of
their servitude ?
When we cease the legislation of religious favourit
ism, and commence the legislation of religious equality
—when we treat all sects and institutions with justice,
and the members of all sects and institutions with
courtesy as well as justice—then shall we be in a
position to apply the principles of common sense to
conventual institutions. If the friends of conventual
institutions realised the wide-spread dislike engen
dered by the multiplication of institutions where a
two-fold absolutism is veiled in entire secresy, they
would be the first to seek a safeguard. The odious
system of direction which during the last few years
has been pervading the Roman Catholic laity, we are
powerless to touch. But the friends of religious
equality should warn any persons if they are carrying
on a secresy which could be remedied, but which if
�22
’The Vatican Decrees
continued will ere long lead to an outburst of indigna
tion, a panic, and a persecution. Why should not
gentlemen who have relations in convents and com
munities of men—why should not the superiors of
such institutions propose a plan calculated to meet
real and known inconveniences, and thus, moreover,
to calm the just susceptibilities of the public mind ?
There ought to be a register preserved in the guest
room of every religious house, in which the real names
of all inmates should be entered; inaccuracy of entry
should be punishable by a fine; any person who could
assign a rational reason should, under suitable restric
tions, be enabled to examine such register. All this
might be arranged so as not to cause any inconvenience
to a conventual institution, but, above all, so as not
to affix any stigma of dishonour or apparent suspicion.
Nearly all the unpleasant rumours against convents
would have been suppressed at once had a precaution
so simple and inoffensive been adopted ; and, without
dragging into print allusions to excellent communi
ties of innocent and good people, I may be allowed to
remark that occasionally there have been incidents,
such as imbecile inmates kept in durance and also
sometimes persons secreting themselves in conventual
houses, and so evading the law, which easily give
countenance to those countless suspicions which keep
aggregating till they descend like an avalanche. The
true friends of lasting religious equality must combine,
along with the maintenance of these great principles,
to abolish favouritism, and to adopt in a spirit of fair
ness and consideration, remedies demanded, not by
bigotry, but by good sesne.
Let me remark, in conclusion, that all my state
ments as to the Papal doctrines imposed on NeoCatholics are founded, as may be easily verified, on
direct quotations from the Decrees and the Encyclical.
Much more remains behind—unsaid.
�and the “Expostulation”
23'
NOTE.
The book formerly deemed the best for the diffusion
of Roman Catholic doctrines was Keenan’s ‘ Controver
sial Catechism.’ It was based on a French Catechism,
and very widely circulated in Great Britain, bearing
the imprimatur of all the Vicars Apostolic of Scot
land. In it appeared the following, until withdrawn
in the year 1869 :—
Q.—Must not Catholics believe the Pope himself
to be infallible ?
A.—This is a Protestant invention : it is no Article
of the Catholic Faith ; no decision of his can oblige,
under pain of heresy, unless it be received and
enforced by the teaching body—that is by the Bishops
of the Church.
ADDRESS.
The following is a quotation from an address
delivered by the Rev. James Martineau at Liverpool,
September 25th, 1871, fourteen months after my
secession from the Roman Catholic Church. In
gratefully mentioning that ever-honoured and beloved
name, may I be permitted to record that, trained as I
had been to lean on the authority of others, my know
ledge of the existence of such a spiritual character as
his, developed in the ranks of Christian Theism, pre
sented to my hopes an encouragement and a stimulus
which the gentle diffidence of his genius would
neither have desired or imagined -
�24
The Vatican Decrees
“ Another event has taken place recently with which
I have had in some degree the privilege of a personal
connection. A very eminent and remarkable man
has given up his adherence to the Catholic religion,
and has thrown himself among us as a preacher of pure
and spiritual religion. I allude to the Rev. Robert
Rodolph Suffield. Now, before Mr. Suffield’s name
was heard amongst us, at his own request I early paid
him a visit at his retreat in the country. I had inti
mate intercourse with him, and learned precisely his
state of thought before he had made up his mind to
the step he has now taken, and I was equally struck
with the problem which was presented to his religious
sense — what is the real essence and nature of
Catholicism ? Now, I found that the view Mr. Suffield
took of Catholicism was this. He said, ‘ I see in the
Catholic religion the only example in the world’s
history in which the great and fundamental principles
of all natural piety and of all natural conscience are
made the actuating principles of the life of multitudes
and of nations. The great doctrine of the moral
government of God, the great truth of the absolute
supremacy of conscience, the great hope of a future
and better life—these things have imbued the Catholic
mind, the mind even of the youngest children of the
Catholic Church that have any intelligence at all.
They are realities to the Catholic people. They speak
of them with the same simplicity and openness with
which they would speak of the work of their plough,
of their spade, of their shuttle; with which they would
speak of the concerns of their houses and their homes.
There is no shyness concerning them. They are ab
solute realities to them, and rule their lives. We
know that they control the passions of young people,
and, if they go astray, by appealing to these images
in their hearts we can recover them again. They are
truly a power in life. And now,’ said Mr. Suffield,
‘ what I want to know is, whether outside the Catholic
�and the “Expostulation”
25
Church those truths have the same power and reality,
whether they take their places among the facts of life
with the same certainty and with the same efficacy.’
He looked upon the Catholic religion simply as an
instrumentality for bringing home to men the simple
natural convictions of the human heart, and making
them live in their consciences and lives. Catholicism
thus was to him nothing but a great system of natural
religion supported by the most artificial and unnatural
of authorities and supports. That is the view he took
of it, and he said, ‘ What I want to know is, if I dare
to throw away these artificial supports, shall I find it
possible to administer this spiritual theism to man
kind, and get hold of the hearts of men ? Or am I
to believe that it is impossible for the weak mind of
humanity to grapple those truths, unless you have a
false mythology, and all sorts of pictures and images
connected with them ? Does the religion enter by
means of the false imagination, or may we fling away
the false imagination and trust to the spiritual power
of religion ?’ That was the problem he had to solve
for himself, and he said, ‘I fear if I were to profess
myself a Protestant I should be propping up these
eternal truths with just as false and entangled a ma
chinery as if I were to remain in the Catholic Church,
Por, if there is no infallibility in the Catholic Church,
neither is there in the Protestant Scriptures, and
whether I take the one or the other, I throw away
natural truths, and fling myself instead on an artificial
and unnatural support.’ Well, I believe myself that
Mr. Suffield here expressed a great truth ; and I think
the changes which are now taking place in the Pro
testant Churches are all of this kind. The tendency
is to fling away the false dependence upon artificial
authority, and to go back to the primitive rights of
religion in human nature and in human life. I said
to him I should feel it an impiety and infidelity—the
only thing I should venture to call infidelity at all—
�i6
The Vatican Decrees
to doubt that what God had made true could vindicate
and justify itself to the human heart without any
human lies to back it up and support it. If we once
found that a thing was a lie, and was false, or even if
it was precarious, it was at the peril of all veracity
and of all fidelity that we dared to place that as a
means of underpinning, as it were, and supporting
an eternal and all-important truth.”
RESULTS OF INFALLIBILITY.
Meanwhile there are already signs of a coming conflict in
quarters where they might hardly have been looked for.
There is probably no section of the Church, beyond the walls
of Rome itself, where the dominant spirit is so fiercely and
fervently Ultramontane as among the Roman Catholics of
England. Nor is the phenomenon difficult to account for.
They form a small body in the midst of an unfriendly popu
lation, and the old Catholic families are at once united toge
ther and inspired with zeal by the long tradition of privations
and persecutions patiently endured for their faith. And then,
at the moment when legal disabilities and social ostracism
were beginning to be relaxed, came the irruption of converts
who had sacrificed most of them all the associations, inte
rests, and affections of half a lifetime for their adopted creed,
and whose leaders, as one of themselves has observed, were
withone illustrious exception, “ Ultramontanes before they
were Catholics.” The late Cardinal Wiseman, whose earlier
policy was of a very different kind, was completely carried
away by the current; his successor has been throughout the
guiding spirit of the infallibilist bishops at the Council, and
all the younger generation of priests have been trained on
the convert model. One of them insisted not long ago,
from the pulpit of a well-known Roman Catholic church
in the metropolis, that it is not to believe the infallibility of
the Pope’s official judgments ; every opinion on whatever
subject he expresses in conversation is infallible. Yet a reso
lute opposition is beginning to manifest itself among both
the clergy and laity of the Roman Catholic Church in Eng
land. We have given several examples of this before now,
and we mentioned the other day that the infallibilist address
presented under strong pressure for the adoption of the Eng
lish clergy had been by no means unanimously signed. Dr.
�and the “Expostulation.”
2"]
Rymer, President of the diocesan Seminary of St. Edmund’s,
Ware, scandalised the Tablet by writing to express his em
phatic disapproval of it. But the tone and language of the
letter of refusal addressed to its promoters by Father Suf
field, and published apparently by his ^request in the West
minster Gazette, is so remarkable that it deserves record
here. The writer is the best known and one of the ablest
and most active of the English Dominicans—a Cambridge
man, though not, we believe, a convert; and it is hardly
likely, considering the stringent discipline of religious com
munities, that he would venture on so bold a protest unless
he felt, assured of the moral support of his Order; and such
an inference is strongly confirmed by the attitude of the
Dominican Cardinal Guidi. Father Suffield says :—
“Knowing with what earnest desire the enemies of our
religion, with taunting speech, at once urge us and defy us to
proclaim, after 1,800 years, the foundation of our Christianity;
knowing the deep repugnance with which, under the pressure
of ecclesiastical opinion and ecclesiastical prospects, canons,
priests, and bishops, have signed declarations pleasing to
ecclesiastical superiors, and repugnant to their private opinions ;
knowing with an intimate and sad knowledge that the moot
ing of this question has led to investigations, and then to
inquiries, which have paralysed the faith in the minds of
numbers of the clergy and of the intellectual laity, and with
not a few destroyed it, I must respectfully decline to sign a
document in which petitioners ask for a definition, the animus
and consequence of which few can be so thoughtless as not to
perceive.
“If we get a Pope vain, obstinate, and in his dotage, shall
we ask him to be confirmed in his powers of mischief ?
“Do we wish, by exalting the lessons of the encyclical, to
render political life impossible to every honest and consistent
Catholic, and to render the possession of political and religious
equality impracticable to any except those sort of Catholics
who would use the language of liberty when they beg, and
the precepts of the Pope when they refuse ? ”
x It is scarcely possible to misapprehend the pointed allusion
to the case of “ a Pope vain, obstinate, and in his dotage,”
and the majority of the Vatican Council has certainly done
what it can to “confirm him in his powers of mischief.”
Father Suffield must be presumed to speak from his own
knowledge when he refers to the numbers of clergy and
educated laity whose faith has been already paralysed or
destroyed by inquiries into Papal infallibility, and his testi
mony is borne out by others ; it is hardly wonderful that he
should look with serious alarm at the further consequences
�28
The Vatican Decrees
that may ensue. The wonder is that those who wish faith
to be maintained and strengthened should be so “ thoughtless ”
as to exult over the “mischief” they have helped to perpe
trate. It is rather late to remind them now of the homely
proverb that the last straw will break the camel’s back, and
this straw is a tolerably weighty one.—Saturday Review, of
July 30th, 1870.
FATHER SUFFIELD AND THE NEW DOGMA.
The newspapers inform us that Father Suffield, late of the
Dominican Order, has joined the Unitarian community; he
has not only renounced his obedience to the Church of Rome,
but has apparently renounced also his obedience to the
Catholic Faith. This is very sad, yet not unexpected after
reading his last published letters. The case is one that arrests
our attention, not only on account of the learning and abilities
of Father Suffield, but because it will form, we fear, only a
type of many such cases ; nor is this difficult to understand.
Brought up with the principle, instilled from earliest child
hood, that the Church of Rome is alone the Catholic Church,
excluding the Orthodox and the Anglican; that the supre
macy of the Pope over the whole Catholic world is the normal
idea of the Church, so completely that those who do not
acknowledge that supremacy are cut off from the promises and
privileges of the Church, even though, like Greeks and
Anglicans, they retain all else necessary to their continuing
portions of the Body of Christ; with these opinions so strongly
impressed on the mind, it is inevitable that there must be a
most violent reaction when the dogma of Infallibility is made
an article of Faith by what claims to be a General Council.
For this dogma is not only a new article of Faith, but it is one
which contradicts much that had been previously held as true ;
it virtually rejects the authority of General Councils as the
voice of the Church, and thus places the Church herself in a
new position. By removing the supreme authority from the
Body, and placing it in one man, who is supposed to be the
head, the original Charter as granted by her Divine Head is
abrogated, and a new one substituted for it. It is no longer,
“Tell it to the Church,” it is “Tell it to the Pope;” it is no
longer,” “If he neglect to hear the Church, let him be unto
thee as an heathen man and a publican; ” but, “ If he neglect
to hear the Pope ”—very naturally the Faith of those who
have been educated, as Father Suffield has been, by Do
minicans, will be violently shaken, and their minds thrown
off their balance, when they are called upon by the authority
�and the “ Expostulation.”
nt)
of the Church to accept the decree of the personal Infallibility
of the Pope. And this reaction is very liable to go to further
lengths than we at first anticipate ; we are apt to expect that
those who, like Father Suffield, repudiate the dogma, and con
sequently find their position as Priests in the Roman Church
untenable, will turn to the Anglican. We should rejoice to
think that the Anglican would form a safe home for those who
reject the dogma, but we fear it will not be so; we are far
more afraid that Father Suffield’s example will be followed
by larger numbers than those who seek refuge with us. We
do not sufficiently consider the habits of thought and mind
which are formed by Roman teaching. In that community
the whole Catholic Faith is wrapped up in, and becomes a part
of, the belief in the Papal Supremacy ; the very rudiments of
the Faith, the Incarnation, the Holy Trinity, the Sacraments,
are all tied up in the idea of the sole supremacy of the Church
of Rome, and the Pope at the head of it; the idea of the
Catholic Church or any part existing, except under the Roman
obedience, is entirely excluded as impossible. When, there
fore, a rude shock comes like this, which destroys all faith in
the Pope and the Roman Church, it destroys all faith in other
dogmas too.—Church Herald.
The dogma of Infallibility is producing its necessary fruit.
Not even Rome can altogether stop inquiry or fetter thought,
and spiritual absolutism finds its own subjects ready to ques
tion its decrees. Already there is a movement in Germany
which bears striking resemblance to that of the fifteenth cen
tury. A meeting of Roman Catholic professors at Nuremberg
has already agreed upon a protest against the spiritual despot
ism of the Pope, and the Cologne Gazette states that the
Bishop of Rothenberg, Dr. Hefele, has resolved not to accept
the Infallibility Dogma, and that his Chapter and the theo
logical faculty of the city of Tubingen support him in it.
Even in this country, where Roman Catholicism is more
Roman than Rome, the dogma is producing confusion and
distress in the minds of the faithful.
As the immediate result of the Council’s work, the secession
of Father Suffield from the Church of Rome is worthy of more
notice than is due to merely individual change of opinion.
Father Suffield is a man to whom the Roman Catholics of
England are willing to confess large obligations. He is said
to have revived the establishment of Peter’s Pence in this
country, to have done much in recruiting the regiment of
Papal Zouaves, and to have held the first public meeting of
sympathy for the Pope ever held in modern England. A
�3°
The Vatican Decrees
correspondent of the Westminster Gazette says, “it has been
impossible to have been much under Father Sumeld’s influence
without becoming intensely devoted to everything Catholic,”
and that “the Prayer-book connected with his name has pro
bably been more instrumental than any other popular manual
in spreading faith wherever English-speaking Catholics are to
be found. ” The Prior of the Dominican House in London, of
which order Father Suffield is a prominent member, speaks of
him as “ a brother of the same order, Whose personal friend
ship I enjoyed before either of us became Dominicans, and
whose zeal and apostolic spirit I have ever held in the greatest
admiration.”
But Father Suffield seems to have felt somewhat as Father
Newman felt, that though the Infallibility was a dogma to be
received as an act of devotion, it was not to be defended as an
article of the faith. “It becomes essential,” he says, “that
unless failure of reason be impossible to an aged Pope, there
should be some means at least of recognising when his decrees
are to be regarded as the acts of man, when as those of God.”
The shock of disagreement and difference which has been
caused by the proclamation of the Infallibility dogma has,
however, shaken the whole fabric of the eloquent Dominican’s
creed. “An incident, not regretted by me,” he says, “has
revealed, almost by accident, the hidden struggle of years.”
Of this struggle he says, “it has been the agony of years.”
His doubts have not risen from within, but have been forced
upon him from without. He “ sought solitude first in the
cloister, then solitude greater in a country village amidst
simple people and the children of his flock, that he might
dispel difficulties and doubts. If those difficulties and doubts
have been wrong, none but the highest rulers of the Church
have been responsible for them; they have not been a pleasure,
but an agony; not a pride, but a humiliation.” Father
Suffield has, therefore, been driven out of the Church by the
declaration of the Papal Infallibility. His case is simply one
of thousands, and is only rendered remarkable by his own
previous services to the Church. The Pope and his Council
have raised more doubts than they will solve, and in grasping
at the shadow of Infallibility they will miss the substance of
authority.—Daily News.
Father Suffield, the eloquent Dominican, whose protest
against the most memorable act of the Vatican Council has
excited some attention in this country, has gone a step beyond
the rejection of the dogma of Papal Infallibility. He has
quitted the Roman Communion. It would seem that as soon
�and the “Expostulation”
31
as the fact became known overtures were made to him with
the view of his joining the Anglican Church. He has declined
to do so. The Articles and the Athanasian Creed block the
way; indeed he “ questions alike the Infallibility of the Pope
and of the Scriptures.” He throws in his lot with “those
who are commonly called Unitarians, Free Christians or
Christian Theists,” and states, in effect, that he intends to
accept the office of a minister in a Free Christian Congrega
tion.—Manchester Guardian.
A. due following out of opinions curiously led Dr. Newman
to the Roman Church, and his brother, Professor Newman,
to pure Theism. In like manner the two Herberts—the one
the free-thinking Lord Herbert of Cherbury, the other the
sainted poet of the English Church : these men felt the philo
sophical impossibility of a middle position. We shall watch
Mr. Suffield’s career with high interest. He will not go in
with the company of Exeter Hall, but sets forth alone in
his quest of truth. There is something very touching, and
very manly too, in his statement of the sufferings of mind and
heart, “which his secession has involved.” Father Suffield
has taken the great leap from authority to freedom.—Dispatch.
FATHER SUFFIELD AND THE CHURCH OF
ENGLAND.
August 22, 1870.
My Dear Sir,—Private communications are so very numer
ous at present, that I cannot conveniently add to my occupa
tions by contributing the literary help you do me the favour
of offering. Moreover that able periodical partakes somewhat
of a controversial character, and is regarded as anti-Catholic
in its position. I am peculiarly circumstanced, have resigned
all offices in the Catholic Church, and ceased the exercise of
priestly and Catholic rites : from the intimate manner in
which I have been interwoven in the Catholic body in England,
this act causes great pain to those whom the least I should
like to wound ; and I am anxious to do nothing but what is
demanded by the exigencies of circumstances or the require
ments of conscience, which could in the slightest degree
grieve those who have so many claims upon my affection,
gratitude, and reverence.
After long and deep thought, study, prayer, and counsel, I
decided that it would be impossible for me honestly to
continue to act as a priest. The infallibility of the Pope, and,
�32
The Vatican Decrees
of the Scriptures, alike, I question, and the dogmas resting
solely on either of those authorities, I am not able on that
account to admit.
It is my desire to unite with others, and to assist them in
the worship of God, and in the practice of the two-fold
precepts of charity, unfettered by adhesion on either side, to
anything, beyond those great fundamental principles as
presented to us by Jesus Christ.
Though relieved from all the obligations of my order, I do
not wish to consider myself as alienated from the Catholic
Church or from other Christian communities, by any personal
hostile act. I assume a position hostile to none—if one man
hurls an anathema, another man is not compelled either to
accept it, or to retaliate it.
Having understood that those who are commonly called Uni
tarians, Free Christians, or Christian Theists, thus agree in
the liberty inspired by self-diffidence, humility, and charity,
to carry on the worship of God, without sectarian requirements
or sectarian opposition; that they possess a simple but not
vulgar worship, a high standard of virtue, intelligence, and
integrity; and these after the Christian type, moulded by the
Christian traditions, and edified by the sacred Scriptures;
holding the spirit taught by Jesus Christ, and the great
thoughts by virtue of which he built up the ruins of the moral
world; and. yet not enforcing the reception of complicated
dogmas as a necessity, or accounting their rejection a crime :
a communion of Christian worshippers, bound loosely together,
and yet by the force of great principles enabled quietly to
maintain their position, to exercise an influence elevating and
not unimportant, and to present religion under an aspect which
thoughtful men can accept without latent scepticism, and
earnest men without the aberrations of superstition, or the
abjectness of mental servitude to another—such approved
itself to my judgment, and commended itself to my sympathy.
I intend adhering to the pursuits of the clergyman and of the
Christian teacher, and communications are in progress in
another part of England which may terminate in my accepting
thus a duty conformable to the habits of my life, and which
will not throw me into a position of hostility, or embarrassment
as to those honoured and loved Catholic friends with whom
so greatly I should prize, if it were possible to maintain kindly
intercourse, inasmuch as I am only externally severed from
them by my being unable to believe certain dogmas which a
Catholic is bound to regard as essential. Thus I hope I have
not only thanked you for your obliging offer, but adequately
explained my position, and showed that the future you were
commissioned to hold out to me in the Established Church
�and the “Expostulation.”
33
would not be deemed possible by the authorities who have
done me the honour and kindness to communicate in my
regard, as soon as they are made aware that the Articles and
the Athanasian creed would be amongst the insuperable
barriers to my entertaining such a proposal.
Many write to me evidently under a grievous misapprehen
sion. They anticipate from me reckless denunciations of that
vision of beauty which I have left, simply because, like a
vision, it had everything but reality. Allied as I am by
relationship with some of our ancient Catholic families, allied
by the ties of friendship with many more of them, I feel it is
a shame to myself that any stranger could suppose one word
of my lips, one thought of my mind, could cast moral reproach
on those beautiful and honoured homes where old traditions
received a lustre greater even than antiquity and suffering can
bestow—crowned with the aureola of charity, nobleness,
purity, and devotedness. Such memories print on my heart
their everlasting record. To cease to believe and to worship
with them was a martyrdom, which none but the Catholic can
understand.
I have ascended now to another stage of my life ; to rise to
it needed sufferings of the mind and of the heart, the sacrifice
of everything in the world I cared for;—but I perceive a work
to do, and, by the blessing of God, I shall strive to perform
it. Youth, strength, vigour, and hope return to me with the
expectation. Truth obtained by suffering is doubly dear to
the possessor.—Very sincerely yours,
Robert Rodolph Sutfield.
To the Rev.----- &c., &c.
N.B.—All the above paragraphs, from different periodicals,
are extracted from Church Opinion.
�ALSO,
By the Bev. B. B. SUFFIELD,
FIVE LETTERS ON CONVERSION TO ROMAN
CATHOLICISM......................................................... 3d.
IS JESUS GOD ?........................................................ 3d.
TRUBNER
and
CO., LUDGATE HILL, LONDON, E.C.
PRINTED BY C. W. BBYNBLL, LITTLE PULTENBY STREET, HAYMARKET.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
The Vatican decrees and the "Expostulation"
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Suffield, Robert Rodolph
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 16 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Part of Morris Misc. Tracts 4. Other titles published by Trubner and Co. by the same author listed on back page. Includes a long quotation from an address delivered by the Rev. James Martineau at Liverpool, September 25th,1871.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Trubner and Co. ; Thomas Scott
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1874
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
G4868
Subject
The topic of the resource
Catholic Church
Papacy
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The Vatican decrees and the "Expostulation"), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Catholic Church-Doctrines
Popes-Infallibility
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/0963b0fcbb638626aa63877a089148cc.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=Wi9ruu3oy7cOlaN%7EKqKBoPkOhIR1og2b%7ETV2RnHrVDM57Ckjs3OTXeKFz7FoTAbwK4hYc3VJ4CIpRpG21yhq0IwuFo8zEU17R7z7UUAXvTCEnog8bvav0U1ZJ-yqtY4wIH8fFeFKtcKEVgYKqivMoKfDd3j2HUhYokbg1x5Fw%7Ejf3o2O51o6FxYG0jp4QlaM4A8wTkLxc8GdswxsiluHJ%7E2s0zCclxWlzfE67ZgIq1FoE6poK7sAdqTyE70JiWJYZ0FZIdpqcWEvKLIznypB55gJ9%7EMSThmGV8TcoT7SplmVPMAgOXuCkI1Va%7EPeF0MuzSPZARu147YAUw8DtOIQ1Q__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
3309bc782b40461b8019390fa4d7c3e9
PDF Text
Text
VATICAN DECREES
AND
THE “EXPOSTULATION.”
BY
ROBERT RODOLPH SUFFIELD,
Minister of the Free Christian Church, Wellesley Road, Croydon; formerly
Apostolic Missionary and Prefect of the "Guard of Honour,"
Author of several Pamphlets in this Series.
PUBLISHED BY TRUBNER AND
57 AND 59 LUDGATE HILL ; AND
CO.,
THOMAS SCOTT,
11 THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD, UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, $.E.
1874.
Price Sixpence.
�LONDON:
PRINTED BY C. W. BEYNELL, 16 LITTLE PULTENEY STREET,
HAYMARKET, W.
�PREFACE.
Since the appearance of Mr. Gladstone’s “ Expos
tulation,” I have been repeatedly asked to express my
opinions as to the political bearing of the Vatican
decrees. The subject is of an extent and complication
beyond the limits of a pamphlet; but as some friends
are partial enough to urge me to make known, at
least in a general way, something of the result of my
thoughts and experience, I can no longer consistently
maintain the silence which I should prefer. Though
after the thoughtful and accurate statements which
have emanated from Mr. Gladstone, Lord Acton,
Lord Camoys, the Right Rev. Monsignore Capel, the
Very Rev. Monsignore Patterson, and the able com
ments upon the same in our leading periodicals, I
have little to add beyond the expression of my per
sonal experience ; the quotations, which at the request
of the same parties are appended to this brochure,
will explain to strangers my profound personal inte
rest in a question which has so intimately affected
my own life.
��THE VATICAN DECREES
AND
THE “EXPOSTULATION.”
EOPLE cannot be allowed the pleasure of at the
same time affirming and denying a conviction.
The Neo-Catholics, headed by the Pope, and in
England by Archbishop Manning, declare the Vatican
decrees to be an undoubted expression of the Divine
will. The Old Catholics, represented by such men
as Bishop Reinkins, Dr. Dollinger, and Lord Acton,
declare them to be merely the utterances of what
Dr. Newman designated “ au aggressive and insolent
faction.” The Vatican Council is either ecumenic or
schismatic. Skilful men can find reasons on either
side, and consistent men may act out either conclu
sion. The Old Catholics deny the infallibility of
the Vatican Council. The Neo-Catholics affirm its
infallibility. Learning has ranged itself on the side
of the “ Old ” Catholics; diplomacy on the side of the
“ New.” The Roman Catholic Church has disappeared;
the Vatican Church has supplanted it. We have
too much appreciation of the learning of the “ Old ”
Catholics, and the diplomatic ambition of the ecclesi
astical rulers of the “ New,” to be able to regard as a
nonentity that momentous revolution. When men
the wealth of whose virtues and learning had enriched
the Papal cause could, in advanced years, sorrow
fully permit the Pope and some millions of adherents
to leave them, at once warning and anathematized—
P
�4
The Vatican Decrees
warning those who leave, anathematized by those
who have left;—when acute diplomatists like Dr. Man
ning urge on a revolution with all the ardour
inspired by ambition, and in presence of the sorrow
ful laments and pathetic warnings of men who had
grown old in the service of a cause then about to
die,—surely a nonentity was just the last event
contemplated by anyone. The Old Catholics and
New Catholics alike beheld in that revolution the
inauguration of a new era of individual absolutism,
to be established as the embodiment of the Divine
will; and in the name of religion, of liberty, of
humanity, the Old Catholics raised their protest. In
the name of Pius IX. and of possession, the New
Catholics raised the war cry, which died off into
a perpetual anathema. Those men who contended
on the battle-field of thought, of history, of diplo
macy, until the fatal victory of July, 1870, were not
children contending for baubles : they were men who
entered the lists. Some contended for truth, others
fought for power. The triumphant faction being in
possession of the Vatican, in possession of the
Episcopal Sees, in the possession of the ecclesiastical
edifices, retained easily power over the masses. What
they sought, they have obtained. Whenever their
chief ruler issues any declaration which he means to
be infallible, it is infallible. Should any voice,
retaining a ring of the accents of liberty, dare to say,
“ The subject on which you have decreed is out of
the range of faith and morals, so you only therein
decree as a man;” the Ruler replies, “You have
accepted as Divine the Vatican decrees; you therein
declared that you will be accursed, and forfeit your
■eternal salvation, unless you inwardly believe ai;d
heartily accept, and outwardly in practice conform to
that belief, that the jurisdiction of the Roman Pontiff
is over all the Faithful individually and collectively;
that his authority compels your entire and unreserved
�and the “Expostulation.”
5
obedience, not only in matters appertaining to faith
and morals, but also in all those that appertain to the
discipline and government of the Church. You.
have declared your internal assent to the Divine
decree, whereby you learn that this power is from
God, represents God, is full and supreme, and not
merely of inspection and direction ; that it is superior
to all other power, extends everywhere, must never
be controlled, must always enjoy free and immediate
communication with its subjects wherever they may
be; that its judgments may never be reviewed, appealed
against, or disregarded; that to it alone it apper
tains to declare what belongs to its jurisdiction and
what domains of thought and of action (if any) are
exempt from its infallible utterances.”
Obviously the Vatican faction could not regard as
meaningless and powerless such expressions, cau
tiously worded and decreed after mature deliberation.
Their promulgation was enjoined. The Vatican party
must not be surprised if those who protested against
their formation desire their promulgation. What can
be done, what was meant to be done, what will be
done, we want all men to know ! Vatican diplomacy,
having obtained the weapons, would rather that the
Faithful alone, and they but gradually, should realise
the weight of the sceptre which they have forged and
feebly yielded to an Italian priest. But we would
rather know and feel the metal of the weapon pre
pared for us. A sword sheathed in velvet is still a
sword. Chains concealed in the intentions of a pre
late, still are chains. They are meant for us, and we
should like to handle them. We have been recently
somewhat naively told that they will be “ convenient.”
Doubtless ; therefore the more that is known about
them the better. In a docile school the boys collect
the birch rods, and with wondering fear feel their
substance, and speculate on their effects. If the scholars
become too frightened, should panic threaten an in
�6
'The Vatican Decrees
convenient outbreak, the master and ushers will pru
dently explain that the rods will be hardly ever used;
that they are merely symbols of authority, quite
harmless, almost pleasant; that obviously it can make
no difference whether the rods are in the school-room
or on the trees ; they were only gathered at the urgent
request of the boys. All very good ; but still a boy
might like to know that they are there, are meant to
be u-ed, and will be used.
In former times we English people knew what the
Popes could effect amongst those who revered in him
a Divine primacy, but not a Divine individual, irre
sponsible infallibility. What is prepared for us now,
when the Papal authority is declared to be absolute,
immediate, personal—when his utterances must be
believed as well as obeyed ? Now that a circle of hell
fire is drawn around the Papal subject, he must either,
like the Salamander, kill his mental liberty, or live for
ever in the flames. People have said, Why in this
country, at a time of profound peace, when all the
Vatican Catholics are living in undoubted loyalty—
why call attention to the Vatican decrees when they
are consoling Roman prelates and harming no one ?
We reply, It is just the time when we should examine
the weapons forged for emergencies. If the English
people were in times of excitement to realise the mag
nitude of the triumphant revolution, we cannot tell to
what excesses some amongst them might be driven.
Those principles of religious equality which we have
been slowly conquering by the patient energy of men
whose passion is for justice might have been pushed
back for generations into the dregs of a cowardly and
insane persecution. All men, of whatever creed,
Roman or the opposite, ought to rejoice that this sub
ject should have been brought to the front and can
vassed at a moment when it appeals to no triumphant
bigotries. I am convinced that nothing can better
secure our Roman countrymen in England than what
�and the 11 Expostulation
7
is now taking place. Let all men realise what must
and ought to be the line of action of a consistent sup
porter of tlie Vatican Church, as contrasted with the
position of the Old Catholics; let all men, having rea
lised it, know what to expect; let all then renew within
their minds the intense conviction that under no cir
cumstances whatsoever must opinions be punished;
that the State has only to deal with actions, and
amongst actions only with those which obviously
affect the commonwealth ; then we shall be strong to
resist and to suppress that hurricane of anti-Roman
indignation which will sooner or later arise, and which
might carry away many of our great principles of
liberty, if we were not prepared to meet it by a recog
nition of the causes exciting it.
No controversialist could have caught the public
ear and instructed the public mind. The foremost
man in England alone could do it; the statesman,
rich in scholarship and in thought, representing in
his own person whatever is the highest in culture,
the most illustrious in our national traditions, the
most reverent, religious, and tolerant in character;
he, the near relative of one Roman Catholic, the inti
mate friend of many, was, above all others, the man
to speak. Judging by the standard of expediency,
his words may politically injure him; judging by the
standard of rectitude, his Expostulation ” will be
recorded amongst the most honourable deeds of an
honourable career. Many will have cause to rejoice
at it; but, above all, must we, the disciples of Reli
gious Equality, rejoice that the people of England
should have been instructed in the words and bearing
of the Vatican Decrees when that instruction could
be received quietly, take its place in the public mind
harmlessly and prepare us against contingencies
wisely.
As to explanations, there are none to give.
Some Roman Catholics, like Sir George Bowyer,
�8
The Vatican Decrees
may not as yet understand the Decrees, and may,
in consequence of their known spirit of submission,
be allowed to write condemned propositions publicly,
trusting to their private repentance in the Con
fessional. But the common sense of the people of
England will easily perceive that the question is not
whether now the Pope may be enforcing loyalty or
not, but what all consistent subjects of the Vatican
Church must do when the Pope may enforce another
course. Regarding that, there can be no question.
Catholics will divide between those who accept the
Vatican Decrees and those who reject them; the
latter will practically be in the same position as all
the Episcopal Churches, independent of Rome, e.g.,
the Greek, Russian, English, American, and German.
In saying that, we can easily surmise the future
action of Neo-Catholics as to Papal Decrees hostile
to our national interests. I do not mean to state that
their constant obedience to the Pope can be always
depended upon by him. Men do not always act in
accordance with their convictions, even under pain of
certain eternal damnation. But we must not forget
that no Neo-Catholic can approach the Sacraments if
he be engaged in any line of action forbidden by the
Pope ; and all Catholics deem the Sacraments essen
tial to salvation ; moreover, disobedience to the Pope
in a grave matter would be understood to be invariably
a mortal sin. A soldier dying in a forbidden service
knows that he perishes for ever in Hell. It may be
said, practically, the Pope will probably not frequently
interfere—that will depend—one fact let us remem
ber, the Pope does not show much interest in matters
of merely personal or public virtue—he seldom thinks
it worth his while to issue a Decree against drunk
enness and such like faults. When dignified eccle
siastics in this country have taken up such merely
moral questions, it has been well known that it has
been chiefly to prevent the cause falling into the
�and the “ Expostulation ”
9
exclusive hands of Protestants. But the questions
connected with Papal power have never been allowed
to sleep. During the last years, Roman Catholics have
felt as if all religion and morality depended upon the
success of Papal political schemes. All the action of
the Pope has been to concentrate power in himself,
and to make it daily felt. His chief representatives
in England and Ireland have been appointed by the
Pope, in defiance of the wishes of the Paithful and
their clergy, and without the concurrence of one single
national vote. Regulations of a most arbitrary cha
racter as to marriage and education have been insti
tuted and enforced, in opposition to the wishes, in
terests and customs of the Faithful concerned.
It rends one’s memories to think of the noblehearted Roman Catholics of England, representatives
of ancient traditions of religion and of loyalty, their
lives as blameless and as beautiful as the poetic
legends of their Faith—they truthfully, through their
vicars apostolic, disowned all those Papal claims
which though often advanced and often recognised,
were not those “ Of Faith ”—on the strength of their
honest disclaimer they were restored to rights which
they ought never to have lost, and all the Liberals of
England rejoiced on that day when, in the Palace of
Westminster, the Roman Catholic nobles re-entered
the ancient hall, on each side of which the peers arose
to greet, them, the bearers of historic names, the re
presentatives of great traditions,—a principle greater
than all traditions arose and bade them welcome—it
was the principle of Religious Equality ! What have
those men done, to use the eloquent plaint of Dr.
Newman, that the hearts of the just should be made
sad ? Rome, ever reckless of honour when power can
be grasped ! what was it to Rome, that these sons of
crusaders and of martyrs had, on the strength of her
silence, plighted a word higher than the word of any
creed—the word of an English gentleman—and by
�IO
The Vatican Decrees
that word disowned and denied all the usurped pre
tensions of Rome. When the convenient time
arrived, a power that has never kept its word, com
pelled English gentlemen to violate theirs, to recant
all that they had said—it was the very triumph of the
Priest over the Man!—like the tyrant general who
seduced the honour of a virgin, and then presented to
her dishonoured gaze the corpse of the father she had
fondly hoped to have saved. The Roman Catholic
gentlemen yielded their honour to save their Church
—the Pope has presented to them as a corpse the
Church for which they interceded.
It is idle to point to the deeds of English Roman
Catholics in the days of old. In July, 1870, Italian
Priests and their coadjutors slew the old Church, and
intoned over it the Requiem. You find that Requiem
in the Vatican Decrees. Formerly, in periods of
discord, many Roman Catholics always sided with
the Pope, because they revered the primacy of his
dignity, the sacredness of his origin, and recognised
him as the centre of the Church’s unity ; other Roman
Catholics disobeyed him, resisted him, besieged his
capital, and yet, approaching the Sacraments, lived
and died in union with the Roman Church and its
creed, but resisting as exaggerated, or criminal, or
unpatriotic, actions and commands of the Roman
Pontiff. All that is past. The Pope was not
satisfied with the willing service of the free—some
to obey, others to oppose—and yet all to be one
with him in Faith and Sacraments. Those mystic
rites, tokens of spiritual memories, must wait
upon diplomacy, and be subject to his temporal
ambitions. Have all, or none. No wonder that in
many an English Roman Catholic home—many an
old Lome of chivalry, faith, and honour—a sorrowful
choice presented itself; accustomed to regard visible
unity with the Pope as essential to salvation, some
accepted the Papal Sacraments and slavery, others
�and the “Expostulation.”
11
sought Free Sacraments and personality, and in so
seeking they deemed the “ Free ” more Christian, more
Catholic than the “ Papal.” The men on each side
we honour, but let us not amidst our sentiments of
homage to conscientiousness—nay, may I add, to
memory and to affection—let us not forget that the
Catholics, divided now into the Vatican and the Old,
represent different principles, opposing positions.
The Vatican faction has triumphed, and has suc
ceeded in establishing all the principles the most
fatal to the development of the human mind, of
human society, of religion, of morals, of science, of
rational liberty. There is no explaining away what
has been done—either embrace it or disown it. Mr.
Gladstone’s “Expostulation ” may display to view a
few of those on either side. But the side taken is
really to be easily discovered by a more obvious test.
Who receives Sacraments from a Neo-Catholic priest ?
Who refuses so to do ? The statements in Mr. Glad
stone’s “ Expostulation ” are so cautiously accurate,
that I need only refer to them; but we must remem
ber that the Vatican Decree is retrospective. The
“ Encyclical ” has become a compendium of articles
of faith ; and every cause dear to a patriot and a
man of justice is cursed by its inhuman decrees.
You mock us with Italian irony, when in the presence
of the civilised world you first solemnly anathematise
science, civilisation, progress, and equal rights, when
you refuse your Sacraments and paternal fellowship
to those who cannot mentally believe the truth or
justice of your anathemas. When you declare that
those who cannot worship with you have no right to
worship anywhere; have, in fact, no rights outside the
walls of a prison or the steps of a scaffold, to which
you declare that your Church has divine power to
commit them; and then, when we read your decrees
and your admonition to civil governors to aid their
execution, and we read your own solemn utterances
�12
The Vatican Decrees
and tremble for the liberties which may be subjected
to your keeping—the liberty of the individual, the
liberty of the family, the liberty of the State, the
liberty of education, of science, of conscience—and
deliberate how we can preserve our liberty and
honour without violating yours, you assume the air of
injured innocence and wonder that we should call
attention to what really meant nothing at all, but
that, as we seem annoyed, you will put your heads
together, give us a nice explanation—a pill so care
fully sugared that even a Cardinal could swallow it.
But we say, we have had your explanations, you
thought about them well enough, you have promul
gated them to the world, we will learn your mind
from the words which you say are inspired—the
words of your Encyclicals and Vatican Decrees—not
from words which you can repudiate as soon as they
have succeeded in blinding. The indignant mind of
Europe has caught you “in flagrante delicto,” and
you turn round with a surprised smile and tell us you
meant no harm; you have taken bigotry, and into
lerance, and arrogance into your counsels, and com
bined together in a conspiracy against humanity—we
detect you, and you say, “ be quiet—what have we
done ? ” You send over your prelates to this England
of ours, and they talk glibly about liberty of worship,
and liberty of conscience, and liberty of speech, and
liberty of the press, and liberty of education, and
liberty of investigation, when they know—and now we
know—that they mean liberty for their own worship,
conscience, speech, education and press, but ana
themas against any one who dares even to think that
such liberty ought to belong to others. You forget
that our passionate devotion to the liberties you
anathematise are alone the cause why the Liberals of
England, headed by their great Statesman, declare
—“ Your equal liberties shall remain inviolate, by
virtue of the very principles you declare to be
�and the “Expostulation ”
13
accursed.” Having said that, and meaning to act
upon it, and determined not to be driven from it by
any foreign or domestic influence, we have surely
proclaimed all that the very chivalry of principle can
demand. But you can expect no more.
If a body of Puritans had existed in Rome in the
days of the Papal sovereignty; if they had in solemn
conclave declared that they regarded the Pope as
anti-Christ, and all his followers accursed by God and
to be repudiated by man, that no Roman Catholic
ought to be allowed any religious educational liberty—
that the Puritan conclave had a Divine right to extir
pate all such liberties—that it was the duty of the
civil power to enforce whatever action the aforesaid
conclave deemed prudent to enact, with the view of
forcibly destroying the existence of the Roman
Catholic religion—that Roman Catholics possess no
rights, but may be tolerated when toleration becomes
a regretable necessity. Suppose these Puritans to
have received civil rights because the Pope imagined
their principles of hostility to have merged into merely
religious and theoretical difference, the Puritans de
claring such to be the case, and repudiating the state
ments attributed to them which had been subversive
of civil loyalty ; supposing that a few years afterwards
these Roman Puritans met together, and declare that
all the opinions ever taught by their wildest divines
were part of the Gospel message; that they now
solemnly proclaim them as absolutely true, and held
firmly by all who join them ; that they have placed
themselves, for the protection of their principles,
under the control of the Emperor of Germany; that
at present they are perfectly satisfied with their posi
tion, and perfectly loyal. What would have been the
attitude of the Pope ? Prisons and scaffolds would
reply. But suppose the Pope to have been a secret
heretic, and, therefore, at liberty to follow the nobler
inspirations of conscience—suppose him to have an
unbounded confidence in the strength of his position
�14
The Vatican Decrees
and the final, though often remote, triumph of the
Right; but suppose him also to be a man capable of
appreciating what is demanded by self-respect and by
regard to the feelings of the loyal. What then would
have been his policy ? Would he have invited to his
more secret counsels Puritans known to maintain
the entire and universal supremacy of the German
Emperor ? Would he have recognised the Puritan
emissaries appointed by the Emperor for the super
vision of his Roman subjects, especially if the Em
peror had publicly claimed him as his own subject ?
Would he invariably have taken the dictation of the
German emissary as to the chaplains for the Roman
army and Roman prisons? Wbuld the citizens of
Rome have felt anxious to show special social con
sideration to the German emissary, whose chief func
tion it would be to keep the Puritans thoroughly
loyal to the Emperor, and ready to obey him when
ever occasion might demand ? If the Pope had so
acted in moments of weakness and romance, he would
have retraced his steps as soon as he recovered his selfrespect ; if a secret heretic, and so able to act nobly,
he would not begin to persecute the Puritans; he
would permit the Emperor to appoint his own emis
saries over the Puritan schools, Puritan institutions,
Puritan chapels, Puritan conclaves ; but he would not
permit the Emperor to appoint his own nominees to
public institutions, and then undertake to pay them ;
such refusal would not necessarily be the result of
fear, but of consistency and self-respect, and from a
conscientious desire not to encourage by favouritism the
further encroachments and pretensions of the German
Emperor. He would feel it due to his own subjects,
not to go out of his way to place in office of power
and of public trust those who continued obviously to
treat him as inferior to the Emperor. But if he
perceived other Puritans who maintained their inde
pendence of the decrees of the conclave, and though
�and the “Expostulation.”
T5
sympathising with the Emperor on account of simi
larity of creed, yet obviously regretting his claims to
supremacy in all causes over the Emperor, the Pope
would treat such Puritans like any other of his
subjects, without adverting in public action to their
difference of creed.
Such, I presume, ought to be our line of action
as to the foreign potentate who has recently claimed
supremacy over all the baptised amongst our country
men. We ought to ignore utterly and entirely all the
Papal claims, and Papal emissaries, as such. A Papal
Archbishop should be to us simply an English citizen,
or, if a foreigner, a f oreign visitor, and nothing more;
we ought not, on the ground of his being a Papal
prelate, to confer with him, and to arrange appoint
ments, or accept his appointments, and ask the wishes
of his foreign sovereign. To do so is contrary to
self-respect—to the national honour. If we had been
as anxious to consult the feelings and wishes of the
Irish people, and of the labouring classes of England,
as we have been anxious to defer to the wishes of an
Italian prelate, we should have but little discontent
in either country. Statesmen of large sympathies
have thought that they would be above all things
pleasing the English Roman Catholics and the Irish
people by finding out what would please the Pope,
and doing it. Oh, marvellous simplicity! Do not
the Irish remember full well that a Pope gave Ireland
to an English conqueror. That a Pope sent over a
Cardinal to help the English Government to suppress
national aspirations which were regarded with
apprehension at Rome ? Cardinal Cullen does not
enjoy the confidence of the Irish people; the prelate
they adore is the one who voted against the Papal
infallibility, an Archbishop whom the Pope would
depose if he dared. When he dies, he will probably
be succeeded by some docile canonist for^whom no
Irishman has voted. Dr. Cullen was appointed^by
�16
The Vatican Decrees
Rome without the concurrence of the Irish clergy.
His objects are of a very matron-like character, and
not at all representative of the wishes of the Irish
people. If we want to legislate with a view to the
wishes and feelings and real living interests of the
Irish people, we must not ask the guidance of any
Roman Cardinal. The Irish ask for national equality,
and we offer them a “concession” about the normal
schools, or invite a Papal prelate to meet a Princess,
and give him precedence over whatever might have
represented the national aspirations. The Irish
people ask for liberty, and you give them chaplains.
The Irish ask for extension of the franchise, repeal
of penal enactments, a national militia, and a local
Parliament, and you say we cannot do those things
for you, but we will pay your chaplains, and confer
with your venerated Bishops as to any other conces
sion they may deem desirable. I do not venture on
this occasion an opinion whether or not the real
wishes of the Irish people can be accepted or not; I
merely, for my present purpose say, if you want to
conciliate the Irish people you will not do so by fawn
ing upon the Pope and the clergy: they have their
objects; the Irish people have other objects. When
shall we give to nations the equal rights which we
more than give to the emissaries of a foreign power ?
Surely the loyalty of a nation is of more consequence
than the purchased conventional loyalty of a priest
hood.
But it may be said, anyhow in England, the way to
conciliate the gentry is to make much of the Papal
prelates. First of all I would say the English Roman
Catholic gentlemen needed no conciliation ; they were
loyal to the backbone; they had everything to lose
and nothing to gain by any change — any possible
change. When the Vatican Decrees were issued, about
two dozen men, distinguished by intellect, character,
and culture, refused submission, and thus virtually
�and the “Expostulation”
*7
assumed the position of “ Old Catholics,” like, for
instance, Lord Acton, the best-read Catholic in Eng
land. But most of the Catholics adopted the new
dogma. Thus the Roman Catholics recognised by
Catholic emancipation are now represented by only
a few honoured names, but very small in number,
probably such as Lord Camoys, Lord Acton, Petre,
Trevelyan, Simeon, Riddell, Oxenham, Thynne,
Wetherall, Hernans, Blenherhasset, Maskell, Charlton,
and some others. The Catholics who have embraced
the new Catholicism are numerous and submissive ;
they deserve our high personal admiration, for their
change, along with all their prelates, was most natural
to expect, and undoubtedly as conscientious on their
part as the action of the more learned of the laity who
remained “ Old Catholics.” But it must not be sup
posed that the New Catholics are, generally speaking,
grateful to Dr. Manning and the Papal faction for
the revolution brought, numerically, to so successful
an issue by their ecclesiastical tactics. English
Catholics have undoubtedly been more interested in
ecclesiastical matters than in political or national,
and thus they have been easily led over into the Papal
camp which their fathers renounced at the emancipa
tion ; but they inherit, along with all the old English
virtues, the old English contempt for Italian domina
tion. Our Government would have pleased English
Catholics better if there had been less courting of
ecclesiastics appointed by Rome, less seeking to carry
out mere ecclesiastical polity. Any one intimate with
the English Roman Catholic tone of thought must
be full well aware how bitterly English gentlemen
have bent beneath the yoke. It is worthy of note
that Dr. Manning was nominated Archbishop by the
Pope against the wish of the whole of the Diocesan
Chapter. Not one vote was given for him. The
English Roman Catholic families, grieved at his
appointment, knew what it meant, feared the results,
�i8
The Vatican Decrees
dreaded the priestly yoke and the papal absolutism ;
but, taught to submit, they did submit. It does not
follow that we need submit likewise. Truthfulness,
dignity, consistency, demand from us that we ignore
a Neo-Catholicism which we have never nationally
recognised. I am aware that for a time we may be
hampered by the grave political difficulty of being
bound to show special favour to the Episcopal Church
of England, and that the Neo-Catholics may
justly say, as you devote large sums of money to
promote worship and education, according to the
principles of Protestant or Ritualistic Anglicanism,
as the case may be, why should you not continue to pay
the Vicars Apostolic appointed by the Pope in some
of our colonies ? Why not continue the payment of
Neo-Catholic chaplains throughout India, in the Army,
and elsewhere ?—why not perpetuate for the promulga
tion of Neo-Catholicism the favour and the funds you
devoted for the Roman Catholicism which your Par
liament recognised ? Doubtless it is always difficult
to rise out of a false position ; but unless these anoma
lies are rectified, dangers await us far more serious
than the transient unpopularity obtained by touching
■existing abuses.
Protestants have not yet realised the momentous
character of the Revolution crowned at the Vatican.
No wonder; how could it be expected when intelli
gent Roman Catholics of lofty character and integrity,
like Lord Herries and Sir George Bowyer, do not
understand it ? I understand it, because as a Dominican
and theologian I studied the whole question during
the period of restless thought preceding the close of
the conflict in July, 1870. It was that study which
opened my eyes to the fallacy of the entire dogma of
infallibility. Heretofore, Roman Catholics were
only bound to believe in the infallibility of the
Church in union with the Pope and speaking through
the Pope. It was quite another question as to what
�and the 11 Expostulation.”
*9
•was needed to constitute an ex cathedra decree.
Some affirmed that no decree was infallible unless
issued in presence of a general council and with its
concurrence ; others affirmed that a decree was
proved to be ex cathedra when accepted by the
council dispersed; others affirmed that a decree was
ex cathedra if issued with great solemnity after
conferring with, and in union with, all the consul
tive congregations of the Roman Church. A Roman
Catholic vacillated amongst these views according to
the exigencies of history, conscience, common sense,
or controversy. The most opposing opinions could
be and were maintained by Bishops, scholars, and
laymen. But now the Vatican Decrees have declared
the Pope to be infallible whenever he intends to be
so, and on whatever subject he declares to fall within
the province of infallibility. Heretofore, the exercise
of the Papal power was limited in action as well as in
theory. National Churches and their Episcopate
disputed his decisions and refused to obey his
mandates. Those mandates could be only imposed
under peculiar circumstances, but the present Pope
has, during his long Pontificate, been concentrating
power in himself. He commenced by utilising the
prestige of his acknowledged position, and the
affection inspired by the kindness of his disposition :
but having attained an unprecedented power over all
National Churches through such means, he culminated
the strategy by first committing Bishops and the
Faithful everywhere to bombastic declarations as to
his divine and supreme prerogatives, and then taking
them at their word, and requiring the exaggerated
utterances of affectionate reverence to be formularised
into articles of faith. They were caught in the trap
they themselves had guilelessly fashioned. The Pope’s
well-known smile, half artful, half cheery, must have
welcomed the accomplishment of his long cherished
scheme. During the period of twenty years I was
�20
The Vatican Decrees
Apostolic Missioner throughout England and Ireland
I saw this power growing; we all dreaded it, for
we saw what an agency would be lodged in the
hands of a Pope abler than Pio Nono and less good,
yet what could we do ? The growing power was
not generally being used for criminal objects, it
was being exercised in England through eccle
siastics for the most part amiable and good. Thus
there was nothing suddenly done of a nature to
arouse and combine opposition; like the walls of the
Temple, the chains were forged amidst a silence only
disturbed by the reception of countless adulatory
addresses, and blessings, and indulgences prodigally
bestowed upon herds of people who listened to the
Holy Father as he repeated again and again the
story of his wrongs, his sufferings, his prerogatives,
and his similarity to Jesus Christ, after a fashion
which would have aroused the ludicrous in any minds
not sunk too low to be capable of appreciating the
ridiculous. But the result is far from being ludicrous.
The Pope has established over the millions of adhe
rents of the Vatican Church a two-fold tyranny-r
over every man, woman, and child, within his Church—
the absolutism of a teaching which may never be
even interiorly doubted; the absolutism of a rule
which may never be with impunity disobeyed. This
two-edged weapon hangs like the sword of Damocles
over every one who dares to think, to write, to act, to
rule, or to serve. At present, the Pope has only one
great object of anxiety—the recovery of his former
provinces—but hereafter other objects may arise.
But more than the political and national consequences
I do acutely mourn over the crushing mental and
moral effect of such an absolutism over all conscience,
all life, all energy, all thought. My intimate acquaint
ance with the personal excellence of English and
Irish Roman Catholics, lay, cleric, and conventual,
makes me deplore the more bitterly a despotism,
�and the 11 Expostulation."
21
which must gradually destroy all the higher develop
ments of character, and turn the descendants of the
fine old English Catholic families into abject Jesuit
ical serfs. In the name of God, may such never be.
Anyhow, may the people of England not expedite
that fall by the imprudence and injustice of a per
secution which would speedily unite those who may
otherwise partially dissolve ; or, on the other hand,
by the misleading encouragement of patronage and
compromise. We have no right to help minds and
consciences into a bondage which, when embraced,
separates the bondsman from humanity—the Church
with its theocracy on one side : Humanity with the
devil on the other side: such is the Papal concep
tion. And, alas ! the separation between the Papal
subject and Humanity is complete: the outward
tokens of courtesy or affection may be observed ; but
what love worth anything can exist between the
blessed and the accursed; what even are the ministra
tions of mercy, if they are so designed, as out of
men’s affections and afflictions to forge the rivets of
their servitude ?
When we cease the legislation of religious favourit
ism, and commence the legislation of religious equality
—when we treat all sects and institutions with justice,
and the members of all sects and institutions with
courtesy as well as justice—then shall we be in a
position to apply the principles of common sense to
conventual institutions. If the friends of conventual
institutions realised the wide-spread dislike engen
dered by the multiplication of institutions where a
two-fold absolutism is veiled in entire secresy, they
would be the first to seek a safeguard. The odious
system of direction which during the last few years
has been pervading the Roman Catholic laity, we are
powerless to touch. But the friends of religious
equality should warn any persons if they are carrying
on a secresy which could be remedied, but which if
�22
Vhe Vatican Decrees
continued will ere long lead to an outburst of indigna
tion, a panic, and a persecution. Why should not
gentlemen who have relations in convents and com
munities of men—why should not the superiors of
such institutions propose a plan calculated to meet
real and known inconveniences, and thus, moreover,
to calm the just susceptibilities of the public mind?
There ought to be a register preserved in the guest
room of every religious house, in which the real names
of all inmates should be entered ; inaccuracy of entry
should be punishable by a fine; any person who could
assign a rational reason should, under suitable restric
tions, be enabled to examine such register. All this
might be arranged so as not to cause any inconvenience
to a conventual institution, but, above all, so as not
to affix any stigma of dishonour or apparent suspicion.
Nearly all the unpleasant rumours against convents
would have been suppressed at once had a precaution
so simple and inoffensive been adopted ; and, without
dragging into print allusions to excellent communi
ties of innocent and good people, I may be allowed to
remark that occasionally there have been incidents,
such as imbecile inmates kept in durance and also
sometimes persons secreting themselves in conventual
houses, and so evading the law, which easily give
countenance to those countless suspicions which keep
aggregating till they descend like an avalanche. The
true friends of lasting religious equality must combine,
along with the maintenance of these great principles,
to abolish favouritism, and to adopt in a spirit of fair
ness and consideration, remedies demanded, not by
b'gotry, but by good sesne.
Let me remark, in conclusion, that all my state
ments as to the Papal doctrines imposed on Neo
Catholics are founded, as may be easily verified, on
direct quotations from the Decrees and the Encyclical.
Much more remains behind—unsaid.
�and the “Expostulation”
23
NOTE.
The book formerly deemed the best for the diffusion
of Roman Catholic doctrines was Keenan’s ‘ Controver
sial Catechism.’ It was based on a French Catechism,
and very widely circulated in Great Britain, bearing
the imprimatur of all the Vicars Apostolic of Scot
land. In it appeared the following, until withdrawn
in the year 1869 :—
Q.—Must not Catholics believe the Pope himself
to be infallible ?
A.—This is a Protestant invention : it is no Article
of the Catholic Faith ; no decision of his can oblige,,
under pain of heresy, unless it be received and
enforced by the teaching body—that is by the Bishops,
of the Church.
ADDRESS.
The following is a quotation from an address
delivered by the Rev. James Martineau at Liverpool,
September 25th, 1871, fourteen months after my
secession from the Roman Catholic Church. In
gratefully mentioning that ever-honoured and beloved
name, may I be permitted to record that, trained as I
had been to lean on the authority of others, my know
ledge of the existence of such a spiritual character as
his, developed in the ranks of Christian Theism, pre
sented to my hopes an encouragement and a stimulus
which the gentle diffidence of his genius would
neither have desired or imagined :—
�24
The Vatican Decrees
“ Another event has taken place recently with which
I have had in some degree the privilege of a personal
connection. A very eminent and remarkable man
has given up his adherence to the Catholic religion,
and has thrown himself among us as a preacher of pure
and spiritual religion. I allude to the Rev. Robert
Rodolph Suffield. Now, before Mr. Suffield’s name
was heard amongst us, at his own request I early paid
him a visit at his retreat in the country. I had inti
mate intercourse with him, and learned precisely his
state of thought before he had made up his mind to
the step he has now taken, and I was equally struck
with the problem which was presented to his religious
sense—what is the real essence and nature of
Catholicism ? Now, I found that the view Mr. Suffield
took of Catholicism was this. He said, 4 I see in the
Catholic religion the only example in the world’s
history in which the great and fundamental principles
of all natural piety and of all natural conscience are
made the actuating principles of the life of multitudes
and of nations. The great doctrine of the moral
government of God, the great truth of the absolute
supremacy of conscience, the great hope of a future
and better life—these things have imbued the Catholic
mind, the mind even of the youngest children of the
Catholic Church that have any intelligence at all.
They are realities to the Catholic people. They speak
of them with the same simplicity and openness with
which they would speak of the work of their plough,
of their spade, of their shuttle ; with which they would
speak of the concerns of their houses and their homes.
There is no shyness concerning them. They are ab
solute realities to them, and rule their lives. We
know that they control the passions of young people,
and, if they go astray, by appealing to these images
in their hearts we can recover them again. They are
truly a powei’ in life. And now,’ said Mr. Suffield,
4 what I want to know is, whether outside the Catholic
�and the “Expostulation.”
*5
Church those truths have the same power and reality,
whether they take their places among the facts of life
with the same certainty and with the same efficacy.’
He looked upon the Catholic religion simply as an
instrumentality for bringing home to men the simple
natural convictions of the human heart, and making
them live in their consciences and lives. Catholicism
thus was to him nothing but a great system of natural
religion supported by the most artificial and unnatural
of authorities and supports. That is the view he took
of it, and he said, ‘ What I want to know is, if I dare
to throw away these artificial supports, shall I find it
possible to administer this spiritual theism to man
kind, and get hold of the hearts of men ? Or am I
to believe that it is impossible for the weak mind of
humanity to grapple those truths, unless you have a
false mythology, and all sorts of pictures and images
connected with them ? Does the religion enter by
means of the false imagination, or may we fling away
the false imagination and trust to the spiritual power
of religion ?’ That was the problem he had to solve
for himself, and he said, ‘ I fear if I were to profess
myself a Protestant I should be propping up these
eternal truths with just as false and entangled a ma
chinery as if I were to remain in the Catholic Church.
For, if there is no infallibility in the Catholic Church,
neither is there in the Protestant Scriptures, and
whether I take the one or the other, I throw away
natural truths, and fling myself instead on an artificial
and unnatural support.’ Well, I believe myself that
Mr. Suffield here expressed a great truth ; and I think
the changes which are now taking place in the Pro
testant Churches are all of this kind. The tendency
is to fling away the false dependence upon artificial
authority, and to go back to the primitive rights of
religion in human nature and in human life. I said
to him I should feel it an impiety and infidelity—the
only thing I should venture to call infidelity at all—
�o6
The Vatican Decrees
-to doubt that what God had made true could vindicate
and justify itself to the human heart without any
human lies to back it up and support it. If we once
found that a thing was a lie, and was false, or even if
it was precarious, it was at the peril of all veracity
and of all fidelity that we dared to place that as a
means of underpinning, as it were, and supporting
an eternal and all-important truth.”
RESULTS OF INFALLIBILITY.
Meanwhile there are already signs of a coining conflict in
quarters where they might hardly have been looked for.
There is probably no section of the Church, beyond the walls
of Rome itself, where the dominant spirit is so fiercely and
fervently Ultramontane as among the Roman Catholics of
England. Nor is the phenomenon difficult to account for.
They form a small body in the midst of an unfriendly popu
lation, and the old Catholic families are at once united toge
ther and inspired with zeal by the long tradition of privations
and persecutions patiently endured for their faith. And then,
at the moment when legal disabilities and social ostracism
were beginning to be relaxed, came the irruption of converts
who had sacrificed most of them all the associations, inte
rests, and affections of half a lifetime for their adopted creed,
,and whose leaders, as one of themselves has observed, were
with x>ne illustrious exception, ‘ ‘ Ultramontanes before they
were Catholics.” The late Cardinal Wiseman, whose earlier
policy was of a very different kind, was completely carried
away by the current; his successor has been throughout the
guiding spirit of the infallibilist bishops at the Council, and
all the younger generation of priests have been trained on
the convert model. One of them insisted not long ago,
from the pulpit of a well-known Roman Catholic church
in the metropolis, that it is not to believe the infallibility of
the Pope’s official judgments ; every opinion on whatever
subject he expresses in conversation is infallible. Yet a reso
lute opposition is beginning to manifest itself among both
the clergy and laity of the Roman Catholic Church in Eng
land. We have given several examples of this before now,
and we mentioned the other day that the infallibilist address
presented under strong pressure for the adoption of the Eng
lish clergy had been by no means unanimously signed. Dr.
�and the “Expostulation.”
27
Rymer, President of the diocesan Seminary of St. Edmund’s,
Ware, scandalised the Tablet by writing to express his em
phatic disapproval of it. But the tone and language of the
letter of refusal addressed to its promoters by Father Suf
field, and published apparently by his request in the B estminster Gazette, is so remarkable that it deserves record
here. The writer is the best known and one of the ablest
and most active of the English Dominicans- -a Cambridge
man, though not, we believe, a convert; and it is hardly
likely, considering the stringent discipline of religious com
munities, that he would venture on so bold a protest unless
he felt assured of the moral support of his Order ; and such
an inference is strongly confirmed by the attitude of the
Dominican Cardinal Guidi. Father Suffield says :—
‘ ‘ Knowing with what earnest desire the enemies of our
religion, with taunting speech, at once urge us and defy us to
proclaim, after 1,800 years, the foundation of our Christianity ;
knowing the deep repugnance with which, under the pressure
of ecclesiastical opinion and ecclesiastical prospects, canons,
priests, and bishops, have signed declarations pleasing to
ecclesiastical superiors, and repugnant to their private opinions ;
knowing with an intimate and sad knowledge that the moot
ing of this question has led to investigations, and then to
inquiries, which have paralysed the faith in the minds of
numbers of the clergy and of the intellectual laity, and with
not a few destroyed it, I must respectfully decline to sign a
document in which petitioners ask for a definition, the animus
and consequence of which few can be so thoughtless as not to
perceive.
‘ ‘ If we get a Pope vain, obstinate, and in his dotage, shall
we ask him to be confirmed in his powers of mischief ?
‘ ‘ Do we wish, by exalting the lessons of the encyclical, to
render political life impossible to every honest and consistent
Catholic, and to render the possession of political and religious
equality impracticable to any except those sort of Catholics
who would use the language of liberty when they beg, and
the precepts of the Pope when they refuse ? ”
It is scarcely possible to misapprehend the pointed allusion
to the case of “ a Pope vain, obstinate, and in his dotage,”
and the majority of the Vatican Council has certainly done
what it can to “confirm him in his powers of mischief.”
Father Suffield must be presumed to speak from his own
knowledge when he refers to the numbers of clergy and
educated laity whose faith has been already paralysed or
destroyed by inquiries into Papal infallibility, and his testi
mony is borne out by others ; it is hardly wonderful that he
should look with serious alarm at the further consequences
�28
The Vatican Decrees
that may ensue. The wonder is that those who wish faith
to be maintained and strengthened should be so “ thoughtless ”
as to exult over the “mischief” they have helped to perpe
trate. It is rather late to remind them now of the homely
proverb that the last straw will break the camel’s back, and
this straw is a tolerably weighty one.—Saturday Review, of
July 30th, 1870.
FATHER SUFFIELD AND THE NEW DOGMA.
The newspapers inform us that Father Suffield, late of the
Dominican Order, has joined the Unitarian community ; he
has not only renounced his obedience to the Church of Rome,
but lias apparently renounced also his obedience to the
Catholic Faith. This is very sad, yet not unexpected after
reading his last published letters. The case is one that arrests
our attention, not only on account of the learning and abilities
of Father Suffield, but because it will form, we fear, only a
type of many such cases ; nor is this difficult to understand.
Brought up with the principle, instilled from earliest child
hood, that the Church of Rome is alone the Catholic Church,
excluding the Orthodox and the Anglican ; that the supre
macy of the Pope over the whole Catholic world is the normal
idea of the Church, so completely that those who do not
acknowledge that supremacy are cut off from the promises and
privileges of the Church, even though, like Greeks and
Anglicans, they retain all else necessary to their continuing
portions of the Body of Christ; with these opinions so strongly
impressed on the mind, it is inevitable that there must be a
most violent reaction when the dogma of Infallibility is made
an article of Faith by what claims to be a General Council.
For this dogma is not only a new article of Faith, but it is one
which contradicts much that had been previously held as true ;
it virtually rejects the authority of General Councils as the
voice of the Church, and thus places the Church herself in a
new position. By removing the supreme authority from the
Body, and placing it in one man, who is supposed to be the
head, the original Charter as granted by her Divine Head is
abrogated, and a new one substituted for it. It is no longer,
“Tell it to the Church,” it is “Tell it to the Pope ; ” it is no
longer,” “If he neglect to hear the Church, let him be unto
thee as an heathen man and a publican; ” but, “If he neglect
to hear the Pope”—very naturally the Faith of those who
have been educated, as Father Suffield has been, by Do
minicans, will be violently shaken, and their minds thrown
off their balance, when they are called upon by the authority
�and the “Expostulation.”
29
of the Church to accept the decree of the personal Infallibility
of the Pope. And this reaction is very liable to go to further
lengths than we at first anticipate ; we are apt to expect that
those who, like Father Suffield, repudiate the dogma, and con
sequently find their position as Priests in the Roman Church
untenable, will turn to the Anglican. We should rejoice to
think that the Anglican would form a safe home for those who
reject the dogma, but we fear it will not be so; we are far
more afraid that Father Suffield’s example will be followed
by larger numbers than those who seek refuge with us. We
do not sufficiently consider the habits of thought and mind
which are formed by Roman teaching. In that community
the whole Catholic Faith is wrapped up in, and becomes a part
of, the belief in the Papal Supremacy ; the very rudiments of
the Faith, the Incarnation, the Holy Trinity, the Sacraments,
are all tied up in the idea of the sole supremacy of the Church
of Rome, and the Pope at the head of it ; the idea of the
Catholic Church or any part existing, except under the Roman
obedience, is entirely excluded as impossible. When, there
fore, a rude shock comes like this, which destroys all faith in
the Pope and the Roman Church, it destroys all faith in other
dogmas too.—Church Herald.
The dogma of Infallibility is producing its necessary fruit.
Not even Rome can altogether stop inquiry or fetter thought,
and spiritual absolutism finds its own subjects ready to ques
tion its decrees. Already there is a movement in Germany
which bears striking resemblance to that of the fifteenth cen
tury. A meeting of Roman Catholic professors at Nuremberg
has already agreed upon a protest against the spiritual despot
ism of the Pope, and the Cologne Gazette states that the
Bishop of Rothenberg, Dr. Hefele, has resolved not to accept
the Infallibility Dogma, and that his Chapter and the theo
logical faculty of the city of Tubingen support him in it.
Even in this country, where Roman Catholicism is more
Roman than Rome, the dogma is producing confusion and
distress in the minds of the faithful.
As the immediate result of the Council’s work, the secession
of Father Suffield from the Church of Rome is worthy of more
notice than is due to merely individual change of opinion.
Father Suffield is a man to whom the Roman Catholics of
England are willing to confess large obligations. He is said
to have revived the establishment of Peter’s Pence in this
country, to have done much in recruiting the regiment of
Papal Zouaves, and to have held the first public meeting of
sympathy for the Pope ever held in modern England. A
�3°
The Vatican Decrees
correspondent of the Westminster Gazette says, “it has been
impossible to have been much under Father Suffield’s influence
without becoming intensely devoted to everything Catholic,”
and that “the Prayer-book connected with his name has pro
bably been more instrumental than any other popular manual
in spreading faith wherever English speaking Catholics are to
be found. ” The Prior of the Dominican House in London, of
which order Father Suffield is a prominent member, speaks of
him as “ a brother of the same order, whose personal friend
ship I enjoyed before either of us became Dominicans, and
whose zeal and apostolic spirit I have ever held in the greatest
admiration.”
But Father Suffield seems to have felt somewhat as Father
Newman felt, that though the Infallibility was a dogma to be
received as an act of devotion, it was not to be defended as an
article of the faith. “It becomes essential,” he says, “that
unless failure of reason be impossible to an aged Pope, there
should be some means at least of recognising when his decrees
are to be regarded as the acts of man, when as those of God.”
The shock of disagreement and difference which has been
caused by the proclamation of the Infallibility dogma has,
however, shaken the whole fabric of the eloquent Dominican’s
creed. “An incident, not regretted by me,” he says, “has
revealed, almost by accident, the hidden struggle of years.”
Of this struggle he says, ‘ ‘ it has been the agony of years.”
His doubts have not risen from within, but have been forced
upon him from without. He ‘ ‘ sought solitude first in the
cloister, then solitude greater in a country village amidst
simple people and the children of his flock, that he might
dispel difficulties and doubts. If those difficulties and doubts
have been wrong, none but the highest rulers of the Church
have been responsible for them ; they have not been a pleasure,
but an agony; not a pride, but a humiliation.” Father
Suffield has, therefore, been driven out of the Church by the
declaration of the Papal Infallibility. His case is simply one
of thousands, and is only rendered remarkable by his own
previous services to the Church. The Pope and his Council
have raised more doubts than they will solve, and in grasping
at the shadow of Infallibility they will miss the substance of
authority.—Daily News.
Father Suffield, the eloquent Dominican, whose protest
against the most memorable act of the Vatican Council has
excited some attention in this country, has gone a step beyond
the rejection of the dogma of Papal Infallibility. He has
quitted the Roman Communion. It would seem that as soon
�and the “Expostulation”
3i
as the fact became known overtures were made to him with
the view of his joining the Anglican Church. He has declined
to do so. The Articles and the Athanasian Creed block the
way ; indeed he ‘ ‘ questions alike the Infallibility of the Pope
and of the Scriptures.” He throws in his lot with “those
who are commonly called Unitarians, Free Christians or
Christian Theists,” and states, in effect, that he intends to
accept’ the office of a minister in a Free Christian Congrega
tion.—Manchester Guardian.
A due following out of opinions curiously led Dr. Newman
to the Roman Church, and his brother, Professor Newman,
to pure Theism. In like manner the two Herberts—the one
the free-thinking Lord Herbert of Cherbury, the other the
sainted poet of the English Church : these men felt the philo
sophical impossibility of a middle position. We shall watch
Mr. Suffield’s career with high interest. He will not go in
with the company of Exeter Hall, but sets forth alone in
his quest of truth. There is something very touching, and
very manly too, in his statement of the sufferings of mind and
heart, “which his secession has involved.” Father Suffield
has taken the great leap from authority to freedom.—Dispatch.
FATHER SUFFIELD AND THE CHURCH OF
ENGLAND.
August 22, 1870.
My Dear Sir,—Private communications are so very numer
ous at present, that 1 cannot conveniently add to my occupa
tions by contributing the literary help you do me the favour
of offering. Moreover that able periodical partakes somewhat
of a controversial character, and is regarded as anti-Catholic
in its position. I am peculiarly circumstanced, have resigned
all offices in the Catholic Church, and ceased the exercise of
priestly and Catholic rites : from the intimate manner in
which I have been interwoven in the Catholic body in England,
this act causes great pain to those whom the least I should
like to wound ; and I am anxious to do nothing but what is
demanded by the exigencies of circumstances or the require
ments of conscience, which could in the slightest degree
grieve those who have so many claims upon my affection
gratitude, and reverence.
’
After long and deep thought, study, prayer, and counsel, I
decided that it would be impossible for me honestly to
continue to act as a priest. The infallibility of the Pope, and,
�32
The Vatican Decrees
of the Scriptures, alike, I question, and the dogmas resting
solely on either of those authorities, I am not able on that
account to admit.
It is my desire to unite with others, and to assist them in
the worship of God, and in the practice of the two-fold
precepts of charity, unfettered by adhesion on either side, to
anything, beyond those great fundamental principles’ as
presented to us by Jesus Christ.
Though relieved from all the obligations of my order, I do
not wish to consider myself as alienated from the Catholic
Church or from other Christian communities, by any personal
hostile act. I assume a position hostile to none—if one man
hurls an anathema, another man is not compelled either to
accept it, or to retaliate it.
H aving understood that those who are commonly called Uni
tarians, Free Christians, or Christian Theists, thus agree in
the liberty inspired by self-diffidence, humility, and charity,
to carry on the worship of God, without sectarian requirements
or sectarian opposition ; that they possess a simple but not
vulgar worship, a high standard of virtue, intelligence, and
integrity ; and these after the Christian type, moulded by the
Christian traditions, and edified by the sacred Scriptures ;
holding the spirit taught by Jesus Christ, and the great
thoughts by virtue of which he built up the ruins of the moral
world; and yet not enforcing the reception of complicated
dogmas as a necessity, or accounting their rejection a crime :
a communion of Christian worshippers, bound loosely together,
and yet by the force of great principles enabled quietly to
maintain their position, to exercise an influence elevating and
not unimportant, and to present religion under an aspect which
thoughtful men can accept without latent scepticism, and
earnest men without the aberrations of superstition, or the
abjectness of mental servitude to another—such approved
itself to my judgment, and commended itself to my sympathy.
I intend adhering to the pursuits of the clergyman and of the
Christian teacher, and communications are in progress in
another part of England which may terminate in my accepting
thus a duty conformable to the habits of my life, and which
will not throw me into a position of hostility, or embarrassment
as to those honoured and loved Catholic friends with whom
so greatly I should prize, if it were possible to maintain kindly
intercourse, inasmuch as I am only externally severed from
them by my being unable to believe certain dogmas which a
Catholic is bound to regard as essential. Thus I hope I have
not only thanked you for your obliging offer, but adequately
explained my position, and showed that the future you were
commissioned to hold out to me in the Established Church
�and the “Expostulation
33
would not be deemed possible by the authorities who have
done me the honour and kindness to communicate in my
regard, as soon as they are made aware that the Articles and
the Athanasian creed would be amongst the insuperable
barriers to my entertaining such a proposal.
Many write to me evidently under a grievous misapprehen
sion. They anticipate from me reckless denunciations of that
vision of beauty which I have left, simply because, like a
vision, it had everything but reality. Allied as I am by
relationship with some of our ancient Catholic families, allied
by the ties of friendship with many more of them, I feel it is
a shame to myself that any stranger could suppose one word
of my lips, one thought of my mind, could cast moral reproach
on those beautiful and honoured homes where old traditions
received a lustre greater even than antiquity and suffering can
bestow—crowned with the aureola of charity, nobleness,
purity, and devotedness. Such memories print on my heart
their everlasting record. To cease to believe and to worship
with them was a martyrdom, which none but the Catholic can
understand.
I have ascended now to another stage of my life ; to rise to
it needed sufferings of the mind and of the heart, the sacrifice
of everything in the world I cared for;—but I perceive a work
to do, and, by the blessing of God, I shall strive to perform
it. Youth, strength, vigour, and hope return to me with the
expectation. Truth obtained by suffering is doubly dear to
the possessor. —Very sincerely yours,
Robert Rodolph Suffield.
To the Rev. ----- &c., &c.
N.B.—All the above paragraphs, from different periodicals,
are extracted from Church Opinion.
�ALSO,
By
the
Rev.
R. R. SUFFIELD,
FIVE LETTERS ON CONVERSION TO ROMAN
CATHOLICISM
-................................................ 3d.
IS JESUS GOD ?........................................................ 3d.
TRUBNER
and
CO., LUDGATE HILL, LONDON, E.C.
PRINTED BY C. W. REYNELL, LITTLE PtTLTENEY STREET, HAYMARKET,
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
The Vatican decrees and the "Expostulation"
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Suffield, Robert Rodolph
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 33 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: Inscription in pencil on title page : With the author's kind regards. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Printed by C.W. Reynell. Includes extracts from comments and letters published in Church Opinion and a quotation from an address delivered by Rev. James Martineau at Liverpool, September 25th, 1871. Two other works by Suffield published by Trubner on last page.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Trubner and Co. ; Thomas Scott
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1874
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
CT8
Subject
The topic of the resource
Catholic Church
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The Vatican decrees and the "Expostulation"), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Catholic Church
Catholic Church-Doctrines
Conway Tracts