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a. "BUGBEARS OF ROMANISM." REPLY TO MR. S. SMITH, M.P. Preaching at St. Mary's Catholic Church, Flint, on Sunday evening, to a large copgregation, from Genesis xxvi., 13-15-18, the Rev H. Lucas, S.J., M.A., of St. Beuno's College, delivered the first of two sermons in reply to the pamphlet recently pub- lished by Mr Samuel Smith, Member of Parliament for Flintshire, on The Claims of Roma."—In the coarse of his sermon, Fr. Lucas eaid:— It is with no jieesmreable feelings that a Catholio Priest finds himself Constrained to bid the din of controversy to echo in the House of God. And ia particular I would willingly refrain from anything like personal controversy with a gentleman in many respects so estimable as Mr S. Smith. But if a man were to go about tb. country stopping up the wells with earth like the Philistines of old, it would mani- festly be the duty of the local authorities to restrain that man from pursuing his career of mischief; and this they would do without waiting to take account of his private virtues and personal character, or to ask themselves whether-perohance-he was the victim of a delusion as to the value of a supply of pure water Now, to the Church of God is entrusted the keeping of the well-springs of the water of truth-of the truth in regard of man's relations to his Creator and Redeemer. And we, Catholic Priests, cannot stand by and see Mr Smith engaged in the work of stopping these wells with the earth of calumnious aeousations and ignorant mifrepresentationp, without Raising our voices in protest against a line of eonduct whioh is more mis- ohievoua than that of the Philistines, by how much the soul is more precious than the body, and the water of truth than the water that flows from natural springs. In the Gospel Lessons which are read at Mass on the Sundays of this present season of Advent, we are more than once reminded of him-the Baptist —of whom the prophets spake u Behold I send my messenger before thy face, to prepare thy way before thee." It is in accordance with God's dealings with men that He should prepare the way for His great works, that He should make ready the hearts of men for the operations of His Holy Spirit. And when the end in view is a great change of heart on the part of multitudes of men, one necessary element in the preparation is a general awakening of the sense of sinfulness, of the conviction of a great need under which men lie, of a deep seated feeling of dissatisfaction with their present positien. Now, be- lieving as I do that there is in store for large numbers of our countrymen the inestimable blessing of re- union with the one true Church of Christ, I am greatly convinced that a first step towards this happy oon- summation must necessarily be the awakening in their minds and hearts of a sense of dissatisfaction with their position as members either of the Established Church or of the innumerable sects the evidence of whose sepasate existence meets us at every street oorner. Now it is an indisputable fact that God sometimes maltes use of the most unlikely means and instruments for the accomplishment of His purposes, that He has the power of drawing evil beginnings to ealatory ends. And if I am not mistaken, the recent utterances of Mr Smith will prove to have been one of those unlikely means and and instruments which God will surely turn to the furtherance of His benefioent designs on behalf of the people ef this country. For when men come to see, and to see clearly, that calumny and misre- presentation are the weapons employed by defenders of Protestantism in this controvertiial war against the Catholio Church, it oannot but be that they will feel some misgivings as to the soundness of the cause that stands in need of such means of defence. Bat it is time to oeme to Mr Smith's pamphlet in detail. As he tefts the reader in his few words of 'preface, its first chapter is in substance identical with an address delivered in this neighbourhood. To this address I have already replied some months ago, and although I shall have more to say about it presently, it may be convenient to turn in the first instance to the later portions of the pamphiet, And in fact to the appendix, wherein the writer has gathered together a number f testimonies, such as they are, which are designed to confirm and strengthen his main positions. On page 51, Mr Smith quotes a number of state- „ ments made by Miss Golding, the so-called rescued nun, the trutb of which, be declares, he sees no room to doubt. Among them is this It is a custom in suoh convents [as the one in which Miss Golding lived] for the commonest, coarsest, most brutal woman to be appointed Lady Superior, so that she may tyrannize over those who are of gentle birth and breeding." Mr Smith, as I have said, declares that he sees no reason to doubt this state- ment; But does he really believe it P Does he really believe that of those hundreds of thousands of ladie • who, following the scriptural counsel of virginity that they may more thoroughly devote themselves to the service of Christ, who chose a Virgin for His mother, and to the servioe of Christ's poor and of Christ's little ones, does he really believe that in this army of consecrated maidens, an army of nurses and of teachers such as, outside the Catholic Chusoh, the world has never seen. "It is a oustom for the commonest, coarsest, most brutal woman to be appointed Lady Superior, so that she may tyrannize over those whe are of gentle birth and breeding" P Do you believe thst Mr Smith believes this t But this is not the worst. Another of Mifs Golding's statements which Mr Smith sees no reason to disbelieve, is as follows Punishment (in the aonvent) consists in what is called I sote throat.' -Somedecoction is given you In your food, you do not know where or when, and this is continued. Your throat gets parched, the next day you are feverish, the following day diaay the cold settles in your lungs, you take to your bed, and then you are told to prepare for death." Now does Mr Smith really believe that these nuna are guilty of wholesab murder? Miss Golding'a statements were made in 1891. It is true that they have been shattered to fragments by the testimony among others of her own relatives as you may learn from a little pamphlet which may be had at the church door. But Mr Smith sees no reason to disbelieve them. And so for 5 years he has lived contentedly under the convictLj that scores, nay hundreds of innocent ladies are habitually being done to death in France by the common, coarse, and brutal women whom it is usual to appoint as Superioresses in these convents. Has he never raised his voice for their protection ? Has he never thought it worth while to enquire whether, in the convent of whiah Miss Golding speaks all the sisters die between 30 and 40," or whether these statements are the hallucinations of an hyeterioal lady whose mind has been unhinged. I do not know whether Mr Smith has a sister. I have, and she is a nun, and I have bad two other relatives who were nuns, one of them the Superioress of a oonvent for many years. Many of Mr Smith's fellow members of Parliament and many of his former constituents have relatives who have devoted themselves to the servioe of God in thin kind of life. And there are two convents within the limilt of Mr Smith's present constituency. I mention these facts that you may understand on the one hand the extent to which he has wilfully stirred up the deepest indignation in our hearts on the other hand the wantonly reckless manner in which he has committed himself to statements, the grotesque absurdity of which he might so easily have ascertained. Now I put it to you, if any man, on the single and unsupported vacillating aud self-contradictory testimony of one woman, had dared to bring an accusation of wholesale murder against the members of some institntion with which Mr Smith's sister (if he has one) might be connected, and especially if this were done under ciroumstances which precluded the members oof that institution from seeking redress would not such a man be justly regarded as a heartless and cowardly scoundrel ? I will not apply these terms to Mr Smith. I am content to point out to you that ha is a man who is deficient in critical acumen aud in oommon sense; and most assuredly no safe guide in natters of religion. On ptges 53, 54 of Mr Smith's pamphlet you m&y read these wordf. I may add," he says, that a Convent Enquiry Society has bien formed their report issued thia year, makes some dreadful charges of barbarity and wick-dties* which I do not qu(itt-, as I have co means of judging of their truth" but I think the public should know that they sum up their ciarjps in the following wor ls, page 16 I Th, facts which hava come to the kuowledge of the C. r] S., aro suoh that the Committee are oonvicced that tatyre is enough iniquity and crime secretly practised in Convents to inure th.-ir immediate dn-solution, if the evidence could he brought out and proved to the publio and the hope of the society is w.t something may oome before them which will enable them to arouse the public to j a sense of theii duty upon this great and serious question." I Now just consider for a moment Mr Smith's procedure here. He has before him certain alleged facts, and certain conclusions deduced from these supposed facts. He will not vouch for the so-called "faota"; because he has no means of judging whether they are facts or not; but he thinks it right that the publio should know the conclusions. And so on the basis of statements of such exceedingly doubtful value that even Mr Smith can hardly digest or even swallow them, he thinks it right to publish in general terms charges of barbarity, wickedness, iniquity and crime, against the Convents of England, which as he well knows count among their inmates membera of every Catholic family of standing or distinction in the country. This is his notion of British honesty and straightforwardness, and truthfulness and honour. If this is the kind of honesty, and straightforwardness, and truthfulness, and honour which is the fruit of the Reformation in England, surely we Catholics have some grounds for our belief that the so-oalled Reformation was the greatest misfortune in the moral order which ever befel the people of thia oountry. But I have not quite done with this part of the subject. So far I have given a provisional credenoa to Mr Smith's statement that he has no means of judging the truth of the statements put forward in the report of the Convent Enquiry Society. This report I have not been able to see. I have made due application for it to the worthy secretary, Mr S. J. Abbott, but I need hardly say that my application has been unsuccessful. The purveyors of mendacious and filthy garbage are obliged to be a little carefui in the selection of their customers. But though I have not been able to see the report of the Society for the current year, I have been fortunate enough to seoure a copy of a pamphlet oalled Monasticism Unveiled," published by Mr John Kensit, for the Conventual Inquiry Society, whioh is, I presume, ths same institution to which Mr Smith refers. The author of the pamphlet is General Sir Robt. Phayre, K.O.B. (now G.C.B.) and about half of it is filled with the ravings of some anonymous lunatio who desoribes how in a convent in which she lived, her confessor took her by the hair of the head and kicked her; how for a penance she had to ohop up a live baby and how she saw several other babies crushed to death, bones and all powdered up and burnt—quicklime I Are these the sort of charges concerning which Mr Smith declares that he has "no means of judging of their truth"? And is Mr Smith aware that Mr Keneit, the publisher of this pestilent compound of falsehood and obscenity, to this day coutinues the issue of that abominable farrago of lied entitled The revelations of Maria Monk ? They are not expensive works and if Mr Smith can afford to expend several pounds in the distribu- tion of his own contributions to literature, he can surely manage to invest a few pence in the purohase of the publication of Kensit. When he has oarefully perused them, will he still have the hardihood to say that he has no means of testiog the truth of the charges made by Kensit'a patrons against the nuns of England ? Next as regards the extracts from the works of St. Alphonsus Liguori, whose name-by the way- Mr Smith thrioe mis-spells. Perhaps the best thing that I can say about these is that Mr Smith ought to be ashamed of having printed them, and the more so becanse he has borrowed them-obviously with- out verification-from a traot by Mr C. H. Collette, a man whose controversial dishonesty is notorious, and beyond the reach of acy palliating exouse. But apart from the question of veracity, of which I shall have something to say presently, what is to be thought of a man who panders to the prurient tastes of the mob by setting before them passages whioh, while perfectly harmless and indeed most salutary in their proper place, can have no other effect when spread abroad than to excite evil thoughts, and arouse unjust suspicionsf Again I ask Does Mr Smith really believe that the practice of confession corrupts the morals of a Christian people ? He is no doubt aware that the statistics of bastardy in Protestant, as compared with Catholic oountries, are not suoh as to afford an English, or Soottinh, or Welsh Protestant unmixed satisfaction. In Catholic Ireland the percentage of illegitimate births, as Mr Smith may easily inform himself, is about 4, in England rather more than 4, in Scotland nearly 7 t. Moreover, whereas the general average for Ireland is l, the particular percentage for Protestant Ulster is more than 3i, while that for Catholio Connaught is less than one (0.7). Why is it that where the praotioe of oonfession prevails the standard of morality is so much higher than whare it is unknown f Why indeed, except that it provides -as it was in tended to provide—a powerful deterrent and dissuasive from sin. If Mr Smith should ever have an opportunity of turning over the file of the Scotsman, he will find in an issue for July, 1869—I cannot give the exaot day-these words "The sum of the whole matter is that Presbyterian and semi-Scotoh Ulster is fully three times more immoral than wholly Papish and wholly Irish Connaught- which corresponds with wonderful accuracy to the more general fact that Scotland, as a whole, is three times more immoral than Ireland as a whole." At least Mr Smith might have taken a little paina to enquire whether as a simple matter of fact the con- fessional is an instrument of oorruptign, and whether —granting that there are countries nominally Catholic in which a good deal of immortality prevails —whether I say there are oountries in which con- fession is habitually praotised, and not, rather for the most part neglected. It is no doubt unfortunately true that priests have fallen into sin, and true that sacramental con- fession has been made, alas, the ocoasion of siu. The priesthood, like every other calling and occupa- tion, has its special temptations and dangers; and against them St. Liguori warns his brother priest* in words which are however not quite correctly represented by the translation quoted from Mr Collette in Mr Smith's pages. But the fact that there have been and are bad priests in the world affords no better argument against the priesthood, than the disgusting literary productions of General Sir Robert Phayre, G.O.B., or the filthy output of the publishing office of Mr John Kensit, affords an argument against the profession or occupation of author or publisher. More than this, when St. Aiphonous Liguori apologiee for the oharacter of the subject with whieh he has to deal in one section of his great work on Moral Theology, he is in fact rendering an nnconscious testimony to the purity of mind and thought which is happily prevalent among Catholic young men when they have been brought up amid Catholio surroundings. He is dealiug with a subject which unfortunately is only too femiliar even to the boya and girls of our streets and of our Board Schools in Protestant England, but which is fur the most part kept from the thoughts of children brought up in a good Catholio home, and this to such an extent that it is no un- common thing for young ecclesiastics to reach man- hood not only in eutioe innocence, as regards the actual commission of sina of this kind, but also in happy ignorance of the very nature of such sins. Mr Collette and Mr Smith may disbelieve this if they like. I apeak of a fact of which they can have no knowledge, but to which anyone who has had any experience in the trainihg of Catholio ecolesiastioal students can bear witness. And this at least I would ask What is to be thought of a man who-in the interests of morality furlooth-scatters broadcast a page from the writings of St Liguori, in which that Doctor of the Church expresses the reluctance with which-as a matter of duty-he enters upon a subject on which it is necti-'iry that the Priest should be informed, but on which no right-minded mac, be he Priest or layman, would willingly utter an unnecessary word, or bestow one moment of thought. I know of no more contemptible exhibition of byprooitioal pbarisaism and prurient prudery than is contained in thees paragraphs from Mr Collette's pamphlet, whioh Mr Samuel Smith, M.P., has thought it right to transfer to his pages. But Mr Collette, and Mr Smith obediently follow- ing in his turbid wake, has done even more than quote these passages from St. Liguori. On p. 49, we read: Every Catholio woman in a parish, old or young, married or maid, is bound under pain of mortal sin, to disclose to a celibate priest all her acts and inmost thoughts to the minutest particular." Of this sentence I say deliberately that the sug- gestion is disgusting, that the assertion is scandal- ously false, and that to asoertain its falsehood was a matter of extreme facility. So far is this state- ment from being true, that a priest would sin grievously were he either to enquire into, or to allow the penitent to enter upon the minute particulars," wt-ioh it would seem have found a lodgment in the unclean imagination of Mr Collette. Next as to the Church and the Bible. On p. 14, we read '• Nothing is more certain than that in every country whero Rome is Bupreme, the circula- I tion of the Scriptures is forbidden." It is proverbial j that none are so blind as those who won't see. But Mr Smith must really have shut his eyes very tig >n indeed, and must have very sedulously refrain-0 from enquiry, if he has never read the Brief of I Pius VI., which is prefixed to most, if not to ali, the editions of the Duuay Bible. The Brief is not addressed to an English Prelate, but to Monsignor Antonio Martini, Arohbishop of Florenoe, a oity situated in one of the countries wherein, to adopt Mr Smith's phraseology Rome is (or was) supreme.' At a time," eays Pius VI., writing in 1778, At a time when a vast number of bad books. are circulated, to the great destruction of souls, you judge exceedingly well, that the faithful should be excited to the reading of the Holy Scriptures; for these are the most abundant souroes which ought to be left open to every one to draw from them purity of doctrine and of morals, to oradiodte the errors which are so widely disseminated in these corrupt times. This you have aeasonably effected, as you deolare, by publishing the Sacred Writings in the language of your country, suitable to every one's oapaoity; especially when you tihow and set forth that you have added explanatory notes, which being extracted from the Holy Fathers, preclude every possible danger of abuse." Now I am perfeotly well aware that from 1564 till 1768 severe restrictions were placed upon the iudisoriminata reading of the Bible in the vernaoular, and I have elsewhere explained the motives which led to these restrictive regulations. I do not intend at present to go over that ground again, though I may pro- bably have something to say on the subject in my next lecture, but in the meanwhile it is a plnin and simple duty to protest again the dishonesty of passing over in silence this Brief of Pius VI., and of quoting the prohibitions issued againt the circula- tion of Protestant Bibles or even Catholic versions as printed and circulated by the Protestant Bible Societies, as if these prohibitions expressed tht; whole mind of the Church on her relations to and use of the Bible. But there is another statement on this subject, occurring in Mr Smith's pamphlet against which I must protest still more emphatioally. Onthesime page from whioh I have already quoted, we read in the course of a long passage quoted from the Monthly Letter of the Protestant Alliance, It is a fact that the Rhemish Testament includes the forged so-called First Epiatle of Clement to St. James." Now it is not a fact that the Rhemish Testament inolades this Epistle. It is an impudent falsehood— not of course on the part of Mr Smith—but on that of the person who first made the statement; for it is evident from his mention of a marginal note on 2nd Peter, i, 15, that he bad the book before him. The Rhemish Testament does not include the spurious Epistle of Clement. It is quite true that in the mar- ginal note on 2nd Petter just mentioned a passage from the Epistle is quoted in the earlier edition of the Rhemish Testament, and that the marginal not- j was not corrected till after 1806. But marginal notea are not part of the Testament, nor are thu original Editors of the Rhemish Testament the only persons who have made mistakes concerning the genuiness of ancient documents. Even Mr Smith, that ohampion of truth and uprightness, is liable to be deceived, nay even un- wittingly to transgress the plainest oanona of literary honesty. Then on page 10 he gives us in inverted commas, as if they were taken from the Syllabus, a series of propositions not one of which is to be found in that document. With reference to this portion of Mr Smith's pamphlet I will only say what I said recently in dealing with a letter from one who came to his rescue in a local paper, viz., that I cannot undertake to discuss the Syllabus with controversialists who will not be at the pain to quote it correctly. There is really no excusi for this misrepresentation. It is now 23 years since Cardinal Newman in his famous letter to tha Duke of Norfolk exposed the dishonesty of turning the condemned propositions of which the Syllabui in a list into private assertions which are assumed to be the contradictories of these condemned pro- positions, and of their quoting this assertion as if they ooourred in the Syllabus. I dwelt on this point in my reply to Mr Smith in July last: I have oalled attention to it again and again in a oontorversy with a :gentleman signing himself Welsh Churchman in the Rhyl Journal. But all to no purpose. And then, this is not a matter of opinion, not a question on which two viowa are possible. It is the plainest canon of literary honesty not to attribute to another—even though he should be the Pope of Rome—words which he bu not used. But thia is not the only instanoe of mu^uofsrtion in Mr Smith's pamphlet. On page 21, he prof«><>e-i to quote some works of Gregory VII, for which he gives a reference to Mansi xx, 53G," Thepasiiage however is not taken from Mansi xx, 536, but from a work entitled "The Pope and the Council," by "Janus" page 110 and if Mr Smith had taken the trouble to look at the foot of this page, he would have seen that the quotatioain the text is not-as it professes to be—a translation of the Pope's words, but a distortion of them. Of the words the Pope actually did use, I shall have something to say iu my next lecture. Next comes a passage, professedly taken from the Bull Unalll Sanctam of Boniface VIII, but in reality borrowed (again without acknowledg- ment) from the work of Janus." I do not deny that in this case <l Janus has more or less oorreotly summarised the doctrine of the Bull, though a tone of harshness is imparted to the summary by its very brevity but my present point is that it is not in accordance with the laws of literary honesty to quote as the words of Bouifaoe a passage in wnioh a hostile author sums up the dootrine of that Pope. After dealing with the remarks as to the Spanish Inquisition—the preacher went on to say :-Mr Smith, as usual blindly following his blind leaders, waxes eloquent on the subject of the forged Decretals, which are supposed to have so greatly helped the Popes "in imposing their arrogant pretensions in Christendom," and in which they are declared to have grounded their monstrous assumptions." It would be foolish to oredit Mr Smith with any real knowledge of the subject on which he writes so confidently. If he were capable of pursuing a more profitable line of investigation than is involved in the employment of scissors and paste upon the works of deolared enemies of the Papacy such as Janus, and Dr. Guinness, and Mr Wylie, he would learn some faots which might induoe him to modify his judgment. Having given a brief history of the forged Decretals, the preacher went on to say- Mr Smith is deeply shocked to think that no Pope in after times has ever oondemned the cruelties of the Inquisition and of the religious wars of the Middle Ages, and takes occasion to draw a contrast in this respect betweeen his virtuous self and these benighted Pontiffs. "No one," he Bays, has denounced the cruel treatment of the Irish Catholics more than the writer [i.e., Mr Samuel Smith, M.P.] has done; but there is this enormous difference the Protestants of to-day repudiate and condemn those prosecutions. but no Pope has ever oondemned this cruel policy of former Popes." Mr Smith has perhaps forgotten that though, in his own estimation he enjoys a prerogative of infallibility such as no Pope ever claimed, he is not yet a reigning Sovereign. It would be more to the purpose to ask—not what Mr Smith may have done in the way of denuncia- tion-but what English King or Queen bas ever denounced—for instance-the masagleres of Glencoe, or what Act of Parliament has ever condemned the massacres of Drogheda or Wexford or the inquities. I do not tay of the penal laws iu themselves, but of their infamous administration. Every man of sense knows how to recognise that the detuunioation of bygone crimes may afford a congenial oooupation to politicians out of office and amateur pamphleteers, but that it hardly bUs within the line of duty of serious and responsible Statesmen. Individual Catholics have deplored as deeply as individual Protestants, the cruelties of a sterner generation than ours but we are perhaps not so ready as some of our neighbours to Bit in judgment on the aotions of individual men wbe, finding themselves at the helm of Government ia an age of social and religious cataolyism applied to violent evil a violent remedy. If you would judge aright of Catholics, and of the Catholio Church, we claim to be judged by our acts, and words. and teaohiog to-day, not by the deeda of days gune by, wherein your ancestors ou:, rivalled ours in religious peraeoution. Or rather, »s we cannot forego the appeal to the past, we oltthn that our whole hiatovy be takim into account, and that instead of fixing their attention on ecaudais whioh none deplore more deeply than ourselves, men should remember rather the holy and exemplaiy l' lives of those in whom the principles of the Church have found a visible embodiment, and in particular the unceasing and devoted service rendered by the Churoh through all ages to the poor and the afflicted L and her great work in bringing heathen nations to the knowledge of thu Gospel. We appeal to our devoted nuns, the servants of ,G"d'ø sick, of God's poor, and of Gol's little ones, and the objects of the ignorant and boorish slanders of those graceless fanatics to whom Mr Smith has given a too ready oredenoe. We appeal to our intrepid missionaries, who with no thought of pay or salary, or of return to their native land, fearing no dangers, shirking no hard- ships heeding na persecutions, give themselves up to a life of labour and privation that they may win souls to God, happy if they can crown such a life with a martyr's death, and making no milk-and-water con- verts, but raising up a generation of Christians whom no torments cau induoe to renounce the faith they have embraced men who are so occupied at this day men who were so occupied all through those earlier and darker days when Protestant England made no effort to win to Christ her conquered people and when Calvinistio Holland was pushing her traffio with China and Japan at the price of trampling on the sign of oar salvation. My task this evening is an unpleasant one. My object has been to let you understand bow blind a guide he is who has set himself up for your teacher in the history and doctrinea of the Catholic Churoh. Read by all means the history of the matters and events to which he refers. Read the history of the Forged Deoretala, and of the Waldensea, and of the Albigeuia, and of the Hugenot, and of the Massacre of St Bartholomew, and of the Inquisition. But be honest in your verdict; do not judge us on the sole testimony of our enemies. Do not flattor yourselves that you have studied history when you have read pamphlets by Mr Smith, Mr Collette, Dr. Guineas, and Janus."

. HOLYWELL RURAL DISTRICT…

. GREENFIELD.

---. ST. ASAPH.

—♦ DYSERTH.

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