In the earlier periods of the Index, the Curia had, in form at least, taken the ground that the prohibitions and condemnations as published in Rome were, without further action, to be held as binding upon all the countries in which the Church itself was recognised. This contention, as has already been noted, failed to secure acceptance in countries like France, Spain, Germany, and Belgium. In fact even in certain divisions of Italy, and conspicuously in Venice, the regulations of the Index were put into force only if, and when, the local authorities had confirmed the same. During the latter half of the 19th century, however, there came to be a change in the nature of the consideration given in Catholic countries to the censorship regulations of Rome. A series of provincial councils and a number of theologians and divines have taken the ground that the Index decrees were entitled to general acceptance and should be enforced with uniformity throughout all Catholic States. The protests and controversial opinions in regard to the condemnation or supervision of literature which, during the 17th and 18th centuries, had been so frequent had during these later decades become more and more exceptional. These earlier protests concerning certain individual books or individual writers developed, as we have seen, in quite a number of instances into general controversies, controversies many of which had an abiding influence on the opinions of believers and on the final policy of the Church. We may recall in this connection the results that arose through the action of the Roman authorities in regard to the works of such writers as the Jesuits Poza and Daniel, the Dominican Serry, the Jansenists Arnauld and Quesnel, the liberal Churchman Fénelon, etc.
It appears to-day to be the general practice in Catholic circles to speak of the purpose and operations of the Index with a fair measure of respect, and the authors of this later period permit themselves even to give specific commendation to the work of the Church in supervising and controlling, for the use of the faithful, the character of literary productions. Curiously enough, side by side with this increasing respect for the institution, or at least with the very considerable lessening of criticisms, protest, and antagonism against the working of the institution, there is evidence of an increasing ignorance of the details of the regulations of the later Indexes, those that are supposed at this time to be in force. The scholarly divines of the latter years of the last century had in not a few instances given evidence that they were by no means familiar with the present Index regulations or with the lists of books placed under condemnation. As late as 1890, Bishop Rass brought into print in Rome a volume by Justus Lipsius which had been condemned in two preceding Indexes; during the same period, Bishop Malou caused a new edition to be printed of a prohibited work. The vicar-general of Lorenzi printed in 1883 a treatise by Geiler von Keisersberg, oblivious of the fact that the name of the author remains in the first class of the Index. It is probably the case that there is under present conditions no such constant reference to the Index lists as guides for reading and for study as could secure for their regulations the authority which properly belongs to them under the theory of Church control. It is a question for the casuist to decide how far ignorance of the fact of condemnation of a book may serve as an extenuation of the sin of reading a volume, for which sin the penalty has been prescribed in successive Indexes of excommunication latae sententiae.
In 1862, under decision of the Quinquennial faculties, it was ordered that bishops had authority to extend permission for the reading of prohibited books only to priests who were actually engaged in the care of souls. Laymen desiring to secure such permission must make application direct to the Holy See. This is in line with the order issued, in 1853, by the Congregation of the Index under which the Ultramontane bishops had authority to extend to ecclesiastics of assured scholarship and piety permission to utilise, during their lifetime, prohibited books having to do with matters of religion and doctrine; but no such permission could be given for books contra bonos mores. In every permission issued by a bishop it must be specifically stated that the authority comes from the Holy See.
After the middle of the 19th century, there began to be a change in the relations of the ecclesiastics of France to the authority of the Index. In La Revue Ecclésiastique, an article printed in 1866 says: “If, twenty years back, the question had been put as to whether the authority of the Index was recognised in France, the answer would simply have been a laugh or a word in derision. To-day, such recognition is assented to without serious question. The formula Index non viget in Gallia, heretofore printed in books the titles of which had come upon the Roman Index, is now no longer to be seen.” Councils of the 19th century of the French Church in which the authority of the Roman Inquisition or of the Congregation of the Index to control literature in France had been accepted in substance, as cited in this article, are these: Paris and Rennes, 1849, Lyons and Clairmont, 1850, Avignon, 1849, Albi, Toulouse, Bordeaux, and Sens, 1850, La Rochelle, 1853, and Rheims, 1857.
Among the councils of this period, outside of France, which placed themselves on record as specifically accepting the authority of the Index, are those of Prague, 1860, Colocsa, 1863, Utrecht, 1865. A council held in Venice, in 1859, orders that the Roman prohibitions are from year to year to be printed in a diocesan calendar. This is a very different attitude from that taken by Venice during the 17th and 18th centuries.
In 1852, Bishop Baillès of Luçon writes in a pastoral instruction: “The prohibition of a book by the Holy See is binding upon believers throughout the Church universal. The lists issued by the authorities of Rome of condemned and prohibited books are securing from year to year a fuller authority and a wider recognition.... Only heretics, schismatics, and Gallicans at this time contest the general authority of the Index.”
In Germany, the world-wide authority of the Index is asserted by such critics as Heymans and Phillips in their treatise on ecclesiastical law (issued in 1872) and by the editors of the Münster Pastoral Blatt, writing in 1879. A modified view is expressed by the editor of the Katholik, writing in 1859, who says: “The Index, considered as a moral law, is to be accepted as authoritative throughout the world. There may be ground for question, however, as to the general obligation to accept its penal regulations.” A little later, however, the editor of the Katholik, writing in 1864, says:
“The faithful throughout the world are under obligations to accept the authority of the censorship tribunals, the Inquisition and the Congregation of the Index, not only in regard to the prohibition of the use of prohibited books but also with reference to the conclusions reached by these censors concerning the soundness of doctrine or general fitness for devout reading of the literature contained in such books.... The history of the Church has secured for the wisdom of the work of the censorship authorities an assured, even a brilliant confirmation.” “The only utterance,” continues this writer, “in which the Congregation of the Index can be convicted of a serious or decisive error of judgment is that of the decree issued in 1616 against the writings of Copernicus.... While the history makes clear (what in fact no one has ever denied) that the Roman Congregations are in their judgments not infallible, the evidence is overwhelming as to the wisdom and effectiveness with which the work of these scholarly and devout censors has been carried on through the centuries; and it would be an act of very gross presumption for individual believers to undertake to question the validity and substantial value of their conclusions.”
In 1865, an article in the official Civiltà Cattolica[170] in regard to a treatise of the Bishop of Treviso, says:
“The infallibility of a prohibition or condemnation of a book which has been expressed through a papal Bull, a papal brief, or under a decree of the Congregation which has been issued under specific instructions from the pope, cannot be questioned. The ordinary decrees of the Congregation cannot be said to possess the same full measure of infallibility as these rest not upon the direct authority of the pope but merely upon the general authority under which the Congregation has been constituted. A book that has been condemned by the Congregation must, however, be considered as having been condemned by the Church of which the Congregation is for this purpose the authorised representative.”
As before pointed out, the influence of the Dominicans in the operations of the Congregation of the Index has been continuous and all powerful. As a result, the theological writers whose books have been condemned included a large proportion of Jesuits, and the literature presenting Jesuit doctrines has from the outset been handled with special severity. In the cases in which occasion has been found for reproving the books of Dominican authors, the censorship has been comparatively mild, and if the books were prohibited, the entry was usually made with the reservation d.c.[171] Father Hilgers, of the Order of the Jesuits in Germany, whose treatise on the Index (issued in 1905) is referred to elsewhere, is one of the few of the scholarly Jesuits who have found it practicable to take a favourable view of the policy of the Index. The Jansenist view of the authority of the Index has not unnaturally been still less approving than that of the Jesuits. Amauld, for instance, writing in 1656, says:
“In France we do not trouble ourselves very much concerning the censures of the Index.... We know on what grounds certain of the condemnations have been arrived at. It is assuredly true that the prohibition of a work constitutes no evidence that it is really pernicious.... If a pope who has such devout purposes as characterised Innocent XI, in coming under the evil practice of Rome, finds it impossible to avoid the condemnation of really devout and scholarly books, it is easy to understand what the results of censorship must be when the authority comes into the hands of popes who are less pious and less fair-minded.... One may await only bad results from the book censorship of Rome so long as the practice obtains of listening only to those who denounce the books and of giving no opportunity to the authors themselves to make clear the writing or precise character of their text. In this way it has come about that books of most importance for scholarship and of religion have been condemned and cancelled on the ground of two or three sentences which have failed to be understood by careless or unscholarly examiners.”
Writing again in 1693, under Innocent XII, Arnauld says:
“Our good Pope is labouring in praiseworthy manner for the abolition of abuses. He has, however, not yet realised that one of the reforms most called for is to avoid appointing as members of the Inquisition cardinals who have no more trustworthy knowledge of the matters there to be considered than a shoemaker has of astronomy. The ‘qualificators’ (the examining scholars) have only a vote for counsel. It is with the cardinals that rest the deciding votes and these unfortunately are not weighed but simply counted. How many and serious have been the blunders committed through decisions of the Inquisition (or of the Congregation) in matters of doctrine of which the majority of the cardinals are frankly ignorant!”
As an example, on the other hand, of an unquestioning acceptance of the wisdom and authority of the Church in this matter of censorship, may be cited St. Francis of Sales, who writes (in 1608):
“We pray our Catholic readers, in order to protect themselves from the contagion of evil influences, to accept without question the book prohibitions of the Holy Church. We may say that we ourselves have always given the strictest obedience to the Church regulations in regard to the reading of condemned books. In no other way can we manifest the full honour in which we hold its authority and our obligations as believers to accept this authority.”[172]
Macchiavelli (writing about 1500) observes that if the princes of the Christian States had maintained religion in the form in which it was delivered by its Founder, these States would be more united and happier than they are. He adds, ne se può fare altra maggiore conjettura della declinatione d’essa, quanto è vedere come quelli popoli che sono più propinqui alla Chiesa Romana, capo della Religione nostra, hanno meno Religione. Et chi considerasse i fondamenti suoi, e vedesse l’uso presente quanto è diverso da quelli, giudicherebbe esser propinquo senza dubbio, ò la rovina ò il flagello. Habbiamo adunque con la Chiesa e coi Preti noi Italiani questo primo obligo, d’essere diventati senza Religione e cattivi, which Mendham interprets, “the more of Rome, the less of religion.”[173]
Sir Edwin Sandys, whose Europae Speculum, printed at The Hague in 1629, was translated (from English) into Latin by Francus, gives in this a summary of the literary policy of the Church of his time. He writes:
“But the Papacy at this day, taught by woful experience what damage this license of writing among themselves hath done them and that their speeches are not only weapons in the hands of their adversaries, but eyesores and stumbling blocks also to their remaining friends; under show of purging the world from the infection of all wicked and corrupt books and passages which are either against religion or against honesty and good manners, for which two purposes they have several officers who indeed do blot out much impiousness and filth, and therein well deserve both to be commended and imitated (whereto the Venetians add also a third, to let nothing pass that may be justly offensive to princes), have in truth withal pared and lopped off whatsoever in a manner their watchful eyes could observe, either free in disclosing their drifts and practices, or dishonourable to the clergy, or undutiful to the Papacy. These editions only authorised, all other are disallowed, called in, censured; with threats to whosoever shall presume to keep them; that no speech, no writing, no evidence of times past, no discourse of things present, in sum, nothing whatsoever may sound aught but holiness, honour, purity, integrity to the unspotted spouse of Christ and to his unerring Vicar; to the Mistress of Churches, to the Father of Princes ... and they brought forth in fine those Indices Expurgatorii whereof I suppose they are now not a little ashamed, they having by misfortune lit into their adversaries’ hands from whom they desired by all means to conceal them.”[174]
D’Aguesseau, in a Mémoire written in 1710, says: “It is well understood that the Index possesses in France no authority. It is sad to understand that it is still permitted to control literature in certain countries which have not known, as has France, how to uphold the freedom of a national Church. The Index has in fact been so misused as a power that it makes prohibition of not a few books which are by no means deserving of so much honour.”
In an essay by Villers on the Spirit and Influence of the Reformation of Luther (which obtained the prize offered in 1802 by the French Institute for the best treatise on the question) the author finds ground for no little indignation concerning the restrictions upon books by a pope who, while issuing fulminations against Luther, gave full license to Ariosto. The writer goes on to say:
“In Spain, in Italy, and in Austria, the prohibitions and censures went much further, and in those countries heavy shackles have been imposed on the liberty of writing and of thinking.” The writer complains that “in public libraries in these countries, the works of Rousseau, of Voltaire, of Helvetius, of Diderot, and of other esprits forts, are kept under lock and key with the order that they shall not be communicated to any persons excepting to those who shall engage to refute their doctrines.”
[** no indent]He makes reference to the dismissal from office, in 1780, of a professor of a Bavarian university who had requested that a copy of Bayle’s Critical Dictionary should be placed in the common library.
“In those countries is still maintained as far as possible the policy of the Middle Ages, under which the minds of men are to be kept on certain subjects in complete stupidity or in a state of emptiness so that they may later be filled with convenient doctrine or may be kept free for superstition.[175]
Mendham points out that
“It is not going beyond the truth to say that an almost perfect library might be formed from the books condemned by the papal Indexes, perfect indeed for all purposes of absolute and abundant utility. It would need only to have added to it a few Benedictine editions of the Fathers, histories and accounts of modern Roman affairs and the collection of the Bulls, Councils, etc.... It would also be somewhat lacking in English books, prolific as this island is in offensive and formidable heresy. The fact is, that the literary productions of England have come into contact or collision with the Italian only by means of translations. It is in this that we find in the Indexes the works of Swift, Tillotson, Sherlock, Robertson, Gibbon, and others.... There is a further detail, that these prohibitory and expurgatory instruments could only be put into execution among subjects of papal government.... Any attempt to enforce them in other States would have provoked hostilities with their heretical community with no prospect of advantage and with much risk of disadvantage to the Roman power.”[176]
Mendham contends that under the general policy of the Church, as expressed in its Indexes, the inference is legitimate that what the Indexes do not condemn they approve and sanction. It therefore follows that the authority from which those Indexes issue (an authority which is the highest in the Church) must be understood as approving and even sanctioning all doctrines or assertions presented by writers of her own communion which her condemning decrees have failed either to proscribe or to expurgate. (This contention is, it must be remembered, denied absolutely by the Jesuit Hilgers, writing in 1905.) In the examination held in 1825 on the state of Ireland, the Rev. M. O’Sullivan stated in one of his answers that in the case of an author of authority, such as Cardinal Bellarmin, the omission of criticism on the part of the authorities amounted to an approbation. The questioner drew the immediate inference: “Then you understand by the Index, not only a negative condemnation of all the books specified, but a positive affirmation of the doctrines or principles of all the books by Catholic writers not condemned.” Against this inference the witness was reported as making no protest. With respect to Bellarmin, it may be noted that his name was entered in the Index of Sixtus V because he had failed to affirm the direct power of the pope in matters temporal, an entry which may be considered as supporting the above inference.
That the works appearing under the form of Indexes, catalogues, etc., however various, still all belonging to, or coming from, Rome, are at least uncommon and extensively unknown, requires no proof more elaborate or unquestionable than the not only ready but forward declaration of ignorance by the very persons who should be presumed to be best acquainted with them, by well informed members of the ecclesiastic community which promulgates and enforces them. Charles Butler, writing in 1824, says: “Few of the Roman Catholics know of the existence of the Index expurgatorius.”[177] Dr. Murray, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, states before a committee of the House of Commons, in 1825:
“The Index expurgatorius has no authority whatever in Ireland; it has never been received in these countries [sic] and I doubt very much whether there be ten people in Ireland who have ever seen it; it is a sort of censorship of books established in Rome and it is not even received in Spain, where they have a censorship of their own. In these countries, it has no force whatever.”[178]
Mendham trusts that “no equivocation lurks under the ambiguity of the epithet expurgatorius.”
Dr. Slevin, prefect of the College of Dunboyne, says (in 1826):
“Our Catholics will respect the prohibitions of the Congregation of the Index.”
In a work entitled Church History of the English from the year 1500, published under the name of Dod, (according to Mendham the real name of the author was Tootell), mention is made of a Council of Reformation. In chapter ix, pages 94 and 95, an extract is given from certain regulations framed by this council during the last decade of the 16th century. The wording is as follows:
“Publick and private libraries must be searched and examined for books, as also all bookbinders, stationers and booksellers’ shops; and not only Heretical Books and Pamphlets but also prophane, vane, lascivious and other such hurtful and dangerous poysons, are utterly to be removed, burnt and suppressed, and severe order and punishment appointed for such as shall conceal these kind [sic] of Writing; and like order set down for printing of good things for the time to come.”
“The earlier editions of the Index expurgatory,” says Mendham, “were distributed with the utmost caution and were intended only for the possession and the inspection of those to whom they were necessary for the execution of the provisions. The reason is obvious. It certainly was little desirable that the dishonest dealings with the authors here censured should be known, either to those who were injured by them and to whom they would offer the opportunity of justifying themselves; or to the world at large whose judgment they must know would in many instances be at variance with their own. And evidently it was not to their interest to discover and to point out those very passages and writings, not only of reputed heretics but of reputed Catholics, which exposed the most vulnerable parts of their own system.”[179]
“The Indices Expurgatorii are very good commonplace books and repertories, by help of which we may presently find, what any author (who has fallen under censure) has against them [i.e. the Catholics]. We are directed through the Index to the book, chapter, and line, where anything is spoken against any superstition or error of Rome; so that he who has the Indices cannot want for testimonies against Rome.”[180]
In an article printed in 1861, in the Katholik of Mayence, the writer says:
“We are prepared to place upon any inquirer the responsibility of determining whether the Congregation of the Index in the whole series of its operations has ever committed an essential blunder.... The policy and method of ecclesiastical censorship as carried out through the Index is the most moderate, the most tolerant, and the wisest that could be conceived.... The Congregation of the Index secures in the shaping of its judgments the service of the scholarship and of the consciences and capable labour of wise and devout counsellors; and its decisions may be accepted as the conclusions of a scientific Areopagus which is entitled to the fullest respect and the most implicit obedience; and he who does not render such obedience is a stranger to, and an opponent of, the spirit of the Church. ... It is through the Index that the Holy See exercises one of the most important of its functions.”[181]
In 1868, in an article having to do with the Council of the Vatican, the Katholik says:
“The sting of the Index (to its critics) rests in this, that it represents a judgment exercised by the highest authority in matters of faith over individual knowledge. It is the sting of infallible truth.... The Index has from the beginning been the most trustworthy teacher of sound theology and defender of true Faith.”
Bishop Baillès of Luçon, writing in 1864, says:
“The Index contains no single book the condemnation of which was not arrived at under general rules.... It may be considered as itself one great book in which are characterised with more or less precision all the errors, heresies, and schisms of the ages—a book which for all devout scholars may be accepted as a trustworthy chart on which have been marked with a skilled and trusted hand all sunken rocks and other perils of the deep. The Index is the incomparable master work of the wisdom of the Church.” Baillès says further: “No bibliographical work can be considered as complete until it has been collated with the Index.... The date of the prohibition of a book, taken in connection with the date of its first publication, indicates the time during which it has become more pernicious.... The Index is to be classed as the most essential of critical bibliographies, one which no library should be without.”
Bishop Plantier of Nismes, in a pastoral letter of 1857, describes the Congregation of the Index as “the throne of good sense, the magistracy of truth, and a tribunal each utterance of which constitutes an indispensable service to true philosophy.”[182]
Minister Jules Ferry, speaking in the French Senate, May 31, 1882, says:
“We will never recognise the decrees of the Congregation of the Index. We propose to maintain the traditions of the French State and of the Gallic Church. Where would the State be if the decisions of the body which has placed its interdict upon the great spirits of mankind, such as Descartes, Malebranche, Kant, Renan, and has even condemned the Dictionary of Bouillet, should be accepted as the law of the land?... The ground that has been assigned for the condemnation of the Handbook of Compayré was the statement contained in it ‘that it was more important for the French child to know the names of the Kings of France than those of the Kings of Judea.’... The Index-decree went over the head of the Ambassador in Rome and of the Nuncius in Paris, in order to start a conflagration in our State.
“In a manual by André Berthet, published in 1882, (which did not find its way into the Index), stand the following questions: ‘What is God? I know not. What becomes of us after death? I know not. Are you not ashamed of your ignorance? One need not be ashamed not to know what has not yet been known to any one.’”
Father Searle (writing in 1895) maintains that the Church does not prohibit Catholics who are competent to undertake scientific investigation, from so doing. She places absolutely no obstacle in the way of their penetrating into all the facts of nature as it stands or of their considering the probable indications as to its past history or of their weighing actual historical testimony.... The Church forbids, as against reason, common-sense, and the welfare of man, liberty of thought on matters, whether in the material or spiritual order, which have been clearly demonstrated and definitely ascertained; she refuses to abandon it on those matters which are still open to reasonable question, as is the case with certain scientific hypotheses not as yet proven.[183]
Such a statement, if accepted to-day as authoritative, would make it evident that the policy of the Church in the 20th century has changed very materially from the policy that was in force, with some strenuousness, in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Hilgers points out that the Church is naturally much more concerned with the protection of the morality and of the spiritual nature of the people than with any formal intellectual development such as is to be secured from the study of the so-called classics. If a classical work, for instance, teaches that suicide is praiseworthy or is defensible, it is the duty of the Church to keep such work out of the hands of the believers. In like manner, the Church prohibits writings of any kind which make defence of the propriety of divorce or which make reference to divorce as if it were a necessary condition of society. The Church can further give its approval either formally or tacitly to no work which attacks the inspiration of the Scriptures or the binding force of scriptural doctrine, and must bring its condemnation upon any writer, however great he may be, whether Catholic or Protestant, historian or litterateur, philosopher or theologian, whose utterances tend to undermine faith in the word of God.[184]
There are, however, not a few expressions of opinion from Catholic sources which are by no means in accord with the conclusions reached by Father Hilgers as to the wisdom and beneficence of the literary policy of the Church of Rome. These critics have pointed out that the censors, whether in Rome, Madrid, or Paris, had been so seriously concerned with matters of doctrine, that they had given small measure of attention to publications of a scandalous character, and the influence of which was contra bonos mores.
A volume published in Osnabrück (Hanover) in August, 1906, may be cited as an example of cordial support given to the present censorship policy of the Roman Church by a loyal Catholic of North Germany. The author is Albert Sleumer, Doctor of Philosophy, and his book, issued under the title of Index Romanus, claims to present a complete record of all the German publications which have been placed upon the Roman Index, together with the titles of books other than German which have been condemned since 1870. Dr. Sleumer’s volume is issued with the approval of Hubert, Bishop of the historic diocese of Osnabrück. Sleumer’s volume had been originally issued in 1901 and now appears in a later revised edition. The contentions submitted by him in regard to the necessity of the Index, and as to the wisdom with which, from the beginning, the censorship of the Church has been conducted, are substantially in line with the position taken by Father Hilgers, whose larger and more important treatise has already been referred to. Sleumer is, like Hilgers, interested in citing examples of censorship by the State which are less consistent in principle and more extreme in application than similar actions by the authorities of Rome. He quotes, for instance, Thiers (whom he describes as “a well-known, free-thinking author of France”) saying, in 1830, that there could be no danger to the community in giving unrestricted freedom to the press.
“Truth alone,” says Thiers, “can have abiding influence; that which is false can do no harm and in the end brings its own refutation and no government can ever be injured by libellous publications.”
[** no indent]In 1834, Thiers takes a different ground:
“The representatives of the People are having their influence impaired by the falsifications of the Press.... The wickedness and lack of responsibility on the part of the Press have brought grave misfortunes upon the community.... It is essential for the safety of the State that there should be a close supervision of the Press.
[** no indent]We may remember that, between 1830 and 1834, the Bourbon government of Charles X had been overthrown and that Thiers was now a leader of influence under the administration of Louis Philippe.
Sleumer has himself no doubt that the press has to-day become “the most important expression of the ‘Evil One.’”[185]
“Who could,” he says, “deny to the State the right to control, with all the authority that has been confided to it, the development and the influence of a power that can undermine the authority alike of the family, of the government, and of the Church? But if such authority is necessary to maintain the foundations of the State, who shall deny an equal right and duty to those who are responsible for maintaining the foundations of the Church?”[186]
In presenting the lists of the German books condemned, Sleumer points out that it is of course an impossibility for the Congregation of the Index to compile with any measure of completeness the titles of all the books deserving condemnation. He contends however, that the books selected may be accepted as fairly typical of the classes calling for condemnation and that the Index schedules can, therefore, be utilised by the more intelligent of the faithful for their own guidance and by the confessors who have the responsibility of directing the reading of their flocks.
It is interesting to compare with the implicit acceptance given to the censorship policy of the modern Church by the scholarly Jesuit Father Hilgers and by the good Dr. Sleumer, the more discriminating and more critical analysis of this policy by a scholarly Jesuit in England, Father George Tyrrell, whose monograph entitled A Much Abused Letter, comes into print while this volume is passing through the press. Father Tyrrell had, it seems, been applied to for counsel by a devoted friend in the Church (since identified as St. George Mivart) who, in middle life, in connection with certain scientific pursuits and investigations, had found himself in perplexity as to the foundations of his faith. The friend had not been able to bring into accord the conclusions which he had arrived at through his scientific investigations with the latest utterances of the Church authorities having to do with the matters at issue. Seriously troubled at the thought of being forced out of relations with the Church in whose communion he had grown up, he had asked Father Tyrrell for advice as to his present duty. The Father had in his reply (which in compass and character constitutes an essay on the relations of faith with intellectual pursuits) taken the ground that there was nothing in the scientific conclusions that his friend had accepted which made it necessary for him to abandon the communion of the Church. It was the Father’s judgment that the spiritual relations of the believer were to be considered quite apart from his scientific opinions or intellectual development. The letter, which was intended to be purely personal and which had for its purpose the saving to the Church of a valued member, through some inadvertency came into publication, and, as a result, Father Tyrrell was dismissed from the Order of the Jesuits. The unauthorised publication of the letter had presented an incorrect, not to say a garbled, text, and the Father now felt at liberty to print the corrected text with some commentary on his own relations to the matters at issue. The document is of decided interest as an expression of the spiritual and intellectual status of a scholarly Catholic of to-day. The selection of opinions of Catholics on the present policy of the Church runs the risk of being unduly extended, but I think it in order to make one or two citations from the volume of this earnest English Jesuit.
“The express purpose of the Confidential Letter was to dissuade my friend from a breach with the Church which would mean an assertion of individualism and a denial of authority and corporate life.... My whole line of argument was to insist that the reasonable and moderate claims of the Church over the individual were not invalidated by any extravagant interpretation of those claims.... The heroes of moral romance sail serenely through life’s darkest storms, cheered by the certainty of their rectitude and by the hearty applause of a thoroughly satisfied conscience. But in real life, it seems to me that such serenity, and the undoubted force and energy which it secures, are the privilege not so much of the heroic but of the unreflective.[187]... Only when we take the word ‘faith’ in its ethical and evangelical sense, is it true to say that loss of faith necessarily implies some moral weakness or imperfection. But the saying is palpably false when faith is made to stand for theological orthodoxy, for assent to a dogmatic system. It is admitted on all hands that such faith as this may, and often does, go with the most extreme moral depravity—with sensuality and cruelty, with injustice, with untruthfulness and hypocrisy, prejudice and superstition. Temporal and selfish interests of one sort or another, or more commonly still, an absolute lack of all sympathetic and intelligent interest in their religion, will keep the great majority of such men in the paths of orthodoxy as long as orthodoxy is in public fashion and favour.[188]... For one reason or another theologians have, for generations, been letting their accounts get into disorder; they have trusted to the one general principle of ‘authority’ for the quieting of all possible doubts and have paid less and less attention to particulars. They have forgotten that, by a necessary law of the mind, the claims of authority will de facto inevitably be called in question as soon as the reasons on which those claims rest are cancelled or outweighed by those which stand against the particular teachings of authority; that though a Catholic as such cannot consistently call this or that Catholic doctrine in question, he can consistently call his Catholicism in question.[189] However unwilling a man may be to raise doubts in his own mind, he cannot live in an age and country like yours [England] without these being thrust upon his attention. In Mediaeval Spain, where index and inquisition were practically workable methods of protection, it was otherwise. There and then one needed only not to think in order to be at peace; here and now one needs also not to see or hear or read or converse or live.
There is now no educational grade so low as to be exempt entirely from the spirit of criticism, whose influence is of course still more strongly felt as we ascend to the higher grades.[190]... Turning to the clergy, we find a great readiness on the part of individuals to disclaim the honour [of having authoritative knowledge] and also a curious vagueness as to the precise depositaries for the final authorities [on intellectual difficulties]. Taken individually, they frankly say that they are themselves incompetent to deal with such problems, but they imply that they have an unbounded confidence in their own collectivity, or in certain persons (unknown and unknowable) whose specialty it is to adjust the claims of sacred and secular knowledge. Thus the responsibility, divided over the whole multitude of the Church’s children, is shifted from shoulder to shoulder, and comes to rest nowhere in particular;[191]... The conservative positions (in the Church) are maintained by ignorance, systematic or involuntary.... The close historic study of Christian origin and development must undermine many of our most fundamental assumptions in regard to dogmas and institutions.... The sphere of the miraculous is daily limited by the growing difficulty in verifying such facts, and the growing facility of reducing either them or the belief in them to natural and recognised causes.[192]... If the intellectual defence of Catholicism breaks down (as far as the individual is concerned) does it straightway follow that he should separate himself from the communion of the Church? Yes, if theological ‘intellectualism’ be right; if faith mean mental assent to a system of conceptions of the understanding; if Catholicism be primarily a theology or at most a system of practical observances regulated by that theology. No, if Catholicism be primarily a life, and the Church a spiritual organism in whose life we participate, and if theology be but an attempt of that life to formulate and understand itself—an attempt which may fail wholly or in part without affecting the value and reality of life itself.[193]... Must we not distinguish between the collective subconsciousness of the ‘People of God’ and the consciously formulated mind and will of the governing section of the Church? May not our faith in the latter be at times weak or nil, and yet our faith in the former strong and invincible?... Let us recognise that, in spite of its noisy advertisements, this self-conscious, self-formulating Catholicism of the thinking, talking, and governing minority is not the whole Church, but only an element (however important) in its constitution.[194]... Faith is the very root and all-permeating inspiration of life. Not the faith of mere obedience to authoritative teaching, which is at best a condition of spiritual education ... not the faith of merely intellectual assent to the historical and metaphysical assertions of a theology that claims to be miraculously guaranteed from errancy. After all, your quarrel is not with the Church, but with the theologians [we are to bear in mind that Tyrrell is still addressing his friend whose scholarship has brought him into doubt]; not with ecclesiastical authority, but with a certain theory as to the nature and limits and grades of that authority, and of the value, interpretation, and obligation of its decisions.[195]... Who formulate these decisions, determine their value, interpret them to us; who have fabricated the whole present theology of authority and imposed it upon us, but the theologians? Who but the theologians themselves have taught us that the concensus of theologians cannot err? These are, however, mortal, fallible, ignorant men like ourselves.”[196]
May not Catholicism, like Judaism, have to die in order that it may live again in a greater and grander form? Has not every organism its limits of development after which it must decay, and be content to survive in its progeny? Wine-skins stretch, but only within measure; for there comes at last a bursting-point when new ones must be provided.