“It will not be unkind to deny him such qualifications, especially now,
for did he not tell his friends at the London banquet: ‘During all these
(seven) years I have been busy in the blacksmith’s shop (of the editor’s
room) and I do not hear the noise that is made by the hammers all around
me’—nor, it might be added, does he hear what is going on outside the
_Britannica’s_ forge.
“Meantime, we bespeak the attention of all the Catholic theologians in
every part of the world to the preposterous invitation to come to hear
the last word about ‘the development of theology’ in the Catholic Church
from a scholar whose claim to theological distinction is that ‘he has
written about Fénélon and Pascal.’ The _Britannica_ shows scant respect
to Catholic scholarship and Catholic intelligence.”
Father Campbell then devotes several pages to a specific indictment of
the misstatements and the glaring errors to be found in several of the
articles relating to the Catholic Church. He quotes eight instances of
St. Cyres’ inaccurate and personal accusations, and also many passages
from the articles on _Papacy_, _Celibacy_ and _St. Catherine of
Siena_—passages which show the low and biased standard of scholarship by
which they were written. The injustice contained in them is obvious even
to a superficial student of history. At the close of these quotations
he accuses the _Britannica_ of being neither up-to-date, fair, nor
well-informed. “It repeats old calumnies that have been a thousand times
refuted, and it persistently selects the Church’s enemies who hold her
up to ridicule and contempt. We are sorry for those who have been lavish
in their praises of a book which is so defective, so prejudiced, so
misleading and so insulting.”
It seems that while the _Britannica’s_ contributions to the general
misinformation of the world were being discussed, the editor wrote to one
of his subscribers saying that the Catholics were very much vexed because
the article on the Jesuits was not “sufficiently eulogistic.”
“He is evidently unaware,” Father Campbell goes on to comment, “that the
Society of Jesus is sufficiently known both in the Church and the world
not to need a monument in the graveyard of the _Encyclopædia Britannica_.
Not the humblest Brother in the Order expected anything but calumny and
abuse when he saw appended to the article the initials of the well-known
assassins of the Society’s reputation. Not one was surprised, much less
displeased, at the absence of eulogy, sufficient or otherwise; but,
on the contrary, they were all amazed to find the loudly trumpeted
commercial enterprise, which had been so persistently clamorous of its
possession of the most recent results of research in every department of
learning, endeavoring to palm off on the public such shopworn travesties
of historical and religious truth. The editor is mistaken if he thinks
they pouted. Old and scarred veterans are averse to being patted on the
back by their enemies.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account