But a more sensational sequel of the debates in Parliament was provided by Mr. Gladstone's article on Ritualism in the October _Contemporary_ and his pamphlet issued in November on _The Vatican Decrees_. By the former, in which he insisted on the hopelessness of the attempt to Romanize the Church and people of England, he provoked the Irish Romanist journals to fury and indignation. The reverberations of the _Vatican Decrees_ pamphlet were even wider. For Mr. Gladstone was not content with assailing the Papal claim to Infallibility: he went so far as to say that "it was a political misfortune that during the last thirty years the Roman Catholic Church should have acquired such an extension of its hold upon the highest classes of this country." The conquests had been chiefly among women, "but the number of male converts, or captives (as I might prefer to call them), has not been inconsiderable." Gladstone's challenge was taken up both by Ultramontane and Liberal Catholic champions, lay and clerical, with the result that the latter disowned the former, and their conflicting answers revealed an extraordinary divergence of opinion among the professing members of the Roman Church. The views of Cardinal Manning and Lord Acton were irreconcilable; and Manning's circular issued at the end of November amounted to an excommunication of the followers of Döllinger, the famous German "modernist" whom Gladstone had visited earlier in the year, and who had been excommunicated himself in 1871 for refusing to subscribe to the Vatican decrees. But Döllinger had refused to allow himself to be consecrated a bishop of the old Catholic Church, and though by conviction he belonged to the old Catholic Community he never formally joined them. The Ultramontane organs in Rome ascribed Gladstone's pamphlet to the alarm occasioned by the progress Romanism was making in England, and even hinted that his attacks were designed to clear himself of the suspicion of hidden Catholicism, which he had incurred by his conversations with Döllinger. This brief sketch of current theological controversy in 1874 may assist us in recognizing the incentives which animated _Punch's_ continued attacks on High Anglicans and Ritualists. At the close of 1875 he quotes the following from the _Church Times_:-- "We regret to observe that that 'chartered libertine,' the Dean of Westminster, has once more degraded the venerable church which is so unfortunate as to be committed to his charge, by making its nave a lecture room in which Nonconformist Ministers may disport themselves." The same organ described the service in the Abbey on St. Andrew's Day as "Dr. Moffatt's entertainment," and _Punch_ asks, "if this is High Church pleasantry, what is Low?" In 1876, when communion was refused on account of the would-be communicant's disbelief in the Devil, _Punch_ observes:-- The cleric mind in quarrels seems to revel. Devil or none, some clerks will play the Devil.