Occasional Papers: Selected from the Guardian, the Times, and the Saturday Review, 1846-1890, Vol. 2Church, R. W. (Richard William)
Religion
Occasional Papers: Selected from the Guardian, the Times, and the Saturday Review, 1846-1890, Vol. 2
Church, R. W. (Richard William)
Christianity; Church and state -- Great Britain; Great Britain -- Church history -- 19th century
The way is always open; there is no need to write long books or make
elaborate proposals about union. Union means becoming Catholic;
becoming Catholic means acknowledging the exclusive claims of the Pope
or the Roman Church. In the long controversy one party has never for an
instant wavered in the assertion that it could not, and never would, be
in the wrong. The way to close the controversy, and the only one, is to
admit that Dr. Pusey shall have any amount of assurance and proof that
the Roman position and Roman doctrine and practice are the right ones.
His misapprehensions shall be corrected; his ignorance of what is Roman
theology fully, and at any length, enlightened. There is no desire to
shrink from the fullest and most patient argument in its favour, and he
may call it, if he likes, explanation. But there is only one practical
issue to what he has proposed--not to stand bargaining for impossible
conditions, but thankfully and humbly to join himself to the true
Church while he may. It is only the way in which the answer is given
that varies. Here characteristic differences appear. The authorities of
the Roman Catholic Church swell out to increased magnificence, and
nothing can exceed the suavity and the compassionate scorn with which
they point out the transparent absurdity and the audacity of such
proposals. The Holy Office at Rome has not, it may be, yet heard of Dr.
Pusey; it may regret, perhaps, that it did not wait for so
distinguished a mark for its censure; but its attention has been drawn
to some smaller offenders of the same way of thinking, and it has been
induced to open all the floodgates of its sonorous and antiquated
verbiage to sweep away and annihilate a poor little London
periodical--"_ephemeridem cui titulus, 'The Union Review_.'" The
Archbishop of Westminster, not deigning to name Dr. Pusey, has seized
the opportunity to reiterate emphatically, in stately periods and with
a polished sarcasm, his boundless contempt for the foolish people who
dare to come "with swords wreathed in myrtle" between the Catholic
Church and "her mission to the great people of England." On the other
hand, there have been not a few Roman Catholics who have listened with
interest and sympathy to what Dr. Pusey had to say, and, though
obviously they had but one answer to give, have given it with a sense
of the real condition and history of the Christian world, and with the
respect due to a serious attempt to look evils in the face. But there
is only one person on the Roman Catholic side whose reflections on the
subject English readers in general would much care to know. Anybody
could tell beforehand what Archbishop Manning would say; but people
could not feel so certain what Dr. Newman might say.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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