The Catholic World, Vol. 03, April to September, 1866Various
Religion
The Catholic World, Vol. 03, April to September, 1866
Various
Catholic Church -- Periodicals
"Nothing can be more unpractical than for an individual to throw
himself into the Roman Church because he could accept the _letter_
of the Council of Trent. Those who were born Roman Catholics have a
liberty which, in the nature of things, a person could not have who
left another system to embrace that of Rome. I cannot imagine how
any faith could stand the shock of leaving one system, criticising
_it_, and cast himself into another system, criticising _it_. For
myself, I have always felt that had (which God of his mercy avert
hereafter also) the English Church, by accepting heresy, driven me
out of it, I could have gone in no other way than that of closing my
eyes, and accepting whatever was put before me. But a liberty which
individuals could not use, and explanations which, so long as they
remain individual, must be unauthoritative, might be formally made
by the Church of Rome to the Church of England as the basis of
reunion."
And again, p. 210:
"It seems to me to be a psychological impossibility for one who has
already exchanged one system for another to make those distinctions.
One who, by his own act, places himself under authority, cannot make
conditions about his submission. But definite explanations of our
Articles have, before now, been at least tentatively offered to us,
on the Roman and Greek side, as sufficient to restore communion; and
the Roman explanations too were, in most cases, mere supplements to
our Articles, on points upon which our Church had not spoken."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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