St. Paul strenuously opposed himself to the circumcision of the flesh, so would the Liberal Catholics oppose themselves to the circumcision of the intellect. These believers are not so foolish as to be blind to the fact that a body so vast and complex in structure as the Catholic Church must move slowly. It neither surprises nor shocks them that new astronomical, geological, or physiological truths should not be accepted with alacrity or that discoveries as to the Old and New Testaments and startling facts with respect to the organisation of the Church in the first two centuries should not be welcomed with enthusiasm and loudly proclaimed.... What liberalism does not understand, what it vehemently protests against and deems fatal to the welfare of the Church, is not reticence, but declarations hostile to and condemnatory of ascertained scientific truth. No one in authority would probably now venture to affirm in so many words that Catholics must regard as historical facts such matters as the legend of the Serpent and the Tree, that of the formation of Eve, Noah’s Ark, the destruction of Sodom, the transformation of Lot’s wife, the talking ass, or Jonah and his whale; nevertheless (not only from what is popularly taught, but from what has been put forth in the name of the Supreme Pontiff) it would seem as if Reuss, Welhausen, and Keunen had never written at all, instead of having transformed our whole conception of the Hexateuch. Liberal Catholics need demand no formal disavowals. What they do most strongly deprecate are needless declarations freshly made in the full light of modern science, physical, physiological, historical, or critical, yet futilely hostile thereto. The well-known Syllabus of Pius IX afforded a memorable instance of what is thus objected to.... It was so worded as to make plain men believe that their reasonable liberties had been condemned, and many tender consciences were greatly troubled thereby. A year or two back, Leo XIII, in a letter concerning the Bible, afforded a most amazing example of misleading ambiguity.... It is understood that for this letter he was not personally to blame, his will having been overborne by the influence of the Jesuits of the _Civiltà Cattolica_. This letter contains, to be sure, a certain recognition of modern science; but it broadly declares that the Bible contains no error.... English Catholics have been played with of late in the matter of a new Index in a singularly inept and absurd manner, owing to the fact that the players at Rome are so densely ignorant concerning the state of things in England.