FRASER'S MAGAZINE. JULY, 1865. ENGLISH ULTRAMONTANISM. IN TWO PARTS.-PART II. II. THE RELATION OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH TO MODERN SOCIETY. THE is the relation of the Roman Catholic Church to modern society. There are two essays upon this subject, one by Mr. Oakley, the other, which is divided into two parts, by Mr. Lucas. Each is characteristic. Mr. Oakley's essay was, as he says, written on very short notice, and bears evident traces of the haste with which it was composed. It is interesting as a plain unstudied account of the feelings of a devoted Roman Catholic in the midst of English society, and it is hardly an exaggeration to say that it might have been written by a Protestant as an imaginary picture of the view which, from the nature of the case, a thorough-going Ultramontanist would be obliged to take of the institutions of his native country. Mr. Oakley's feelings appear to us perfectly natural to a person in his position, and we will try to state shortly their character. He observes that the position of a Catholic minority in a nation 'whose institutions and interests are diametrically opposed to the genius and habits of their religion,' is very embarrassing to all Catholics, except, on the one hand, monks and nuns, who make their own world, and to whom it matters little where they live; and, on the other, those who have so deeply imbibed the national spirit as to have lost their Catholic susceptibilities.' All others, especially those who have anything to do with politics, find themselves in a false position. They are not positively re VOL. LXXII. NO. CCCCXXVII. The duced to hypocrisy, but they come to something very like it. 'We are all, in fact, thrown against our inclination upon a discipline of economy and management.' reason is plain enough. They cannot state their principles fully and act up to them on all occasions, for if they did they would lose all influence whatever. 'We Catholics are children. . . of the Church, which is the sole and exclusive depository on earth of eternal and immutable truth. . . . The most imposing of the pretensions of other bodies does not even approach the limits of our prerogative; the most orthodox of their opinions does not come a whit nearer to our truth than the wildest and most fanatical of their doctrinal innovations.' Protestants, however, will not admit this. Far from being permitted to assert our ascendency as a prerogative, we are treated to scant measures of the barest right with a smile of patronage.' Hence we must make up our minds either to understate our claims, economise our principles, and resort to a phraseology utterly inadequate to the true facts of the case, or withdraw altogether from the arena of public usefulness.' Nay, necessity makes them acquainted with strange bedfellows. They have to make common cause with Protestant dissenters, or as Mr. Oakley puts it, we are compelled to cast in our lot with those separatists of yesterday,.... with the rejected of the rejected, the offshoots of the dissevered branch; A with the fautors, however unconscious, of heresy doubly distilled, and the victims of schism twice divided, and compelled to think it gain if we can get anywise into port by the aid of a towage so rude, or under a convoy so shabby. Certainly it is an abject position for the Queen of the Nations and the Bride of the Lamb.' Very abject indeed. Nay more, Catholics are obliged to use language which cannot be called altogether sincere. 'While using in a certain sense correctly of heretics and schismatics who are our fellowcitizens and companions in distress the endearing name of "brethren," we are obliged. . . . to call our own true brethren "co-religionists." Even this is not the worst. More perilous still . . . is the temptation to defend Catholic truth or to promote Catholic objects by un-Catholic means.' And then, again, there is the counter danger of neglecting those means if they are the ones which under the circumstances ought to be employed. For this reason particular forms of argument ought to be specially sanctioned as appropriate. The argument ad hominem is particularly recommended. "Thus when we charged with advocating principles highly favourable to toleration in one country, and apparently at variance with it in another, to this charge we have a complete and satisfactory answer at hand. But as it is one which our opponents are quite incapable of appreciating, we may therefore well waive the abstract question and refer them to those principles of religious equality which in this country are so ostentatiously professed and often so partially applied.' This is no doubt prudent, inasmuch as the argument generally used is-It is your duty to tolerate us when you are strong because we are right. It is our right to persecute you when we are strong because you are wrong. The difficulties of this economizing' system are no doubt very great, 'the mean to be hit is as delicate as a needle's point.' There are, however, models at hand. There are sons and daughters of Catholic Ireland in this wild and wicked are metropolis who, with little of worldly knowledge, are practically solving this great problem with an accuracy and precision which education cannot teach nor rules supply.' It is, however, ill to play with such edge tools. 'Those under statements of Catholic truth which our position entails should be strictly limited to cases of overpowering necessity or the most obvious expediency. They come, indeed, under the head of those studied ambiguities of phrase which our theology rather permits than encourages.' The remainder of Mr. Oakley's essay is less interesting, but it contains one passage too characteristic to be passed over:-'One of the misfortunes of our position is the temptation it creates to think better of liberal Protestants than of what are called "bigots." He feels that he ought to like the bigot best, and that it is very hard that those who agree with him in spirit should differ irreconcileably in matters of detail. So it is, however. It can hardly be expected that for the sake of uniting upon the ground of a common fanaticism your fellow bigot should give up the very points on which his bigotry is most excited. Mr. Oakley's utterances are very remarkable. If any further evidence were required of the utter irreconcileable hostility which exists between Ultramontanism and all that the English nation has gained by many centuries of wisdom and courage-if any one still supposes it possible to reconcile Popery in its full development with sincere attachment to England and English principles of government-if any one ventures to deny that a consistent Ultramontanist is under the strongest possible temptation to be false to his country, to be hypocritical in all that he says, and to be continually saying one thing and meaning another, let him read Mr. Oakley's essay. The Pope and the Queen are obviously God and Mammon in his eyes, and it will never be possible for him and those who think like him to serve both heartily until the two powers stand in their proper relation-the relation of King John to Innocent III.—then, indeed, Mr. Oakley would be heartily loyal. To the Queen, as the Pope's inferior, he would no doubt yield a willing service. As it is he obeys the law not heartily and willingly, not because he loves the nation, and is himself a part of it, but because submission to the powers that be is a duty which the Pope enforces. prefers the phrase, his own true brethren,' a habit of mind which is the direct result of the action of oppression on weakness? Mr. Oakley says to the Roman Catholics of England, 'Be sly, run cunning, imitate the Irish in studied ambiguity, never tell the whole truth, never speak your whole mind, never ✓feel or think or act as Englishmen, for the spirit and instinct of the English nation are diametrically opposed to you, and would scatter you and your plans and feelings to the four winds if you dared to avow them. The premiss is true enough, but what are we to think of the conclusion? We do not wish to be unfair to Mr. Oakley. No doubt if a small minority is to gain a hearing, they must go by steps and work with such means as are available for them; but what a revelation his essay affords of the gulf between sincere Roman Catholics and English Protestants! We must give up all the principles in which we feel most deeply that we are right; we must alter the whole spirit of our legislation and government; we must make fundamental changes in the principles on which we govern foreign dependencies, such for instance as India, if we are to come over to him. Protestantism has been described as a mere negation. This is utterly untrue; it involves a positive view of morality irreconcileable with Romish theology, and so sacred to those who hold it that they would run all risks here and hereafter rather than not acknowledge its obligations and act upon it as far as human infirmity will admit. It is needless to dwell upon Mr. Oakley's paper. It is a perfectly natural, and no doubt, a true expression of the feelings of an Ultramontanist in a Protestant country. A frank, straightforward citizenship, thorough sympathy with the national life and the national objects, are simply impossible to him in a country which does not in its corporate capacity acknowledge the supremacy and infallibility of the Pope. So long as this is rejected he is restricted to a narrow alternative. Either he must go into a monastery, or retire into privacy, or take in politics a shifty disingenuous course in which he cannot avow his true principles openly, or pursue with the least prospect of success any really important object. He is a stranger and sojourner amongst us. He is the subject of a foreign priest who enforces his commands on those who believe in it by a power infinitely more effectual than any which human laws can apply, and issues commands on subjects with which no human legislator would dare to meddle. Dr. Newman was intensely indignant at the suggestion that his creed was unfavourable to manliness and truth. How angry he ought to be with Mr. Oakley! 'Studied ambiguities in phrase,' are to be the stock in trade of the Roman Catholic politician, and his model for imitation is to be found in that slippery indirectness constantly running into falsehood which we tolerate in the poorer class of Irish because they unite some of the virtues of the child to some of the vices of the slave, and because English oppression is answerable to some extent for each. What is to be said of a man who deliberately proposes as a model for the imitation of his 'co-religionists,' or if he There is one part of Mr. Oakley's essay which inclines us charitably towards him. He is the one writer in this volume who speaks with anything like fairness on the attitude of the Established Church with respect to infidelity. He does appear to see that a consistent Romanist ought to believe and hope that the victory will rest with the former. He quotes with propriety the old line of Virgil: Tua res agitur cum proximus ardet |
