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Vol. XII.— No. 28.
Poatholic
Philadelp}
» Thursday, July 11, 1844.
. ’ “heed
Whole Number 600
THE CATHOLIC HERALD
1S PUBLISHED EVERY THURSDAY BY
‘ M. FITHIAN,
No, 72 North Second Street, Pi
iladelphia.
Terms.
Two Dollars and Fifty Cents, if patd
in advance, or Three Dollars, payable half yearly.
No paper discontinued until all arrearages are
settled. .
All Communications, except from Agents or
Subscribers enclosing remittances, must be post
paid, and addressed ‘+ To the Editor of the Ca-
tholie Merald, Philadelphia, Pa.”
By permission of the Post-Master General, any
Post-Mastercan frank a letter containing a remit-
tance, fora Subscriber. :
From the Spirit of the Times.
LINES
On the Ruins of St. Mugustine’s Church.
BY JUSTUS E. MooRE.
[The following Lines, suggested by the ruins of St. Au-
gustine’s Church, were written for the purpose of remo-
ving the impression which seems to be daily gaining
strength, that Catholicity is inlmical to civil and rehgious
liberty. They were also written for the sake of directing
the attention of those to history, who have been deluded
by the misrepresentations of some who, by their inflam-
matory productions, are still urging on the populace to
further acts of iucendiarism and bloodshed.)
LINES ON THE RUINS OF ST. AUGUSTINE’S CHURCH.
JUSTUS ¥, MOORE.
‘There was a time, that had [ gazed on thee— .
Beheld thy ruins!—seen thy temple burn,
Christ, I had doubted thy diviaity—
God, thy religion I had shun'd—nay, spnen'd.
‘The Jew spoke well, when to the mob he turt
Watching its wild delirious career,
And wrapt in smoke and fire thy cross discern'd,
While shoutsof thousands rang upon his ear,
Laugi'd out—*1 did not think so many Jews were here!
\
Nations as men need lessuns. ‘Touch them not;
A lasting monument tet them remain; ~
They speak a language ne'er to be forgot,
How here the Press made men as ifinsane,
‘Till law was mock'd at—trampled with disdain.
Should not these traitors vile, for such they are,
Who urg'd the ruffian herd to fire this fune,
Who would all sucial right, all order mar,
Be instantly arraign'd before their country’s bat ?
Nay, touch them not. Their blacken'd’ pile will be
A scoffing commentary on our Hall
Where men conven'd—determin’d to be free—
Religivus liberty proclaim'd to alt.
“The oppress’d of nations heard the sacred call;
With tears the exiie left his nauve home,
And join'd our band to conquer or to fall—
Flow’d not his blood as freely as our own!
‘And for his sweat and biood, Jo! now his children groan !
Denounc’d as despots—as unfit to share
In freedou’s sacred rights—.8 leagu'd with those
Who would all liberal principles im
And cannot history, theo, a page disclose
‘To brand this base aspersion of their foes?
England, even England, for three hundred years,
‘Who would the same base calumny impose,
Who, vampire-like, fed on their blood and tears,t
England stands nobly forth, and the dark slander clears.§
ppair.
Who eaved all Europe from the Northern horde,
‘When barbarism threaten'd (ar and wide?
Who stay'd the oppression of the feudal lord,
nd placed the sert unsbackl'd by his side fi
"ho first thece Northmen with their laws supplied f
Who first to all religious freedom gave 1T
Wh science, literature, art seved—reviv'd?
Who backward rvil'd the fierce barbarian wave
Which doom'd all Christendom unto one common grave?
EE
* A circumstance which really occurred at the time.
+ Never wore luws nore sanguinary and tahuman fram-
ed against any class, Christian or Pagan, than those
acted in England against the Catholics. Sce Hal
AListury of the Constitution of England.
persecution, to class was more
i. he noted reviler ic
€ find by the highest Catholic authority, in reply
he Universities of France and Spain,
8.1791. which is supported by the testimony
f . xercise any civil authori
holies, by virtue of their ecclesiastical office.
ped in
held in
third general Council of Lateran
all Christ be exempt from
this dat be traced the decline and gradual
ance of sertiam. Voltaire, that bitter enemy of the Popes,
Pontiff entitled to the eternal geatitude
of Europe.—(Essai sur jes Movurs
T The first declaration of civil and religious liberty that
When rush’d to arms the proud Mahomedan, i
Subdued all Spain—subjected Sicily—
France penetrated—ravaged Haly j—
Who then rose up—threw off a foreign yoke,
And thus to Europe,gave her liberty t*
plan'd—suggested—gave the master stroke
Which crush’d the Moslem horde,their power foreverbroket
Who first to cities Magna Charta gave,t
‘Those nurseries of liberty?! Who laid
‘The Swiss Republic ?—Venice in the wave
Of the Adriatic?—San Marino made?
Andorra rear'd! Genoa, in the shade§
Of the vant Al; ut turn we to our uwn;
Ay, who for ours undaunted stood arrayed,
Led in the van, where fiercest havoc shown fi
‘The same who worshipp'd here: Lo, ruins sad and lon
yi
Those ruins! touch them not—let all remain
‘Their fragments will in after ages tell
Where demagogue and bigot held their reign;
And when in flames thy dome in thunder fell,
Rade ruftians leap'd and danced as fiends from hell!
‘Talk now nv more of Vandal, Goth, or Hun,
‘Their feats our modern Mohawks far excel ;
With shame those ancient savages would shun ’
The laurels here that our barbarians, shouting won. >
eon nent Bt eaten re
Think ye, they'd rob their dead? ‘Their tombs deface
Their own Jaws trample? Fire the sacred fane
A shelter gave to all !1 Ici with pain
Upor the ruins dark and biack I gaze;
On us they fix the foul and damaing stain
Of fell religivus bigotry. Those days :
T thought had pass'd fore'er of wheel, and rack, and blaze!
lic meetings on religious subjects, and of
church societies of all sorts; and may be con-
sidered as under the special patronage of the
bench of bishops and other dignitaries. Such
phrases as “our truly apostolic church,” “our
apostolie branch ‘of the “Catholie church,”
“our pure and primitive church,” are iis toc-
sing and its watchwords, Far is it from our
intention at present to disturb their slumbers,
who sleep comfortably on thi: tem. It is
to the upholders of the third that we wish
principally to address ourselves. ‘This isa
sort of middle course, not the old (we trust
exploded) via media system, but one which
would fain have a church moulded between
present Catholicity and present Anglicanism.
It considers the tone of the one too high, that
of the other too low: and it would lower the
one, and screw up the other, till both accorded
vpoma middle note. To what extent each
change should be carried, whether Rome
should relax more than England strains, or
whether the task should be equally divided, is
y no means a seitled point. For we sus-
pect, that if those who wish for unity upon
this theory were a-ked first to settle asong
themselves the amount of curtailments, modi-
fications, and changes of every sort which
would satisfy them on our parts, no two would
be found to agree upon the exact line which
we must descend to, to meet the alterations in
un ascending direction, which they would ask
from their’ own establishment,
And now to our reason for noticing the litle
work before us, Il is the production of one
belonging to the last of these classes, and is
a ,
was ever made by a legislative body, was by the Catholic
colony of Maryland in the yeur 1619—(See Baneroti's
(Proestaat) Hisiery of the United States ,
i otestant writers, and fm
also adé, according tuevery impariial reader of i amay
Europe is indebled for ber independence, her social tak.
rovements, and the rise of free stitutions, to the Cut.
ic arch. /
+ See Hallam's Middle Ages: M. Guizm's (Protestant)
Lectures on Civilization in Modern Europe; weo Lure
fe of Innocent LL o
Detoergey
veluped than iil those of any olhor part
d Srebua
hese Republigy
he aspersion that Catholicily
1s inimical to free institutions. Andorra was founded
more than ten centuries ogo by a Cutholie Bishop, and
San Marino, over fifteen hundred years ago by aCathulic
Monk. i
{| Many of the generals and officers of our Revolution
were Catholies—Lafa
jarry, whose tomb inay Le seen in
Church, Fourth Steet.
2, when the Cholera visited Philadel phi
Parsonage and the School House, back of the C!
were converted into a fospial. Within its valle were
three hundred and seventy patients; attended day and
night, by the Sisters of Charity. Sixty-three of the pa
tents were Catholics, the remaining three hundred and
8 Verily, these sakoued and blacken
‘ the Pastur of that
rous remuneration fur expenses then
incurred aud services rendered !
the rear of
St Mary’s
v1 14,
h
the
urch,
From the Dublin Review. .
A Voice from Rome, a. d. 1842. Londo
1843,
1
-We should not have thought of noticing
this small pamphlet, consisting of letters law-
ly published in the Zaglish Churchman,
were it not that we consider ita type, a repre=
sentation, of a certain class of views, which
we are inclined to treat with respect, though
sometimes, we own, it is hard to do so. !
In England, we believe we may say, that
there are three different systems or ideas of the
Catholie church. .
_ The first is the trae one, to which, we of
course hold with all uur souls; that the church
in communion with the Holy See alone repre-
sents Catholicity, and that she alone has the
prerogative of being the Spouse of the Lamb,
and as such without spot of wrinkle 3” that
they who would have truth and holiness. must
come into her as she is, without haggling or
pretending to make terms, or Donatist-like,
holding out till she may choose to alter or
modify herself to their taste,
The second is that peculiarly happy con-
ception of Catholicity which sees all its attri-
butes and characteristics in the Anglican estab-
lishment just such as it'is ; which would not
he|for the world disturb -an atom. of existing
thiogs, would not think’ of transforming the
jooar-| lawn into the cope, or the table into an altar,
nor of interfering with the arrangements, do-
mestic, ecclesiastical, or civil, of the clerical
nine TTT Ae
body. This is the comfortable theory of pub-
many persons in it. Its pur-
port is to hold the balance” between the evil
(as its author deems it,) and the good, which
Rome presents to a two-years’ observer.” We
have heard Jately of several English travellers,
engaged in the occupation that has given birth
to these pages ; of persons who go about—not
as furmerly, to gaze on the wonders of modern
art, and explore and sketch the remains of an-
cient grandeur; but to pause, pencil in land,
opposite any memorial of rustic piety, or the
more devout than scientific images on~the
walls of the Suburra or of ‘Trastevere, and
there, to the astonishment of passers-by, note
down the rude and simple rhymes inscribed
under them ; who enter churches and basilicas,
hot to venerale the memory an es of
apusiles and martyrs that repose therein, but
to spy about, beside and behind the altars, to
detect any Jurking tablet that proclaims an in-
dulgence. ‘These memorials are carefully
noted down, and published as documentary
evidence of the corruptions of the Apostolic
church and see. With such materials our au-
thor has filled upwards of thirty pages; while,
as a set-off, to show his impartiality, he gives
i that number, an account of the
countless and boundless charities of that city,
which is a8 greatin the practice of the third,
as she is in the mastery of the first, theulo-
gical virtue,
Now what is the practical ‘conclusion to
which such modes of investigation and their
accompanying course of reasoning are meant
‘*|tolead? Clearly this: “Rome may be the
firstand mother church ; she may huld all the
prerogatives granted to Peter; she may have
right indisputable to the veneration, the love,
nay the obedience, of all men and of all
churche-; she may be the true and rightful
centre of unity, to which all should cleave; she
may have deen the only preserver of many
reat doctrines, the only deposit of many holy
traditions; she may alone have nourished he-
roic piety, ascetic fervour, virginity, mortifica-
tion, the spirit of martyrdom ; she may have
exclusively produced down to our times real
saints, like St. Charles of St. ‘Teresa; she may
varivalled present the pattern of Christ's
church in its universality snd its oneness ; all
these I concede to her as clearly her right; but
so long as the Pope allows these doggrel in-
seriptions to remain on the wall, and does not
recall bis concession of these certain indu!-
gences, I, A. B., pronounce that all those
claims go for nothing: I set up my judgment
against that of the Apostolic chucch, and hav~
ing settled in my mind that. these things are
idolatrous, superstitious, &e., [declare that it
is better to forego all the privileges of com-
munion with the church, than yield to her
teaching and assurance that they are not so, or
believe myself more likely to mistake and
misunderstand than her.” Such is the con-
clusion—shall we say it?—to strain at such
gnats of abuses (taking them at their very
the camel of schism; aye, and with a
hunch of heresy upon it!
ut, alas! how easy it is tv make for our-/
selves excuses, when. we cling to an error. ’
ese, and such other topics, are put forward ”
by many persons, as pleas and reasons for their !
not joining the communion of the Holy See,
as bars to the possibility of the Anglican ee- ¢
tablishment’s being again united to it, Letus
therefore come to terms. Letus suppose that
His Hotiness were to accede to their wishes,
and order aa sbundant application uf whites ‘
wash to the obnoxious localities, 80 as to ef-
face every inscription which any of these the-
ological tourists may consider objectionable ;
were to withdraw every ‘concession of indul- /
gences more ample than They would approve /
of, and forbid by stern laws any one to wish *
bis neighbourin salutation, the blessing or !
prayers of our Redeemer’s Mother (for these |
form one head of accusation); Jet us, in one
word assume that all the grievances pointed *!
out in the voice from Rome,” or other such
works, were atonce re-dressed—ives any one
imagine fora moment, that the English chureh
would atonce rush repentant to the arms of -
her offended Mother, or that the crosier of {
Canterbury, which assumes to be that of St.°)
Augustine, would be laid at the feet of Saint’)
Gregory’s namesake and successor?) Itmust @
be the merest delusion, to imagine that these |!
are the obstacles to unity ; a thousand preju- i
ices, a thousand passions, a thousand »juie-
rests, and what is worse than all, but cannot
be numerically deseribed—an utter deadness
eeling, an insensibility to the claims or
importance of religious unity in those who
occupy high places, and a cold political idea
of a church, in her rulers, secular and eccle~
siastical; these form obstacles which no con-
cessions on our part could at present remove,
Let those, then, who really desire unity, look
for it themselves and for themeelves. We
would recommend to them the epiatle address-
ed by St. Abgustine to a'nun, who being a
convert, was so greatly shocked at the disor-
ders which she thought she had found, oreven
had really foand, in the lives of Catholic ec-
clesiastics, that she was therebv tempted to re-
turn to her former schism. Now that great
Father does not attempt to deny the truth of
her allegations, but strongly exhorts her not 10
allow these apparent evils to lead her astray
toa schismatical communion. in which she ?
could nothave salvation, Si enim de isto 1’
reculo exires separata ab. unitate: corporis
Christi, nibil sibi prodesset servata integritas
corporis (ui. ‘
And further he tells ler concerning those
whom she felt inclined 10 r joi ea i
(Ecclesia) vero separati, quamdiu contra illam
sentiunt, boni esse nun porsunt; guia etst alie
quos corum bonus videtur ostendere quasi lau-
dabilis copversatio, mulos eos facit ipya dis
visio. *(1
‘The persons-with whom we are dealing, +
cannot consider these sayings hard from vs 5
for they take great pains to make out our
church not oaly corrupt, but idolatrous, ino
der to screen themselves from the imputation
of schism. We, in return, must deal plainly
with them; and they must not be more sensi«
tive than they wish us to be. We know that
many persons unfortunately adhere to the An-
glican system on other grounds—equally une |
tenable, but atleast not unjust nor unkind to us
who would not allow the imputations of this
class of persons to be valid. With these we
are notat present dealing ; we have in mind
those who sit in judgment upon the chureh,
and rely on their own partial views for justifi- :
cation of their remaining out of her commun: }
2
0. ‘ .
Ilowever, we feel disposed to treat even )
them in a more good-natured tone than some +
of our remarks may seem to indicate; for, ;
really serious as are the charges made against’,
us, we can afford to be good-humoured under
them. , ‘This outery about abuses, and partis ;
culatly about idolatry, or the peril of it, has;
been a standing war-ery of the church’s ene-.
mies, from the beginning ; and we may. ver
calmly listen to it, after the indignant castiga~”
lions it has received from Si. Jerome. Eun,
mius, Porphyry, Vigilantivs, were loud, in
their day, in denouncing the honour shewn to,
saints as excessive, superstitious, and idola-,
trous. They were, in this respect, the Pro»
lestants of the earlier ages. “They employed
the very arguments now urged against Us
yt :
qi
worst) and justify one’s self for swallowing
a Ep, ad Feliciam, Ep, eeviii. tom, ii. col.276,
ed. Bened. Veit
1
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v
“~~ 73?