But one attribute the Church has, and the Pope as head of the Church, whether he be in high estate, as this world goes, or not, whether he has temporal possessions or not, whether he is in honour or dishonour, whether he is at home or driven about, whether those special claims of which I have spoken are allowed or not,—and that is Sovereignty. As God has sovereignty, though He may be disobeyed or disowned, so has His Vicar upon earth; and farther than this, since Catholic populations are found everywhere, he ever will be in fact lord of a vast empire; as large in numbers, as far spreading as the British; and all his acts are sure to be such as are in keeping with the position of one who is thus supremely exalted.
I beg not to be interrupted here, as many a reader will interrupt me in his thoughts, for I am using these words, not at random, but as the commencement of a long explanation, and, in a certain sense, limitation, of what I have hitherto been saying concerning the Church’s and the Pope’s power. To this task the remaining pages, which I have to address to your Grace, will be directed; and I trust that it will turn out, when I come to the end of them, that, by first stating fully what the Pope’s claims are, I shall be able most clearly to show what he does not claim.
Now the main point of Mr. Gladstone’s Pamphlet is this:—that, since the Pope claims infallibility in faith and morals, and since there are no “departments and functions of human life which do not and cannot fall within the domain of morals,” p. 36, and since he claims also “the domain of all that concerns the government and discipline of the Church,” and moreover, “claims the power of determining the limits of those domains,” and “does not sever them, by any acknowledged or intelligible line from the domains of civil duty and allegiance,” p. 45, therefore Catholics are moral and mental slaves, and “every convert and member of the Pope’s Church places his loyalty and civil duty at the mercy of another,” p. 45.
I admit Mr. Gladstone’s premisses, but I reject his conclusion; and now I am going to show why I reject it.
In doing this, I shall, with him, put aside for the present and at first the Pope’s prerogative of infallibility in general enunciations, whether of faith or morals, and confine myself to the consideration of his authority (in respect to which he is not infallible) in matters of conduct, and of our duty of obedience to him. “There is something wider still,” he says, (than the claim of infallibility,) “and that is the claim to an Absolute and entire Obedience,” p. 37. “Little does it matter to me, whether my Superior claims infallibility, so long as he is entitled to demand and exact conformity,” p. 39. He speaks of a third province being opened, “not indeed to the abstract assertion of Infallibility, but to the far more practical and decisive demand of Absolute Obedience,” p. 41, “the Absolute Obedience, at the peril of salvation, of every member of his communion,” p. 42.
Now, I proceed to examine this large, direct, religious, sovereignty of the Pope, both in its relation to his subjects, and to the Civil Power; but first, I beg to be allowed to say just one word on the principle of obedience itself, that is, by way of inquiring whether it is or is not now a religious duty.
Is there then such a duty at all as obedience to ecclesiastical authority now? or is it one of those obsolete ideas, which are swept away, as unsightly cobwebs, by the New Civilization? Scripture says, “Remember them which have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the word of God, whose faith follow.” And, “Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves; for they watch for your souls, as they that must give account, that they may do it with joy and not with grief; for that is unprofitable for you.” The margin in the Protestant Version reads, “those who are your guides;” and the word may also be translated “leaders.” Well, as rulers, or guides and leaders, whichever word be right, they are to be obeyed. Now Mr. Gladstone dislikes our way of fulfilling this precept, whether as regards our choice of ruler and leader, or our “Absolute Obedience” to him; but he does not give us his own. Is there any liberalistic reading of the Scripture passage? Or are the words only for the benefit of the poor and ignorant, not for the Schola (as it may be called) of political and periodical writers, not for individual members of Parliament, not for statesmen and Cabinet ministers, and people of Progress? Which party then is the more “Scriptural,” those who recognize and carry out in their conduct texts like these, or those who don’t? May not we Catholics claim some mercy from Mr. Gladstone, though we be faulty in the object and the manner of our obedience, since in a lawless day an object and a manner of obedience we have? Can we be blamed, if, arguing from those texts which say that ecclesiastical authority comes from above, we obey it in that one form in which alone we find it on earth, in that one person who, of all the notabilities of this nineteenth century into which we have been born, alone claims it of us? The Pope has no rival in his claim upon us; nor is it our doing that his claim has been made and allowed for centuries upon centuries, and that it was he who made the Vatican decrees, and not they him. If we give him up, to whom shall we go? Can we dress up any civil functionary in the vestments of divine authority? Can I, for instance, follow the faith, can I put my soul into the hands, of our gracious Sovereign? or of the Archbishop of Canterbury? or of the Bishop of Lincoln, albeit he is not broad and low, but high? Catholics have “done what they could,“—all that any one could: and it should be Mr. Gladstone’s business, before telling us that we are slaves, because we obey the Pope, first of all to tear away those texts from the Bible.