Judging by One-Sided Rule
Illustrations of One-Sidedness
Education
Images
Oaths
Further Illustrations
Persecution of Converts
Right to Make Converts
Principle of Toleration
Insult and Mockery
Dr.Achilli and the Inquisition
English History of Violence
A CONSIDERATION was incidentally introduced into the argument which engaged our attention last week, Brothers of the Oratory, which deserves insisting on, in the general view which I am taking of the present position of the Catholic Religion in England. I then said that, even putting aside the special merits and recommendations of the Catholic rule of celibacy, as enjoined upon the Priesthood and as involved in Monachism, (with which I was not concerned,) and looking at the question in the simple view of it, to which Protestants confine themselves, and keeping ourselves strictly on the defensive, still, when instances of bad priests and bad religious are brought against us, we might fairly fall back upon what may be called the previous question. I mean, it is incumbent on our opponents to show, that there are fewer cases of scandal among the married clergy than among unmarried; fewer cases of mental conflict, of restlessness, of despondency, of desolation, of immorality, and again of cruel slavery and hopeless suffering, among Protestant women, whether unmarried or wives than among Catholic nuns. It must be shown that in such instances of guilt or sorrow which can be adduced, the priests accused have fallen into sin, the nuns compassionated have passed from happiness to misery, distinctly by virtue of the vow which binds them to a single life:—for till this is proved nothing is proved. Protestants, however, for the most part find it very pleasant to attack others, very irksome and annoying to defend themselves; they judge us by one rule, themselves by another; and they convict us of every sin under heaven for doing sometimes what they do every day.
This one-sidedness, as it may be called, is one of the very marks or notes of a Protestant; and bear in mind, when I use the word Protestant, I do not mean thereby all who are not Catholics, but distinctly the disciples of the Elizabethan Tradition. Such an one cannot afford to be fair; he cannot be fair if he tries. He is ignorant, and he goes on to be unjust. He has always viewed things in one light, and he cannot adapt himself to any other; he cannot throw himself into the ideas of other men, fix upon the principles on which those ideas depend, and then set himself to ascertain how those principles differ, or whether they differ at all, from those which he acts upon himself; and, like a man who has been for a long while in one position, he is cramped and disabled, and has a difficulty and pain, more than we can well conceive, in stretching his limbs, straightening them, and moving them freely.
1.
This narrow and one-sided condition of the Protestant intellect might be illustrated in various ways.
(1.) For instance, as regards the subject of Education. It has lately been forcibly shown that the point which the Catholic Church is maintaining against the British Government in Ireland, as respects the Queen’s Colleges for the education of the middle and upper classes, is precisely that which Protestantism maintains, and successfully maintains, against that same Government in England—viz., that secular instruction should not be separated from religious 1. The Catholics of Ireland are asserting the very same principle as the Protestants of England; however, the Minister does not feel the logical force of the fact; and the same persons who think it so tolerable to indulge Protestantism in the one country, are irritated and incensed at a Catholic people for asking to be similarly indulged in the other. But how is it that intelligent men, who can ascend in their minds from the fall of an apple to the revolution of a comet, who can apply their economical and political inductions from English affairs to the amelioration of Italy and Spain—how is it that, when they come to a question of religion, they are suddenly incapable of understanding that what is reasonable and defensible in one country, is not utterly preposterous and paradoxical in another? What is true under one degree of longitude, is true under another. You have a right indeed to say that Catholicism itself is not true; but you have no right, for it is bad logic, to be surprised that those who think it true act consistently with that supposition; you do not well to be angry with those who resist a policy in Ireland which your own friends and supporters cordially detest and triumphantly withstand in England.
(2.) Take again a very different subject. A Protestant blames Catholics for showing honour to images; yet he does it himself. And first, he sees no difficulty in a mode of treating them, quite as repugnant to his own ideas of what is rational, as the practice he abominates; and that is, the offering insult and mockery to them. Where is the good sense of showing dishonour, if it be stupid and brutish to show honour? Approbation and criticism, praise and blame go together. I do not mean, of course, that you dishonour what you honour; but that the two ideas of honour and dishonour so go together, that where you can apply—(rightly or wrongly, but still)—where it is possible to apply the one, it is possible to apply the other. Tell me, then, what is meant by burning Bishops, or Cardinals, or Popes in effigy? has it no meaning? is it not plainly intended for an insult? Would any one who was burned in effigy feel it no insult? Well, then, how is it not absurd to feel pain at being dishonoured in effigy, yet absurd to feel pleasure at being honoured in effigy? How is it childish to honour an image, if it is not childish to dishonour it? This only can a Protestant say in defence of the act which he allows and practises, that he is used to it, whereas to the other he is not used. Honour is a new idea, it comes strange to him; and, wonderful to say, he does not see that he has admitted it in principle already, in admitting dishonour, and after preaching against the Catholic who crowns an image of the Madonna, he complacently goes his way, and sets light to a straw effigy of Guy Fawkes.