CARDINAL MANNING ON CATHOLICISM IN ENGLAND.
THE interviewer seems likely to furnish the journalist with a constantly increasing proportion of his material. One eminent person after another is discovered to have found keeping silence pain and grief to him, and to see in the entrance of " our representative " an excuse for speaking with his tongue. One of the latest, and in many ways one of the most striking, of these confidences is that made by Cardinal Manning to a correspondent of the Pall Mall Gazette, which is printed in that journal last Monday. Cardinal Manning seems to have spoken his mind with great freedom on this occasion, and that upon subjects on which it is specially interesting to know his opinion. The interviewer examined him upon the progress of the Roman Catholic Church in England ; upon Mr. Stead's dream of its possible future ; upon the religious prospect in England; upon " Lux Mundi " ; upon the alleged difference between Old Catholics and Converts—and to each question Cardinal Manning gave a detailed answer. Apparently, the fact that an interrogatory had been administered to him, though not under the direction of the Court of Chancery, made speaking natural.
There is a marked difference between the cautious way in which Cardinal Manning handles the question of Roman Catholic progress in England, and the triumphant air which the lesser lights of his Church sometimes assume in regard to it. " It would be a mistake," he says, to test the progress of the Roman Catholic Church " only by the number gathered into it, for, though many, what are they upon the millions of their country ?" And then Cardinal Manning suggests three tests by which this pro- gress may be more accurately measured—material develop- ment, change in public opinion, increase of spiritual action. On the first and third of these, the Cardinal is an un- impeachable witness. No one can know so well as he the increase that has taken place " in churches, clergy, colleges, convents, and schools. Everything is doubled or trebled, and in some cases increased tenfold." And the activity of the agencies thus created is as remarkable as their numbers. There are immensely more services held, more sermons preached, more sacraments administered. " The number of Catholics now in England is over one million and a half, and.of those a very large proportion are in faithful practice of their religion." It will be seen that this kind of progress is essentially the progress of a minority. If England were really being converted, Cardinal Manning would have a different story to tell. There would be added to the Church daily not merely such as should be saved, but such as wished to go with the stream, to be like other people, to follow the fashion. Among such converts as this the pro- portion "in faithful practice of their religion" would be very much smaller. Religious convictions would have played a very secondary part in their conversion, and they would con- sequently exercise a very secondary influence over their lives. The converts to Roman Catholicism in England have, with few exceptions, been actuated by the single desire to be sure that they are in the one true Church. The depth and continuance of that desire varies, of course, within very wide limits ; but, as a rule, the probability is that a man who has cared enough about religion to become a Roman Catholic, will care about it enough to keep himself a practising Roman Catholic. The growth of churches, convents, and schools is a natural result of this. Men who are in earnest, are willing to spend money on the things they care for. Moreover, the earnestness and the readiness to spend money are alike quickened by the consciousness that Roman Catholics are a minority, and a closely-watched minority. Unitarians or Baptists might go on having few chapels, and those devoid of all approach to material splendour, and no one would notice the fact. But if there were no new Roman Catholic churches, and those in existence remained as squalid as they were fifty years ago, the fact would be closely observed and sharply commented on, and the knowledge of this certainly helps to make men active and liberal.
When we turn to the remaining test suggested by the Cardinal, the change in public opinion, it is hardly neces- sary to point out that h in he has himself been largely instru- mental n bringing it about. Cardinal Manning is one of the most respected, as he is one of the best known personages in English society. He is foremost in every good work, and his activity is not limited to works associated with his own church. He has never trimmed, or tried to minimise the features which make his religion feared by so many Protestants ; but he has been foremost in showing that these features are capable of an expression which the Protestants in question would once have thought it impossible they could wear. Of course, there are other reasons for the change. Conversions, though they have often produced a momentary irritation, have, in the long- run, made Englishmen better acquainted with Roman Catholicism. Many of them now number Roman Catholics among their relations or friends, and they have learned by experience that a change of religion does not involve any change in the characteristics for which they held their friends or relations dear. Two other reasons, however, which Cardinal Manning does not mention, have also played their part. One is the misfortunes which the Roman Catholic Church has undergone on the Continent of Europe. A Church which is weak near home cam hardly be dreaded abroad. In France and Italy, the two countries in which Englishmen are most often brought into contact with Roman Catholics, the posi- tion now held by the Church has nothing in it that can alarm any one, except a few fanatics who read current events in the light of a past which, in the teeth of facts and common-sense, they believe to be still present. The conception of the Papacy which was once current in England, had its origin in vague recollections of the Armada, the Gunpowder Plot, and the reign of James II. ; and since 1870, at all events, it is only an insignificant minority that can fear any recurrence of these incidents. The -second reason is the general decay of religion in England. Formerly, such religion as English- men had was intimately associated with Protestantism ; and as the latter has declined, it has been replaced by a state of feeling which, whatever be its other advantages, is near of kin to indifference to truth.
With regard to " Lux Mundi," Cardinal Manning spoke with reserve. "I must not," he said, "be a judge of those that are without—I am too old to throw stones now." His criticism of " Lux Mundi," that " it is a counterpart of Essays and Reviews,' " would be more intelligible if he had defined more exactly the points of resemblance between the two books. The statement that " every school in the Church of England, and they are many, brings forth its own fruit," leaves the character of the fruit in each case undefined. Nor is he much more explicit about Mr. Stead's dream of the possible future of the Roman Church. Indeed he seems, on this point, to have economised a little. The real weakness of Mr. Stead's vision is this : That he asks the Church to abandon her real function in favour of a function which he thinks more important and more interesting. Christianity supplies the most effectual stimulus to philanthropy ; but it is not philanthropy. It deals primarily with the future, and with the present as it influences the future. If we could imagine it established beyond doubt that mankind will be happy in another world, in proportion as it is miserable in this, Christians would no longer have any motive for relieving suffering. Their business would simply be to teach men to bear it by holding up before them the prospect of the compensating future. Consequently, " the absolute temporal welfare and condition of the people," which Mr. Stead would have the Church make her first concern, can never be more than her second. She cares for their temporal welfare not absolutely but relatively to its action upon their spiritual welfare. Cardinal Manning is probably too grateful to Mr. Stead for the handsome things he has said about " the power and future of the Catholic Church in its relation to the world," to wish to make this distinction more clear, and he consequently goes off upon profit-sharing and the just proportions which ought to regulate the co-operation of capital and labour. The Catholic Church, as Mr. Stead would have it, would really be the Church of Humanity, not the Church of God. It would have been better, we think, if Cardinal Manning had brought out this con- trast, instead of saying that Mr. Stead has " been able to appreciate the power and future of the Catholic Church far more clearly and truly than any public writer who is not Catholic." No doubt Mr. Stead has attributed to the Roman Catholic Church a very remarkable power, and a future to be won by the frank use of that power. But neither the power nor the future have any genuinely ecclesiastical element in their composition. They have to do with the bodies of men rather than their souls, or with their souls as they can be used to make their bodies healthier and their lives happier. Christianity, on the other hand, does not exist for this end solely or primarily. It does not, indeed, neglect it ; but it gives it a strictly second place. No one knows this better or has preached it more con- sistently than Cardinal Manning ; but we wish he had not omitted the sermon in his interview with the representative of the Pall Mall Gazette.
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