Cardinal Vaughan on Monday attended the annual con- ference of
the Catholic Truth Society at Bristol, and made a speech which had at least the merits of sincerity and out- spokenness. To his mind, " reunion " implied submission to the Catholic Church. That Church could make no compro- mise as to any doctrine, nor receive any one who doubted any of her teaching, nor modify in any way her grand tenet that the Pope possessed de jure divino the right t) interpret revelation, define doctrine, and govern the Church. The acceptance of that truth was essential and imperative. We have given elsewhere the text of the words used about the Papacy, which the Cardinal must have known will in a special degree repel the average English mind. His Eminence denied that he was opposed to reunion, but admitted that he did not believe any corporate submission of the English to be within the limits of probability. They had become the most individual of races, each man a Pope to himself. "I should like to know whether there be a single parish in the United Kingdom at the present time that would follow its clergyman to submit, I will not say to Rome, but to any other definite authority to which the clergyman might feel per- sonally drawn to transfer his own allegiance." As we have argued elsewhere, it is pleasant to hear a great Roman eccle- siastic speaking out like that, and it will not increase the bitterness between the Churches. Though the Cardinal practically forbids "reunion" in any technical sense, he enables the Churches to understand better each other's posi- tion, and diminishes the suspicion that Rome is keeping back her real ideas. Reunion, she says, implies and includes complete submission to me.
Previous page
