[TO T1113 EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.")
Sin,—Your able correspondent, "An Irish Catholic," has sub- stantially vindicated Catholic honour in both the sister countries from Mr. Gladstone's insinuations. But his vindication of Irish Catholics in his last letter has been so conspicuous and so com- plete, that I would ask to be allowed a few words by way of sup- plement to the generous work he has done for English Catholics.
Amongst the assailants of "An Irish Catholic" "An Outsider" has made himself conspicuous, if not for knowledge of his subject, at least for dogged adherence to his brief. His position against "An Irish Catholic" is, as I understand it, just this :—Mr. Gladstone is justified in his charges against the Catholic Church because, when all is said and done, there is now extant in the British Museum a "Declaration and Protestation," dated 1789, signed by the four Catholic Vicars-Apostolic and a very large number of Catholic clergy and laity, wherein Papal Infallibility is repudiated in these terms :—" We acknowledge no infallibility in the Pope," which "Declaration" does not carry on the face of it any connection with persons calling themselves "Catholic Dis- senters," and above all, which has never been formally retracted, —an awkward fact, I admit, and when brandished with the stub- born pertinacity of "An Outsider" by no means ineffective. On the other hand, "An Irish Catholic," has shown that Parliament in 1791 deliberately rejected an oath containing a repudiation of Papal Infallibility in favour of one which makes no mention of it. I may add that, in deference to Catholic scruples, Parliament also modified the clause which repudiated any power in the Pope where- by civil matters could be indirectly affected. The discussions in Par- liament, as well as their practical issue, prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that Parliament did not ground its legislation upon any supposition that English Roman Catholics had repudiated Papal infallibility; neither did it understand them to have done so. The Archbishop of Canterbury, in the debate in the Lords, speaks even of the strong language of the "Catholic Oath," as denying the infallibility of the Pope, "except in spiritual matters," —i.e., as not denying it at all in our sense of the term. (" Hansard," Vol. XXIX.) Whatever may have been the representative character of the "Declaration" of 1789, I am at a loss to see how it can be "binding," as Mr. Gladstone pretends. It was never published by authority, it was never presented in any form to Parliament, except so far as the "Catholic Bill" may be taken to represent it. Within a few months of its being drawn up, those who had signed it were in open and fierce conflict as to its meaning, and with other literary curiosities, it found its natural tomb in the British Museum. If the Museum copy has no reference to "Catholic Dissenters," for which I take "Outsider's" word, Dr. Milner's copy, which I have now before me, has the following title :—" The Declaration and Protestation signed by the English Catholic Dissenters in 1789, with the names of those who signed it.-1791." The Catholic Committee adopted the title subsequently to the signing of the document, to the intense disgust of many who had signed it, probably at the same date—June 26, 1789—when,. having moulded the "Declaration" into the form of an oath without consulting the Bishops, they published it in " Woodfall's Register." This oath was at once condemned by the four Vicars- Apostolic in an Encyclical, dated October 21, 1789, which re- ceived Papal confirmation, and all such unauthorised proceedings
prohibited ; and in a letter of the same date, addressed to the Committee, the Bishops denounce the obnoxious title of "Catholic
Dissenters." When the oath began to be pressed in Parliament, three of the Vicars-Apostolic condemned it afresh in an Ency- clical, dated January 19, 1791, and expressed their disapproval "of the appellation given us in the Bill, and of three provisos therein contained." These three clauses, I gather from Bishop Horsley's speech and Dr. Miler's "statement," were,—(1) the condemnation as "un-Christian, &c.," of the doctrine of the
deposing power ; (2) the denial of any power in the Pope capable of indirectly effecting civil matters ; (3) the denial of the exist- ence of any spiritual power capable of dispensing from certain oaths —very delicate points these, on which Catholics more politic than
scrupulous would surely have held their tongues. Well might Lord Rawdon speak of these scruples on the part of Catholics as affording "a proof of their detestation of that dangerous doctrine which bigotry had imputed to them, namely, that of mental re- servation" (" Hansard," Vol. XXIX.). By what fiction, I ask, could the Pope, whatever may have been his own private Ultramontane
pretensions, have been laid under the obligation of formally con-
demning this "Declaration," under pain of committing a fraud against the British Government ? Was it not amply sufficient
that the Holy See condemned it in the form of the "Catholic
Oath," the only form in which Government was concerned with it ? So much for the question of fraud.
It remains to be considered how far the "Declaration" repre- sents the repudiation not merely as non-obligatory, but as false, on the part of those who signed it, of the doctrine defined at the Vatican Council, viz., that the Pope, speaking "ex eathedri I," is infallible. I have no hesitation in saying that the "Declaration" does nothing of the kind, and I call two witnesses to prove that those who signed the "Declaration" rejected Papal Infallibility, not as it was held within the Church, but as it was misrepresented outside it. The Rev. Mr. Reeve, a strong partisan of the Com- mittee, writing when the "Catholic Oath" was still before Par- liament, speaks thus :— "The Pope's Infallibility is exhibited in such exotic colours, and dis- torted in so strange a manner, that it bears no resemblance with anything- ever known to Catholics by the name of 'Infallibility.' To justify the assertion, we need but present it [Papal Infallibility] in the shape in which it has been drawn by a Protestant pen, and offered to us in the- public protestation we signed. The Pope's Infallibility is there intro- duced under the notion that we believe the Pope can do or command nothing wrong ; and that by the principles of our religion, we therefore hold implicit obedience, as it is pretended, to be due from us to all
orders of the Pope, whatever they may be Such is the description given by Protestants of the Pope's Infallibility, and such is the precise. object which, under that appellation, we are called upon to disclaim."
Of the Ultramontane tenet as really held, he remarks, "ATE affirmative or its negative may be held with equal safety to the State."
Mr. Francis Plowden, writing also in 1791, in the name of those who, having signed the "Declaration," refused the "Oath," says that he signed, and would sign again, the rejection of Papal Infallibility in the Protestant sense, to which sense the immediate- context of the rejecting clause, as it stands in the Declaration, limits it ; but that he cannot sign the oath which exliibits the re- pudiation of Papal Infallibility in an isolated clause, and so, abso- lutely. He cannot do this "because the words convey a sense, and go to an extent to which no Catholic is warranted in carrying a denial of the doctrine," and "would operate to exclude a great number of worthy and respectable Catholics" holding the Ultra- montane doctrine ; moreover, the infallibility of the Church implies that its head must have "some infallibility in him."* lEE truth, the Gallicanism of the English Catholics of those days was, if you except a few lawyers and clerical literati, of the mildest description, and quite such as amid the events of the last eighty years, without any "violence or change of faith," might have ripened into what Mr. Gladstone calls " Vaticanism."—I
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