On Tuesday M. Paul Sabatier delivered at the Passmore Edwards
Settlement the first of three lectures on the Liberal, or "Modernist," movement in the Roman Catholic Church. He began by pointing to the extraordinary contradictions within the Church, and drew a contrast between the reproba- tion of honest historical inquiry and the approval of behaviour like that of M. Montagnini in Paris. "If a priest was led". (we quote from an excellent translation in the Times) "by his studies to have new views on the date or the author of certain Biblical books, authority brandished the thunderbolt; but if the very representative of that authority employed for years methods of espionage and deletion which would provoke the contempt of schoolboys, it all seemed normal and legitimate." The Curia was already embarrassed because the lists of those suspected of Modernism reached a terrifying length. Every- where in the Roman Church there were souls in anguish, and they longed to prostrate themselves before the Pope, confess their mental troubles, and be comforted. But they knew that he would not understand them. The true courage was to remain in the Church; and the day would certainly come when the father of the family would be deserted by the mercenaries who now served him so ill and would recall those for whom to-day he had only looks of anger.
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