ARCHBISHOP MANNIX AND THE COERCION OF HERETICS.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] Sra,—In the Spectator of March 23rd Dr. Leeper, of Melbourne University, expresses surprise at Archbishop Mannix, the acknow- ledged leader of the Roman Catholic Church in Australia, having publicly "claimed for his Church that it was justified in employ- ing physical coercion in the treatment of heretics." Perhaps the Archbishop is not bound to make such a claim in public, but, as a loyal member of the Latin Church, it appears that he is not at liberty to hold any other view on the matter. So at least I infer from Addis and Arnold's Catholic Dictionary, 1884, p. 446 :— "The power of the Church, according to Fleury, is 'purely spiritual,' and he held with Marsilius that the Pope could employ no corrective punishment of any kind unless the Emperor—i.e., the civil power—pave him leave. From such a view it logically follows that St. Paul ought to have asked the permission of Sergius Paulus before striking Elymas the sorcerer with blind- ness! The overwhelming majority of the canonists take the opposite view—namely, that the Church can and ought to visit with fitting punishment the heretics and the revolter; and since the publication of the numerous encyclical letters and allocutions of the late Pope [i.e., Pins IX.] treating of the relations between Church and State, and the inherent rights of the former, the view of Fleury can no longer be held by any Catholic."
This edition of the Catholic Dictionary bears the imprimatur of
Cardinal Manning.—I am, Sir, &c., D. HAY FLEXING. Edinburgh.
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