CATHOLIC AND HERETIC PATRONS. CATHOLIC AND HERETIC PATRONS.
HOW many, we wonder, of our readers are old enough to remember the happy old days when the House of Commons had still leisure and taste to spend its Wednesdays in listening to essays from Sir George Lewis. Nowadays, these once pleasant interludes amidst serious business are appropriated to the dull labour of pushing a Government Bill a step further, or disburdening the hearts of the Irish Members. There is no longer any opportunity for doing the House the service which Sir George Lewis knew so well how to render— that of clearing the mind of cant. In the other House, however, such opportunities are still abundant ; and it is impossible to read such a debate as that called forth by the Roman Catholic Patronage Bill without wishing that some one were present among the Peers to play Sir George Lewis's part.
It is almost indispensable to a discussion of this kind that it should turn on a question of no practical moment. If the grievance touched by Lord Barrington's measure involved real hardship to anybody, it would call for redress, and then there would be no room for that philosophical indifference to the result of the debate, which it is so easy to maintain in view of the proceedings on Tuesday. Considering how few Roman Catholics are patrons of livings, and how small is the injury caused by their inability to present to them, we can very well agree with the speakers who urged that, with the prospect before us of a comprehensive measure dealing with Church Patronage as a whole, it is unnecessary to introduce a Bill dealing with only a single incident of the system. Considering again that there is really nothing to be said in favour of the existing law with regard to advowsons held by Roman Catholics, we can afford to criticise quite frankly the bad reasoning which was used in support of a practically sound amendment. When the Archbishop of Canterbury assures us that he has the firmest purpose of framing a scheme which shall be acceptable to both Houses of Parliament, there is nothing to be said in favour of making the very small change proposed by Lord Barrington. But his Grace would have been wiser if he had stopped there. The two arguments he urged in addition only weakened his case. When he said that he could not understand a Roman Catholic desiring to present to a living in the Church of England, he showed less imagination than may fairly be expected even in a great ecclesiastical dignitary. A Roman Catholic patron may very well have the larger part of
the interest in the disposal of a benefice which any Anglican patron can have, and he may have all the interest which a great many Anglican patrons have. If he has any right feeling as regards the parishioners, he will be anxious that the living should be given to a good man—a man who will do his work well, according to his lights. If he is himself resident in the parish he will naturally desire that the incumbent shall be a tolerant man, and not one who is made unhappy by the mere neighbourhood of a Popish family. He may have relations who are in Anglican Orders, and towards them he may feel the same good-will that is felt by a Protestant towards
relations who belong to a different religion. In every one of these respects a Roman Catholic patron stands on precisely the same footing as any other patron. Nor, as regards the first two of them, has he even the satisfaction of knowing that the presentation will fall into hands which can be trusted to make a good use of it. A living in the gift of a Roman Catholic patron falls to the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge in turn, and the Universities are by no means fit bodies to exercise ecclesiastical patronage. A presentation by Convocation or the Senate means much canvassing on the part of the candidate, and much ignorance of the candidate's qualifications on the part of the patrons. It is very much like an election to a voting charity, where persistence and a total absence of inconvenient shyness go further than anything else to determine the result. The Archbishop farther alleged the fundamental character of the differences between the Churches of England and Rome as a reason for ,voting against the Bill. Probably, he did not see the dilemma in which this statement must land him. If the differences between Anglicanism and Roman Catholicism are of a kind which makes it improper for a Roman Catholic to exercise ecclesiastical patronage, does the Archbishop mean that no man should be allowed to present to a benefice unless he belongs to the Church of England? That may be a very reasonable contention in itself, but it is hardly one which will make the passage of his forthcoming Bill more easy. He will find himself confronted by the old difficulty how to define membership of the Church of England, and confronted by it in a specially inconvenient form, as being one that makes failure to come within the definition involve a specific loss of property. If, on the other hand, he is content with the law as it stands, he will, moreover, be committed to the statement that the differences between the Church of England and the Church of Rome are more fundamental than the differences between the Church of England and any other body. It will be inconvenient for the head of an Episcopal Church thus to minimise the difference between Episcopacy and Presbyterianism, or for the head of a Christian Church thus to minimise the difference between Christianity and unbelief. Yet, as the law stands, Roman Catholicism is the one variety of religious or irreligious profession which prevents a man from presenting to a living. There is nothing, for example, to hinder Mr. Bradlaugh from buying as many advowsons as if he were an Evangelical clergyman, and making a Bradlaugh living and the "Bradlaugh trustees" as well known in clerical nomenclature as a Simeon living or the . Simeon trustees. How about " fundamental differences" in this case ?
A more weighty argument against the Bill was urged by the Duke of Argyll. The fault of the existing system is that it presents patronage too much in the light of a property right and not enough in the light of a public trust. The wretched practice of selling next presentations may be responsible for this in a great degree ; but to whatever cause it is due, there can be no question that to many minds the right of presentation appears as simply one among many forms of property. A cure of souls is an office of profit, and as such it is something which a clergyman is willing to buy, and which a layman is able to sell. Nor can there be much doubt that the change proposed by this Bill, if it stood alone, would exhibit patronage still more as a right of property than it is already. As the law stands, one class of persons is excluded from the exercise of this trust on the ground of supposed personal unfitness ; and the apparent object of the Bill is to dismiss personal unfitness as having really nothing to do with the exercise of a property-right. It is true that the law does not exclude certain other classes who are equally or more unfit ; and so long as it omits to do this, the arbitrarily excluded class have a theoretical ground of complaint. But the true way of meeting the difficulty is either to exclude all the unfit classes indifferently from the exercise of the trust, or to surround the exercise of it with such efficient safeguards as to make it a matter of
little importance in what hands it is vested. It is fair to say that Lord Barrington's Bill provided that the person presented by a Roman Catholic patron should be submitted to the Bishop for approval, a security for a proper appointment which exists in no other case of patronage. But the fact remains that this was a proposal to legislate on the subject of patronage from a point of view which presented the property element in it in its most naked form. As such it would have, and ought to have, shocked public opinion, and that is quite enough to justify the postponement of any change in the law until such time as the question can be taken up in its entirety.
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