[To nrs EDITOR OP THE " SPECTATOR:1
Si,—You generously allow me a few words of reply "to' substantiate any misrepresentations of my meaning or any perversion of facts." Of the latter there can be surely no question in connection with the Spectator.
Allow me to correct a strange example of the former. My reviewer does not quote the words of my note, which does not
refer to the matter treated in the text. As the note says, it refers to a former review in the Spectator on Mr. Rivington's work, "Authority." Referring to quite a different subject, as any reader can see for himself by turning to a file of the Spectator, this judgment on Dr. Littledale was rightly put in a note, and not in the text.
Again, Cardinal Manning does not "declare that to appeal to history against any doctrinal statement of the Pope is treason and heresy," but states in general that to appeal against a dogma defined by the Church, however defined, to the individual opinion, arrived at by the personal study of any human science, as to a higher Court of Appeal, deserves these c,ensures, if, as the whole work of the Cardinal proves, the voice of the Church is the voice of the Holy Ghost.
Again, Keenan does not say that the doctrine of the infallibility of the Pope is a Protestant invention, but that the assertion in 1855 that it was a defined Catholic dogma was such. Can any one read the passage seriously and doubt to what the word " this " refers ?
Again, I do not misrepresent Mr. Gore on page 77 of my book, but I quote his very words, in which, as I say, "Mr. Gore brings up the invention of an unhappy heretic (Tertullian) as a powerful exposition,' the authority of which is merely reduced' by the unimportant fact that it was concocted by a heretic to prove his heresy."
With "S. T. P.," and with every Catholic I ever met, allow me to say that we Catholics appeal fearlessly to history, to true and certain history, and that any definition of dogma is impossible if its subject-matter be not found in that Verbum Dei Traditum which is history in its most sublime and exalted sense.—I am, Sir, &c.,
[Our reviewer sends us the following remarks on these letters :—" I apologise to Mr. Rivington for having erroneously attributed to him a high opinion of De Marca, who is, however, a Roman Catholic writer of standard authority. Mr. Rivington says that he guarded himself against being supposed to make such a statement' as that Liberius never fell at all.' But Mr. Rivington has recommended to the public, in an Intro- ductory Essay,' a book which he has read with care, and of which he has said, I willingly adopt it as my own also.' (' What are the Catholic Claims ?' p. 19.) In that book (pp.
162, 100), I find the following statements Mr. Rivington, in his new book gives powerful reasons for holding that St. Liberius never fell at all;' These considerations will at once dismiss such matters as the pretended falls of Liberius and Honorius: It is rather bard to blame the Specto.tor for accepting as accurate a statement about Mr. Rivington which it took from a book for which Mr. Rivington has become sponsor, and which he has publicly adopted as his own.' With regard to Father Richardson, I must simply repeat em- phatically that his note on Dr. Littledale points to a historical incident, and that no reader of his book could possibly have divined the explanation which he has since offered. Father Richardson fences with my quotations from Cardinal Manning. The Cardinal holds that there can be no dogmatic decision on faith or morals binding on the conscience without the Pope's sanction, and Father Richardson says a good deal which seems to me highly irrelevant in denying my statement. His explana- tion of Keenan's Catechism ' is certainly a bold experiment on the reader's intelligence. I give Father Keenan's question and answer and Cardinal Manning's statements in parallel columns, and leave the reader to judge for himself as to the trustworthi- ness of Father Richardson's criticisms KBBNAN'S CATECHISM.' "CARDINAL MANNING'S
"Must not Catholics believe VATICAN CouNciL.'
the Pope in himself to be in- " ' The head is always infalli- fallible ? This is a Protestant ble by himself.' He condemns as invention ; it is no article of the errors against the faith the Catholic faith : no decision of theories : 'First, that the joint his can oblige under pain of action of the Episcopate congre- heresy, unless it be received and gated in Council is necessary to 'enforced by the teaching body ; the infallibility of the Pontiff; that is, by the bishops of the secondly, that the consent of
Church.' the Episcopate dispersed is re-
quired; thirdly, that if not the express, at least the tacit assent of the Episcopate is needed.' And this doctrine, before the definition of the Vatican Council,' 'was a doctrine revealed by God, delivered by the universal and con- stant tradition of the Church, recognised in (Ecumenical Councils,' &c. Behold the value of Father Richardson's fearless appeal to history ' !
"Mr. Gore argues, on grounds quite independent of Ter-
tullian, that a certain view about St. Peter's position in the Church has probability on its side, and in a note of less than four lines and a half he says This is Tertullian's view, but his very powerful exposition is reduced in authority by the Montanist animus of the passage,' &e. Father Richard- son, ignoring Mr. Gore's argument in the text, seizes on this note, and declares that he is 'tempted to lose his patience and to ask Mr. Gore where he thinks this trifling with words will lead him to.' He actually informs his readers, in his patronising style, that good, worthy Mr. Gore brings up the invention of this unhappy heretic as a powerful exposition [the italics are Father Richardson's], the authority of which is merely reduced,: &c. I used what seemed to me mild language in characterising this as seriously misrepresenting a reference by Mr. Gore to Tertullian.'"]
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