By a circular read in the Roman Catholic churches on
Sunday evening hurt, Archbishop Manning explained to the faithful of his Church that as both the Immaculate Conception and the In- fallibility of the• Pope had been defined by infallible authority, and the definitions properly published, all "who openly refuse to believe the said doctrines," yet "persist, nevertheless, in calling themselves Catholics," and "give out that they go to confession and go to communion in the Catholic Church," are deceiving the clergy by such practices, and "that in every such confession and communion they commit a sacrilege, to their own greater condem- nation." That is, we suppose, a mild way of drawing the atten- tion of the priests to the fact that the anti-Infallibilists are out of communion with the Church, and cannot be absolved without retracting their disbelief and confessing their sin in persisting in such disbelief. Rome could hardly have done less in such a junc- ture. And the little that is done has a curious air of anxiety and hesitation about it.
