Tar, CHURCH OF ROME- IN SCOTLAND.
AMYSTERIOUS announcement has been made during the week to the effect that a Roman Catholic Hierarchy is; after all, not to be at once established in Scotland. It is said that certain difficulties have been encountered in carrying out the project, and that Cardinal Manning, who is now in Rome, has been authorised by the Pope to treat with the English Government, and to make such compromise as may be ex- pedient. We doubt the latter half of the report. It, in fact, carries its own refutation with it. It is not the first fiction which has been launched respecting the creation of a Roman Catholic Hierarchy in Scotland. We were lately assured that the Pope had sent to the Queen an autograph letter thanking her for "the permission" which she had given to the proposal to create territorial bishoprics. This preposter- ous statement by-and-by shrank into the news that the Pope had thanked the Queen for the tolerance shown to Catholics living under British rule, and had mentioned his inten- tion to re-establish the Catholic hierarchy ; and it is quite possible that the rumour about the pause in the measures taken for the re-establishment of the Catho- lic, hierarchy is only correct in so far as that purely personal difficulties, with which the Khedive has as much to do as our Government, have arisen. It is alleged that a party represented by Cardinal Manning are desirous of placing in the Scotch Archiepiscopal See Monsignor Capel, or some other eminent ecclesiastic who is not a Scotchman ; that the present Bishops object to this ; and hence the fact that the completion of the' scheme was not announced at the Consistory held the other day. Whatever be the cause of the hitch, there is no reason, so far as Scotland is concerned, why the Romish hierarchy should not be .re-established. No one, except Dr. Begg and Dr. Wylie, cares a straw about the prospect of gentlemen with outlandish titles, such as Abila, Abnazarba, or Nicopolis, changing them for homely designations. To be sure, in 1851 the people of Scotland, like their neighbours, gave way to a fit of folly. Public men and eminent divines• raved away about the dreadful consequences of substituting bishops with real sees for Vicars Apostolic, and the few courage- ous editors who dared to stem the tide and speak sensibly were warned that they must join in the rant about "No Popery," or lose their readers. On both sides of the Tweed, however, people havehecome ashamed of the hubbub and scare of 1851. The ordinary Scotch Presbyterian will hardly believe that there ever was a time when the Edinburgh Divinity students flocked to the' Waterloo Rooms, to hoot down the-Roman Catholic citizens who had met to protest against the calumnies which were heaped upon them. Some timid people have talked mysteriously- about the effects of introducing the Canon Law into Scotland, in a way which leaves it problematic whether they believe it will enhance the taxes or the price of the quarters-loaf. Dr. Begg, we believe, affects to see in the proposed revival of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in Scotland a new danger to the' country; but this veteran is the only person apparently much frightened, and even he seems to sound a note of rather in deference to a habit on the part of warlike ecclesiastics of the North -to use strong language on very slight provocation, than from any very genuine or deep terror.
We.onl,y hope.,that the new Bishops will not differ too much from-the Vicars-Apostolic and their coadjutors of the present and other days. There is no reason why they should. A Vicar-Apostolic is as much, and in fact more under the in- fluence. of- Rome than the diocesan bishops are. The new diocesan bishops will be, for the most part, the present Bishops with new titles. There is indeed a fear that an early effect of the system may be to introduce a class of bishops of a more- Ultramontane cast than has hitherto been common in Scot- land. It is to be anticipated that the change will ultimately be for the benefit of freedom of life among Scotch Catholics ; but the immediate application of the new system may be the reverse. We sincerely hope that the new diocesan bishops, all whoever they may be, will not labour to file away and efface those peculiarities which distinguished, and still do in aslighttles .- gree distinguish, the Scotch Roman Catholies from their Engliak. and Irish brethren. This -is a portion 'of Scotch life' which has never been fully or fairly described. No novelist has,, so- fir,: as we knew, ever drawn his materials largely from the richit materials which the history, habits, and life of the Scotch Catholic ! might yield: Scott knew little of the northern glens inwhiehe Catholicism hid and led a precarious existence-after the Reforms,- Lion: He has therefore told us little of its work-a-dayexistencer It is only lately that Scotch Catholicism has• emerged from its,1 obscurity, and revealed its real nature and proportions to Pro. teetants. For more than a century and a half it owed its ex- istence to its apparent insignificance. The position of a Catho- lic in the middle of last century in Scotland was in theory% worse even- than it was in Ireland. He existed on.sufferancei;; By an old law, which was always- dangled -before the eyes DV Roman Catholics whenever they were restless, they were•botuur to leave the Kingdom unless they subscribed the Confession of Faith. Presbyteries might summon before• them suspected Papists, and Protestant relatives might take into their .own,' hands the education of children bred up in the Roman Catholic faith. But in point of fact, the Scotch Catholic was not the caput lupinum which the law considered him to be. He pur- chased immunity by obscurity ; he was not persecntatV just because he was- heartily despised. Occasionally, a "habit and repute" priest was put in prison, or the true/ owner of an estate was harassed by a Protestant claimant...
But these were exceptions ; and if. the Catholics in last:: century kept in the background, they were not the victims of: the harsh law, and suffered only rough social persecution. The . Roman Catholics of Edinburgh, for example, worshipped in re-+ tirement in Blackfriars' Wynd, at no great distance frona:thet place where the General Assembly sat, and they had-to fear ! nothing except a sudden visitation from a surly Edinburgh, mob.
It has been the lot of 'the Roman Catholics in; Scotland to• have the services of one or two able and high-minded . bishops bishops' who, by the way, have not got half enough of honour for their Church, By far the most •eminent of: them was John Hay, Bishop of Dahlia, to whom' Romano Catholicism in North Briton owes more than it does to • all, the rest of its prelates put together. His devotional/ worke,c " The Sincere Christian" and " The Devout Christian ".—de-t votional catechisms, if we may use the phrase,--have been.. household books in Catholic families for nearly a century, and as new editions of them are produced, it is not unlikely that-) the name of "good Bishop Hay" will be remembered for! many years to come. A metaphysician, an ardent admirer a Reid, the author of an elaborate reply to Hume's " Essay, on; Miracles," an able administrator, a man of scientifac attain.; ments, and possessed of a wide knowledge' of men and, thingep he was the first Roman Catholic prelate in Scotland who, led Protestants to' ,think of his Church as no insignificant body.: During the seven-and-thirty years of his episcopal life he saw a scattered, obscure sect grow into a powerful. community. His attainments commanded the -respect of men when-had the profoundest contempt for. " the trafficking Jesuits'" who stealthily ministered to their flocks in Lochaber or Badenoch..; His charity and geniality secured the reluctant esteemof acrid: Presbyterians, who were apt to fancy that• a bishop wait little better than a Papistical limb of Satan: Bishop Hay was the representative of a very-ram ..typerofi Bishop,—a type perhaps impossible in these days4 and we fear that the old type of parish. priest• common a quarter: of a century ago is vanishing also. The training, of the-yormic aspirants to the priesthood in these days was• peculiar. At a very-early age—in fact, when almost children theywexe placed in the preparatory college of Scalan, or St. Mary's, at ,Blairso They there went through' a course of study, chiefly, literary and theological. They acquired a fair knowledge of Latin and of a vague something called rhetoric: When,they had completed the curriculum, they were sent to .then Scotch College' .at Rome, to Douai, Rheims, or Valladolie1.3 They returned, after an absence of many years, to-be pastor* perhaps, in their own • native valleys:. Some of them: sank into red-faced, jolly peasants, too fond of toddyr and loud; boisterous jokes. But others became the trusty secu• lar as well as spiritual advisers of 'their flocks. They returned to an Inverness village or clachan with manners refined by contact with good society abroad, and their de-; meanour sometimes very favourably contrasted with that of the parish minister, who had, stepped at a few strides from! the plough-tail to the pulpit. Their long residence abroad familiarised them-with modern languages ; and it was not un- common to find in a remote glen in Invernesshire or Banff, shire a priest " passing rich on fifty pounds " a year who could talk fluently French, Italian, and Spanish. They might be learned or ignorant, boorish or refined, bigots or latitudinarians, but one virtue was important in their station,—they must be hospitable, boundlessly hospitable. How it was all managed we know not—how the miserable pittance allowed the priest enabled his housekeeper to keep open table was a mystery ; but it was done, and after mass might be seen streaming into the priest's house a crowd of worshippers,—farmers who had driven fourteen miles to chapel in the morning, maid-servants who had walked almost as many without shoes, and every one, in short, who desired victuals or gossip. How the table was spread with bread, eggs, and coffee nobody perhaps knew ; but all took it for granted that • it was but a part of a pastor's duty to feed those who had come many miles to his ministrations. The talk at these gatherings was not uninteresting or common-place. The priest stopped discussing some points of topographical detail respecting Madrid or Rome with the Catholic landowner of the district, to question some farmer about his crops or his sons. He kept up the conversation, and drew all into it, as only one could do who had mingled much with all classes, who had travelled and seen much, and who had learned tact and the social amenities in commerce with people of many countries.
The Scotch priests of the old school were repaid by the fidelity of their flocks, who looked to them for help and advice in regard to all matters, temporal and eternal, and who, indeed, often ascribed to them almost magical powers. We doubt much whether the new race of priests is altogether equal to the old which we describe. We fear that it is rarer than it was to find in remote glens a highly-educated gentleman in the closest relationship with his flock, at home in all circles, and inculcating charity and friendliness to all, Protestant as well as Catholic. It is questionable whether the ranks of the priesthood are fed, as they once were in Scotland, by families belonging to the upper middle-class, with whom it had been a tradition for centuries to devote some of their sons to the Church. We rather fear that the Scotch Roman Catholic priesthood is not much distinguishable from the Irish or the English.
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