The Express.
London, England, 1858-10-25 00:00:00

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LONDON, MONDAY, OCT. IL

SPORTING VC /NLLIO ENCR.

4 SPECIAL EDITION of t►. " EXPRESS,•
eintaimdeg the remelts of the day. Ram, im palm-
limbed every evening during the Sporting Beason, at
el: AIDA.

Tiz sezreptitioas baptises and forezble alsdneties
el the little Jewiah lad, eight years old, at Belem,
have aroused a storm of indignation on the Omuta-
seat which will hardly be appeased by the ammo.
. . .

contained to t tholic letter, from Rome that young
MOSTA BA. the interesting ..abject of eeciesiadieel
elooes, is well housed, well fed, and well clothed,
is the College of the Catechumens, to whieh he is
he the peewit consigned. There is a Murder dis-
crepancy in the report of the child's pat-baptismal
condition es we dad it in the oorrespoodenee of an
_ .

altra-Catholie organ at Turin, and in the version
which appear, in a letter Iron Bologna, the birth-
plass and home of MORTARA, published in tha
Debate.

In the former the poor child is presented to oar
contemplation in the shape of a precocious saint, of
small physical but enormous spiritual stature, a
marvel of unctuous docility, a prodigy of exulting
and abounding "grace." The little boy's quick per-
ception, net of the doctrines only, but of the senti-
mentalities of devotion, his readiness of repartee, and
his lofty compassion for the poor unconverted father
and mother who are " miming " him--his childish
prattle and all his little ways and looks—like mew
human parents in the mere earthly home at Bologna,
are edifying and delightful in the extreme. The
boy is persuaded that the Mater Dolorosa, whom
image is over the college gates, is weeping for his
fatter and mother whom he has tried in vain to win
over to the new faith. When the father asks him
to come back home, and reminds him gently of the
words, " Honour thy father and thy mother," we
may suppose the budding saint is a little moved.
Not a jot. "The POP!: responds this ingenuous
Catechumen, "Allows the commandments better than
you er I do: I shall do what the Pori tells am"
This traly crushing reply is no doubt to be accepted by
pins minds as a proof of extraordinary aptitude for
a moor to terminate in canonisation ; but—shall we
etafess t—it grates upon the natural ear; and, in
our ignorant prejudice, we prefer another kind of
" grace " to this.

The lad, we are told, is master of his Catechism,
aad " as Arm is his faith as an apostle ;" " and yet,"
exclaims the correspondent of the Arnsonio," there
" are people who would give back this child of faith
"to the Jews." The other correspondent, however,
writing from Bologna, gives a very different &exeunt
of the poor boy's state. The child was not allowed
to see his father except in the presence of priests ;
but by way of impressing upon his mind the advan-
tage of exchanging an earthly father and
mother far a paternal Pori and a Mother
Church, be wee taken a walk through the
Ghetto, where the destitute children of Israel in
their rage and filth might gaze upon a desk and
shining specimen of Catechumenical cultivatioe,
fresh from the blessing of his Holiness himself.
English Preteetanta, we apprehend, will be en-
able and unwilling to regard :hie solemn kidnapping
exploit of Cardinal VIALE Pant and the enthusi-
astic nursevymaid of Bologna from any other than a
purely sad simply human point of view. We in this
favoured heretical land are happily spared the diffi-
culty of attempting to reconcile the absolute preten-
sions of a Church which knows no salvation formals
beyond its pals, with the common instincts
and affiances of humanity. We sympathies
as cordially as we can with the 'rounded
feelings of sincere end kind-hearted Catholics who,
like the Abbt DILLACOUTURE, insist with painful
fervour that neither canon-law nor seclesiastical
authority eon pretend to over-ride the universal and
'wadable law of nature, and we freely pity those
who need seek an admonition yet our forlorn situa-
tion, as Protestants " beyond the pale," enables es to
avow frankly that in any purely Catholic discussion
11
of the Co., M. VEITILLOT and the Univers appear to
se to have the best of the argument. The Church
has acted in this instance in strict conformity to her
essential dogmas, albeit in flagrant sontradietion to
the spirit of the nineteenth century, in rescuing
the soul of a child from the inevitable alternative of
eternal perditioo, even at the cost of a father's civil
rights, and of • mother's entreaties and protesting
tsars.

The Papa orator whom the amiable Abbil
DnAcorTlTlll quotes with en much effect know
nothing, it should be remembered, of " baptismal
grace" While, therefore, we entirely adopt the
ootelaaions of the Aquas and of the Abbe
Du-scotrruith, we do so, and are only able to do so,
as Protestants ; we can feel for the embarrassment
of an honest human heart at war with login
whether it ban in a priest's Or a layman's
The Abbe DILLACOUTUILZ deprecates with batter
reason sash a scandal to his Church as this
stolen baptism and spiritual violence in an age of
doubtful soquiesosaco rather than of faith ; bat Nis
is no concern of ours. A keen writer in La Prialet
however, probes the question to the quick wins iss
asserts that this isolated Bologna incident is, in fact,
a struggle between the Mach of the middle are
and the reason and enlightenment of the present age;
only the Church la consistent with her claims, whil♦
the nineteenth century is more than half afraid of its
own ecovionoon The Chards holds up bed banner,
and the nineteenth century affects to march under it
while its heart and its intellect are in another asap.
The " reepeetful deference" with which the 11111111 i.
official and anodyne o:mitigations/I has ventured

11111imil