The Sun.
London, England, 1866-02-14 00:00:00

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Archbishop Manning's Pastoral.

The following is the Pastoral given in extenso,
precisely as it was read at all the Catholic
churches of the metropolis on Sunday morning
last :

HENRY EDWARD, by the Grace of God and the
Favour of the Apostolic See, Archbishop of
Westminster, to the Clergy, Secular and Regular,
and the Faithful of the said Diocese,
Health and Benediction in the Lord.

Reverend and Dear Brethren, and Dear Children I
in Jesus Christ,—The season of Lent calls us home
to our own hearts. It is the time in which the
Church takes account with its children, and bids
them examine their state before God. All the
year round we are busy and abroad, each one in
his calling, worldly or sacred. Our hearts are full
of it, and we are drawn off from ourselves. Lent
is a time of grace, not only to you who are serving
the world, but to us also who are serving at the
altar. If the dust of earthly things settles upon
your hearts, the handling of holy things has its
higher danger for us. Pastor and flock, we have
all alike need to enter into ourselves, and year by
year to renew our peace and union with God. Lent
then is a kind of retreat for all. The Church
preaches to us, and lays on us the precept of Con-
fession and Communion. There is a wise fore-
sight and a delicate precaution in this obligation.
As the Sacrament of Penance is necessary to sal-
vation for all those who have sinned morally after
Baptism, and as the Church cannot know who are
or who are not in the state of Baptismal Grace, it
lays upon all its children the obligation of confes-
sion once a year. To those who are in union and
peace with God it is a precept not light only but
sweet : to those who are out of grace it is a precept
of absolute necessity. By this means the Church
provides that all its children shall pass, year by year,
through the sacrament of reconciliation, and so abide
in or be restored to the peace of God. And in order
that this may be done, not in word or in name only,
but in deed and in truth, the Church has instituted
these sacred forty days as a preparation for our
Easter duties, and for the commemoration of our
Lord's Passion.
In the season of Lent the Church calls us to the
three evangelical good works—Fasting, Alms, and
Prayer. But it is not necessary that we should
now dwell upon these primary truths of religion.
We will, therefore, make three applications of these
precepts, very needful at this moment. We would
urge upon you to learn, from the precept of Fasting,
the duty of a habitual restraint upon all forms of
needless indulgence : from Alms, the duty of giv-
ing your own personal service to our Lord and
His poor : and from Prayer, the worthy use of the
infinite gifts of the Blessed Sacrament, by which the
presence of Jesus abides always with us.
I. The precept of Fasting, then, is of divine in-
stitution. Jesus fasted as our example, and His
example is our law. He had no need of the dis-
cipline of Penance ; nor in His deified humanity
were there passions or affections needing to be
subdued. They were in perfect measure and har-
mony with His deified will, and with the Divine
law. In us they are in perpetual conflict, both
with our inferior will and with the will of God. The
rebellions of the body break in upon the soul.
Pride, anger, sloth, and the like, are fed by the
pampering of the body. Delicacy, softness, indul-
gence of appetite and palate by meat and drink,
fastidious taste and carefulness in seeking its
gratification, as well as excess in quantity—all
these things deaden the soul, and subject it to the
body. We are not now speaking of gluttons or
of drunkards, of whom it is written they " shall
not possess the kingdom of God." Fasting is not
intended only for them, but for all ; for those also who
by refined indulgence of themselves make the spiritual
power of the soul heavy, or feeble. The Holy Scrip-
tures describe the Christian as a " spiritual man ;"
that is, one in whom the spiritual life, intelligence,
powers, affections, faculties, instincts, activity sopre-
dominate over the body, its senses and its impulses,
that the body obeys him as a servant and an instru-
ment. Such have been always the state and cha-
racter of the disciples of Jesus Christ ; especially
of those whom we recognise as saints. It is not
difficult from this to understand what is the un-
spiritual man. It is a man in whom the body pre- i
dominates over the soul—sometimes grossly, some-
times with refinement. The civilisation of our age
is too fastidious to be gross, but it is subtle enough
to be intensely unspiritual. The action of material
civilisation over the mind is to hold its faculties I
down in the closest contact with the merely natural
operations of the intellect and the will. As an ex-
ample of unspiritual man, we may take the whole
multitude of men of the world who treat the super-
natural as visionary and fanatical ; or, again, the
men of intellect, who place the perfection of man in
the use and enjoyment of his natural powers ; or
who construct for themselves a Christianity of com-
mon sense, with self-confidence as its motive, and
contemplation of its own heroism as its reward ;
a kind of Christian Paganism, formed on the model
of the Greek magnanimity, and the Roman endur-
ance of danger and enterprise.
To all such men the precept of Fasting appears
to be a wrong done to nature. They would con-
demn excess as a degradation ; but to deprive the
body of its food for a time, or to deny its palate, or
to mortify its delicacy, is, to them, a violation of
the rights of nature, which claims its full satisfac-
tion in every faculty and appetite.
The Church, in the precept of fasting, exercises a
vigilant care that a sufficiency of food shall be taken
to sustain not only life, but health. So great is its
consideration and care in this respect, that before
Lent in every year it mitigates by Dispensation the
rigour of the Forty Days' Fast. On four of the
seven days, in order to sustain health and strength,
it permits, even to those who are bound to fast, the
use of meat, and on all days, with few exceptions,
it gives certain relaxations which, as they are con-
tained in the usual Indult attached to its Pastoral,
we need not specify. It may, however, clear some
doubts which have at times been raised to add a few
words.

1. All persons, from the age of reason to twenty-
one years, or who are over sixty years of age, or
who can earn their bread by labour, are bound by
the law of the Church to abstain, but not bound to
fast.

2. All persons, from the age of twenty-one years
to sixty, except those who earn their bread by labour,
are bound to fast.

3. All persons not bound to fast are bound, on
Fasting Days, to follow the quality of the food
allowed on those days as the chief meal of those
who are bound to fast, but they are not limited as
to the quantity nor as to the time or frequency of
their meals.
4. All persons bound by the law as above to fast,
borutduisnpaebnlseedb
by reason of health, may be exempted
deen:diet XIV. expresses it ob legiti-
mam causam et
Confessor
medici consilio : that is
to say, their
heaithobr.has power to dispense them,
the reason of
The latter clause has
certified by a Physician.
confessor
alicflouble value, inasmuch
o
as it relieves both the )
by
and the penitent
from doubt and hesitation,
proper
remitting the judg-
ment of the cause to the
vonefboth authority, whose
that the
decision may assure the conscience
dispensation is neither granted outoof too
t
facility nor asked from self-indulgence.great
It is, therefore, a contradiction of the mind
and
intention of the Church to endanger either life
health by fasting. Nevertheless, the Church would
d
have us learn that the quantity and quality of food
necessary for life and health is far less and far
simpler than the world pretends. It trains its chil-
dren to use food wisely, for the end designed by the
Creator, that is to sustain healthy and vigorous life;
it teaches us that lle created all things with their
qualities of sustenance or of sweetness, to be used
not sourly and sadly, but with gladness, and with
singleness of heart, because " Every creature of
God is good, and nothing to be rejected that is
received with thanksgiving, for it is sanctioned

by the word of God and prayer." Nevertheless,
it trains us to be indifferent as to what is set
before us; not to be in bondage to the palate,
Or to niceties of choice ; to be masters over
ourselves, able to deny ourselves in little things ;
and, in the midst of an abundance, to set apart
something for those who hunger and thirst.