The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1853-02-22 00:00:00

THE LIVERPOOL STANDARD, TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1853.

ROMISH INTERFERENCE WITH RAGGED
SCHOOLS.

The following latter has ken addressed by the Rev. Dr,
Al'Neile to Mr. Power, a priest in connection with St
Patrick's Roman Catholic Chapel in this town :

SlR,—The mistress of OUT Industrial Ragged School has
addressed a letter to the managing committee, in which she
says that you and one of your brethren visited the school on
Thursday last, and insisted 61 withdrawing some of the chil-
dren on the plea that their faith was in danger, especially
because they were taken to divine service in my church.
After a description which I need not transcribe, she says:—

" I asked Mary to go for a policeman. Finding a different
reception from what they aplarently anticipated, they became
quieter, remarking that theyconsidered a great indignity had
been done them, by sending for a policeman, as they moved
in the position of gentlemen: and considered themselves such.
I answered, that when I me: gentlemen, I expected gentle-
manly conduct, and as their's had been the reverse I had been
necessitated to act as I did. I further said that there were
starving Catholic children onthe streets that it would be better
to look after and care for than to take children from a place
where they were kindly treated, and that the children came
here, we did not go for them and, moreover, it was their neg-
lect of such children that cinsed schools of this kind to be
opened. Mr. Power replied hat it was the souls of his flock
he was anxious about, not :heir bodies, and quoted What
shall it profit a man,' &c. Tee souls of those children in the
streets are not in danger,`bit oh! the souls of those in this
place are in danger,' therefoe we will remove them, and by
this day week there shall notbe a Catholic child in this school,
nor while I am pastor of St. ?atrick's Church shall a Catholic
child be permitted to come li=re."
And near the conclusion of the letter she says,
"About this time Mary ant the policeman appeared. Mr.
Power tried to smile, reloading, ` We are good friends now,
behaving better;' but the other prieo stormed and used some
abusive names towards Mary, ordering her away, and asking
me to do so also. Mr. Power then began to bravado about
what he had done and what he wolld further do, saying, My
name is Power." You have already repeatedly said so,' I
replied. Yes,' lie said, lit is a pcmerful name !' "
This communication from the mietress has been sent to me
by the committee, and I am thereby induced to write you this
letter.

I am aware that I need not, as far as you are concerned,
appeal to the word of God as containel in the Holy Scriptures;
because, although you profess to believe the inspiration of the
Scriptures, you deny that they containa complete rule of faith,
and thereupon appeal to the Church as authorised and infal-
lible interpreter of Scripture.
I shall not now insist upon the fact, that although we know
of men who, in their capacity of indridual witnesses, have
written vs hat we can appeal to in proof of the inspiration of the
sculptures; we do not and cannot knot/ of any men in the ca-
pacity or organization of a Church until we have the Scriptures
first, because it is only in the Scripturesthat we can learn what
a church is. You cannot evade this, txcept by making the
Church bear witness of herself; in wli itt case we apply to the
body what the Head applied to himself—" If I bear witness of
myself, my witness is not true." St. Join v. 31.
But in the present instance I am content to appeal to the
Church.

My faith is the faith of the old Catholic church, represented
by three hundred and eighteen fathers assembled at the Coun-
cil of A'ice, A.D. 325. It is what has ever ince been known as
the Nicene Creed, and received by the whoa Church as resting
on most certain warrants of Holy Scripture.
The same was reiterated at the Council of Ephesus, A.D. 431,
with a decree that it should be lawful for na man to "profess,
write, or compose any other form of faith.'
The same was reiterated at the Council d Chalcedon, A.D.
451, the Bishops exclaiming, "No person nukes any other ex-
position of faith." We neither attempt, not dare to do so."
The same was reiterated in the third sesson of the Council
of Trent, A.D. 1546, the assembled fathers re:iting The Nicene
Creed, and nothing else, as the faith of the Church.
The Nicene Creed is my creed, the creed of the branch of
Christ's Holy Catholic Church in this realm of England. How
comes it, then, that you differ from us; and inso doing declare
yourself a dissenter from the decrees of Nice, Yphestis, Choice-
don, and Trent ?*

The reason is, that you have unfortunately embraced a new
creed put forth by the Bishop of Rome after the middle of the
sixteenth century. It was published as a crced for the first
time, on the 9th of December, 1564.
This new creed contains all the points of controversy between
the Church of Christ and the Church of Rome—the Church of
Christ as she was from the beginning, and the Church of Rome
as she has been for the last three hundred years.
This new creed contains all the differences between you and
me,—between what you teach and what I teach. What you
hold in common with the Church from the beg:nning, I hold
also. Confine yourself to the faith of the old Clare!), and you
and I will agree.

But all that is peculiar to your faith is new. Of course you
will deny this. Well ! To the proof. I have given you chap-
ter and verse for my faith.
And I hereby invite you, I will not say challenge ; the word
sounds harshly, and I neither feel nor mean to express any
harshness ; but I give you a fair opportunity to show, if you
can, when and where the Church--not some heretical individual
or individuals, observe, but the Church, when and where the
CHURCH—ever proclaimed as her faith, any one of the twelve
articles which I, as a Catholic, reject, and which you as a post
Tridentine Romanist, a follower of the novelties of the 16th
century, maintain.

When I call them novelties, you will observe it is as articles
of faith in the Church. Ido not deny that individuals, in the
exercise of their private judgment, held and wrote many of
them at a much earlier age—indeed I think it is easy to trace
some of them to the Heathen schools of Pythagoras and Plato.
These philosophers taught the sinfulness of matter, the holi-
ness of abstaining from certain meats, the super-angelic sanc-
tity of celibacy, and that the departed spirits of the illustrious
dead were mediators between the gods and men. 1n their
gropings without revelation they knew no better ;—but I do
deny distinctly that the Catholic Church of Christ ever embo-
died any of them in her creed, or that they were ever set forth
by authority for subscription by the clergy until after the
Council of Trent had finished its sessions, and the Pope saw
that something more pointed than the wordy decrees of that
council was required to stay the progress of the Reformation.
Come, then, the press is open, public opinion is alive, more
alive to this subject than it has been for many years, if you
can show that your distinctive- creed is the old creed, do so.
and you will prove yourself better entitled to the name you
seem to be so proud of, than by any conversation, however
triumphant, with a poor school-mistress.
If you cannot do this, if you cannot show that your faith,
where it differs from mine, is older in the Church than 1564,
you will scarcely, I think, be able to justify yourself in the
eyes of the people of England, in taking a poor sick woman
out of her bed and compelling her IT your threats to go out
in a cold winter day to demand her child from a school where
the old Catholic Nicene faith is the religion taught to all the
pupils.

You will scarcely justify yourself in the assertion that the
souls of children in the streets are not in danger, but the souls
of children learning the old Catholic faith are in danger—in
other words, that ignorance, and vice, idleness, blasphemy,
and crime, the teaching of the streets, do not endanger the
soul, but learning the word of God, ano the creed of the
Catholic Church does.

You will, however, he a competent witness to prove that
ignorance and vice, idleness, blasphemy, and crime, do not
separate men from the modern Church of Rome, but that
acquaintance with Catholic truth does.

This is the sore place. To separate souls from God costs
Rome little, but to separate people from herself costs her
much.

Therefore, she can forgive profaneness, and Sabbath-break-
ing, and theft, and adultery, and murder ; for these she has
easy penances, and easy payments, but she cannot forgive
what she calls heresy; for this she has dungeons, and tortures,
and death.

The people of England were sluw to believe this. They
thought it too monstrous to be true. But facts are forcing
upon them the painful conviction, and you are adding your
feeble note to the sound which has issued from the prison-
house of the Madiai.

You may treat this letter as many of your reverend brethren
have treated similar letters from members of our true Catholic
Church; but, be assured, your silence will be ascribed, even
by your own people, not to contempt, nor to the conscious dig-
nity of strength and truth, hut to the novelty of your distinc-
tive creed, and your utter inability to defend in the light the
unscriptural traditions which you are teaching the ignorant in
the dark.

In conclusion, unless you can disprove the statements of
this letter, not by mere assertion, but by documentary evi-
dence, I charge you, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, not
to presume to withdraw immortal souls from the teaching of
the Church of God, into a conventicle set up by the Bishop of
Rome in the year 1564.

Waiting yoiir reply, and hoping that you will have the honest
boldness, either toprove yourself right, or to acknowledge your-
self wrong, I am, Sir, a priest (in the sense of rpEollurEpoc,
i Peter v. 1., for there is not, and cannot be upon earth a
priest in the sense of hpEvc, ie a sacrificing priest, Heb.
viii. 4, our sacrifice is ONE, once offered, and our priest is ONE,
once entered into the true holy place, as our faith is ONE ; but
in the sense of presbyter, I am, Sir, a priest) of the Catholic
Church, HUGH M'NEILE.
Aigburtb, 15th Feb., 1853.

* DECREE OF THE COUNCIL OF EPHESUS,

"These things having been read, the Holy Synod decreed,
that it should be lawful for no one to profess, to write or to
compose, any other form of faith than that defined by the
Holy Fathers, who, with the Holy Ghost, had been assembled
at Nice."

" But those who shall have dared to compose, or to profess
or to offer, any other form of Faith to those wishing to be con-
verted to the acknowledgment of the truth, whether from
Paganism, or from Judiasm, or from any sort of Heresy, that
these, if they were Bishops or Clergymen, that the Bishops
should be deposed from their Episcopacy, and the Clergy from
their Clerical office ; but that if they were Laymen, they should
be subject to an ' anathema.' "—Mansi, vol. iii. p. 130.