The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1875-02-15
Tn. Religious Controversy in England.


without any apparent necessity or any very
Ineligible object is kept up with vigor on
bota sides. Intelligent Protestants who wish
to understand the merits of this controversy,
and are willing to see what the case Of the
Catholics really is as presented by one
of the very ablest of their champions,
will find DR.. Newman one of the
most courteous, considerate and pleasant
of guides. He is, perhaps, the most ex-
quisitely accomplished master of the English
language among the living authors who write
it. The delightful grace, ease. simplicity and
responsiveness of DR.. Newmans style have
always excited the admiration of those differ
ing most widely from him in sentiment, and
his new book in reply to Mr.. Gladstone, which
he regards as his last, is q model of contro-
versial writing which may be studied with ad-
vantage by disputants in every cause who
would qualify themselves not merely to con-
flute but to convince. DR.. Newman's Catho-
licty is not pitched in very high key, and
perhaps no writer ever SO perfectly under
stood the art of tapering the wedge he intends
to drive to the thinnest possible edge and
prevent 1t from flying back under the heavy
strokes of his beetle. On readers not utterly
impervious to argument DR.. Ncwman's dex-
terously insinuating sincerity makes such gen.
tie and gradual gains that they are carried
along with him further than they are aware;
and he is especially gentle ard persuasive
guide for weak or doubling Catholics, or, as
he calls them, ''the little ones of Christ"
In considering DIR. Newman's positions we
may be pardoned for remark or two on the
chief point in discussion as viewed by American
minds. 1t is not easier for the Protestants than
for the Catholics of this country to see any i'm
pelling necessity for Mr.. Gladstone to stir up
and inHame the slumbering luminosity of reli-
gious sects Why should he have sounded this
sudden note of alarm against the pretensons
of the Pope four years after its ostensible
occasion? The Vatican Council was held in
1870, and if its definition of the Pope's infalli-
bility and jurisdiction is so truly alarming, as
MIR. Gladstone contends, why did he not
sound his trumpet at once while the occasion
was fresh? 1t cannot be pretended that in
these four years the Pope hos done anything
to weaken the tie of allegiance which binds
British subjects to their government. Be the
powers which the Ecumenical Council con-
coded to the Pope greater or less, certain ii is
that they have been as yet mere brutum ful-
men so far as any use could be made of them
in dissolving or weakening the allegiance of
the subjects of Queen Victoria. Pope
Plus TX is bowed down beneath the weight
of years, and after forbearing SO long
to interpose between British subjects and
their sovereign nothing could seem more
visionary and chimerical than fear that this
raise any practical question which would
cause British Catholics to hesitate between
the duties they owe to the head of the State
and the duties they owe to the head Of their
Church.
1t is quite possible that the personal char
acter of the successor of Pope Plus may
cause uneasiness but as neither Mr.. Glad
stone nor anybody can foresee who he will be
it might have been as well for this Don
Quixote of civil allegiance, after waiting four
years since the Vatican Council, to have
stayed his hand few months longer until he
could judge whether the dogma of infallibility
would not prove as harmless in the hands of
Pope Plus successor as in those Of Pope Plus
himself. The recent history Of the Papacy
renders alarm ridiculous, 80 far as political or
civil allegiance is concerned Within the last
few years the Pope has been deprived of his
temporal dominions, has been reduced to the
condition of q subject Of the King of Italy, has
no longer rood of territory over which he can
claim to exercise the rights of political
sovereign and it is in this period of deep
humiliation and political impotence that Mr..
Gladstone feels impelled to raise cry of
alarm against dissolution of British allie
glance!
| If the Pope can absolve subjects from their
civil allegiance why has he not done it in
Italy? It is there, if anywhere, that the in
terests of the Papacy require him to stand on
the extreme boundary of his rights Italy is
Catholic country; its people are nearly
unanimous in acknowledging the spiritual
jurisdiction of the Pope and accepting the
dogma of in!allibility He speaks their Ian
guage, understands their character, has
greater facilities Tor influencing them than for
influencing any other portion of the Catholic
Church. He has for years maintained an
obstinate dispute with the government OF
United Italy. Why, then, has not the Pope
released the subjects of King Victor Emmanuel
from their allegiance? What danger can there
be in England when facts demonstrate that he
is so utterly powerless to control civil alle-
glance even in Italy? 1t seems to the Ameri-
can mind, Protestant as we'll as Catholic, that
the history of Italy since the Vatican
Council refutes and explodes the position
of Mr.. Gladstone by signal reductio ad
absurdum. If the Pope exerts no power over
allegiance in the country of his birth and
residence, in country with whose govern