The morning star and Catholic messenger. [volume] (New Orleans [La.]) 1868-1881, 1875-11-21
The Guibord Question.

| The Times, Of Friday last, in response to
an enquirer, gives a synopsis of the Guibord
case, from which it leaves out two i'm
portant items; the frst, that Guibord died
excommunicated; the second, that the
cemetery was a consecrated one. Yet these
are the two items that control the case.
Mr.. Guibord had been, but was no longer.
Catholic. and the cemetery was as much
holy ground as 10 q church. People have to
be buried in cemeteries and, therefore, lots
have to be sold, but in many cases they are
sold subject to well known conditions.
Thus every Catholic knows that no one but
Catholic can be buried in consecrated
ground, and when he buysa lot in such a
cemetery it is with the clear understanding
that his own remains cannot be buried
there unless he die Catholic. This con-
d1tion may not, perhaps, be expressly
stipulated in the act of purchase, bat if
such bigoted nonsense as that of the
Queens Privy Council in the Guibord
AFFAIR is to be taken as precedent, such q
clause will have to be introduced. Hitherto
mere decent regard for property and good
faith has suficed to have this understand
ing respected.
Now in such matters there can be but
two questions: first, has the Church the
right, toithout appeal, of Recommending
her members Z second, can she have sacred
places set apart for the exclusive use of her
members living or deceased
AS regards the ultimate power of excom-
munication, no one who is willing to let the
Church exist will deny it because the
possession of such power is one of the
dogmas of the Church, as much as is the
dogma of the Trinity or the Incarnation.
Whoever, therefore, denies the power of
the Church to recognize her own worthy
members and to proclaim as foreign ele-
ment whatever is dead and decayed, might
as we'll deny to her the right to teach
Characterization or Purgatory. If the
Church does not know her own members,
but must be controlled in that knowledge
by Court or Privy Council, she is no longer
the Catholic Church. She has erred in all the
past ages, and her infallibility is gone for
ever. Therefore any pretense by Govern
ment of right to interfere in questions of
membership would be an attack on a vital
point of the Church. 1t would be as direct
persecution as that of Diocletian or Nero
which required Christians to cease wor-
shipping Jehovah and to substitute Jupiter.
The age is hardly ready for this, outside of
the dominions of Bismarck.
Now as to consecrated places, what diff
fculty can there be If the Church may
possess a church building where her con-
grave yard on the same footing3 If only
members are entitled to admission within
the walls of the sanctuaries, why not apply
the same rule to cemeteries 2 If a man
may place the remains of any one, at his
own option, in his tomb because it belongs
to him, why may he not insist on the occu-
pancy of pew in a church because it be-
longs to him, although he have in the mean
time lost membership and become scandal
to the hock7
If civil government in any country is de-
! termined to claim any such supervisory
power over the internal affairs of religion
it cannot be prevented. The power of the
sword is with the State. But it would be
a small and contemplate use of that power,
and, withal, a barren one. The CAurch
would simply stop consecrating her ceme-
teries and temples. She could worship in
places consecrated in the eyes of the civil
power by being private property. The
State could not interfere as against private
rights without Introducing an element of
tyranny that would be too far.reaching to
escape popular Odium.
State interference with Church preroga-
tives in the matter of public worship and
burial, would therefore be a despicable
little piece of despotism, without sufficient
fruit of evil in it to compensate for the
disgust which it's meauness would create.
But the Guibord case leaves Queen Victo-
ria and her Privy Council in just that pos
ition of a pitiful meauness which can do no
great harm except to the reputation of it's
own perpetrators.