The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1900-04-02

o. IL. I.
former lecturer on zoology at ST. Marys
Hospital Medical School and professor of
biology at the University of Luvain long
recognized as the leading scientists within
the Roman Catholic Church in England,
is dead.
The late Or. Mivart was recently in
volved in sharp controversy with Car
dinal Vaughan, Archbishop of Westmin-
ster, growing~out of certain articles he
had contributed 10 the Nineteenth Cen
fury and the FoTnightly Review. He had
demanded from the Cardinal, as proprietor
of the Tablet, the principal Roman Cath
ollc organ in London, an apology for per-
sonal attack made upon him in that pa
per. The Cardinal replied that the mat
Ter was entirely one for adjustment be-
tween the editor of the Tablet and DIR.
Mivart, as he was responsible for neither
the language nor the arguments of the
Tablet. phis was the subordinate feature
OF the controversy. Its principal feature
involved DR. Mivart's views as to the in
SEPARATION of the Scriptures.
sensational article by Prof Mivart
appears in the April North American Re
view, in which he says that the reception
by Cardinal Vaughan of his magazine ar
ticles, showed the Roman Church to be
essentially u petrified and not pro-
gressive church,
Continuing, Prof. Mivart says he was
called upon to declare hts belief in Ger
tain books of the Bible. VA
1T was, of course, absolutely innpossi-
bic for me, or any other scientific man to
sign such formula" he says, unless
it was clearly and publicly known that
L should be free to reject as errors,
statements historically untrue, such as
The account OF the serpent and the tree,
the bringing of animals to Adam to be
named, the tower of Babel that of the
deluge and so on"
Prof. Mivart believed there were Or
rors in the Bible and he wrote to his
Cardinal, asking if by signing the formula
referring 10 the books he would be bound
to accept everything Biblical as fact
1T is very noteworthy" says Prof. Mi
vart, that l could get no authoritative
answer from the Cardinal. The fact was
he dared not answer. He could not allow
that God had inspired men 20 write false
hoods, or that the church had las of
course) misled mankind to the Word
of God for a long succession of con-
turtles"
Prof. Mivart continues: 1T was an
absolute dogma of the church that the
damned are damned eternally; that from
hell there is no possibility of escape, and
that the two kinds of torment in the in-
fernal prison, The torture of loss and the
torture of hell fire, will go on forever.
80 terrible, so revolving doctrine con-
stituted for many Catholics one great trial
of their faith. Some known to me, priests
as well as laity neither could not woald
believe in il. and yet TO deny, or even in
wardly to reject any single dogma of the
Catholic Church was and is simply not 10
be in reality a Catholic at all The hor-
ror of this was, l knew very much felt in
the United States as might be naturally
expected from a people so nationally cen
siderate for and tolerant of the beliefs
both of their fellow citizens and of strang-
ers.
The God ordinarily Catholic theoIogi-
ans would have us adore is represented
as regarding with complacency torments
compared with which burning alive is as
endured by thousands of thousands of
| human beings for a duration which we
can only picture by millions of millions
of years recurring without end.
Such a God we must refuse to wor-
ship and did a being of the kind exist we
should be officially bound, happen what
might, to abhor eXecrate and defy Him.
After mature reflection and many men,
tai struggles | have CONT TO the conclus-
ion that the Roman Catholic Church must
tolerate a Transforming process of evolu-
ticn with respect to many of its dogmas,
or sink by degrees into an effete and in
significant body composed of ignorant
persons, a mass of women and children
and a number of mentally effeminate
men,"