The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1902-05-10

| DO you deny that her whole worship
( consists of empty forms and idle cere-
monies?"
"Of course L do. But be so good as
to specify what you call an empty
form, or an idle ceremony
THE light of nature teaches us thai
God is not wOrshiped by mere show
! by vain pomp and parade. and that
no worship can be acceptable to him
| which is not real, in spirit and il
| truth
Granted; proceed
Your bowings and genuflections
| your fasts and your feasts, are a vain
| mockery, if merely external, and the
heart be far from God"
No doubt of it: proceed
Confessions to a priest external
acts of penance, the repretition of pa
tiers and ayes, and even the giving of
aims, are vain illusions, and have no
power to purge the conscience if there
be not genuine repentance, deep and
pungent sorrow for sin
Nothing in the world more true;
proceed"
The heart must be right; there must
be internal holiness or all our outward
worship will avail us nothing
LAS true as preaching. Go on"
HIS is enough. Ill tOHCeIlIIIS ILLS
much, you condemn your church,
How SOP"
Because all she enjoins is outward,
formal, mechanical, addressed to the
senses and imagination, requiring no
internal purity and holiness in the wor-
shipper"
And where did you learn that?"
rs it not so?'
What proof have you that it is SOP
1T is what the reformerS and we
have always alleged against her.
''If they have called the master of
the house Beelzebub. how much more
then of his household? 1 have not
asked what you allege, but the proof
of what you allege, against the
church"
DO you mean to call all Protestants
false witnesses and calumniators?'
rs it more unreasonable to believe
them to be SUCH than it is TO believe
that the overwhelming majority of all
who bear the Christian name, or have
borne it, have, for eighteen hundred
years, or from the very age of the
apostles, been sunk in superstition,
and guilty of the abominable sin of
idOiatry? 1t seems to me much easier
to believe that Protestant can
calumnate than that a Catholic can be
an idolater; and in so believing, 1 be-
lieve nothing worse of you than you
profess to believe of u.s.
What else can one see in your wOr-
ship than mere outward form?'
What else should you expect to see
in external worship but external wor-
ship? External is by it's very nature
external; and L am unable to compre-
bend how the church should have an
nyt al nd of n VT
nal worship. But if you had ever taken
the least pains to inform yourself. you
would have known that the church
teaches all her children that no exter-
nal act which does not proceed from
justice and sanctity, is, or can
be, meritorious?
You rely on the sacraments."
well, what then?'
Are they not outward?"
Are they not inward ?"
Does not the church teach that the
child is regenerated in baptism?"
''She does
''And it is no superstition to believe
that a little water poured upon the
head of the child, and a few words
over him by the priest, can
the soul?"
s'If you make the water and the
words the efficient cause of the regen-
Grafton, it is unquestionably supersti-
ton, for none but the Holy Ghost can
the child: but if you I'M
1erstand by the water and the words
simply, the medium through which the
Holy Ghost is pleased to communicate
he grace which regenerates, there is
40 superstition; for the cause assigned
S adequate to the effect. The church !
caches the latter; the former is the |
vain fancy of her calumniators."
(Tn he continued .----