The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1914-07-25
WHO RESPECTS THE BIBLE?

smart folk are, as usual, years be-
hind their masters, the infidel
critics of Germany. The school of
Biblical Criticism that rejected
the history of Ewes creation is
dead and buried. But it was
resurrected last Sunday for the
benefit of the benighted folk of st.
Paul by wise man from Boston.
The fact is that Sylvia Pankhurst
and Caroline Gait have created a
market for this style of "crit-
icism' which tempts preachers
who ought to know better, to lift
up out Of the "discard into
which sensible men and women
have thrown it, the foolish denial
of God s revelation about how He
made the first woman.
The episode is only a new illu-
stration of the old truth that the
treatment which the Bible receives
from Protestants is the best refu-
tation of Professionalism. There
were always a few logical Prot
estants who argued that the Bible
came from the Pope and the Pope
is Antichrist and so the Bible can
not be the word of God. And any
how there is no way of knowing
that the Bible is divinely inspired
except from the testimony of His
Church to which God revealed
that as we'll as other truths. So
those logical souls rejected the
Bible and became infidels as soon
as the disciples of Pope Luther
and Pope Calvin grew careless and
logical enough to see that man
has at least as good a right to re-
ject the opinions Of the Pontiffs of
Professionalism as these latter had
to reject the doctrines of the
Church Of God.
The two Protestant principles
the Bible and private judgment
are about as safe together as a
lighted match and stick of
dynamite. For a long time the
match was kept damp in the blood
of the men who ventured, how
ever timidly, to ask what is the
meaning and what is the proof Of
inspiration. But human reason
backed up by human passion, will
ultimately insist upon it's rights
and even more than it's rights
especially when it's most irrational
and irreverent usurpations are
justified and applauded before
hand as so many exercises of d
sacred religious duty and priv
lege. Thus among Protestants the
Bible has been torn into shreds
The jibes Of Voltaire, the bias.
phemies of Ingersoll, purged in.
deed of their coarseness, have be.
come mere commonplaces in the
lecture-halls of Protestant univer
sites and, what is still worse, IL
the pulpits of many Protestant
churches. Every Protestant who
uses his Protestant privilege Of
private judgment at once starts 6
new sect of his own, or becomes 9
Catholic, or an infdel; he simply
cannot stand still. Every wind oil
doctrine carries him along; every
fashionable error, every silly fac
popularized by the latest sensa
/ tional novelist has it's group oil
followers among the preachers
Speak out strongly enough against
any passage Of the Bible, and ever
though you are merely obtruding
upon a long-suffering public your
personal feeling of irrational, un
reasoning distaste, you may heal
your grumbling converted int
sermons in score of pulpit'
within a week. Spurgeon, the we'll
known Protestant preacher IL
London, said that the modern
Protestant pulpit has taught mel
to be infidels, that many of tn,
avowed ministers of Christ ar,
not ministers of faith at all bu
i promoters of unbelief, that a maj
cannot be sure on going int
many a church if he will hear tn,
| Gospel there, or will come on
| hardly knowing whether the Bibl,
is inspired or not And still tn,
Bible is the religion of Protest
ants y
| How different the reverence,
with which Catholics regard tn
inspired word of God! Carolina
Gasquet has been raised to hi
high dignity principally becaus
i of his great work for the Bible
and he stated a few weeks ago il
London that the Catholics o
America had only to be told wha
he was doing, to be induced t
J, come forward and defray most 0
the expenses involved in his won
q derful task. He aims at revising
II the official Latin text of the Bible
so that we may have the very tex
that st. jerome gave to tn
Church, purged of the errors o
detail that crept in during the Ger