The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1919-05-17
ARCHBISHOP DOWLING'S SERMON

tical authority. In many ways these
four centuries have conceded with a
period of material progress unparal-
lelled in the recorded history of man.
The date of the Reformation syn
chronizes with the dates of some of
the worlds greatest adventures. A
new world had just been discovered
| by Columbus. The ancient literatures
of Greece and Rome long inaccessible
| to all but privileged few had,
through the fall of Constantinople and
the fight of the Byzantine scholars,
| become again the common heritage of
| men. The newly-invented art of
printing put learning, which till then
was the property of a limited number
| of clerics and few others, within
the range of all. New ideas begat
new unrest. Macchiavelli in his
| epoch-making book rejected the Chris
| tian moralities in the government
which he adumbrated and justified the
tyranny of all unprincipled but sue
cessful rulers. In the rash enthu-
siasm for novelty which SO inter-
CoIlhS pei lOu CuSClluCACu, tlVl
came from many quarters an insistent
demand that the organic law of the
=, Church should be profoundly altered
and that the venerable voice of au-
| thority proclaimed in Scriptures and
supported by the unbroken Christian
tradition should be silenced and in it's
place the Bible as the Word of God
should be put in the hands of every
man and interpreted by the light of
personal revelation. The Reformation
meant different things in different
places but it's most common result in
ancient affairs and the deprivation of
the ancient hierarchy, or if as in Eng
land the name and externals of the
hierarchy were preserved, the author
ity of Bishops in doctrinal matters
and their sense of jurisdiction over
sin and sinners entirely disappeared.
These revolutionary propositions were
not accepted without a protest and
blood flowed in torrents in many lands
and for many day in the famous and
bitter quarrel that ragged about the
Mass and the forms of ecclesiastical
government. But as the upholders of
novelty in religion usually took sides
with the newly-developing national
spirit in England, France and Ger
many, the religious difficulties of the
10th century became confused with
political controversies to the detri-
ment of the ancient faith. For the
new nationalism as well as the new
religions were aroused against the
venerable See of Rome, that had been
in SO many ways the benefactress of
every country of Europe because it
stood for an internationalism of the
spirit and the brotherhood of Chris
tan men which national interests
then rejected. So the old affairs fell
in England and in many parts of Ger
many and in Northern Europe and
Bishops were deprived of their Sees
or driven into exile or done to death
and the old church was put in the pill
Tory of the rising literatures of all
Protestant countries. With the
priests and Bishops disappeared the
dominant note of Christian thought in
the administration of government.
Soon secular thought prevailed and
the purely secular state appeared
For a time the old Christian ideals,
the old reverences and customs of an
immemorial Christian past retarded
the development of the principle of
disorder which was introduced both
into religion and into politics when
private inspiration replaced the mag
isterium of the church, and impulse
was preferred to law and public af-
fairs were dealt with by the emo
tional rather than by the reasoning
faculties of men. But little by little
the hesitations and scruples of Chris
tan morality gave way before the
sweep of revolutionary ideas which
rallied to the service of all the
wrongs of society, and which justified
their own excuses by the reality of
the abuses which they thus cham
pioned.