"CATHOLIC CHRISTIANITY AND MODERN UNBELIEF."

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIII, Issue 11, 3 July 1885, Page 9

"CATHOLIC CHRISTIANITY AND MODERN UNBELIEF."

[COMMUNICATED.] This is a book which must have been the result of much labour, study, and thought. , The author has aimed to present Catholicism, in its totality of doctrine and practice, before the reader, so that he may appre hend it without misapprehension and misrepresentation. From the central dogma of the Incarnation, all the mysteries and doctrines, devotions and practices, the life and spirit of Catholicity, emanate like rays of light. The introduction is a master piece of reasoning against infidelity and freethongbt, which aim to free the conscience from religious restraints. Hence they caricature religion. He is severe upon agnosticism, positivism, atheism, and all other isms. Modern infidelity, unlike that of the 18th century, is essentially ignorant and irreverent. Its professors are neither wits nor scholars. It is, however, more dangerous to a flippant society than was the Voltairian atheism. This is an age of indifference, of life and education without God. It is labouring to annihilate Christianity, and especially its greatest bulwalk— an infallible Church. The freethinkers sneer at legitimate authority, and pursue a policy of unprincipled rebellion against its divine authority. Scepticism is the result of private judgment, and individualismileads to rationalism and infidelity pessimism follows in due course and life becomes actually valueless ; society becomes a herd of cattle and horses, with the survival of the fittest. Protestantism is melting away, like an iceberg before the fire of Rationalism. Infidels and Protestants give a caricature of Catholicism. They forget that the Church's primary doctrine is her own infallibility ; she is inspired by the Holy Spirit that inspired the Bible, and her living voice is equally with the Bible— the word of God Indeed. She vouches for the Bible, and|has sanctioned the canon of Holy Writ. She existed before the Bible, and it is her vocation to interpret it aright. She is a living infallible oracle, and not a dead book, interpreted in multifarious and contradictory ways, as Protestant Churches do; Catholicism is enveloped in an atmosphere of mystery — a 9, indeed, is man himself, with his dual existence, which materialism ignores. Catholicism, like truth, is necessarily intolerant of error ; she believes that she is guided in her interpretation of the Bible by the Holy Spirit abiding with her, and consequently she cannot err. Her divine mission is to teach with authority, and it is our bounden duty to sit at her feet, like Mary at the feet of Christ, and learn wisdom. An infallible revelation requires an infallible interpreter. Protestantism in the last analysis resolves itself into infidelity. The chapter on godless education receives a fresh confirmation in our secular system in this Colony. Beverence is entirely wanting in these Colonial schools. The author, by travel and extensive reading, is well posted up in the habits of thought prevalent in these Colonies. He justly scathes with his satire the religions of humanity. They all are materialistic, and ignore the dual nature of man. They are " the bag of bones theory." There is no such thing as spirit or soul or mind distinct from the body, any more than there is a conscious, personal God apart from the universe. Had he the Otago University in his eye. when he wrote that the grand discovery of modern times is osmosis? —which means that man is only an aggregate of cells ; the will, and all that, is but the succession of cellular vibrations ; and the action of the mind is of the combination of brain waves, as they pass over the delicate nerves and brain tissue. His chapter on modern spiritism is not satisfactory to me ; for he admits that behind the so-called phenomena, there are veritable demons. The book is a splendid apology for the Church and the Bible ; for freethought, he justly argues, is the natural outcome of education without God. But, alas 1 how few do really think in this busy and mechanical age. The age is revolutionary, and refuses to listen to the Church. Hence we have travesties of religion. The author has done a real service to Religion in the publication of this excellently written work. He succeeded Dr. Moran, the energetic Bishop of Dunedin, in South Africa. He is Bishop of Ketimo, and Vicar Apostolic of the Eastern Vicariate of the Cape Colony. Altogether, the Right Key. J. D. Bicards, D.D. may be regarded as one of the very best defenders of the Faith, in this latter half of the nineteenth century. Considering that he is a missionary prelate, and destitute of the leisure, comfort, and means of information enjnyed by European bishops, it is really wonderful to see how pure, and clear, and scholarly his style, upon the whole, is. One reads his book with positive delight, and lays it aside with regret. The perusal of such a book is refreshing, exhilarating and reinvigorating.