SOME REMARKS ON THE LETTERS OF SIR R. STOUT IN ANSWER TO DR. MORAN.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIV, Issue 40, 28 January 1887, Page 11

SOME REMARKS ON THE LETTERS OF SIR R. STOUT IN ANSWER TO DR. MORAN.

TO THE EDITOH N.Z. TABLET.

Sir,— No doubt the public gaze hung with deep interest on this controversy, but none, perhaps, watched it more closely than I, who am the humblest reader of your journal. Anxious to Batisfy myself of the truth or non-truth of the Premier's statements, I followed his arguments as closely as my poor ordinary capacity would allow and, in a sense, am sorry to say I waß not finally convinced by the force of his logic and reasoning. This, no doubt, may be owing to the weakness of my own mental calibre. Sir Robert could throw me arguments pile upon pile, but he had it not in his power to give me intelligence to see their force. The arguments, however, yet remain in the full pride of their strength and are now before me in two copies of the Tablet. As this controversy is now closed I purpose, with your permission, to examine his first argument founded on Prop. XV. and to give my own reasons, not as a theologian, but as an ordinary reader, why his logic failed to bring conviction to my mind and to warrant the statements he had publicly made regarding Catholics and their Church. This I intend to do but nothing more. Ido not here assume the position of defender of the Syllabus and Encyclical ; this, it will be almost impertinence on my part to say, I may leave with all confidence in the hands of Dr. Moran.

Sir Robert, then, on his own acknowledgment made the statements attributed to him. He was asked to substantiate them and he endeavoured to do so. How ? By throwing together five Propositions excerpted from different parts of the Syllabus and stringing to the tail of these an extract from an Encyclical letter. On the strength of these he makes his reply to the two first questions put him by the Bishop. Now, that your readers may not be confused, 1 shall repeat the first statement of the Premier and the first Prop, given by him as an argument in support of that statement. Said the Premier. "It was laid down by .the Pope that it was the duty of the State to support religion ; they even went further by condemning as an error that all religions should be free in a state." Says the condemned Prop. , (XV.) : " Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which led by the light of reason he may have thought true." The burden of proof here rested with Sir Robert. Everyone who knows anything about logic will at once admit that if he wished to draw an argument for his utterance from the condemnation of this Prop., it was his duty to establish for the public that (it wa3 condemned by the Pope, in that sense, and in that sense only, that would warrant the Premier's statement. If it were condemned in any other sense, that is to say, if His Holiness attached any other sense to it, than that given it by Sir Robert Stout, and condemned it in that sense, it is not only vain and absurd but even unjust for the Premier to bring it forward in support of his statement. Now has the Premier shown us what is the sense of the Prop., and has he proved to us that in that sense as understood by him, and in that only, the Pope condemned it? Far from it ; instead, he has had what I will call the simplicity, but which Dr. Moran with, perhaps, more sagacity termed the adroitness, to tell the Bishop that he (Sir Robert Stout) was awaiting his (the Bishop's) explanations not only of it, but of them all. Is it not clear that a Prop, may be so cleverly worded that from it may be drawn, very naturally, by all ordinary minds v. meaning not only harmless, but right and good, while at the same time there may be hidden, to be perceived only by minds of greater acumen, a very logical but poisonous inference, which would in the hands of wicked and irreligious men be entirely subversive of moral life f Was there in this Prop, any such danger to be apprehended ? If so, it seems to me to have been the duty of the Pope, who claims to be the representative of Christ upon earth and the guardian of moral truth, to condemn it at once and unmercifully. If there was no such poison hidden beneath, I submit it behoved Sir Robert, before he made an attack on the Church and her Supreme Head, to prove for ordinary minds, such as the mass of the public are possessed of, that there could be no such double meaning in this Proposition, and that in condemning it the Pope intended to deny " that all religions should be free in a State " in the ordinary sense in which these words are understood. When people say that " all religions should be free in a State " they commonly understand it to be the recognized right of " every man " to be allowed to pray and worship in a rational manner according to his conscience, as, for instance, we are allowed to do in this country. Did the Pope condemn Prop. XV. in that sense ? This is Sir Robert's contention, which I venture to say he has not proved, and which in my opinion it was his duty to have proved before he embarked on his bold assertions. And why do I make this statement ? Because in my judgment the Proposition clearly may bear another interpretation than that adapted to Sir Robert's line of argument. There is question here on the authority of Dr. Moran and on the admission of Sir Robert of the individual. If you examine this Prop, carefully, as it is here nakedly expressed, can you not at once deduce from it that all religious truths are subject to the examination of reason. Sir Robert Stout, no doubt, and his clique of Freethinkers will say they are, but the Pope and Christians generally are not Sir Robert Stout, and they beg to differ and say no. Here at once is the source of all the flaws in Sir Robert's arguments. He coolly assumes that these five Propositions allow to man nothing but his legitimate rights, and starting from this gratuitous hypothesis he boldly declaims against the Pope and the Church for condemning them. But he should, if he reasoned like a logician, have made this the minor in in his syllogism, proved it, and then drawn his legitimate condemna-

tion of the Pope. To do this he would have more than an acorn to crack. Sir Robert's aim was to prove that the Pope and Catholic Church smell of rank intolerance. As proof, or part of proof, he alleges Prop. XV. Before this will gerve his purpose he must establish three things : (1) that this proposition can have only those meanings adapted to his arguments; (2) that m whatever sense it be understood, it justly gives in the judgement of all right-minded men (not in that of Sir Robert alone), a right to " every man " to embrace and profess that religion which led by the light of reason he may have thought true ; " 3. That in that sense in which the Pope has condemned it, he has thereby denied to every man " a liberty to which every man has a just title. Not one of these has the Premier in my opinion in any way established. But he says referring to the Proposition, " the language is plain." It m»y be to philosophers and dialecticians, but I assure the Premier that to ordinary minds like my own, Propositions of that kind when isolated from their context, and extracted substantially as they have been, from various authors, appear plain in their verbal drew, but obscure and ambiguous enough as to their hidden meanings. Sir Robert, no doubt, thinks every man ought to have every liberty contained within the wording of that Proposition and the rest, but he should just have considered whether such liberty may not clash with Divine authority, and assign to man a right which belongs only to Him who made him. lam surprised at a man whose miad must be sharpened by constant examination of " legal " documents to pass so superficially over Propositions like these, where every meaning is, evidently, not on the surface. Moreover, he should have remembered that in his soul, large and capacious as it is, all other souls and their faculties are not eternally locked up, and that the Pope and the Catholic Church are not under any necessity of thinking these Pro. positions as harmless as the gallant knight in his great-souled philantrophy may imagine. What right, with all deference to his titles and high position.has Sir Robert Stout to declaim against the Pope and the Catholic Church.for denying in a sense of which she alone ought to be the best judge that " that every man is free to embrace and pro. fess that religion which led by the light of reason he may have thought true." She says every man is not so free ; his position, on the contrary, obliges him to say every man is ; she says lam divinely appointed to be a judge in the matter ; his predilection for Freethinking principles obliges him to say you are not. There is clearly at the bottom of this whole controversy an endless contention and logomachy. In his last letter, he tells us that Bishop Moran refused to show wherein his interpretation "of the • legal • docnments was wrong." The Bishop might have done so had he liked, but it was not necessary for his purpose. It was sufficient to have asserted that the Pope might have condemned them in a sense different from your "interpretation." It is one thing to prove that your interpretation is wrong, it is another to show or assert that that in which the Pope condemned them was different. Dr. Moran made this assertion, at least indirectly ; yours, then, was the duty to prove for the public that the interpretation in which the Pope condemned them was identical with that put upon them by you. Furthermore, you should have shown that the meaning nxed to them by you was correct, and correct in every sense. This done, you will have established your purpose of branding the Catholic Church with intolerance and bigotry, but not till then. The Bishop does not underestimate the intelligence of the public, or the readers of any journal, but the charge may be justly retorted on Sir Robert Stout, who took it for granted that all readers of the byllabus and Encyclical understood them as he understood them.— l am, etc.,

B. P. HUBLBY.

P.S.— I have here referred only to his general line of argument in connection with Prop. XV., and that for two reasons, first, because I do not wish to occupy your space, and second, because what I have written with reference to this will fairly apply to all his reasoning.