The New Zealand Tablet. Fiat Justitia. THURSDAY, MAY 25, 1899. 'A RELIC OF BARBARISM.'

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVII, Issue 21, 25 May 1899, Page 17

The New Zealand Tablet. Fiat Justitia. THURSDAY, MAY 25, 1899. 'A RELIC OF BARBARISM.'

f CORRESPONDENT in the ()lo,t» ';,/,/<, y,,, s of Saturday last draws attention, opp num Iv enough, to the terms of the Hriti-,h roi.iiMtion oath — the oath which sonic sixty <> Id ye;iis;iuo was taken by Queen Victoria, and which in the natural order of things unless some change be made, must at no distant day be taken by her successor. The writer in (juestion makes no comment on the oath, but contents himself with merely having its terms published, rightly judging that this insulting and infamous declaration carries "with it its own condemnation. The question is opportunely raided because, as we have said, the advanced age of Her Majesty renders ir, certain that before \ery many years can elapse the sovereignty must pass into other hands, and if any change is to be made in this impious declaration, if the perpetration of what Cardinal Wiseman called this ' national crime ' is not soon to be repeated, now is the time for those interested to be up and doing. Already in England the subject has been brought prominently before the public by leading Catholic writers. Nearly three years ago the learned Kedemptorist, the Very Rev. Father Bridoett, drew attention to the matter in an exhaustive article published in the Month, and the question has been very fully discussed since that time. As a consequence an agitation is on foot in England— and is being even more actively carried on in Canada — for the abolition of the obnoxious words in the coronation formula. Before giving the exact terms of the insulting declaration which the English sovereign is required to make on his accession, it may interest our readers to very briefly review its history and trace the development of the coronation oath into its present form.

The imposition of some form of oath on a prince at his coronation is probably as old as the ceremony of coronation itself. According to one competent authority, informal traces of it are to be found in the history of "the Hebrewkings. It was in regular use in the case of the tribal chiefs

who invaded and ultimately broke up the Western Roman Empire. In these tribes the principle of hereditary succession was by no means strictly adhered to. It was therefore natural that on the appointment of a new ruler there should be something in the nature of a mutual bargain between king and people : the king pledging himself to rule justly ; the people promising obedience to all lawful commands. Even after the principle of succession became iixed and settled, the practice was continued and finally crystallised into an inviolable and immutable custom. There have been considerable variations from time to time in the precise form of the English coronation oath, though until the Revolution of 1688 the substance of it remained practically the same. By the time of Edward 11., in 1308, the oath had taken definite shape. From that time onward it was framed in the form of question and answer, as it still is. In this formula the sovereign promised to grant, keep, and confirm to the people of England the laws and customs granted by the ancient kings of England, and especially the laws, customs, and privileges granted to the clergy and people by the glorious King St. Edward. He further promised to keep peace and accord towards God, the Holy Church, and the clergy and people, to maintain law and justice, to uphold righteous customs, and to perform rightly all the other duties of his office. This was the oath taken by Edward 11. and by his successors, with only two exceptions, right down to the time of James 11. In the time of James 1. a short clause had indeed been added to the effect that the laws and customs should be observed, ' according to the law of Gon, and the true profession or the Gospel established in this kingdom.' As it was the Bishop who used these words, ' true profession,' James 11., who was of course a Catholic, left to the Bishop the responsibility of the word ' true,' and yet answer sincerely : ' I promise to keep it,' i.e. not to violate what is established.

The present odious form of the oath dates from the year 108!). It was then enacted by the Bill of Rights that 'every English sovereign should, in full Parliament, and at the coronation, repeat and subscribe the Declaration against Transubstantiation.' The outline of this Declaration was first framed by the Puritans in the great rebellion against Charlks I. It was passed into law by the Parliament of 1C7:) in the shape of the Test Act, designed to keep Catholics out of all offices both civil aud military ; arid the years l.iLt t i f , was imposed on all members of Parliament. In KJ.VJ it was, as we have &aid, extended to the wearer of the crown. It is no longer, as everybody knows, exacted from .Members of Parliament, but it still retains its place as an offensive tag to the English coronation oath. Here are the full terms of this vile and insulting declaration which, in the present state of the law, the English sovereign is required to make at his coronation :—: —

I, A.8., by the grace of God, King (or Queen) of England, Scotland, Prance, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, do solemnly and sincerely in the Presence of God, profess, testify, and declare, that I do believe that in the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper there is not any Tranbubstantiation of the elements of bread and wine into the Boily and Blood of Christ at or after the consecration thereof by any perbon whatever : and that the invocation or adoration of the Virgin Mary or any other Saint, and the Sacrifice of the Mass, as they are now used in the Church of Rome, are superstitious and idolatrous. And I do solemnly in the prebenee of God profess, testify, and declare that I do make this declaration, and every part thereof, in the plain and ordinary sense of the words read unto me, as they are commonly understood by English Protestants, without any evasion, equivocation, or mental reservation whatsoever, and without any dispensation already granted me for this purpose by the Pope, or any other authority or person whatsoever, or without any hope of any such dispensation from any person or authority whatsoever or without thinking that I am or can be acquitted before God or man or absolved of this declaration or any part thereof, although the Pope, or any other person or persons, or power whatsoever, should dispense with or annul the same, or declare that it was null and void from the beginning.

Such are the shameful words with which Queen Victoria, when a young girl of eighteen, was forced to inaugurate her long reign. Such are the words with which, unless something be done, the Catholic subjects of England will be greeted by her successor. It would be difficult to conceive anything more wantonly and outrageously insulting. The words contain, indeed, a triple insult. They are, in the first place, a very special and direct insult to the ele\en millions of Catholic subjects who owe allegiance to the English Crown. It will be noticed that it is the Catholics alone who are singled out for this special and particular

opprobrium. In India and in the Soudan it has become a recognised principle of British policy to do nothing that would interfere with the religion of" the conquered races or that would hurt their religiotis feelings.' In England itself Quakers and Shakers, atheists and agnostics, Buddhists aud Shintoists, and the hundreds of other sects enumerated in Whitaker, are allowed to live and flourish in full freedom and with absolute immunity from am thing in the shape of public insult from the throne. Catholics alone have to suffer the shame of a public abjuration by their own sovereign of their most cherished religious practices and beliefs.

The Declaration is an insult in the second place to' the sovereign himself. The representatives of the nation apparently will nob- take his simple word. He must be compelled to heap phrase upon phrase to satisfy his subjects that he is not equivocating or evading. And finally the oath is an insult to many of the other crowned heads with whom the English sovereign is allied, and to the hundreds of millions of all nations who kneel in fervent adoration before that great Sacrament which is here so vilely and impiously stigmatised. As we have shown, the declaration had. its origin in the old Puritan days, when religious bigotry was at its fiercest. It is grotesque and out of place in the present day, when religions freedom and tolerance are happily tne universal rule. It is, as Sir Colmajst O'Loghlen once said in the House of Commons, a ' relic of barbarism ' ; or as a celebrated writer still more expressively phrased it : — ' It is a satire on the times ; it is a disgrace to the British nation ; it ought to be destroyed by the hand of the oommon hangman.'

As might naturally be expected, there have not been wanting formal and weighty protests against the stigma and indignity thus placed upon Catholics. Thus, when Queen Victoria, was about to take the Declaration, the great historian, Dr. Lingard, wrote as follows to the Lord Chancellor of the day :—: —

It will not be denied that before a man may safely and consistently affix the stigma of superstition and idolatry on any Church, it is incumbent on him to' make the doctrine and worship of that Church the subjects of his study ; to be satisfied in his own mind that He understands them correctly, and not merely as they have been misrepresented by their adversaries ; and to weigh with impartiality the texts and arguments by which they may be assailed and defended. But who can expect all this from a young woman of eighteen ? * Or,' we may safely add, * from the probable successor of our present Queen.' Even more noteworthy, as coming from a Protestant, are the words of Lord Kmberley, an ex-Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. In a speech in the House of Lords on the subject of Catholic disabilities, referring to this Declaration he said :—: —

He had himself D*een called upon to make that Declaration before the Irish Privy Council, in the presence of a large number of persons of the Roman Catholic faith ; and he must say he had never in his life made a declaration- with more pain than when he was required, before men holding high office, and for - whom he had the greatest respect, to declare the tenets of their religion to be superstitious and idolatrous. If it is recognised as offensive to Catholics for the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland to make the Jbeclaration, how much more offensive toust it be for the Sovereign himself to do so ? '

The bigots, like .the poor, we shall, no doubt, have always with us. It is therefore possible that there may be a few of thosa afflicted with the * no-Popery ' mania who are prepared to defend even the barbarous anachronism of the coronation oa^h. If such there be, we are persuaded that they will be very few, and that they will be both in numbers and intelligence utterly insignificant. The trend of feeling is now all the other way about. Slowly but surely the grinding disabilities ot Catholics in England, have been removed. And this/ odious Declaration is doomed to go the way of all the rest. Only, our Catholic leaders must not be content with merely writing ably on this subject. The agitation, to be effective, must take definite and organised shape. The initiative may be taken in England, but there is no reason why Catholic feeling should not make itself heard from every colony and dependency under British rule. One way in which this could be done would be by the presentation to the House of Commons of a petition signed on behalf of Catholic subjects' by all the Catholic

Bishops throughout the British Empire That would bs a simple and feasible, yet dignified and «i?«cLive, way of giving expression to united CaihoHc feeling ou r.he subject. Bnt whatever form the agitation may tiike, no lime shoukb by lost. The time is indeed ripe- for the desired change. The dawn of another century is upon us, and for English-speak-ing Catholics the coining century could not be more happily ushered in than by the news that this ' relic of barbarism,' this inglorious monument to Puritan bigotry and injustice, had baen once and for ever swept away.