The New Zealand Tablet. Fiat Justitia. THURSDAY, JULY 6, 1899. 'THE WORSHIP OF THE VIRGIN.' A CONTROVERSIAL TRICK.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVII, Issue 27, 6 July 1899, Page 17

The New Zealand Tablet. Fiat Justitia. THURSDAY, JULY 6, 1899. 'THE WORSHIP OF THE VIRGIN.' A CONTROVERSIAL TRICK.

T was ' old Hobbes,' who said, in his Leviathan, that ' words are wise men's counters : they do but reckon by them ; but they are the money of fools.' Logicians tell us that most disputes and misunderstandings arise out of an abuse or misuse of words. Two centuries ago .bossuET pointed out that the dispute between Catholics and Protestants on the subject of the 'worship' of images and the Blessed Virgin and the saints is to some extent a dispute rather about words than things. This is true even at the present day. The very word * worship ' itself is one that readilyi lends itself to verbal jugglery and controversial legerdemain. Reference to any standard dictionary will show that it includes two such hopelessly and generically different meanings as (1) the mere respect or honour which a man may show to his fellow-man, and (2) the supreme adoration .which is due to God alone. A class of callow pulpiteers and small controversialist pamphleteers avail themselves of this ambiguity of meaning to fix the tradition of an odious charge upon the Catholic body. The rank and file of their hearers and readers bave no practical acquaintance with any but one — namely, the divine — form of religious worship. "We have, of course, been frequently charged in coarser and more direct fashion with the monstrous crime of giving divine honour to our Lady. But the great tradition of the Protestant masses has been fed in no small degree (1) by the ambiguity of the term ' worship ' ; (2) by the limitation of its meaning, as stated above ; and (3) by the deadly dingdong persistency with which this comparatively new idea of its meaning has been for some centuries associated, in their minds, with the legitimate honour shown by Catholics to her whom God's angel found ' full of grace.'

It is only within comparatively recent times that the word 'worship' has come to acquire the meaning of supreme adoration, as of the Godhead. The scholarly Protestant writer, Archbishop Trench, in his English Past and Present (6th cd., p. 245) shows that the word was originally written ' worthship,' and that it meant ' honour ' only. It retained that meaning exclusively for centuries. It retains it still, though not exclusively. We recommend to the notice of a certain Devonport preacher a number of old English reprints which were issued in London and Birmingham in 1868-1869. Notable among them is the Revelation of the Monk of Evesham, written in 1196, and first typed by William de Maohlinia in 1482. Throughout the whole of this curious work — which is an English forerunner of Dante's Divina Commnlia — the word ' wor-

ship *is used exclusively in the sense of ' honour,' Thus, a certain abbot is described as a man of ' worschipful [».e», honourable] conversation ' ; a monk is represented as being punished in purgatory for having unduly sought • worshippe' [or honour] at the hands of the people ; and the writer describes how 'oure Lord did worscbyppe [«.c, honour] his servante ' — a holy bishop — by bestowing upon him the gift of miracles. And so on and on in a score of other passages throughout the work. • • • j The Bible improperly attributed to Wyclif — and dfrting from about the year 1382— translates Matthew xix., 9, as follows : ' Worschippe [i.e., honour] thi fadir and thi modir ' ; and our Saviours words in John xii., 26; thus t 'If any man seme me, my Fadir schal worsohipe* [£«., honour] him.' A precisely similar meaning' is given to i tta 1 word in The Babies 1 Book (p. 37), published by the Early v English Text Society ; and in Langland's Piers Flbivmem and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. The two lagfouumd' works were written in the latter half of the fourteenth century, and are easily procurable by the general reader. We have counted no fewer than nine different plaoesin which Shakespeare uses the word ' worship * in the senso-of" mere honour, and without any reference whatever U>- tllat supreme worship or adoration which is due to God 1 akme; The Authorised Version of the Protestant Bible thus translates our divine Lord's words in Luks xiv., 10 :— But when thou art bidden, go and sit down in the lowetfrroonr; that when he that bade thee oometh, he may say unto thefe : Fritnd^ go up higher ; then shalt thou have- worship in the pzeaenee o£ them that sit at meat with thee. * • • In the Church of England marriage service the bridegroom says to the bride : ' With my body I thee worship ' (meaning, of course, to ' honour. 1 ) In Cardwell's History of the Conferences (p. 200) exception is stated to have been made to these words by Dr. Reynolds. Thereupon His Majesty looked upon the place. ' I was made beliere (saith he) that the phrase did impart no lease than divine worship and adoration, but by the examination I find that it is an usual English tearm, as " a gentleman of worship," etc., and the sense agreeable unto Scriptures, '• giving honour to the wife," etc. But turning to Dr. Reynolds, with smiling said his Majesty: "... If you had » good wife yourself you would think all the honour and worship you could do to her well bestowed. Nobody misunderstands Tennyson when he urges a young man to ' worship her [a maiden] with years of noble deeds ' ; nor Carlyle when he writes of the * hero-worship *' offered to Mirabeau, Cromwell, Napoleon, Johnsou, Rousseau, Madame de Stael, and Robbie Burns. Here in the very midst of this Protestant land, mayors and magistrates are still addressed as * your Worship ; ' the Master of an Orange lodge is styled by the brethren 4 Worshipful,' and the Grand Master the ' Right Worshipful. 1 A glance at Webster's or any good dictionary will show that ' worship ' still retains its original meaning of simple honour or respect. But it has also in the course of time acquired the later and far different signification of supreme divine adoration. It is needless to say that the merely relative ' ' worship ' or honour paid to a creature — even to the spotlesar Virgin-Mother — differs not only in degree, but in kind, from the supreme ' worship ' of adoration which must, be given to God alone. With Catholics the meaning of the word ' I ' worship ' is defined and safeguarded by the terms of the Church's known teachings. It- is quite another matter when the term is used of us, with hostile or controversial intent, and in the sense already indicated, by Protestant preachers or writers. Without due explanation and definition the word, as applied to our veneration of the Blessed Virgin, etc., is toleiably certain to mislead. It insinuates a gross and. monstrous charge of idolatry. In the circumstances, an< honest man's plain duty is either to explain his meaning ot the term, or to seek a better one. Those who knowingly decline both alternatives ought to revise their moral code. Those who are ignorant of the the slippery character of the term would do well to go to school again. • • • The teaching of the Catholic Church on the so-called' ' worship of the Virgin Mary ' is well and tersely expressed in the following words of one of our great divines : ' The Church condemns the least expression which oversteps thatv clear line, never to be crossed, dividing supreme worship of' God from the highest honour paid to His highest saint.' We accord the Blessed Virgin peculiar veneration* jusfe

because God crowned her with peculiar honours. Huss, Wyclif, and the early Reformers— Luther, the authors of the Bohemian, Tetrapolitan, and Basle Coufessions of Faith, of the Declaration of Thorn, and of the Leipzig Colloquy (1631) — all agreed in a lesser and legitimate form of ' worship of the Virgin Mary. 1 In his preface to The Story that Transformed the World (1890) Mr. W. T. Stead says of the veneration of Catholics for Mary :—: — Protestantism will have much leeway to make up before it can find any influence so potent for softening the hearts and inspiring the imagination of men as that of the true ideal of the womanhood of the world [Mary]. One of the hopeful signs of the past fifty years is the steady advance of respect and veneration for the Blessed Virgin among our Protestant brethren. It is not to be stopped by abusive or begging-question epithets nor by appeals to the feelings of ignorant hearers. As for the Catholic Church : her divine Founder prophesied that she should ever be the butt of the persecutor's hand and of the calumniator's tongue. We are the heirs of the blessings as of the trials of those who, when the Church was in. the catacombs, were accused of worshipping the head of an ass. Foolish charges and covert insinuations of rank idolatry may and do cause local irritation and effect some local harm. It is our duty to repel them as far as we may. But if they ' form part of the Church's cross, they will all form part of her crown. 'They shall persecute and calumniate you.' So, in substance, ran the prophecy. But ' the gates of hell shall not prevail against her '(the Church). So ran the promise. An army of sons of Ananias can no more shake the rock-foundations of God's Church than volleys of Pink Pills could shift the Rock of Gibraltar. And it is a bad cause that must needs support itself by falsehood.