A Hoary Calumny.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXI, Issue 3, 15 January 1903, Page 2

A Hoary Calumny.

A week or two ago Archbishop Carr, while engaged in a newspaper correspondence with the R*v. Mr McLaren, had occasion to indignantly protest against the ignorance of Catholic teaching maniested by that gentleman and by other Protestant clergyman in repeating the foolish calumny that Catholics 'adore ' the Blessed Virgin and give to her the honor due only to God. It is indeed amazing that this misrepresentation should still be perpetuated in view of the fact that in all Catholic books on the teaching of the Church and in all authoritative utterances of Popes on the subject the true Catholic doctrine is carefully explained and formal protest is made against the garbled versions. The latest protest to hand comes from the International Marian Congress held a month or two ago at Fribourg, Switzerland, and it is particularly weighty, coming as it does from a Congress which was specially held to do honor to the Blessed Virgin. The following are the terms of the formal declaration unanimously adopted by the Congress :—: — This assembly of sodalists in Fribourg lifts its voice aloud in order to protest solemnly against the calumny, three centuries old, that Catholics make the august Mother of God an object of adoration. The assembly, in the name of truth and justice, demands that this lie and calumny, systematically spread by official teachers and masters of religious communities separated from us, should at length cease. It calls attention to the irrefutable truth that the Catholic Church knows of no other adoration but that of the Triune God and of Jesus Christ our Lord ; and that all love of and confidence in the Blessed Virgin Mary is strictly limited to such love and veneration as, according to the words of the Archangel Gabriel, the eulogy of St. Elizabeth, and the requirements ot reason itself, is owing to a creature who was elevated to the position of Mother of Jesus Christ, and to whom even an Apostle was committed from the Cross as a child to its mother. The man who, after reading such a declaration, still continues to repeat this calumny, stands convicted either of gross uncharitablcness or of incurable and invincible prejudice.