PASTORAL LETTER

New Zealand Tablet, Volume 13, Issue 7, 13 February 1908, Page 22

PASTORAL LETTER

ARCHDIOCESE OF WELLINGTON The following pastoral letter has been issued by the Most Rev. Dr. Redwood, Archbishop of Wellington and Metropolitan: — Dearly Beloved Brethren and Dear Children in Jesus Christ-T-in this Pastoral we have two very grave and important matters to put before you for your earnest consideration and most faithful accomplishment, namely, the recent Decree of the Sacred Congregation of the Council on Betrothals and Marriage, and the great Papal Encyclical •on Modernist Errors. 1. To begin with the Encyclical, we remark that the very foundation stone of Modernism is the theory, based on a false philosophy, that access to the Divine reality is only to be found through the religious sense, and that the certain eyidence of God's existence is not to be had intellectually by use of our reason in arguing from external creation. On this primary assumption the whole of its revolutionary con- . elusions as to faith, dogma, and Sacraments, are seen to depend. Now this very cardinal "and crucial doctrine was rejected, nearly forty years ago, and rejected infallibly and under anathema, by the Vatican Council. ' Wherefore the Pope in his Encyclical reminds the faithful of the infallible teaching of the Vatican Council, in which the whole ~ system of Modernism in its very root-principle has been already shattered and condemned. Hence the Encyclical, instead of being a newly-made infallible judgment, is infallible with the infallibility of the several judgments already made, which it solemnly proclaims and applies. It is the . voice of the Church and her Chief Pastor and as such, is cordially and thankfully received by Catholics, Bishops, Clergy, and faithful the wide world over. And God, whose wisdom and bounty are wont to take good out of evil, and make the reprobation of error redound to the greater splendour of truth, will work out His merciful plan, and give to the Church the triumph she loves best — not the destruction, but the conversion of her enemies. In this great Encyclical the Holy See has not only condemned a series of errors, but has gone far to eradicate the evil by unmasking the whole system of mystic rationalism of which they are the offspring. As any words of ours, in an endeavour to sketch the system, would be superfluous and lack the lucidity of the Encyclical, we will attempt a much simpler task. What the Catholic people at large require, what the busy man in the street or in his study wants, is to know in a few clear words precisely what the Holy Father is condemning, and what is ■ the practical gist and pith of the system which he reprobates. We therefore furnish you with a few salient features of the .teachings "condemned in the Encyclical and the Syllabus of condemned propositions, which may be rightly deemed its accompanying schedule. We select the following points: — • First, the Pope condemns Modernism because it changes our belief in Christ. As Catholics we hold that Christ our Saviour is the Eternal God who was made man, came into the world, and entered into our own life and human sphere of action. To say that the Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us is equivalent to saying that the Divine became a sojourner in the domain that is human and historical. We believe that He — the very God — trod this earth, lived, and spoke, and wrought in it His miracles, and rose from the dead. We believe that the very meaning of the Incarnation is that God Himself made Himself manifest and came into human life, and that thereby all the facts of His Divine action and ingerence in the world are really and historically true. On the contrary, Modernism asserts that all those Divine actions of Christ, which fill the Gospels, including His Miracles and His Resurrection, are not. historical facts and never did really and actually take- place so as to be historically true. It holds that all this Divine part of; Christ's "life belongs not to the order of real happening and history, but merely to the order of faith or believing. Thus the good Catholic or Christian, in reading devoutly his New Testament, would have to remember that all those wonderful works of Christ, and many of His parables, and all those chapters upon His Eesurrection and Ascension — in a word, seven-tenths of the contents of the Gospels — represent things which never actually happened in real history, but only things "which were attributed to Christ by enthusiastic disciples long after His death. The plain man of practical common sense, soaring above the subtleties of pseudomysticism, would doubtless say : If these things are not historical and never really happened, why should I believe them ? Faith which founds itself on what is historically false is mere make-believe, and thereby artificial, insincere, and demoralising. The Pope reprobates this division of Christ. He will not have Christ cut in twain, into a purely human and historical Christ, who is" the object of real knowledge, to be thrown to the critics and analysed according to the ordinary human standards,, and a Divine Christ who is the , object of " faith, and . withdrawn from the .domain of all historical reality. He upholds the truth of Ihe Gospels, and safeguards the very meaning of the Incarnation. ' Secondly, the Pope condemns Modernism, because it alters our belief in the Blessed Eucharist and the Sacramentß.

We believe that the Christian Sacraments were instituted by Our Lord Himself in person. No mere man, however religious, could of his own authority or power take bread and wine and assure his fellow-men that, as often as they partook of them, they would 'receive the Body and Blood of Christ. Nor could any mere man, without blasphemy, guarantee that the pouring of water with a given formula would be accompanied by the regeneration of the Holy Spirit. God alone can make the bread and wine to be Christ's Body and Blood, and God alone can send the Holy Ghost. Hence the Sacraments by their very nature can only be the work and act of God made man, and Christ, by virtue, of His Godhead, must be the sole Institutor of the Sacraments. But Modernism teaches, on the contrary, that the 'Sacraments were not instituted by Christ personally, but were introduced or evolved in the course of- time by His disciples. They would be thus a work not of Divine but human or ecclesiastical institution. It is pleaded that, by a principle of immanence, Christ lives and survives in the religious life of His disciples. But such a plea is obviously futile, if it be meant to save the Divine character of the Institution of the Sacraments. For Christ does not survive or live personally in His disciples, but only by His grace. Their acts are not God-actions like those of the Person of Christ. To say that the disciples in instituting the Sacraments were animated with a religious sense, and that their religious life is the life of Christ within them, and that therefore their work in instituting was in a sense His work, and that therefore He instituted the Sacraments mediately through them, is mere puerility, and trifling with the first principles of the Christian faith. The religious sense in any man is not the personal Divinity, and is not personally Divine work. Otherwise every ordinance of the Church, and every practice of the Saints would be works of Divine institution ! What men do is the work of. men, and it remains so, no matter how good or religious the man may be, and it is only disguised Pantheism to think otherwise. The very meaning of Divine as distinguished from ecclesiastical institution, is that in it God Himself is at work, and is personally the Author and Pounder. In denying this to the Eucharist and the other Sacraments, Modernists strike at the very meaning of the Sacrament, and at that necessary bond between the outward sign and- the inward grace of Divine ordinance which is the essence and soul of the whole Sacramental system. The Pope 'rejects this theory of mediate or human institution, and of evolved man-made Sacraments, and in doing so he safeguards the Divine and actual institution of the Sacraments of Our Redeemer, as the sole Author and Pinisher of our salvation. Thirdly, we believe that the Church of God was founded and constituted, not by men, but by Christ in person. All her authority derives from His actual commission. It was His own will, His own intention and purpose that the Church, armed with that authority, should continue His mission here upon earth. The Church is, therefore, His own creation, and owes her -being to His Divine word and - will. Modernists hold that the Church came into being, not by any act of Christ personally, but by the Christian community organising itself as the subsequent need arose, for the purpose of defence, expression, and survival. Hence the Church is held to be a mere vital emanation from the collectivity of Christian consciences, and consequently deriving all its authority therefrom, and, by the fact, remaining responsible thereto. The Pope rejects this people-made idea of the Church's origin and institution. He maintains that the Church was instituted by Christ Himself as its Divine Author, and that her authority to teach comes directly from Sim to His Apostles and their successors, and not from the people . whom she has to teach ; and he re-echoes the solemn judgment of Pius VI., by which the derivation of ecclesiastical power from the community of the faithful is declared to be heretical. That is only to say that the Church does not hold her commission from men, and in the work of her mission she will never be responsible to them. It would be mere confusion of thought to imagine that such a conception of the Church as that traced by the Modernist system, is involved in the coming triumph of the principles of Democracy. The Church has no quarrel with „ Democracy within its own proper sphere. She has helped it not a little in the past, and she will help it, probably in the future. But the competency of Democracy is to manage, in growing measure, the temporal things of this world. To preach and preserve God's message, to. expound the nature and mysteries of God, and save souls- for the next- world, is not in the least the work of Democracy, nor within its competence. Hence, in expecting the coming Democracy, her attitude can nevgr be one of panic or abject subservience, but of friendly independence, confidence, and ' fearlessness. Fourthly, we believe in the great dogmas of the Christian religion — in the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Atonement. We believe that these are absolutely and everlastingly true, founded as they are on the word of God, which" can never pass away. ' The very depth and strength of the- consolation of our Christian hope is the eternal solidity of the great truths in which God's nature and God's love are made known to us. ' _ The Modernists teach, on the contrary, that dogmas are an evolution of the Christian conscience, that thej are

constructions made or .spun by themselves in our .effort to explain to ourselves our relation to God, that they are merely relative, and to be taken " as counters and symbols that are no part of permanent religion, and which may, in. the course of future progress, become "obsolete and superannuated. Thus a time might come when it would be no longer necessary or desirable for us to, believe that there are three persons in God, that God became man for the love of us, or that our Saviour died for our Salvation. The Pope condemns this theory that Christian dogma is a mere evolutionary product of our own making, or that the great truths .which come to us from the Wbrd of God can ever be merely relative or transitory "adaptations which are no permanent part of religion. In doing so he safeguards the truth and dignity of Christian doctrine and the surety of Christian hope, and prevents them from being degraded into being the mere playthings of our intellect and the religious -fashion of the day. Fifthly, we believe that in the Sacred Scriptures we have a Divine revelation, communicated from the mind of God to the mind -of man, by writers whom God inspired for the purpose. To us, therefore, the Scriptures have God for their Author so truly that what is contained in them is the word of G.od.. -„_ . The Modernists teach that the Scriptures are the outcome of evolution, of the religious sense in manj that what we call Divine Inspiration is nothing more than the religious experience which in its measure is given to all men ; and that the Scriptures are Divine only in the sense that they were written by men under the influence of the religious sense that is within them, or that sense of the Divine which is in all "men, and is but another word for inspiration. Thus the sacred books of Buddhism or Brahminism, -or Mohammedanism, written as they were under the same sense of religious feeling, would be also in their measure Divine Revelations, and in the same plane albeit on a lower level, as the Christian Scriptures. The Pope rejects this teaching as part of a false system, and he reaffirms the teaching of the Council of the Vatican on the truly and specifically Divine character of Revelation, and the Divine Authorship of the Bible. Sixthly, and finally, we believe that God endowed man with reason so that man might know his Maker, and that by knowledge of created things he can rise to the certain knowledge of the existence of the Creator. " Por the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen being understood by the things that are made." (Rom. 1, 20.) ( The Modernists maintain that the exterior world furnishes no certain proof of God's existence, that the understanding cannot rise above the domain of mere phenomena, and that the reality of the Divine is only reached, through the religious sense or feeling, which is not intellective. The Pope condemns this error as a pernicious form of Agnosticism, and cites the decree of the Vatican Council in which it is declared, " If anyone shall say that the One True God, Our Creator and Lord, cannot be certainly known by the natural light of human reason through created things, let him be anathema. ' ' These are six points which are at least certain important elements embodied in the Popal Encyclical * and in the Syllabus of condemned propositions which preceded it. In answer,- therefore, to the question what does the Pope really want and insist upon ? we reply that he insists that Jesus Christ shall be adored as one who is inseparably true <Jod and tyue man, and that He and His Divine works shall not be driven out of the field of human history tinder threat of being treated as something merely and simply human if He remains in it — he insists that the great Christian verities such as the Atonement, are absolutely true, and will remain so long as God continues to be the immutable truth — he insists that the Church of God had Christ Himself personally as her Pounder — he insists that the Bible is God's revealed word written by men whom God inspired, and that its revelation and inspiration are not of the kind which can be attributed to the product of any human authorship, such as the books of the Mohammeclan.. and. Pagan religions — he insists that , God has His witness in human reason, and that by the light of his understanding in beholding" God's works, man can certainly come to. -the knowledge of. his Creator. We might, go further and say that he insists that the great Catholic truths of the indwelling' of the Holy Spirit in man, and therein the perpetuation of Christ's Divine life in the souls' of His" disciples, shall- not, under cloak of immanence and permanence, be used to induce a blasphemous confusion between what is essentially and personally Divine and- that which is Divine in merely the created and -participated sense of the term, and, thus pushed to a false and final synthesis, may lead to the conception of humanity as a pantheistic whole animated by an impersonal principle of life- known as Divinity. 2. Next, regarding the " Decree of the Sacred .Congregation of the Council on Marriage, " it is very important that - the Catholic public, parents, guardians, and particularly Catholic marriageable youths, should have a clear and full knowledge of the new laws regarding marriages lately issued 'by the Holy See. Let them, therefore, know (1) that, after Easter next, any marriage between Catholics is absolutely null and void — viz., -no marriage at all — unless it is contracted in the presence of a duly qualified priest and two

witnesses. Hitherto, in this country, when a Catholic in JttSV* % & I^* H % °\ UrCh ' t a o gef married 1 either m a Protestant Church or in a Registry Office, the IT?hT^ th ° UU Igh1 gh S nev ?. u /y si »ful and sacrilegious, was' held by the Church as valid and binding, and the parties to ?n SSLSS'rS W V fe " * ex * Easter, such marriages in Protestant Churches and Registry Offices will be for zonlt? X^K^ 1 ' but *?Waad the persons who SI W - v aVS mci " e^ gone trough an empty ceremony, and will be no more man and wife than tW were before. And this law binds all Catholic^ even apostate dni e frTT a i ed folios. But, on the 'other hand it cSLZ* th ° Se + ThoT h0 £ re not ' and never bave been, eSS GoM e9«ently, Protestants and non-Catholics generally are outside its scope, and the marriages of such in their Churches or conventicles, or Registry Offices, are recognised by the Catholic Church, all things else permitting, fnsStL true marriages The Holy See, therefore, while SS.?^ g «??- Gat t h^ cele^ating- their unions under' conditions befitting the Sacrament, has not taken a harsh or bigoted view of the marriages outside the pale, celebrated S een aon-Catholics. (2). Who is the qualified priest beiore whom the marriage must be celebrated ? The priest o± the place where the marriage is celebrated : that is to say, the parish-priest, or the priest having cure of souls in the distuct or any approved priest whom the parish-priest or may delegate. In ease the parties did not belong to that parish or district, or diocese— even then the marriage will be valid. Thus the priest of a parish, or district, or his delegate, may celebrate validly the marriage of all Catholics who come to him But in law and good order he is bound not to celebrate the marriage unless one of two alternative conditions has been fulfilled— namely, either one or other a- ! P arties must hav e resided a month in the parish or district where the marriage takes place, or one or other v- \ P artie , s must have obtained permission of the priest or bishop under whose jurisdiction he or she resides. But in case o± grave necessity even this permission will not be necessary.

tJ° BT *?\, up ;e; c P osltlon broadly, suppose two persons. John and Mary (free from impediment), wish to get married! It any priest having care of souls (or any other priest authorised by him or by his bishop) consents to marry them in his parish, or district in presence of two witnesses, the marriage is valid, and the parties are really man and wife. But as a condition, not of validity, but of lawfulness or good order, they are bound to conform to the following simple regulations. The .marriage ought to take place in the parish of the bride, unless there should be some -just cause for its being celebrated in some other place. If, however they desire to be married elsewhere, say in tfee Church' at Masterton, they must ask the priest of Masterton (or some other priest authorised by him or the bishop) to marry them and either John or Mary must have resided in the parish or district of Masterton for a month. But if they do not wish to do so, all that is necessary is that either of them shall obtain permission from his or her own -parish priest, or from the Ordinary. They will have, of course, to give the requisite assurance that they are free to marry and to comply with the usual conditions for receiving the Sacrament of Matrimony. If John or Mary should happen to be a person of no fixed abode, and travelling throughout the country, the priest who marries them will have to obtain the permission of the bishop or of his delegate But let us suppose the exceptional case, that, John and Mary are living in the wilds of Australia, or Africa, or in some country where there is a violent persecution of the Church, and they find that, after waiting for a whole month, the priest of the place, or- any other priest authorised 1 by him or by the bishop is not accessible, then they have only to call two witnesses, and take each other as man and wife in their presence, and their marriage will be both valid and Jawtul. Or let us suppose a much sadder case, that John and Mary have lived together outside of wedlock, and one 2«,vL ?-V h<^ m is in immin ent danger of death, then lor the relief of conscience and the legitimisation of their offspring any priest may marry them, if the parish priest or one authorised by him or the Ordinary is not available Again, the Church for the future will recognise no sponsalia (or betrothal) as an impediment to marriage or as having canonical effect, unless they have been made in writing and signed both by the parties and by the parish priest or the bishop, or at least in presence of two witnesses Therefore, Catholics in future, throughout the whole of Christendom, will thus be able to know clearly what" they have to do, and what regulations they have to fulfil in order to .receive validly and' lawfully the Sacrament of Matrimony., Above all, they have to bear in mind the main tact of their Baptism, equally plain and' vitally important— that in future for Catholics (in any part of the world where a Cathohe priest may be had) either their marriage must be a Catholic marriage celebrated by a Catholic priest before witnesses, or it is no marriage at all. The above laws are binding upon all persons baptised in the Catholic Church and upon those who have been converted to it from heresy or schism (even when either the latter or the former have fallen away afterwards from the Church) whenever they contract betrothal or marriage with one another. The same laws are binding on the Bame Catholics as

S&»? £ I 6 ° a *««»t betrothal or marriage with nonCatholics, baptised or unbaptised^even after a has been obtained from the impediment inixtae religionis 'or dispantatis cultus unless the Holy' See" decrees otherwise "for some particular place or region. -' •<»,--,. Non-CatKolics, either* baptised or unbaptised, who contract among themselves are no where boundto observe the Catholic form of betrothal or marriage. * - . ■ > • vJ^Lr^f l^! l^ of th ? Hol y See is rooted in the veiy nature of Christian marriage. Marriage is not merely a natural or civil contract— two "people agreeing together to take each other as man and wife--it is not' a mere manwork, that is to say, only the work of the parties themselves ratified, i£ need be, by the co-operation of other men, who form the community or State. If such were the case!' as human work can never rise above its own level, marriage would be simply dependent on the human conditions which" make it, and might be terminable by the consent of the contracting parties or by the act of the community or State which ratified it. But Christian marriage— to its sacred honour and dignity be it ever spoken— is not a mailwork, but a God-work. It is not merely a covenant of two between a man and a woman who take each other, but a covenant of three— the man and the woman and God, who joins both, and accepts into His own immutable hand the consent of both, and seals it by an infusion of the Holy Ghost mto*their souls. Christ has thus exalted the contract of marriage into a Sacrament or 'Christ-act/ one in which ,±Le himself is the uniter, binding together two souls' in a bond which is a type of the union between Himself and Mis onuren. Hence the unity and indissblubility.and sanctity o± Christian marriage, in which God Himself joins together what man may never dare, to put asunder. As God's work it is God alone who can make or unmake it, and as a bacrament of Christ, it belongs to Christ and to His Church ' to nx the conditions of validity under which thaf work shall be effected. The work is a Sacramental union of souls, and by its very nature a matter of morality, and' of spiritual relation of souls to God and to each other. In the creation of such a bond, the State, whose province is purely in things temporal, can have no possible competence.' The State may indeed by its legislation declare what are the conditions under which it will accord to marriage civil recognition and civil effects as to civil status and inheritance and other temporal consequences. But over the ' making or unmaking of the marriage bond itself it has no control. It cannot make two persons man and wife before God neither can it unmake them. The State by its own authority can no more make a marriage valid or invalid in the' eyes of God, than it can forgive sins or offer the sacrifice" of "the Mass. It is to the Church, and not to the State, that Christ has given the administration of His Sacraments' and it is to the Church and not to any~ civil power that He has left the power- of fixing the conditions of .validity; and has said, " Whatsoever you shall bind upon earth shall- be bound in Heaven." What the requirements of the Church are to be for ..the valid reception of Matrimony we have just seen in the conditions already explained. The law is not retroactive, and does not touch marriages made in other conditions before this time. It does not affect non-Catholics,, who are 'left to celebrate their marriages in their own way," and the Church recognises the validity of such marriages as often as the contracting parties are free to marry; But for Catholics, the law after next Easter is absolutely "binding throughout the world, and should they after, that time attempt to marry in an heretical Church or in a Registry Office, their marriage will be mill and" void/will be no" real marriage in 'the sight of God and of Hiß Church, and they will be no more man and wife than if they "had .never gone through the ceremony. ' .- • • . The sacred bond of Holy Marriage lies at the. foundation of the Christian home and Christian society. To safeguard .its celebration under auspices which are sacred and Catholic, and to save the reception of the Sacrament Jrora conditions which are profane and sacrilegious, is undoubtedly one of the highest interests "of the Church and of ' the faithful themselves, and the heartiest sympathy and co-operation of both clergy and people of the Catholic" world will be -with Pius X. in the great legislative work which he has achieved for this purpose. * • - ; 3. There are some -other prescriptions of the Encyclical and the Decree which are to be observed,' but', as v th'ey regard the clergy more particularly, arid 'are applicable to the laity chiefly through the clergy, we dp" not detail "ttfein in this Pastoral, but we exhort the clergy "to" carefully "arid faithfully carry them out, and~to' acquanrTthe 'laity,* 1 when the occasion requires, of what ' demands "their dutiful "fulfilment. "" " --'•"-' - '- • •-.«-- -• -.- In conclusion, we earnestly exhort you to faithfully discharge all your duties in regard to fasting and'abffinence, ' to the frequentation. of the .Sacraments, to* mortification, prayer, and alms-deeds, during .the fiply season of'Xen%,""and so to "grow in grace and"iri the'Ttnowledge*df ouf; L'oird and Saviour Jesus- Christ. To 'Him tie" glory," both' "now and unto the day of eternity. Amen." (H' Petef~iii^ r IB.X Archbishop of Wellington. Given at Wellington on the ' - * •*♦- "-' ■ 3rd day of February, 1908.