NEW BOOKS

New Zealand Tablet, 31 March 1910, Page 515

NEW BOOKS

t* .i } l^ Ve -,? eivd . from Messrs. M. H. Gill and Son, Eta., Dublin, Ihe History of the Catholic Church in the Nineteenth Century, by the Rev. Dr. McCaffrey, Professor of Ecclecxastical History in St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth. In two volumes of over 1050. pages the learned Maynooth professor gives us a resume of the progress, successes, and trials of the Church in all countries from the French Revolution of 1/98 to 1909. To collect the materials for such a comprehensive survey of the events of an epoch-making period has been a work which necessitated wide reading, great patience, research, and industry, but still greater was the task to compress such materials into two volumes of moderate size. That the learned author has succeeded in producing a most useful and educative work no one can deny. In the first volume Dr. McCaffrey traces the history of the Church in France, the German States, Switzerland, Spain and Portugal, Poland and Russia, and Italy down to 1848, and then turns back and resumes the consideration of the fortunes of the Church in these same, countries from 1848 to our own day. In the second volume he deals with the Church in Great Britain, Ireland, America (including the United States, Canada, Newfoundland, Mexico, and the various Central and South American States), and Australasia. The final chapters deal with Catholic Missions, Religious Orders, Theological Errors, Ecclesiastical Studies, Education, Socialism, and the Catholic Labor Movement. Of the 574 pages in the second volume nearly 170 are devoted to Ireland. The author treats of the repeal of the Penal Laws, Ireland from the Union until Emancipation, and from Emancipation to the disestablishment of the Protestant Church, As the fortunes of the Church have always been bound up with the question of education, and in no part of the world had there been more insidious efforts made by the ruling authorities to control education and thereby cripple the Church by poisoning the minds of the rising generation than in Ireland, Dr. McCaffrey has devoted considerable space to the subject of education in Ireland. In order to make the position clear he goes back to an earlier date than that from which his history starts. 4 The history of Irish primary education during the latter portion of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth (he says) is almost entirely taken up with the efforts of proselytising societies to destroy Catholicity in Ireland by capturing the education of the children. While the Catholics were either forbidden to erect schools, or prevented from doing so by legal restrictions, by the resistance of the landowners,' and by general poverty and depression, immense sums of money were placed at the disposal of proselytising societies by individuals and by Parliament, with the aim of uprooting the Catholic religion. In some cases the objects were professed openly, in other cases proselytism was concealed under some specious name, but in nearly every instance the fears of the Irish Catholics were amply justified- Dr. McCaffrey then enumerates the many classes of schools that had been established for the purpose of proselytism, secret or avowed. Regarding the results of Irish emigration on the progress of the Church m English-speaking countries in the nineteenth century the author in his preface says: olic emigrants and their descendants who have built up the Church in the United States, Australia, South Africa, and, to a great extent, in England, Scotland, and most of the English colonies. These emigrants introduced into those countries and developed a strong type of Catholicity. They were neither Liberals, always complaining of authority,' nor Conservatives, striving against every reform. They had imbibed at home the true spirit of faith and loyalty to the successor of St. Peter, and they communicated this to their descendants.’ A perusal of the chapters devoted to the history of the Church in France during the nineteenth century will give the reader a very good idea of the many trials which she underwent during that period, and he will also be able to understand the causes which have led up to the recent repressive and iniquitous laws. The Catholic reading public, or at least that section who have neither the time nor the opportunity to consult books dealing exclusively with the histories of the various countries dealt with in these volumes, owe a debt of gratitude to Dr. McCaffrey for his scholarly, comprehensive, and painstaking work. They have here in a compact form the history of the Church during a century remarkable for its material and social progress a century which has witnessed a great growth of the democratic spirit—and they can contrast the position of the Church' at the beginning of the nineteenth century, when the timid were oppressed with pessimism regarding the future, with its position at the close of the century, and-see how she has adapted herself to the new spirit and the new conditions obtaining in the republic of the West and the progressive Englishspeaking colonies, in the German States, in Holland, and other countries, and find comfort and consolation in the knowledge that never before did her spiritual sway extend over greater numbers, whose loyalty and devotion are unquestioned. A comprehensive index of fifty pages considerably enhances the usefulness of the volumes as a work? of reference. (Dublin: Messrs. M. H. Gill and Son, Ltd. cloth, 1061 pages; price, 12s 6d.) •. . ;