The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 1916. THE TITLE 'CATHOLIC

New Zealand Tablet, 16 November 1916, Page 33

The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 1916. THE TITLE 'CATHOLIC

*c£a& * " E have lieai 'd a good deal just lately about < ™//W/K 'sensitive Irishmen,' but it is hardly t'f/Mv necessary to say that- Irishmen have by ' no means a monopoly of that sometimes honorable quality. At the very large Sjjk XSJ&L ;uul highly successful Catholic gathering * * ** held in Christchurch last week, his Lordship Bishop Brodie used these words: ' They all admired the sacrifice made by Bishop Julius for the cause of Christian education in giving half of his episcopal revenue for that purpose. (Applause.) As Catholic Bishop of Christchurch I shake him by the hand and say, "Let us take the platform together, to show that we, as Christians, are not fighting one another for the advancement of irreligion and atheism. Let it be said of us we are friends in a common cause, the advancement of Christianity." ' On the face of it, this utterance conveys nothing but the utmost friendliness and good feeling towards the Anglican body, yet strange to-relate, some Anglican clergymen in Christchurch have found cause of offence in the words, and the sermons in which this hypersensitiveness

found expression have been given generous and prominent space in the congenial columns of the Christchurch Press. One of the two clergymen referred to speaks of ' the audacity of this wording iii referring to his Lordship Bishop Julius as "a non-Catholic" as though to discredit him as a Bishop of the Catholic Church.' No one, it. is safe to say, who listened to Bishop Brodie gathered any such impression from the words, and the whole context shows that no intention of discrediting Bishop Julius in any shape or form was present in the speaker's mind. The term 'non-Catholic' doubtless seemed to Bishop Brodie, as it does to us, the safest and gentlest expression that could be used. Bishop Brodie might have referred to Dr. Julius as the ' Protestant ' Bishop of Christchurch —and we can imagine what a worse than Bulgarian atrocity that would have been in the eyes of the two gentlemen with the thin epidermis. The words to which exception has been taken occurred in the midst of a warm and earnest eulogy of Bishop Julius and there was, we repeat, quite manifestly no intention to express anything but admiration for the head of the Anglican body in Christchurch. Catholics would not be so stupid—and, least of all, a genial, cultured gentleman like Bishop Brodie ■ —as to fire their olive branch out of a catapult. * One of the two unnecessarily indignant clerics has added to the gaiety of the newspaper-reading public by telling us that Bishop Julius is ' the true Catholic Bishop of Christchurch.' The claim is presumably based upon an extraordinary ' branch ' theory which makes ' the Church' mean (in the language of an Anglican writer), not any one particular denomination, but a great corporate body of Christians ' spreading through East and West, and serving God in all languages.' Some of our Anglican friends maintain that their Church is a ' branch ' of the great speckled body that (they say) constitutes ' the Church Catholic' There is only one thing the matter with this pretty theory: no such corporate body exists. No such corporate body has ever existed.' 1 Nor is there any trace of any such multitude of men, as described, that by any stretch of fancy can be called a ' body ' or an association of any kind. Not a scrap of evidence of the existence of such an association has ever been offered. There is none to offer. This idea of the Church is a new one. It has no place in history. ■ Who, for instance, are the members that compose this mythical corporate body? Catholics? But Catholics ridicule the idea that any such association has ever existed. Greeks ? But the Greeks are equally energetic in denying that any such body exists or that they have ever had any connection with it. Protestants? But Protestants generally repudiate such a new-fangled view of the Church. Nobody in the wide world at the present time believes in it except a small party in the Church of England. And they are hopelessly unable to determine who are the members of this imaginary association, what is the nature of its organisation, or any of the other points which it is essential to know about any corporate body existing among men. They try to force into an imaginary body a thousand hostile creeds that are diametrically opposed to each other on the most important subjectscreeds, too, nineteentwentieths of which do not admit the existence of such an association, much less membership thereof. * As for the term ' Roman Catholic ' : it is none of our making. It is merely a legal designation forced upon us by an Act of a Protestant Parliament. In itself, and apart from legal convention, 'Roman Catholic' means a Catholic who is a native of, President in, the city of Rome. And this is the meaning which the combination carries in Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, and every other modern European language. ' Catholic' is our name, not ' Roman Catholic' The word ' Roman' in the sense of limiting the meaning of the title ' Catholic,' was repudiated by the Vatican Council. It is, in this signification, •theologically wrong. With us, the word ' Roman ' when applied to the Church, is descriptive or explana-

tory, not restrictive. It indicates ' that 'Rome is the centre of our unity. It is, of course, not meant to convey a limitation of the circumference or sweep of the Church's catholicity or universality, for that would be a contradiction in terms. Ours is the only Church that claims and bears, the simple title, 'The Catholic Church.' Apart from legal necessities created for us by Acts of Parliament, ' Catholic ' is the only name we acknowledge. To say Roman Catholic/ is, in its way, as bad a tautology as to say 'a round, circle.' All circles are round and all Catholics are Romanin the sense explained above. There are no other Catholics. The two excited* Anglican clerics can learn as much from the first person—learned or simple, medico or lawyer, hodman, street-cleaner,, or- schoolboy—that they meet on the street. . If they inquire for the residence of the ' Catholic Bishop of Christchurch ' one and all will direct them, not to the Anglican See House, but to Barbadoes street. * It is the same to-day as it was in the far-off times of Augustine, and Cyril, and Pacian, whose testimony to the exclusive use of the name ' Catholic ' for those in communion with the See of Rome we quoted in a recent article on the subject. The title ' Catholic is now, as it was then, the distinguishing mark of our Church, and not a. vague general term which is intended to include a hopeless salmagundi of non-coalescent and mutually repellent Christian creeds. The well-known lines of Horace have been metrically translated as follows: Yes, words long faded may again revive, And words may fade now blooming and alive, If usage wills it so, to whom belongs The will, the law, the government of things. / * Aulus Gellius puts the same idea in the following words : ' Custom is the mistress of everything, and, in a most especial manner, regulates t lie "use of words.' And custom is quite agreed' that the word ' Catholic ' is the peculiar designation of the Church which has for its visible head on earth the Pope or Bishop who sits upon the chair of St. Peter in Rome. The very streetarab finds only one meaning in the words of a "stranger who inquires for the Catholic Church, the Catholic priest, the Catholic sisterhood. ' Standard English writers—we need only instance 'Lord Macaulay, Edmund Burke, James Martine.au, Lecky,—agree in using the word ' Catholic ' to designate the Church which is in communion with Rome/ Lecky, when taken to task some years ago in Dublin for having used the word ' Catholics' to designate members of the papal Church, refused to employ the compound word ' Roman Catholic,' which he regarded as a solecism in language. This noted Unionist and rationalistic historian cannot be suspected of any leaning towards our faith. But in all his learned and voluminous writings he habitually applies the term ' Catholic Church ' to that great religious organisation which has its centre in the City of the Seven Hills. The great Encyclopaedic Dictionary states that the word ' Catholic ' is by general usage applied to those in communion with the See of Rome or, as its . Protestant compilers' put, it, 'the Roman Catholic branch' of the Christian Church.' Webster's great standard dictionary defines the term ' Catholic,' when standing by itself, as meaning ' Roman Catholic' Briefly, the word ' Catholic ' means just what practically universal usage has decided that it shall mean. And that meaning is inseparably associated with what is legally known among us as ' the Roman Catholic Church.' It is too late now for any small creed or section thereof to attempt to alter the long-fixed. and settled meaning of words that are still in everyday use. Such attempts have been made. But from the days of Horace and Aulus Gellius down to our time they have not met with any conspicuous measure of success. * In the languages of Continental Europe no term is known corresponding to the legal designation of 'Roman Catholic' by which we are known in English-speaking countries. • In French, Italian, German, Spanish,

Portuguese, Dutch, and other European languages the title ' Catholic ' is, as we have pointed out, applied to, and only to, the Church of Rome. Were the word 'Roman' added it would be understood to mean the Catholics of the city of Rome. The same statement holds good in the East. In his Visit to the Russian Church, Rev. W. Palmer (Anglican) tells how, to his great annoyance, the ' Orthodox ' Russians persisted in calling the adherents of the Church of Rome 'Catholics' pure and simple. The Russian Orthodox American. Messenger —as in recent issues—does likewise. And the following paragraph appeared in the Catholic Times a few years ago from a correspondent resident in Cairo (Egypt) : ' In the East no one is called a Catholic if not in communion with Rome. If a. man called himself 'an Anglican Catholic' here he would be at once considered a .'Roman Catholic' from England. All Churches united with Rome are called Catholic, such as the Catholic Copts, Greek Catholics, Syrian Catholics, and Latin Catholics. Those in schism are called Orthodox. The Anglicans are simply English Protestants.' * 'The attempt now made to lake from us, or share with us, our time-honored title of ' Catholic ' is symptomatic of the changed times in which we live. We are happily far from the days when altars were overthrown all over England, when sacred vestments were destroyed or turned to common or base uses, and when the fate of the " massing priest ' was the torture chamber, a short ride on a tumbril, a brief interview with the common hangman, and the impaling of his quartered remains, as a traitor, upon the Tower. The Church of England has undergone many a change since those fierce old days. Ever since the days of the Oxford movement our High Church friends have been paying the once hated creed the flattery of imitation. They have been quietly assimilating Catholic doctrines and principles. They have been imitating our ritual, erecting 'altars,' adopting vestments, incense, lighted candles, etc., performing a ceremony which they call the ' Mass.' and although avowedly members of a merely national Church, have even come, as we sec, to boldly lay claim to a share in the title of ' Catholic ' or universal, which, by right and by the fact of common usage, belongs only to that great and divinely founded organisation which has its centre in the See of St. Peter. They are "Catholics': we are 'Roman Catholics." So, at least, they tell us. They forget, however, that the official title of their Church, as given in the accession oath, is not ' Catholic ' but ' the Protestant religion as by law established,' or, as in their own prayer-book, simply ' the Church of England.' This new view of the Church is confined to a small but devout and growing body in the Anglican Church. It has no basis in history, and is interesting chiefly by reason of its abandonment of some of the fundamental principles of the Reformation, its vehement objection to the official and once-loved title of ' Protestant,' and the manner in which it has led, and is still leading, thoughtful Anglicans day by day into the one, true, and undivided Fold of Christ. The new title claimed by the Christchurch clergymen for the Anglican Bishop'of Christchurch, which raised such an expansive smile on the faces of readers of the Press, represents a phase of v Anglican Protestantism to which the Lamp (an extremely 'High' Anglican organ) once made the following reference, to which we

cordially direct our Anglican friends’ attention: To call ourself a Catholic and ignore the Pope is like the play of “Hamlet” with the character of Hamlet left out.’ And'then it goes on to say: ‘ The opponents of reunion with Rome call it enslavement. Has the Church of England ever ceased to be enslaved since the Tudor tyrants, father, son, and daughter, first made her so ? Submission to the Vicar o ? Christ in reality means emancipation from enslavement. God hasten the day when Anglicans will think lovingly of the successor of St Peter as our Holy Father, and gladly render him filial obedience.’.