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Mgr. Bourget says in reference to the law as laid down by H. M. Privy Council:—
"The Gallican liberties, which have been appealed to to that end, being now considered even in France as real servitudes which deprived the Church of her legitimate liberties, cannot be set up as giving anyone the authority here in Canada to encroach upon the rights of the Holy Church.
"It is to the Church alone to decide whether the decrees of the Council of Trent are or are not binding in any particular country.
"To her also is reserved the right of judging whether sinners who are under the weight of censures have made the requisite reparations to merit the pardon of their faults and participate in the benefits of religion."
"Allow us, in conclusion, to observe, our very dear brethren, that this decision might not have been given if the noble Lords who compose the Privy Council and advise Her Majesty could have been able to assure themselves that it would tend strangely to grieve the Bishops of this country."
Finally, in his Pastoral Letter of 1st February last, (1876,) quoted in my former pamphlet, he caps the climax by declaring "each one of you can and ought to say in the interior of his soul, 'I hear my Curé; my Curé hears the Bishop; the Bishop hears the Pope, and the Pope hears our Lord Jesus Christ, who aids with his Holy Spirit to render them infallible on the teaching and government of His Church.'"
The foregoing quotations are merely selections from a mass of documentary evidence produced since 1870, which conclusively proves that the course adopted is not the caprice of one over-zealous prelate, but the deliberate policy of the whole Hierarchy; and it is to be observed that the entire body of proof thus furnished bears date subsequently to 1870, and the most aggressive portion within the last two years—all being long after Confederation, and much the greater
