III.
What is defined, when the Holy See condemns Errors of Doctrine?
To get an accurate idea of the nature and intent of theological censures, and to understand what Rome intends to teach or lay down when she brands a proposition with the note of error or falsehood, is a necessary requirement for giving its true value to the Syllabus of Pius IX.
First of all, as Catholic divines tell us, the propositions are intended to be condemned in sensu auctorem, to wit, in the sense given to them in the books or writings from which they have been picked out. This point of Catholic doctrine deserves attention. The truest and most wholesome axiom may have a poisonous meaning in the mouth of a wily foe to religion and morals. The Pope condemns it in the baneful sense which the whole tenor of the writing from which it is taken shews to have been intended by the writer, not in the healthful one in which anyone else may utter it. Thus, an English Catholic may well express his satisfaction at the fact that in England, through the non-recognition of Catholicity by the State, we enjoy a religious liberty which Anglicans and Presbyterians may well envy us; yet the same Catholic will heartily condemn and detest the fifty-fifth of the errors enumerated in the Syllabus, to wit: "The Church should be severed from the State, the State from the Church." This assertion, if spoken by a Catholic, would be harmless; in the mouth of the infidel it is simply impious. The Catholic looks on a State in which religion should be the prime mover of all political action, as a dream too bright to be realized. And viewing its realization as a thing not to be hoped for, he prefers isolation from the State to slavery and Cæsarism. But isolation of Church from State and State from Church, in the mouth of the condemned writer, meant that no State should be controlled in its policy by the laws of God or checked by His ministers in its career of unjust aggrandizement. As anyone may see, the utility of the Papal censure would be lost, were the treacherous sentence expressed otherwise than in the identical words of its framer.
The next rule to be borne in mind, in order not to stumble in reading the Syllabus, is one that needs a touch of elementary logic to be understood. It is thus conveyed: "When a proposition is pronounced false, its contradictory is declared to be true; its contrary may be, or may not be, true." I crave my reader's forbearance for this bit of scholasticism; one word of explanation will make it as clear as noonday, and I really could not have left it out without loss.
In short; one sentence is said to be contradictory to another when it conveys just as much as is wanted, and no more than is wanted, to affirm the falsehood of the opposite one. For example, if I read this sentence: "All the Catholic members of the House of Commons voted for the disestablishment of the Irish Church;" its contradictory might be thus formulated:
"Not all the Catholic members voted for disestablishment." The latter does not state that many members or even that more than one member withheld his vote; it simply denies that all voted. Between two contradictions there is no medium; if one is true, the other is false; and hence when a sentence is condemned as false, its contradictory is thereby defined as true.
But it is otherwise with two contrary propositions. Propositions are said to be contrary when one not only asserts the falsehood of the other, but affirms more than was necessary to make its opposite false. Thus, these two propositions: "All the members voted," "None of the members voted," are said to be contrary; the second denies a great deal more than was required to falsify the former. Between contraries there is a medium; it may be that some members did, some did not vote; hence both of two contraries may be false; though both cannot be true. I hope I have made clear what schoolmen mean by the two kinds of opposition in sentences; to wit, contrary and contradictory opposition. Now, why have I intruded logic on my readers? Because, as I said, we cannot get on in the present case without it, and the neglect of the canon stated above, that " the condemnation of an opinion implies the truth of its contradictory, but not that of its contrary," is at the bottom of more than half the misconceptions that have entered the heads even of well meaning people with regard to Pius IX.'s Syllabus.
Take an example: the Pope condemns this proposition (27th of the Syllabus): "The sacred ministers of the Church and the Pontiff are to be excluded from every charge and dominion over temporal affairs." Its contradictory would run thus: "The sacred ministers, etc., are not to be excluded from every charge and do minion over temporal affairs." This is defined as true. Ten thousand contraries might be framed, as damnable as the condemned proposition itself; for example:
"The sacred ministers and Roman Pontiff should have every charge and dominion over temporal affairs;" or else, "The Roman Pontiff should have charge and dominion over the temporal affairs of the British Crown, and control the expenditure of the Queen's household, and the civil list," etc., etc. Every one of Mr. Gladstone's blunders on the score of condemned propositions proceeds from the Right Honourable gentleman's substituting contraries instead of contradictions to the condemned propositions.
Let us run down the list of condemnations, supposed to have been taken from the Syllabus, which are contained in pages 16 and 17 of the ex-Premier's celebrated pamphlet. In the very first on the list, he tells us, that the Pope has condemned the "liberty of the press," and again, in the third, that the Holy Father has consigned to everlasting damnation the "liberty of speech." This is coming out strong with a vengeance! What would have been the effect on his readers' nerves, if he had only added the "fearfully energetic epithets in which they were clothed," and which, he tells us, he has considerately omitted to avoid making either himself, or his friends, or his adversaries lose their temper.
Now, a more childish want of the elements of logic was never displayed, and the pamphleteer's talk about the "fearfully energetic epithets" suggests an apt illustration of the narrow line that separates the sublime from the ridiculous. The sentence contradictory to the condemned one might run in this or a similar form: "It is not a right belonging to every man, that he should have an uncontrollable license to utter any sentiments" how blasphemous, libellous, or immoral soever. But if we say instead: "The liberty of the press and the liberty of speech are unlawful," and make this out to have been defined by the Pope, either we can lay no claim to British truthfulness, or we do not understand the Pope's latin, (which is easy enough, in all conscience,) or we are in the case of Horace's schoolboy, sævo dictata reddentem magistro, saying our lesson the wrong way, through dread of a brow-beating schoolmaster. Do not substitute contraries for contradictories.
One more example. Mr. Gladstone's seventeenth erroneous sentence (seventy-eighth in the Syllabus) says: "In some Catholic countries, it has been wisely provided by law, that persons coming to reside therein, shall enjoy the public exercise of their own peculiar worship." The contradictory would be: "In the Catholic countries referred to by the condemned author, it has been un-wisely enacted that," etc. This is, and always has been, most true, in the case of countries where unity of Faith had never been shattered, and the introduction of new religions produced political convulsions. But if I were to say, "In no Catholic country may liberty of worship ever be allowed to Protestants," I have gone many a mile wide of the mark. Mr. Gladstone's version from the latin is so distorted and untrue, that we cannot form its contra dictory without making the Pope say what he never wanted to say. It runs thus: In "Countries called Catholic, the free exercise of other religions may laudably be allowed." Of course, the proposition contradictory to this would run thus: "In countries called Catholic, the free exercise of other religions may not laudably be allowed." The ex-Premier left the quibusdam untranslated,—it ought to have been, "In certain countries"—and has thereby coined a new condemnation for us, never dreamed of by the Pontiff.
One more item and I shall close this chapter. I know many honest Protestants think, that whatever the Church defines, she defines as of faith; that the eighty condemned propositions are eighty heresies in the eyes of Rome, and the eighty contradictories so many articles of faith. This is a misconception. Opinions may be censured as heretical, or as approaching to heresy, or as dangerous, or as offensive to pious ears, or as erroneous, etc.[1] Hence I must say a word or two on the several kinds of definitions and of censures. Of course my non-Catholic friends will not allow that we are right; but I trust they will give us credit for consistency and common sense.
- ↑ All these censures, except the first, are called minor censures.