Untitled - Rore Sanctifica

liv
Introductory Essay.
invites the Russian Church and ourselves to
reunite ourselves with Rome. On this point
he says :
" But will Rome impose certain
beliefs, indirectly, which are current among
the people, and which, for minds educated in
Protestantism, are
especially a stumblingblock
? The answer lies in those three words
which guide the conduct of the Catholic
Church : In necessariis unitas, in dubiis Ubertas,
in omnibus caritas. In things necessary,
unity ; in things doubtful, liberty ; in all,
charity. But how to distinguish things neces
sary from things doubtful ? What is only an
will it become arbi
opinion for Protestantism,
trarily a certainty for the Catholic Church?
No !
what is only a pious belief will not be
to-morrow created into a dogma.* The opinion
of a holy person, the thought of a Bishop,
even the teaching of a great doctor, do not
suffice to constitute an article of faith. The
Church proclaims as such only, what has its
foundation in Holy Scripture, is rested on a
never ordained Bishops" (p. 64) ;
whereas the juxtaposition
of the two names shows that he has never examined the
question, and he does not know that nothing turns upon Bar
low s consecration, (See Ab. p. xli.) though certain. The
Predicateur Gen6ral of the Dominicans in France has inadver
tently pledged himself to the exactness of the facts ; p. vi.
* This assertion has been made in England also. Its
explanation is, I fear, only this, that the creation of any
thing which was previously held as a
"
"
pious opinion
into
an article of faith, is held to be a proof that it never was
a pious opinion.