582 



ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH. (ENGLAND.) 



the presence of God, profess, testify, and declare 

 that I do make this declaration and every part 

 thereof in the plain and ordinary sense of the 

 words read unto me, as they are commonly un- 

 derstood by English Protestants, without any 

 evasion, equivocation, or mental reservation what- 

 soever, and without any dispensation, already 

 granted me for this purpose by the Pope or any 

 other authority or person whatsoever, or without 

 any hope of any such dispensation from any per- 

 son or authority whatsoever, or without think- 

 ing that I am or can be acquitted before God or 

 man or absolved of this declaration or any part 

 thereof, although the Pope or any other person or 

 persons or power whatsoever should dispense with 

 or annul the same, or declare that it was null or 

 void from the beginning." 



Even before his Majesty's recital of it, strong 

 protest against the declaration was made by the 

 Catholics of the empire. Why the ruler should 

 be less free than the subject to choose his religion, 

 or be obliged to undergo a religious test for office 

 unnecessary in any other case, seemed sufficiently 

 inexplicable; but, granting the necessity of safe- 

 guarding the Protestant succession, it seemed 

 gratuitous for the King to single out for insult 

 one religion out of the many professed by his sub- 

 jects, and stigmatize it as idolatrous. It imposed 

 an indignity upon 10,000,000 Catholics, and upon 

 the King himself, whose honor* and veracity it 

 questioned. Since the only remedy was by act 

 of Parliament, Edward VII, like the gentleman 

 he was, made the taking of the declaration as 

 inoffensive as possible, by repeating the words in 

 an undertone audible only to the Lord Chancellor. 

 When Parliament met, the agitation broke out 

 afresh. The Catholic peers sent a protest to the 

 Lord Chancellor; and it was joined by similar 

 protests from the Catholic hierarchy of England, 

 Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Canada, Australia, In- 

 dia, Malta, Jersey, and the Straits Settlements. 

 A resolution was introduced into the Canadian 

 Parliament, praying that the King reform the 

 offensive declaration by omitting all expressions 

 offensive to the religious belief of any of his sub- 

 jects, and was passed by a vote of 125 to 19. The 

 Australian Parliament, and that of Malta, passed 

 similar resolutions. Then the House of Commons 

 woke up, after Mr. Balfour had ingeniously tried 

 to side-track the affair by pointing out that the 

 offensive declaration would not have to be taken 

 again during the present reign, and consented to 

 the appointment of a joint committee to revise 

 the declaration. In the meantime Lord Broye 

 had introduced a bill into the Lords abolishing 

 the declaration. The upper house was not pre- 

 pared for such a radical step and fell in with the 

 Balfour plan. A select committee of the House of 

 Lords was finally settled on, and reported in June 

 in favor of a modification of the declaration. The 

 amended formula, however, met with little favor, 

 since it retained a statement of the King's dis- 

 belief in transubstantiation, the sacrifice of the 

 mass, and the " adoration " of the Virgin Mary. 

 W T hen the Lords went into committee of the whole 

 on the bill, it was seen that a modification of the 

 declaration was impracticable, unless the house 

 should adopt the suggestion of one of the Catholic 

 peers and make it read " I renounce the Pope and 

 all his works." Any promise to maintain the 

 Protestant religion, said the Archbishop of Can- 

 terbury, would give immediate point to the ques- 

 tion " Which Protestant religion ? " The one by 

 law established? But there were two one for 

 England and one for Scotland and besides it was 

 not intended to prevent the sovereign from being 

 or becoming a Methodist, a Wesleyan, or a Con- 



gregationalist. The only point in the declaration 

 was that it excluded Catholics, or was designed 

 to; for as a test it was useless. Finally after half 

 a dozen sessions of the house had been devoted to 

 the question, the Catholic members still objecting 

 to the amendment, it was dropped for the session. 

 By its judgment in the so-called Cockerton case 

 the Court of the Queen's Bench decided that the 

 functions of the local city, town, and borough 

 boards of education were limited to controlling 

 and supporting elementary schools, under the 

 existing acts of Parliament. To provide for the 

 secondary schools a bill was introduced into the 

 House of Commons establishing new educational 

 authorities, to whose hands all secondary educa- 

 tion was to be entrusted. The feature of the 

 measure of greatest interest to Catholics was its 

 provision for the support of denominational 

 schools on the same basis as non-sectarian institu- 

 tions. Its conscience clause contained the stipula- 

 tion that the time for religious worship or for 

 any lesson on a religious subject should be con- 

 veniently arranged for the purpose of allowing 

 the withdrawal of any scholar therefrom. The 

 bill underwent considerable tinkering in commit- 

 tee, and was dropped for the session to give way 

 to more pressing measures. The Government com- 

 mitted itself, however, to the passage of a bill 

 containing as its main feature the support of 

 denominational schools. 



The time-worn demand for better religious fa- 

 cilities for Roman Catholic sailors in the navy 

 came up again in the debate in the house pre- 

 ceding the report of the committee on supply. 

 Beyond extorting the annual promise of the Gov- 

 ernment that provision would be made toward 

 putting Catholic chaplains in the navy on the same 

 footing as regards rank, pay, and proportionate 

 representation with their brethren of the Estab- 

 lished Church, nothing was accomplished. No 

 Catholic chaplains are allowed on board ship, and 

 the " shore system," by which the men while in 

 port are supposed to be able to attend to their 

 religious duties ashore, has proved a failure owing 

 to a natural disinclination of their commanders 

 to give them shore leave denied to their comrades. 

 In addition to this, many of the priests receiving 

 pay from the British Government for acting as 

 shore chaplains in distant ports like Alexandria. 

 Port Said, and Indian ports are unable to speak 

 or understand English and can be of little prac- 

 tical assistance even to those who are fortunate 

 enough to have access to their ministry. 



As a polite atonement for the enforced insult 

 of the accession declaration, the King invited a 

 deputation of the Catholic hierarchy of England 

 to visit him, and was unusually gracious to the 

 idolaters. The subject of the declaration was not 

 raised, but the King later expressed his hope that 

 provision for its elimination might shortly be 

 made. 



The campaign against Catholicism in France 

 woke the islands of Jersey and Guernsey from 

 half a century of sleep and induced them to k 

 adopt two measures of persecution. By the first 

 the members of religious orders exiled from France 

 were prohibited from landing in the islands. The 

 second provided that no school which had not ob- 

 tained a certificate of efficiency for the year end- 

 ing Sept. 30, 1899, should share in the education 

 grant. Of the 9 Catholic schools in the islands, 

 8 were excluded by the provisions of the bill, al- 

 though 7 of them had obtained the certificates 

 before the measure was introduced. 



As a mark of special favor to the Catholics of 

 England, Leo XIII obtained from the authorities 

 of the Church of Toulouse the cession of the ven- 



