APOLOGY FOR THE BELFAST ADDRESS 



49 



a Priesthood exercises dominant power. 

 Precisely the same complaint has been 

 made with respect to the Catholics 

 of Germany. The great national litera- 

 ture and the scientific achievements 

 of that country, in modern times, are 

 almost wholly the work of Protestants. 

 A vanishingly small fraction of it only is 

 derived from members of the Roman 

 Church, although the number of these in 

 Germany is at least as great as that of the 

 Protestants. " The question arises," says 

 a writer in an able German periodical, 

 " what is the cause of a phenomenon so 

 humiliating to the Catholics ? It cannot 

 be referred to want of natural endowment 

 due to climate (for the Protestants of 

 Southern Germany have contributed 

 powerfully to the creations of the German 

 intellect), but purely to outward circum- 

 stances. And these are readily discovered 

 in the pressure exercised for centuries by 

 the Jesuitical system, which has crushed 

 out of Catholics every tendency to free 

 mental productiveness." It is, indeed, 

 in Catholic countries that the weight of 

 Ultramontanism has been most severely 

 felt. It is in such countries that the very 

 finest spirits, who have dared, without 

 quitting their faith, to plead for freedom 

 or reform, have suffered extinction. The 

 extinction, however, was more apparent 

 than real, and Hermes, Hirscher, and 

 Giinther, though individually broken and 

 subdued, prepared the way, in Bavaria, 

 for the persecuted but unflinching 

 Frohschammer, for Dollinger, and for 

 the remarkable liberal movement of 

 which Dollinger is the head and guide. 



Though moulded for centuries to an 

 obedience unparalleled in any other 

 country, except Spain, the Irish intellect 

 is beginning to show signs of indepen- 

 dence; demanding a diet more suited 

 to its years than the pabulum of the 

 Middle Ages. As for the recent mani- 

 festo in which Pope, Cardinal, Arch- 

 bishops, and Bishops are united in one 

 grand anathema, its character and faith 

 are shadowed forth by the Vision of 

 Nebuchadnezzar recorded in the Book 

 or' Daniel. It resembles the image 



whose form was terrible, but the gold, 

 and silver, and brass, and iron of which 

 rested upon feet of clay. And a stone 

 smote the feet of clay ; and the iron, and 

 the brass, and the silver, and the gold, 

 were broken in pieces together, and 

 became like the chaff of the summer 

 threshing-floors, and the wind carried 

 them away. 



Monsignor Capel has recently been 

 good enough to proclaim at once the 

 friendliness of his Church towards true 

 science, and her right to determine what 

 true science is. Let us dwell for a 

 moment on the proofs of her scientific 

 competence. When Halley's comet 

 appeared in 1456 it was regarded as 

 the harbinger of God's vengeance, the 

 dispenser of war, pestilence, and famine, 

 and by order of the Pope the church 

 bells of Europe were rung to scare the 

 monster away. An additional daily 

 prayer was added to the supplications of 

 the faithful. The comet in due time 

 disappeared, and the faithful were com- 

 forted by the assurance that, as in 

 previous instances relating to eclipses, 

 droughts, and rains, so also as regards 

 this "nefarious "comet, victory had been 

 vouchsafed to the Church. 



Both Pythagoras and Copernicus had 

 taught the heliocentric doctrine that 

 the earth revolves round the sun. In 

 the exercise of her right to determine 

 what true science is, the Church, in the 

 Pontificate of Paul V., stepped in and, 

 by the mouth of the Holy Congregation 

 of the Index, delivered, on March 5th, 

 1 6 1 6, the following decree : 



And whereas it hath also come to the 

 knowledge of the said Holy Congregation 

 that the false Pythagorean doctrine of the 

 mobility of the earth and the immobility 

 of the sun, entirely opposed to Holy writ, 

 which is taught by Nicolas Copernicus, is 

 now published abroad and received by 

 many. In order that this opinion may not 

 further spread, to the damage of Catholic 

 truth, it is ordered that this and all other 

 books teaching the like doctrine be sus- 

 pended, and by this decree they are all respec- 

 tively suspended, forbidden, and condemned. 



