Introduction.
MY DEAR READER:
Perhaps this is the first time in your life that you have held a book in which the doctrines of the Catholic Church are expounded by one of her own sons. You have, no doubt, heard and read many things concerning our Church; but has not your information come from teachers justly liable to suspicion?
You asked for bread, and they gave you a stone. You asked for fish, and they handed you a serpent. Instead of the bread of truth, they extended to you the serpent of falsehood. Hence, without intending to be unjust, is it not the case that your mind has been biased against us—merely because you listened to false witnesses?
This, at least, has been the experience of thousands of my countrymen whom I have encountered in the brief course of my missionary career. The Catholic Church is persistently misrepresented by the most powerful vehicles of public information.
She is assailed in novels of the stamp of Maria Monk, and in the pages of pictorial periodicals. It is true that the falsehoods spread by these illustrated journals have been thoroughly exposed. But the antidote often arrives too late to neutralise the poison.
I have seen a picture portraying Columbus attempting to demonstrate the feasibility of his plan to discover a new continent—before a group of monks who are depicted as shaking their fists and gnashing their teeth at him. It matters not to the artist that Columbus could likely never have undertaken his voyage and made his discovery—according to the explorer’s own testimony—were it not for the benevolent zeal of the monks Antonio de Marchena and Juan Perez, and other ecclesiastics, as well as for the munificence of Queen Isabella and the Spanish Court. [xii]
The Church is similarly misrepresented in so-called histories, such as Foxe's Book of Martyrs. It is true that he has been successfully refuted by scholars such as Lingard and Gairdner. But how many have read the fictitious narratives of Foxe, who have never perused a single page of Lingard or Gairdner?
In a large portion of the press, in pamphlets, and especially in the pulpit—which ought to be consecrated to truth and charity—the Church becomes the victim of the most appalling slanders. Upon her fair and heavenly brow, her enemies place a hideous mask, and in that disfigured guise they parade her before the public, subjecting her to ridicule and contempt; just as Jesus, her Divine Spouse, was treated when, arrayed in a scarlet cloak and crowned with thorns, He was mocked by a thoughtless rabble.
They are afraid to tell the truth about her, for:
“Truth has such a face and such a mien,
As to be loved needs only to be seen.”
– Dryden, Hind and Panther. 1
It is not uncommon for a dialogue like the following to take place between a Protestant minister and a convert to the Catholic Church:
MINISTER. — You cannot deny that the Roman Catholic Church teaches gross errors—the worship of images, for instance.
CONVERT. — I admit no such charge, for I have been taught no such doctrines.
MINISTER. — But the priest who instructed you did not teach you everything. He withheld some points which he knew would be objectionable to you.
CONVERT. — He withheld nothing; for I possess books which treat exhaustively of all Catholic doctrines.
MINISTER. — Deluded soul! Don’t you know that in Europe they are taught differently?
CONVERT. — That cannot be, for the Church teaches the same [xiii] creed all over the world, and most of the doctrinal books I have read were originally published in Europe.
Yet ministers who make such slanderous statements are surprised when we express indignation, and they accuse us of being too sensitive. We have been vilified for so long that they imagine we have no right to complain.
We cannot exaggerate the offence of those who thus wilfully malign the Church. There is a commandment which says: “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.”
If it is a sin to bear false testimony against a single individual, how then shall we characterise the enormity of those who calumniate three hundred million human beings by attributing to them doctrines and practices which they themselves repudiate and abhor?
I do not wonder that the Church is hated by those who derive their understanding of her from her enemies. It is entirely natural for an honest man to loathe an institution whose history he believes to be riddled with bloodshed, crime, and fraud.
Had I been educated as they were, and reared in an atmosphere hostile to the Church, perhaps I too should be unfortunate enough to be breathing vengeance against her today—instead of consecrating my life to her defence.
It is not their hostility that I decry, but rather the fact that the judgement they have formed is grounded in the reckless assertions of her enemies and not in the testimony of impartial witnesses.
Suppose I wished to obtain a correct estimate of the Southern people: would it be fair for me to rely solely on certain Northern and Eastern periodicals which, during our Civil War, were bitterly opposed to the race and institutions of the South?
Those papers have depicted you as men who always resort to the sword and pistol, instead [xiv] of the law, to settle your private grievances. They heaped accusations upon you which I shall not repeat here. Instead of adopting these publications as my sources, my duty was to come among you; to dwell with you; to read your lives by studying your public and private character.
This I have done, and here I cheerfully bear witness to your many excellent qualities of both mind and heart.
Now I ask you to extend to the Catholic Church the same measure of fairness which you quite reasonably demand of me when forming a judgement of Southern character.
Ask not her enemies what she is, for they are blinded by passion. Ask not her ungrateful, renegade children, for you have never known a son to speak kindly of the mother whom he has abandoned and despised.
Study her history in the pages of truth. Examine her creed. Read her authorised catechisms and doctrinal books. You will find them everywhere: on the shelves of booksellers, in the libraries of her clergy, and upon the tables of Catholic families.
There is no Freemasonry in the Catholic Church; she harbours no secrets. She has not one set of doctrines for Bishops and Priests and another for the laity. She does not maintain one creed for the initiated and another for outsiders. Everything in the Catholic Church is open and above board. She teaches the same doctrines to all—to both the Pope and the peasant.
Should not I be better qualified to present to you the Church’s creed than the unfriendly witnesses I have named? I have imbibed her doctrine with my mother’s milk. Her history and theology have been the study of my life. What motive could I possibly have to mislead you?
It is not temporal reward—for I seek [xv] not your money, but your soul, for which Jesus Christ died.
Nor could I hope for an eternal reward by deceiving you, for in doing so I would be purchasing for myself eternal condemnation by gaining proselytes at the expense of truth.
This, friendly reader, is my only motive. I feel, deep within my heart, that in possessing the Catholic faith I hold a treasure in comparison with which all earthly things are but dross.
And rather than wish to bury this treasure within my breast, I long to share it with you—especially since I lose none of my spiritual riches by communicating them to others.
It is both a duty and a labour of love to speak the truth concerning my venerable Mother, so much maligned in our times.
Were even a tithe of the accusations levelled against her true, I would not remain attached to her ministry, nor even to her communion, for a single day. I know these charges to be false. The longer I know her, the more I admire and venerate her. Each passing day reveals to me new spiritual charms.
Ah! my dear friend, if only you could see her as her children see her, she would no longer appear to you as typified by the woman of Babylon. She would be revealed to you, “Bright as the sun, fair as the moon,” with the beauty of Heaven stamped upon her brow, glorious “as an army in battle array.” You would love her, cling to her, and embrace her. With her children, you would rise in reverence “and call her blessed.”
Consider what you lose, and what you gain, in embracing the Catholic religion.
Your loss is nothing compared with your gain. You do not surrender your manhood, your dignity, your independence, or your reasoning faculties. You forfeit none of the revealed truths you may already possess. The only restraint imposed [xvi] upon you is the restraint of the Gospel—and to this you cannot reasonably object.
You gain everything that is worth possessing. You acquire a full and coherent understanding of God’s revelation. You attain possession of the whole truth as it is in Jesus. No longer do you behold it in fragments, but reflected before you in all its beauty, as in a polished mirror.
While others remain outside, criticising the architecture of the temple, you are within—worshipping the Divine Architect, and devoutly exclaiming with the Psalmist: “I have loved, O Lord, the beauty of Thy house, and the place where Thy glory dwelleth.”
While others from without perceive only blurred and confused figures in the stained-glass windows—without symmetry, attraction, or meaning—you, from within, are gazing with silent rapture upon God’s glorified saints, their outlines clearly defined upon the windows, all illuminated by the sunlight of Heaven.
Your knowledge of the truth is not only complete and harmonious—it becomes fixed and steady.
You exchange opinion for certainty. You are no longer “tossed about by every wind of doctrine,” but are now firmly grounded upon the rock of truth. Then follows that profound peace which springs from the conscious possession of truth.
In coming to the Church, you are not entering a strange place, but returning to your Father’s home. The house and its furnishings may appear unfamiliar to you, but they remain just as your forefathers left them three hundred years ago. In returning to the Church, you worship where your fathers once worshipped; you kneel before the same altar at which they knelt; you receive the Sacraments which they received; and you acknowledge the authority of the clergy whom they venerated.
You return, like the Prodigal [xvii] Son, to the home of your father and mother. The garment of joy is placed upon you, the banquet of love is set before you, and you are given the kiss of peace—a pledge of your filiation and adoption.
One warm embrace from your tender Mother will compensate for every sacrifice you may have made. And you will cry out with the penitent Augustine: “Too late have I known Thee, O Beauty ever ancient and ever new; too late have I loved Thee.”
Should the reading of this book bring but one soul to the knowledge of the Church, my labour shall be abundantly rewarded.
Remember: nothing is so essential as the salvation of your immortal soul. “For what doth it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” 1
Let not, therefore, the fear of offending friends and relatives, the persecution of men, the loss of earthly possessions, nor any other temporal calamity deter you from investigating and embracing the true religion.
“For our present tribulation, which is momentary and light, worketh for us above measure exceedingly an eternal weight of glory.” 2
May God grant you the light to see the truth, and, having seen it, may He grant you the courage and strength to follow it.
1. Dryden, Hind and Panther.
1. Matthew xvi. 26
2. II Corinthians iv. 17