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Date: 1865-03-17
By: True Witness
Citation: “Col. Haultain and the Papal Encyclical”, True Witness (17 March, 1865)
Other formats: TBA

COL. HAULTAIN AND THE PAPAL ENCYCLICAL.

—”Ne sutor ultra crepidam,” is a somewhat trite proverb, yet may we be excused for recalling it to the memory of the gallant colonel, and erudite legislator whose name appears above. We may say to him as the Bishop of Nîmes on a somewhat similar occasion lately said to poor dear M. Baroche, that “it is easy to see that he, Col. Haultain, has not received grace and mission to interpret the Encyclical and Syllabi;” and it would therefore have been more prudent on his part, and in better taste, had he abstained from a public display of his ignorance, and of his anti-Catholic prejudices. We do not expect that Protestant gentlemen should be posted up in Catholic theology; but we do expect that they should hold their tongues upon topics of which they know nothing, literally nothing.

Col. Haultain, in the course of his discussion on the Union scheme before the country, expressed his apprehensions that the Protestant minority of Lower Canada might be thereby exposed to unjust treatment from the Catholic majority; and he sought to justify these apprehensions from the essentially intolerant character of the “Romish Hierarchy,” of which intolerance the Pope, in his late Encyclical had himself set an example:—

“He, Col. Haultain, would refer on this point to the late Encyclical Letter from Rome as an answer to the question put him. He saw by that document issued with the authority that surrounded a message from the Pope to the Roman Catholic Church, that one of the errors condemned was,— “That emigrants to Catholic countries should have freedom of worship.”

Col. Haultain will pardon us for assuring him that he has seen no such thing; that he has not seen the Encyclical with its Syllabus, but at best only an imperfect translation of that document furnished by the newspapers; and that in consequence, he has fallen into a very great, though under the circumstances pardonable, mistake as to its meaning, and the precise nature of the errors therein condemned. As we will not believe that he, an English gentleman, would knowingly assert that which is untrue, so also we trust that he will take it in good part that we indicate to him his error, trusting to his English love of fair play that he will publicly acknowledge and retract it.

The passage of the Encyclical to which in the above extract from the Colonel’s speech allusion is evidently made, is the second clause of the tenth section of the accompanying Syllabus—wherein the following proposition is marked out for condemnation:—

“78. Hinc laudabiliter in quibusdam Catholici nominis regionibus lege cautum est, ut hominibus illuc immigrantibus liceat publicum proprii cujusque cultus exercitium habere.”

Of which we offer the following translation:—

“Thus it is commendable that, in certain Catholic countries, it has been provided by law that; foreigners coming there should enjoy the public exercise of their particular religious rites.”

We beg of Col. Haultain to note the words which we have Italicised—”lege cautum est,” and “publicum”—as on these in great part the meaning of the, to him, obnoxious paragraph depends ; and to bear in mind that it is one thing for a State calling itself Christian and Catholic, to tolerate, or not by law to prohibit, freedom of worship to foreigners within its jurisdiction ; and another and a very different thing for the said State to make legal provision, lege cavere, for the public exercise of all manner of religions that foreigners coming within its limits may happen to bring with them. Now it is the assertion that it is the duty, or praiseworthy on the part, of the Christian and Catholic State to provide by law, “ut lege cautum sit,” for the public exercise of all manners of religions, indiscriminately, that foreigners within its limits for the time being may happen to bring with them, that the Pope condemns; and this proposition all Catholics, laics as well as clerics, condemn with him, as a monstrous error.

We will suppose that Col. Haultain is a member of the Church of England; if so would he not treat as an error the proposition that the British Government would do well to provide by law for the public exercise of the religious rites even of all its subjects—seeing that of those subjects many are plunged in grossest idolatry? Much more then is Great Britain as a Christian State not bound, or rather bound not, to provide by law for the public exercise of their religious rites by all foreigners who may happen to come within its jurisdiction. Would Col. Haultain, for instance, deem himself bound as a member of Parliament to make legal provision for the public exercise of the rites of Buddhism? were a stream of Chinese immigration to be directed towards Canada, as it already has been directed towards Australia; or would his principles of tolerance compel him, in case of a Mormon immigration setting in towards Toronto, to insist upon a legal provision for the public exercise of Mormon worship? And yet if he should refuse to do either of these things he, all Protestant as he is, would only be acting in strict conformity with the principle laid down in the late Encyclical, and which he nevertheless condemns.

Col. Haultain may be sure that the words used by the Sovereign Pontiff in his late Encyclical, were scrupulously selected, and carefully weighed before they were given to the world; and that if it had been the intention of the Pope to condemn as erroneous, the proposition “that emigrants to Catholic countries should have freedom of worship—or in other words, should not be prevented by law from worshipping God after their own fashion, and privately—the writer of the famous Encyclical would have said so at once; and there would have been no reason for qualifying the condemnation with the words “lege cautum est,” and “publicum.”

Modern Liberalism of which the error condemned by the Pope in Art. 78, is the offspring, holds indeed, that all religions are entitled to equal provision from the State, because all are equally “true,” or in other words are equally “false.” Now unless we accept as an axiom this pretended equality, we cannot say that the State which “provides by law” for the “public exercise” of the rites of all religious denominations within its jurisdiction, does well, reasonably, or “laudabiliter;” and as no one can be a Christian without believing that all other religious systems are false, so no Christian can logically, or consistently with his Christian profession, maintain the proposition, that the Christian State does well in providing by law for the public exercise of the rites of non-Christian or false religions, should by chance the professors of any of those false religious systems happen to take up their residence within the limits of the jurisdiction of the said State. It might indeed refuse to interfere, to put down or suppress any of these false religions; but it could not make legal provision for their public exercise, without thereby making abnegation of its Christian character.

And so the Protestant Government of England, applying this principle, and carrying it further than does the Pope, not only makes no legal provision for the public exercise of their religion by its Catholic subjects in England, but it positively, and by law, makes in many instances, of the ” “public exercise” of that religion, an offence punishable by the civil magistrate. So too, wherever Protestants are in power the public exercise of the Catholic religion is virtually prohibited, if not by statute law, at all events by mob law, from which there is no appeal. We would therefore call upon Col. Haultain, as an Upper Canadian, and as the friend of religious liberty, to remedy this abuse; and, if he indeed believes it to be right and proper that the State should by law make provision for the public exercise of their religious rites by all foreigners within its limits, we expect of him that he will use his influence as a legislator to procure for his Catholic fellow-subjects of Toronto the enjoyment of their legal right to freedom of worship on their own domain. He will remember that last summer, when the Catholics of Toronto attempted to exercise this legal right, they were brutally set upon and dispersed by a liberal Protestant mob, and that the law gave them no redress. We therefore call upon Col. Haultain to see to it that effective legal provision be made for the public exercise of the Catholic religion in Toronto, and throughout Upper Canada.

• “Ecclesiastical Titles Bill,” for instance.