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Date: 1865-02-17
By: True Witness
Citation: “His Lordship Bishop Lynch’s Second Lecture on the Pope’s Encyclical”, True Witness (17 February, 1865)
Other formats: TBA

HIS LORDSHIP BISHOP LYNCH’S SECOND LECTURE ON THE POPE’S ENCYCLICAL.

On last Sunday evening, his Lordship Bishop Lynch, delivered his second lecture on the Encyclical. The Cathedral was densely thronged by an immense audience principally composed of men, and, as on the former occasion, including a large number of Protestants. The lecture embraced Socialism, Communism, Clerico-liberal Societies, Bible Societies, and Secret Societies. His Lordship was listened to throughout with marked and respectful attention.

Upon entering the pulpit, his Lordship addressed an earnest and forcible advice to the members of the Hibernian Benevolent Society, counselling them as lovers of peace and order, to give a good example to others by refraining from their annual Procession, this year. The request so eloquently urged by His Lordship, will, no doubt, meet with that prompt and ready obedience which Catholics are accustomed to yield to the wholesome exhortations of their ecclesiastical superiors.

His Lordship then spoke as follows:—

In the 8th chapter of the Book of Kings, we read that the Hebrews getting tired of the government of God, by his prophet Samuel, demanded to be governed by kings, and God was angry with them and said to Samuel his prophet: “Hearken to the voice of the people in all they say to thee, for they have not rejected thee, but Me, that I should not reign over them.” Modern Society, engulfed in the same abyss of vice as the Jews were, cry out, “we don’t want God to reign over us through the Church, give us kings, worldly men like ourselves, time serving slaves of passion, as we are who cannot rebuke our vices whilst indulging in enormous crimes themselves—men of lies and dissimulation who reject every religious control. Look at the exterior of society, in our time sumptuous palaces, luxurious decorations, costly dress and ornament—splendid Jails and Poor Houses, brilliant theatres, magnificent hotels, gold and silver dazzle on the side-board of the castle, and the noble occupant protests and declaims against the precious vessels employed in the service of the temple of God. Amidst all this, the poor are scorned and despised. A proud and giddy people are dancing around the funeral pile of their country and their liberties. Private extravagance and public ruin, debts accumulating with taxes—till all assert there must be universal repudiation and final bankruptcy.

Look into the interior of society and you open a white-washed sepulchre. Insubordination of youth, dishonored old age, dissensions and divisions, backbiting and calumny, wretched gentry under faded silks and twice dyed ribbons, the marriage tie insecure, divorces may now be announced as regularly as births, marriages and deaths, drunkenness and infamy that cannot be mentioned abound, children learning vice so young that they are not ashamed of it, while true religion and fasting, and holy prayer, and humble confession of sins ordered by the Bible, are only to be practised by weak-minded women and children. Our Lord tells us of the latter times to which we are fast approaching, if we are not already arrived at them: “Think you,” said He, “I shall find faith on earth when I come. Sins, little heeded and called vice—circumventing and usury, and the oppressions of the poor.” 1,500,000 people banished from their homes to improve their country.

And for the affairs of State: what corruption and bribery at elections—self interest placed before public good and patriots become mere place hunters. Kings and Emperors can rob on a large scale and appropriate to themselves the dominions of their weaker neighbors on the plea of public good and national progress. And the King robber is called a great hero—might holding the place of right. But a poor man steals a little bread for his starving family, and behold, the disgrace of a prison awaits him. The mighty ones of the earth arrogate to themselves the right to change the meaning of words when it suits them, and call war peace, and peace war. The Empire is peace, when the Empire has determined on war—misery is called prosperity for the country. Europe enjoys the highest civilization, and is gaining the top of the mountain of prosperity, while it takes 5,000,000 of armed men not to count police, and spends over £100,000,000 to keep the peace and guard the territory from robbers! Yes, King-robbers—gallant men—heroes. A power to conquer gives a right to conquer. A few sympathetic words to oppressed nationalities or a feigned word of encouragement to hasten their slaughter and subjugation. Standing armies must be reduced, but every invention for wholesale slaughter must be adopted. We are in the age of large kingdoms for Kings, and large estates for Lords, and these must be acquired by all means, and no prophet of the Lord dare offer a rebuke; and this is christian civilization and progress of the 19th century. The Pope raises his voice, and proclaims the truth of God amid this chaos of confusion, he condemns errors which have been, and if still practised will continue to be ruin of society.

Among the first to which we will call your attention this evening is Socialism, Communism. What do these terms mean? what is their doctrine? The communists proclaim that society was first established on false principles; and they wish to correct the error, and reconstruct it on the basis of human reason. They wish to substitute for religion, science—for government, universal family compacts—for laws, man’s common sense or instinct—and for the present distribution of the things of this world, a general division of property, equalizing the fortunes of all men, regardless of the vested rights of the present owners, regardless of the frugality, economy, ingenuity, enterprise, and industry of the present owners, nor taking into account the vice or indolence of the recipients. They seek, also, social and political equality, as if all men were equally talented, equally virtuous, and equally adapted to all states of life. They seek, moreover, to change the status of the family, and to place woman in the enjoyment of the same rights and privileges and in the same sphere of action as man. No later than the year 1848 this new grand system was to be inaugurated in France; and St. Simon, Fourier, Cabet, Owen, Proudhon, were to be the gods of this grand kingdom of universal equality, brotherly love, and happiness.

The French Revolution of 1789 had already tried the principle of socialism. It levelled everything ancient and revered – the altar, the throne, the entire social fabric – and issued into being the universal citizen, baptised in the best blood of the country. How long did this abortion of the Goddess Reason govern a happy and prosperous people divorced from the sweet rule of the Gospel? Revolution after revolution, and a happy and prosperous country brought to the verge of ruin will tell. And France has still her plebeian and minister of state, her banks and her pawn offices. It is degrading to dispute the wild reveries of those demented beings; and yet it is humiliating to our common reason to be forced to acknowledge that this system has its thousands of votaries in the new as well as in the old world; and as in the old world this system has produced trouble and confusion, so in the new world it may re enact its scenes of blood. We will, therefore, detain you a few minutes on the subject. Let us suppose an equal distribution of property according to the want of each. How many bureaus, and ministers, and committees, and arbitrators, would be required to enquire into the demands of each and supply them, and investigate into the rights of each and adjust them. But here the system is upset – if we may be allowed so to say – before it is founded. Here is social and political inequality, the very thing they wish to avoid. But, again. How hard to content the spendthrift – how difficult to satisfy the cravings of the avaricious! What a scramble! what a struggle to obtain possession of the better shares! All lands are not equally fertile – all metals are not equally precious – all climates are not equally favorable. Men are not equally energetic and wise, and for the offices of social life and the burdens of State how distribute them?

But suppose an impossible hypothesis – that a fair distribution were arrived at. How long could this state of things be maintained, considering the passions to which humanity is subject? The spendthrift and drunkard would make quick work of their portion; and immediately the cry of the “jack tars” who tried communism would be theirs: “Come, boys, let us share again!” The ignorant and the indolent – and their number would soon be legion – would be the next to demand a new division. And thus repeated divisions would cause a constant drain on the energies of the few; and constant indulgence would engender indolence, until the system must fail or the human family perish. Labor expects its reward. Scripture teaches that a man should enjoy the fruits of his own labor, and “he that will not labor,” says St. Paul, “neither let him eat.” But we dismiss this subject – it is not worth further attention.

Clerico-liberal societies are also condemned. That is to say, societies of clergymen who have missed the vocation. Wordly men whose knowledge of light literature surpasses their knowledge of the Bible, the rituals of the Church, the writings of the Holy Father, canon law and theology, prayer and meditation on holy things; who neglect preaching the Gospel to the poor, and succoring the weak by the administration of the Sacraments; political agitators and sympathisers with rebellion. These men seem to be pointed out by St. Paul, in his Second Epistle to Timothy, ch. 3, v. 4: ‘Traitors, stubborn, puffed up, and lovers of pleasure more than of God. Having an appearance indeed of piety, but denying the power thereof. Now these avoid. For of this sort are they who creep into houses, and lead captive silly women loaded with sins, who are lead away with divers desires: always learning and never attaining the knowledge of truth.’ They are even despised by the world, that makes tools of them, and are the first to experience the rage of the worst passion of a despotic and infuriated mob, when the first tocsin of a revolution which they fostered is sounded.

They pretended to say, let us have the Apostolic times. How so? Mobs and stoning to death, and Nero and Dioclesian and the Catacombs, or the lands and the money that the faithful offered to the Apostles, or the Deacons ordained to administer church property? To these men we say, if you will have Apostolic times, give us Apostolic men with the full fervor of the Apostolic Spirit.

Biblical societies are also condemned. That is to say, societies who spread abroad a bible mutilated and mistranslated. Who expose the holy and blessed word of God to ridicule and contempt. We must not throw pearls to swine says our Saviour. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing. I would ask our Protestant friends is not the Bible abused. Are there not things in the Bible hard to be understood, which the unlearned and the unstable wrest to their own destruction. The word of God is good for instruction and edification. But do the illiterate and the vicious always draw from it instruction and edification. The bee from a flower, will extract honey. The wasp from the same flower will extract poison. You would place the Bible in the hands of the proud and ignorant, when even in the hands of a would-be Bishop of a certain established Church, it is made to speak fables and lies, and he spoke the sentiments of a vast number of the learned laity of his country.

Do not all those so called founders of new religious, base their contradictions of worship, and of fame on the same sacred word. God’s word is true, but man’s interpretation of it is too often false.

These biblical societies, who pretend to convert the heathen by sending the aforesaid kind of Bibles among them, pursue a different course from that pointed out by our Lord. He said, ‘go teach the word of God.’ They say, go scatter a printed copy of what they call the whole word of God.

Thousands of Bibles, so called, have been thrown upon the shores of China, with sometimes the impious exclamation. ‘Let God take care of his own word.’ ‘Tis not the use of the Bible the Pope forbids, it is the abuse of it. It is not the dissemination of the true word of God among the people—but the indiscriminate scattering of it among people who cannot appreciate it, or will not respect it. We forbid the Bible to some people so we do the sacraments.—We always forbid sacred things to those who would profane them. It is said we fear the effect of spreading the Bible, lest people should become enlightened by it and detect our false doctrine and errors, but Protestants have not the same fear. Oh no! For according to them the Bible proves all their doctrines however contradictory. The Bible, therefore proves their errors, so they need not fear detection from that source. Hence the promiscuous spreading of the Bible improve the multiplication of religions, diversity of doctrines, latitudinarianism of principles, laxity of morals, in fine, it is quoted by Protestants as the authority and excuse for vice.

Secret Societies are next condemned. A condemned secret society is an association of men bound together by an oath for a purpose opposed to the common weal, or injustice to faith and morals, or hurtful to the members themselves, or detrimental to secured lawful rights to the peace of well-regulated communities, or to attain an object to the recipient undefined, or by means of which he is ignorant. It is evident that the members of Privy Councils of State, who are bound by oath to keep secret the deliberations of the Council, the faculty of students of universities and colleges, who are sworn to keep the rule of their institute, are not to be placed in this category, they know their object, it is good—the means by which they must attain it, they are right and those who take the oath are not ignorant of either of them; hence the oath is not opposed to any right or any good, and is taken with deliberations and a full knowledge of all the responsibility it involves.

The Church is the divinely-appointed guardian of the faith and morals of the Christian world. To Her was addressed these words by our Divine Lord, ‘Go ye. therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,—teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you; and behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world. [Mat. xviii. 20.] She is bound to teach them all things necessary to salvation—all truth—to guard their faith and morals against corruption ; and she pronounces on secret societies in general, that they are not to be tolerated.

The learned Pope Benedict XIV., in condemning secret societies, gave his reasons for so doing as follows:—

1. Because men of all and every and no religions opinions are associated—even those who deny the Divinity of Christ.
2. Because of secrecy.
3. Because of the oath.
4. Because these societies are forbidden by ecclesiastical and civil law—at least in some kingdoms—as prejudicial to the social welfare and opposed to right order.
5. Because many good men abandoned these societies, and expressed their regret at having ever belonged to them.

(To be continued in our next.)