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Then there is the Congregation of Immunities, instituted by Urban XIII., but this is a small affair now, when rights of asylum and clerical immunities are all but extinct. It rather deals with small matters in which Church and State may come into conflict.

Next is the Congregation of Bishops and Regulars, also instituted by Sixtus V., which concerns itself with the relations between monks and friars and the episcopate.

The Congregation of Indulgences, established by Clement IX., sees to the conditions on which indulgences are granted and is directed to avert, and correct, abuses.

Lastly, may be here mentioned the Congregation of Propaganda, which was instituted by Gregory XV. in 1632, to protect, regulate and promote foreign missions.

I came into collision with the Holy Office and the Sacred Congregation of the Index in the following manner:

I had long made it my business to try and effect a satisfactory reconciliation between recent science and modern culture, on the one hand, and ancient Catholic dogma and contemporary Roman Catholic teaching, on the other. The questions to which I naturally first addressed myself were those of my own department of science, biology, and especially the doctrine of Evolution. To this end I published two works, "Genesis of Species"* and "Lessons from Nature," which did a good deal toward effecting the object I had in view.

But, though my notions appeared to be sympathetically regarded by a large number of priests, I was attacked by others, and notably by one Murphy, in the Irish Ecclesiastical Record, a journal much esteemed by not a few Catholic theologians.

Thereupon I endeavored to demonstrate, by a notable example from astronomical science, how much greater the freedom of Catholics really was than they seemed to suppose.

The example I took was the never to be forgotten case of Galileo, and it was this which led me to study the nature and effects of decrees made by the Sacred Congregations of the Index and the Holy Office. In 1616 the Index made a decree condemning Copernicanism, as before stated, because it was "altogether opposed to divine Scripture ;" and, in 1632, the Inquisition con

*Macmillan & Co., 1870.

†John Murray.

In an article entitled "Modern Catholics and Scientific Freedom," in the Nineteenth Century for July, 1887.

demned the astronomer Galileo for having held a doctrine "contrary to the sacred and divine Scriptures," and he, in his abjuration, speaks of its having been declared to him by authority that his doctrine was "repugnant to Scripture."

From all this I argued, since it has now become universally acknowledged that both the Holy Office and the Index had erred in their interpretation of Scripture, Catholics had become forever free from such trammels, since one error sufficed to destroy all confidence in the absolute certainty of their future decisions.

Fairly satisfied by my success-especially since my article, though somewhat provocative, elicited no censure I next attempted to meet a much more serious difficulty.

It was, and is, an absolute dogma of the Church that the damned are damned eternally; that from hell there is no possibility of escape, and that the two kinds of torment in the infernal prison, the torture of loss and the torture of hell-fire, will go on for ever and ever and ever!

So terrible, so revolting, a doctrine constituted for many Catholics the one great trial of their faith. Some known to me, priests as well as laity, neither could nor would believe in it; and yet to deny, or even inwardly to reject, any single dogma of the Catholic Church was, and is, simply not to be in reality a Catholic at all. The horror of this doctrine was, I knew, very much felt in the United States; as might be naturally expected from a people so rationally considerate for and tolerant of the beliefs both of their fellow citizens and of strangers.

There was small wonder that such terror should be felt for the doctrine taught by the Fathers and Saints of the Church regarding hell-SS. Cyprian, Gregory, Chrysostom, Augustine, Aquinas, etc.

Two quotations from modern writers will, I think, quite suffice. A priest known as Father Furniss thus describes the place of punishment:

"But listen to the tremendous, the horrible, uproar of millions and millions and millions of tormented creatures mad with the fury of hell. Oh! the screams of fear, the groanings of horror, the yells of rage, the cries of pain, the shouts of agony, the shrieks of despair, from millions on millions! There you have the roaring like lions, hissing like serpents, howling like dogs, and wailing like dragons; there you hear the gnashing of teeth and the fearful blasphemies of the devils. Above all, you hear the roaring of the thunders of God's anger, which shakes hell to its foundations."

The teaching of that modern Saint, St. Alphonsus Liguori, about hell, has been thus summarized:

"In hell there is a kind of horrible gloom, where the dim light only serves to reveal objects of horror-a vast expanse, overarched and searched by torrents of devouring flame, where lie in heaps the carcasses of the damned, incapable of motion from their first casting down; and as long as God shall be God, the brains within the head, the marrow within the bones, the bowels within the body, the blood within the veins, the heart within the breast, shall be searched and interpenetrated by quenchless fire. In that dim and glimmering light the senses of the damned shall each receive its own particular torture; the sight shall be appalled by the view of devils who trample upon the bodies of their victims, assuming shapes the most horrible to increase the terrors of their presence; the sense of smell shall be assailed with a stench so great that, by comparison, all earthly stenches would seem jasmine or attar of roses. The ears of the damned shall

ever echo to the unceasing howling of the devils and of their own shrieks of despair, of agony, and of impotent rage. How painful," says St. Liguori, "to listen to the groans of a sick man, and what must be the torture to the inhabitants of hell to listen, not for an hour, a day, a week, but to the dreadful sounds which fill the air of hell forever and forever. * 中 In that fiery deluge must the souls of the lost forever

toss to and fro, like chips upon an ocean, but chips consubstantiated with fire."

What would seem wonderful about such writings is that their authors should think any readers would tolerate and accept such statements. Yet their very existence shows that men and women, deluded even to so great an extent, do in fact exist. What a gospel for mankind! What "good news," compared with what Paganism had to offer! But let us consider one of the most cruel of Pagan cults. Surely the Mexican god before whose image the priests cut open the breasts of living victims, in order to smear its lips with blood from their torn-out, but yet palpitating hearts, was a god of benevolence and mercy compared with the Divine Monster worshipped by St. Alphonsus Liguori! The Mexican's sufferings, after all, were short, and he was often a voluntary victim; but the God ordinary Catholic theologians would have us adore is represented as regarding with complacency torments compared with which burning alive is as nothing. For the hellish torment is to be endured by thousands of thousands of human beings, for a duration which we can only picture by millions on millions of years recurring without end.

Such a god we must refuse to worship; and, did a being of the

kind exist, we should be ethically bound, happen what might, to abhor, execrate and defy him.*

Yet such is the Divine Demon who seems to be praised and adored by Catholic Saints and Fathers, and by the common teaching of the Church.

Well might any Catholic desire to free his Church from the incubus of such teaching, could it be possible for him so to do. This I endeavored to effect by my articles entitled "Happiness in Hell," which were published in the Nineteenth Century in December, 1892, and in February and April, 1893.

Of course, I could not pretend to know anything more about the next world than other men. My task was limited to such a criticism of Catholic doctrine and such a statement of its terms and propositions as might show that the Church's teaching about hell, rightly understood, contains nothing which cannot be seen to accord with right reason, the highest morality and the greatest benevolence.

I will now, very briefly, state the essence of my contention.

(1.) I recalled the fact that, according to Catholic doctrine, man, at his first creation, was raised above his natural state and condition to a supernatural existence which carried with it, as a consequence, that inconceivable happiness in the next world which is technically called the "Beatific Vision;" a happiness as utterly unattainable by the mere natural man as it is impossible for a fish to live the life of a bird-or rather inconceivably more impossible, since between a natural and a supernatural mode of existence there is an infinite difference.

(2.) Man by "the Fall" descended to a mere natural existence, and so became incapable of the Beatific Vision.

(3.) The Redemption having again made a supernatural life attainable through baptism, the baptized, who did not die in a

*As some relief to the horrors above depicted, I may quote some of the quaint ideas of Father Lessius, S. J., recorded in his work "De Perfectionibus Moribusque Divinis" (A. D. 1620). Their perusal will demonstrate the immense gulf which has come to exist between the conceptions of his age and modern ideas. In his chapter (XX.) on the general resurrection, he describes the despatch of angels to collect the minute, scattered fragments of bodies, and treats of the bearing of cannibalism on the process. He was, in a way, a precursor of Rochefoucauld, since he described how the blessed look on at the torments of the damned and congratulate themselves "quod tantis malis in æternum sint exemrti.” He also estimates the time it takes to descend into hell and the number of miles to be traversed. He considers its size and structure, and declares it need not be so very large because the damned will neither have to stand up nor run about, but are piled up in a great heap on either burning coals or burning wood. He also describes the damned as in a pool of burning liquid sulphur, the diameter of which need not be more than 20,000 feet.

state of grave sin, would enjoy the supernatural happiness of the direct Vision of God.

(4.) No one unbaptized, or dying in grave sin—such sin putting an end to the supernatural life of the soul-could ever attain the Beatific Vision, there being no state of probation after death. Thus, all grave sinners, with all the unbaptized, must pass their eternal existence excluded from the Beatific Vision-that is, they must remain in hell for all eternity.

I then proceeded to argue that there must be happiness in hell, because the Church teaches that the souls of unbaptized infants live there, for all eternity, a life of the most perfect and complete natural happiness, though forever excluded from the supernatural mode of existence. Of this they might be forever unconscious, and, certainly, having no experience thereof, would as little desire it as a trout would desire to be a humming-bird.

I added that there were millions of savages who were probably as irresponsible as little children, and for them also a happy natural future must be in store. Next, I pointed out how many persons, from congenital defect, early bad influences, or overpowering temptation, might commit faults actually very grave, for which, however, they were but little, or not at all, responsible. To such, a just God could not apportion a miserable eternity.

If, then, there was so much happiness in hell, how could the terrible declarations of Fathers, Saints, Theologians and Preachers be justified and harmonize therewith?

To me it seemed an easy task, and I rejoiced to undertake to demonstrate that harmony, knowing how much solace and comfort it would give to many an anxious mind, possessed by terrible fear, as to the future.

Now, as I have said, the difference between supernatural and natural happiness is declared by the Church to be an infinite one. How can the real nature of such a difference be best brought home to men's minds? Our natural mode of life, our natural joys and sorrows, we have all constant experience of and can readily understand. But, as to what the Supernatural may be, we can form no conception, as we have had no experience of it; and men cannot imagine anything of which they have never had any experience. How then can its value be made most appreciable?

If a painter had to depict, as best he could, a brightness which no pigment can approach, his only resource must be to deepen the

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