BX4700 F6R6I Hi ; ; liililiiliii r . iiiiilllliiilS* Cents ■K ::i!i ||||! llij BlltlS Mi a j)ii iji| |j;t | i|ii (v linn'-:- 1 -; - lltf •• j* ••ill •Mill! «0 PSP !'f * * ,!*** *'* i:*:?- HBSPwh MU ifeiivs: mm, 1 1 II III i Bliip ffi Bra ||iji a* , ( i l8i M i i i>*;i SHpWPWj nfiMb i n i ) HI ! ||K HIH Hill ■ill S mSm mmumi Hi t t Fortnightly $1.00 per year CATHOLIC MIND No. 13 July 8, !903 The Re&l St. Francis of Assisi. I. THE V -W w. ; fkss r SSCNGKK New Yoxk ;V ‘The CATHOLIC MIND A periodical published fortnightly, on the eighth and twenty-second of the month. 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T'b lo I In that exquisite garland of immortelles known as the Fioretti or “Little Flowers of St. Francis/’ we read of a certain friar once asking St. Francis : “Why is it that all the world comes after thee, and everybody desires to see thee, and to hear thee, and to obey thee? Thou art not a man either comely of person, or of noble birth, or of great science; whence then comes it that all the world runs after thee?” Not a few persons may have been tempted of late to repeat this question in view of the homage which the opening century is offering to the Little Poor Man of Assisi. No one who follows the “signs of the times” can have failed to note the many manifesta- tions of this homage whether in art or in literature or in historical criticism. The mere fact that the Povereilo in his tattered habit should become an object of widespread interest in an age that affects to smile at medisevalism seems strange enough. But that the present revival of interest in the life and work of St. Francis should re- ceive its greatest impetus from those who are not Cath- olics is stranger yet. Of all the saints, the Seraphic Patriarch we should think would be the last to win the affections of Protestants, yet he is apparently the one most beloved. It is several years ago now that a distinguished Oxford professor published an essay which first set our separated brethren talking about St. Francis. Ever since that time i THE REAL ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI Protestant interest in the Saint has been steadily grow- ing in widening circles and the public never seems to grow weary of hearing more about him. Indeed the past decade has been remarkable for an almost continuous stream of literature dealing with the Saint’s history. New biographies have appeared, including one in the “ epoch- makers” series; (i) the secular magazines have treated at length of his “spirit” ; even the daily papers have turned aside from politics and the latest scandal to invoke the name of St. Francis as though it still had a magic power over men’s minds. Moreover Protestant poets have run the gamut of the Saint’s praises; oratorios have been composed in his honor and milliners with cruel irony have concocted little birds for the trimming of bonnets which they call oiseaux a la St. Frangois. Nor is this all. The life of our Saint has been made the sub- ject of Sunday-school study by the Congregational Union of England; (2) of sermons in Protestant cathe- drals; (3) of lectures in Rationalistic Universities, (4) and of “consecration” by the Salvation Army. (5) At the moment the beginnings of Franciscanism as a “world movement” are being diligently studied and an Inter- (1) The best Catholic one is undoubtedly Abbe Leon Lemon- nier’s admirable “ History ” (London : Kegan Paul, 1894), but the finally acceptable life of the saint has still to be published. (2) In each of the three grades during 1897 appeared a life of "St. Francis.” (3) Canon Knox Little delivered a series of lectures on St. Francis at Worcester Cathedral in the Lent of 1896. (4) Professor W. Goetz, of the University of Leipzig, devoted the entire academic year 1899-90 to the critical analysis of the Speculum Perfectioyiis and the Legenda Trium Sociorum. (5) One of the most popular volumes of the “Red Hot Li- brary” is “Brother Francis or Less than the Least” by “Staff Captain” Douglas. THE REAL ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI. 3 national Society under Royal patronage has been estab- lished to facilitate this study ; a new race of pilgrims is wending its way towards the Umbrian towns where every little out-of-the-way convent is being ransacked in the quest of chronicles, legends, or whatever else may throw any light, however dim, upon the early history of the Seraphic Order. (6) As a result of the discoveries al- ready made among the “buried cities” of Franciscan lit- erature we have lately been put in possession of no small number of original documents, reprints and new editions, all edited with scholarly care and often with exquisite taste. Not less noteworthy is the eager wel- come which such works receive from the reading pub- lic and the sympathetic treatment of them at the hands of the reviewers. Truly, in the face of all these facts, one is tempted to conclude that the new century cannot be altogether un- spiritual when the “message” of a stigmatized mystic is being reverently listened to even in the halls of the “high- er criticism.” Indeed, a perusal of some recent works might almost lead one to believe that the day of saints is coming at last, and that the present Franciscan renais- sance is but the presage of a golden age when simple things and tenderness and faith shall be the vogue. (7) But, alas ! we fear that not a little of what is being written nowadays about “sweet St. Francis” must be set down as mere sentiment. We have in mind at least one recent contribution to the literature of Franciscanism (6) Societa Internationale di Studi Francescani inaugurated at Assisi, June, 1902, under the patronage of the Queen Mother, Margaret of Savoy. (7) Canon Rawnsley’s address at Assisi last summer may be cited as an example. 4 THE REAL ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI. which certainly conies under this head. For the rest, even in those quarters where the appreciation of St. Francis is not of the sentimental order, we are also tempted to fear that the Saint is regarded chiefly as a great sociological fact, and that his methods are being studied as a mere academic exercise. Be this as it may, that St. Francis should be seriously studied at all outside the Church at a time when the very school-boys are read- ing Huxley and Spencer, is something to be thankful for — even though the motive be not a religious one. Con- temporaneously with all this Protestant activity, Cath- olic scholars have not been idle, and in special periodicals and publications have contributed not a little to the ex- tension of the Franciscan research movement. (8) But it is time to return to our question : What is the cause of the present widespread homage to St. Francis? (8) Some of the most energetic workers in this direction are the Friars themselves. Among them Father Leonard Lemmens, the present annalist of the Friars Minor, holds first place by reason of the acumen of his criticism and the importance of his discoveries. He is at present editing the "Documenta Francis- cana,” a collection of ancient chronicles of the Order. Three volumes of this work have already appeared — “Scripta Fratris Leonis,” “Speculi Redactio l a ,” and “Extractiones ex Legenda Antiqua,” besides the “Chronica Beati-Bernardini,” the “Dialogus De Vitis Fratrum,” and the “Excerpta Celanensia.” Father Mar- cellinus da Civezza and Teofilo Domenichelli, both well-known writers, have given us for the first time the integral text of the “Legend of the Three Companions.” The Fathers at Quarrachi have published the two “Legends of St. Bonaventure.” Father Edward d’Alengon, Archivist of the Capuchins in Rome, has pub- lished a critical edition of the “Sacrum Commercium S. Fran- cisci cum Domina Paupertate,” held to be the earliest of Francis- can documents, and he promises a similar edition of the “Two Legends,” by Celano. Meanwhile, Father Joseph Fratini, O.M. THE REAL ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI. 5 It is of course far too wide a question to allow the writer of the present article to do more than make a few sug- gestions. First and foremost then the perennial charm of the Saint’s personality must ever be reckoned with as a remote cause. There is an indescribable attraction in the Saint which draws and holds men of the most different habits of mind, with a sense of personal sym- pathy. Perhaps no other man unless it be St. Paul ever had such a wide-reaching all-embracing sympathy. And it may have been wider than St. Paul’s, for we find no evidence in the great apostle for a love for nature, and for animals. This exquisite Franciscan spirit, as it is called, which is the very perfume of religion — this spirit at once so humble, so tender, so devout, so akin to the “good odor” of Christ, passed out into the whole world and has become a permanent source of inspiration. A character at once so exalted and so purified as St. Fran- Conv., has published a concordance of the “Two Legends of Celano,” “The Three Companions,” and “St. Bonaventure.” Out- side the Franciscan family Mgr. Faloci Pulignani, of Foligno, Editor of the Miscellanea Francescana, and Don Minocchi, of Florence, the Bollandist, F. van Ortroy, P. Erhle, S.J.. the eru- dite critic of the Mediaeval Church, P. Mandonnet, O.P., of Frei- burg, Prof. W. Goetz, of Leipzig, and Karl Muller, have become prominent for their recent contributions to the study of early Franciscan history. Nor have the English writers been idle. Besides the work of Fathers Cuthbert and Stanislaus, O.S.F.C., the “Sacrum Commercium” has been translated by Montgomery Carmichael under the title of “My Lady Poverty” (London, Ten- nant & Ward). The “Speculum Perfectionis” has been translated successively by Dr. Sebastian Evans (Boston, L. C. Page, 1899), and by the Countess De La Warr (London, Burns & Oates, 1903), while “The Legend of the Three Companions,” translated by Miss E. Gurney Salter, is among the latest additions to the Temple Classics, in which series there is also an admirable Eng- lish version of the “Fioretti." 6 THE REAL ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI. cis was sure to keep alive an ideal. And so he does. From this one can easily understand St. Francis’ dom- inance among a small but earnest band of enthusiasts now pointing the world back to the reign of the spirit. It was this same gentle idealism of St. Francis which inspired the art of the Umbrian people ; it was this which was translated into the paintings of their greatest artists. No school of painting has ever been penetrated with such pure idealism as the Umbrian, and the inspiration at once religious and artistic came from the tomb of the Povcr- ello above which Giotto had painted his mystical frescoes of poverty, chastity and obedience. The earnest quasi- religious study of the mediaeval beginnings of Western art has therefore rightly been set down (9) as another cause for some of the latter-day pilgrimages to Assisi. In like manner the scientific treatment of the romance literature leads naturally to St. Francis as to the humble upper waters of a mighty stream — at the beginning of the thirteenth century is St. Francis, at the end is Dante. It was Matthew Arnold, we believe, ( 10) who first held up the Poor Man of Assisi as a literary type — a type as dis- tinct and formal as the author of the “Divine Comedy.” Prose, he says, could not satisfy the Saint's ardent soul, and so he made poetry. But St. Francis’ poetry is not merely in his written words, though they are very beauti- ful ; it is in his life, and that life must ever appeal to the imagination of all true poets. Thus, we have Longfellow (9) Catholic University Bulletin, Washington, D. C.. April, 1903. (10) In his chapter on pagan and mediaeval sentiment where he draws a comparison between a hymn of Theocritus and the Canticum Solis of S. Francis . — Essays on Criticism , First Series, Macmillan & Co., 1883. THE REAL ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI. 7 speaking of St. Francis as his '‘favorite Saint,” Tennyson sighing for the Saint's return to earth, and Ruskin treas- uring up a relic of the Saint’s habit. Such men, however, in their expressions of affection, remember St. Francis chiefly as the one who "went forth to preach to the birds at Bevagna, who tamed the fierce wolf of Gubbio, who sheltered the leveret and set the wild doves free, who felt the welcome of the minstrels of the wood at La Verna, who bade affectionate farewell to his brother the Falcon, and who sang in sweet contest with the nightingale in the ilex grove of the Carceri.” But if some are more directly moved by the aesthetic aspect of the Saint’s life, there are others who consider his character from a more serious standpoint. These latter see in St. Francis a type of the true Christian re- former whose "social idea” might with some modifica- tions be applied to actual conditions. "Let us try,” writes such a one, "to discover whether the Saint’s ideas have lost their virtue, whether those principles have ceased to be true and living, or whether, if cast into well-prepared soil, they are not capable of bearing fruit still, like those grains of wheat, which, after lying for long centuries be- side the bodies of the Pharaohs, still preserve their germi- nating powers to-day.” (n) In such expressions as these we are said to hear "the farthest shoreward ring of that ripple which St. Francis made when he dropped into the sea of men’s affections his gauntlet against the ava- rice and self-interest of the favored classes in his day.” Since that day the world has been burned in many fires and in many agonies has faced the birth of new truths. What wonder, then, in view of the strong new walls of (11) “St. Francis and the Twentieth Century.” Contemporary Review, December, 1902. 8 THE REAL ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI. division rising amid our changing economic condition, if a world overrun with materialism and more deeply de- ceived than it likes to admit, should hark back to the “so- cial idea” of the man who, “when European society was on the brink of complete collapse, stepped in and saved it.” (12) When, therefore, we consider that “Umbrian- ism,” as typified by St. Francis, changed the whole aspect of the Social Question, that it diverted the course of art and forced poetry to take new directions we shall have gone far on the road to understanding the influence which the Poverello wields over the cultured and thoughtful minds of our day. But may we not also see in the present neo-Protestant cultus of St. Francis a phase of that “great intellectual Catholic Renaissance” by which a non-Catholic dramatist (13) seeks to explain the recent revival of the miracle plays. We have, it seems, “traveled so far away from the spirit of the mediaeval period, that we have almost completed the circle.” Unconsciously, then, we are mak- ing our way back to the old ideals, or as this writer puts it, “recovering from the too reactionary spirit of the Re- formation” and re-awakening as it were to the “imagina- tive beauty of the Catholic presentment of Christianity.” Be this as it may, it is certain that the frigid if not bitter tone which was formerly a marked feature of the Protes- tant religious literature when treating of the Communion of Saints is gradually disappearing under the modern aesthetic movement. At least a large section of Protes- (12) These are the words of the late Protestant Bishop of London, Dr. Creighton, who, like Canon Knox Little, lectured on St. Francis. See the English Historical Review, Vol. V, No. 20. (13) Laurence Housman in the Critic, March, 1903. THE REAL ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI. 9 tantism is no longer guilty of what Ruskin called “the vulgar and insolent Evangelical notion that one should not care for the saints/’ And strange as it may seem to those within the fold the Saint, who, if he has not been a means of bringing about this change, has certainly the strongest attraction for the Protestant mind is St. Francis of Assisi. Whatever may be the cause of the present neo-Protes- tant cultus of St. Francis its effects cannot but prove beneficial to all who study the Saint’s life in a proper spirit. That some Protestants seek to do so is clear from such books as that of Canon Knox Little. (14) Spite of some impatient words about the “claims of Rome,” etc., that disfigure its pages. Canon Knox Little’s appre- ciation of St. Francis is an interesting evidence of how the Saint’s career may affect those who really differ from the creed he professed. Very beautiful from beginning to end is the interpretation of motives and character pre- sented by the eminent Anglican divine in his biography, which is the more valuable since he tells us he has studied everything on the subject within reach; that he depends for his information on original authorities, and that he has formed his judgment independently from them. His aim in writing is to lead others “to follow under wholly different conditions in the main and deepest things, the noble example of a holy life.” And if those who read in this spirit do not rise from a study of the Saint’s life bet- tered and strengthened in ideal and purpose there are not many appeals that would have power to reach them. Furthermore, the study of early Franciscan history serves to bring many non-Catholics within a Catholic atmos- phere of thought. By studying the personality of a pre- (14) St. Francis of Assisi, New York: Thos. Whittaker, 1897. IO THE REAL ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI. eminently Catholic saint living in an essentially Catholic age, they come to have a better knowledge of Catholic life, and this better knowledge must draw them nearer the Church. And here it is interesting to recall the evo- lution in the non-Catholic attitude towards St. Francis. Strangely enough Mrs. Oliphant in her “Life” of the Poverello denies him the title of saint. Not so Dr. Jes- sop, who, in his “Coming of the Friars,” asks, “why grudge to call him Saint Francis?” Canon Knox Little, disdaining any concession to middle-class English Protes- tantism, calls him saint as a matter of course. Dr. Ad- derlev accepts the miracle of the Stigmata without ques- tion. As for Canon Rawnsley he almost seems to accept everything, including even the Third Order. In the lat- ter's appreciation of St. Francis, non-Catholic sympathy with the life and aims of the Seraphic Patriarch reaches its highest level up to date — unless the establishment of an order of Protestant Franciscans may be considered a higher tribute. Spite of all this, it may be as the pessi- mists say that the sectarians are really no nearer the Church than they were twenty-five years ago. But this much is at least certain that the spirit of St. Francis has the happy effect of eliminating acrimony from the minds of men, and thus they may more easily discern where truth resides. In so far then as closer acquaintance with St. Francis conduces by a way altogether uncontroversial to dispel prejudice, we hope that his Protestant admirers will, mindful of Pope's admonition, drink deeply at the well of earlv Franciscan literature ; they will find it a well of doctrine undefiled. And who knows but that some at least, may in the end find a short cut to Rome over the Umbrian hills. For its own sake also, this study of the THE REAL ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI. 1 1 Franciscan classics among Protestants is to be welcomed and encouraged, seeing that the literature of the spirit hears in our day so sorry a proportion to that of the flesh. But withal, while we admire the enthusiasm shown by non-Catholics in studying the life of Saint Francis and while we accept their good work in making it better known at its full value, it is none the less proper that we enter a protest against their interpretation of St. Francis being taken as the correct one — the more so as their work betrays a tendency to eulogize the merely external beauty of the Saint’s life at the expense of those graces of the spirit so peculiar to him. It is not that we wish to see St. Francis portrayed as though he went through life wrap- ped in one unbroken ecstasy, seldom, if ever, descend- ing to the level of our ordinary existence. Such hagi- ography is, to say the least, somewhat discouraging, since it places the saints on a pedestal quite above the reach of human endeavor ; it is moreover most misleading since, after all. the saints, unlike the poets, are not born but made. (15) The tendency we fear sins by defect rather than by excess. The danger is lest, in the general Protestant appreciation of the Saint’s moral beauty, his internal motives be ignored, belittled, or misconstrued. Of course we cannot expect non-Catholics to fully appre- ciate the supernatural aspect of the Saint’s life and, as it is, “many who are charmed with the legend of the wolf of Gubbio, pass over the mystery of the Portiuncula as unintelligible.” But, on the other hand, does St. Francis stand for nothing more than universal peace, brother- hood, and the appreciation of the lowly? It is this social side of his teaching that is being made much of by non- (15) See ‘“The Inner Life of St. Francis,” by Fr. Stanislaus, O.S.F.C. London Catholic Truth Society, 1900. THE REAL ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI. I 2 Catholics. We are told that the message of St. Francis to our century is one of brotherhood and peace amongst nations and classes. (16) This is true, as far as it goes, but the Saint has a further message. He has a message to all and every age. Nor was his message only by way of sermons. He did preach or rather, he talked to the people, but his life was his sermon and it is just in that side of his life which non-Catholics are passing over in silence that we should seek the Saint’s real “message.” In St. Francis’ intense belief in the supernatural, in his never questioning loyalty to ecclesiastical authority — is there not a lesson for our own doubting and restless gen- eration? Yet you will look in vain among most, if not all, of the eulogies of St. Francis now in vogue for even any allusion to the fact that he was a Catholic. Of course it could hardly be claimed that he was a Protestant, since there were no Protestants in the thirteenth century, but you will be told that St. Francis “belongs to humanity and not to the Church.” In their apparent anxiety to read the beginnings of the Franciscan movement in the light of their own predilections some non-Catholics have sought to give the work of St. Francis a color of “unde- nominationalism,’'’ and to represent the drift of his teach- ing as one in which the value of orthodoxy was discount- ed to make room for a fuller presentment of the “Social Question.” Hence he is often held up as a sort of mediae- val humanitarian who, were he alive to-day, would have pleaded “for thrift, for old age pensions and for com- munal banks.” (17) To borrow the phraseology of a (16) This was the burden of M. Sabatier’s address at London last year. It is reprinted in the Contemporary Review, Decem- ber, 1902. (17) This is what Canon Rawnsley declared in his Assisi ad- dress already mentioned. THE REAL ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI. J 3 well-known writer, (18) it is not just to St. Francis nor true to his spirit and teaching thus to tear off the label and to rub out the trade mark, and then to say : “See the new remedy we have discovered for all the ills the twenti- eth century is heir to.” “The doctor for our sickness to- day,” writes an' Anglican enthusiast, “is the man who brought his medicines to the men of Assisi in the thir- teenth century.” Far be it from us to gainsay Canon Rawnsley’s assertion that the modern world in general, not excepting the Anglican church, is badly in need of just such a course of treatment as St. Francis adminis- tered to his fellow-men six hundred years ago, nor shall we find fault, no matter who it is, that makes the most of the remedies from the pharmacy of the Church which Christ has established for the healing of the nations, but — let them be honest. Let them admit they have no remedy of their own, and that they must needs have re- course to Rome. As it is, glancing over the speeches de- livered last summer at Assisi at the reunion of the Inter- national Society of Franciscan Studies, one cannot but feel that its promoters were plucking a flower not of their own growing, and while exploiting the beauties of this borrowed blossom taking care not to say a word as to the garden which produces blossoms of such wondrous color and fragrance. And yet it makes all the difference in the world in what garden a flower grows — the more so, since some flowers do not grow except in one place. Thus the thornless rose-bushes at Portiuncula, with their blood- stained leaves, cannot be transplanted. Neither can St. Francis. (18) Rev. A. P. Doyle, Catholic World, September, 1897, to whose excellent article on St. Francis we are also indebted for several other references. 14 THE REAL ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI. But to return to the Assisian society it may be inter- esting, as not a little has been heard of late respecting this organization, to note that its object as set forth in the prospectus is to compile a complete catalogue of Fran- ciscan manuscripts existing in Europe and with the aid of writers on Franciscan subjects to collect materials for a bibliographical dictionary for the guidance of students. It is proposed to include in this catalogue: ‘T MSS. of works bearing on the history of St. Francis and the Franciscan movement; 2 MSS. containing the writings of Franciscan Friars (the majority of which will be scho- lastic treatises) ; 3 MSS. transcribed by Franciscan Friars, or formerly belonging to Franciscan houses; 4 service books/’ The catalogue will be arranged accord- ing to libraries ; will be issued in parts and subsequently indexed. Meanwhile, members are being enrolled and a bureau has been established for correspondence in the principal European languages. Among the most en- thusiastic promoters of this undertaking have been several Anglican clergymen, under whose auspices a branch of the society was established last winter in England. In apparent ignorance of these facts some Catholic papers have been lauding the society as if it were as orthodox an institution as the Third Order, and not a few Catholics were induced to join it. Doubtless, like the editors, they supposed it to be a Catholic affair, or at least presumed the spirit of purely scientific and critical study to animate its founders. The mistake is natural enough. How, they ask, could Protestants admire a saint who was the very negation of Protestantism ? They forget that Protes- tants can admire almost anything under the broad blue sky except external authority, as represented by the Roman Pontiff. Our Protestant friends may argue that to love THE REAL ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI. 1 5 St. Francis does not imply a belief in the Church whose most loyal son he was. We answer that a society for Franciscan studies need not be an ascetic assembly or even a religious association, much less an organization for non-Catholic proselytism, but its object should be to study St. Francis in every phase of his career — not merely as a friend of nature, as a social reformer, and as preacher of poverty, but also as the friend of Gregory IX., as the support of the Roman church, as the founder of an order which has been a nursery for the supernatural virtues. Since it became clear that such was not the ob- ject of the Assisian society, but that its aim was rather to study St. Francis in part, in so far, to wit, — as he is ‘‘canonized in the heart of humanity and not by the Church,” the Catholic members realizing that they were not in their Father’s house, and fearing that they might be serving in the enemy’s camp seem to have nearly all withdrawn. The difficulties not to say dangers of that pretended neutrality which, as in the present case, is kept so con- stantly before the eyes of Catholics nowadays are clearly indicated by Mgr. Faloci Pulignani, of Foligno, editor of the Francescana Miscellanea, in a recent letter to the president of the society. This distinguished prelate is so well known for his vast erudition, especially in all that appertains to Franciscan history, that the promoters of the new society used every effort to secure his co-operation in its organization. These advances having failed, the vice-president wrote a lengthy letter to Mgr. Faloci, in which he laid particular stress on the complete neutrality of the new society. In his reply, Mgr. Faloci places the question on its true basis. In justifying his abstention, he adduces reasons which are so much to the point that i6 THE REAL ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI. we cannot do better than give a synopsis of them. (19) Prefacing his reply with the remark “that it is not pos- sible to be a Catholic in heart, if one does not profess to be one,” Mgr. Faloci says : “I have received a circular from the president of the committee, in which we read that the society wishes to preserve a strict neutrality. This seems to me to be but idle talk, for it is impossible to draw a parallel between a society whose purpose is the study of St. Francis, and a society of chemists, an acad- emy of electricians or a congress of mechanics. They must remain entirely neutral, because chemistry, elec- tricity or mechanics are neither Catholic nor heretical. But a society whose object is the study of St. Francis must be Catholic or non-Catholic. Neutrality under these circumstances altogether favors non-Catholics ; and never- theless should we or our society out of regard for these gentlemen stifle and lock up our feelings in the depths of our hearts, while they make such ready display of theirs? Let us study St. Francis, let us be critics, pitiless critics, indefatigable seekers after truth ; but both as individuals and as a society, let us have the courage to call ourselves Catholics, and let us bear the consequences. We are not a religious confession ; we are not a religion ; we Catholics are the religion ; consequently for us neutrality is logically a mistake. For others, all religions are good ; they must of necessity be neutral. For 11s all religions, except the Catholic, are false. Therefore we cannot be neutral.” Precisely because M. Sabatier has taken such a promi- nent part in the International Society of Franciscan study, we shall treat of his work and spirit in a separate article. (19) We are quoting from the translation of Mgr. Faloci’s let- ter published in the Franciscan Monthly of London, for Decem- ber, 1902. THE ALDINE CHAPBOOKS Designed and illustrated by Roberta F. C. Waudby Washington Irving’s The Country Church Kenneth Grahame’s Fun o’ the Fair Charles Lamb’s Dream Children and The Child Angel Brother Wolf, from The Little Flowers of Saint Francis Our Lady’s Tumbler, A Twelfth- Century Legend Leigh Hunt’s The Old Lady and The Maid-Servant J. M. DENT & SONS LIMITED : LONDON E. P. DUTTON & GO. INC. : NEW YORK Printed, in Great Britain at the Temple Press, Letchworth, Herts (Dj 297) THE SERIES OF THE CATHOLIC MIND No. 1. THUS FAR PUBLISHED CONTAINS REFORM, TRUE AND FALSE. By the Rt. Rev. Bishop Paul Wilhelm Von Keppler. No. 2. THE LAWS OF PROSCRIPTION IN FRANCE. By Ferdinand Brunetiere, Editor of Deux Mondes. No. 3. IMPORTANT PAPAL DOCUMENTS. I. Bull of His Holiness Leo XIII, on the Church in the Philippine Islands. II. Constitution on the Institution of a Commission for Biblical Studies. III. Encyclical Letter to the Bishops of Italy on Studies in Ecclesiastical Seminaries. IV. Allocution to the Cardinals, December 23, 1902. No. 4. No. 5. THE HOLY SHROUD, by Joseph Braun, S. J. JUBILEE SERMON ON LEO XIII, at the New York Cathedral, March 3, 1903, by the Rev. T. J. Campbell, S.J. No. 6. THE CHRISTIANITY OF ADOLF HARNACK. From the Civilta Cattolica . No. 7. WHAT THE CHURCH HAS DONE FOR EDU- CATION. By the Rev. John A. Conway, S.J. No. 8. THE BIBLE AND ASSYRIOLOGY. By Albert Condamin, Etudes , March 20. No. 9. THE ATTITUDE OF MODERN PROTESTANTS TOWARDS THE VIRGINITY OF OUR BLESSED LADY. By A. J. Maas, S.J. Reprinted from the American Catholic Quarterly Review for April, 1 903. Nos. 10, 11. GALILEO GALILEI LINCEO. 10 . Reprinted from the Catholic World, October, 1887. 11, Reprinted from the Irish Ecclesiastical Record, April, 1893. No. 12. THE RELIGIOUS CONFLICT IN FRANCE. Reprinted from The Messenger, July, 1903. DATE DUE M£Y £5 ’65 The Th( currer Hi! PRINTED IN U.S.A. For Salk by all Newsdealers The Messenger, 27-29 West I6th Street. 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