Catholic | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Nov 18, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 44.

“Catholic.”

At the Episcopalian convention in Chicago recently a resolution was offered with the design of changing the name of that sect from Protestant Episcopal to American Catholic. The majority of votes were for it—134 to 94—but, failing to obtain the necessary two-thirds, it did not pass. Its advocates argued that the term Protestant was narrow and inconsistent, and some of them actually spoke of it with loathing. This may not indicate a revolution, but it is certainly the sign of a great change in public sentiment. People nowadays hardly realize it. You could more easily insult an Episcopalian fifty years ago by calling him a Catholic than by applying the most opprobrious epithet of billingsgate to him. Since then the Puseyite movement has taken place. The poet Coleridge was the first, we believe, who dared to use the name Catholic without any purpose of abuse. Now Protestants are in love with it; they use it with tiresome iteration; and some of them want to exchange their right name for it.

But, after having trampled it in the dust for three centuries, is it not unfair, is it not scandalous, is it not, in short, ridiculous, that they should desire to appropriate the Catholic name? What folly! They Catholics? Why, the boot-blacks on the street will laugh at them. Let them try. Let them use the test which Tertullian challenged the heretics of his day to, and ask the first indifferent man they meet on the public highway where there is a Catholic church. Will he point out the way to an Episcopalian meeting-house? Not much. No! our esteemed friends of “the Church” cannot rob us of our jewel of a good name. It is ours, and we have worn it so long that all the world concedes our title to it.—Catholic Mirror.