MORE PROTESTANT FAWNING.
By W. N. G.
THE very patronizing act of the W. C. T. U. in congratulating a Catholic convention “on the possession of such leaders as Archbishops Satolli and Ireland, and Bishop Watterson,” has its companion piece. The Catholic Summer School, which is conducted something after the Chautauqua plan, held its session at Plattsburg, N. Y., and one day a profound sensation was created by the following congratulatory dispatch from Chautauqua:— CHAUTAUQUA, N. Y., Aug. 7.
By a vote of 5,000 Chautauquans, to-night, Chautauqua sends greeting and best wishes to the Catholic Summer School. JOHN H. VINCENT. The president of the Catholic school returned an equally felicitous reply, and the Catholic News comments as follows on the incident:— It was a gracious act of the great Chautauqua, a Methodist institution, to send greetings and good wishes, last week, to the Catholic Summer School, as told in our report of the proceedings of the summer school, this week. The Catholics of America appreciate the kindly action of the Methodist body. One of the exercises of this Catholic Summer School was a series of discourses on the Bible by a Jesuit priest named Pardow. In one of these we note a marked reflection upon Luther and the Reformation, in such expressions as these:— The Reformation consistently had no Bible logically. With requirements of reason, there is no possible way of authentication but by God. Christ had said: “All power is given to me. Go ye therefore and teach;” and he thus established an authority, and that authority decides what is the Bible. The church met in council in the year 397, with St. Augustine as head. They fell back on the promise of Christ, “All my power I give to you.” These God-directed men said what was to be Bible, and what not, and Luther and the others had but human authority, which every man had. . . . It is absurd to think that the whole Bible, and nothing else, is the rule of faith. It would be unreasonable. . . . People were blinded in Luther’s time, not to question his statements. Inasmuch as “The Bible, and the Bible alone,” is the original Protestant watchword, a school where such a principle is declared to be “absurd” and “unreasonable” would hardly seem to be a subject of Protestant congratulation. That a bishop of a leading Protestant denomination, in the name of a great Protestant educational system, should send such “greeting and best wishes” is decidedly significant. W. N. G.