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Show ST. ANSELM A CATHOLIC. Father Lambert's Dissertation on Archbishop Arch-bishop of Canterbury His Loyalty to the Holy See. In connection "with the celebration by Catholics in England of the eighth centenary of St. Anselm, Archbishop of Cauterbury, some Protestants have been trying to make it appear that with the exception ex-ception of his loyalty to the Holy See the Faith of Anselm was the same as the religion of the present pres-ent day Anglicans or Church of England. Implying Imply-ing to this claim a Catholic priest, Rev. C. Wierz. observes that the question is not of one point more or less in the Christian creed, but a question affecting af-fecting the very foundations of that creed. It is a question standing in the same relation to the Christian religion as the question of the origin and validity of human knowledge to any system of philosophy, hence its radical, fundamental and paramount par-amount importance. St. Anselm's faith was entirely built upon the teaching of an international spiritual authority, upon the Rock of St. Peter, and any religion with another basis, whatever its contents might or might not be, is radically and fundamentally different from that of St. Anselm. It could never be forgotten for-gotten why the great and glorious Confessor suffered suf-fered so much during the fifteen years of his episcopal epis-copal dignity. He bore it all in order to prevent "the mitre from being melted into the crown," as Eadmer, his biographer, had put it so well. But even if they looked away from his lifelong battle for spiritual supremacy they could not and would not look away from the fact that the teachings of St. Anselm could not be reconciled with the Thirty- ' nine Articles. Merely from a point of view of subject-matter his doctrine was in its essentials at variance with some of the most important of these Anglican dogmas or tenets. St. Anselm believed in the Mass, the invocation of the saints, the devotion de-votion to the Mother of Christ, prayers for the departed, de-parted, and confession things more or less strongly strong-ly condemned in the Anglican Church. All this of course Father Wierz had no difficulty in establishing. The attempt to make a Protestant of St. Anselm is as ridiculous as the same undertaking under-taking with reference to St. Patrick. Archbishop Bourne in his sermon at the celebration in Westminster West-minster Cathedral, said that if St. Anselm could return there were many things he would find changed the food, the dress, the, buildings, the political customs, many things had nassp-1 vfs.y which he knew. Were he to go through the lentfh of the country and enter into some of those ecclesiastical ecclesi-astical edifices which he knew so well, even into that which was once his own Cathedral, many things would seem strange to him in the prayers, the doctrines, and the ceremonial. But were he to some into the midst of the Catholics of England he would find the same faith, the same jurisdiction, jurisdic-tion, the same authority, the same discipline, the same liberty, all the things that he knew so well. Many things have changed in the world in eight, hundred years, but the grand old Church stands still the same unchanged and unchangeable. |