ut a partial harmonising of the whole moral ideal. And the whole
Catholic _religion_, if we only distinguish and apprehend it rightly,
will present itself to us in the same light.

But there are other reasons besides those just described, by which
outsiders are hindered from arriving at such a right view of the
matter. Not only does the intricacy of Catholicism _described_, blind
them to the simplicity of Catholicism _experienced_, but they confuse
with the points of faith, not only the scientific accounts the
theologians give of them, but mere rules of discipline, and pious
opinions also. It is supposed popularly, for instance, to be of Catholic
faith that celibacy is essential to the priesthood. This as a fact,
however, is no more a part of the Catholic faith than the celibacy of a
college fellow is a part of the Thirty-nine Articles, or than the skill
of an English naval officer depends on his not having his wife with him
on shipboard. Nor again, to take another popular instance, is the
headship of the Catholic Church connected essentially with Rome, any
more than the English Parliament is essentially connected with
Westminster.

The difficulty of distinguishing things that are of faith, from mere
pious opinions, is a more subtle one. From the confusion caused by it,
the Church seems pledged to all sorts of grotesque stories of saints,
and accounts of the place and aspect of heaven, of hell and purgatory,
and to be logically bound to stand and fall by these. Thus Sir James
Stephen happened once in the course of his reading to light on an
opinion of Bellarmine's, and certain arguments by which he supported it,
as to the place of purgatory. It is quite true that to us Bellarmine's
opinion seems sufficiently ludicrous; and Sir James Stephen argued that
the Roman Church is ludicrous in just the same degree. But if he had
studied the matter a little deeper, he would soon have dropped his
argument. He would have seen that he was attacking, not the doctrine of
the Church, but simply an opinion, not indeed condemned by her, but held
avowedly without her sanction. Had he studied Bellarmine to a little
more purpose, he would have seen that that writer expressly states it to
be '_a question where purgatory is, but that the Church has defined
nothing on this point_.' He would also have learned from the same source
that it is no article of Catholic faith, though it was of Bellarmine's
opinion, that there is in purgatory any mate