treatises, with an elegance of
language and an elevation of style calculated to deceive the simple
and to misguide the unwary. It is Father W. Faber who remarks that,
"there is not a new philosophy nor a freshly named science but what
deems, in the ignorance of its raw beginnings, that it will either
explode the Church as false or set her aside as doting" (Bl. Sac.
Prologue). Indeed the world is always striving to withdraw men and
women from their allegiance to the Church, through appeals to its
superior judgment and more enlightened experience; and philosophy and
history and even theology are all pressed into the service, and
falsified and misrepresented in such a manner as to give colour to its
complaints and accusations against the Bride of Christ, who, it is
seriously urged, "should make concessions and compromises with the
modern world, in order to purchase the right to live and to dwell
within it". What is the consequence? Let the late Cardinal Archbishop
and the Bishops of England answer. "Many Catholics," they write in
their joint pastoral, "are consequently in danger of forfeiting not
only their faith, but even their independence, by taking for granted
as venerable and true the halting and disputable judgment of some men
of letters or of science which may represent no more than the wave of
some popular feeling, or the views of some fashionable or dogmatising
school. The bold assertions of men of science are received with awe
and bated breath, the criticisms of an intellectual group of _savants_
are quoted as though they were rules for a holy life, while the mind
of the Church and her guidance are barely spoken of with ordinary
patience."

In a world such as this, with the agents of evil ever active and
threatening, with error strewn as thorns about our path at every step,
and with polished and seductive voices whispering doubt and suggesting
rebellion and disobedience to men, already too prone to disloyalty,
and arguing as cunningly as Satan, of old, argued with Eve; in such a
world, who, we may well ask, does not see the pressing need as well as
the inestimable advantages and security afforded by a living,
vigilant, responsible and supreme authority, where all who seek, may
find an answer to their doubts, and a strength and a firm support in
their weakness?

And as surely as the need exists, so surely has God's watchful
providence supplied it, in the person of the Supreme Pontiff, the
venerable Vicar of Chr