[28] Ibid. Among the technical notions borrowed from law and here used in Latin theology we may cite "the Roman penal system, the Roman theory of the obligations established by Contract or Delict," the intercession or act by which one assumes the obligation contracted by another, "the Roman view of Debts and of the modes of incurring, extinguishing and transmitting them, the Roman notion of the continuance of individual existence by Universal Succession,"[29] Cf. Fustel de Coulanges, "La Gaule Romaine," p.96 and following pages, on the rapidity, facility and depth of the transformation by which Gaul became Latinized.
[30] The Church of England, in its confession of faith, makes this express declaration.
[31] As called by Joseph de Maistre, referring to the Greek church.
[32] Duke Sermoneta-Gaetani has shown in his geographic map of the "Divine Comedy" the exact correspondence of this poem with the "Somme"by Saint Thomas. - It was already said of Dante in the middle ages, Theologus Dantes nullius dogmatis expers.
[33] Cf. "L'Empire des tsars et les Russes," by Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, vol. III., entire, on the characteristics of the Russian clergy.
[34] Bossuet, ed. Deforis, VI., 169. The Meaux catechism (reproduced, with some additions, in the catechism adopted by Napoleon). "What works are deemed satisfactory?" - "Works unpleasant to us imposed by the priest as a penance." - "Repeat some of them." - "Alms-giving, fastings, austerities, privations of what is naturally agreeable, prayers, spiritual readings."[35] Ibid. "Why is confession ordained?" - "To humble the sinner. .
. " - "Why again?" - "To submit one's self to the power of the Keys and to the judgment of the priests who have the power to punish and remit sins."[36] Bossuet, ibid., Catéchisme de Meaux, VI., 140-142.
[37] "Manreze du prêtre," by Father Caussette, I., 37. "Do you see that young man of twenty-five who will soon traverse the sanctuary to find the sinners awaiting him? It is the God of this earth who sanctifies him. . . Were Jesus Christ to descend into the confessional he would say, Ego te absolvo. He is going to say with the same authority, Ego te absolvo. Now this is an act of the supreme power; it is greater, says Saint Augustin, than the creation of heaven and earth." - T. W. Allies, " Journal d'un voyage en France," 1845, p.97.
"Confession is the chain which binds all Christian life."[38] "Manreze du prêtre," I., 36. "The Mother of God has undoubtedly more credit than you, but she has less authority. Undoubtedly, she accords favors, but she has not given one single absolution."[39] Could one imagine that Stalin, that that apostate former student expelled from the Tiflis Theological Seminary, would, on reading Taine's text, have conceived the idea of having communist missionaries, directed by the KGB in Moscow, direct an army of agents inside the capitalist world? (SR.)[40] Like a central committee of the communist party? (SR.)[41] Pr?1ectiones juris canonici, I., 101. "The power entrusted to St.
Peter and the apostles is wholly independent of the community of believers."[42] Here Lenin pretended to install the Proletariat and announced its (his own) dictatorship. (SR.)[43] Here we have a clear model for an International Communist Party, tasked with the creation of a visible organization whenever this is possible, but with an invisible structure of missionaries, recruiters, controllers, policemen and agents, since any bourgeois state must, once it discovers the party's true aims, forbid it and drive it underground. To the Christian dream of an eternal life in heaven or hell, the communist movement has its promise of a millenary on earth contrasted by the immediate annihilation of any traitor or dangerous opponent. (SR.)[44] "Cours alphabétique et méthodique du droit canon," by Abbé André, and "Histoire générale de église, vol. XIII., by Bercastel et Henrion.
The reader will find in these two works an exposition of the diverse statutes of the Catholic Church in other countries. Each of these statutes differs from ours in one or several important articles; the fixed, or even territorial, endowment of the clergy, the nomination to the episcopate by the chapter, or by the clergy of the diocese, or by the bishops of the province, public competition for curacies, irremovability, participation of the chapter in the government of the diocese, restoration of the officialité; return to the prescriptions of the Council of Trent (Cf. especially the Concordats between the Holy See and Prussia, Bavaria, Wurtemberg, Baden, the two Hesses, Belgium, Austria, Spain, and the statutes accepted or established by the Holy See in Ireland and the United States.)[45] The brothers Allignol, "De l'état actuel du clergé en France,"p.248. "The mind of the desservant is no longer his own. Let him beware of any personal sentiment or opinion! . . . He must cease being himself and must lose, it may be said, his personality." - Ibid., preface, XIX. " Both of us, placed in remotes country parishes, . . .