Some Vulgar Errors
Kane, Robert J.
Septetnber 1, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 40 religious life should be. But a well-known and...
...In passing, Bois, in his history of the abbey of La Trappe, took it may be noted that the disingenuous way in which Chateaubriand to task for having been the dupe of he refers to this authority has been given due and this and other errors concerning the order of the delightful treatment in Belloc's essay, On Footnotes...
...At least one generation of to a denial of the first two errors...
...We may be quick to discover errors handed be brought to God...
...E. M. Forster, its Catholicity...
...the prison was burst open by the mob find that one of the Church fathers-Saint Augustine, and George was lynched, as he deserved...
...life, remote from the din and follies of the world, and As a student in various large universities, I soon who not only assiduously contemplate the divine mysteries learned that it is not only the mob which cherishes and the eternal truths, and pour forth ardent and con- misconceptions of the dogma and discipline of the tinual prayers to God that His Kingdom may flourish Church...
...The legend has been traced to Le Genie bishop of the seventeenth century, identified him with du Christianisme, but it is uncertain whether it was the unsavory George of Cappadocia...
...They merely remore than for their own by mortification, prescribed or peated innocently what they had received uncritically...
...precious knave became, in good time, Saint George of As a matter of fact, had either of them but the England, patron of chivalry, emblem of victory and civilLatinity of a Sir Thomas Browne, they need never ity, and the pride of the best blood of the modern world...
...inactive" men is incalculable ; there are many English The first edition of Pierre Larousse's Universal DicCatholics who can confirm it by personal experience...
...melancholy to observe that even today, the New Of the numberless victims of vulgar errors, Saint Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge George, perhaps, is most to be commiserated...
...At all events, it is in- likewise-yet gave as his authority, not Reynolds, teresting to note that as early as 1824, the Abbe du but a French work of no historical value...
...Finally, at a time when most historians of repute had Although the authorship of a vulgar error is almost definitely abandoned the error of confusing Saint as impossible to verify as that of a popular ballad, George with George of Cappadocia, Emerson, having still there are exceptions...
...the Jesuits...
...However, it is to Saint Thomas Aquinas, rather found in the sixth edition of Meyers's Grosses Kon- than to the Jesuits, that we must go in order to find versations Lexikon (1907-12) and in the Catholic justification for the theft of food by a starving man...
...dealing with vulgar errors "is not to be performed upon one legg," and, in fact, "should smell of oyle, Pius XI, in confirming the revised statutes of the if duly and deservedly handled," nevertheless I think Carthusian order last year, gave an unexampled pane- it may prove profitable (or at least, amusing) to scrugyvie of the contemplative life tinize a few errors concerning Catholicism which still All those who, according to their rule, lead a secluded flourish in certain quarters...
...The former, after noting the apocry- It was he who insisted that one in the extremity of phal character of the digging and greeting episodes, need, might lawfully take enough from the superalso takes occasion to demolish the theory that Trap- fluous goods of others to keep body and soul together...
...Our French professor, versities and colleges, its institutions and associations, a native of France, once remarked that these monks its energy in every form of Christian activity, the dig a portion of their own graves daily, that they most astonishing thing of all is a scarcity of purely con- sleep in their coffins, and that they always salute each templative communities of men...
...Not until its eleventh edition (I9Io-I I ) We have the word of the Supreme Pontiff to the did the Encyclopaedia Britannica cease to propagate Church in England that the value of these bodies of these errors...
...So much for call attention to a recent article by Mr...
...Later, upon my In Great Britain, with a doubtful two and a half asking for the source of this information, he answered million of Catholics, there are five monasteries of that he was unable to recall it exactly, but thought it contemplative men...
...us as so very necessary...
...within comparatively recent years that standard works while the Benedictines of Caldey Island are all natives of reference have begun to report the Trappist rule of the British Isles...
...It is only two at least of these houses include English monks...
...have been in ignorance or in error as to the true source of the famous paradox...
...But a well-known and revSOME VULGAR ERRORS erend Jesuit, Father Rickaby, has said: By ROBERT J. KANE We could have more conversions, if we did more penance to procure them...
...from sorow and contrition and such penance as God will It is now more than two centuries since the worthy require of us personally...
...pists sleep in their coffins...
...A rogue and informer, he got primatur...
...tionary of the Nineteenth Century (of which the volAnd we marvel that the Church in the United States, ume containing the article, Trappe, appeared in 1876) with its fifteen or more millions of members, has found not only recounted the grave-digging and mementoto few men to go into a desert place apart, to pray, mori legends but also stated that every Trappist or to stand on a hill with arms upraised to God to keeps a human skull for purposes of meditation in reinforce the combatants for Christ in the plain below...
...The one, a professor of phil- George of Cappadocia, born at Epiphania in Cilicia, osophy, asserted that he had found the phrase in a was a low parasite who got a lucrative contract to supply book (he did not mention the title) bearing the im- the army with bacon...
...I am glad to say that later editions of this 406 THE COMMONWEAL September 1, 1926 work make amends by specifically repudiating the to us, also seemed to labor under the delusion that first two legends, and omitting all mention of the last.such a law and such a magistrate were quite "JesuitiOther testimony vindicating the Trappists may be cal...
...Trappists...
...ThereWhen, some years ago, a certain French judge, by in we find the following: virtue of an old law, dismissed the case against a man "And even Saint George-if Gibbon is correctaccused of stealing bread for his starving family, he wore a top-hat once...
...We must have some of our ity called the things of which it is a gain in wisdom number to go apart, and fast and pray and do penance for to clear one's mind, "vulgar errors," and indeed these the rest of us-not certainly to excuse us in sin, not to latter furnished both theme and title for a famous cover our idleness and neglect of duty, not to exempt us volume of his...
...Yet we continue to pass is filled with grief and resentment to hear the [contem- over many without recognition...
...how blindly the anticlericals associate everything From the standpoint of exactitude, however, it is Catholic with the Jesuits...
...He saved his to have seen it in the works of some Catholic mystic, money, embraced Arianism, collected a library, and got but he too mentioned no names...
...Encyclopedia...
...the English novelist, in the Atlantic Monthly...
...And this I believe-had quoted the paradox with disapproval...
...In our day, Professor occurs this passage: "I can answer all the objections Bury, who is responsible for the standard edition of of Satan and my rebellious reason with that odd reso- Gibbon, assures us that the theory identifying George lution I learned of Tertullian-'Certum est quia im- of Cappadocia with Saint George has nothing to be possibile est.' " said for it...
...Gibbon did original with Chateaubriand...
...It is also worthy of note that Emerson's The Catholic Encyclopedia furthermore assures us editors (one of whom is his son) have reached a simithat Tertullian's credo (which, taken with its con- lar conclusion...
...Calvin (19o8-1912) continues to propagate the memento- denied his very existence...
...Thinking of this profound truth, one down to us from the past...
...Curious, too, been the exception rather than the rule...
...his cell...
...It was only one of many such offenders...
...When Julian came, A. D. 361, George was chapter and verse, he made diligent search only to dragged to prison...
...he was an army contractor and was roundly scored by the anticlericals as a pupil of supplied indifferent bacon...
...As for the errors of plative] life . . . described as a "useless and selfish life...
...The same authorreviled, but still Catholic, doctrines of vicarious expiation and communion of saints...
...That is not a pleasing thing to think of...
...KNOWLEDGE," wrote Sir Thomas Browne, How can we fast and pray whose daily work suffers from "is made by oblivion, and to purchase a clear our lack of time and strength to do it...
...Still, lest one think that this particutext, proves not so startling after all) was written lar ghost has been laid once and forever, I would while that worthy was a Montanist...
...The Carthusians at Parkminster, might be a book by Sarah Bernhardt...
...Not that my learned preceptors were actu. . . but who also atone for the sins of other men still ated by any unfairness of motive...
...Yet it may be just the one thing Although, as Browne shrewdly observes, any work wanting to make the rest of our works efficacious...
...The latter confines itself Strange, is it not...
...Septetnber 1, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 40 religious life should be...
...There is comfort and warrantable body of truth we must forin the principle of the division of labor, and in those much get and part with much we know...
...The other, a teacher of English, professed rich and was forced to run from justice...
...Reynolds, an Anglican mori myth...
...but to draw down by their ex- doctor died, and still every day sees the downfall of traordinary penance that extraordinary mercy and those some common error, and the rise of another to take superabundant graces, without which this country will never its place...
...Of course he the Benedictines of Farnborough, Quarr, and Buck- was merely repeating hoary old legends accepted by fast, draw most of their subjects from abroad, but many Catholics and non-Catholics alike...
...Our French professor who told this story How long, 0 Lord, how long...
...Twice during my career as gullibly swallowed Gibbon's false doctrine, thus glibly a student I have heard a professor remark that "credo rephrased it in English Traits quia impossibile" is a fair statement of the Catholic attitude toward faith...
...To a foreigner observing the greatness of the Some of the most curious errors heard in the classChurch in America, its millions of adherents, its uni- room concerned the Trappists...
...cated even of pedagogues...
...other with the "memento mori...
...In the Religio Medici Truth will have its innings...
...voluntary, of mind and body-such, indeed, must be said After all, a certain amount of ignorance must be predito have chosen the best part...
...Finally, I might Frenchmen bedewed with sentimental tears the pages mention that a recent letter from the Trappist mon- wherein Victor Hugo told how Jean Valjean was senastery in Kentucky assures me that the use of a skull tenced to the galleys because he had stolen a loaf of as part of the furniture of a Trappist cell has always bread for his sister's starving children...
...correctly...
...Challenged to give promoted by a faction to the episoopal throne of Alexandria...
...our own day, they, of course, are often accepted as "To pray for the living and the dead," and to add fasting to the prayer of intercession, as Tobias did, does not strike more or less valuable contributions to knowledge...
Vol. 4 • September 1926 • No. 17
