Is It Honest? [pp. 239-255]

Is it Honest 23
IS IT HONEST?*
A BRIEF tract, issued a short time
since by The Catholic Publication
Society, seems to have produced
an unusual commotion among our
non-Catholic brethren, and has called
forth reply after reply from the sectarian press and pulpit. The tract
is very brief, and consists only of a
few pointed questions; but it has
kindled a great fire, and compelled
Protestants to come forward and attempt to defend their honesty, in uttering their false charges and gross
calumnies against Catholics and the
church. It has put them on their
defence, made them feel that they,
not the church, are now on trial before the public. This is no little
gain, and they do not have so easy a
time of it, in defending their libels,
as they had in forging and uttering
them, when Catholics had no organ
through which they could speak, and
were so borne down by public clamor that their voice could not have
been heard in denial, even if they
had raised it. Times have changed
since those sad days when it was only
necessary to vent a false charge
against the church, to have it accredited and insisted on by a fanatical
multitude as undeniable truth, however ridiculous or absurd it might
be.
Since our sectarian opponents
have been put upon their defence,
we trust Catholics will keep them to
it. We have acted on the defensive
long enough, and turn about is only
fair play. They must now prove
their libels, or suffer judgment to go
against them. They feel that it is
* Sermons in answer to the Tract, Is it Honest?
By Rev. L. W. Bacon. The Brooklyn Times, March
gth, -7th, 24th, x868.
so, and they open their defence resolutely, with apparent confidence and
pluck. They have no lack of words
and show no misgiving. This is
well; it is as we would have it, for
we wish them to have a fair trial,
and to make the strongest, boldest,
and best defence the nature of the
case admits.
In our remarks we shall confine
ourselves principally to the justification attempted by Mr. Bacon, in his
sermons, as we find them in the
Brooklyn Times; and we must remind
him in the outset that the assumption with which he commences-that
the tract, in appealing to the good
sense of the public, whether it is
honest to insist on certain charges
against the church as true, when the
slightest inquiry would show them to
be false-makes an important concession, or any concession at all to
the Protestant rule, is altogether unwarranted. He says: "This submitting of the questions in dispute
to the public, man by man, after the
Protestant, the American fashionconcedes at the outset one great and
most vital principle, to wit, that the
ultimate appeal in questions of personal belief, is to each man's reason
and conscience in the sight of God."
Quite a mistake. There is no question of personal belief in the case.
The question submitted to the public
by the tract is not whether what the
church teaches and Catholics believe
is true or false, but whether it is honest to continue to accuse the church
and Catholics of holding and doing
what it is well known, or may easily
be known, they do not do, and declare they do not hold? This is the
question, and the only question, sub
239