New Catholic World Magazine, 1875

Questions concerning the Syllabus.

DOCTRINAL AUTHORITY OF THE SYLLABUS.

We enter on a work whose practical usefulness no one, we suspect, will dispute, since it concerns perhaps the most memorable act of the reign of Pius IX.-the Syllabus. There has been a great deal of discussion about the Syllabus-much has been written on it in the way of both of attack and defense; -but it is remarkable that it has scarcely been studied at all. The remark was made by one of the editors of this review. Father Marquigny, in the General Congress of Catholic Committees at Paris; and, so true as it felt to be, that it provoked the approving laughter of the whole assembly.

But to pass by those who busy themselves about this docuмent without having read it, how many are there, even among Catholics, who, after having read it, have only the most vague and confused notions about it-how many who, if they were asked, "What does the Syllabus teach you; what does it make obligatory on you?" would not know what to answer! Thus is man constituted. He skims willingly over the surface of things; but he has no fancy for stopping awhile and digging underneath. If he is pleased with looking at a great many things, he does not equally concern himself to gain knowledge; because there is no true science without labor, and labor is troublesome. Yet nothing could be more desirable for him than to come by this luminous entrance from the knowledge to the possession of truth. Christian faith, when it is living and active, necessarily experiences the desire of it ; for, according to the beautiful saying of St. Anselm, it is, by its very nature, a seeker of science - of knowing: Fides quaerens intelectum.
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