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They that yield to the adversaries in matters of rite, cos hoc ipso in impietate sua confirmant; and the adversaries cessione ista non parum adjuvantur, saith Balduin. Bellarmine, rejecteth Cassander’s reconciliation, for this reason among others, because, according to the judgment of the fathers, we should not change nor innovate the smallest matters for gratifying of heretics.
It is a point of controversy between Bellarmine and those that write against him; he holding up, and they crying down those names, because the Christian people are the κλῆρος, the heritage of the Lord as well as the ministers.
Galileo did not hesitate to yield to this injunction. On the day following, the 26th of February, he appeared before Cardinal Bellarmine, to renounce his heretical opinions; and, having declared that he abandoned the doctrine of the earth's motion, and would neither defend nor teach it, in his conversation or in his writings, he was dismissed from the bar of the inquisition.
Cardinal Bellarmine, a man of great energy, earnest, zealous, sincere, learned the Doctor Buckley of his day showed how that: "if the Copernican Theory should prevail, it would be the absolute undoing of the Bible, and the destruction of the Church, rendering the death of Christ futile.
As a refutation of these calumnies, Cardinal Bellarmine had given him a certificate in his own handwriting, declaring that he neither abjured his opinions, nor suffered punishment for them; and that the doctrine of the earth's motion, and the sun's stability, was only denounced to him as contrary to Scripture, and as one which could not be defended.
We are not aliens in this land, not aliens by birth or principle. As to the latter, I may say with all truth, that no one has given clearer expression to the basic principles of democracy than the Catholic theologians, Suarez and Bellarmine." This attitude of aloofness, during the coming period of reconstruction especially, would be profoundly un-Catholic.
Bellarmine, indeed, pleadeth for the utility of ceremonies, as things belonging to the conservation of religion. His reason is, because they set before our senses such an external majesty and splendour, whereby they cause the more reverence. This he allegeth for the utility of the ceremonies of the church of Rome. And I would know what better reason can be alleged for the utility of ours.
For it was held by 'Malvenda, who writes expressly on the subject', and who, besides, 'states as the opinion of Ribera, Gaspar Melus, Viegas, Suarez, Bellarmine, and Bosius that Rome shall apostatise from the faith'. THE death of Pius IX brought to Manning a last flattering testimony of the confidence with which he was regarded at the Court of Rome.
I hope that the Reverend Father Ptolemei, who does his Society credit and is occupied in filling the gaps left by the famous Bellarmine, will give us, concerning all of that, some explanations worthy of his acumen and his knowledge, and I even dare to add, his moderation.
Sermons are perhaps the best test of such a change; and it is a relief to move from the addresses bristling with Suarez and Bellarmine to the noble exhortations of Bishop Butler. Not until the French Revolution were ultimate dogmas again called into question; and it is about them only that political speculation provokes deep feeling. The urbanity, indeed, is not entirely new.
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