Note 53 — Chapter XIII

— Schismatic Catholics were those Catholics that went to Mass in private houses, and then, more or less, frequented their parish church afterwards to escape the fines. They were further divided into Communicants and Non-communicants. Very often the men of a family were Catholics of this sort, and the womenkind strict Catholics. Indeed, it was mainly the women and the priests that have kept “the Pope’s religion” alive in England: although, of course, many men of great mental and physical powers were papists of the most rigid class. The practice of “going to the Protestant church,” as English Roman Catholics term the practice to this day, was deliberately condemned by the Council of Trent.

The cause of the historic controversy between the Jesuits and the Secular Priests in the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. lies in a nut-shell. It was this: the Jesuits, and especially their extraordinarily able leader, Father Parsons, thought that the Secular Priests required watching. And so they did; and so do all other human creatures. But the mistake that Parsons made was this: his prejudices and prepossessions blinded him to the fact that the proper watchers of Secular Priests are Bishops and the Pope, and not a society of Presbyters, however grave, however gifted, or however pious.