Rome in Canada; The Ultramontane Struggle for Supremacy Over the Civil Authority (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: III. LIBERTIES OF THE GALLICAN CHURCH. It will be convenient, at this point, to trace, in rough outline, the ancient land-marks of the Gallican liberties, which have become obscured and nearly effaced by time. On the model of the national Church of France, the Church of Canada, under the French Dominion, was formed. The resemblance was not, and in the nature of things could not be, in all respects, complete. But the general features were in both the same. Ultramontanism was better held in check, under the French, than it has been since the conquest. Of what the Gallican liberties consisted, in the land of their birth, will first form a subject of enquiry; and then will follow the consideration of the extent to which they were transferred to Canada. These liberties were not always the same in their scope and extent; they varied with time and circumstance, and sometimes they were theoretical rather than practical. At one time they assumed the defiant aspect of the Pragmatic sanction; at another, they were embodied in a concordat concluded between the nation and the Pope. But whatever their form, and whatever deductions may have been made from the full demands of the Gallican advocates, there always remained a valuable residuum of real liberty, on which the national pride of France could fix with real satisfaction. The term Gallican Church is too wide an expression for what is meant to be conveyed. There were other Gauls besides 'those of France, whom this Church did not include: Cologne, Treves, and Mayence, were Austrian Gauls, and others belonged to pays d'obtissancewhich received without distinction all constitutions and rescripts from Rome. Under this submissive name came the Pays Bas, Loraine, Provence, and Bretagne. The French Church, by the command or leave...