THE HISTORY OF THE PAPACY IN THE XIXth CENTURY

IV

ALFONSO MARIA DE' LIGUORI

DURING the time that the ghost of Jesuitism was disembodied, it found refuge in an order founded by an Italian, who has not only been canonized, but also honored, with the title of Doctor ecclesiae.

A.M. De Liguori (1696-1787)

If we can believe the records of a process of beatification, a wonderful miracle took place in the little episcopal city of Sant' Agata dei Goti, between Benevento and Caserta, on that 21st of September when Clement XIV was in his last agony. Alfonso Liguori, the Bishop of the place, who was seventy eight years old, fell into a trance while resting in his easy chair after Mass. He neither moved nor spoke, and was insensible to everything about him. The whole of that day; and the following night he remained thus, and no one dared to rouse him from his state of holy ecstasy. But at dawn the next day he rang his bell, as a sign that he wished to say Mass as usual. When he saw the astonished faces of the members of his household, he asked: "What is the matter?" They told him how long he had sat without giving any sign of life. "That is true", he answered, "but you do not know that I have been with the Pope, who is now dead".

Those who surrounded him at first believed that the Bishop had had a dream. Later on they found that he had returned to consciousness of his surroundings at the very moment that Clement XIV died at Rome. They concluded that this was an instance of the phenomenon familiar in the legends of the Saints, called "bilocation", when a man is permitted to be in two places at once. It is said that this was not the only "bilocation" which the Bishop of St Agata experienced. Once, while staying at Amalfi, he is said to have preached in the church there, and at the same moment to have been hearing a confession in his house at home; and once, while at Naples, he gave alms to a poor woman at Nocera de' Pagani.

Alfonso Maria de' Liguori, the subject of these stories, which are still repeated even by a cardinal-archbishop and librarian to the Pope, was born 27th September 1696 at Marianella, one of the suburbs of Naples. His father, Giuseppe de' Liguori, was a captain of the galleys; his mother, Anna Cavalieri, was of Spanish extraction on the mother's side. His mother's predilection for the Spanish Saint Alfonso of Toledo provided him with his first Christian name, and the family veneration for the Madonna gave him his second. This name was prophetical, for never since the Middle Ages has the Virgin Mary had a more true knight than the Bishop of Sant' Agata.

As Alfonso Maria's father was often away on the galleys, his education was at first principally left to his pious mother. His first instruction he received from the fathers of the Oratory; and in this congregation, so well known in the history of music, young Liguori's taste for music and for poetry was fostered. He had inherited the harp of Giacopone of Todi. He began early as a Laudese, and a duet between the Soul and Jesus Christ, arranged for the violin, of which both the words and music are his, has lately been brought to light in the British Museum.

His parents had not intended the young Lauda composer for the service of the Church. With his good looks, his large head, high forehead, aquiline nose, and speaking eyes, they expected him to make his fortune in other ways. When he was twenty-one years old, the parents on both sides arranged a marriage between him and the beautiful Teresa, aged fourteen, the only daughter of Francesco Liguori, Prince of Presiccio. But when the Princess of Presiccio soon after gave birth to a son, the engagement was broken off, because, as the cardinal   biographer says, “Teresina would now lose her dowry—a thing which even Christians think a great deal too much of in the question of marriage”. Teresina's brother did not live long, and after his death the former marriage project came up again. Now, however, Teresina was unwilling. Her heart was set upon the cloister, and within the convent walls she met an early death. Thirty-seven years later her former betrothed, then an elderly priest, wrote an account of her life of piety and her edifying death. It does not mention that her biographer had once regarded his subject with earthly love. It may, however, have been from association with the love of his youth that the pious priest and bishop so often resorts to the intercession of St Teresa. Sia lodato Gesit, Giuseppe e Maria, con S. Teresa in compagnia! So runs the heading of the first letter in that collection of many volumes of correspondence, which Liguori's disciples have lately published; and Teresina's saintly namesake is put in a place of honor in the heading, of many of Liguori's letters, next to Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.

A proposed marriage with another rich heiress was coldly declined by Alfonso. He also had made up his mind to live unmarried, and he gave himself up wholly to his work as an advocate. But a sensible wound to his vanity gave him a distaste for that work. An important case, which he had hoped to win, was lost, because in an important part of the papers he had overlooked the little word non. This misfortune made such an impression upon him that he sat silent for three days without taking food, and after that decided to break with the false world. With prayer he laid down his advocate's sword before an image of the Virgin just as Loyola at Montserrat had laid his weapons at the feet of the Madonna. After a very short period of theological study, Alfonso, in 1725, was ordained sub-deacon—the first step on the priestly ladder.

As a priest, Liguori determined to imitate the Saint of the Oratory, Philip Neri. He immediately began to work among the Lazzaroni in Naples, and in the evenings he gathered round him men of every grade of society for spiritual conversation. In the open places in Naples he often made stirring addresses to casual listeners, and when the bells rang for Ave Maria, he and his friends at many of the churches invited young and old to come in for prayer and for instruction in the rules of a Christian life. He also tried his spiritual powers outside Naples. When an earthquake had brought distress and misery upon Foggia, a thing happened while he was preaching in the church of St John the Baptist in that town, which he and others took as a sign that he was under the Madonna's special protection. During his preaching, a famous and ancient effigy of the Virgin became alive and moved, much to the amazement of the congregation, who with loud shouts and tears commended themselves to the Mother of God.

BEGINNINGS AT SCALA

Liguori also worked for a time at Amain, and had there an experience of no less importance than the one at Foggia. A visionary nun, Sister Maria Celeste Costarosa, had a vision, in which she saw a number of priests gathered together for love of God, and preaching to millions of neglected souls in villages and country districts. Liguori was one of these priests, and it seemed to Sister Maria that God said: “I have chosen Alfonso to be the leader of the new congregation of priests which shall prosper in honor of Me!”

The words of the visionary woman fell into good ground in Liguori's mind. In 1732, he, with eleven others, began a mission in the little town of Scala, in the province of Benevento, among the numerous cowherds and goatherds in the neighborhood. The Bishop of Scala gave him and his friends a dwelling-place in a poor monastic building; and in the cathedral of Scala, after a Mass of the Holy Ghost and a Te Deum, the new congregation was formed; the Savior being chosen as patron. But in Naples there arose a jealousy of the new order. The Congregation of the Propaganda raised objections; they even thought of depriving Liguori of his humble living, and in March 1733 nearly everyone deserted him. But he was firmly resolved to sacrifice himself altogether on behalf of the poorest and the most neglected, and his courage rose again when the Bishop of Cajazzo gave him  an ancient hermitage in the village of Schiavi (Sclavia). It would doubtless have made him still more hopeful if he had known, what the Cardinal of Capua believes to be a fact, that the asylum which received him was the same place where the great schoolman, Anselm of Canterbury, wrote part of his famous treatise Cur Deus homo.

Later on, Liguori obtained new houses for his congregation in Ciorani and Nocera de' Pagani, and began spiritual exercises after the manner of the Jesuits, with those who gave themselves up to his guidance. But the old antagonism between the priests and the congregations made itself felt here again, and the Alfonsini had to suffer somewhat from the opposition of the clergy. A complaint was lodged against him at Rome, and he was accused of wishing to form a new order without the Pope's permission. He replied that most of the orders had been formed with only the bishop's permission at first, and that the Pope had established them afterwards, and that, of course, he wished to have the work he had begun acknowledged, not only by the see of St Peter, but by his King as well.

There was much to be done, however, before this end could be reached; for Rome was somewhat slow to authorize new orders. Liguori determined to labor as an apostle of the written word as well as of the spoken, and in 1744 he began his work as an author with a little book on the Sacrament and Maria Santissima. He continually emphasizes the fact that this work and the numerous others from his hand owe their origin, not to the vain desire of making a name, but to zeal for the honor of God and for Christian truth. His writing was to be an "Apostolate," and he used his pen so industriously that his works in the Regensburg edition fill two and forty volumes.

RULE  OF  THE  REDEMPTORISTS

After some years had passed, and the congregation was no longer in its infancy, Liguori resolved to attempt to get it acknowledged by the Pope and by the King. Benedict XIV had all the circumstances examined, and on 23rd February 1749 the new order was confirmed. Liguori had written letters to Benedict XIV and the Cardinal-Archbishop of Naples explaining his programme as the founder of the order. The congregation was to consist of priests who lived together under the supervision of the local bishop, like the “Fathers of the Mission” and the so-called Pii Operai. The members were always to choose their dwellings in the poorest neighborhoods, and to devote themselves especially to the neglected shepherds and other equally ignorant and helpless people. They should also be willing to take part in missions, in the work of instruction, and in the administration of the Sacraments—in fact to be a sort of home missionaries in priests’ orders. This project was approved by Benedict XIV; but with reference to the name of the new congregation an alteration was made at Rome. Liguori had wished to call his order the Congregation of St Savior; but as there was already a company of Canons Regular at Venice which bore that name, his order was called after Christus Redemptor. Liguori was then solemnly acknowledged as Rector Major of the “Redemptorists”. After the papal ratification many new members applied for admission, although the full leave of the Crown was not obtained till a much later date. The King, however, had shown his sympathy with Liguori's work by giving him an annual pension before Benedict XIV confirmed the order.

Liguori was convinced that the happy execution of his plan was due first of all to the Madonna. In token of his gratitude he wrote the most widely read of his devotional books, Le glorie di Maria Vergine, a full-voiced utterance of the most modern cultus of Mary, and at the same time a collection of highly-colored flowers gathered with something more than naiveté from the field of the more ancient Marialogy. Before that time, in 1748, Liguori had published the first edition of his chief work, the Theologia Moralist at which he had been laboring for fifteen years, and which he kept on improving to the last. These two books, like all his writings, grew out of his practical work. The book in praise of the Madonna gave expression to that heartfelt affiance in her, which  stamped his whole  religious life; his Moral Theology was the fruit, not only of long years of study bestowed upon the subject, but also of his work in the confessional, and of his efforts to make the Neapolitan shepherds submit to the law of Christ. 

In 1747 the King offered him the archbishopric of Palermo, but he did not accept the offer, because he wished to devote himself wholly to the congregation, which at that, time had not yet received the Pope's confirmation. Fifteen years later came a new offer, this time of the bishopric of Sant' Agata dei Goti; a diocese which contained about 30,000 souls, with a yearly income of more than 11,000 lire, a considerable sum as things went at that time. He would rather have declined this also; but orders came from Rome to accept it, and according to the rule of the Redemptorists he was obliged to comply. But Liguori was never quite happy as a bishop. The consecration at Rome with all its ceremonies and big gratuities scandalized him at the outset and landed him besides in money difficulties; and in 1765 he was so tired that he begged to be relieved of the burden of the bishopric. Not until 1775 was he allowed to resign. At that time he had for several years suffered from constant pains in his head and, chest, and was deaf and nearly blind. Four times during his episcopate he had taken the Viaticum and twice received Extreme Unction. Rheumatism had so crippled him that his head had sunk right down upon his breast, and it was only by means of special arrangements that he was able to drink of the cup at Mass. Seen from behind he looked like a headless trunk.

TROUBLES OVER THE RULE

Even while Bishop of Sant' Agata, he had been Rector-Major of the Redemptorists, but not until after the resignation of his see could he again give himself wholly to his congregation. He settled at Nocera de' Pagani, and from thence, with the help of younger and stronger men, he ruled, amidst increasing feebleness of body, the steadily growing troop of the Redemptorists; but it was not without much opposition and many disappointments. He saw with sorrow how the spirit of disobedience spread within his order, and the opposition to it grew so strong that at one time there was a talk of dissolving the order or reconstructing it altogether. It also distressed Ligupri that the Neapolitan State delayed so long in acknowledging the Redemptorists. The first step towards this recognition was taken in 1779, and two Redemptorists were sent to Naples to negotiate the matter. Their instructions were not to yield a jot or tittle of the rule that had been confirmed at Rome. These instructions were transgressed, and the Regolamento, which was the outcome of the negotiations with the Neapolitan government, would have put the order completely at the mercy of the secular powers. The blind old Founder of the order was made to believe that the new rules agreed with the old, and acting on the advice of his confessor and others he signed the Regolamento. He soon discovered that he had been deceived; but nevertheless he ordered the publication of the new rule, after the government had agreed to some small, unimportant alterations. He was convinced that it was necessary to yield outwardly to the King's demands; for instance, that the promises ought to be exchanged for an oath of obedience, because the King did not like promises.

Those of the Redemptorists, however, who lived in the Papal States complained to the see of St Peter; and at Rome they would not hear of any temporal government altering a rule confirmed by the Pope. It was lost labor that Liguori endeavored to show that the rule and the Regolamento agreed on all vital points. The Roman commission, which was appointed to examine the case, said that Liguori's behavior was quite incomprehensible. “It is impossible”, says a letter to him from Rome, “that a man of your wisdom and learning should allow himself to be led into using secret reservations, which are contrary to the principles of healthy morality, or should flatter himself that he can appear what he is not, and can  be something other than he seems”. The result of the new Regolamento was a complete schism. On 22nd September 1770 Pius VI appointed a new superintendent over the four Redemptorist houses in the Papal States, and the Neapolitan houses were shut out of the congregation and deprived of the enjoyment of its privileges and favors.

By this means, Liguori and those Redemptorists, who wished with him to follow the new rule, were put out of the order. This was, of course, a heavy blow to the old man. In several letters to the new superintendent of the Redemptorists in the Papal States he endeavored to effect a compromise, permitting the Neapolitan Redemptorists to follow the rule approved by the King, and those in the Papal States that of the Pope. No concession was to be expected on the part of the King. Liguori wrote a letter to Pius VI; but it was not well received. “I know”, Pius is said to have exclaimed, “that Alfonso is a saint, and has always been devoted to the Roman See; but in this matter he has not shown himself so”.

Liguori bore in silence the displeasure of Pius VI at his having in the matter of the congregation followed the temporal power rather than the see of Peter, and when anyone asked his advice he always answered: “Obey the Pope!” Not till three years after his death, which occurred 1st August 1787 did the King of the Two Sicilies revoke the Regolamento, and then the Neapolitan Redemptorists were again received into the order. But before Liguori closed his eyes he had the joy of seeing his order send a branch far into the North. In 1783 Clemens Maria Hoffbauer from Moravia, and Johann Hübel from Bohemia, entered the congregation at Rome and after a while they began to hold missions in one of the churches in Warsaw. A little later the Redemptorists came to Southern Germany and Switzerland; and in 1812 Hoffbauer himself, instigated by Adam Müller, began a work in Vienna, which prospered greatly under the ecclesiastical reaction which followed the Congress of Vienna; Zacharias Werner, the  famous preacher of the Congress, even found shelter for a time in the tents of the Liguorians. In the next generation Liguori's order came into Portugal, France, Belgium, Holland, Prussia, Russia, Turkey, England, and North America; in our days Baltimore is a main centre of its activity. Where Loyola's disciples have had full liberty to spread their wings, Liguori's are generally of less importance, but where this has not been the case, or where, as now in Germany, the Jesuits are excluded, there the Redemptorists have in many ways been their substitutes.

FAULTS FOUND IN LIGUORI

There is considerable likeness between the two orders in important points, and Liguori, the Neapolitan, has in several respects been the disciple of Loyola the Basque. With an intuitive perception that the Redemptorist order is altogether of the same spirit as their own, the Jesuits have been very eager to obtain for Liguori all the honors that the Church of Rome could bestow. Immediately after his death a preliminary enquiry into his “virtues and miracles” was begun at Nocera de’ Pagani and Sant’ Agata dei Goti, with a view to his being ultimately beatified. There were, however, a few incidents in his life which required to be cleared up before such an honor could be obtained. In 1772 Liguori had written a long dedication of his book, Trionfo della Ckiesa, to Tanucci, the powerful Neapolitan Minister, who was one of the most ardent “Regalists” of his time. The friendly words which Liguori addressed to Tanucci in this dedication shocked many people. However, they comforted themselves with the thought that it was “only a dedication”; that Tanucci had not personally broken with Christianity; and also that even such a holy man as Francis of Sales had looked upon flattery with indulgence, and had attributed to it an “indirect” educational importance. The schism within the order, and Liguori's own attitude towards the rule, might likewise be the cause of certain difficulties to the Promotor fidei in the course of a process of beatification. In order to stifle such questions Pius VI, after a careful investigation of the circumstances, issued a brief commanding eternal silence upon this delicate point. So the trial took its course, and in 1803 appeared an official declaration that there was nothing in Liguori's writings contrary to the faith. After this declaration Pius VII gave a dispensation from the rule that fifty years must elapse between a man's death and the examination of his “virtues”; and when the Jesuit order was risen from the grave which policy had dug for it, Pius VII (on 15th September 1816) placed Alfonso Maria de’ Liguori among the number of the beatified.

Only two years later the first steps were taken towards obtaining a place for the Bishop of Sant’ Agata on the roll of Saints, but it was not until 1839 that Gregory XVI issued the Bull of Canonization, advancing Liguori to the company of the Saints of the Church, because of his virtues and his miracles. Two instances of miraculous healing are especially brought forward. But Liguori had not yet reached the greatest honor of all. In 1867, 39 cardinals, 10 patriarchs, 135 archbishops, 544 bishops, 25 heads of orders, and 4 theological faculties—among them those of Louvain and Vienna—besought Pius IX to grand to St Alfonso Maria Liguori the honorable title of “Doctor of the Church”, which placed him side by side with divines like Augustine, Bernard of Clairvaux, Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventura. It was in reality the army of Jesuitism which came forward with this request; and it was granted by a papal decree of 23rd March 1871.

Next to Liguori's war with infidelity and Jansenism, the decree lays especial stress upon three things which make him worthy to be a doctor ecclesiae. They are his setting forth of ethical principles, and his zeal for spreading the belief in the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary, and in the infallibility of the Pope.    These are also the three main points upon which Leo XIII lays stress in the letter which he wrote on 28th  August 1879 to Liguori's French translators.  A closer study of his ethics, of his glorification of the Virgin, and of his doctrine of papal infallibility, will make it easy I to understand why modern Jesuitism has been so eager for his exaltation.

In the decree above mentioned, Pius IX says, by way of specifying more distinctly Liguori's importance in the domain of morals, that he “has thrown light upon what was obscure, has cleared up what was doubtful, and has made a safe way between the perplexed opinions of theologians, which were sometimes lax and sometimes rigorous”. This refers to Liguori's solution of one of the ethical problems which have filled an important place since the rise of Jesuitism. But in order to understand Liguori's position in the theory of ethics, we must first consider his own ethical personality.

HIS "HEROIC VIRTUES"

The papers of the process of beatification expatiate at great length upon his many “heroic virtues”. He was one of the heroes of that monastic asceticism of which the only object is to make life as unpleasant and burdensome to itself as possible. At Ciorani he lived for years at the back of a staircase in a wretched, narrow room, which received light and air only through an opening covered with paper dipped in oil and wax, instead of glass. In order to make every step painful he often carried pebbles in his shoes; and when he was going to eat he generally hung a big stone round his neck. Three days a week he ate nothing but a thin soup and bread; when he had fish, he contented himself with the scanty pickings about the head. Every time he took his frugal meal, he had a box of bitter herbs by him, which he sprinkled over his food, so that both taste and smell was repulsive. Before eating sweet fruits he made them unpalatable by putting salt or bitter herbs upon them; and neither the beggars, nor the cats, which were always about him, would touch his food. He never slept more than five hours, and he often spread his sheet over sharp stones, which went so deep into him that the blood spurted out upon the wall. In the daytime it was his rule to wear a penitent's belt, garnished with spikes; and both night and day he plied the scourge upon his feeble body. Like other saints, however, both male and female, he seems to have had a weakness, if such it may be called: his weakness was for snuff. It is said that this point was alleged by the Advocatus diaboli during the process of beatification, but was dismissed with the remark, that Liguori took snuff by the doctor's orders, as a remedy for an affection of the eyes. It is certain that his confessor gave him the testimony that he never had “matter” for a confession. Yet what was the spiritual condition of this saint?

He was continually plagued by scruples, which brought him to the verge of insanity. His letters give a forcible impression of the incredible suffering to which his scrupulous conscience subjected him. The further he advanced in asceticism, the stronger his temptations became. He always turned his back when talking to women; but, as a feeble old man, he acknowledged that he could not walk down a street without casting his eyes downwards so that they might not meet any temptation to impurity. In order to conquer his scruples, he made himself a perfect tool in the hands of his spiritual guide. No Jesuit could have been more willing to sacrifice his will than Liguori; and he was always impressing upon his Redemptorists the importance of absolute obedience. “My Father! I am cold; give me a little of your warmth, and tell me at least what I shall do!” Thus runs one of the many notes, which in his anguish he wrote to his director. Each time he had to act, this famous moral theologian, who had to govern an order as well as a bishopric, was as bewildered as a child. It was not only such a question as that of giving up or retaining his see which could set him endlessly arguing; he was just as hopelessly at a loss in face of the problem whether he should have a sack of straw under his head or not.

HIS MORAL TEACHING

Work among those who had been led astray first aroused Liguori's moral interests; it was no wonder,  therefore, that ethics became to him principally casuistry, and that the problem of Probabilism occupied his  thoughts at an early period. In those days complaints of the slackness of the Jesuit moral system were heard on all sides; and an honest man, like Cordara, dared not deny that the ethics of the order had a shady side, although, like a good Jesuit, he was more inclined to regard the doubtful teaching as a theoretical weakness than as an   offence against right. The most objectionable point in Jesuit ethics was the teaching about moral probability. According to the Jesuit view, a clear and certain recognition of the right course of action is in most cases difficult, and in some impossible; therefore in every action and every moral opinion a man must take into consideration its greater or less probability.

Probabilism, as it was called (or Laxism) and the Jesuits were as a rule Probabilists—went so far as to teach that in doubtful cases it was allowable to follow the less safe opinion, even if it were also the less probable, nay, even if it had an extremely small degree of probability. Rigorism (or Tutiorism), on the other hand, insisted that when there was a doubt about the lawfulness of an action, it should be left undone, even if there were more reasons for its lawfulness than for the opposite. This severe doctrine, however, was condemned in 1690 by Alexander VIII, and therefore the Rigorists so far modified their view as to allow that the less safe opinion might be followed, if it were in the highest degree probable (probabilissima), but only in that case.

Liguori had been brought up to the severe view, but he had learnt also that many moralists held another. In the course of his work in the confessional, and among the peasants, his Rigorism dwindled more and more, especially after he had plunged into the moral theology of the Jesuit Busenbaum. In 1748 he published in Italian a manual for confessors, and in the same year the first edition of his Morals appeared in the form of notes and discussions supplementary to Busenbaum's famous book. In this first edition he still kept back his own opinion about Probabilism; but in the second, which was dedicated to Benedict XIV, he says in his address to the Pope that he has sought to take a middle course between the extremes of laxity and severity. Some years later he wrote to his publisher at Venice, telling him that he must not have the book looked over by a theologian who holds the rigorous view, for instance a Dominican; because the author himself does not hold those views, but takes a middle course. He says, at the same time, that the Jesuits at Naples have praised his book both publicly and privately, although on some points he is too rigorous for them. In the third edition (1757) he still holds the same views unaltered; but in a Latin edition of extracts from his Morals, which appeared in 1758, he teaches that not only is it permissible to reject the safer opinion if the opposite one is more probable, but even if it is only equally probable.

The struggle which at that time was going on against Jesuitism, and which was partly directed at its Probabilism, made it desirable that Liguori should prove that he did not share the lax views of the Jesuits. In a work called Breve dissertazione dell’ uso moderato dell’ opinione probabile, which appeared in 1762 at the time when he was made a bishop, he maintained with great force the so-called Equiprobabilism, a sort of half Probabilism from which he never went back. He now asserted that it was allowable to follow the less safe opinion when it is but equally probable with the safer one. In his Equiprobabilism he comes nearest to being a disciple of the Bavarian moralist, Eusebius Amort, of Pollingen. Liguori thought that with his modified Probabilism he had placed a sufficient distance between himself and the Jesuit Probabilism which was so strongly attacked; and in his letters he often expresses his annoyance that people could class him with the Jesuits. But, as the promotor fidei expressed it when he was made a “Doctor of the Church”, although St Alfonso in his system is an opponent of Probabilism, he proves himself a true Probabilist when he is concerned with the decision of individual cases.

In his writings may be found instances of the notorious mental reservation of the Jesuits, as when he says: " A wife who breaks her marriage vows may deny her breach of marriage to her husband, while meaning, “I have not done it in such a manner that I need confess it”. She may also say that she has not broken marriage, inasmuch as the marriage still exists, and when she has confessed the sin she can say, “I am not guilty”. Busenbaum taught that anyone in extreme want may take so much of another's property as is required to save him from his necessity. To this Liguori appends the question, whether a man of note, who is ashamed to beg or to labor, may take the goods of others. His answer is: Yes, if the man is so much ashamed of begging, that he would rather die than beg. He also examines at length in his Moral Theology, how much a man may steal without incurring the guilt of mortal sin, and his casuistry here takes such an excursion that he gives a regular tariff. From a beggar not even a few farthings can be taken without committing mortal sin, from a poor laborer up to a shilling, from a man in easy circumstances half-a-crown, from a very rich merchant four and sixpence, while a theft from a king is only mortal sin when it exceeds fourteen shillings. To this are added further investigations into the degrees of sinfulness according to the length of the intervals between the times when the sums were taken.

It is hardly to be wondered at that such moral theology should be characterized even by Roman Catholics as “immoral theology”, or that the Abbé Laborde in 1851 exclaimed: “If Liguori's doctrine is right, then the narrow way of the Gospel is made broad, or rather it is given up, and the broad way which leads to destruction is recommended to Christians”. But since 1871 these morals are canonized by the Roman Church, and Liguori is now to Roman Catholic ethics what Thomas Aquinas is to Roman Catholic dogmatics. The heart of the Cardinal-Archbishop of Capua beats high with joy at the thought that these two great lights in the theological world were both not only Italians, but “from our province”. John Henry Newman, on the other hand, openly   declared that Liguori's defense of equivocation and the like is, in his opinion, an Italian form of morals which does not suit Englishmen. But what could the protest of an individual do? Cardinal Wiseman said that even in his time there was no confessional in England which was not under the influence of “the gentle theology of this saint”; and to Cardinal Manning Liguori was the moral theologian. Modern Roman Catholic systems may on individual points be more or less strict than the Bishop of Sant' Agata, but the spirit is the same, and it is the spirit of Jesuitism.

HIS DOCTRINE OF MARY

It is in like manner a breath of Jesuit piety, which meets us in Liguori's doctrine with regard to the Blessed Virgin. As early as 1731 he wrote in a letter to some nuns: “Pray always to Mother Mary; and to get her to show you favor, you must love her, praise her, and honor her! Let her sweet name be always in your hearts and on your lips! You must know that she, the fair one, loves you tenderly. Be grateful and return her love! Love of Mary is a certain pledge of Paradise”. Mamma mia is the term of endearment which he always uses for the Mother of our Lord, and in all his letters she is invoked at the beginning or end, with Jesus and Joseph. In Liguori's youth Francesco Pepe, the Jesuit had made his appearance in Naples as an ardent advocate of the doctrine of the immaculate conception of the Virgin. Francesco Pepe wrote praises of the immaculate conception on little strips of paper, and these strips were taken as a dose by sick people in hopes of being cured; they were also given to hens to make them lay more eggs. Even this superstitious cultus of the Madonna was countenanced by Liguori. When he lay at death's door, he asked for one of Pepe's strips and swallowed it.

As early as 1734 he communed with Francesco Pepe about a matter which became one of the chief points in his own doctrine of Mary; that all men are saved by the Madonna's mediation, because all grace is distributed through her. In one of his pamphlets he gives a popular account of the way things are done in heaven.  Appealing for support to Bernard of Clairvaux, he says: “The most holy Virgin places herself before her divine Son and shows Him her bosom wherein He was shut up for nine months, and her holy breast which He so often sucked. The Son then places Himself before His divine Father and shows Him His opened side, and His holy wounds, and when the Father sees such sweet pledges of the Son's love, He can deny Him nothing, and we gain all”. The pamphlet ends with the words: “Hail, Jesus, our Love, and Mary, our Hope!”

It is chiefly in his book above mentioned, Le glorie di Maria Vergine (written in 1750), that his doctrine about Mary is found. According to his own account, this was the book which had caused him most trouble, and also gained him most praise. In our days it is still very widely circulated; in Germany and France it has gone through many editions, and in England it was strongly recommended by Wiseman and Manning. But when it is printed north of the Alps, it is frequently found that a few things, especially some of the most superstitious stories, have been carefully removed. Not everywhere in these days is it safe to offer to Roman Catholic Christians the mediaeval Madonna-legends of Bernardino of Siena, and Bernardino of Busto.

In this extraordinary book Mary is represented as the queen of the universe, the sweet Mother, whose prayer Jesus always hears. Her mediation is morally necessary, and all God's grace flows through her, la mediatrice di grazia. She co-operates also in our justification; for God has entrusted to her the dispensing of all grace to usward. No one comes to Christ unless the Blessed Virgin has drawn him by her prayers. Mary is our hope, and she is almighty as Christ, though only in the sense in which a creature can be so; the Son is almighty by nature; the Mother by grace. Her name is sweet in life or death; she saves people from hell, and brings her own into Paradise. Salvation is easy through her. A Franciscan once in a vision saw two ladders. At the top of one, which was red, stood Christ; at the top of the other, which was white, stood Mary. Those who tried to climb up the red ladder always fell down as soon as they had gained a few steps; but when they complied with an invitation to try the white one, all went well. The Blessed Virgin stretched out her hand to them, and so they safely entered Paradise. The moral of this story, which is taken from a Franciscan chronicle, is clear: it is difficult to be saved through Christ; but through Mary it is easy. Mary is also ascended into heaven, just as Christ is, and she is our pattern in all virtues. As the daughter of God the Father, the mother of the Son, and the bride of the Holy Ghost, she is conceived without taint of sin (Maria Immacolata).

As a foundation for his doctrine of Mary, Liguori often quotes both the Old Testament and the New; but his interpretation is the wildest allegory. He affirms, moreover, that he has spent several years in collecting what the Fathers and the most celebrated ecclesiastical authors have written about Mary's mercy and power; but Old-Catholic criticism has proved that in using the works of the Fathers of the Church he has betrayed “boundless ignorance and levity”. Many quotations are at second or third hand, and he attributes to Ignatius, Athanasius, Ephraem the Syrian, Augustine, Anselm, and Bernard of Clairvaux sayings which are either not in their works at all, or are found in quite a different form.

HIS DOCTRINE OF THE POPE

The same doubtful use of quotations from the Fathers is found in Liguori's defense of the third point in the programme of modern Jesuitism, viz., the infallibility of the Pope. To the first edition of the Moral Theology in 1748 there was appended a disquisition on the infallibility of the Pope and his superiority to Councils, and as late as 1776 Liguori still occupied himself with this problem. In the end of the latter year he informs his publisher that he has finished a little book on papal infallibility, but because of the persecution preparing for his congregation, and in order not to rouse the anger of modern litterati, he does not mean to publish it—at all events not under his own name. But he is so delighted with his work, that he dares to assert that the dogma of infallibility has here received a better foundation than in Zaccaria, Noghera, or any other theologian. The fate of this treatise is unknown; it is uncertain whether it was ever printed. But apart from it, there are five treatises on the Pope by the hand of Liguori, which were so agreeable to many members of the late Vatican Council, that it was proposed to define the infallibility in Liguori's words.

During the Vatican Council attention was drawn to the fact that nearly all the quotations from the works of the ancient Fathers, which are found in Liguori's treatises, are either given inaccurately, or are taken from spurious compositions; and Döllinger, in 1871, offered to demonstrate to his archbishop that those proofs of papal infallibility which are found in Liguori's works (as well as in those of Perrone, Cardoni, Ghilardi and Schwetz) “are for the most part spurious, forged, or garbled”. However, the historical proof of infallibility is by no means the most important with Liguori. To him the infallibility of the Pope is a necessary axiom of the whole system: if God has not given the Pope infallibility, He has not taken sufficient care for the good government of His Church. And it is not only human law, the law codified by the Church, which is subjected to the Pope's interpretation and government, but also the divine law.

Belief in the Pope's infallibility was not common at the end of the eighteenth century, so it was not to be wondered at that many of Loyola's persecuted disciples should feel drawn towards Liguori and his order. St Alfonso's “powerful defense of the primacy of the Pope and of his office of infallible teacher”, so highly praised by Leo XIII in the letter to which reference has been made, first showed its effectiveness south of the Alps. But his writings and ideas have since, under the sheltering wings of the revived Jesuit order, done a great work outside Italy, and have in many places schooled people for Jesuitism. The kinship between Liguori and Loyola is felt not only in those main points upon which stress has been laid. The Bishop of Sant' Agata was as intolerant as any Jesuit. In one, of his last works he mentions with high praise the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which drove all the followers of the “ungodly” Calvin out of France. He hated all forms of Jansenism and Protestantism, and thought it quite right that Sister Maria Josefa, a nun in the convent of Frasso, had been forbidden by her director to read an Italian translation of the four Gospels. “Women, and especially nuns, should not read books of that sort, and least of all when they are translated into the vulgar tongue”. He recommends them, instead, as the best guides to a holy life, stories of saints and spiritual books, especially Rodriguez and Saint Jure—two Jesuit authors. And he calls to mind how St Theresa refused to receive a would-be nun, who brought; the Holy Scriptures with her, saying that nuns should only become acquainted with the Bible through sermons and confessors, but not read it themselves. The attempts of the Jesuits to stop the work of the Bible societies would have found  support in St Alfonso.