a covert
insinuation of the same charges, in a publication avowedly Catholic,
and edited in my own diocese, consequently canonically subject to my
correction. Should such a misstatement, made under my own eyes, be
passed over by me, it might be surmised that it could not be
contradicted; and whether chronologically it preceded or followed the
French account it evidently becomes my duty to notice it, as French
bishops have considered it theirs to correct the inaccuracies of
their native writers.

Otherwise, in a few years, we might find reference made, as to a
recognised Catholic authority, for the current and unreproved
statement of what occurred at Rome, to _The Home and Foreign Review_.
And that in a matter on which reprehension would have been doubly
expected, if merited. In its first number the Address, which has, I
believe, wonderfully escaped the censure of Protestant and infidel
journals, is thus spoken of: "This Address is said to be a compromise
between one which took the violent course of recommending that major
excommunication should be at once pronounced against the chief
enemies of the temporal power by name, and one still more moderate
than the present" (_The Home and Foreign Review_, p. 264). Now this
very charge about recommending excommunication is the one made by the
French paper against my Address. But, leaving to the writer the
chance of an error, in this application of his words, I am bound to
correct it, to whomever it refers. He speaks of only two addresses:
the distinction between them implies severe censure on one. I assure
you that neither contained the recommendation or the sentiment
alluded to.

My Brethren, I repeat that it pains me to have to contradict the
repetition, in my own diocese, of foreign accusations, without the
smallest pains taken to verify or disprove them with means at hand.
But this can hardly excite surprise in us who know the antecedents of
that journal under another name, the absence for years of all reserve
or reverence in its treatment of persons or of things deemed sacred,
its grazing over the very edges of the most perilous abysses of
error, and its habitual preferences of uncatholic to catholic
instincts, tendencies, and motives. In uttering these sad thoughts,
and entreating you to warn your people, and especially the young,
against such dangerous leaders