IN THE remarkable letter addressed to Fr. Rosenthal, and printed in another column, the Bishop of Birmingham is “willing to wound and yet afraid to strike”. He accuses the Catholic priests in his diocese of erroneous teaching and superstitious practice, and perhaps realizing that a mathematician is not necessarily accepted as an authoritative theologian, he shelters himself behind the authority of the Erastian Bishop of Gloucester and an Evangelical Canon of Westminster. Dr. Barnes denounces but he does not threaten. “ Receptacles called tabernacles” — here once again the superior sneer — are, he says, illegal. Will he tolerate the continuance of the illegality, or order the tabernacles to be removed? Will he dare? Reservation, he suggests, is of itself illegal. It was specifically sanctioned in Birmingham by Dr. Russell Wakefield. Will Dr. Barnes order its discontinuance? Will he dare? We think not. “ Willing to wound and yet afraid to strike!” Fr. Rosenthal’s reply is admirable, and the laity will rejoice that the spokesman of Birmingham’s Catholic priests has spoken out so unequivocably. We have been told of the Bishop’s “sincerity and courtesy”. The courtesy is shown, as Fr. Rosenthal says, by addressing injunctions and rebukes to the clergy through the medium of the Press!

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