“Steeped in Romanity” — Fr. Victor-Alain Berto

The Relations of the Church to Society

Father Edmund O'Reilly S.J.$25.00

Father Edmund O’Reilly may safely be judged the foremost Irish theologian of the nineteenth century. In his celebrated letter to the Duke of Norfolk, Cardinal Newman appeals to him as “one of the first theologians of the day”. Of the present work Dr W. G. Ward of the Dublin Review writes that it “cannot but be of signal benefit to the Catholic reader in these anxious and perilous times”. Clear, exact and perfectly orthodox, Father O’Reilly explains the whole of Catholic doctrine about the relations of Church and State, particularly those points that are most contested by the Church’s enemies or least understood by uninstructed Catholics. The explanation of the Church’s traditional attitude to religious liberty, the theological explanation of the Great Western Schism, the precise extent of the infallibility of the Pope and of the Church are of particular interest in the twenty-first century.