2.
THE author of "Where Saints Have Trod" writes on the subject of devotion and devotions:[1] The Church reserves to herself a certain right of discrimination in this matter. She meets the various devotions that arise with approval, or toleration, or condemnation, according as she judges them sound in doctrine or the reverse, and helpful or harmful or indifferent to the spiritual life. By her approval she guarantees that they are sound in doctrine and have it, at least, in them to be helpful to salvation and sanctification; by her toleration she ensures to them a certain negative virtue and harmlessness, without any assertion as to their being actually ennobling and useful. But here her mission ends. It is not as with the sacraments, which she presses on the use of the faithful; it is not as with her doctrinal definitions, which are to help on the life of spiritual knowledge as the sacraments that of grace; in this other field she assumes to herself no final responsibility, except in the merely negative manner which we have indicated; she approves in the name of doctrine, she permits
- ↑ London Catholic Truth Society Publication, 1903.
