Sebastian Gebhard Messmer

"The charge made by the Jansenists that the popes curtailed the rights of archbishops in order to increase and strengthen their own claim of universal primacy, is best refuted by the fact that the metropolitan authority in it struggles against encroaching primates and patriarchs or rival metropolitans, found no stronger support than that given by the Holy See. On the other hand, Rome had also to defend the native or acquired rights and privileges of suffragan bishops against usurping claims of their metropolitans. That the Holy See did not exceed its powers is further proved by the fact the Council of Trent restricted rights of metropolitans even more than the popes had done."

"It is no presumption to say that our educated Catholic laity is, unfortunately, too little acquainted with the safely stored treasures of Catholic tradition and learning regarding the Holy Scriptures. We fear also that too little time is given to biblical study and questions in many of our Catholic colleges and high schools. When the divine character and the historical authority, the genuineness and credibility of our holy books are more than ever attacked, even in popular literature, with the most insidious arguments of a pretended science and criticism, it behoves the educated Catholic to know something of the unanswerable proofs, by which the Catholic Church, the divinely appointed custodian and interpreter of God’s written Word, defends her claims to and her belief in the Sacred Scriptures. Nor should he forego the enhanced pleasure and profit in reading the sacred Books which he will assuredly derive from a better knowledge of their historical, geographical, political, and domestic surroundings. The wider the budding rose unfolds its fragrant leaves, the more abundantly will it drink of the refreshing morning-dew. So will the Christian soul open itself, by study and prayer, to receive in fuller measure the waters of eternal life, flowing, as from a rich fountain-head, from the Words of the Living God."