“On reading the note-books from which he delivers his lectures on sacred rhetoric, I noticed in them various opinions which do not agree with the tradition of the Church.
“First, M. Guitrel, whilst condemning as to their conclusions the commentaries on Holy Scripture drawn up by atheists and so-called reformers, does not condemn them in their principle and origin, in which he is seriously in error. For it is evident that, the care of the Scriptures having been confided to the Church, the Church alone is capable of interpreting the books which she alone preserves.
“Second, led astray by the recent example of a monk who thirsted for the applause of the age, M. Guitrel presumes to explain the scenes of the Gospel by means of that pretended local colour and that pseudo-psychology of which the Germans make a great show; and he does not perceive that, by thus walking in the way of infidels, he is skirting the abyss into which they have fallen. I should weary the benevolent attention of His Eminence Monseigneur the Cardinal-Archbishop were I to place before his reverend glance the passages where M. Guitrel with pitiable childishness follows the narratives of travellers, as to ‘the boat-service on the Lake of Tiberias,’ and those where, with intolerable indecency, he describes what he calls ‘the soul-states’ and ‘the psychic crises’ of our Lord Jesus Christ.
“These foolish innovations, blameworthy in a cloistered worldling, should not be tolerated in a secular cleric entrusted with the instruction of young aspirants to the priesthood. Hence I was more grieved than surprised when I heard that an intelligent pupil, whom I have since been obliged to expel for his bad disposition, described the professor of rhetoric as a ‘fin de siècle’ priest.
“Third, M. Guitrel affects a culpable laxity in relying on the untrustworthy authority of Clement of Alexandria, who is not included in the martyrology. In this the professor of rhetoric betrays the weakness of a mind misled by the example of the so-called mystics, who imagine that they find in the _Stromata_ a purely allegorical interpretation of the most concrete mysteries of the Christian faith. And, without actually going astray, M. Guitrel shows himself, in this matter, to be inconsistent and light-minded.