Chapter 3

"You Catholics," he tells us, "are far too hard on sin and not nearly indulgent enough towards poor human nature. Let me take as an instance the sins of the flesh. Now here is a set of desires implanted by God or Nature (as you choose to name the Power behind life) for wise and indeed essential purposes. These desires are probably the very fiercest known to man and certainly the most alluring; and human nature is, as we know, an extraordinarily inconsistent and vacillating thing. Now I am aware that the abuse of these passions leads to disaster and that Nature has her inexorable laws and penalties; but you Catholics add a new horror to life by an absurd and irrational insistence on the offence that this abuse causes before God. For not only do you fiercely denounce the "acts of sin," as you name them, but you presume to go deeper still to the very desire itself, as it would seem. You are unpractical and cruel enough to say that the very thought of sin deliberately entertained can cut off the soul that indulges in it from the favour of God.

"Or, to go further, consider the impossible ideals which you hold up with regard to matrimony. These ideals have a certain beauty of their own to persons who can embrace them; they may perhaps be, to use a Catholic phrase, Counsels of Perfection; but it is merely ludicrous to insist upon them as rules of conduct for all mankind. Human Nature is human nature. You cannot bind the many by the dreams of the few.

"Or, to take a wider view altogether, consider the general standards you hold up to us in the lives of your saints. These saints appear to the ordinary common-place man as simply not admirable at all. It does not seem to us admirable that St. Aloysius should scarcely lift his eyes from the ground, or that St. Teresa should shut herself up in a cell, or that St. Francis should scourge himself with briers for fear of committing sin. That kind of attitude is too fantastically fastidious altogether. You Catholics seem to aim at a standard that is simply not desirable; both your ends and your methods are equally inhuman and equally unsuitable for the world we have to live in. True religion is surely something far more sensible than this; true religion should not strain and strive after the impossible, should not seek to improve human nature by a process of mutilation. You have excellent aims in some respects and excellent methods in others, but in supreme demands you go beyond the mark altogether. We Pagans neither agree with your morality nor admire those whom you claim as your successes. If you were less holy and more natural, less idealistic and more practical, you would be of a greater service to the world which you desire to help. Religion should be a sturdy, virile growth; not the delicate hot-house blossom which you make it."

The second charge comes from the Puritan. "Catholicism is not holy enough to be the Church of Jesus Christ; for see how terribly easy she is to those who outrage and _crucify Him afresh!_ Perhaps it may not be true after all, as we used to think, that the Catholic priest actually gives leave to his penitents to commit sin; but the extraordinary ease with which absolution is given comes very nearly to the same thing. So far from this Church having elevated the human race, she has actually lowered its standards by her attitude towards those of her children who disobey God's Laws.

"And consider what some of these children of hers have been! Are there any criminals in history so monumental as Catholic criminals? Have any men ever fallen so low as, let us say, the Borgia family of the Middle Ages, as Gilles de Rais and a score of others, as men and women who were perhaps in their faith 'good Catholics' enough, yet in their lives a mere disgrace to humanity? Look at the Latin countries with their passionate records of crime, at the sexual immorality of France or Spain; the turbulence and thriftlessness of Ireland, the ignorant brutality of Catholic England. Are there any other denominations of Christendom that exhibit such deplorable specimens as the runaway nuns, the apostate priests, the vicious Popes of Catholicism? How is it that tales are told of the iniquities of Catholicism such as are told of no other of the sects of Christendom? Allow for all the exaggeration you like, all the prejudice of historians, all the spitefulness of enemies, yet there surely remains sufficient Catholic criminality to show that at the best the Church is no better than any other religious body, and at the worst, infinitely worse. The Catholic Church, then, is not holy enough to be the Church of Jesus Christ."

II. When we turn to the Gospels we find that these two charges are, as a matter of fact, precisely among those which were brought against our Divine Lord.

First, undoubtedly, He was hated for His Holiness. Who can doubt that the terrific standard of morality which He preached--the Catholic preaching of which also is one of the charges of the Pagan--was a principal cause of His rejection. For it was He, after all, who first proclaimed that the laws of God bind not only action but thought; it was He who first pronounced that man to be a murderer and an adulterer who in his heart willed these sins; it was He who summed up the standard of Christianity as a standard of perfection, _Be you perfect, as your Father in Heaven is perfect;_ who bade men aspire to be as good as God!

It was His Holiness, then, that first drew on Him the hostility of the world--that radiant white-hot sanctity in which His Sacred Humanity went clothed. _Which of you convinceth me of sin?... Let him that is without sin amongst you cast the first stone at her!_ These were words that pierced the smooth formalism of the Scribe and the Pharisee and awoke an undying hatred. It was this, surely, that led up irresistibly to the final rejection of Him at the bar of Pilate and the choice of Barabbas in His place. "_Not this man!_ not this piece of stainless Perfection! Not this Sanctity that reveals all hearts, _but Barabbas_, that comfortable sinner so like ourselves! This robber in whose company we feel at ease! This murderer whose life, at any rate, is in no reproachful contrast to our own!" Jesus Christ was found too holy for the world.

But He was found, too, not holy enough. And it is this explicit charge that is brought against Him again and again. It was dreadful to those keepers of the Law that this Preacher of Righteousness should sit with publicans and sinners; that this Prophet should allow such a woman as Magdalen to touch Him. If this man were indeed a Prophet, He could not bear the contact of sinners; if He were indeed zealous for God's Kingdom, He could not suffer the presence of so many who were its enemies. Yet He sits there at Zacchaeus' table, silent and smiling, instead of crying on the roof to fall in; He calls Matthew from the tax-office instead of blasting him and it together; He handles the leper whom God's own Law pronounces unclean.

III. These, then, are the charges brought against the disciples of Christ, as against the Master, and it is undeniable that there is truth in them both.

It is true that the Catholic Church preaches a morality that is utterly beyond the reach of human nature left to itself; that her standards are standards of perfection, and that she prefers even the lowest rung of the supernatural ladder to the highest rung of the natural.

And it is also true, without doubt, that the fallen or the unfaithful Catholic is an infinitely more degraded member of humanity than the fallen Pagan or Protestant; that the monumental criminals of history are Catholic criminals, and that the monsters of the world--Henry VIII for example, sacrilegious, murderer, and adulterer; Martin Luther, whose printed table-talk is unfit for any respectable house; Queen Elizabeth, perjurer, tyrant, and unchaste--were persons who had had all that the Catholic Church could give them: the standards of her teaching, the guidance of her discipline, and the grace of her sacraments. What, then, is the reconciliation of this Paradox?

(1) First the Catholic Church is Divine. She dwells, that is to say, in heavenly places; she looks always upon the Face of God; she holds enshrined in her heart the Sacred Humanity of Jesus Christ and the stainless perfection of that Immaculate Mother from whom that Humanity was drawn. How is it conceivable, then, that she should be content with any standard short of perfection? If she were a Society evolved from below--a merely human Society that is to say--she could never advance beyond those standards to which in the past her noblest children have climbed. But since there dwells in her the Supernatural--since Mary was endowed from on high with a gift to which no human being could ascend, since the Sun of Justice Himself came down from the heavens to lead a human life under human terms--how can she ever again be content with anything short of that height from which these came?

(2) But she is also human, dwelling herself in the midst of humanity, placed here in the world for the express object of gathering into herself and of sanctifying by her graces that very world which has fallen from God. These outcasts and these sinners are the very material on which she has to work; these waste products of human life, these marred types and specimens of humanity have no hope at all except in her.

For, first, she desires if she can--and she has often been able--actually to raise these, first to sanctity and then to her own altars; it is for her and her only to _raise the poor from the dunghill and to set them with the princes_. She sets before the Magdalen and the thief, then, nothing less but her own standard of perfection.

Yet though in one sense she is satisfied with nothing lower than this, in another sense she is satisfied with almost infinitely nothing. If she can but bring the sinner within the very edge of grace; if she can but draw from the dying murderer one cry of contrition; if she can but turn his eyes with one look of love to the crucifix, her labours are a thousand times repaid; for, if she has not brought him to the head of sanctity, she has at least brought him to its foot and set him there beneath that ladder of the supernatural which reaches from hell to heaven.

For she alone has this power. She alone is so utterly confident in the presence of the sinner because she alone has the secret of his cure. There in her confessional is the Blood of Christ that can make his soul clean again, and in her Tabernacle the Body of Christ that will be his food of eternal life. She alone dares be his friend because she alone can be his Saviour. If, then, her saints are one sign of her identity, no less are her sinners another.

For not only is she the Majesty of God dwelling on earth, she is also His Love; and therefore its limitations, and they only, are hers. That Sun of mercy that shines and that Rain of charity that streams, _on just and unjust alike_, are the very Sun and Rain that give her life. If I _go up to Heaven she is there_, enthroned in Christ, on the Right Hand of God;_ if I go down to Hell she is there also_, drawing back souls from the brink from which she alone can rescue them. For she is that very ladder which Jacob saw so long ago, that staircase planted here in the blood and the slime of earth, rising there into the stainless Light of the Lamb. Holiness and unholiness are both alike hers and she is ashamed of neither--the holiness of her own Divinity which is Christ's and the unholiness of those outcast members of her Humanity to whom she ministers.

By her power, then, which again is Christ's, the Magdalen becomes the Penitent; the thief the first of the redeemed; and Peter, the yielding sand of humanity, the _Rock on which Herself is built_.

IV

JOY AND SORROW

_Rejoice and be exceeding glad.... Blessed are they that mourn_.-- MATT. V. 12, 5.

The Catholic Church, as has been seen, is always too "extreme" for the world. She is content with nothing but a Divine Peace, and in its cause is the occasion of bloodier wars than any waged from merely human motives. She is not content with mere goodness, but urges always Sanctity upon her children; yet simultaneously tolerates sinners whom even the world casts out. Let us consider now how, in fulfilling these two apparently mutually contradictory precepts of our Lord, to rejoice and to mourn, once more she appears to the world extravagant in both directions at once.

I. It is a common charge against her that she rejoices too exceedingly; is arrogant, confident, and optimistic where she ought to be quiet, subdued, and tender.

"This world," exclaims her critic, "is on the whole a very sad and uncertain place. There is no silver lining that has not a cloud before it; there is no hope that may not, after all, be disappointed. Any religion, then, that claims to be adequate to human nature must always have something of sadness and even hesitancy about it. Religion must walk softly all her days if she is to walk hand in hand with experience. Death is certain; is life as certain? The function of religion, then, is certainly to help to lighten this darkness, yet not by too great a blaze of light. She may hope and aspire and guess and hint; in fact, that is her duty. But she must not proclaim and denounce and command. She must be suggestive rather than exhaustive; tender rather than virile; hopeful rather than positive; experimental rather than dogmatic.

"Now Catholicism is too noisy and confident altogether. See a Catholic liturgical function on some high day! Was there ever anything more arrogant? What has this blaze of colour, this shouting of voices, this blowing of trumpets to do with the soft half-lights of the world and the mystery of the darkness from which we came and to which we return? What has this clearcut dogma to do with the gentle guesses of philosophy, this optimism with the uncertainty of life and the future--above all, what sympathy has this preposterous exultation with the misery of the world?

"And how unlike, too, all this is to the spirit of the Man of Sorrows! We read that _Jesus wept_, but never that He laughed. His was a sad life, from the dark stable of Bethlehem to the darker hill of Calvary. He was what He was because He knew what sorrow meant; it was in His sorrows that He has touched the heart of humanity. '_Blessed_,' he says, '_are those that mourn_.' Blessed are they that expect nothing, for they shall not be disappointed."

In another mood, however, our critic will find fault with our sadness.

"Why is not the religion of you Catholics more in accord with the happy world in which we live? Surely the supreme function of religion is to hearten and encourage and lay stress on the bright side of life! It should be brief, bright, and brotherly. For, after all, this is a lovely world and full of gaiety. It is true that it has its shadows, yet there can be no shadows without a sun; there is death, but see how life continually springs again from the grave. Since all things, therefore, work together for good; since God has taken pains to make the world so sweet, it is but a poor compliment to the Creator to treat it as a vale of misery. Let us, then, make the best of things and forget the worst. Let us leave the things that are behind and press forward to the things that are before. Let us insist that the world is white with a few black spots upon it, be optimistic, happy, and confident.

"You Catholics, however, are but a poor-spirited, miserable race. While other denominations are, little by little, eliminating melancholy, you are insisting upon it. While the rest of us are agreeing that Hell is but a bogy, and sin a mistake, and suffering no more than remedial, you Catholics are still insisting upon their reality--that Hell is eternal, that sin is the deliberate opposition of the human will to the Divine, and that suffering therefore is judicial. Sin, Penance, Sacrifice, Purgatory, and Hell--these are the old nightmares of dogma; and their fruits are tears, pain, and terror. What is wrong with Catholicism, then, is its gloom and its sorrow; for this is surely not the Christianity of Christ as we are now learning to understand it. Christ, rightly understood, is the Man of joy, not of Grief. He is more characteristic of Himself, so to speak, as the smiling shepherd of Galilee, surrounded by His sheep; as the lover of children and flowers and birds; as the Preacher of Life and Resurrection--He is more characteristic of Himself as crowned, ascended, and glorified, than as the blood-stained martyr of the Cross whom you set above your altars. _Rejoice, then, and be exceeding glad_, and you will please Him best."

Once more, then, we appear to be in the wrong, to whatever side we turn. The happy red-faced monk with his barrel of beer is a caricature of our joy. Can this, it is asked, be a follower of the Man of Sorrows? And the long-faced ascetic with his eyes turned up to heaven is the world's conception of our sorrow. Catholic joy and Catholic sorrow are alike too ardent and extreme for a world that delights in moderation in both sorrow and joy--a little melancholy, but not too much; a little cheerfulness, but not excessive.

II. First, then, it is interesting to remember that these charges are not now being made against us for the first time. In the days even of the Roman Empire they were thought to be signs of Christian inhumanity. "These Christians," it was said, "must surely be bewitched. See how they laugh at the rack and the whip and go to the arena as to a bridal bed! See how Lawrence jests upon his gridiron." And yet again, "They must be bewitched, because of their morbidity and their love of darkness, the enemies of joy and human mirth and common pleasure. In either case they are not true men at all." Their extravagance of joy when others would be weeping, and their extravagance of sorrow when all the world is glad--these are the very signs to which their enemies appealed as proofs that a power other than that of this world was inspiring them, as proofs that they could not be the simple friends of the human race that they dared to pretend.

It is even more interesting to remember that our Divine Lord Himself calls attention to these charges. "_The Son of Man comes eating and drinking._ The Son of Man sits at the wedding feast at Cana and at meat in the rich man's house and you say, _Behold a glutton and a winebibber!_ The Son of Man comes rejoicing and you bid Him to be sad. And _John the Baptist came neither eating nor drinking._ John the Baptist comes from the desert, an ascetic with his camel-hair about him and words of penance and wrath in his mouth, and you say, _He hath a devil.... We have piped unto you and you have not danced_. We have played at weddings like children in a market-place, and you have told us to be quiet and think about our sins. _We have mourned unto_ you, we have asked you to play at funerals instead, and you have told us that it was morbid to think about death. _We have mourned and you would not lament._"

III. The fact is, of course, that both joy and sorrow must be an element in all religion, since joy and sorrow together make up experience. The world is neither white with black spots nor black with white spots; it is black and white. It is quite as true that autumn follows summer as that spring follows winter. It is no less true that life arises out of death than that death follows life.

Religion then cannot, if it is to be adequate to experience, be a passionless thing. On the contrary it must be passionate, since human nature is passionate too; and it must be a great deal more passionate. It must not moderate grief, but deepen it; not banish joy, but exalt it. It must weep--and bitterer tears than any that the world can shed--with them that weep; and rejoice too--with _a joy which no man can take away_--with them that rejoice. It must sink deeper and rise higher, it must feel more acutely, it must agonize and triumph more abundantly, if it truly comes from God and is to minister to men, since His thoughts are higher than ours and His Love more burning.

For so did Christ live on earth. At one hour He _rejoiced greatly in spirit_ so that those that watched Him were astonished; at another He sweated blood for anguish. In one hour He is exalted high on the blazing Mount of Transfiguration; in another He is plunged deeper than any human heart can fathom in the low-lying garden of Gethsemane. _Behold and see if there be any sorrow like to My Sorrow._

III. For, again, the Church, like her Lord, is both Divine and Human.

She is Divine and therefore she rejoices--so filled with the New Wine of the Kingdom of her Father that men stare at her in contempt.

It is true enough that the world is unhappy; that hearts are broken; that families, countries, and centuries are laid waste by sin. Yet since the Church is Divine, she knows, not merely guesses or hopes or desires, but _knows_, that _although all things come to an end, God's commandment is exceeding broad_. Years ago, she knows--and therefore not all the criticism in the world can shake her--that her Lord came down from heaven, was born, died, rose, and ascended, and that He reigns in unconquerable power. She knows that He will return again and take the kingdom and reign; she knows, because she is Divine, that in every tabernacle of hers on earth the Lord of joy lies hidden; that Mary intercedes; that the saints are with God; that _the Blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin_. Look round her earthly buildings, then, and there are the symbols and images of these things. There is the merry light before her altar; there are the saints stiff with gold and gems; there is Mary, "Cause of our Joy," radiant, with her radiant Child in her arms. If she were but human, she would dare but to shadow these things forth--shadows of her own desires; she would whisper her creed; murmur her prayers; darken her windows. But she is Divine and has herself come down from heaven; so she does not guess, or think, or hope--she knows.

But she is human too and dwells in the midst of a human race that does not know and therefore will not wholly take her at her word, and the very height of her exaltation must also be, then, the measure of her despair. The fact that she knows so certainly intensifies a thousandfold her human sorrow, as she, who has _come that they may have life_, sees how _they will not come_ to her and find it, as she sees how long the triumph which is certain is yet delayed through their faithlessness. "If _thou hadst known_," she cries in the heart-broken words of Jesus Himself over Jerusalem, "_if thou hadst but known the things that belong to thy peace! Behold and see, then, if there be any sorrow like to mine_, if there be any grief so profound and so piercing as mine, who hold the Keys of Heaven and watch men turn away from the Door."

So, then, in church after church stand symbolic groups of statuary, representing joy and tragedy, compared with which Venus and Adonis are but childish and half-civilized images--Mary as triumphant Queen, with the gold-crowned Child in her arms, and Mary the tormented Mother, with her dead Son across her knees. For she who is both Divine and Human alone understands what it is that Humanity has done to Divinity.

Is it any wonder, then, that the world thinks her extravagant in both directions at once; that the world turns away on Good Friday from the unutterable depths of her sorrow, and on Easter Day from the unscalable heights of her joy, calling the one morbid and the other hysterical? For what does the world know of such passions as these? What, after all, can the sensualist know of joy, or the ruined financier of sorrow? And what can the moderate, self-controlled, self-respecting man of the world know of either?