Part 1

THE CALVERT SERIES HILAIRE BELLOC, _General Editor_

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY

THE CALVERT SERIES

HILAIRE BELLOC, _General Editor_

_Belloc_: THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY _Chesterton_: THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND CONVERSION _McNabb_: THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND PHILOSOPHY _Ward_: THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND THE APPEAL TO REASON _Windle_: THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND ITS REACTIONS WITH SCIENCE

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY

BY HILAIRE BELLOC

_NEW YORK_ THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1927 _All Rights Reserved_

Nihil Obstat ARTHUR J. SCANLAN, S. T. D. Censor Librorum.

Imprimatur PATRICK CARDINAL HAYES ✠ Archbishop, New York.

New York, September 16, 1926.

Copyright, 1926, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1926. Reprinted, April, 1927 September, 1927.

_Printed in the United States of America by_ THE FERRIS PRINTING COMPANY, NEW YORK.

PREFACE

The object of the author has been to state and summarise in a brief, succinct form the arguments drawn from History in opposition to the claim of the Catholic Church: that is, to the claim put forward by that Church to speak with Divine and Infallible Authority. The author insists upon the point that he is not attempting a positive apologetic drawn from History in favour of this claim, but a rebutting of the evidence drawn from History opposed to this claim. He is engaged in examining the value of the arguments drawn from History to prove that the Catholic Church has varied or erred in her teaching or has made it depend upon immoral methods, and in showing that they have no force.

The little book is divided into two parts, the first dealing with the three moral arguments: (1) that the Church has made pronouncements which History can prove to be false; (2) that the Church can be proved by History to have used material which she knew to be false; (3) that the Church, being proved by history to be not only organised but increasingly organised from the beginning of its existence, is thereby shown to be different from the simple thing which a divine institution of the sort should be.

Secondly, the intellectual argument, to wit, that the Church can be proved by History to be man-made, not God-made. This the author divides into two sections: (1) the Protestant argument that there was some original good message told by Jesus Christ, which the Church has gradually corrupted and from the origin of which she has deviated; (2) the general agnostic argument that the Church can be proved historically to be but one of many religions, to have grown up like any other religion, with the same illusions and similar rites and mysteries, and is therefore man-made--which last form of attack the author regards as to-day by far the most serious.

EDITOR’S PREFACE

There needs but a brief introduction from the same pen as that which composed the essay which follows it.

It must be to this effect.

The general subject “The Catholic Church and History” might be treated from a hundred different positions. Perhaps the most important in the eyes of the cultured man of our day is the question whether the Catholic Church is, or is not, proved by the general story of European history for the last two thousand years to have been a beneficent influence. That question, however, I cannot touch upon because the question whether the Church be beneficent or no is, to a Catholic, subsidiary to the point whether its claim to be the very truth is valid or no. If this claim is justified, then certainly the Church must be beneficent. If it be proved beneficent, that will indeed be some support of its claim; but a weak one, because we cannot even judge whether it be beneficent or no until we have decided what we think better and what worse--and this issue cannot be decided until we are certain of our philosophy, that is, of our religion.

It is another and more important point to discuss whether the Church in her long history has, or has not, shown exceptional signs of holiness and of supernatural power, which are an evidence of her claim. There are also, as I have said, very many other points of discussion which the general title suggests.

I have confined myself to _one_, and _one_ only, to wit, the rebutting of a certain argument drawn from History _against_ the Church. I have done so for the reason that, in my eyes at least, much the most formidable assault delivered against the Catholic Church to-day is the assault delivered from the historical argument. There remains (as I have said in the Essay that follows) much of the old Protestant argument, to wit, that an original excellent establishment or message of divine origin was corrupted in the course of the centuries and that the Roman Communion still defends that corruption, so that its claim to authority fails. This I have attempted to meet. But of far more weight in my judgment, at the present moment, is the general argument that, regarding History as a whole and adding to it what little we can guess, and what very little we positively know, about man before he began to establish records, the Faith is but an illusion, parallel to many another such illusion to which men have been subject by the process of projecting their own imaginations upon the void of the universe.

This I am convinced is the chief attack which we of the Faith have to meet in modern times. The modern white world, the world of the European races and their oversea expansion, is rapidly becoming divided into two fairly definite camps: those who accept the full mission of the Catholic Church and those who are convinced, by the study of geology and recorded History, that the Catholic Church is but one more example of man’s power of self-delusion.

Two questions may be asked of me by those who should read the analysis which makes up my booklet. First, why have I confined myself to rebutting, that is, to a negative position, instead of advancing positive evidence from History in favor of the Catholic claim (evidence drawn from holiness, continuity, unity, etc.)? Secondly, why have I given but a portion, and not the largest portion, of my space to what I have called the most important part of the attack, to wit, the attack from general pre-History and History, the purely Sceptical attack which I deal with at the end of my Essay? My answer to these two questions is as follows:

First, that, in my judgment, the action of the Catholic Church is here a defensive action. The opponent _takes it for granted_ that History and pre-History _dis_prove the Catholic claim. He must be met as one attacking.

Secondly, that though the general Sceptical attack is by far the more important, yet it needs less space in writing for the meeting of it than does the discussion of the old Protestant attitude. The reason is that the issue between the Faith and mere scepticism is narrower and sharper, and at the same time more general. If you are debating whether the Church declined or was corrupted you must go into more historical detail. You must in some degree, even in so short an essay as this, be concrete. But on the other and larger issue you have a very simple and direct “yes” or “no”; which is, briefly, the answer to that old, eternal question “whether religion be from God or from man”; and upon the answer to that question depends the future of our civilisation.--_The Editor._

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY

I

1. By the term “The Church” I mean the Catholic Church; and by the Catholic Church I mean that visible society real, one, and clearly present before the world to-day, which is in communion with the Apostolic See of Rome, and accepts not only the supremacy of that see but also the Infallibility of its occupant when, as shepherd and teacher of all Christians, and speaking in that capacity, he defines a matter in faith or morals.

2. The Church claims Divine Authority. She says:

“I alone know fully and teach those truths essential to the life and final happiness of the soul. I alone am that Society wherein the human spirit reposes in its native place; for I alone stand in the centre whence all is seen in proportion and whence the chaotic perspective of things falls into right order. Mankind cannot feed upon itself--for that is death at last. I alone provide external sustenance from that which made mankind. The soil of my country alone can fully nourish mankind. Here, in me, alone is reality. For I alone am not man-made but am of direct divine foundation and am by my divine Founder perpetually maintained.”

3. Against this claim many forms of rejection are found, each with its type of argument: as, that the claim conflicts with the ascertained results of Physical Science: that it advances a particular affirmation not based on the only proofs admissible by reason: that the objector discovers in the Church not the marks of holiness which should accompany such a claim, but rather of evil, etc.

Among the chief objections is the objection from History. It is affirmed that the records of the past, the better they are known and the more closely they are examined, make the more certainly for the rejection of the Church’s claim to Divine Authority, to unique inspiration. These records (it is affirmed) show the Church to be of merely human origin. They yield manifold evidence that illusion, myth and even craft have built up her structure. Her rites are of the kind imagined by men in all ages and places wherever men have abandoned themselves to emotional images divorced from reason. Her doctrines are spun out of nothingness by men engaged upon mere systems invented to explain irrational statements. Her objects of worship are but projections of the worshipper’s mind and have no real existence.

History, it is said, can prove all this. We can trace illusion growing from step to step: the mythical and legendary gradually accepted for fact; the doubtful, vague, uncertain, tentative dream hardening into fixed and absurd dogma. Supposed contemporary evidence, enlightened History with modern apparatus, proved to be subsequent interpolations. The writings traditionally ascribed to witnesses turn out--under the examination of History--to be of a very different and later date. Beyond all this and clinching the argument is the discovery through History that men have always thus created for themselves wholly fanciful beings whom they have worshipped always in much the same fashions. There has been a long process of self-deception from which humanity in its advance is gradually freeing itself, and in this process the Catholic Church is but the last phase.

It is this objection, the argument from History, that I propose to refute. Certain other of the main objections--the objection from Reason, the objection from Philosophy, the objection from Physical Science--are dealt with in other works in this series. I am dealing with the historical objection alone. I propose to show, not that History may convince any man of the Church’s claim, but that the supposed argument from History against that claim has failed. I propose to enquire upon the validity of the objection from History.

II

Premises must precede such an enquiry. I lay them down as follows:

(1) The refutation of any argument against the Faith is not a demonstration of the truth of the Faith. It is the removal only of an obstacle to the Faith. For the Faith is not arrived at by demonstration, but by demonstration it is shown to be at least tenable. The Faith is not a conclusion which all can reach by the formal action of reason, but a revelation to be defended by reason. The Faith is not a theory, but a thing. It is rational, but not deductively arrived at. There is no process whereby all mankind can be convinced of it as of an abstract proposition. But there is a process whereby all mankind can be convinced that each particular proposition against it has failed.

This principle in what is called “Apologetics” (that is, writings in defence of Catholic truth) is so generally neglected that it is of the first importance to make it quite clear at the opening of any discussion upon revealed religion.

A man who can see colours will never be able to prove colour to a colour-blind man. He can show that the colour-blind man’s arguments--e.g., that colours do not exist because if they did they would affect surface--are false. If he proceeds to establish the presence of colours positively, he must do so by analogy, by convergent evidence, by the manifest action of others, by the proved nature of other senses than that of sight. He can only _prove_ (in the strict deductive sense of the word “prove”) that the sense of colour is rational, acceptable without violence to the human mind; but that it is present he must establish by other methods.

Nearly all our modern debates in this matter are confused by the fact that one of the parties misconceives the nature of these debates. The opponent of Catholicism thinks that its apologist is, in arguing, trying to prove Catholic truth as one proves a case for a positive verdict. He is not. He is rebutting the supposed value of opposing evidence; he is pleading for a negative verdict; for acquittal of the charge “irrational.” When he comes to establishing the Faith positively, he does not do so by following one line of deductive reason, but by a mass of converging considerations.

History cannot be said to prove the Faith, save in the very extended use of the word “prove” to mean a general process of increasing conviction from the examination of what is revealed of the Church’s action on the world, of men’s attitude towards it, of the moral and intellectual activities of acceptors and rejectors compared. But it can be _proved_ that an increasing knowledge of History does not shake the Church’s claim to Divine Authority: while, on the contrary, a lesser knowledge is almost invariably more hostile to that authority than a greater.

(2) I have used the term “reason,” and this leads me to my second premise: The human reason is absolute in its own sphere.

That elementary truth is often denied to-day (though the minds which deny it can only use reason to arrive at this very conclusion!), but it is fundamental and I must postulate it as a necessary prelude to any discussion. For to argue with men who deny the basis of all argument is futile; it is like pleading in a court where the judge is a corpse and the jury a set of waxworks.

A man says, “The river Ohio flows eastwards.” I show by the compass, the map, and the sun, or in any other rational way you like that it flows westward. If he then answer me, “Oh! that is formal logic--I have no use for it! Westward and eastward are but apparent contradictories. They can be resolved into a higher unity. And, after all, what is ‘flowing’? And here is a bend of the river which does flow eastward for a mile or two. And a statement may well be true in a higher sense than the geographical one. And anyhow, the modern mind is no longer bound by the mediaeval fetters of dialectic”--if he replies with this sort of rigmarole, I must leave him to it. I am writing not for modernists--that is, not for people who think that a proposition can be both true and untrue at the same time--but for men of sane tradition who admit logic as a court of final appeal in things of the mind. For we Catholics regard reason as supreme in its own sphere and will admit nothing contrary to reason.

(3) Lastly, I must premise that we are discussing things as they are: the real Catholic Church; and are excluding from the discussion what is not germane to it. We are discussing the claim of the Catholic Church to authority, the claims of its accredited organs to express divine truth--not what some opponent may in ignorance regard as an accredited organ of the Catholic Church, when it is nothing of the kind, nor a supposed doctrine of the Church which the Church has never taught. Conversely, I do not admit as rebutting evidence such phrases as “all the best authorities” or “all the latest authorities”--they are worthless as evidence. I examine the grounds on which the affirmations are made, not the mere affirmation unsupported by anything but fashion. (Thus, if an opponent advance, “Marcus, a priest, said the earth was flat: it is proved round; therefore the Catholic Church was wrong,” it is replied that Marcus, a priest, is not the Catholic Church. Or if it be said, “The Catholic Church teaches that mankind is but six thousand years old,” it is answered, “Many heretical sects have taught this but the Catholic Church has never taught it.” Or if it be said, “The Catholic Church affirms the witness of the fourth Gospel but all reasoning men admit that it is spurious,” it is replied, “All reasoning men do not admit that it is spurious: that is but the affirmation of a fashionable school.”)

III

We must begin by establishing the main sections into which is divided the argument from History against the claims of the Catholic Church.

But before setting out these sections in their order I must reject one as having no relation to the discussion, though often confused with it: I mean the so-called historical argument from material prosperity.

It is advanced that the claim of the Catholic Church to Divine Authority is negatived by a proved historical process whereby societies rejecting the Church’s claim are blessed with material prosperity, while societies accepting that claim become poor.

Such an argument no more applies to societies in their relation to the Church’s authority than it does to individuals in relation to the authority of their own conscience or of their own reason. My conviction that a course of action is morally right, or that a given statement is intellectually true, is not to be tested by its effect upon my income. In point of fact, the argument is as worthless in its presumptions as in its reasoning. The historical affirmation is historically false. It is not true that societies have risen in wealth through the rejection of the Catholic Faith, or fallen in wealth through the retention of it. The two phenomena are not correlated in History at all, and there is as much to be set upon the one side of the account in this brief two hundred years over which the rises and falls extend as on the other.

But even were the statement true, the application of it would be clearly beside the mark: even had every Catholic society fallen into penury and every anti-Catholic risen to affluence, it would be utterly without bearing upon the truth or falsehood of the Catholic claim.

This being said, what are the respectable and historical arguments against the Faith? What are those arguments drawn from History of which the intelligent man must take serious notice? They would seem to fall into two categories:

The first argument I will call the minor argument, because it appeals only to the moral sense--not that the moral sense is less than the intellectual, but that in weighing questions of material evidence (which is the matter of History) a moral test takes the second place. Thus, in a court of justice evidence to character, though of weight, counts less in establishing a man’s claim than material evidence. Next I find, and much more cogent, a major argument, which is directly concerned with the intellectual facilities of man.

(I) The minor, or moral argument, as I have called it, is directed against the character of the Church, and attempts to show from History that her character is not consonant with her claims. It has many forms: accusations of cruelty, of unsocial neglect in material things, etc., but the main headings are three:

(a) The Church has been historically confident upon and has affirmed as truths a number of points since proved to be erroneous: a Divine Authority would never go wrong upon any point.

(b) The Church has relied on falsehoods and propagated them _after_ she had known them to be falsehoods, and has not abandoned them until she was compelled to abandon them by the overwhelming weight of evidence. No Divine Authority would act in this fashion.

(c) The Church is highly organised and has apparently always shown organisation: such organisation has developed more and more from the beginning, or at any rate from a very early stage indeed. The Church is a body whose doctrines, institutions and structure have perpetually proceeded from the simpler to the more complex and from the less to the more defined. Nothing possessing divine inspiration would be organised, for organisation is mechanical and is of death: inspiration, which is of life, remains free, at large, untrammelled by rule.

(II) What I have called the major, intellectual argument, which is much the more serious in all our debate, stands thus:

The Church is man-made, as can be seen by the appearance over and over again in History of a doctrine or a practice unknown to an earlier epoch, and more largely, by a comparison between all religions; for the Church, which seemed a unique phenomenon to the lesser historical knowledge of our fathers, is now discovered to be but one of many similar phenomena, one of many religions, with rites and doctrines not indeed identical (they differ widely), but all having parts in common and all presumably of human institution. Therefore the Church must be included in the character of all religions: it is but one of many and man-made like the rest.

But this major, intellectual argument falls into two very distinct branches, which I will call the Protestant and the purely Sceptical.

(a) The Protestant appeal to History takes the form of saying: “The Christian revelation is indeed divine, but at some period (earlier or later, according to the views of the disputant) it was corrupted by man-made accretions and illusions. History is therefore opposed to the Catholic Church: for History bears witness to the fact that the Catholic Church as we know it is essentially man-made. But there does underlie it some divine foundation, some moral revelation not man-made.” (The limits of this acceptable minimum each individual disputant fixes for himself.)

(b) The Sceptical appeal to History--much the most formidable to-day, and always intellectually the most respectable--speaks in much bolder tones, thus: “The whole of the Catholic Faith from beginning to end is man-made. It is a mass of illusions: of projections of the human mind thrown by the human imagination upon the void; of deceptions, some of them conscious in some degree, many more but half-conscious; by far the most unconscious, implanted in the mind by early training. What the Catholic Church affirms is false from beginning to end, and History shows that the affirmations of the Catholic Faith have been thus man-made step by step from the very first origins we can discover. The idea of a God is man-made; so is the sacramental idea, the idea of Incarnation--the whole affair.”

Such, as it seems to me, are the historical arguments against the claim of the Catholic Church to Divine Authority. Those arguments, tabulated in the order of their importance, that is, of the power they wield over a rational human mind fully open to evidence and to approaches of reason, I will here set down in graphic form:

I propose therefore to deal with them in their order, beginning with the least and going on to the greatest.

IV

(I) THE MINOR OR MORAL ARGUMENT

(a) _That the Church has been historically wrong upon a number of facts: a Divine Authority would not go wrong in this fashion._