Part 5

In every historical case of abuse, whether it be the erroneous acceptation of a false document (as in the case of the Donation) or an abuse of excess, as in the case of the exaggeration of image worship, the traditional forces of this Sacred Society admit the moral or clerical error, and usually they begin to admit it in increasing numbers from the moment of the first challenge. But in the case of orthodox doctrine it is not so. It is just the contrary. It is the doctrine that stands and the heresy which gradually dies out.

Of specific heresies which have attempted to maintain but a part of truth while rejecting the rest, all without exception have gone through a process of rapid growth, culmination and decay, and nearly all have at last wholly faded. That is not true, of course, of pure scepticism. That we shall always have with us, for it is native to the human mind. A complete denial of the whole Catholic scheme, that is, a complete rejection of all that is unfamiliar and does not repose upon evident proof immediately acceptable to everyone; a denial of all mystery and especially of specific doctrinal affirmation, is as natural to man as breathing, for faith is of grace and is exceptional to Nature. But the heresies, as distinguished from such general rationalist denial, never have in them the vitality which continues to urge orthodox tradition.

That is historical fact; and it is an historical fact which should give every man who is seriously examining these things grave food for thought.

Take the example which is most familiar to the older members of the present generation in English-speaking countries other than Ireland: I mean, the attitude towards Holy Writ.

Here heresy began by setting up the literal interpretation of Scripture (and the personal judgment of the reader upon it) in opposition to the authority of the Catholic Church. The Catholic tradition in the matter was that (1) Scripture was the Word of God; but (2) given us not as a record of science, or even History, so much as a witness to the Church and particularly to the Incarnation; and (3) was only to be accepted in the sense which the authority of the Catholic Church admitted.

As against that ancient Catholic attitude towards the Bible came, as a novelty, the fierce affirmation of its absolute and literal authority and of its being plainly interpretable for himself by every reader.

We are all witnesses to what has happened in that particular example.

The heresy, after nearly three hundred years of vigour, has gone to pieces. The Bible outside the Catholic Church has lost authority. The original Catholic position remains. Indeed, there is a comic irony in noting that it is we Catholics to-day who are thought old-fashioned in maintaining our respect for the text of Scripture and in being slow to admit all the modern guess-work in derogation of it. So much for the test of Innovation.

(2) I turn to the second test, the test of Critical Date.

If it be true that the Catholic Church is the warping and corruption of an originally delivered truth, then that warping and corruption must have had an origin.

I am walking by night along a road which is laid out upon the map for miles due east and west; but after so walking for some time I begin to notice by the stars that the road is bending. It turns more and more southward. The map has misled me. In such a case I can, when daylight returns, retrace my steps and I shall find the point of flexion. I may not be able to establish it to a yard, nor even, if the process be at first very gradual, to a quarter of a mile; but I shall at least be able to say, “Up to this point it was dead straight, pointing west. After this point (say, as much as a mile further on) it is clearly bending south of west, and I find it bending more and more southward as I proceed.” If not a point at least a section of flexion can be established.

Now there is this remarkable historical fact about the process of the Catholic Church--that its Protestant opponents, all agreeing in its loss of direction, cannot agree as to when that loss began. There is not and apparently cannot be any general conclusion upon so simple an historical matter as to even the main historical section--first century, second, third, fourth, eleventh--in which this point of flexion lies. For one body of Protestant thought it is found in what they call “Counter-Reformation” of the sixteenth century. It was then that the Catholic Church went wrong, with its exaggeration of Papal power, of Eucharistic ritual, its more mechanical organisation of the Sacrament of Penance, and all the rest of it. In the fifteenth century the Church of England, of France, of Castille were all (rightly) in communion and their common authority was sound. By 1600 it was lost. For another set of Protestants the change was the opening of the Middle Ages--what is called the “Hildebrandine Movement” of 1050–85. Until then Christendom was proceeding in consonance with its tradition. The see of Peter had Primacy indeed, but had not developed a highly detailed jurisdiction over a vast number of personal and national affairs. The discipline of celibacy among the clergy in the West (so they tell us) had been optional; its universal enforcement was a corruption. The monastic institution had been free and sincere; it slowly became, after that date, enslaved to the Papal power and to Mammon, and was more and more a scandal of insincerity. Others would find the point of departure in the ignorance and loss of material powers which mark the entry into the Dark Ages. The fifth and sixth centuries are the wide sections in which to seek the point of flexion and of decline. Others are willing to accept as traditional and on the right line the Christendom of Gregory the Great and St. Augustine of England; but the ninth century is a breaking point and the tenth a final collapse; by the time of Marozia the Church had clearly lost an original character which it never recovered, and that new and degraded thing, the mediaeval Church, had begun to appear. The Church was never more the same. For some few of my own acquaintance the dreadful moment is 1870; the right way was lost with the definition of the Infallibility of the Pope. For others again it is the thirteenth century, with its developing organisation for the repression of heresy and its too strict definition of the sacrament. For a very great body of men in the immediate past (now a smaller number) things began to go wrong with the freedom of the Church under Constantine. Then did lay and state corruptions, imitations or influences of the old Pagan society, begin to thwart the divine scheme.

The most popular of the latest Protestant theories is that the thing went wrong almost at once between Pentecost and the predication of St. Paul, and that St. Paul was the author of the evil transformation into a mystery religion of what had before been an ethical society upon the suburban model. As their phrase goes, “Nothing can bridge the gulf between the Gospels and the Pauline writings.” A lifetime ago the point of flexion was put later. In the Protestant thesis of the mid-Victorian day the corruption began about the end of the second century. St. Paul was accepted, but already there was trouble beginning, as revealed in the authentic epistles of St. Ignatius; and manifestly things were becoming Catholic (and therefore corrupt) by the time of the African Martyre, and were hopeless by the time of the Thirty Tyrants. For these scholars the Catholic taint is the natural accompaniment of the decline of civilisation after the Antonines.

Now I am not saying that because there is dispute upon the moment of flexion in any directive scheme, because there are debate and diverse opinion upon the point where an upright original began to go wrong, that therefore one may conclude it never did go wrong. But I am free to maintain that such enormous disparities of opinion, and such a ceaseless shifting of it, would be impossible if a plain historical process were at work.

When we consider, for instance, the popular monarchy of the English, that is, the government of England by a king, aided indeed by other powers, but having in his own hand the main force of the executive, there may be some debate as to the moment in which these powers began to fall off, until they reach the purely symbolic or nominal situation in which they are to-day, when the king no longer governs at all but is the neutral chief of society. I myself should put it as early as the reign of Edward VI, and I should say it had become marked under the elder Cecil at the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign. It is more usual to say that the great change came under Charles I, and certainly it was clinched by the civil wars. There are even perhaps some who maintain that monarchy was still in the main more powerful than any other political factor until the Dutch invasion of 1688. But at any rate it lies within these two lifetimes--1550 to 1690. No one will deny that the process had begun in the latter half of the sixteenth century; no one will deny that it was thoroughly accomplished before the end of the seventeenth.

It is so with all other historical phenomena of the kind. You can put within the limits of a lifetime, and not a very long lifetime, the transformation and decline of the Roman Empire during the third century. You can see clearly that feudalism was a living social system under Henry III of England and even under Edward I, but that it was no longer the spiritual motive of society after the Black Death. You may take any process you like throughout History, and you will find this to be true; not that you can always put your finger upon a particular year or event, let alone a particular moment, but that you can say, “Within this comparatively narrow limit of time the change takes place, certainly the institution was living within its traditions and in the direction determined by its originals as late as such and such a moment; certainly after such and such a moment, not long subsequent, it is as clearly failing to keep that original direction.”

But here, in the case of the Catholic Church, her opponents can say nothing of the kind. If they could, not only would scholarship be roughly agreed among our opponents as to the Critical Date, but we ourselves should at last be agreed, as we are agreed with regard to attack upon abuses, in the long run--though never with regard to the attack on doctrine.

But there is no such agreement, and can be none; for the simple reason that the Catholic Church has not thus warped or veered but has remained herself. So by this second test I conclude that the historical objection is false.

It seems to me that an impersonal observer, say some historical student from the extreme Orient, to whom the whole Catholic scheme was indifferent and who cared nothing whether the original institution of the Catholic Church had failed (because he had no affection for that institution and no belief in any of its doctrines nor any respect for Jesus Christ nor any attachment to the idea even of a personal God)--it seems to me, I say, that such a wholly neutral observer would, upon the general historical evidence, decide that the Catholic Church was founded with a certain directive nineteen hundred years ago, to be correct, about the year 29, and had remained throughout the successive centuries consonant with itself. I think he would say of it what we may say with regard to many an ancient state, “Its personality has survived, its soul is still the same, its essential unity has not been lost.” He would add the qualification “yet”; he would conclude, “The personality _yet_ survives; the continuous life has not _yet_ been lost.” We of the Faith of course affirm--but not upon historical evidence--that the word _yet_ does not apply; that it shall remain to the consummation of the ages. But for the purposes of the particular argument which I am here examining, that is neither here nor there. I say that a mere historical examination with no reference to the truth or falsehood of the Church’s claim will conclude that that claim has been continuous from the beginning, and that the Thing to-day is essentially what it was when the strict organisation, the unique phenomenon, appeared in Syria under the principate of Tiberius. There is nothing left contemporary with that still vigorous, still well-favoured, ancient Thing. It has seen the disappearance of everything in Europe save itself, and its spring still copiously flows.

(b) _The Sceptical or Pagan objection from History._

I have said that much the most important form of historical attack upon the Catholic position, the most formidable, and to-day the most hardly pressed, the most lively and the most universal, is the Pagan or purely Sceptical, the definition of which I will here repeat.

It is maintained that the claim of the Catholic Church to Divine Infallible Authority is baseless, because it is manifestly man-made. The process of reasoning is as follows:

Man is to be discovered in history perpetually making gods, erecting religious themes, constructing cosmogonies. It is in his nature thus to project himself upon the universe and to take his imaginations for realities. His gods are but large reflected images of himself; his religious doctrines, from the petty myths of a small savage tribe to the majestic fabric of Catholicism, are one and all upon the same model. Each is false, for each differs from the rest; and all are false, for all are compact of the same stuff as the others: a stuff bearing plainly the marks of human emotion and human construction. Now this prophet is deified, now that chief, now that other imaginary figure, half legendary or perhaps wholly without historical existence; and what is true of any one of these is true also of the Catholic scheme. The deification of its Founder is an example of deification like any other. Its elaborate theology is but a somewhat more developed specimen of what men have done before us and will do after us--a spinning of logical systems into the void on premises that are without substantial basis. Its affirmations of the miraculous are of the same legendary sort as those to be discovered in a thousand other forms; its ritual can be proved to have cousinship in this point or in that with many another ritual of sacrifice, expiation and the rest; the very details of its liturgical life, the mere ornaments, the host of practices, the great monastic institutions, the pretty small devotions of light and ornament--all these are of one material. That material has been exhaustively examined and is now historically known. A vast mass of evidence has been accumulated and continues to accumulate. The more it is co-ordinated the more clearly this conclusion appears.

That is the position we have to meet. That is the main historical argument against the divine origin and authority of the Church of God.

Our fundamental answer to such a position is of course not historical at all. It is the answer of faith; as though a man should say, “Yes, this stone is a stone and there are multitudes of stones, but I believe this particular stone to be a talisman.” Or as though he should say, “Yes, this Man was a man, and there have been countless millions of men; but this one Man, and this one Man only, was also God.” The rational basis (not the positive proof) of such a reply is based upon spiritual experience--upon our judgment after noting the world, its reactions towards the Faith, and the effects of the Faith upon it, that here if anywhere is the divine; a conclusion coupled with our further judgment that somewhere there must be present upon earth the visible action of the divine acting in corporate fashion through some institution, some society, some body.

But this main argument does not concern the little essay which you are reading. I am dealing only with the value of the historical argument against the Faith, as I have put it, I think fairly, into the lips of one of our typical, modern, well-read opponents.

Now what is our reply?

Our reply is that the generalisation is hasty and inaccurate, and that the more you examine it the more you discover upon what a false and superficial basis it reposes.

There is not a great number of religions, nor has there been in the past a greater number, apparent to men of different nations and temperaments, of which hotchpotch the Catholic Church is but one. There is not a multitude of systems of theology falling under the one general category “theologies,” of which the Catholic scheme is but a single specimen. Upon the contrary, there is, and has been for these centuries past, a social and religious phenomenon _unique and comparable to nothing else_, called the Catholic Church. Its spirit, quality, voice, personality is such that the line of cleavage does not lie between it and pure scepticism, leaving on the one side _all_ religions (including Catholicism) and on the other the free uncertain mind; the line of cleavage lies between the Faith upon one side and all other human opinions and moods upon the other. And this unique character of the Catholic Church is as plain an historical truth as the astronomical truth of the reverse rotation of Uranus is unique among the planets. It claims what no other society has ever claimed. It affirms its Founder to have been what no other society claims its founder to have been. It functions as no other society has functioned: by an unsupported authority, absolute in its affirmation.

It may indeed be granted that in pure theory at least there is an equal alternative to the unique thing. One might say that, outside the Catholic Church, the human mind can stand quite unattached, examining all things by no criterion save common experience and the deductive power of the intelligence. In pure theory there might be a whole society of such detached (but also quite unrooted) minds with no certitudes, no ethical predicates, living upon the void.

In practice that is not so. There is not one of us that can point to any mind of his acquaintance, or to any mind appearing through the pages of a book which occupies such a position. All without exception betray an ethical theory of some kind, that is, doctrines which, though the holder of them may refuse to formulate them, appear in his actions. Every man is a theologian. Every man has his philosophy of the world. And viewing man thus as he is, always a member of some group, we do not discover as an historical phenomenon any group save that of the Catholic Church which possesses the unique character of authority. Conversely, we find in all other groups the well-known marks attached to men in all forms of worship--rites, doctrines, disciplines: we find in Catholicism similar phenomena; but we do _not_ find in any of the other groups, into which men’s attempts at satisfying this religious sense may fall, that particular mark in which Catholicism is quite different from all the rest.

Let us turn to the historical evidence on the matter and see how true this is, prefacing that examination by the reiterated remark that such unique quality does not of itself and unsupported by other considerations determine the mind to accept the authority of the Faith, but remarking that it does provide a presumption stronger than our modern world, even its small educated part, is generally aware of.

In the first place, is it true that there are a mass of religions bearing for their chief characteristic that which is the chief characteristic of the Catholic Church--a secure, unfailing and constant affirmation of Infallible Authority?

No; it is not true. There have been many restricted, some (very few) widespread religious systems; to-day there are two in especial--the Buddhist, the Mohammedan, occur at once to mind; but not one of them makes this particular Catholic affirmation. Mohammedan society, not a new religion but essentially an offshoot and degradation of the Christian, taking the Catholic doctrine and simplifying it to its last rudiments (with the exception of all in it that demands faith in mystery), is passionate for a certain way of life and intolerant of others. It creates a very marked and special culture which no doubt could claim in its own way to be historically unique, just as the culture of the Chinese is historically unique. But Islam does not come forward with the statement, “I am a society of divine foundation possessed of the power to reply to question after question upon the only things that really matter, to which questions man has never yet of himself attained an answer.” It says indeed, “This is the way to live; and in this way of living we are content. A disturbance of it is odious to us, and we desire as much as we can to turn all others into our own image--not only the religious, but the social habits of men offend us where very different from our own.” But it does not and cannot of its nature say, “Here alone through this defined organisation is the voice of God perpetually speaking, settling controversies, defining and re-defining in ever-expanding area of thought whatever truths may be challenged.” It is alive, but it is not alive with a life of development; and so far from presenting any organisation through which its doctrine can be developed as well as affirmed, it is specifically repugnant to such organisations. In a phrase, Mohammedanism is essentially anti-clerical.

If it be true of Mohammedanism (the chief historically active opponent of the Faith) that it has not the peculiar marks which make the Catholic Church different from any other society in the world, that it has not some major quality by which all religions are distinct and which is also the major quality of the Catholic Church, that statement is still more true of Buddhism.

Buddhism never pretended to make, and does not make to-day, an affirmation to be accepted corporately by the universal world. It presents a certain philosophy--which I cannot but call the philosophy of despair, and which is quite certainly a philosophy of negation. It presents this gloom for acceptation by the individual mind. But it claims no corporate rule; it affirms no divine authority: it enjoys no functional power of excretion nor any of assimilation. You cannot say of Buddhism, “Here is orthodoxy and the living tradition searching out heresy and denouncing it, maintaining its life triumphantly by insistence upon a personality of its own and by a corresponding power of attack against whatever would diminish or threaten that life.”

If we turn from the great systems to the local worships we find another character, wholly separate from that apparent in Catholicism: that they do not pretend to certitude; they pretend to no more than the satisfaction of emotion and to a corporation tradition. They have their myths, but will readily accept them as myths or compare them unoffended with the myths of others. They have their sanctities: but their sanctities make no pretence at all to be universal. There was one, and only one, historical phenomenon, which in this point did compare with the Faith--the phenomenon of the Jewish religion; and that is precisely why we Catholics call the Jewish religion the forerunner of our own and the preparation of the world for its Incarnate God.

But is it not true that there are countless ceremonies and also major doctrines, comparable to and some even nearly identical with those of the Faith?