CHAPTER  ONE

God

Reason proves God's existence

1. Does not scientific opinion tend to be agnostic, and to regard the existence of a Supreme Being as incapable of verification?

Some scientists who are proficient in certain limited experimental spheres may profess to be agnostics. But when they do so they are not speaking in virtue of any scientific knowledge they possess. They have gone outside the field in which they are proficient into a field in which they are not proficient. Often they have given so much attention to their own little field of inquiry that they have paid no attention to the rational explanation of the universe as a whole. They study the thing caused, but do not reflect upon the ultimate cause of all reality. And knowing little of the subject, they foolishly think nothing is to he known, forgetting their own limitations. Some do this. Not all. And thousands of great scientists have not been agnostic. They have devoted some thought to the subject instead of uttering hasty opinions. Thus Lord Kelvin said that science positively confirms creative power. Marconi recently spoke as follows: "It is a mistake to think that science and faith cannot exist together. There is too much atheism today. There are too many people just drifting along without any aim or ideal or belief. Faith in the Supreme Being whose rule we must obey can alone give us the courage and strength to face the great mystery of life." One cannot go through an endless stream of quotations. No one, of course, believes that the existence of the Supreme Being is capable of verification by methods proper to experimental science. But His existence is capable of verification by reason; and science does not tend to the denial of this in properly instructed and well-balanced minds.

2. People argue from the order prevailing in the universe to the existence of an intelligent God.

They do; and rightly so.

3. How do we know that it is not in the nature of things themselves to act in an orderly way, according to a plan?

We know that it is not in the nature of created things of themselves to act in an orderly way according to a plan, for if they are working towards the fulfillment of a plan, there is a constant adaption of means to an end, which supposes an intelligence which has both formulated the plan, and perceived the fitting relationship between given means and the given end to be attained. Now blind matter is not endowed with intelligence. Nor can mere chance produce order. Scatter indiscriminately over the ground thousands of letters written on slips of paper, they will never by mere chance fall together in such a way as to make, say, an oration of Cicero. Now the only intelligent beings in the world are men. But prior to the advent of men to this world, order prevailed. It can be accounted for only by an extra-mundane Intelligence. As surely as it needs intelligence to understand the order prevailing in the universe, it needed intelligence to produce it. Employing all the resources of his intelligence, a genius may devote the whole of his life to a study of the orderly arrangement of crystals. Will he ascribe the whole of the universe to an intelligence so much less than his own that he calls it a blind force? The moment one speaks of the laws of the universe, he speaks of a legislator. And all legislation supposes intelligence, even though human legislation indicates often enough how badly employed human intelligence can be. If it be in the very nature of certain things to tend in an orderly way towards the realization of a plan, that tendency was implanted in their nature by the Supreme Intelligence responsible for the plan; and that Supreme Intelligence is God.

Primitive Monotheism

4. Did not humanity originally begin with polytheism, and gradually evolve towards monotheism?

No. Humanity began with monotheism, and multitudes degenerated into polytheism. At first sight the most primitive traditions found in the Vedic books seem polytheistic; but a deeper scrutiny shows an individual Deity, and indicates that the plurality of gods is really a plurality of effects or created manifestations. This ancient tradition was a survival of the primitive convictions of our first parents. But even as the Jews were always prone to fall into polytheism despite the special protection of God, so the Gentile nations degenerated in their religious notions, and the idea of a plurality of gods became quite common among the rank and file of peoples. The great Greek philosophers, Aristotle and Plato, though in general practice conforming to popular notions, discerned, however, by reason that polytheism was absurd, and theoretically maintained that there could be but one Deity. They saw that polytheism was an error, and that error supposes a truth of which it is the corruption. They both allude to ancient traditions confirming their views. Philologically, also, no plural terms existed prior to singular terms precisely because multitude is subsequent to unity; and the notion of a plurality of gods presupposed a notion of the one God.

Mystery of God's inner nature

5. You do not believe that the universe can be explained in terms of the material only.

Most certainly I do not. The mere materialist offers explanations which do not even deserve a place in the catalog of errors. They are too puerile. Of visible things materialism gives explanations one would expect from a prattling baby or from a lunatic. Of invisible things and spiritual things it gives no explanation at all. It constructs bodies with smaller bodies, like a child playing with a set of blocks, and it gets quite out of breath by the time it gets to things of the mind. It contradicts itself by speaking of laws of matter, for a law is a decree formulated by reason, and reason is not material. Materialists are inconsequent people who prove God every time they speak in order to deny Him. For at the back of every denial of God there is the idea of God. No man can believe in truth, or appreciate goodness, or seek happiness, without tending towards the Author of these things. Yet each of these ideas leads to God. Materialism is not rational; and its only real appeal lies in the fact that it makes the universe the magnificent plaything of man's pride, and gives him a free field for his passions.

6. Is it not reasonable to suppose a purely physical cause of which we as yet know nothing?

I must ask you what you mean by a "purely physical" cause. God is a physical, though not a material Being. If you intend a material cause, I say that the supposition is not reasonable; for the material cannot produce the spiritual. Thought itself is in the spiritual order, and so is the soul which produces thought. You would scorn the idea that a telegraph pole spontaneously began to produce peaches. Yet the proportion between a telegraph pole and peaches is much less than that between matter and spirit.

Again, if we as yet know nothing of the cause of all things, why is it reasonable to suppose that cause to be "purely physical"-whatever you mean by that- yet not reasonable to suppose it to be the Personal God we Christians accept? As a matter of fact, I maintain that a Personal God is the only reasonable explanation.

7. Because we do not yet know of such a purely physical cause, is that in itself sufficient reason to assert a Divine Cause?

Apparently, by "purely physical" cause you mean some blind force. Now I admit that because, we do not know of such a purely physical cause we would not be justified in asserting a Divine Cause. But what if, instead of merely "not" knowing of a purely physical cause which could produce this universe, we "know'' that no such blind force could do so? And we do know that. The order and obvious design so evident in the universe insist that the Cause be intelligent and personal. And the very supremacy of that Cause supposes Divinity, or a Cause which is itself not an effect, but uncaused, and above all created limitations. Divinity is but a term reserved for an uncreated Being outside and above the created order, and rejoicing in limitless perfections.

8. Despite all your arguments, I refuse to believe in a God we can't understand.

That is unreasonable. In any case, you can understand that there is a God, even though you cannot fully understand the nature of God. God must surpass the capacity of the human mind or He would not be God at all. You must not confuse mystery with absurdity. Tell me that blind matter produced the universe, and I admit the absurdity. But mystery is the very opposite of absurdity. The absurd is false, contradictory, incoherent. But mystery is a truth whose immensity surpasses us. When we speak of God, what we say is true as far as it goes. But human ideas will never go far enough to express God completely. We must express God as best we can, though we shall never fully succeed in expressing God as He is. And I, for one, would not believe in God unless He did surpass my own limited concepts.

9. Since God is infinite, and the finite human mind cannot conceive the infinite, God must be thoroughly incomprehensible to us.

God is not thoroughly incomprehensible to us. We can attain to a certain degree of knowledge concerning Him, even though we cannot form an adequate concept of Him. The finite human mind can conceive the fact that there is a Being not finite as are the things that Being has made. It can affirm perfections of God, denying the imperfections associated with limited creatures, and attributing the purified perfections to Him in an altogether higher and nobler order of being. Any perfections affirmed of God must be with the proviso that God transcends created nature and that we intend them as they must be in an order above that of nature. In other words, we intend them as they are in the supernatural order and as known to God Himself. Even as an animal can know that a human being has certain knowledge, without comprehending the precise quality of that knowledge, so human beings can know that God possesses certain perfections without fully comprehending their precise quality as they are in God.

10. I have heard God spoken of as Elohim, Jehovah, Yahweh, Eternal Father, the Infinite King, Divine Providence, and in many other ways. Is any one of these names capable of defining God completely?

No one word can define the whole of the significance of God. Our concepts or thoughts are derived from created things; and there can be as many diverse thoughts in our minds as there are varying perfections in created things. The infinite plentitude of God's perfection is too great to be comprehended in any single human concept, and our small intelligence has to speak of God in partial and inadequate concepts. Thus even in the one concept of the Pope we have many implied and different aspects. The same person is Bishop of Rome, Head of the Church, Chief Shepherd, Supreme Teacher, Holy Father, etc. If I allude to him under one of these titles, all the rest is implied. And whether I speak of God as Eternal Father, or King, or Divine Providence, or Jehovah, or under any other accepted term, I successfully call attention to the Being I intend; and all that that Being implies in Himself is included, even though I neither express nor fully grasp it.

Personality of God

11. You constantly allude to God as if God were a person. Can God be truly a personal Being?

God is truly personal. We know that the being and vitality of man is conscious and personal, and that by life, consciousness, and personality, man is higher than inanimate things. Therefore God, infinitely higher than man in the scale of perfection, is living, conscious, and personal.

12. Is the term person capable of being used to define an infinite entity?

It is capable of being applied to an infinite entity, though its significance from our point of view falls short of the reality as it is in God. For example, a stone is a being and a man is a being. The word "being" is equally true of each, though one who knew only stones would not know of its full implication in man. So, too, man is personal, and God is personal. Person is true of each. But we, who have experimental knowledge only of human persons, do not know its full implication in God. Yet, though there is not absolute identity of concept, there is a true analogy of concept; and in revealing that He is personal, God has conveyed the real truth to us in a way adapted to our lesser capacity.

13. When you call God "Father" do you not imply that there is sex in God, and that He is masculine?

No. The word "Father" is used of God, not to imply that He is of the masculine gender, a quality proper to material bodies, but merely to denote our production by God; and this, not as by some blind mechanical force, but by an intelligent and loving Principle of Being. The word '"Father" is the nearest human expression suitable for the proportionate truth to be declared. As directly drawn from human beings, of course, the word implies procreation by mutual cooperation between the sexes, and that supposes masculine and feminine. But when applied to God abstraction is made from the mode or process of production, and the sense is restricted to the fact of our production by God, and to the parental dispositions of God towards us. We thus express in our human way a characteristic which is really in God, though not precisely as it is in man. God is truly a Father to us.

Providence of God and the Problem of Evil

14. If God's providence rules all things, is it not an insult to Him to put lightning conductors on Churches?

No. It would be an insult and a sin of presumption to expect God to do immediately those things which we ourselves are capable of doing with such powers as He has bestowed upon us. He does not give us our natural intelligence for nothing, but expects us to use it. We are expected always to do all that we are capable of doing, and then we ask God to supply for our incapacity in things beyond our ability.

15. Face the dilemma. God could either prevent evils or not. If He can but will not, He is not good; if He cannot, He is not all powerful.

That dilemma is invalid. If a dilemma is to be valid, the disjunction must be complete, exhausting all possibilities. There must be no room for the reply, "Datur tertium"-there is a third possibility. Your dilemma fails, if evil and pain and suffering be useful. What if the evils we see in this world are the necessary condition of a higher good? What if, still more, they be indispensable to the progress of man and the realization of his destiny-if some day they are to be compensated by an eternity of happiness? In any case, for a dilemma to be valid, the inference from each alternative in itself must be certain and indisputable. Neither of your alternatives is even reasonable.

16. Do you say that even God cannot prevent these evils?

Absolutely speaking, God could annihilate the whole of creation, and then, of course, there would be no problem of evils in the universe. But granted that God wants this type of world, then pain and suffering are a necessary condition; and it was certainly better to permit them than not to create a universe in which it was possible for them to occur.

As it is, your very terms involve a contradiction. In practice, the assertion that if God cannot remove all pain He is not all powerful means, where physical pain is concerned, that if God cannot have sensitive beings without their being sensitive, He is not all powerful! For, granted the power of sensation, our sensations will be pleasant and unpleasant even with the variations of the weather! Where moral evil is concerned, your assertion means, "If God cannot have free and morally responsible beings who are not really free and morally responsible, He is not all powerful." For granted freedom of will, moral evil is a necessary possibility.

17. Since you cannot appeal to sin, free will, and a future life in the case of animals, why do they have to suffer pain?

I would have to be God to give you a completely satisfactory answer to that question. To a certain extent, therefore, the problem must be left amongst the thousand and one mysteries which defy human solution. However, I can suggest certain points which may help to some understanding of the problem.

Firstly, it is better to be a vegetable than a mineral. A vegetable at least has life and growth, and is admittedly a more perfect thing than a stone.

Secondly, it is better to be a dog than a dandelion. The dog is not only living; it has sensitive life, and is able to enjoy many pleasant sensations denied to dandelions. But the price of additional sensitive perfection is pain. If a being is endowed with the power of sensation, it will endure sensations both pleasant and painful. And as even God could not create a sensitive being which would have no sensations, He must have seen that the pleasant ones would compensate for the painful ones. If you concentrate on the capacity for pain, and forget the capacity for pleasure, you might think it better not to have created such beings, and that life is not worth living for them. But no animal feels that. If a cat eats a mouse, the very protests of the mouse show how it likes being alive. You yourself would pity the mouse for being deprived of its life rather than the cat for the misery of being fed and compelled to live longer.

18. But there are individual cases where the compensations seem entirely inadequate.

There are, and they necessarily baffle us. But even so, we must beware of reading human attributes into the merely animal world, interpreting the sufferings of animals in terms of our own experiences. It would be a grave error to think that animals suffer in the way we do: for they lack our power of reflex thought. Then, too, we must not endow them with personal moral rights which they do not possess.

19. That doesn't alter the fact that animals suffer.

I agree. We cannot do more than appeal to the greater good. And it is a question of the general good as opposed to the individual good. The sum-total of pleasure in the animal world more than compensates for the sum-total of unavoidable pain. There is also the good of man to be considered. There is no violation of reason in the thought that God should permit physical pain, which does not involve moral evil, in order to procure the good of a higher order. Granted that God wished to create just such a universe as this, the unpleasant sensations of sensitive beings are absolutely necessary for the universal good. If all physical pain were eliminated, inferior beings would no longer be the means of existence to superior beings.

Many beautiful fauna would never exist. Also, if animals did not live on animals, they would multiply beyond all proportion, and then earth would be littered with rotting carcasses. The general good presupposes such physical evils in such a world as this.

20. It seems to me that you folk who believe in God are the most forebearing folk in the world,

I suppose you feel that if you believed in God you would tell Him what to do. But only one who does not believe in God can think like that. Did you believe in God you would realize that He is not subject to you, but that you are subject to Him. He is not answerable to us for His conduct. We are answerable to Him for ours. Meantime, it is because we believe in God that we have a solution for the troubles of this life which makes them bearable, however serious they may seem. Dissatisfaction is proper to those who do not believe in God. Their rejection of God does not diminish their trials. It merely deprives them of the consolation which good Christians experience in the midst of them.

21. You should not seek your God's forgiveness; He should seek yours.

Such a remark illustrates a great truth. As men cease to believe in and esteem God, they begin to believe in and esteem themselves. They lose the sense of sin, and become more and more unconscious of their moral failings. Thus, it is quite common for unbelievers to assert that they do not believe in religion, and at once to catalog their own virtues. Almost instinctively they add. "I don't pray, but I'm as good as those who do. I live a good clean life, owe no man anything, help my fellow men, etc." Conscious of their rectitude they feel that they deserve only the best; and naturally they resent misfortune. They smart under suffering and trial with a sense of injured innocence. And they cry out that, if there be a God, He is greatly to be blamed. Conscious only of their own virtue, they do not dream that they need any forgiveness. But believing their sufferings undeserved, they talk of God begging their pardon.

On the other hand, the more one believes in and esteems God, the less he believes in and esteems himself. Any good that is in him he attributes to God; and he is keenly conscious of his own shortcomings as being his own work. Aware of his sins, he is not astonished that suffering and trial should be his lot. Instead of thinking that he deserves only the best, he knows that he deserves only the worst. He therefore asks God to forgive him his sins: and is grateful to God for treating him so much more gently than justice would demand.

22. Where you define pain as something negative, millions of tortured creatures give the strongest evidence that it is something decidedly positive.

The fact that creatures positively experience pain does not alter the fact that evil as such is not a positive entity owing its creation to God.

23. Do you believe literally in God as Creator of all things, visible and invisible?

Yes. But remember that things, whether visible or invisible, are things insofar as they have positive being. Now try to follow carefully this treatment of the subject.

Evil, as such, whether physical or moral, is not a positive entity, but is a privation of due perfection. God has created every positive entity, but He does not directly produce those privations of perfection which are called evils.

Take the physical evil of a decayed tooth. God is the cause of all the positive being involved. That part of the tooth which is not yet decayed, but which is still good, owes its existence to God. The existent nerves owe their being to God, and are good nerves. Their perfectly good registrations letting us know that the tooth is out of order are due to God's causality. But the real evil is the absence of healthy tooth and of right order in the nerves. Even the germs which consumed the tooth are quite good germs so far as their being goes. Even the process of consuming the tooth was excellent as a process.

But the evil element is reduced to absence of order and absence of healthy tooth; and absences of perfection are not caused by any positive action of God. God permits them, if you wish, insofar as He does not choose to prevent corrosive processes, or to produce good tooth as fast as it is eaten away.

In all this I do not deny that pain is a positive experience. Owing to the absence of healthy tooth, there is quite a positive vibration of the exposed nerve giving positively painful registrations. But the positive action is a good activity; the evil is merely lack of due order. And whilst God is the Creator of all positive entity, He is not the Creator of a lack of what should be there.

The same principle applies to moral evil. The will, and the action by which I choose are good in themselves. The evil is the lack of moral rectitude-again an absence of something which should normally be there. And God does not cause the absence of what should be present.

Why He permits the nonexistence or the privation of due order in created things is another question. We are dealing with the causality of God. God is not the cause of evil as such.

24. How can you admit that evil is positively experienced by us, yet deny its very existence?

I do not admit that we positively experience evil. We positively experience good registrations telling us that perfection is wanting. The registrations are positive, but they tell us of an absence of perfection. Positive entities alone really exist -good thus far-which lack the full measure of goodness which they ought to have. The evil is the privation or limitation of entity, not an entity itself.

25. Why did not God create a different type of world, and not this one?

That question is not yours to ask. God would not be God if He had to depend on the future approval of your judgment before He dared to act. If you reply, "Then I don't believe there is a God," you violate reason. And you will find the universe a much greater problem without God than any I have to face. If you say, "God does exist, but He is not good, or not entirely good," you contradict yourself, for once you introduce any limitation of perfection in God, then He is no longer God at all. The only reasonable position is to say, "God is a fact. Suffering is a fact. I do not fully comprehend why God should have permitted suffering, nor how He adjusts compensations which seem to me to be required if justice is to prevail. But that I do not fully comprehend these things does not surprise me, since there are thousands of lesser problems than this which I have failed to solve. Therefore, I can only conclude that, if I do not understand things, I do not understand them. But I am not going to deny what is certain, and maintain that my finite intelligence ought to be able to comprehend everything-a comprehension the possibility of which experience absolutely denies."

26. These difficulties have caused thousands of men to abandon religion.

Their own dispositions have caused men to abandon religion. Some men have made this problem the excuse even as other men have advanced other excuses. But any man who would neglect those religious and moral obligations which he can clearly understand merely because he cannot understand mysteries which he cannot be expected to understand is as foolish, and more so, than a man who would rather sit in darkness than switch on the electric light on the score that he doesn't understand just what electricity is!

CHAPTER TWO

Man

Immortal Destiny of Man

27. Don't you think that the idea of immortality is due merely to the desire to live on?

I know that it is not due merely to that. Men without any desire to live on have the conviction. At the same time normal people do desire to live on, and by such an irrepressible tendency that we must admit it to be a clear indication of immortality. I do not say that everything a person wants to be true is necessarily true. But here we have, not a transitory wish, not a momentary craving, but a natural tendency implanted in our very nature and always with us. Aristotle said long ago that "nature does nothing in vain." The eye demands light; and there is light. Our very constitution demands air; and there is air. And it is part of our very nature to look forward to immortality. All men experience this urge at times. They have not to persuade themselves that they will live on. They have to try to persuade themselves that they will not. Or else they just forget it. However, in addition to this argument from purposive tendencies there are other reasons of equal and greater weight. The very nature of thought shows the soul to be immaterial, and not subject to the laws of disintegration and destruction which govern all material things. We must consider, also, the facts of the moral law and the necessity of ultimate justice. All these arguments, taken together, are quite satisfactory to reason. If people say that they are not satisfied by such considerations, it is because they unreasonably expect too much. We cannot expect to prove the immortality of the soul as we can prove that lead is heavy by testing it on a pair of scales. But there are different orders of being with different orders of proof. Who would be so unreasonable as to deny the existence of humility because it can't be bought by the pound? All the reasonable proof of the immortality of the soul man can rightly demand is available.

28. Would you please amplify the evidence that the human soul is immortal.

Reason tells us that the soul is a spirit, not composed of parts like material things, and unable to disintegrate and go to pieces like material things. All corruption is disintegration of parts. But the soul has no parts. It is not a composite thing. It is a simple spiritual substance; and it must, of its very nature, continue when the body perishes. Again, all men as naturally judge that the soul is immortal as they are conscious that they exist. They do not have to persuade themselves that it is true, but that it is false. Man's intelligence, if not warped, seeks the truth for which it is built. It cannot rest contented with a lie. Left to itself it spontaneously judges immortality to be a truth; and this universal judgment cannot be doubted without casting suspicion on all our faculties. Furthermore. God has established a moral law written on the conscience of men. He knows and loves the moral order He has established. And He is infinitely just. It is certain that right conduct cannot be ultimately the worse for a good man; evil conduct cannot ultimately be for the good of an evil man. Things will be leveled up somewhere. Yet certainly they are not leveled up in this life. Public laws and human justice cannot cover interior wickedness. Honors are often conferred on the unworthy. An evil man has less remorse of conscience over a serious crime than a good man over a small fault. Since things are not rectified in this life, they will be in the next, and the responsible element of man will have to be there. It is not the body, which we have seen die and which will rise only on the last day; it is the soul. From the viewpoint of fact, God has revealed that man's soul is immortal; and Christ raised at least three people to life from the dead, recalling their souls to their bodies, besides rising Himself in the Resurrection after His death on the Cross.

29. I know that it's nice to believe that the soul is immortal when you feel sure of eternal happiness. But, if you look out of yourself, and think of the millions lost, it is not a very nice thought.

If immortality is a fact, it does not matter whether it is nice or not to think it. Our likes and dislikes cannot alter the fact. If it is true, it is each man's plain duty to save his soul; for if he loses that, all is indeed lost. So Christ put the question, "What does it profit a man to gain the whole world, if he suffer the loss of his soul?" Meantime, there is no need to think of the millions lost. To all men God gives sufficient grace for their salvation. Only those are lost who sin despite the known will of God, and die without repentance.

30. Cicero said that when he read a book proving the soul immortal, he believed it; but when he read a book against it, he did not believe it.

Such a stray remark on occasional states of mind proves nothing. No one maintains that the conviction of immortality is one which may never momentarily become obscured. A man reading arguments against a given doctrine, and not immediately perceiving the answer to them, may arrive at vague doubts, and speak hesitatingly. But even with Cicero, nature reasserted itself, and in the end he said it must be so. However, what this individual or that has thought or said avails nothing against the general judgment of mankind.

31. All my own inclinations are to believe it. But desirability does not make it true.

I have already given you reasons independent of man's natural inclinations. But even your inclinations here are a reliable indication. I admit that we do not find sufficient justification for believing a doctrine merely because it is a pleasant concept. But if you find yourself endowed by nature with deep-seated inclinations tending necessarily towards it, things are very different. This does not count for nothing. If all our thoughts go one way, if we have needs, desires, aims, and aspirations, all of which demand an object, and imply by their own very existence that that object does exist also, then that object must exist. Could anyone conceive that God would form that most delicate organ of hearing, the ear, so wonderfully adapted to every kind of vibration, yet endow no objects with the power of causing sound? The whole tendency of the ear would be to hear, yet it would never do so because its complementary object would be wanting. Every natural tendency implies and has an object. More, if nothing in this life really and completely satisfies the soul, and if there be a message professing to be from God, teaching us that of which we already have the presentiment, and to provide the means to attain the destiny of happiness we crave, surely it is deserving of our attention. And whilst I am at it, let me suggest to you that it is the Catholic religion above all others in this world that is most deserving of your attention.

32. Is it pride of intellect that makes one agnostic on this subject, or just inability to have any firm conviction?

No man is unable to have a firm conviction of a future life. And I do not think agnosticism on this point is due to pride of intellect. There would certainly be no grounds for such pride. The agnostic who says that he does not know whether death ends all or not is one who is simply unintelligent, or who refuses to think about the subject at all, or who pretends not to have a conviction which he really does possess, but which he constantly tries to repress for reasons best known to himself.

33. Have you ever seen the other world?

Apart from the indications of reason in favor of immortality, One who has seen the future life of millions who have already gone from this world, and who knows what awaits us, has given us all the information we need. God Himself has stepped in, and speaking by the prophets, and by His own Son, has told us of the future for which we must prepare. And Christ had only one word for the man who does not prepare-fool! To the rich man who had neglected all thought of life after death He said, "Thou fool, this night shall thy soul be required of thee." Take my advice, and think out this matter more carefully.

34. Belief in immortality is most harmful. It diverts men's attention from the good they can do in this life.

It does just the opposite. It inspires still greater works of devotedness and charity in the cause of humanity for the love of God. And the doctrine is in the best interests of man. All mankind lifts its voice with mine. Generation after generation has agreed. In fact, it is part of man's very nature. The conviction of a future life is so deeply ingrained that it could not be based on a lie. It is as true an instinct as that of a baby which carries everything to its mouth, knowing that thus it will be nourished, though it can explain nothing about the processes of nutrition. Destroy man's conviction of immortality, and he degenerates, even as the fish taken out of the sea will perish, or the tree torn up by the roots will die. Most of those who deny immortality are interested in denying it. Nor are they very convinced themselves of their position against immortality. They have no proofs whatever. They deny, because they don't want to prepare for it.

35. Why do you Christians want a future life?

Why do you want to know that? You will say, "Well, it is natural for a man to desire knowledge." So I say that it is natural for man to desire further life beyond the few years earthly existence can offer.

Can Earth Give True Happiness?

36. I am perfectly happy in this world, and will be quite content if death ends all.

No man is either perfectly happy or perfectly miserable in this life. Life is a succession of days alternating between joy and suffering. There are enough miseries in this life to prevent perfect happiness, yet enough happiness to compel us to look beyond this world for the complete fulfillment of lawful hopes. If death did end all, of course, you would be neither contented nor discontented. You would be nonexistent. And it is absurd to say that you are perfectly happy, and to give that as a reason for being content even now with the prospect of death ending all. If you said that you were perfectly miserable and that you longed for death to end everything, you would speak more intelligently, even though that, too, would be an exaggeration.

37. So you deny that I am perfectly happy?

Yes. You will never come to a stage when all your desires are quite satisfied whilst you are still in this life. If you were perfectly happy, and in want of nothing more, why did you bother writing in order to secure a further knowledge you did not possess? One who has all he wants seeks nothing more.

38. It is enough for a man if the good he does lives after him.

You are impelled to say that by the very desire of immortality. It is the effort to conquer time. Why should you want anything of you to live on? And if you want the lesser thing to live on, why not yourself? You are more important than what you do.

39. Would it not be better for men if death did end all?

To that I must say, firstly, that our conjectures as to what might or might not be better cannot alter the fact that man's soul will live on whether he likes it or not. Yet, secondly, the prospect of facing a future life is not fearful save to those who have reason to be afraid. The wicked have reason to tremble; the good to rejoice. Virtue should have a corresponding place in eternity And if virtue, so also vice. As a matter of fact, all that is good in civilization has been built up by those who believe in an eternal destiny. And civilization tends to go to pieces when belief in immortality is destroyed. We need belief in eternal life in order to believe in the seriousness of this life.

Do Human Souls Evolve?

40. The question is ever arising as to whether man appeared suddenly on the earth by a special creative act of God, or whether he evolved.

The evolution of man's body would not be opposed to any defined doctrine of the Church, though it is far from being a proven fact, and the probabilities are against it. But man as a reasoning, thinking spiritual being certainly did not evolve. His possession of intelligence introduces a new fact into the universe, for, intelligence differs entirely from material conditions and development.  It is a spiritual power, and must come from the realm of spiritual being. We maintain, therefore, that the soul, to which intelligence belongs, is a special creation by God in each case simultaneously with its infusion into the material embryo as soon as that embryo is fit to receive it; and that is at the moment of conception.

41. If descent from animals is proved, would it mean that God only added the faculty of reason to the brute soul in order to make it human?

Firstly, I do not believe that the descent of man from brute animals will ever be proved.

Secondly, even if it were proved, it would not mean that God had merely to endow an animal with the faculty of reason. God would have to create a human soul endowed with reason and will, and infuse that soul to supplant the existent brute soul or life-principle in the animal body selected to be the body of the first man. Personally, I do not for a moment believe that any existent animal body was chosen by God to be the recipient of the first created human soul. Such an animal body would be so unfitted for the reception of an intelligent soul that the immediate formation of a human body seems far more likely than the miraculous alteration of an existent animal body.

42. Would Eve also have attained to a certain degree of physical perfection, and then have been endowed with reason in the same way as Adam?

No. As I have said, it is not a question of superadding reason to some animal soul. That could not be done, because the animal soul is material, whilst reason is immaterial. No life-principle entirely conditioned by matter could be endowed with a spiritual faculty. For the first woman, as for the first man, God would have to create a special human soul endowed with the spiritual faculties of reason and will. This would be the case even did men prove the bodily derivation of human beings from beasts. But that is a merely speculative supposition never likely to be proved.

43. Since animals already have sensitive life in common with man, why could not God merely add reason and will?

Because reason and will are purely spiritual powers, and can belong only to a spiritual nature. Now the brute soul is not spiritual of its very nature, and it could not be the subject of purely spiritual powers. The brute soul is essentially limited to the vital functions of a material organism, and cannot transcend material conditions. But whilst the brute soul is essentially unfitted for higher spiritual operations, the human and spiritual soul endowed with reason and will can, when united with a body similar to that of animals, direct all the lower functions of which animals are capable. But we cannot argue that because a superior principle is capable of lower operations, an inferior principle is capable of higher operations. Nor can we say that the inferior principle could be endowed with higher powers, when those higher powers belong to a completely different order of being. The essentially spiritual powers of reason and will require an essentially spiritual nature-and the brute soul is nonspiritual.

44. I do not see why the soul could not evolve. If gasoline is sufficiently heated it bursts into flame. Could not matter be rarefied by some natural process until it merged into spirit?

No. Rarefaction may turn a solid into a vapor, but a vapor is not spiritual. By condensation a vaporized solid can be solidified once more; but a soul cannot be thus treated. Your analogy of the gasoline does not meet the case, for both flame and gasoline are in the same material order. But thought and matter are opposed to each other. The object of bodily sight may be a material thing; but the object of thought is an idea of the thing. Ideas are spiritualized abstractions outside the realm of matter. Two and two potatoes make four potatoes. You can put them into a pan and fry them. But you cannot put the truth that two and two make four into a pan and cook it. The idea of that truth is not conditioned by space or time; and it is universal, not individual. In what place, at what time, or what individual material beings could evolve into the truth that two and two make four?

45. Thought seems only a higher form of animal sensation, for ideas are only generalized images.

Thought is more than a higher form of animal sensation. Animal sensations may give images, but images are not ideas. An image of some object may be thrown on the retina of the eye, and a man may be able to picture that image to himself later on in his "imagination." But every such image is of some particular measurable thing. Nor could a multitude of images of a multitude of different things add up into one idea of all these things. By sensation a man secures a foundation for thought, but sense images are not thought. Reflection shows that ideas are in a different order altogether, and we rightly implore men to go by reason, and not by mere imagination. This is more clearly seen when we leave ideas of concrete things and proceed to ideas of mathematical relations, or even to ideas of ideas in reflex thought. Ideas are not material things.

Now, a being is characterized by its powers; its powers by their activities; and those activities by their object. Since ideas are not material, the act of thinking by which those ideas are produced is not material; and the power of intelligence which enables us to think is not material. Therefore, the soul which possesses that intelligence is not material. All these things are in the same order, and that order is not material. God must have intervened in creation with a new and spiritual element when He made the soul of man.

46. Since man is a material being, he should share the fate of material beings.

You are thinking of man's body only. Equally I could say that, since man's soul is a spirit, he should share the immortal destiny of spiritual beings. Man is a mysterious being, blending the two spheres of matter and spirit. But, in his present state, he is an unstable composite tending to that dissolution of the union between body and soul which we call death. Whilst the body, however, dies, the soul does not. It lives on. It is of higher value than the merely material, and does not depend upon the body for its existence. Rather, the body depends upon the soul, which surpasses all material conditions and survives them. God Himself does not destroy that which carries within itself no principle of destruction. In other words, He does not create souls essentially fitted to live on forever, only to annihilate them. That would be quite opposed to His infinite wisdom.

Is Transmigration Possible?

47. Is transmigration of souls, and our return in animal forms impossible?

Yes. The human soul is essentially an intellectual being, and the nature God has given to man demands a proportionately constructed bodily counterpart. An intellectual soul united with a body incapable of cooperating in thought processes, as, for example, a human soul inhabiting a dog, would be a metaphysically repugnant monstrosity, and a direct contradiction of Divine Wisdom. Moreover, God has revealed that it is appointed unto man once to die, and after that the judgment. We do not come back as animals and die again. Also the judgment of each soul concerns its final destiny, and does not allow of another temporary and earthly existence. So our returning in animal forms is outside the realm of both possibility and fact.

Animal Souls

48. Speaking of animals, do you deny that animal souls exist?

No. It is impossible to doubt the existence of animal souls. The only point open to discussion is as to whether animal souls survive after the death of their bodies.

49. What is the attitude of the Catholic Church towards the question of their survival?

Catholic philosophers reject belief in the immortality of animal souls, chiefly on the score of their nonspiritual operations. A study of animal psychology reveals nothing that transcends the sensitive and material order, and there can be no reasonable doubt but that death terminates the existence of animals both as regards body and soul. Revelation gives no indication that animals will have a future life; in fact, the general trend of God's revelation seems to exclude it.

50. Each animal seems to have its own distinctive personality.

Personality supposes intelligence, and a moral responsibility following upon free will, which no one would attribute to mere animals. Each animal may have distinctive characteristics; but we are not justified in attributing personality to them in the strict sense of the word.

51. Does not the Catholic Church defend the rights of dumb beasts?

When you speak of dumb beasts you admit that they are on a lower plane than human beings. Not being persons, they have not personal rights. Still, the Church teaches that cruelty to animals is sinful. Now sin means the violation of rights. But whose rights are being violated by wanton cruelty to animals? Certainly not the rights of animals themselves. Wanton cruelty is a sin because no man has a right to brutalize his own humanity. Man has an obligation to develop what is best in his own nature, and not to indulge in vicious tendencies. And by wanton cruelty he sins against this obligation. Again, God has the right that His creatures should be used in accordance with His will, and that means reasonably and kindly. Cruelty, therefore, is a sin against God's rights. But that cruelty is a sin does not imply that there are any moral rights vested in animals themselves. It is a violation of rights belonging to God Himself, and of the responsibility vested in the dignity of our own rational nature.

52. If animals are not immortal, God's treatment of them is unjust.

That is not true. All justice is in the moral order, and supposes the violation of rights possessed by morally responsible subjects. Animals do not possess reason, and cannot refer their actions to moral standards which they know to be imposed upon them by their Creator. And if animals have no personal rights to be violated, there can be no question of injustice towards them.

53. Think of noble animal traits often exceeding those of men.

The good instincts of animals, for which they are not morally responsible, may be preferable to the vices of men as such. But the very moral degradation of a man who chooses vice rather than virtue indicates a nobler type of being than any mere animal which is incapable of truly moral conduct.

54. If we deserve to survive, don't animals by their virtues deserve the same?

Strictly speaking, we cannot attribute virtues to animals. They may have good habits, but virtue and merit suppose moral freedom, and the deliberate choice of things which are not a matter of physical necessity.

55. Are there no compensations for animal sufferings?

Only rights imply compensation and animals as such have no rights.

56. Many people abandon religion because the interests of animals are not made a special part of its teaching.

The interests of animals can never be a special part of reasonable religion. It is a religious duty to God and to man's own dignity to practice restraint and kindness in the use of animals. But that will result from the really important duty of worshipping and loving God, and attending to the salvation and sanctification of our own souls by the practice of Christian virtue.

There is a great danger of excess in this matter. As Christian ideals fade, human beings forget their own dignity, reduce themselves to the animal level, and grow hard towards one another. And by a strange kind of distortion, the human sympathies which they cannot suppress entirely tend to go out to the animal world. Many women marry, refuse to have children, and lavish their starved instincts upon pet animals as a substitute. So we have beauty parlors for pet dogs, where ladies can take their little Pomeranians to have them "bathed, shampooed, groomed and manicured" at a price which would provide a week's food for a starving child. I do not suggest that you would approve of such extremes, but you echo ideas which have led to them. Meantime, if people will not practice religion to attend to the interests of their own souls, it will be quite useless for them to do so in order to attend to the interests of animals. You may think me hard, but I cannot win sympathy for religion by sympathizing with ideas utterly opposed to it by their extravagance. We must love God, and let our love for God extend to all His creatures reasonably and proportionately. It is a distortion to love animals, and then be prepared to love God provided we can let our love of animals extend to Him also! It is essential that we have a correct knowledge of the order of things established by God, that we obtain a genuine notion of religion and of its duties, and that we fulfill those duties. Sentiment cannot be exalted to the dominant element in religion.

Fatalism

57. How would you answer the assertion that what has to be, has to be?

By granting it. If a thing has to be, it has to be. But I deny that everything has to be.

58. If a man riding a bicycle is run down by a car and killed accidentally, did that have to be?

If such a thing happens, then it happens. And it could not "happen" yet "not happen" simultaneously. At the same time, granted that it does happen, it does not happen by any absolute necessity. The man need not have chosen to go for a ride on that particular day. The car driver was under no compulsion to be on the road at the time. So we cannot say that the accident was foreordained by God and inevitable. There was no determining force outside and independent of those two men compelling them to come into collision, with fatal consequences for the rider of the bicycle.

59. Is the hour of one's death appointed by God at the moment of one's birth?

No; for a man is physically free even where his own life is concerned. Keep in mind this principle. Although God's providence extends to all things from a universal or general point of view, that same providence has willed that within the universe there should be a vast series of secondary causes affecting each other immediately. Now amongst these secondary causes is man, a free agent. The moment of a suicide's death is obviously not determined by God, for God forbids suicide; and if the suicide had obeyed God's law he would have lived longer. The same thing is true of murder, where a man's life is terminated by the rebellion of another man's will against the will of God.

Freedom of Will

60. If my future actions are preknown by God, they must have been predetermined, and free will is impossible.

That is not true. God does know what you will do in the future. Yet when you do it, it will be by your own free choice. Your difficulty arises from the fact that you are speaking of God as if He were conditioned by time exactly as we ourselves. He is not. We are space-time creatures, and God is outside all space-time limitations. Actions which, from our standpoint, must seem to be preknown, are not really preknown to God. For "preknown'" supposes successive knowledge, and succession supposes time. God, in reality, simply "knows" in an ever-present eternity. We are quite unable to comprehend the relationship between an eternal intelligence and successive events conditioned by time. The only experience we have is of the time-sequence. I know that talk of God as being outside time is like talking color to a man born blind. But that can't be helped. We have to talk of these things. But we must realize our limitations, and know that we cannot even state the problem except in terms which are incapable of expressing it adequately.

61. Your appeal to mystery does not answer my denial of free will.

When a problem involves the mutual relationship of two agents, only one of which is adequately within the reach of our understanding, mystery is inevitable. And categorical denials based on inadequate knowledge are themselves unreasonable.

62. What becomes of the "proof" of free will?

That stands. We know that it is a fact both by reason and revelation. And the positive evidence for free will deprives of all force those speculative difficulties which every reasonable person must expect to be present.

63. If free will obtains, it is impossible for God to know the future. He is not omniscient, and Biblical prophecies are mere superstitions.

Within the time sequence of history we have certain evidence that prophecies have been made, and that they were duly fulfilled hundreds of years later; and in such numbers and detail as to exclude any notion of mere chance. Not superstition, but reason, demands a connection between the subsequent events and what we have to term the previous knowledge of them. Meantime, men who know nothing of the conditions of eternity as related to the time in which we exist cannot reasonably declare it to be impossible for God to know the future.

64. No system of philosophy has successfully dealt with this question.

Sane philosophy admits the existence of free will. It successfully shows that there is not necessarily a contradiction where some people claim to find one, mistaking their inability to see a reconciliation for the impossibility of it. You must not ask philosophy to do what it cannot rightly be expected to do. If you regard as successful only that treatment of this question which enables a limited human mind to comprehend fully and completely how the eternal and Divine intelligence knows things which are future to space-time creatures, you are doomed to disappointment.

65. What is your official position on this subject?

That God's omniscience and man's free will are two facts known to be such, both by reason and revelation. The relationship between these two facts is necessarily a mystery; that is, the compatibility of the two facts is above reason, but not against reason. And the facts stand, despite the inability of man to solve to his full satisfaction the problem they present to the human mind.

66. Is not a man compelled to do what God knows that he will do?

No. It is a fallacy to think of knowledge of an event as the cause of that event. Thus, if I know that the sun is shining, the sun is not shining because I know it; I know it because the sun is shining. My knowledge of it does not make the sun shine. Nor does knowledge possessed even prior to the event cause the event to occur. An astronomer's knowledge that there will be an eclipse of the sun next week does not cause the eclipse. Knowledge as such is conditioned by the event: the event is not conditioned by the knowledge of it. But even that analogy cannot strictly apply to God's knowledge, for since He is outside time, there is nothing really future to His intelligence.

67. If God knows my future, it can only be because He has determined that future, and I am not free, if then God knows that I will end in hell, it's no use my trying to get to heaven.

The God who knows what your future will be, knows also that the future depends on your own choice. God has determined that your future will depend on your own conduct. His design is that "if" you try to serve Him, you will attain heaven, and that "if" you do not, you will lose your soul. Your future, therefore, has not been determined by God in any absolute sense. His very decision to endow you with free will, and commit your destiny to your own keeping excludes that. I appeal to your common sense. How do you let this problem affect you in other matters? If you were a farmer, would you say, "God knows whether I will have a crop or not. If He knows that I will have a crop, I will have it whatever I do. If He knows that I will not have a crop, I will not have it, whatever I do. Therefore, I will do nothing. I will neither plough, nor sow seed." That is foolish, for if God knows that you are to have a crop, His knowledge includes the knowledge that you will take the means. You can apply the same thought to any other matter of ordinary experience. If God knows that you will catch a train, you will catch it; if He knows that you won't catch it, you won't. Therefore, what is the use of going to the station at all? Surely you see the absurdity! God has decreed that certain things will result from the use of certain means. Heaven will be the result of trying to serve God. Take the means, and you will attain the normal result of such means. To do anything else is to be guilty of a folly in the matter of eternal salvation of which you would not be guilty in any other matter.

68. All the same, if I am going to end in hell, I am going to end in hell.

It is a logical necessity that what you do choose to do, you choose to do. But it is not necessary that you make such a choice. You could go to hell only by committing grave sin. Now God forbids you to commit grave sin. He could not therefore compel you to commit it. Moreover, if you had to commit it, the choice to do so would not be voluntary, and, therefore, would not be sinful — and you could not go to hell at all, despite God's knowing that you would end there! The absurd is false.

69. If you believe in free will, you must hold that the will is conditioned by itself, and that means that it is not conditioned at all.

It is self-contradictory to say that a will is not conditioned at all which is conditioned by itself. To talk sense a man could begin by saying that a will cannot be conditioned by itself. Then he would have to prove that statement.

70. An act of the free will is, therefore, an uncaused act, which is impossible.

The will itself is the cause of its own elective activities, and its choice is self-caused. God Himself has given us the power of volitional activity. He does not compel us to use it in this direction or that. Determinists argue that it must be compelled in one direction or another, because in the material or physical universe they see necessary causes producing necessary effects. But it is begging of the question to suppose that there is no other kind of causality, and that the spiritual, intellectual, and moral order must conform rigidly to the material and physical order. These determinists are like children who have never attained to the use of reason, and who go only by what comes within the range of their senses. They confuse the uniformity of nature which is a peculiarity of the visible and tangible universe with the principle of causality. And I say that that is childish. In the material universe we see causes which are determined to produce given effects: and in the same circumstances the same causes will produce the same effects. But it is equally a fact of experience that intelligence and will transcend the conditions of mere matter, and that there is no absolute necessity why the law of causality must work in the same way both in the inner world of man's soul, and in the outer world of material things. Within man there is a power of self-adjustment not found elsewhere. Physical laws declare that friction will necessarily produce heat. They do not say that provocation will necessarily produce anger. For one man may choose to give way to his feelings of resentment; another man may choose not to do so. Let the determinists first prove that there is nothing in man transcending the conditions of mere matter, and then they can restrict their notion of causality to the uniformity of nature discernible in the merely material universe. But they cannot do that without ignoring obvious facts of human experience. And to ignore facts because they don't fit in with one's theories is to cease to be scientific.

71. If you believe in free will, training is just beside the point.

It is not. It is necessary precisely because human beings are endowed with free will. Irrational animals, determined by mere instinct, do not face the same problems as man at all. Magpies are not concerned with morally wrong choices made by their offspring. But human parents, concerned with the character-formation of their children, are obliged to train those children precisely because they retain freedom of will to choose virtue or vice. Children must be taught what virtue is, and must be trained to choose the morally good as opposed to the morally evil. They must be formed in mind, and will, and heart.

Free Will and Faith

72. Another absurd conclusion to which believers in free will must inevitably come, is the idea that a man is free to believe whatever he likes.

I myself believe in free will, yet I deny absolutely that I must inevitably come to any absurd conclusion as a consequence of my conviction.

73. It is manifestly wrong that a man is free to believe whatever he likes.

Your trouble is a confusion of ideas. Before discussing a subject it is essential to get very clear ideas on that subject, and to know the precise sense of the terms you use. Otherwise, ambiguities and fallacies are bound to result. I know exactly what you have in mind. But you express yourself very badly. What you have in mind cannot be denied. But what you say can be denied. For example, if you drove a motor car at sixty miles an hour, you would know that that car could do sixty miles an hour. You would not be free to believe otherwise. But if I took that same car out and drove it at eighty-five miles an hour, and came back and told you I had done so, you would be free to believe what you liked about it. You have only my word for it. You could choose to believe me. Or you could choose to doubt my accuracy of observation, or my veracity. Not having experimental knowledge for yourself, it would not be manifestly wrong and absurd for you to believe whatever you liked. You see you have used the word believe without any regard for the motives of belief or for the degrees of certainty in our knowledge.

74. No man can honestly believe that which his reason rejects as untrue.

It is certain that so long as he rejects a thing as untrue, he cannot believe it. But he can cease to reject as untrue what he at one time thought to be untrue on discovering that he has no real proof that it is untrue, either because his former judgment was based on inadequate knowledge, or because there was a fault in his process of reasoning.

75. For instance, I cannot believe that a man once lived three days inside a whale.

Taking your proposition as it stands, I must confess that I would have a good deal of difficulty in believing it myself. If, however, a man said to me, "The God Who created this universe arranged that a huge fish (not necessarily a whale) should swallow a man, and by His divine power God kept that man alive inside the fish," I would certainly agree that it was not impossible for an omnipotent God to do such a thing. I could believe it, though I would not believe it actually occurred without a convincing authority for doing so.

76. I may try for hours to convince myself that I believe this, but the simple fact still remains, I cannot believe it.

At one time men could not believe that a person in England could speak to another person in America. But we, who know of radio transmission, find no difficulty in believing it. For the factor rendering it possible is known to us, whereas it was unknown to them. They could not believe it so long as the factor of radio transmission was omitted from the proposition. Now, if you restrict your proposition to a man, a whale, and the man's living inside the whale for three days, omitting all reference to God's intervention, your difficulties do not surprise me. But will you say that God Himself could not cause such an event to happen? I am not asking you to believe that it did happen. I only suggest that, since God could do it, you could believe it if He did do it.

77. The only force which can possibly alter my beliefs is an appeal to my reason by way of demonstration, argument, evidence, etc.

There are other forces which could alter your beliefs, despite your assertion to the contrary. I knew a girl who believed absolutely in the rectitude of a man she loved, despite evidence to the contrary clear to all others who knew him. After two years her love faded, and her belief changed. A human being's beliefs are often dictated by psychological factors and this is because the human will is free, making possible the will to believe in those who desire to believe. And where the Christian religion is concerned, the will to believe involves no conflict with reason. Belief is, in fact, the reasonable choice.

CHAPTER THREE

Religion

Religion and God

78. Why are religious people always talking about doing the will of God?

Because by the teachings of their religion they know what is due to God, and by the virtue of religion they desire to render to Him the acknowledgment and obedience they owe to His laws. They know that they cannot be good people otherwise. After all, a thing is good if it does what it's for. If I construct a machine to tell me the time, it is a good machine insofar as it does as I will and intend. If it does not, it is no good. Now God made me. He made me, not for an idle freak, but for a definite purpose; and I am good insofar as I fulfill that purpose.  In other words, insofar as I fulfill God's will and intentions.

79. Does it not occur to them that they have very little knowledge of what that will is?

That certainly does not apply in the case of Christians who are well instructed in their religion. Listen to these words from the Catholic catechism: "For what purpose did God make us? God made us to know, love, and serve Him here on earth, and to see and enjoy Him forever in heaven. What good shall I do that I may have life everlasting? If thou wilt enter into life-says Christ-keep the commandments. What commandments am I to keep? I am to keep the ten commandments of God. and the six commandments of the Church." And the catechism gives a clear explanation of the obligations imposed by those commandments; or, in other words, a clear explanation of the will of God. Finish reading this book, and by the time you have done so, you will have lost the notion that we have very little knowledge of what God's will is.

The Duty of Prayer

80. Religion involves the whole question of prayer, and for my part prayer is both unreasonable and useless.

Apart from the obtaining of benefits, by prayer we express our love of God, and our gratitude to Him, as also our sorrow and regret for such sins as we have committed against Him. But also prayer is a normal and intelligent means by which we obtain many blessings from God, together with His protection and consolation in difficulties. Prayer is neither unreasonable nor useless

81. How can prayer be reasonable?

Reason itself dictates the necessity of prayer. Reason tells you that you are not the author of your own existence, that you owe your origin, as does the whole human race, to an outside Cause Who is more intelligent than the creatures of His own making. Every man also, who is not mentally deficient, knows that he himself is limited in a thousand ways, in size, in strength, in mind and will. Man is small, weak, ignorant, and inconstant. Enabled by reason to realize these imperfections, man is impelled by reason to appeal to, and rely upon his Maker for the help and protection necessary lest his defects should lead to disaster. Prayer to his Maker is as natural to man as the instinct of a child to turn to its parents for help. All creatures, of course, are subject to such limitations. But man alone is conscious of them, arid, therefore, rational people alone are given to prayer. Brute animals do not pray. It is irrational not to pray.

82. If there be a God, it should not be necessary to tell Him of our needs.

We do not pray in order to inform God of our needs. We pray to fulfill a condition laid down by God for our own sakes. God demands of us the humility which acknowledges our dependence on Him, and the confidence which acknowledges Him as our Father. Even earthly parents, who know their children’s wants, and intend to supply them, insist that they ask respectfully for what they need. It is in a child’s own interest that it should be trained to behave properly.

83. Is it not more generous to give spontaneously than to wait to be asked? If God be supremely generous, it is an insult to Him to implore Him to give us anything.

It would not be more generous on God’s part to give us all we need without waiting to be asked. God has, of course, given us very many things without any request from us. But it would not be more generous to do that always. It is more generous to secure our still greater good by making us ask. And even apart from our training in religious behavior, it is a great happiness and privilege to be allowed to converse with God concerning our own interests.

84. If God is unchangeable, can you hope to change Him by fervent appeals?

God is unchangeable. But prayer is itself part of God’s unchangeable providence. He has decreed that many benefits will depend upon our praying for them. We shall get them if we ask for them; if we do not pray we shall not receive them. The change is not in God.

85. How can I pray when I cannot feel sure that anyone is listening to me?

How do you want to feel sure that God is listening to you? What type of evidence do you want? Do you want the certainty you have of the existence of a speaker when you hear his Voice from your radio set? If so, you will want in vain. But man is not limited to his senses, as are mere animals. By reason he can attain to the knowledge of a truth not accessible to the senses. Take the truth of thought. Were a dog sitting near you, it would hear the sounds of a human voice as you hear them with your ears. But it certainly could not grasp the truth conveyed by those sounds. Your reason can rise to a perception of a reality which is above and beyond any powers of sense-perception. If you cannot feel sure of God’s existence and knowledge merely because He is invisible and inaudible so far as your senses are concerned, you abdicate as a reasonable person, and descend to the lower level of irrational creatures. Your very expression, “I cannot feel sure,” is unfortunate. For feelings belong to our sensitive natures, not to our rational natures. We don’t believe things with our feelings. We believe them with our minds.

86. But supposing even my reason gives me no certain conviction?

Even then you could still pray. If you are not certain that God does hear you, you are not certain that He does not. But if you thought it only possible that He hears you, you could quite reasonably pray, even if you did so like the famous agnostic, “O God, if there be a God, save my soul, if I have one.” But apart from your own mental state, there are many considerations which intensify the reasonable character of prayer for you. If, on a given day, there was to be a huge meeting in a city hall, and you came from the country to attend that meeting, but did not know where the hall was situated, you would quite reasonably adopt the same line of conduct adopted by the crowds of people all flocking in the one direction. So, too, despite your uncertainty, you see crowds of people who are not in the least uncertain, and who give themselves to prayer, convinced that their prayers are heard by Him to whom they pray. And not all these people are fools by any means. You will admit that Marconi was a very clever man, a genius at experimental science, and a great contributor to the possibility of the radio transmission we enjoy today. Yet he says of prayer, “I believe it would be a great tragedy if men were to lose their faith in prayer. Without the help of prayer I might perhaps have failed where I have succeeded. In allowing me to attain what I have done, God has made of me merely an instrument of His own will, for the revelation of His own divine power.” The very certainty of so many other intelligent men, and their conviction as to the efficacy of prayer, make it quite reasonable for you to adopt the practice also.

87. If God knows that I will commit a sin, it’s no use praying that I won’t.

God’s knowledge can be left out of your question, for that knowledge does not affect your conduct. If He knows that you are going to commit a sin, it is because you will choose to commit it. However, you may ask what is the use of prayer if you will, as a matter of fact, fall into sin after all. In the first place, since you will not be compelled to commit that sin, there is at least less likelihood that you will do so with the help of special graces due to prayer than without them. But supposing that you do so? Even then the prayer was not useless. In itself it was a meritorious act of religion prior to the sin. Even granted the sin, you would probably have been far worse on the occasion than you would have been had you not prayed. And in virtue of the previous prayer God would give you the grace to repent more quickly arid sincerely of your fault.

88. For centuries humanity has prayed to God for deliverance from floods, famines, plagues, and distress; but God has ever been silent.

You can‘t gulp down the whole of humanity like that. For centuries some men have cursed God: some have simply ignored God; and some have prayed to God. Humanity as a whole has not prayed to God for deliverance from evils. And amongst those who have prayed, many have done so in order to praise God, or to thank God, or to repair their sins against God, or to ask spiritual graces from Him. Prayer is not confined to the asking of temporal benefits only.

But even if you restrict your question to prayer for temporal favours, thousands would rise in protest, and prove to you that prayers for temporal favours have been granted far more often than can be explained by mere coincidence. All that Christians claim as regards prayer for temporal favours is that such prayers are sometimes heard in the way we wish when God knows that the granting of our request will be really for our good. Prayer of petition is not the kind of penny-in-the-slot machine by which we obtain just what we specify as we would obtain a box of matches.

89. God allows war to continue, though people of all religious denominations pray to Him to stop it.

If the sufferings caused by war were entirely useless, it might be more difficult to answer that problem. But if men can benefit by such sufferings, a good God could certainly permit them; and if men deserved them, His justice can not be blamed. Men do deserve such sufferings; and indeed mankind as a whole deserves more than it gets in the way of suffering. See the flood of iniquity in the world, and ask yourself whether men deserve that all things should flatter their desires. If people prayed that the war should stop, then the fact that the war moved some people to prayers they would not otherwise have said was already a good result. And prayer did produce remarkable results in various individuals during the war. If it did not make all combatants cease fighting at the various moments, various unbelievers thought the war ought to end, that fact does not imply that prayer was useless.

90. Will the prayers of one in a state of sin be heard by God?

Every sincere and earnest prayer, no matter by whom it is said, will be heard by God. Prayer is, in itself, an act of religion as well as a petition. Normally, as an act of religion, it is meritorious just as any other good work. But as a person in a state of serious sin cannot merit before God, in the sinner’s case no merit attaches to his prayer. But, whilst no merit attaches to his prayer, it retains value as a petition. And the petition will certainly be granted if it be for the grace to be converted and to resist further sin. If the petition be for temporal favours, such as the recovery of bodily health, or for some other earthly advantage, the petition will be granted provided God sees that it will not prove a hindrance to the petitioner’s spiritual welfare.

91. If prayer is necessary for conversion, how will one reform who finds it impossible to pray?

Prayer is never really impossible. I admit that one who has long neglected prayer will find little taste for it, and, therefore, will find it difficult. But, despite the difficulty, he should take up his prayers once more, if necessary with the help of a prayer book, trying to mean the prayers he recites. As a child learns to walk by walking, so we learn to pray by praying. Facility will come with practice. And as his prayers increase in earnestness, so will a man receive ever more abundant graces from God to help him in his struggles against ingrained habits. God will give light to intensify his convictions, and strength to fortify his weak and inconstant will. If, then, a man persists in doing his own best to fight down acquired bad habits, and perseveres in his efforts at prayer, he will certainly succeed in the end in the desire to reform his life.

The Mysteries of Religion

92. Are not the mysteries taught by your religion simply mental opium?

Not in the least. They do not stifle thought. They are a provocation to thought, and have inspired the greatest minds. Unexplained themselves, they throw an immense amount of light on the problem of life's purpose and destiny, when added to what we already know by reason itself. Though we cannot sound their full depths, we find in them the explanation of most of our noblest experiences. They are the key to life; and as life itself is mysterious, so the key to it is mysterious. A key is as intricate as the lock, or it does not fit. It is only by combining the clear and the mysterious that we arrive at a proper understanding. We have an example of that in science itself. In spectroscopic analysis a ray of light is broken up into its various colors; but the spectrum reveals a series of dark lines which are most mysterious. Their explanation is found only by noting where they fall in relation to the colors which are clearly shown. Now, in his search for knowledge man finds that his own power of sight is limited to a very narrow band of wave lengths. He can see neither infrared nor ultraviolet rays. These would be absolute mysteries to him if he depended only on sight. But his intelligence has discovered them. Faith goes further, and by a knowledge secured from God's revelation, gets an inkling of the great mysterious reality of God Himself, who clarifies the puzzling lines and dark shadows by which the whole of our knowledge and life are crisscrossed from end to end. So we find that the mysterious and the clear give the true sense to life.

93. All mysteries yield sooner or later to reason. Science will know tomorrow what it does not know today.

Mysteries necessarily exist, and ever will exist. Even in the merely natural order, it is useless to say that what is a mystery now will not be a mystery in the future, as if all mysteries in nature will thus be eventually unraveled. Knowledge begins with mystery and ends in mystery. The further science pushes its conquests, the more mysteries it will discover, every advance revealing further mystery ahead. Transmission by radio was an unsuspected mystery to previous generations. It is an accomplished fact today, but it has led to a host of other mysteries.

But these natural mysteries are not even on the same plane as supernatural mysteries. Were all natural mysteries eventually solved, supernatural mysteries would remain. Not all the scientific knowledge of the universe could manifest to us the infinitely mysterious inner life of God Himself. From the natural point of view God's intimate nature and vital activities are inaccessible to man. And any knowledge of His personal inner life given to us by revelation-a life completely transcending the natural order of created being-will be as mysterious to us as it is beyond our natural and experimental ideas. These revealed mysteries satisfy reason by surpassing reason, since reason itself tells us that a divine religion, introducing the Infinite, must contain elements exceeding every finite capacity.

94. Are we expected to believe things to be true without any evidence for them?

We are expected to believe what God has revealed, because God must know the truth, and because He could not deceive us. Where revealed mysteries are concerned, we accept them, not because they appeal to reason as evidently true in themselves, but because of God's authority. This supposes evidence, of course, that God has actually revealed the mysteries we thus accept. We believe what God says, but we must know that He said it. It will be necessary, therefore, to study the historical evidence for the fact of revelation.

Can We Believe in Miracles?

95. Why are miracles fewest where people are most enlightened?

I deny your supposition.

96. I am a civil engineer, and my profession treats largely with cause and effect, and is based on mathematical accuracy.

I must ask you to keep in mind that proficiency in the knowledge of natural causes gives no special competency in matters not due to those causes.

97. I have never witnessed a miracle; nor has any other member of my profession whom I have asked witnessed one.

Because you have never personally witnessed a miracle, you cannot conclude that, therefore, miracles have never occurred. As regards your fellow professional men, had one of them declared that he had witnessed a miracle, would you have accepted his evidence? If so, why will you not accept the sworn evidence of equally accredited medical men? You may say that you do not know of any such evidence. But your not knowing of it does not prove it to be nonexistent. The evidence exists.

98. I once questioned a group of illiterate, dirty, drunken peons at La Paz, Bolivia, all of whom were Catholics.

If they were Catholics, it was in spite of, and not because of the conditions you describe. I am a Catholic, but I am neither illiterate, nor dirty, nor drunken; so those qualities are not necessarily associated with Catholicism. Also, on your own methods of testing evidence, since I have never seen a group of illiterate, dirty, drunken peons, you can scarcely expect me to accept your word for it that they do exist.

99. All declared that they had witnessed miracles.

Granted that you did ask them, and that they replied as you say, the fact that the witnesses you consulted were drunk renders their evidence worthless. It would be on a par with the evidence of a drunken man who swears that a given lamp post has duplicated itself. Even if they were not drunk, I would put their evidence down to a great deal of superstition-a superstition found, of course, not only amongst the illiterate. We are surrounded by superstitions even amongst the educated. There are the superstitions of the sceptic, of the spiritualist, of the Christian Scientist, of those who believe in the infallibility of novels and newspapers, of those who swear by astrology, of those who reject miracles without giving a single valid reason for doing so, of the man who thinks that witnesses who have not seen a thing afford reliable evidence that the thing does not exist. But, in the whole of this affair, the most striking thing is that you should seek evidence for miracles from such obviously unreliable sources. If a sensible man really wants evidence, he does not bother about taking that evidence until he has some reason to believe the source reliable. It is a reflection on your own intelligence that you did not bother inquiring in better quarters.

100. What kind of evidence do you call that?

As I have already remarked, I do not regard it as evidence at all. But when you contrast civil engineers with illiterate peons, remember this: If there are educated men who do not believe in miracles, there are educated men who do; the former lacking evidence; the latter possessing evidence.

And if you wish to argue, "Drink-sodden men believe in miracles, therefore, miracles don't happen," I will be justified in retorting, "There are plenty of drink-sodden men who do not believe in miracles, therefore, miracles do happen." It's absurd argumentation, I know, but it is based on your own principles.

101. Can you expect enlightened people to believe in miracles?

Yes. They are the unenlightened people from whom we expect unbelief; from people who have never bothered to examine any evidence, but whose opinions are dictated by their prejudices.

102. Does the Church require proof before she will accept any event as miraculous?

Yes, and very strict proof. She takes little notice of people's private opinions concerning the cause of a given event. Before the Church will publicly admit and sanction any event as being a miraculous manifestation of God's power, she demands proof that no merely natural means could account for it.

103. That could never be, because we do not yet know all the forces of nature. There may be natural laws which we do not yet know, yet which could account for an event thought to be miraculous.

There is no need to know all that nature can do, before we can be sure of a miracle. It is enough to know what nature cannot do. And we know that when we perceive an absolute lack of proportion between the means used and the effect produced. That a man rotten with leprosy should suddenly be cured at the men sound of Christ's voice saying, "Be thou clean," is obviously outside the scope of merely natural laws, and, therefore, miraculous. So, too, it is certain that the dead do not naturally rise from the grave and resume their earthly lives. So true is this law that, if one who was actually dead did rise, God alone could have made him do so by a quite supernatural intervention. Here the very thing accomplished is not against, but absolutely beyond the scope of the ordinary laws of nature. Thus all admit that the resurrection of Christ must be ranked as miraculous. Those who refuse to believe in it simply deny that it happened; but they do not deny that, if it did happen, it would be miraculous.

104. You at least advise caution in the matter?

I do. In fact, since not the abnormal but the normal is ordinary, and the miraculous necessarily rare, a prudent judgment will incline on the side of the greater probabilities, and prefer to regard events as nonmiraculous rather than as miraculous.  If God really wishes to show His power to men in a miraculous way He will do so in a way which leaves no prudent doubt in the minds of those who study closely the whole affair. Thus, at Lourdes, many cures have taken place. But the Medical Bureau of Inquiry will not register as miraculous any cures which are explicable by natural causes. For example, if a person is cured suddenly of a nervous disease of many years' standing, the doctors will say, "We congratulate you on what seems to be a great favor from God, but we cannot accept it as a miracle. The natural factors of excitement, or of autosuggestion, may be responsible for it; and it does not necessarily, therefore, manifest God's direct intervention." But if a broken leg is healed instantaneously, an inch of bone being supplied to make it the same length as the other, that is a different matter. No amount of subjective persuasion, and no merely natural influences could accomplish that. In the presence of such an occurrence we can but say, "The finger of God is here"; and all reasonable men would admit it to be a miracle.

105. I agree with those who wish to purify the Gospels by eliminating the miraculous element embodied in them side by side with so much good teaching.

It is impossible to eliminate the miraculous element from the Gospels without rejecting them completely as fraud and forgery. You might just as well suggest a life of Napoleon without any military exploits as suggest a life of Christ without miracles. The texts describing the miracles were there from the very beginning, and were written by those who saw them, and who wrote the rest of the matter contained in the Gospels. It is unreasonable to say that the authors were quite reliable in setting down what you happen to approve in the accounts of Christ, but that they suddenly became unreliable in sections which do not happen to appeal to you.

106. The miracles envelop His life in legend, and belittle Him rather than magnify Him.

The miracles in the Gospels are not legendary. They are a matter of history. Nor do they belittle Christ. There is no element in them of the merely curious, ostentatious, and puerile. They bear directly upon His mission as Redeemer. Christ manifested His goodness by curing bodies as well as souls, and proved His divine power against objectors by such sayings as, "Which is easier, to forgive sin, or to say: Arise and walk?" And He bade the crippled to rise and walk; which they did. By His miracles Christ proved both the truth and the necessity of the religion He taught.

CHAPTER 4

The Religion of the Bible

Historical Character of the Gospels

107.  I presume you accept the Canonical Gospels as historical because they give general support to one another?

Not entirely. There are other and independent grounds for their historical character. Being historical, of course, general agreement would be one of their notable characteristics.

108. How do you account for the fact that there are other uncanonical writings which give a different version of these affairs?

I account for that by the fact that men wrote them, and gave the different version you mention. If you ask why these men wrote them, I can but say that some did so from rather romantic motives in order to fill in in an imaginative way the brief accounts given in the genuine Gospels; others did so with the evil intention of discrediting the genuine Gospel accounts. Some of the writers of the apocryphal gospels were, therefore, orthodox in faith; others were heretics.

109. Can you quote any reference prior to Irenaeus, 182 A. D., which so much as alludes to the existence of your Gospels?

It would not matter much if I could not. However, I am able to do so. Prior to Irenaeus, Tatian had written his Diatessaron, or Harmony of the Four Gospels, which is certainly a tribute to the existence of those Gospels. Tatian's teacher, Justin Martyr, was quoting the Gospels 30 years before Irenaeus wrote on the subject. Earlier than Justin, Papias had written that the First Gospel was by St. Matthew; and that St. Mark had also written a Gospel. Almost 30 years before Papias, Hermas, in his "Shepherd," had written that the Third Gospel was by St. Luke, and the Fourth by St. John. The Epistle of Barnabas, written nearly 80 years before Irenaeus, contains quotations from St. Matthew's Gospel. St. Luke, who wrote the Acts of the Apostles about the year 63, speaks of his having written a former treatise, clearly referring to the Third Gospel, as all reputable scholars admit.

Canonical Books of the Bible

110. Did not the selection of the Gospels to be regarded as Canonical depend upon the various Councils?

The selection of the Gospels depended upon the authoritative decisions of the Catholic Church, decisions formulated in her official Councils, and always to be approved by the Pope. And it is the authority of the Pope which alone counts in the final analysis. Above all, such matters are not dependent upon the authority of "various" Councils, when you wish to include false gatherings of recalcitrant bishops whose proceedings have been repudiated by the Church, and whose decisions have been declared null and void. The authority of Councils can be cited only when those Councils have been authorized by the Holy See, and when their decisions have been approved and sanctioned by the Pope. Under these conditions, the decisions of Councils are quite reliable.

111. Matthew Tindal says that no good ever came of any Council, and that if all the accusations and libels were extant which the bishops hurled at each other, few would have reason to boast of the First Oecumenical Council.

Matthew Tindal was a rationalist, and an enemy of the Christian religion. His verdict, therefore, is prejudiced. But any man who says that no good ever came of any Council stands self-condemned. He is talking obvious nonsense. As for the First Oecumenical Council, if the accusations and libels of the bishops are not extant, information concerning them is wanting, and to hazard a guess is valueless. The First Oecumenical Council of Nicea, in 325 A. D., was a Council of the utmost importance to the Church, and did immense good. That it condemned heretics is not surprising, since it was convened for the purpose of safeguarding the truth against false teachings. And that the heretics who were condemned should have taken their condemnation badly is not surprising. They were not men of outstanding patience and virtue.

112. Is it not a fact that, in the Second Council of Ephesus, Dioscurus, Bishop of Alexandria, assaulted Flavian, Patriarch of Constantinople, with such violence that the Patriarch died within three days of his injuries? Can we accept the verdict of such Councils?

It is a fact that the heretical Bishop Dioscurus assaulted Flavian, the lawful Patriarch of Constantinople. But the Second Synod of Ephesus is known as the "Robber Council," and its proceedings were at once declared null and void by the Pope. Flavian died of his injuries, in reality a martyr for the true faith. But the citation of the bad conduct of a heretical bishop in an abortive Council in no way supports any of your contentions where the Gospels are concerned.

Original Manuscripts

113. Are any of the original manuscripts of any of the Gospels extant?

No. The original manuscripts have perished, the Gospels surviving in later copies only. Manuscripts cannot last forever. If we have the Odes of Horace, or the Annals of Tacitus today, we have them only in copies derived from the now perished original writings of those authors. An elaborate attempt to prove that the Annals of Tacitus were really composed by an Italian scholar named Poggio was rejected as absurd; but for definite refutation scholars had to rely upon one allusion to them occurring some three hundred years after the death of Tacitus himself. The evidence was a thousand times more slender than that available for the Gospels; yet all scholars accepted it.

114. What is the date of the earliest copies available?

The earliest copies containing the complete Gospels are the Vatican and Sinaitic Codices, dating from the fourth century. There are several fragments of Gospel manuscripts dating from the third century, and one of St. John's Gospels belonging to the second century, a copy probably made within fifty years of the Apostle's death. But besides these actual Gospel copies, of course, we have a wealth of citations in the earliest Christian writers, citations which presuppose the existence of the Gospel manuscripts.

115. Why should not a Catholic who believes in miracles expect that the original Gospel manuscripts should last forever?

Because, although a Catholic believes that miracles can occur, and have occurred when God has willed to grant them, he does not expect miracles where God has not willed to grant them, nor that God should will to grant them wherever men might think it wise that He should do so.

116. Here surely was an occasion that could provide an unshakable basis for faith.

Any one miracle would provide an unshakable basis for faith in any person of good will. But, if the original Gospel manuscripts were in fact preserved by a miracle, you would not accept that as a miracle any more than you accept existent miracles already wrought by God. If you want miracles for your consideration, there are plenty available. "If they hear not Moses and the Prophets," said Christ, "neither will they believe if one rise from the dead." He said this because the refusal of the Jews to be guided by Moses and the Prophets was due to bad will. And a man who has a bad will and does not want to believe, will not believe, no matter what motives are put before him. If you reject the Christian religion despite all its present credentials, neither would you believe even were the original Gospel manuscripts miraculously preserved.

117. Here surely was psychological momentum for a miracle, if such things are.

Miracles do not go by "psychological momentum." And, in any case, if there is to be talk of possible miracles God might have thought fit to grant, I could think of a thousand miracles which would have much wider and more efficacious appeal than the preservation of the original Gospel manuscripts.

118. Do not say there was no need for the survival of the originals because transcriptions could be made without fundamental error.

I must say precisely that. If I want to read the works of Charles Dickens, it makes no difference whether I read them in the original edition, or in a reprint of a hundred years later. So long as we have the Word of God, it does not matter by what medium it comes to us. All this, of course, is supposing that the Gospels are necessary at all. Absolutely speaking, quite apart from any written Gospels the Catholic Church would have been sufficient provision in itself for the preservation of the Christian religion. But of that, more later.

119. Rev. Dr. Hort has said that absolute fidelity of transcription in the first three centuries was little valued.

Dr. Hort held the highest opinion of the accuracy of transmission of the Gospel text. His allusion to mistakes and to lack of fidelity must be taken in a very restricted sense. He would certainly have admitted that such minor variations as crept into early copies do not hinder us from getting back to the original text in all important and substantial matters, and even in almost all unimportant points The minor error of one copyist would not be that of another. And a comparative study of texts proves a corrective of minor variations.

120. If all errors were rectified, is it not possible that an entirely different conception of the Scriptures would become inevitable?

No. Textual criticism could never give an entirely different text of Scripture.  In their interpretations of the meaning of Scripture, of course, independent readers will arrive at very different conclusions as to the sense of what is written. But what is written will not undergo any substantial change. For example, a close study of manuscripts, whether of copies or translations, together with quotations in the early Fathers, reveals some 150,000 variant leadings. But the vast majority of these are merely transpositions of words, or the substitution of synonyms. Scarcely 100 have any significance, and only about 10 of them could have any relation to doctrinal matters. Nor would any of these 10 have any substantial effect upon Christian doctrine. Moreover, any possible doubt concerning any essential Christian doctrine would be excluded by its being clearly laid down elsewhere in undisputed section of the text. It is impossible that critical research should ever render an entirely different version of Sacred Scripture necessary.

121. I have read that the Greek Septuagint contained many errors which were not corrected until about 200 A.D.

The Greek Septuagint Version is the name given to a translation of the Old Testament from the Hebrew, made by seventy Jewish scholars at Alexandria for the benefit of the Jewish colony there about 250 B. C. In Palestine copies of what are called the Palestinian Hebrew Scriptures were in use. At the time of Christ, both the Palestinian Hebrew Scriptures, and the Alexandrian Septuagint Greek were equally acknowledged by the Jews as authoritative. It is certain that neither Christ nor the Apostles ever challenged the value of the Septuagint. Both direct and indirect references to the Greek Septuagint abound in the New Testament.

Now, at the time of our Lord, the original Hebrew writings had already perished. And many minor errors and discrepancies had crept into the copies through inadvertence on the part of copyists. There was no officially corrected Hebrew text at the time of Christ. And errors went on increasing as handwritten copies were multiplied. The Jewish Rabbis, therefore, about the second century after Christ, determined to secure a correct official Hebrew text; and in order to do so they used the Greek Septuagint translation to check discrepancies. Not the errors of the Septuagint, therefore, but the errors of the Hebrew text were being corrected. In his preparation of his Latin version, called the Vulgate, St. Jerome used both the Hebrew text and the Greek Septuagint.

122. Would Christ use Scriptures which contained errors?

Christ made use of existent copies of the Bible, despite their errors. For those copies were substantially correct. The errors were isolated, and of minor importance. And there is no reason why He should not use existent copies for the matter in them which He knew to be quite correct. For that matter, the Protestant Authorized Version in English today contains many errors. But it is not entirely erroneous. And where it is not erroneous, it is certainly the inspired Word of God, and could be quoted as such.

Truth of the Bible

123. From the natural point of view I find the stories of Adam and Eve, of Noah and the Ark, of Lot's wife, of Samson, of the Israelites crossing the Red Sea, of Jonah and the whale, etc., very difficult to believe.

I am not surprised. And to me they would seem often enough quite impossible from the merely natural viewpoint. If I were expected to believe in these things as being the result of any merely natural laws or forces, I would refuse to do so. They become credible only when they are attributed to some cause outside merely natural forces; and to me they are credible only because Almighty God Himself has stepped in with a special manifestation of His infinite power. Every reasonable man has to admit that God could cause such things to happen; and a Christian is obliged to believe that He did so, wherever the Bible obviously intends to declare such events to be matters of historical fact.

124. Must these be accepted in the literal sense?

We have to believe in the inspiration and truth of the Bible. But we have to believe in the truth intended by God, not in the first superficial idea that comes to our mind. In other words, we have to believe in the Bible rightly interpreted. Of various passages we must ask whether God intended them to be taken as literally true, or whether they are meant to convey the truth in a metaphorical way. Normally speaking, presumption stands for the literal sense, and no details are to be taken as metaphorical without sufficiently grave reason. It must be noted also that an historical event may be described in such a way that figurative expressions abound. In such a case, we have to accept the account as substantially historical fact, but need not accept every secondary detail in a similar way.

Now let us take the examples you give. Are we obliged to believe that God intended all the cases you give to be taken entirely in their literal sense? There are certainly metaphorical details blended with the history of Adam and Eve. But we are obliged to believe in the substantial accuracy of the narrative. The Catholic Church insists on our acceptance of those basic facts which are at the very foundation of the Christian religion. We must believe that God did create all beings apart from Himself; that the creation of man was a distinct action; that the first woman was formed from the first man; that the whole human race is descended from the first pair, Adam and Eve; that this first pair disobeyed God, and by their sin put themselves and all their posterity into a state of evil from which they needed redemption by Christ. We have to believe in the historical interpretation of these fundamental details in a spirit of obedience to the Church, and because there are no sound reasons for thinking otherwise.

Personally, also, I see no sound reason for rejecting the historical character of the accounts of Noah and the Ark; of Lot's wife; of Samson; and of the crossing of the Red Sea by the Jews. There is no room for a metaphorical interpretation of these things. It is possible to accept the story of Jonah and the whale as a kind of parable, truly typifying the burial and resurrection of Christ, just as the parable of the Prodigal Son truly typified God's mercy towards sinners. But I cannot see any real need to do this. I would have no difficulty in accepting the story of Jonah and the whale as literally true once I was certain that the account was intended by the original writer in that sense.

125. Is it not absurd not only that God should want to try Abraham's faith, but that He should order Abraham to kill his own son?

God did not test Abraham in order to secure further knowledge concerning him, but in order to give Abraham an opportunity of performing a meritorious act of obedience which Abraham would not otherwise have received. The trial was not necessary from God's point of view. It was necessary from Abraham's point of view. It was God's immutable will, based upon His infinite knowledge of all things, that Abraham should first be asked to offer his son; and then that he should be freed from the necessity of sacrificing that son in actual practice. But even had God intended Abraham to kill the boy, God, as supreme Lord and Master of life and death, would not have exceeded His rights.

126. Can you believe it true that God hardened the heart of Pharaoh, so that he refused to release the Jews from Egypt?

The expression, "God hardened the heart of Pharaoh" occurs only after the repeated statement, as in Exodus VIII., 15, "And Pharaoh hardened his own heart." The context shows that God did not positively harden Pharaoh's heart, but that He merely permitted Pharaoh to harden his own heart. Pharaoh himself admitted, in Exodus IX., 27, "I have sinned this time also. The Lord is just. I and my people are wicked." Pharaoh knew quite well that he could have yielded to God's commands and released the Jews.

127. Do you believe that God sent the plagues upon Egypt, and above all, had the innocent children of the Egyptians killed?

Yes. Our speculations as to what God would or would not do are not evidence. I might be inclined to say, "Surely God would not permit cancer!" But God has permitted it. The prudence of man's limited intelligence is not the measure of God's wisdom. As for the innocent Egyptian children, we must not view them merely as individuals. It is essential that they be viewed as social units. One nation as a nation was grinding another nation down in abject slavery and immense suffering- a nation whose services God wanted for a special purpose. The offending nation was punished as a nation, the parents suffering through their children. Those individually innocent children had their lives in this world curtailed, but they continued their existence in the next where they received just treatment from God. Meantime, if those children lacked some of the joys experienced by others who live longer, they also escaped many of the sorrows and afflictions of this world. In any case, a created being is completely owned by its Creator, and we have a right to life only so long as our Creator decrees.

128. I could go on almost forever quoting extraordinary things believers in the Bible must accept.

You could. But nothing would be gained by doing so. It would be surprising if an account of an omnipotent God's dealings with men did not contain extraordinary things. Once God's rights and God's power are in question, the extraordinary cannot be advanced as disproof of the events recorded. The Bible certainly cannot be proved untrue in that way.

129. Did the flood recorded in Genesis really occur?

Yes.

130. So you believe that God repented that He had made man? In what sense do you understand that expression?

From the viewpoint of the human beings to whom God spoke. Naturally, in addressing a message to men, God speaks in a way which is intelligible to them. Now, when a man makes a thing which will not fulfill the purpose for which he made it, he destroys it, and sets to work again. Men did not fulfill God's will, and in quite a human way God says that He regrets having made man, and predicts mankind's destruction by the flood. But there was no change in God. There is a big difference between changing one's will, and willing a change in the destiny of others. God had always willed that if man did good, man would not be destroyed; and that if he did evil, he would be destroyed. The change was in the fortunes of men, not in God. The words, "God repented," therefore, are to be understood metaphorically according to human analogies, and from the aspect of the effects experienced by men.

131. To my mind the flood is simply a myth.

Your only reason for terming it a myth is the fact that you cannot see how it happened according to forces which no one claims to have been responsible for it, and according to conditions arbitrarily appointed by yourself. That is not a rational position. You should first ask what exactly is claimed concerning the flood, and what forces are supposed to have caused it.

132. Do you believe that rain for forty days could cover the whole earth with water above the highest mountains?

The Bible attributes the flood, not only to the rain, but also to an invasion of water from the sea. Moreover, the flood did not cover the whole of the earth, but the whole of the particular region where it occurred. The interpretation of the flood as local is not opposed to the expression in the Bible referring to "the whole of the earth." That is quite a usual expression for the whole of some given region. Thus, the famine in Egypt is described as a famine "over all the face of the earth."

133. The water could not remain banked up in a given region even to the height necessary to cover the mountains.

You forget that the Bible declares God to have been the cause of the flood. God is omnipotent. He can suspend, dispense with, and regulate the physical laws He established as He pleases, and without the slightest difficulty. Imagined difficulties by one who thinks only of created natural laws, leaving out the direct power of God, are of no value. The only way to refute the account of the flood is to refute the historical character of Genesis on other grounds: or to show that there is no God, or that He is not omnipotent. In other words, you must show that the cause alleged by Genesis either does not exist, or could not accomplish what is attributed to Him. But it is of no use to say that you do not see how it could happen in accordance with merely natural factors, when we grant that merely natural factors could not account for it. The waters were maintained in position by God's power during the time willed by God. This involved a miracle, insofar as God acted in a way outside the ordinary course of nature. But an omnipotent God who can create a universe can do with that universe, or any part of it, what He wills. The question is not as to whether God could do it, but as to whether He did do it. The Bible says that He did. There is positive evidence for it. There is no evidence against it. The flood is not a myth. It happened.

134. How could Noah build an Ark capable of holding two animals of every kind in the world?

The flood did not cover the whole face of the earth, but the whole area of that locality in which men existed. Animals, created prior to man, could have spread much farther afield, or could have been created according to their specific kinds in various places over the face of the earth. If we consider all types of animals in the whole of the world, there is a difficulty as to how the Ark, with its known measurements, could accommodate representatives of every type. But there is no need to imagine such conditions. Innumerable varieties of animals could have existed outside the flood area, and not come into contact with the disaster. It is sufficient that types of those animals in the locality subject to the flood were represented in the Ark.

135. To contain types of all animals in the world the Ark must have been of a tremendous size, probably larger than the Berengaria. What was its probable tonnage?

Allowing for the local character of the flood, the Ark would not have to be of so great a size as you think. As a matter of fact, the Bible tells us the size of the Ark. It was 450 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet deep. It was, therefore, much smaller than the Berengaria, which was 883 feet long, 98 feet wide, and 57 feet deep. We can scarcely estimate comparative tonnage, as the Berengaria was of steel, with immense inner constructions and heavy engines. Its gross tonnage was 52,226. But the Ark was built of wood. I would say that in size it would have been much about the same as the average 6,000-ton steamer of today.

136. With two of every living thing on the Ark, the food problem would have to be considered. Many of the animals would have eaten the others, or would have died themselves.

The animals taken into the Ark for the sake of preservation were duly preserved, and emerged safely after the flood. Noah took on board stores of suitable food, at least sufficient to preserve life, even though it were possibly not the normal diet of every given animal. Keep in mind that the number of animals was far fewer than many imagine, for they were local specimens only. And here is a remarkable fact: In 1609, Peter Jansen, of Horn, in Holland, built a vessel according to the dimensions of the Ark as given in Scripture. And it was found that, even if a quarter of the space were given to storage of food, there would still be left more than 50 cubic feet for each 7,000 pairs of animals. But it is doubtful whether there were 7,000 pairs of animals in the Ark. And the provision of food for the duration of the flood was not so great a problem as is imagined.

137. If only the human beings in the Ark were saved, all men today must be descended from Noah and his family.

That is true.

138. Is it necessary to believe that there were no human survivors except those in the Ark?

That is not an article of faith. The opinion could be held, though it is the far less probable opinion, that not all men were drowned in the flood, but that some races had proceeded far afield, and had escaped it. Personally, I do not accept that opinion, which raises far greater difficulties than the ordinary view.

139. Anthropologists say that the Australian aboriginals are the most ancient of all peoples. In that case, they must have been in Australia when the flood occurred, contemporaneously with Moses.

That would not affect the doctrine of the flood, for Moses wrote of the flood many centuries after it occurred. I might mention that anthropologists are growing more and more modest in their attempts to gauge the antiquity of various races. They admit that many of their earlier speculations have failed to allow sufficiently for all the factors involved. Moreover, expert opinion declares that the Australian aboriginal belongs to the Caucasian group of peoples, and that his presence in Australia is due to migration from Asia.

140. You see no difficulty in accounting for the presence of the aboriginal in Australia, and the Indian in America?

No great difficulty presents itself. America was almost certainly joined to Asia in the remote past, at least in the North where Alaska almost touches Siberia. Australia, too, was probably connected by continuous land with Asia where today we have the numerous islands from Cape York to Singapore. But actual union between the countries would not be necessary. From time immemorial men have traveled vast distances in skiffs, or on rafts. In our own times, natives travel great distances in primitive boats made of the bark of trees, or of hollow logs. The difficulty of getting to remote places by water is not regarded today as any serious objection to the doctrine of a common source for the human race.

141. In Exodus XX., 5, we are told that God is a jealous God. Do you believe that to be true?

Yes, in the sense intended. Wherever there is love, there must be some kind of jealousy, for jealousy is but zeal on behalf of the object of one's love. But, just as there are different kinds of love, selfish or unselfish, so there are different kinds of jealousy. The more one loves, of course, the more one tries to exclude whatever could come between himself and the object of his love. Where a man, however, is usually jealous of others who would take from him one whom he thinks necessary for his happiness, God is jealous of all that would prevent Him from giving happiness to the souls He loves. To bring this home to the Jews, as His chosen people, and the particular object of His love, God spoke to them through the prophets in a way they could understand. He told them that Israel was wedded to Him; that He had espoused His chosen people; that idolatry, or worship of false gods, was simply "adultery" in His sight. And just as a man is jealous of his wife lest another should rob him of his exclusive right to her affection, so the Jews understood that, on the religious and spiritual plane, God insisted on His exclusive right to their devotedness and love. God's very justice demanded such a return for all the benefits His love had lavished upon them. His use of the human term "jealousy," therefore, was meant to bring home to them on their own level His exclusive claim to their spiritual allegiance. But in God, the term would have to be understood in a way proper to God, and not in a way proper to men.

142. In Exodus XX., God is recorded as forbidding us to kill, yet in XXXII., as ordering the Israelites to kill even brothers, friends, and neighbors!

The authorized and just death penalty ordered in the latter case was not in conflict with the commandment forbidding unauthorized and unjust killing. You must note, firstly, that this death penalty was ordered by the very God who forbade men to kill unjustly and on their own personal responsibility. And God should know His own law. Secondly, you should note the theocratic nature of the Jewish regime.

The Jews had God Himself as their Supreme Ruler even as regards their earthly welfare. Those who abandoned God for idolatry were guilty of treason, and punitive measures were justified. Also, they were giving themselves up to all manner of wickedness and immorality, and did not deserve to retain a life they were so abusing. God, therefore, the Supreme Author of life and death, decreed their extinction, but only after they had been afforded an opportunity to repent and return to Him. Those who refused to repent were to be put to death, and no tie of friendship was to hinder the execution of justice.

You speak as though God the Creator were conditioned by and limited to the rights of a creature. God is the Author of life, and we have no right to live longer than He wills. He who makes a thing has the right to unmake it, if it does not fulfill the purpose for which he made it. God has no obligation to keep rebellious men in existence; and He can appoint any given means of removing them from this world; above all, when it is supremely necessary to impress the gravity of man's obligations upon others.

All that is by way of explanation of God's command. The absence of contradiction between the two passages you quote is evident quite independently of the reasons for the particular event mentioned in your second reference.

143. If Moses is the author of Deuteronomy, who wrote the account of his death and burial towards the close of the Book?

Moses certainly could not have written those words. Joshua might thus have completed the Book, or else some other inspired, but unknown writer.

144. In Joshua X., 13, we read that the "sun stood still." Quite evidently the writer thought that the world was flat, and that the sun moved across the firmament.

It is not surprising that the writer was unaware of facts not discovered until hundreds of centuries after his time. But that has nothing to do with the inspiration or truth of the Bible. The writer set down the truth as it appeared in the external order. Even had he known that the earth is a globe, that it rotates on its own axis, and that it moves 'round the sun, he would probably and in fact certainly should have described the phenomenon just as he did. With all our scientific enlightenment we still speak of sunrise and sunset, though the sun does not rise, nor "go down." We express the apparent truth in everyday speech without any fear of being challenged concerning our veracity.

145. Did the sun stand still?

Relatively to this earth the sun is always still. It only appears to rise, move across the heavens, and set. The question should be, "Did God suspend the rotation of the earth for a given period?" There is no need to admit that He did so. The prolongation of daylight was a miracle wrought by God, but it could have been accomplished by a prolongation of the sun's rays. We all know how density of atmosphere apparently enlarges the sun towards evening, and how, too, by the refraction or bending of the sun's rays, the sun appears to remain visible even after we know that it must have gone below the ordinary line of vision with the actual horizon. By a miraculously caused refraction of the sun's rays God probably caused a prolongation of daylight, giving an effect which men would naturally describe as the sun standing still.

146. Did Jonah actually live in the whale for three days?

That depends upon the further question as to whether the incident be intended as strictly historical, or as a kind of parable with typical truth only. Catholic interpreters are free to regard it as an allegory. Most Catholic authors regard the story as historical. Granted the intervention of an omnipotent God, no one can say that it would be impossible. However, the Church has defined nothing concerning the interpretation of the Book of Jonah save that it is truly canonical and inspired by God.

New Testament "Contradictions"

147. Are there not many such contradictory passages in the New Testament?

There are no real contradictions in Scripture. A superficial reading may find passages which appear to be contradictory, but an examination of text and context by one who has the requisite knowledge and training in Biblical scholarship removes all idea of conflict. There is not a single instance of alleged contradiction that has not proved capable of rational solution. Enemies of revealed religion could continue asking captious questions interminably, stating objections in two or three plausible sentences, leaving to us the minute research, laborious examination, and the thirty pages of explanation necessary to educate them up to the standard required for an understanding of the problems they raise. From the earliest years of Christianity, critics have thus attacked the Scriptures, and they will do so till the end of the world. But the Scriptures remain, and will remain, accepted by intelligent and expert men of good will as the inspired Word of God. These men are as conversant with the objections as those who make them; but they are aware, too, of their superficial character in the vast majority of cases, and they know how all such difficulties yield to further examination and research. There is scarcely need to point out the folly of the man who thinks that, because he does not see the solution of a difficulty at once, no solution is possible!

148. In Galatians I., 15-22, .St. Paul says he did not go to Jerusalem to see the Apostles, but into Arabia, and then back to Damascus. In Acts IX., 25-30, St. Luke says that he went from Damascus to Jerusalem, and there met the Apostles.

No contradiction occurs there. St. Luke merely omits the additional details given by St. Paul to the Galatians. In writing to them, St. Paul wished to impress upon them that he had received the Christian revelation from God quite independently of the other Apostles. He practically says, "Do not think for a moment that any human being taught me what I preach to you. After my conversion I did not consult others, and I did not even go to Jerusalem to see the Apostles. I went into Arabia, and thence returned to Damascus. Then, three years after my conversion, I went to Jerusalem to see Peter." You see, St. Paul does not deny that he went to Jerusalem. He merely says that three years elapsed before he did so. St. Luke simply omits reference to St. Paul's solitude in Arabia, and merely states for the purpose of his summary of events that he went from Damascus to Jerusalem. He does not say that he did so immediately after his conversion. If a man left England, spent three vears in Colombo, and then came on to Australia, a shorter account of his life could say, "He left England and went to Australia." By its omission of reference to Colombo, the shorter account would not contradict a longer one which included such reference.

149. In Galatians I., 22, St. Paul says that he was unknown by face to the whole of Judea. Yet in Acts XXVI., 20, he tells Agrippa that he preached unto all the country of Judea.

There is no contradiction there. When he wrote to the Galatians he was speaking of the time before he had preached throughout Judea. When he was speaking to Agrippa, he had already preached there. The fact that he preached there subsequently cannot alter the fact that he was unknown by sight to the people of Judea before he did so.

150. The Old Testament says that lying lips are an abomination to the Lord, yet St. Paul writes to the Romans, "If the truth of God hath more abounded through my lie, am I to be judged a sinner?"

St. Paul puts that question only to refute the suggestion. He puts the question in Rom. III., 7, but in the very next verse says, "We are slandered, as some affirm that we say let us do evil that good may come, whose damnation is just." In Eph. IV., 25, the same St. Paul writes, "Wherefore, putting away lying, speak ye the truth every man with his neighbor."

151. Christ praises marriage saying that, "For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and cleave to his wife." But St. Paul says, "It is good for a man not to touch a woman."

There is no contradiction in that. Our Lord says that, if a man does marry, he leaves father and mother in order to live with his wife. But He Himself counsels the renunciation of marriage for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Matt. XIX., 12. St. Paul therefore declares that one who chooses not to marry makes quite a good choice. The context shows, of course, that St. Paul had in mind not any merely selfish motives, but a choice based upon the idea of self-sacrifice, and a complete consecration of oneself to the love of God and the service of one's fellow men.

152. The Acts of the Apostles declare that women will prophesy, and speaks of a man's four daughters who did prophesy; yet St. Paul writes, "Suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence."

St. Paul in no way contradicted what was written in the Acts. Personal prophetical gifts were bestowed by God upon both men and women in the first days of the Church. But there is no trace of suggestion that they necessarily conferred any judicial authority or administrative rights in the Church; and St. Paul is dealing precisely with such rights. Also there is no suggestion that the bestowal of prophetical gifts was to be a permanent feature in the Church; and St. Paul's subsequent legislation that women were not to teach publicly in the Churches contradicted no acquired rights of such women. Apart from all this, however, a woman could still receive the gift of prophecy from God without any conflict arising with St. Paul's legislation forbidding women to teach or usurp authority.

153. St. Paul says that the powers that be are ordained of God, and that we must not resist them. Yet the powers that were are blamed for condemning Christ.

St. Paul justifies legitimate authority acting within the limits of its proper jurisdiction, and in accordance with the demands of justice. There is no obligation to admit that legislators are right when they exceed their powers, and are manifestly unjust. To have power is one thing. To abuse that power is quite another. And the condemnation of Christ was a criminal abuse of power which it is impossible to justify.

154. Both St. Peter and St. Paul say that we must be subject to our masters; yet Christ said that one only is your master, and St. Paul himself says, "Be ye not servants of men."

There is no conflict here. Christ was not referring to ordinary relationships between masters and servants, but used the term "master" in the sense of "teacher'": and He declared that He only was the source of doctrine, and that all were to be taught by Him and to hand on His teachings. No one was to set himself up as an independent teacher in his own right. Such words certainly do not gainsay the necessity of obedience on the part of servants to the authority of masters in ordinary everyday affairs. The explanation of St. Paul's words, "Be ye not the servants of men," is given by St. Paul himself. He is speaking of our allegiance to Christ as Christians, and merely declares that that allegiance must never be abandoned in favor of men. We must regard our souls as belonging to Christ, and to no one else. But this does not exempt us from duties within their own proper limits to earthly employers and masters. In fact, St. Paul adds, "Let everyone remain in the condition of life wherein he was called, but abide therein with God." Servants of men will, therefore, remain servants of men; but once they have become Christians they will regard their duties as duties to be fulfilled for the love of God, and not as before, a matter of routine and with no spiritual motives whatever.

155. St. James says that the anger of man worketh not the righteousness of God, yet St. Paul says, "Be angry and sin not."

St. Paul warns us not to go to excess and commit sin when we have just reason for resentment and indignation. St. James is dealing precisely with that excess. Man's tendency to anger is implanted by God as part of our very nature, and is quite a good thing in itself. It braces us to ward off things that could be to our harm. Indignation and anger are certainly good when they help a girl to repel unwelcome advances on the part of some evil man. Far from being sinful, anger is then a preservative against sin. In such a case St. Paul's advice is sound. "Be angry, and sin not." Unfortunately, however, anger, like all other passions, tends to get out of hand. It easily becomes immoderate, and we get angry over trifling matters, or merely because we dislike people, and then it is true that the anger of man worketh not the righteousness of God. Anger then tends to vent itself upon others without just cause, and often without any restraint at all. There is no contradiction therefore between St. Paul, who urges us to make a good use only of our tendency to resentment of evil; and St. James, who warns us against bad temper and excessive irascibility.

156. St. Paul told the Ephesians that they were saved by faith, and not by works; whilst St. James says that by works a man is justified, and not by faith alone.

St. Paul's doctrine is that good works cannot contribute to a man's salvation before he is united with Christ by faith. Because the gift of faith is supernatural, no previous good works can deserve it. A man can ask the gift of faith from God, and if he receives it, it is the first step towards his salvation. St. James tells us that after a man has received the gift of faith he is expected to live up to it. The two passages show that both faith and a life of good works in accordance with faith are necessary if one is to be justified in God's sight. Such has ever been the Catholic doctrine, and it excludes the two extremes of rationalism and early Protestantism. For the rationalist says that natural goodness without faith is enough for any man; whilst the early Protestants attacked the Catholic doctrine that good works are necessary for salvation, and taught that salvation depends on faith alone. But I have said enough to show that there is no trace of contradiction between St. Paul and St. James in this matter.

CHAPTER FIVE

The Christian Religon

Christianity Alone True

157. You seem to think that the Christian religion is the only true religion.

I do not merely think it to be the only true religion. I know it to be so. I know that religion is as necessary to the human race as breathing. I know that there must be a true religion. I know that all other religions save that revealed by God and recorded in the Bible are false. Reason alone can provide sufficient grounds for that. Moreover, I know by the gift of divine faith that the contents of the Christian religion are true with the very truth of God.

158. If you were a Mahometan, you would think the same of your Mahometanism. So, too, if you were a Buddhist.

I deny that either a Mahometan or a Buddhist, or a member of any other non-Christian religion can ever have the same kind of certainty concerning his religious beliefs as that which is given by that particular grace of God known as the gift of Christian faith. Meantime, that others are convinced of the truth of their various religions merely shows that the human mind is limited; that men are affected by heredity and environment; and that they are prone to form very decided opinions without sufficient knowledge. But that does not affect the truth as it is in itself, and does not make all religions equal in value.

159. Much that is in Christianity is to be found in other religions also.

It would be very surprising were that not so. Religion is natural to man; and if men try to construct religious systems in accordance with their natural instinct and needs, they will naturally hit on some truth. And the basic natural truths in their various systems tend to content those who know no other religion, and to distract their attention from the accompanying human errors.

Not the Product of Religious Experience

160. It is often argued that Christianity is true because of its beneficial effect upon humanity.

Where it is practiced, it undoubtedly has that beneficial effect. Life is benefited by the Gospels. That could not but be the case, since both life and the Gospels have the same Author, God.

161. But the adjustment of the Gospels to human needs does not prove divine origin.

If we consider Christ's person, His doctrine in itself, the manner in which He taught it, together with its effect upon the lives of those who have practiced it sincerely, we have moral certainty that the religion of the Gospels is from God. We cannot account for it by merely human ingenuity. In fact, the greatest miracle of all would be for the merely natural ingenuity of Christ, were He nothing more than the son of Joseph, the carpenter, to evolve such a doctrine out of a merely human mind. In fact, it is impossible that a religion so perfect in all respects should be wrong in one point only, and that of such fundamental importance, its claim to a divine origin. Christ has been able to do what no other religion, and no philosopher, has ever been able to accomplish. He has given a doctrine which completely satisfies every legitimate aspiration of mankind. The argument is strengthened when we see that the loss of Christian faith and of the grace of Christ in a soul, or even in a nation, leads to vice, discord, pessimism and despair.

162. Could we not say that Christianity is the crystallization of the wisdom of mankind?

Not reasonably. Christendom drew its wisdom from the Gospels, and every departure from them has resulted in but a manifestation of folly.

163. I mean that the Gospels should be regarded as the fruit, and not the cause of human experience.

I don't think we could say that any more than we could say that a baby, being nourished, is giving, and not receiving milk. It is not human wisdom that made the Gospels. They are the Gospels that correct human folly.

Compared With Buddhism, Confucianism, Mahometanism, Bahaism, etc.

164. Since other religions contain so much good, why do you rank them all as false?

Because not every particle of truth is "the" truth. Non-Christian religions are wrong because side by side with such natural truth as they have, they contain many errors; and because they say they are from God, whereas they are not.

165. Buddhism and Confucianism have an immense number of adherents, far outnumbering Christians.

Even if you take those two religions together that is not true. If you were to include all other non-Christian religions in the world you would attain your desired majority. Taken individually, neither Buddhism nor Confucianism is numerically equal to Catholicism. It would not matter if they were, for error could not become truth merely because those who are wrong happen to outnumber those who are right. As a matter of fact, the approximate and proportionate figures are as follows: Catholicism, 400 millions; Greek Orthodox Christians, 150 million; Protestantism, 220 million: Confucianism and Taoism, 350 million; Buddhism, 150 million; Hinduism, 230 million; Mahometans, 210 million. You apparently regard Buddhism as including Hinduism, though they differ. Also it must be noted that the Indian and Chinese systems are rather moral philosophies than religions strictly so-called; and that the religious elements in them are due to the natural religious inclinations of men trying to find vague expression through these philosophies.

166. Buddhism is of far greater antiquity than any Christian creed.

Superficially that may seem to be true, insofar as Christianity dates from Christ, whilst Buddhism originated with Buddha or Gautama, who was born about 557 B. C. In reality, however, Christianity is very much older in origin, for it is but the legitimate development of the primitive revelation given by God to our first parents, and of the progressive revelations given through the Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as well as through Moses and subsequent Prophets. The primitive, patriarchal, and Mosaic religions were simply preparatory Christianity. And centuries before Buddha was born, men were looking forward to Christ their Savior, as we ourselves look back to Him for our salvation through His death on Calvary.

167. The Buddhist and Christian codes of conduct are apparently of similar portent.

You must not confuse external similarities in conduct with the code of that conduct. Man is essentially a social being, and it is not surprising that a leader should attract disciples and inculcate naturally good principles of morality. But the code of conduct in Buddhism differs immensely from the Christian code. Buddhism knows nothing of God nor of duties to God. It is based on a pessimistic view of life, and is entirely self-centered. It teaches that man is not essentially different from animals; that he goes through a series of transmigrations, ending practically in annihilation. Whilst Christians believe that they are created by God, and owe to God obedience and worship, serving Him in humility, and doing all for the love of Him, Buddhists regard man as a particle of a blind universe, whose whole aim is to escape distress and be at peace in this world. Even charity to others is based on love of self insofar as enmity disturbs one so much interiorly. Where Christians are saved by Christ, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, Buddhists need no savior. Buddha saves no one. He indicates his way, and each can attain the end by his own powers. Again there is but one Christ for all ages. But there must be a series of Buddhas, a new Buddha appearing as the work of each one fails. I cannot go through all the differences. But I have said enough to show that the codes of Buddhism and of Christianity are essentially different.

168. Has it not been claimed that Christianity copied many rules of conduct from Buddhism?

That has been claimed, but by writers who have judged too hastily from apparent resemblances. Some scholars have asserted a derivation of certain Christian practices from Buddhism; others, that later Buddhistic practices have been derived from Christianity. But deeper research has led scholars to deny both suppositions, holding that the similarities are more apparent than real; and that they are natural developments, independently of one another, from the respective aspirations of the two systems.

169. Has not a virgin birth been claimed for Buddha?

No authentic claims can be advanced on behalf of any abnormal birth in regard to Buddha. The oldest writings concerning him were compiled several centuries after his death, and they are full of imaginary elements. But even the legend of Buddha does not claim a virgin birth. We are told that Buddha was born of Maya, the wife of Suddhodana. Suddhodana and Maya had lived as husband and wife for years, but Maya was childless. Maya, however, miraculously conceived a child "by a ray of the sun." The child was named Siddhartha, with the surname Gautama, in honor of a Vedic poet. His followers speak of him as Buddha, the "wise one." The Buddhist tradition, therefore, does not say that Gautama was born of a virgin; and the cause of his conception-a ray of the sun-is obviously folklore. There is no parallel between the legendary birth of Buddha, and the historical virgin birth of Christ.

170. How do you account for the solidity and perpetuation of Buddhism and Confucianism?

So far as solidity is concerned neither Buddhism nor Confucianism has preserved a really consistent body of doctrine through the ages. There is nothing in them like the stability of dogmatic teaching in the Catholic Church. Both are rather ethical systems of conduct. Their perseverance is easily accounted for. Man is naturally religious, and he will tend to cling to the religion he has been taught, above all, when the true religion has not been brought within his reach. And even when the true religion has been put before him. the influence of heredity and environment, together with prejudice, may prevent his viewing it impartially.

171. How do the personalities of Buddha and Confucius compare with that of Christ?

They cannot be ranked as on the same plane as that of Christ. Neither Buddha nor Confucius claimed to be more than ordinary human beings. They did not even claim to be able to show their fellow men the way to God, for they knew nothing of God. They claimed to show men the way to peace of soul, and how to escape the worries and trials of this life. Christ claimed to be God, and demanded for Himself the love and absolute service of men. There is all the difference in the world between the Divine Personality of Christ and the merely human personalities of Buddha and of Confucius. According to Buddha's own teachings, he himself has gone through various transmigrations, having previously been a beggar, a lion, a bird, an elephant, a king, and various other types. He attained perfection, so the legend says, and had a right to enter Nirvana; but he preferred to be born again in order to teach men the road to wisdom and to freedom from the miseries of life.

Confucius was born about six years earlier than Buddha. This Chinese philosopher was a great reader and collector rather than an original thinker. He edited the ancient Chinese classics, and taught a system of natural ethics. He concentrated on behavior in this world, and admitted that he knew nothing beyond this world, although he did not deny a future life.

Of no other person in history could such words be written as those used by St. John in speaking of Christ: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt amongst us."

172. Does not Mahometanism worship the true God?

It does, but in the wrong way. No one with a sense of logic and a knowledge of history could accept Mahometanism as a religion truly revealed by God. Mahomet was born about 570 A. D. He founded a religion of his own, blended of Arabic, Jewish, and Christian elements. But his moral standards fall infinitely below those of the Christian teachings, whilst many of his doctrines and the history of his religious movement cannot possibly claim a divine origin and protection in the light of critical analysis.

173. Perhaps if you knew more of other religions you would not continue to be a Roman Catholic.

You have no grounds for that supposition. Of one thing I am quite certain. If there be any true religion in this world today it is the Catholic religion. It is a choice, therefore, between Catholicism, or no religion at all. But to have no religion is such a complete violation of reason that no instructed and intelligent man could entertain such an idea for a moment. You can be quite sure that I will spend the rest of my life as a Catholic, and die in that faith. If such absolute certainty seems strange to you, it is only because your own religion has never been able to enkindle a similar confidence within you.

174. Have you yourself ever studied other religions besides the Catholic religion?

I have been doing it practically all my life. Like everybody else, of course, I was born a pagan. But after a few weeks I was christened in the Anglican Church, and took Anglicanism for granted until later reflection altered my views. Despite my being an Anglican, I attended Methodist and Presbyterian Sunday Schools as a child; but later on, when I left school and went to work, dropped all religion in practice. When, for the first time the claims of the Catholic Church were brought to my notice, I reacted against them rather violently, and resumed my attendance at the Anglican Church, and sought the help of the Anglican rector of the parish to preserve my Protestant faith. With him I went into the whole question of religion deeply, and he ended by telling me that he thought I ought to become a Catholic, considering the convictions at which I had arrived. I had no thought then of becoming a priest, of course. But later on, I felt that such was God's will, and after a twelve years' course of studies here in Australia, I was ordained as a Catholic priest. Thereupon I went to Rome to do two more years of study there, and ever since have been engaged chiefly in the study of comparative religion. This has necessitated the constant reading of what other religions and churches have to say for themselves, and I can but assure you that the more knowledge I have attained, the greater has become my certainty of the truth of the Catholic Church.

175. Have you ever studied the religion of Bahaism?

I have. It is a popular religion of mushroom growth in recent times, though it claims to be very ancient in origin.

176. Could you tell me something of its history?

According to the Bahais, the last of the Mahometan Shiite sect of 12 Imans died in Persia about 940 A. D. But he did not really die. He continued to live in the beyond, directing the world from a distance through an intermediary or a gate called a Bab. This went on for 69 years when the last Bab died without appointing a successor. In 1844, a young Persian decided to announce himself as a Bab, restoring communication with the last Iman. This young Persian was murdered in 1850, but his followers, the Babis, said that he had promised the advent of the One longed for by all peoples, the Mighty Educator, who would give the Most Great Peace to all mankind. One of the leaders of the Babis, named Baha'u'llah, suddenly declared, in 1863, that he was the Mighty One promised. Baha'u'llah preached his religion chiefly in Baghdad. One of his followers, named Ibrahim George Khay-ar'u'llah, who had married an English wife, went to America about 1892, and began to spread the worship of Baha'u'llah there. The movement so grew that in 1902 a magnificent temple was commenced in Chicago, on the shores of Lake Michigan. In 1911, Abdul-Baha, whom Baha'u'llah, before his death, had appointed Chief Apostle, went to America, and Protestant Churches of various denominations were thrown open to him for lectures. He taught that Confucius, Buddha, Zoroaster, Christ, and Mahomet, had all been precursors of Baha'u'llah, and that in Baha'u'llah men would find the fullness of God's revelation, and the Most Great Peace. Moreover, Baha'u'llah is responsible for all that happens in the world, and those who become Bahais will attain true spiritual power and share with him in supreme control of all things. A National Assembly has been formed in America to rule the cause of the Most Great Peace there, and to see to its expansion. This strange religious aberration is winning many credulous souls who have lost their grip on such religion as they previously possessed, and are in search of a new one.

Rejected by Modern Jews

177. Why do the Jews today still deny the claims of Christ?

Because they are not sufficiently interested to go into the question. Most of them are content with what their fathers before them have believed. Then, too, the Jews have a most strong national bond identified with their religion, and their very sense of isolation from other peoples even whilst in the midst of them keeps them aloof from the religion of others. Furthermore, the Jews still center their hopes and expectations upon a salvation restricted to this world, devoting little thought to the hereafter and to the supernatural. Finally, I think most Jews have a latent consciousness of the ill-treatment to which they have been subject, often most unjustly, by professing Christians; and this in itself would leave a kind of repugnance for the religion of those who injured them, predisposing them against so much as considering its claims.

178. How do the Jews stand in relation to Christianity today?

Judaism as a religion is no longer acceptable to God. The one true religion in this world is the Christian religion. But the Jewish people, as a whole, are a witness to the Christian religion in spite of themselves. They are dispersed everywhere, yet are one race and a permanent feature of this world. They manifest the very predictions of their own Scriptures, and of Christ, by their very refusal to sec the realization of those predictions. They preserve the very texts and prophecies announcing that they will love the promises, yet reject the fulfillment of those promises. It is a marvelous thing. How far individual Jews are responsible to God for their rejection of Christ must, of course, be left to God. The modern Jew would not be nearly so responsible as those Jews who actually saw and heard Christ in person.

179. Would a good and practicing Jew go to heaven, despite his not being baptized a Christian?

Yes, provided through no fault of his own he did not at any time advert to the truth of Christianity, and to the necessity of actual baptism; and provided he sincerely believed Judaism to be still the true religion, and died truly repentant of all serious violations of conscience during life.

The Demand for Miracles

180. If God wants people to become Christians would not you, seeing the appalling conditions today, and believing in miracles as you do, expect God to work more miracles to convert us unbelievers?

No. You see, as a Catholic, I believe that miracles can occur, and I know from history that miracles have occurred. But I do not therefore think that miracles should occur whenever human speculation decides that they would be opportune. As for the appalling conditions of today, history makes me doubt whether it is relatively more appalling than in other ages. There is a danger that we, who are sensitive to the present ills of humanity, will tend to discount the miseries of previous ages to which others were sensitive, and to think that no one has suffered as we.

181. If Jesus was God, as you believe, and came to earth once, might He not reasonably make an occasional reappearance, especially in such times as these?

That is not a reasonable expectation. How could it be, when we know definitely that when God did appear in the midst of men, He declared that His next coming would be at the end of time? That necessarily excludes occasional reappearances in our midst. Nor can I see what benefits you think would arise from such reappearances. When God did become incarnate and dwelt amongst men, multitudes who met Him refused to believe in Him. The same thing would happen again. He came once to pay the price of man's redemption; and that having been done, all who have the good will may benefit by it. If they have not the good will, they would not benefit by His coming again. And such times as these have no greater claim upon Him than any other times.

The Necessity of Faith

182. The problem of religion seems to be extraordinarily difficult.

The problem is extraordinarily difficult yet extraordinarily simple. The simplest truth revealed by God is extraordinarily deep when we try to sound it to its full depths. Yet faith in all that God has taught is a simple act, based not on the understanding of every least thing God has revealed, but on a consciousness of the claims of God to our allegiance no matter what He reveals. By this faith, which a child can possess, we accept all that He reveals in general, and each thing as further study reveals it to us as contained in the general revelation. But this faith is a gift of God, to be prayed for rather than to be attained by our own efforts, even though our own efforts are required as a disposing condition.

183. You maintain that faith in Christ is necessary for salvation?

I maintain that Christ is the Savior of mankind, and that there is no salvation except through Christ. A man's own efforts cannot accomplish his salvation, for man cannot be his own redeemer. If any man is saved, therefore, he will owe it to the grace of Christ. But as regards actual faith in Christ, professed during one's lifetime, that will be required only of those who have had Christian teaching sufficiently manifested to them. One who has had sufficient opportunity to believe in Christ is guilty before God if he refuses deliberately to do so, and dies still rejecting His teaching authority. Therefore, Christ said, "He who believes shall be saved; he who believes not, shall be condemned."

184. What of those who have never heard of Christianity and follow other beliefs?

God obliges no one to the impossible. If these people are sincere in their mistaken beliefs, try to obey natural conscience, and repent of their failures and sins, God will give them the necessary interior graces for their salvation, graces due to the merits of Christ. The moment after their death they will know that Christ has been their Redeemer, even though, through no fault of their own, they did not recognize the fact during life.

185. What of the countless millions before Christ?

The same answer applies to them also. Those who knew of the Old Testament promises of the Redeemer to come had to have faith in those promises of God as a condition of their salvation. Others were in the same position as those today who have never heard of Christ. But all graces given prior to Christ, whether to those who believed in God's revelation, or to the inculpably ignorant, were given in view of Christ's death on the Cross; and He is the Savior of all.

186. Faith is a blind acceptance of what we do not know to be true, and religion is but organized ignorance.

The Christian faith is certainly not blind. It is wide-awake acceptance of what God has taught only after one has solid evidence that God has so spoken. If a man is ill, it is faith in the medical profession that takes him to the operating table; and far from this being an ignorant action, it is a most wise one. The same principle is involved in an act of faith in God's reliability when He deigns to teach us truth in the supernatural order.

187. Is it a virtue to be so convinced of one's own beliefs as to exclude any possibility of being wrong?

Not if one's own beliefs happen to be the result of one's own speculations, with nothing particularly in their favor save that one desires to maintain them. It is a virtue, however, to maintain the absolute truth of what Christ has taught, once one has attained the reasonable conviction that He is God. For true virtue refuses to admit that God does not know what He is talking about, or that He is given to telling lies. It is not a question of refusing to admit a possibility of our being wrong. It is a question of refusing to admit the possibility of God being wrong. Virtue forbids blasphemous insults against God.

188. Once you say that your religion deals with the infinite and the supernatural you rule out any possibility of knowing it to be true.

You are confusing two things, a religion as a religion, and the contents of its teachings. For example, we can know in the strict sense that Christ really existed, that He claimed to be God, and wrought more than enough signs to justify belief in that claim. A Christian knows that his religion is the one true religion. The teachings of that religion, which deal with the infinite and supernatural, he believes by faith. He knows that God teaches certain things, but because they are beyond human comprehension, he believes them by faith in God's knowledge and veracity.

189. However reasonable a thing may be, if it is not demonstrable, it remains mere theory.

You are not making sufficient allowance for the different kinds of demonstration, the one from intrinsic evidence, the other from extrinsic evidence. For example, I know that two and two make four by intrinsic evidence. I have only to set out two units with another two units before me, and I know that there are four units. But proof by extrinsic evidence differs. I prove that God exists from reason. By history I prove that He said this thing. But since what He says is as far above me as the Einstein theory of relativity is above the powers of a child of seven, I believe it simply because He says so. And I have a genuine knowledge of the truth based upon His authority. It is not mere theory. A theory is a probable guess, a conjecture, or an hypothesis. But the doctrine I believe is not a guess, conjecture, or hypothesis of my own.

Difficulties Not Doubts

190. Take faith in the Trinity. You admit that, since it is a mystery, you cannot demonstrate its truth beyond doubt.

We know the truth of the Trinity beyond all doubt. We cannot demonstrate the existence of three divine Persons in the one divine Nature by intrinsic evidence drawn from an experimental knowledge of the divine Nature as it is in itself. But we can give all that reason requires to exclude all doubt as to its truth. Negatively we can show that the doctrine does not violate any rational principles. Positively we can show that God has revealed the doctrine.

191. The evidence in support of the theory of the Trinity, like the evidence in support of the theory of evolution, is incomplete; therefore, we cannot "know" either theory to be correct.

Not for a single moment can one speak of the theory of evolution and of the doctrine of the Trinity as if they were on a par in the realm of our knowledge. Evolution is a conjecture of men based on a probable guess of human reason alone, and without adequate data. The doctrine of the Trinity is the authentic teaching of Christ with all the authority of God, who obviously must know the facts. The Trinity, therefore, is not a theory; it is absolutely certain with all the certainty of God's omniscience.

192. Does not the Church demand faith precisely because we cannot know it to be true?

We have a mediate knowledge of its truth. We know that God is a reliable source of information, and that He has taught the doctrine.  We believe it because God teaches it, and our faith gives us a knowledge of the truth which has an extrinsic certainty far above all degrees of mere probability. Evolution is a mere theory because man has not sufficient evidence to demonstrate its truth, and has no other source of information concerning it save that of the world about him. If, however, God stepped in and revealed to man that the evolutionary theory is true, then it would no longer be a mere theory, but a certainty, even though men discovered not a scrap more natural evidence to support it. Men would know of its truth just as a child would know the right answer to a sum if told by a teacher, despite omission or inability on the part of the child to do the preliminary work necessary to arrive at that answer. In the same way we have certainty of the religious truths God has revealed.

193. Can one cling to the Christian faith despite intellectual difficulties which defy solution concerning its doctrines?

Yes, for difficulties concerning revealed mysteries do not affect the sound and reasonable foundation for one's acceptance of Christianity as the revelation of God. A difficulty in comprehending the full significance of a thing is not a doubt concerning its existence. There are scores of difficulties concerning things we know to be facts in the natural order with scientific certainty; but we do not deny them because of that.

Proofs Available

194. You admit, then, that Christianity cannot be proved?

I have never said that. It may demand faith in doctrines above the powers of human reason in themselves, but it can prove itself to have been revealed by God.

195. If you have anything like proof, men like Professor Haldane, who was deeply versed in the arguments for Christianity, yet who does not believe in it, must be incurably stupid.

Professor Haldane is not deeply versed in the arguments for Christianity. He has made the most elementary blunders in his attempts at stating them. And however well versed he may be in his own department of natural science, I am afraid that he is incurably stupid in at least some other matters. Listen to one of his considered statements: "I am prepared to admit the possibility," he writes, "that I am nothing but a biologically and socially convenient fiction." That is certainly a stupid statement, and a repudiation of reason as a guide to truth at all.

196. You really mean that you can find arguments to support the belief of those already inclined to such belief.

I do not mean that. Men have been convinced by the evidence for Christianity who were not in the least inclined to Christian beliefs when they took up the study of the question. And of those convinced, some have yielded to their convictions, making their act of faith in Christian teaching; others have not. Whether a man is inclined to accept Christian beliefs or not, sufficient proof is available for every reasonable man to show that the Christian religion has been revealed by God, and that its teachings have the guarantee of His authority.

Dispositions of Unbelievers

197. Look at the numbers thirsting after all sorts of panaceas for salvation.

I deny that they want salvation as we Christians understand it. They may thirst for panaceas of this world's ills so that they can enjoy this world's goods and bodily comforts and pleasures without concomitant penalties. They want what they desire, not what God tells them they ought to desire. And the end in view being wrong, they naturally ignore the means to the right end. Rejecting the supernatural end or destiny which God offers, they propose another end to be attained independently of Him. All they know is that all the means they have tried so far to get to their self-constituted end have failed. But they will not renounce the material and selfish end they propose to attain. So they are still trying and grasping at all sorts of panaceas, and are left still thirsty.

198. Don't say that men do not choose to believe because the way of salvation is hard.

That is precisely what I must say. Some people are so intellectually lazy that it is too hard on them to undertake the study of God's revelation. Others are so proud that it is too hard on their self-esteem to ask them to submit to authoritative teaching of any kind. Others are so immersed in earthly ambitions that it is too hard on them to accept supernatural and spiritual ideals instead. Others again are so subject to self-indulgence in a hundred and one ways that a religion asking self-denial is altogether too hard for them to consider for a moment.

199. Men are ready to submit to anything provided they can realize their ideals.

You well say "their" ideals. But they are not prepared to sacrifice "their" ideals for those proposed to them by Almighty God. Men will sacrifice what they consider the lesser good for what they consider the greater good. And often some good of the present moment will seem greater than a future good which in their calm moments men will admit to be really the higher and better. People whose one ideal is to have a good time will sacrifice rest, health, and money in the cause. Others, whose ideals are based on utilitarian rather than upon pleasurable earthly ambitions, will sacrifice comfort and well-being in the fight for their objective. With some people individual motives prevail. But they stake all on earthly and materialistic considerations, which they are not prepared to sacrifice for supernatural and spiritual considerations. They will not serve God. It is humanity that is to be served and worshipped, either in their own precious persons, or in mankind as a whole. Man is lord of creation to a certain extent, but he is a vassal king, subject to God, and obliged to serve God. But human pride revolts. Men refuse to admit that they owe homage to God. They will be independent, self-sufficient, the sole object of their own worship. All must minister to them, and they to nobody. And all must be measured according to its relationship to their earthly progress, comfort, and welfare. In other words, man is made for man, and not for God. And this deification of man is the great idolatry. Men are fascinated by it. Humanity is set up on an altar, as was a woman as the goddess of reason in the Cathedral of Notre Dame during the French Revolution. And sacrifices are made for the glorification and satisfaction of humanity whether in self, or the nation, or the race, to the accompaniment of clouds of incense in the form of adulation, and of hymns of praise for men's noble ideals of themselves. This is the great obstacle to religious belief in God, and to the acceptance of His revelation.

200. See what men have endured under Communism and Fascism, in order to realize their ideals!

These things are bound up only with the earthly and material interests of humanity. Men are striving for what they think will serve themselves best, not that they themselves may serve God. And whatever they may be prepared to sacrifice for their own sake, they are not prepared to sacrifice themselves for God's sake. That they find too hard; and that is why they refuse to consider a revealed religion which demands an abdication of self and detachment from the fascination of earthly attractions. Even did they study it scientifically and sufficiently to realize that God's revelation is credible, they would refuse to make its teachings the object of their faith and conduct. Not every man yields to evidence; and there is a lot of truth in the saying that "a man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still." The basic difficulty as regards the Christian religion is that men's wills are wrong. And that hinders the perception of the truth. So Christ said, "Everyone that doth evil hateth the light, and cometh not to the light, that his works may not be reproved." And to love this world as if it were the be-all and end-all of man is doing evil. It is the repudiation of God. And Christ warned us against it when He said, "Love not the world," indicating the supreme law, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and soul, and mind, and strength." Lack of the good will to do that is the basic reason for intellectual rejection of God's revelation.

CHAPTER SIX

A Definite Christian Faith

One Religion is Not as Good as Another

201. If Christ came to earth today, would He not bless all the Christian Churches, despite their doctrinal differences?

No. Remember that Jesus said, "I am the Truth." Truth excludes error. He founded His Church and said, "If a man will not hear the Church, let him be as the heathen." That does not sound much like a blessing. Again He said to His Apostles, "He who despises you despises Me; and he who despises Me, despises Him that sent Me." Also, "He that is not with Me is against Me." And if it be true that Sunday should be observed by Christians, would He have a blessing for the Church which still insists on the Jewish Saturday? If He be really present in the Blessed Eucharist, would He be equally pleased with the doctrine of those who deny His presence there? He would say, "I do not blame those who are mistaken through no fault of their own, but I object to doctrines which deny the truth I revealed to mankind. And I cannot bless organizations devoted to the diffusion of error."

202. I'm not a Catholic, but God has heard my prayers in many ways.

That in no way disproves what I have said. The Catholic Church teaches that God will hear the sincere prayer of anyone at all, even though that person's religion be quite erroneous, provided the person be in good faith and does not suspect it to be wrong. God would hear the earnest prayer of a sincere Mahometan; but that would not make Mahometanism the correct religion. And that God hears the sincere prayer of a sincere Protestant does not make it just as right to be a Protestant as to be a Catholic. Those who really love Christ want to belong to the true Church He founded, and not to any other. And the Church He established is the Catholic Church.

203. Are not a conscientious Catholic and a conscientious Protestant equal in God's sight?

They may have equally good dispositions, but they have not equally good religions. The Catholic has the advantage of the full truth, and greater means of grace at his disposal. Protestantism, after all, lacks the Mass, and many of the Sacraments, besides a clear knowledge of Christ's teachings on many essential matters.

204. At judgment will Protestants be told that they were on the wrong path?

They will certainly be told that. But they will not be blamed for the mistake if they were in no way responsible for it. God will judge them on other factors; and if indeed they have been faithful to their conscientious convictions, they will save their souls. But realizing then that the Catholic religion was right, little as they suspected it, they will say, "Had we but known when we were on earth, we certainly would have become Catholics."

205. Would you deny that God offered grace and guidance to such Protestants?

Certainly not. God gave them the graces necessary for their salvation, and to do His will according to their convictions. If in His goodness God had offered them the gift of faith in the Catholic Church they would have become Catholics. If they did not become Catholics it was only that they did not receive the particular grace necessary to perceive the truth of the Catholic Church. God respected their good will, and gave the graces necessary for a life of sincere virtue, or at least necessary for final repentance and death in His love and friendship.

Changing One's Religion

206. It is only natural that people should believe what they have been taught from childhood.

That is quite true, and, therefore, we do not blame people for mistakes for which they are not responsible. But the fact that people tend to believe what they have been taught from childhood does not make what they have been taught right. Would you say that, because a Protestant child takes it for granted that Protestantism is right, and a Catholic child takes it for granted that Catholicism is right, both Protestantism and Catholicism are equally right? They cannot be. Catholicism says that it is absolutely necessary to be subject to the Pope. Protestantism says just the opposite. How can both be right?

207. I think we should die in the religion in which we are born.

That is an antichristian principle. Were it sound, why did not Christ tell the Jews to die in the religion in which they were born, instead of asking them to accept His religion? And, even on reason alone, must a man live and die in the religion of his parents even though he discovers it to be wrong?

208. One who leaves the religion of his parents is a traitor.

A traitor is one who leaves a cause he knows to be right, and does so from unworthy motives. But would you say that St. Paul was a traitor when he abandoned what he knew to be wrong in order to embrace the religion of Christ once he had perceived it to be right?

209. Should people change their religion when they get married?

If they discover their religion to be wrong, they should abandon it whether they marry or not. If they know it to be right, they should not abandon it for any consideration on earth. Marriage has nothing whatever to do with this question. Religion is concerned with duties to one's Creator. No desire to please a fellow creature can affect one's duties to God.

210. Should not a woman embrace the religion of her husband?

Such a principle could never be admitted. For then, were her husband a pagan, she would have to become a pagan; if a Jew, she would have to become a member of the Jewish religion; if a Methodist, or a Presbyterian, or an Anglican, or a Baptist, or anything else, she would have to become a member of one of those religions. God's rights, and the claims of conscience, would then become a mockery. The principle must stand that the relation between the soul and God cannot be affected by any relationships with human beings. This principle is of universal application.

211. Then a Protestant cannot become a Catholic in order to marry a Catholic?

That is true. However desirable it might be that both should be Catholics, if the Protestant party conscientiously believes the Catholic religion to be wrong, he cannot possibly embrace that religion. What he can do, however, is this: He can suspect that he has not enough knowledge of the Catholic religion; or that he even has mistaken notions about it. For the sake of his wife he can, therefore, study the Catholic religion. Then, if he becomes convinced of its truth, he can embrace it for its own sake, and for the love of God. I hope all is now clear. Marriage is not a reason in itself for the changing of one's religion. But marriage to a Catholic would certainly justify a Protestant in undertaking a close study of the Catholic religion to see whether he could conscientiously accept it.

212. It is out of place for a man to adopt his wife's religion.

As no woman should adopt a religion merely because it is that of her husband, so no man should adopt a religion merely because it is that of his wife. Ever human being owes it to God to find out the true religion, and having found it, to embrace it. This obligation falls on every soul, independently of the question of sex. If the wife's religion happens to be the true religion, then the man should embrace that religion, not for his wife's sake, but from a sense of duty to God.  If the man's religion happens to be the true one, then the wife should join it.

Catholic Convictions and Zeal

213. In mixed marriages it is always the Protestant husband who is converted to the Catholic wife's religion, never the Catholic who accept the Protestant religion. Why do Catholics cling to their position so rigidly?

Because it is certain that the Catholic party has the true religion. And, therefore, Catholics cling to their religion for the love of God, and of Christ, and of their own souls. Knowing that the Catholic religion is true, Catholics know that they can please God only by fidelity to their religion; and that they would offend Him seriously by leaving it. Duty to God is the most important thing in life. To be what God wants her to be is a better and nobler thing for any woman than to be what her husband would like her to be. And no husband can take God's place in his wife's soul. Secondly, we must think of Christ. He established the Catholic Church only, and to that Church we owe obedience for the love of Christ. To abandon the Catholic Church is to abandon Christ, and cry out with those who put Him to death, "Away with Him. Let Him be crucified." Catholics cannot bring themselves to do that. Thirdly, we Catholics understand the duty to our own souls. Our religion is dearer to us than life itself. We know its truth and beauty and value as others do not. And we need the help our religion alone can give us. To abandon our Holy Mass, our Communions, the opportunity of sacramental absolution in Confession, our devotion to our Lady, the Mother of Christ, in fact, all the privileges of our religion-one who asks us to do this does not realize what he is asking. Never can there be any peace of soul for us save in the Catholic religion.

214. Can any one group claim to be exclusively right, and that others are accordingly wrong?

If not, every one of us is radically uncertain as to whether his religion is right or wrong. Christ could never have intended that. He taught the truth with authority, and promised to safeguard it till the end of time. Being the very Son of God, He could do so, and He chose to do so by means of an infallible Church. And he who wants the religion of Christ must belong to that infallible Church. To understand this, contrast Christ with some merely human philosopher. Take Aristotle. When Aristotle was dead, his teaching, so coherent, intellectual, and positive fell into the hands of disciples of diverse tendencies, who dragged it in all directions, and finally degraded it into rank materialism. Now Christ, knowing what was in man, and possessing means not possessed by Aristotle, took precautions against such distortion and destruction of His teachings.  He organized and guaranteed His Church from the doctrinal as well as from the practical point of view. He Himself was the Light. When He departed He left His Church to be the Light of mankind to shine, not with a light of its own, but with His Light, as infallibly reliable as Himself. All religions which conflict with the Catholic Church therefore are mistaken.

215. If others think their own religion the right one, should Catholics try to convert them?

Yes, although prudence is required in the exercise of that duty. Christ bade the Church preach the Gospel to every creature. And every Catholic shares to some extent in the obligation laid upon the whole Church. No Catholic, therefore, can be indifferent to the conversion of non-Catholics, however sincere they may be. Catholics are obliged to hope for their conversion, and contribute towards the apostolate by prayer and good example, letting their light shine before men. Where advisable and acceptable, also, they should speak of the subject to others, giving good advice, suggesting the study of Catholicism, and urging the reception of instruction from accredited priests. The fact that others are in good faith, and think themselves right, does not alter the fact that they are mistaken, and that they would be far better off spiritually did they possess the full truth. And charity should make every Catholic desire to bring such blessings into the lives of others.

Religious Controversy

216. It seems a tragic waste of power against the common enemy of evil when the Churches detract from each other's good works.

I do not detract from any good works of other Churches. I regret indeed their mistakes, and pray for unity. But I know that the only way to unity is by the return of the children of Protestantism to the one Catholic Church their forefathers should never have left. Meantime, you have hit upon one of the tragic disasters which resulted from the divisions due to the abandoning of the Catholic Church by so many at the time of the Reformation. I have watched an ant dragging to its home a dead beetle. Other ants with equal good will rushed to help it, but only to pull in other directions. It seemed a ludicrous waste of energy. Now, the Catholic Church alone was really commissioned by Christ to bring back humanity to God. No one could blame the Protestant Churches for trying to do the same. But it is a vast pity that they separated from the Catholic Church, each pulling in a different direction.

217. I do not believe in religious discussions which always awaken strong feelings.

Religion does not exempt us from the use of reason. The head as well as the heart has its duty. And if we are obliged to think about religious matters, there is no reason why we should be forbidden an interchange of thought with others on the subject. Why should a discussion about politics be right, yet a discussion about religion be wrong? The interchange of thought by discussion has led thousands from erroneous ideas to the truth on innumerable subjects. Surely, you will not say that it is good to rectify mistakes in other matters, but that religious mistakes should be the accepted thing. With you, I would certainly object to quarreling over religion. But there is no need for religious discussion to develop into a quarrel. The rejection of some particular religious position is quite consistent with politeness, and respect for the person who sincerely maintains that position.

218. Since quarrels do arise with much sectarian bitterness, would it not be better to avoid all discussion of religion?

If truth has any value, the search for it must go on, even though it hurts at times. After all, Christ came to teach the truth, and He was not deterred from doing so by the disturbances He caused amongst those not disposed to hear it. We know the ill-feeling He caused in many of His listeners, and what it meant to Himself in the end. The fault, of course, was in the evil dispositions of His enemies. We ourselves must learn to confine our efforts to reasoned judgments on doctrines, principles, and historical facts. Great difficulty arises even here, for unconsciously there is a danger of distorting the truth itself through partisan spirit and lack of intense love for intellectual honesty. We all have the tendency to accept as true those things we would like to be true, and merely because our inclinations tend in that direction. To rise above that tendency, and to put aside all likes and dislikes, is almost the first requirement in all who earnestly wish to discover the truth.

219. Mutual recriminations are so futile.

I wish they were only that. They are positively injurious and never justified. Both Catholics and Protestants should discard once and for all everything unfair, rude, hateful, unkind, or simply unpleasant about each other. Mutual recriminations do no good and much harm. Instead of perpetuating causes of irritation and hostility, we should all try to correct religious errors wherever we may find them, whether in ourselves or in others; but this must be done with a calm loyalty to truth, and without any concession to blind feeling and prejudice.  And always, whilst weighing the value of principles, we must leave persons to God, our own charity giving them credit, as far as possible, for the best of intentions. This does not mean that one must be a hypocrite, adjusting all that is said to what one thinks other people will like, whether it be right or wrong. One must be sincere and straight, never seeking to win people at the expense of truth. That the problem is exceedingly difficult, owing to the psychological differences in various types of people, I do not deny. But we must do our best, leaving results to God.

The Curse of Bigotry

220. Do you think intolerance and bigotry will gradually disappear as the denominations get to know one another better?

There is, of course, far too much sectarianism and bigotry in existence, and no one could condemn it too strongly. But the remedy for it goes beyond a merely closer knowledge of others. The essential thing is an immense increase in charity, or love for all others, whatever be their beliefs. In the meantime, all should work to eliminate the basic cause of sectarianism, that almost unintelligible division of the sects from one another, and from the Catholic Church.

221. The very claim that yours is the only true Church indicates your bias against others.

If you mean that I am unreasonably prejudiced against them, I must deny the charge. If you mean that I accept the Catholic religion to the exclusion of the claims of other religions, I must plead guilty. But in that case every person who refuses to believe what others want him to believe must be regarded as biased.

222. Such claims cannot but meet with the charge of bigotry.

Anyone who has set convictions on almost any subject, but above all on religious matters, is liable to that accusation from two types of people-from those who have set convictions of an opposite character, and from those who have no set convictions and think that nobody else should have set convictions. But when I say that anyone with set convictions is liable to the accusation of bigotry, I do not mean that the accusation is always justified. In some cases it is; in other cases it is not.

223. How far should tolerance go?

We should be tolerant towards our fellow men, whatever be their mistakes, provided their mistakes be not injurious to the common good, or to the peace of society. But such tolerance does not oblige us to admit that their mistakes are not mistakes. Truth excludes error. And he who wants the truth will not get it by tolerating error. Tolerance does not mean that one must agree that the ideas of others are right when he believes them to be wrong.

224. The Catholic Church wants all to submit to her; but only bigots expect to be able to impose their views on others.

Not bigots, but only fools could expect to be able to impose their views on others. But a Catholic, knowing his religion to be the true religion, can at least ask others to study it; and then, if convinced, to become Catholics for the sake of truth and for the love of God. If not convinced, of course, others cannot become Catholics.

The Catholic Church absolutely forbids any attempt to compel acceptance of the Catholic religion by unwilling people.

225. I have heard Catholics say that one must he a bigot where truth is concerned.

By such expressions the case is not well put. In the strict sense of the word, bigotry is a blind and obstinate attachment to a particular creed, together with excessive zeal and a refusal to make allowances for other people's sincerity. No one should adopt such an attitude, even in the cause of truth. In a loose sense of the word, bigotry is a term used to denote a firm and reasonable adherence to what is true, despite the fact that others do not think it true. In that sense, one sometimes hears the expression that one has to be a bigot where truth is concerned.

226. It is a known fact that the Roman Catholic Church is intensely intolerant and bigoted towards what she terms the so-called Christian Churches.

That is not a just estimate of the Catholic attitude. Truth must exclude error; but Catholics who have the truth are forbidden to behave intolerantly towards the persons of those who differ from them. Bigotry is a narrow and unreasonable dislike of others, with a readiness to think and speak evil of them. That is forbidden to Catholics. Yet we must retain a reasonable consistency. We cannot believe that our own Church is the one true Christian Church, and then inconsistently admit that other and opposed Churches are equally true and equally reliable representatives of the Christian religion. Yet the Catholic conviction is not a blind conviction. This book should be evidence of that. But the Catholic Church teaches her subjects that their conviction must inspire no dislike of others; that it must not prevent them from making full allowances for the sincerity and goodness of others, despite their mistakes; and that it never dispenses them from charity.

227. Truly religious people humbly bow in respect to every other creed, so long as people are sincere.

By humility one may depreciate self; but one does not practice humility by depreciating Christ. Humility does not demand that we respect creeds opposed to the teachings of Christ, and declare them to be permissible. St. Paul wrote to Titus. "A man that is a heretic avoid, knowing that such a one is subverted, and sinneth." St. John said, "If any man come to you and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into the house, nor say to him: God speed you." It is impossible to visualize St. Paul or St. John "humbly bowing in respect to every other creed." If people are sincere in a wrong creed, we may respect their sincerity, but that certainly does not mean that we must respect their creed. I believe that you are a truly religious person. Now, we Catholics hold as part of our creed that the Pope is the infallible and supreme head of Christ's only true Church on earth, and that all Christians should be subject to him. Here you may test yourself by your own principle. Do you humbly bow in respect to that creed?

228. Why cannot there be a spirit of unity between all Christian bodies? How do you account for the lack of it?

There should always be a spirit of unity in charity and respect for each other's persons. There cannot be doctrinal unity, of course, until we all accept the same doctrines. I must confess, however, that much antipathy does exist, and this is greatly to be deplored. The cause of it is chiefly to be found in social influences. Catholics and Protestants, for example, have false and unkind feelings about each other because they have inherited them. They have been handed on from generation to generation. We have got them from books we thought to be reliable, or from our parents and religious teachers, and have taken for granted that they must be right. But nothing that destroys charity and leads to bitter ill-feeling can be right. We must try to emancipate ourselves from the legacy of prejudices, sentiment, and bitter sectarianism. Either a given doctrine is wrong, or the dispositions of those who resent that doctrine are wrong. The first problem for every one of us is to check our dispositions, making sure of our love for all our fellow men, and also of our love of the truth for its own sake. I do not say that it will be easy to rectify these things. But I do say that it is essential.

229. Would you grant a Protestant the right to take just as firm a stand as you do without accusing him of intolerance?

If a Protestant were absolutely convinced that his religion is the one true religion in this world, I would not accuse him of bigotry and intolerance did he say that he believed all other religions wrong. A convinced Protestant in such a case would be no more intolerant in firmly asserting his belief than an equally convinced Catholic in supporting the Catholic position. To stand to one's principles, such as they may be, is not intolerance. It is evidence of sincere conviction. But no one is dispensed from charity in his treatment of others from whom he is compelled to dissent religiously.

230. It is the Catholic claim to infallibility that is the trouble. That makes her hard on others as non-infallible Churches need never be.

The Catholic Church is not hard on others. She is uncompromising. With this reservation, I admit that her exclusiveness is due to her infallibility. She denies that men have the right to dispute any truth revealed by Christ. That necessarily follows from her doctrine that Christ is God. Sabatier, a French Protestant, admitted straight out that an indisputable religious truth supposes an infallible Church. He proved that no Church could maintain any definite doctrines unless it were infallible, and accepted as infallible. And he showed that psychologically, socially, and in actual fact, doctrinal chaos and unbelief must result without the safeguard of a final living authority. He himself refused to accept any infallible Church, so gave up believing that any indisputable truth can be known. In other words, he gave up Protestantism for Modernism, denying all real value to statements of belief issued by any Church, whether Catholic or Protestant.

231. A Catholic, taught Catholicism only, is ignorant of other religions. Anglicanism could be true for all he knows. I speak as an Anglican, with knowledge Catholics do not possess.

I, at least, speak as one who was an Anglican, and who only in later years became a Catholic. But let us take your point on its own merits. It suggests several reflections. Firstly, a Buddhist monk could have urged the same argument with St. Thomas, the Apostle, whose apostolate carried him to India. "Thomas," the monk could say, "You have been taught in the school of Jesus Christ, but you are ignorant of our Buddhistic religion; and our Buddhism could be true, for all you know." What would Thomas reply? Would you advise him to suspend his faith in Christ, and throw himself into an intense study of Buddhism so that, after some years of it, he could return repentantly to Christ and say, "Lord, by trying what you said was wrong I have found out that you were right after all"? Secondly, because a Catholic is ignorant of every other religion save his own, it does not follow that, therefore, the Anglican Church might be the true one for all he knows. Because one always travels home from work by the right train, can he never know that other trains traveling in other directions are wrong trains until he has tried traveling by them also? A Catholic has been taught the truth, and knows that the Catholic Church is true. He knows also that the Anglican Church is not the Catholic Church. Thirdly, you have been brought up as an Anglican. You have not studied Catholicism. Catholicism could be true for all you know. Will you act on your own principle, commence attending a Catholic Church, and receive instruction in the Catholic Faith from a priest? We Catholics do not admit your principle. But you do. And it is not unreasonable to ask you to act upon it.

232. Catholics should at least try the Church of England.

Why the Church of England in particular? If one cannot be sure that Catholicism is true till he has tried Anglicanism, he cannot be sure that Anglicanism is true until he has tried Mahometanism, and every other form of religion in this world. Catholicism and Anglicanism are not the only two possible religious positions. Will you set to work to try every religion in the world? If not, why should a Catholic act on a principle upon which you yourself will not act?

Towards a Solution

233. The only solution seems to be to let each denomination carry out enthusiastically its own special program.

That is not a solution of the real problem. The problem is that there should be but one definite Christian Church. And the solution you propose leaves that problem untouched. That there should be separate denominations each with its own special program is absolutely opposed to the principles of the New Testament. Rev. Dr. H. L. Goudge, an Anglican, and Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford, writes as follows: "Today we often mean by 'the Churches' separate Christian societies recognizing no common authority, and possessing no visible unity; but that use of the word is unknown to Scripture, and should not be accepted without protest." He adds that the New Testament knows of only one Church against which the gates of hell will not prevail-one Church locally represented by Churches in different places. "So," he writes, "the Post Office is one Government Department; but it is represented by the local Post Offices. And in dealing with each of them, we are dealing with the Post Office itself." That is the Catholic position. It rejects the idea of a multitude of small independent Churches scattered through the world, all rejecting unity with the one great and original Catholic Church.

234. I do not object to the Catholic Church affirming her own truth. But she should not deny others. She should let them live their own life, and win their good will by making concessions.

If you do not object to the Catholic Church affirming her own truth, you cannot object to her denying the truth of other Churches opposed to her. Every affirmation is a denial of the opposite. If I say that New York is in America, I deny that it is elsewhere. Remember that the denial of the Catholic Church that other Churches are right is really an invitation to the supporters of those Churches to come to her, and get the full truth. It is not prompted by hatred, but by fidelity to Christ, and by a desire that all should possess the truth. When you speak of other Churches living their own life, you take too much for granted. They are dying their own death. Whilst they are asking anxiously what is the essence of Christianity, the Catholic Church lives, and gives life. The obvious disintegration of non-Catholic Churches is not a sign of life and vitality. Finally, your suggestion that the Catholic Church should make concessions is impossible. Protestantism has been making concessions, one after another, to rationalism, and the results are disastrous. The Catholic Church is strong precisely because she has refused to have anything to do with such concessions. But, apart from this, she simply cannot make the concessions you have in mind. The certainty and the urgency of her teachings forbid it. And she would be abandoning what does not belong to her but to Christ. Christ has commanded her to teach His doctrine, not to abandon it. And concessions would merely be the betrayal of Christ.

235. It is regrettable that there are barriers which seemingly will always exist.

I share your regret. And I have to agree that the barriers will always remain save in the case of those non-Catholics who break through them and return to the Catholic Church which their forefathers left at the time of the Protestant Reformation. But, where the barriers do remain, at all costs they should be confined to differences in the religions professed, and not allowed to become barriers of dislike, bitterness, and hatred between those who profess the different religions. We must not confuse a lack of sympathy with what we believe to be error with a lack of sympathy towards those who profess what we believe to be error. We may feel that the barrier of truth and consistency forbids acknowledging as correct those religions which contradict our own. But no barrier of ill-feeling and ill-will towards one another personally should be given any quarter. Charity must sweep all such barriers away.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The Problem of Reunion

Efforts at the Reunion of the Churches

236. Whatever their differences may have been in the past, would it not be a good thing if all the Christian Churches composed their differences, and formed a single United Church once more?

Not only would that be good; there is an obligation on all professing Christians to do so. The New Testament knows nothing of a system of separated Churches professing to be Christian. As the Anglican Dr. Goudge has remarked, "The relation of the Churches to the Church is like the relation of local post offices to the G. P. O.; there is only one Post Office, private enterprise not being here permitted. But the G. P. O. has its local representatives in the towns and villages, and in dealing with them we are dealing with the Department itself. Everywhere in the New Testament the Church is one, and only one." No one who believes in the New Testament, therefore, can admit that divisions between the Churches is lawful.

237. Could it not be that, as the king of England speaks of his empire, although it is a commonwealth of nations, so Christ intended by one Church all religions which recognize Him as their Savior?

That is not admissible. As the British Empire is a commonwealth of nations, so the one true Catholic Church subject to the Pope is a vast confraternity of English, American, Japanese, French, Australian, Indian, German, Italian, Spanish, and other national peoples who are united in faith, worship, and discipline. But members of non-Catholic Churches are not members of this one true Catholic Church.

238. This view seems to be supported by Christ's own words in St. Mark, IX., 38-41.

It does not more than seem to be so. The text is as follows: "John said to Him: Master, we saw one casting out devils in Thy name, who followeth not with us, and we forbade him." But Jesus said, "Do not forbid him. For there is no man that doth a miracle in My name, and can speak ill of Me. For he that is not against you, is for you." Now notice that St. John spoke of two things-the fact that another was doing good, and the fact that he did not follow the Apostles. Of the latter point, Christ does not here speak. Elsewhere He spoke strongly of the necessity of submission to the authority of His Church. But here He confines Himself to one aspect only, and rightly so. Insofar as others do good, do not blame them or forbid them; for in doing what is good, they are not against your cause, but for it. Now the non-Catholic Churches do try to inculcate the worship of Christ. And with that aspect of their work no one could quarrel. Insofar as they stand for the supernatural and spiritual, and for the love of Christ as opposed to brute materialism and rationalism, they are not against the Catholic Church, but fighting for her cause. And certainly, if Protestants will not become Catholics, we Catholics would rather see them true to such good principles of Christianity as their respective denominations do contain than see them drift from them to rationalism and unbelief. And that is the aspect with which our Lord deals. The other section of the text, "He followeth not with us," is dealt with elsewhere. In Matt. XII., 25. Christ says, "Every kingdom divided against itself shall fall"; and in Verse 30, He reverses the saying you quote, remarking. "He that is not with Me is against Me." Fortunately, the Catholic Church is not divided against itself.  It would be, if it embraced all the contradictory denominational sects. But it does not. They are not part of that true Catholic Church which stands with undivided unity. And whilst these Protestant sects are not against the Catholic Church in preaching that Christian virtue is necessary, they are against her insofar as they are not with the authority of Christ in the Church against which they rebelled.

239. Other Churches are devoting more and more attention towards the reunion of the Churches, and working for unity.

Other Churches should not have to work towards unity. It is a confession that they should never have got out of unity. The Catholic Church preserves her unity; she does not work to secure a unity she has never lost. And we must face the fact that the non-Catholic Churches will never secure unity. Unity will be possible only when they renounce their independent existence, and their members, one and all, return to the Catholic Church. Where the Catholic Church gathers people to herself, men gather together to form the various non-Catholic Churches. Of its very nature, Protestantism does not unite; it divides. And on the principle of private judgment and authority, it logically leads to as many variations as there are men. Unity may engage the attention of Protestant Churches, but it will do no more than engage their attention until they have ceased to exist. And when they have ceased to exist, and Catholicism is the only form of Christianity in this world, then we shall have unity.

240. It is wrong to magnify the divisions amongst Protestants. They all believe the same thing, and do not differ in essentials.

I am afraid that they do not even agree as to what is essential. In fact, a host of Protestants have drifted so far from the Christian Faith that they believe no particular belief to be essential, and they are prepared to maintain any peculiar idea of their own creation on the score that, after all, it does not matter what one believes.

241. What are the essential differences between Anglicans, Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Congregationalists, Baptists, Christian Scientists, Christadelphians, Salvation Army, Pentecostals, Liberal Catholics, and the Churches of Christ?

It would take far loo long to analyze the doctrines of these twelve different variations. Briefly, however. Anglicans and Liberal Catholics believe it essential to have priests and bishops. The others do not. The Liberal Catholics believe in the Sacrifice of the Mass. Anglicans do not. Leaving these two, let us turn to the others. Baptists and the Churches of Christ forbid infant baptism. Presbyterians hold to what is called the Westminster Confession, and say that the ultimate authority is vested in their General Assembly. Methodism has no formal confession of faith, holding that creed is not essential. Lutherans hold that creed is essential, and support the Augsburg Confession by faith, believing in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist by consubstantiation as opposed to the Catholic doctrine of transsubstantiation. Congregationalists say that it is not essential to have organized unity at all. Each local Church is independent, the members walking by faith, each according to what he privately judges faith to imply. Christian Scientists deny the Divinity of Christ, and believe that Christianity is ordained to the attaining of physical health by autosuggestion blended with prayer. Christadelphians deny the immortality of the soul, believing that Christ will come again, recreate the elect, and reign over them forever on this earth as their civil ruler. General Booth broke away from Methodism, and began a social crusade with his Salvation Army. Doctrinally the Army is very vague. The Pentecostal Church thinks that all others have missed the essential thing, and its members concentrate on contact with the immediate and personal influence of the Holy Spirit, whom they gratuitously constitute their direct guide whilst they do as they please. I cannot now go more deeply into their differences; but it can be said that each sect has at least one thing it thinks essential which it believes the others to lack. Were it not so, it would never have commenced its own separate existence. If we study the origins of the different sects, we find that their founders fought almost violently for things which modern Protestants now declare to be nonessential. But how far even modern Protestants believe their differences to be nonessential is a problem. If their differences be nonessential, why do they find reunion amongst themselves so impossible a task? They talk of unity, hold conferences to discuss it, discover that their positions are essentially irreconcilable, determine not to unite after all, and tell the world that they were all good-tempered about it. and that a wonderful unity was obvious in their decision to tolerate a continued lack of unity!

242. At least these Churches are trying to unite and find a common dogma.

As I have pointed out before, to acknowledge that unity is necessary, and yet that they lack unity, is to stand self-condemned as lacking a necessary qualification of the true Christian Church.  And how can these Churches set out to convert the world to Christian teaching whilst, on your own admission, they cannot agree as to what is the Christian teaching?

The Church of England as a "Bridge-Church"

243. When reunion comes, do you not think that the Anglican Church will have a contribution of great value to make to the reunited Church?

We Catholics cannot accept any suggestion that the true Church is divided, and that it needs reuniting. The Catholic Church is obliged to insist that there is but one indivisible Church according to the will of Christ, and that she is the one indivisible Church. Those who rebelled against her authority and left her are simply outside the Church and no longer part of it. There can be no question of uniting divided fragments of the Church. Those whose forefathers wrongly left the Catholic Church must return to her. Many Anglicans are beginning to see this. Recently the Rev. Spencer Jones, an Anglican clergyman, published a book pleading that the Church of England should return to Rome. "It is plain," he wrote, "that the power formally to change her position, which is denied to the Church of Rome, is a conspicuous characteristic of the Church of England." Another Anglican clergyman, the Rev. T. Whitton, M.A., speaks in the same way. "On the Roman Catholic side," he writes, "there is their dogmatic position which they cannot give up if they would. If Rome were to admit that even the most Romanizing Anglicans were Catholics, she would admit the division of the Church, and commit suicide." This is not pride on Rome's part.  It is fidelity to the truth that Christ founded but one Church and guaranteed to preserve its unity.  To say that He did not preserve its unity is to renounce belief in His Divinity, and throw Christianity to the winds. Rome will never do that.

244. Anglicans are working harder than any others for the reunion of all Christian Churches.

The return of all separated Churches to the one Catholic Church they left in years gone by is greatly to be desired. But reunion will never be accomplished by dream-solutions based on wrong premises--solutions which can never be realized, and which, if they were realized, would mean the destruction of the Christian religion.

245. Is not the Anglican Church an ideal "Bridge-Church," belonging both to the old and the modern Churches?

The Anglican Church does not belong to the ancient Catholic Church. It commenced its existence with the Protestant Reformation some four hundred years ago, and has no connection with the previously existing Church in England.

246. The Anglican Church is distinguished from other branches by having thrown open its doors to fresh revelations of good that came through the advancing scholarship of its great divines.

The Anglican Church is not a "branch" of the true Church. What distinguishes it from the genuine branches of that Church is that all true branches are still in communion with the parent tree, and at one with the Pope as successor of St. Peter and supreme head of the universal Church. Anglicanism is an independent Church founded by Henry VIII. in 1534, when that earthly king broke away from the Catholic Church to set up his own religious body in England subject to his exclusive control. The Anglican Church is a Protestant sect, distinguished from other Protestant sects by the fact that its founder differed from the founders of other forms of Protestantism. It does not differ from the others by having thrown open its doors to fresh revelations of good from advancing scholarship. All, more or less, have been infected by that peculiar form of  "religious rationalism" called modernism. Modernism accepts as fresh revelations of good the latest deviations from the Christian Faith. But they are not revelations. Revelation is not the fruit of advancing scholarship, the product of human thinking. The Christian revelation is essentially the teaching of men by God through Jesus Christ. His Son.

247. In Anglicanism the pre-Reformation and post-Reformation periods of the Christian Church can be used to bring together all the broken branches of the Church.

The Anglican and the other Protestant Churches have no pre-Reformation period of which to make use. They are not branches, even broken ones, of the true Church. They are independent Churches, set up by men who had no authority to do so, at various times centuries subsequent to Christ. And if they all unite amongst themselves, they will be no nearer to unity in the one universal Church - the Catholic Church - than the uniting of the independent states in America restored the U. S. A. to unity with the British nation they abandoned. There is a fundamental fallacy underlying all such talk of reunion. The true branches of the one universal Church do not need bringing together. The geographical distribution of those branches has not affected their unity. The Catholic Church in America, or the Catholic Church in England, or in Italy, or Germany, or the scattered Islands of the Pacific, or anywhere else in the world, all these branches form but one Church in unity with the Pope as its supreme head on earth.

248. You think Anglicans are following a will-o'-the-wisp in holding out the hand of friendship to both sides?

I am certain that Anglicans will never induce all other Churches to accept a unity such as they specify. It involves an acceptance of Anglo-modernism. Catholics can have nothing to do with it. The Greek Orthodox Churches cannot accept it. Nonconformists would have to unsay the whole of their history in order to yield to it. The dream that all other Churches will merge with Anglicanism is a fond thing vainly invented.

249. By holding out its hand, the Church of England has actually succeeded in drawing together many members of the old and modern Churches.

The first question that arises is this: Which hand did the Church of England hold out? It held out an Anglo-Catholic hand or High Church hand to the Greek Orthodox. And at once there were violent protests from Low Church Anglicans that the beliefs of the Church of England had been completely misrepresented to the poor deluded Greeks, who had no idea of Anglican variations. When the Low Church hand is held out to Nonconformists, there are equally indignant protests from the High Church section. So, for example, when a Nonconformist preacher was invited to preach in the Liverpool Anglican Cathedral, uproar resulted.

Anglicans and the Greek Orthodox Church

250. Anglicans must first approach the Greek Church, the oldest Church in Christendom, founded actually before the Church of Rome.

It is not true that the "Greek Orthodox Church," as it is popularly known today, was founded before the Church of Rome. It may be true that the Catholic Church took root and consolidated itself in various parts of the East and amongst Greek-speaking peoples before it was established in Rome where St. Peter finally set up his Bishopric. But the "Greek Orthodox Church" came into existence in the first place through the schism of Photius in the ninth century, just as Anglicanism came into existence in the sixteenth century through the revolt of Henry VIII. against the Pope.

251. A close alliance now exists between Anglicanism and Greek Orthodoxy.

Some High Church Anglicans have exchanged courtesies with some representatives of the Greek Churches. But nothing approaching unity has been effected. Nor is the cause of unity helped by mutual compliments paid by members of one rebel Church to those of other rebel Churches, whilst all ignore the one universal Church they left, and to whose authority they still refuse to submit. No advance is made towards reunion by looking everywhere except to the very source of unity-Rome.

252. Does not Rome accept the Orthodox Church as Catholic, even though schismatic?

No. Firstly, there is no one united Orthodox Church. There are many independent forms of Orthodoxy, as there are many independent forms of Protestantism. Secondly, and even taking all these independent forms as a general group, Rome does not admit that members of the Orthodox Greek Churches are Catholics. The Catholic idea supposes the universal extension of one and the same united Church. Catholicity, in the proper sense of the word, is impossible without unity. And as the Orthodox Greeks are out of unity with the Catholic Church, they are not regarded as Catholics. Rome recognizes that the Orthodox Greeks have retained valid Orders, but that is another matter altogether. Thirdly, although traditionally the Greeks are spoken of as schismatics, Rome does not regard them merely as schismatics. They are heretics also on various points of doctrine.

253. The Orthodox Church accepts the Church of England as Catholic.

That is not true. Firstly, there is no united voice emanating from "The Orthodox Church." The admissions of one Patriarch would be indignantly repudiated by others. One of the greatest difficulties of reunion between Rome and the Orthodox Greeks is the fact that the Orthodox Greeks are not united amongst themselves. Secondly, no single Greek Patriarch has really admitted that the Church of England is Catholic. Some Greek Patriarchs have expressed that opinion after hearing a High Church account of Anglicanism. But of what value is the admission of isolated Greek leaders who have been misinformed concerning the true nature of the Church of England?

254. If Orthodox and Anglican Churches unite, what then will be Rome's attitude to Anglicanism?

Such a union will never be effected. Before a united Ortho-Anglican Church could exist, the various Greek Churches would have to form one united body; and there is no prospect of that. Then it would be necessary to get the Low Church majority in the Church of England to accept Greek Orthodox teachings. And there is no prospect of that. But if, as is impossible, such a union were effected, Rome would regard the Anglican Church exactly as at present -and that is as an heretical Protestant sect. By uniting with the Greek Church, therefore, the Church of England would be no nearer union with Rome. It would be but the union of two schismatical and heretical Churches; and the resultant Church would still be in schism and heresy. If Germany and Russia were to unite as one nation, they would not be any closer to membership of the British Empire. The road to Church unity does not lie in the union amongst themselves of those who have no unity with Rome. The road lies in the submission of the various independent Churches, or of their individual members, to the authority of the Catholic Church, and to that of the Pope as its supreme head on earth. There is no other way out.

The "Old Catholics" of Holland

255. The "Old Catholics" are trying to secure the union of all separate Churches on the basis of a non-Papal Catholicism.

Having renounced the very principle of unity, the authority of Christ in His Church, they are attempting an impossible task. Events have shown this in the most practical manner possible. The "Old Catholics" are rapidly disintegrating. In the beginning they received great government patronage in Germany and Switzerland, where politicians had great hopes of fostering what they believed to be a disruptive movement in the Catholic Church. But nothing came of it, and the radical liturgical, disciplinary, and constitutional changes adopted in the first fifteen years convinced them that the "Old Catholic" claim to Catholicism was but a fiction. They lost interest in the "Old Catholic" movement, and its vitality rapidly declined.

256. The Lambeth Conference of 1930 agreed that there was nothing in the Declaration of Utrecht inconsistent with the leaching of the Church of England.

That is the death-blow to the "Old Catholics." For it means, not that Anglican doctrine is Catholic, but that the "Old Catholics" are Protestants.

257. There is now complete intercommunion between the "Old Catholics" and the Anglican Communion.

That is not surprising. The "Old Catholics," being simply "New Protestants," recognize those with whom they have a real affinity. If you think I take a harsh and unreasonable view of things, let me ask you to consider a parallel case. If a Congregationalist boasted to an Anglican that his Church had intercommunion with the Methodist Church which had broken away from Anglicanism, would the Anglican be deeply impressed? Can a Catholic be deeply impressed, therefore, when an Anglican boasts that he has intercommunion with a schismatic body which itself has abandoned the Catholic Church? The same difficulty ever recurs. If, instead of merely having intercommunion with the Anglican Church, the "Old Catholics" were completely absorbed in full communion with the Church of England, Christendom would be no nearer unity than it would be if Aimee Macpherson with her "Four-Square Gospelers" decided to amalgamate with Judge Rutherford and the "Witnesses of Jehovah." The union of heretical bodies amongst themselves really leaves the problem untouched. The only hope of a united Christian Church is the return of all schismatical and heretical bodies to the Mother Church of Christendom-the Catholic Church. When all have come back, then, and then only, will there be "one fold under one shepherd."

Reunion Conferences

258. Would you be in favor of one State Church, compelling all religious bodies to unite?

Such a plan for bringing all religious bodies into one faith and one Church could not possibly be accepted. Christ died for all men without exception. No State Church, therefore, could be the true Church of Christ. A State Church would be essentially national. People belonging to other States and Nations would feel that it was not for them. Christ is not for this nation or that; He is for men of all nations. All true followers of Christ, therefore, should be united in one great Church which is not national, but international. There is such a Church-the Catholic Church. If men really wish for unity, the remedy is there before them. Let them return to the Catholic Church.

259. Why does the Roman Church refuse to take part in the World Congresses of other Churches for the securing of unity?

Because she can never sanction by her participation Congresses which admit that the unity of the Church has been lost, and that it must be found again; and which hope to attain unity by a compromising policy of give and take. The unity promised by Christ has been retained by the Catholic Church. That Church believes that she is but the custodian of the religion of Christ, and she has not the right to make any compromises, to pare down and whittle away His doctrines in order to placate those who refuse to accept them in all their fullness. It would be useless to attend a Congress working on the idea that "we are all wrong, and must put our heads together to see how we can put ourselves right." The acceptance of such a principle would mean that the Catholic Church must unsay her infallibility. Did she do so, she would no longer be the Catholic Church at all. Yet Congresses of non-Catholic denominations would welcome her participation only on the understanding that she admits herself to be as fallible as themselves. It cannot be done.

260. Did not negotiations for the reunion of Anglicanism and Catholicism take place during the Malines Conversations?

The Malines Conversations were an unofficial discussion of the subject between Lord Halifax and several leading Anglican clergymen on the one hand, and Cardinal Mercier with several French theologians on the other. The Conversations were for the sake of inquiring as to whether any common basis could be found upon which an attempt at union could be inaugurated.

261. Why did those Conversations fail?

Because the participants were trying to find a way to reconcile the irreconcilable. Moreover, the Anglican Delegates presented only the High Church views to Cardinal Mercier and the French theologians, giving them a wrong outlook on the Anglican Church as a whole. Low Church Anglican papers throughout England denounced the Anglo-Catholic Delegates for misrepresenting Anglican doctrine, denied their right to speak on behalf of the Church of England, accused them of being "Romanizers," and declared that they would never submit to any undoing of the work of the Protestant Reformation. With such chaos reigning in the Anglican Church the Conversations could not but fail. Unity in Anglicanism itself is absolutely necessary before it can even discuss the question of possible unity with the Catholic Church.

262. As an Anglican I was bitterly disappointed with the result.

If you believe that the Church of England ought to be in communion with Rome, and is not, how can you justify yourself in remaining where you ought not to be, and in refusing to take that step personally which the corporate Anglican Church cannot and will not take?

Catholic Unity

263. Will you explain just what Catholics mean by the unity of the Church?

By the unity of the Church we mean the unity of belief, worship, and government for all peoples and for all times in the one religious body. This is the first great requirement of the true Church. Unity is reality. Unity and life, in fact, go together. If the Church is the union of God with man, and man with God, how can there be several different Churches? That would mean division in the very thing that should unite us in God. If God is one, and men are one in Christ, then there can be but one Church, a divine yet human organization, of which Christ is the Head, the Holy Spirit the Soul, and all men members. The Church is but a continuation of Christ in this world. Therefore, St. Paul asks, "Is the body of Christ divided?" There is but one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one Church. The Catholic Church is this one Church; and any religion which differs in character from the Catholic Church, and wishes to exist independently of it, is outside the true Church.

264. History shows that the Roman Church has had crisis after crisis. She has not always had unity, but only recently has perfected her concentration.

The Catholic Church has always had unity. It is true that there has been crisis after crisis in her history. But that does not imply loss of unity. In all life, whether individual or social, civil or religious, crisis follows crisis. But where civil kingdoms have been dissolved, the Catholic Church has ever emerged with a still more concentrated unity. Today there is no possibility of a Greek schism or a Protestant reformation by any movement from within the Catholic Church. Modernism was soon settled as far as she was concerned. And all previous disloyalties and rebellions provoked a reaction of unity proving the vitality of the Catholic Church, and that will to live which is her preservation. What you call the concentration of unity in the Catholic Church is merely her interior principle of control responding to the complications incidental to growth.

265. The exclusive claims of the Catholic Church will never lead to unity. It can come only by tolerance, respect for each other, and closer cooperation.

Continued tolerance of error can never give unity in truth. By such tolerance people will remain as divided as ever in their beliefs. Respect for the persons of others should ever prevail. Closer cooperation is not enough. Perfect cooperation is necessary. But that will be possible only under a unified control. And a unified control of a perfectly united Christian Church will result only from a return of the Churches which caused a division to the one fold of the Catholic-Church. After all, Christ sent His Church to fight the forces of evil. If a country sent an army to resist its enemies, how would that army get on if different subordinate officers walked off with groups of soldiers, disobeying orders of the higher command, and deciding to try out what they thought to be better ideas of their own? Discipline and order are essential. Our Lord knew this, and warned against such divisions, saying, "A kingdom divided against itself cannot stand." And if superior officers protested against the indiscipline of hotheaded subordinates, would you blame them? Or suggest that, since all aimed at defending the country, they should work harmoniously with these insubordinates, whilst still allowing them to do as they please?

266. Could not one religion be arrived at by compromise on the part of all the different Churches?

The resultant religion certainly would not be Christianity. Instead of being the religion of Christ, it would be a religion which all those putting their heads together would agree that it would be nice for Him to have taught. Just imagine one saying, "Well, I am convinced that Christ taught this, but you are convinced that He taught something else. But now, let us not bother about the authority of Christ. I'll give up a section of what I am convinced to be His teaching; and you give up a section of what you are convinced to be His teaching, and thus we will arrive at a working agreement to suit ourselves." Surely you can see how impossible is such an attitude. After all, to whom does the Christian religion belong? It belongs, not to us, but to Christ. For the Catholic Church, therefore, there can be no question of compromise.

267. You cannot foresee a new and undivided Church blending all existent forms of the Christian religion?

That will never be. The Catholic Church will never abandon such of her truths as Protestants dislike, in order to embrace the various errors all Protestants will generously agree amongst themselves to accept in a spirit of real good fellowship. How you can talk of a new Church is a mystery. Christ established a definite Church, promising to be with it all days till the end of the world. That does not suggest the abolition of all existent Churches and the formation of a new one. As a matter of fact, another true Christian Church would demand another Christ, and another Incarnation. But to what purpose? What would a new Christ do that the first Christ has not done? No. Christ established a definite Church to last for the rest of time, promising that the gates of hell will never prevail against it. They have not done so. And that definite Church of Christ is the Catholic Church. To her men must return.

The Papacy as Reunion Center

268. You have quoted some Protestant clergymen as saying that the Papacy is the only possible center of unity for the Church,

I have; and there are very many who speak like that today.

269. Anglo-Catholics regard the Papacy merely as a handy rule of thumb for orthodoxy, but other Protestants do not.

If Anglo-Catholics regard the Papacy merely as a handy rule of thumb for orthodoxy, their ideas are no more acceptable to Catholics than to Protestants. We cannot accept patronizing views of Papal decisions as if they were "rather a good idea," or "quite useful!" To any Anglo-Catholics who would think in such a way I would say, "Either you believe sincerely in the infallibility and supremacy of the Pope, or you do not. If you do not, you cannot submit to the Pope on any plea that this would fit in with some favored scheme of your own. If you do, then you are not justified in refusing acceptance for a moment, and you should submit to Rome at once, instead of remaining in a false position for any supposedly good purpose."

270. Theoretically, the existence of a visible head of the Church seems to supply a stable rallying point.

It not only seems to do so; it does so. But these reasons of convenience are beside the point. The point is-what is the will of Christ? If it be the will of Christ that the Pope is the visible head of the Church, then we must be in union with him. If it be not the will of Christ that there should be a visible head of the Church on earth, then we cannot alter things to suit our own notions. Anglo-Catholics consistently refuse to face this issue.

271. In practice, the Roman claims have been the very basis of division in the Church.

There is no division in the Church. The Church is essentially One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic. Being one, it is at complete unity with itself, and must ever retain perfect unity. The Catholic Church alone does so. You may speak of divisions from the Church; but not of divisions in the Church. All non-Catholics are divided from the Church-that Catholic Church their forefathers left. And the Roman claims were not the cause of these divisions. Will the criminal in jail say that the laws of the State which he violated are the basis of his division from society? They are, of course, but the guilt is his own, not that of the State. And those who rebelled against the lawful authority of the Catholic Church, and left that Church, are responsible for their separation from it.

272. What kind of a center of unity is the Papacy, when it possesses the assent of less than half of Christendom?

Since they are the divisions of "Christendom" (not of the Church) which are to be united, one could hardly expect the proposed center of unity to possess the assent of all before they are united! It is not true that less than half of Christendom acknowledges the Papacy. Out of some 700 million of professing Christians, 400 million profess the Catholic Faith and admit the authority of the Pope. About 300 million reject the claims of the Pope, and repudiate the Catholic Church. But they are not united amongst themselves, save in protesting against Rome. If we ask these others to state their beliefs we get a chorus characterized chiefly by negations and contradictions. They are not unfairly described as a group of dissidents who cannot agree amongst themselves.

273. The Church as a whole judges against Papal claims, preferring schism to assent on terms dictated by Rome.

One cannot speak of the judgment of the Church as a whole whilst asserting in the same breath that it is split into fragments bv schism!  Those belonging to one of the fragments separated from the Catholic Church appeal to the verdict of the other separated fragments that Rome is wrong, although they will not accept the verdict of those other fragments on anvthing else.

274. The witness of Rome is to be respected and weighed when it agrees with the rest of Christendom.

Is that to say that Rome might possibly be right if only she will admit that she is just as likely to be wrong as the separated sects which abandoned her?

275. So long as Rome persists in ignoring the witness of the rest of Christendom she will he subject, like the rest of us, to her own peculiar forms of heresy.

Never was a greater tribute paid to Rome. If the rest of the Churches are subject to their own peculiar forms of heresy, is Rome to be blamed because she won't join them and accept their self-confessed heretical witness? If Rome did join them, and renounce her claim to possess the full and complete truth, it would be good-bye to all hope of unity in the truth. The only hope for unity is for those who admit that they have not got it to submit to the one Church which is conscious of possessing it. And that one Church is the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church cannot be expected to take seriously the offer of those who say. "We will be prepared to consider your claims to be the true Church only provided you do not make such claims, and admit that you are just as wrong as we are."

276. The inflated claims of Rome first compelled the Greek Orthodox to repudiate Rome.

Not the claims of Rome, but the inflated claims of the Patriarchs of Constantinople, led to the separation of the Greeks from the unity of the Catholic Church. And that break has been perpetuated by pride and nationalism.

277. Then Luther, after protesting in vain against abuses in the Church, was given his choice between keeping quiet or getting out.

Luther introduced far greater abuses than any he professed to remedy. I do not deny the existence of abuses. Multitudes of good Catholics were longing for their rectification. But Luther made them but an excuse for rebellion against the Catholic Church, and for the introduction of schism and heresy of which he was the self-constituted prophet. Rome proved the safeguard of unity by expelling him, preferring to see him divided from the Church rather than allow him to cause division in the Church. He was asked to submit, not to abuses in the Church, but to the just laws of the Church. He refused, left the Church, and dragged multitudes with him in the end. But his Protestant principles proved the cause of division after division amongst Protestants, as if to bring out by contrast the unity of Catholics who remained loyal to Rome. No one with eyes to see can doubt that the Papacy means unity, whilst separation from the Papacy leads to almost endless diversity.

278. Later still, the monstrous proportions Papal authority wished to assume in England led to the breaking away of the Anglican Church.

Henry VIII. thought it monstrous that the Pope should refuse him a divorce from Catherine in order that he might marry Anne Boleyn. But who will subscribe to the proposition that the Pope was responsible for the schism because he would not condone Henry's adultery? Unity at such a price would not be worth having. However, the Catholic Church preserved her unity, for Anglicanism is not a division within the Church. It constitutes a separate Church which no longer has any real bond with the Church of the centuries.

279. Then the "Old Catholics" were forced into separation from Rome by the decision of the Vatican Council that the Pope was infallible.

Your line of argument really is that every decree necessary to preserve unity is a cause of disunity because a few recalcitrant subjects refuse to accept and obey it. And is it reasonable to concentrate on a small group of disaffected subjects, ignoring the unity of hundreds of millions of loyal Catholics? Again, if the Papal claims were so wrong that the Greeks had to abandon the Church in the ninth century, why did Germany discover them to be wrong only when Luther discovered abuses in the sixteenth century? And why did England not equally see how wrong they were until Henry VIII. wanted his divorce? And why, despite the Greeks, and Luther, and Henry, were the "Old Catholics" content with the Catholic Church until 1870? If the Catholic Church was true until Henry came along, the Greeks were not justified in their secession. If true until the "Old Catholics" had to leave, neither Luther nor Henry was justified in leaving the true Church.

Protestant Hostility to Catholicism

280. To what do you attribute the seemingly incurable hostility of Protestantism to Catholic claims?

I attribute it to the growth of indifference to all religion, to lack of knowledge of the Catholic Church, to inherited prejudices against that Church, to wrong ideas of the Christian faith, and to mistaken ideas of national loyalty. There is no doubt that Protestantism in general has led to a widespread indifference to the claims of religion. People don't bother about it. At the same time, whilst Protestantism has failed to hold the multitudes who have been deprived of the Catholic Faith, it has left a lingering poison of prejudice against the Church it abandoned. So it is that Protestants, who have no particular love for their own Churches, have an instinctive dread of Catholicism. It is not reasonable, and they cannot account for it. If they attempt to do so, they have to invent reasons which will not bear analysis. But the dread is there. And the more Protestant a country is, the greater its hostility towards the Catholic Church. Nonconformity, therefore, as a rule, is more hostile than Anglicanism.  But besides inherited prejudices, all forms of Protestantism have a wrong idea of Christian faith. For Protestants, Christianity has become merely a subjective way of life to the exclusion of an objective acceptance of truth. They have had it drilled into them from pulpit after pulpit that "creed does not matter." That practically means that truth does not matter. They have the idea that not what a man believes, but what he does, is the sole criterion of goodness. Reason, therefore, takes a very secondary place, and religion is better measured by feelings of piety and devotion. Consequently, if Protestants have no religious feelings, they banish the whole problem. On the other hand, if they have religious feelings, they are content where they are, and do not bother to inquire as to whether the form of religion they profess is right in itself, or not. Finally, Protestantism and patriotism have long been associated in their minds, and they have a vague sense of disloyalty to their country in the mere thought of Catholicism. In any case, to become a Catholic is to violate the conventions. That is one of the things "not done." This is but a brief survey, and incomplete. But all these things, singly or collectively, with many others, contribute to the apathy or hostility of Protestants towards the Catholic claims.

281. Good and cultured Protestant ministers cannot reconcile Rome with Scripture and tradition.

Their inability is easily explicable. Their goodness is a matter of morality. But perception of the objective truth is a matter of mentality. Now, the formation of a Protestant minister's mentality is quite unfavorable to the perception of the truth of Catholicism. We may dismiss tradition, for the basic idea of Protestantism that Scripture is the only rule of faith diverts their attention from traditional teachings. Their inability to harmonize Scripture and Catholicism results from the fact that they do not rightly understand either Scripture or Catholicism. Protestant clergymen cannot even state Catholic doctrine clearly to themselves. Where Scripture is concerned, they lack sound principles of interpretation, and cannot arrive at its correct sense. That should be evident experimentally from the fact that they arrive at so many diverse and conflicting conclusions.

282. High Church Anglicans go to Rome because of their community of ritual; but Low Churchmen and Nonconformists never yield ground.

As a matter of fact, conversions to Catholicism from Low Church Anglicans and Nonconformists are proportionately more numerous than from High Church Anglicans. And, paradox as it may seem, High Churchmen are not drawn to the Catholic Church because of community of ritual. Firstly, they have the idea that, having borrowed all our external practices, they base nothing to gain by "going over to Rome." And secondly, they get so wrapped up in the accidentals of religion, that they are less likely than ever to perceive the essentials. The essential thing in all true religion is obedience. We went from God by disobedience, and the road back is to retrace our steps by obedience. And since religion is to take us back, the very heart and soul of religion must be a spirit of obedience. Therefore, the spirit of obedience has ever been an outstanding feature of Catholicism. But the High Church movement has ever been characterized by defiance of Anglican bishops. The more ritualistic an Anglican clergyman is, the more he steeps himself in a spirit of disobedience to authority. And by this he is less fitted to submit to the principles of authority in the Catholic Church. I would much rather instruct a convert from Nonconformity than one from Anglo-Catholicism; and as a rule I keep Anglo-Catholics much longer under instruction.

283. If access to the truth is not easy for these religious men, how can unbelievers and voluptuaries hope to discern it?

Your line of thought is not justified. For conversion to the Catholic Church means the undoing of a previous mentality, and the substituting of another. In the man who has had no previous religious convictions, one has but to build. It is easier to give right ideas to one who has had no ideas on a given subject, than to substitute right ideas for wrong ideas. Again, strange as it may seem, the irreligious voluptuary, when he does hear God's voice, has grounds for a humilitv which are more or less wanting in those conscious of their goodness and virtue.  And humility is a basic condition for the greater gifts of God. Also, as I have said, the religious non-Catholic is much more likely to rest content with his present position, and refrain from further inquiry, than the irreligious man who never quite succeeds in stifling his uneasiness. You must remember, too, that God will not force the gift of faith on anyone. That gift demands our cooperation; and the dispositions of the individual person are of immense importance.

The Demands of Charity

284. The attitude of Rome holds out little hope of reunion, but gives promise only of continued bitterness.

To that let me quote the words of a famous Protestant journalist, and a onetime member of the British Parliament-Mr. P. W. Wilson. He writes as follows: "The Roman Catholic Church can have had, and did have, no other origin than with the Founder of Christianity itself. But the company of the faithful, once united in a visible Church, has suffered an organic disintegration. Whatever general sentiment may be abroad favoring friendship, experts fail to find a real formula for reunion on which to agree. But I am convinced that there is a profound amelioration of atmosphere. Hitherto we have seen a Christendom in which Protestant confronted Catholic. It is a situation by no means ended. Such situations do not end quickly. But none the less, the new situation has arisen. I have lost entirely any conscious enmity against or suspicion of the Roman Catholic Church. And if reunion be not possible here and now; if it be not possible for all to share the same worship or accept the same ecclesiastical authority, it is possible for all to love one another as they love themselves, to pray for one another, and to help one another, and to be associated as far as may be in the task of serving this sad and sorrowful world." All Catholics will agree with the sentiments expressed by Mr. Wilson. But they will pray for the only possible kind of reunion---the return of all separated brethren to the Catholic Church and to the authority of the Bishop of Rome.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The Truth of Catholiciam

Necessity of the Church

285. Do not Roman Catholics make too much of the doctrine of the Church?

They give it that place in their faith which Christ intended.

286. We Protestants have a great respect for Christ, but we do not have faith in any Church.

That cannot be right. If you believe in Christ, you must consider as necessary what Christ believed necessary. To wish to believe in Christ without believing in the Church is a great mistake. For centuries Christians have said, not only, "I believe in Jesus Christ, our Lord," but also, "I believe in the Holy Catholic Church." They made an act of faith in both Christ and His Church. If you no longer believe in a Church, something has gone wrong somewhere.

287. Christ does not say, "Come to My Church." He says, "Come to Me."

We come to Christ by coming to His Church. As a matter of fact, the Church, in the person of the Apostles, first preached Christ to the early converts to Christianity. The first fact for the early Christians was, therefore, the Church. They experienced faith in the mission of the Church, and because of that, believed in her teachings about Christ. You will notice, in the Acts of the Apostles, when Saul was persecuting the Church. Jesus appeared to him, and even identified Himself with the Church, saying, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?" The denial of the Church is therefore really a denial of Christ, if people, but realize it.

288. People are rapidly coming to the conclusion that, without ceasing to profess Christianity, they can dispense with Churches.

I admit that that is the logical ultimate result of Protestantism. The Anglican Dr. Goudge recognizes this. "We are," he says, "congenital individualists, and exceedingly unwilling, in religion as elsewhere, to recognize our dependence on others. It appears to us obvious that our religion is wholly bound up with our individual relation to God, and that others are not concerned with it. We become members of Christ, so we think, by our individual faith alone. This is the Protestant view. The result is that we neglect the doctrine of the Church. It is not so much that Protestants have a false conception of the Church as that they seem to be without any clear conception of it. We all tend to be hazy on this subject. Yet the doctrine of the Church is, next to the doctrine of God and His redemption, the most important doctrine of revealed religion, both in the Old and in the New Testament."

289. I can be religious without the Church.

But you cannot thus be religious in the way God wants you to be religious. And since religion is concerned with duties to God, it is for God to dictate the terms and conditions, not for us. Your attitude is due to lack of knowledge and thought. You are contenting yourself with no more than a vague religious sentiment. But religion demands a devotedness of the whole man to God, a devotedness of mind and heart and will. That means that we must believe what God has taught, love Him above all else, and serve Him both by worship and obedience to His law. For all this a man must study and know just what God has revealed, and not be content with a merely vague religious outlook. And as he is not only individual, but also social by his very nature, man must render both private and public worship to God. Christ established a Church to teach all nations and to gather to itself all whom it leads to a belief in Christ. One who says he is religious, yet who refuses to have anything to do with the Church Christ established, simply does not know the Christian religion.

The True Church

290. The Church as I understand it is in the souls of men.

If the Church is an invisible quality confined to the souls of men, then no human being could say where the true Church is to be found, and no one could hear its voice or obey its precepts. No. Our Lord established a visible society in this world, even though not of this world. And He compared it to a city set upon a hill which cannot be hid. One of the visible and organized Churches in this world today is His. And the Catholic Church alone can show the characteristics which He declared should be those of His true Church.

291. The Church is formed, not of those who belong to a visible organization, but of those who are born again from above and endowed with the Holy Spirit.

That could not be judged by men. No one could tell who belonged to the true Church, and who did not, according to that theory. Christ established a visible Church and appointed visible Apostles. And those belonged to the Church who accepted the teaching of the Apostles, and persevered in the discipline imposed by them. In Acts XX.. 28, we read, ''Take heed to yourselves, and to the whole flock, wherein the Holy Ghost hath placed you bishops to rule the Church of God." How could bishops rule the Church if they did not know who belonged to it?

292. I have a great respect for Christ, but very little for the Church.

That cannot be right. If you believe in Christ, you must consider as necessary what Christ considered necessary. To wish to believe in Christ without believing in His Church is folly itself. As a matter of fact, Jesus did not preach to the first converts; the Church preached Jesus to the people, and on the testimony of the Church, they believed in Christ. And the first fact for the early Christians was belief in the mission of the Church. Through their acceptance of the Church and her authority they were led to faith in Christ.

293. You make too much of the word Church, and not enough of the Savior, who is supreme over all things.

Jesus is certainly supreme over all things. And the Catholic Church exists to bring souls to the Person of Christ. She ever bids her children to love Him, and insists that they can never love Him too much. Meantime, those who obey our Lord by submitting to the Church He founded make more of Him than those who do not, but who insist on dictating their own terms. If I speak often of the Church it is because of the nature of the questions sent in. And that is because non-Catholics, instead of making much of Christ's doctrine concerning His Church, simply ignore it as if it had not the same value as His other teachings. A man who is not wrong in what he says, may be quite wrong in what he omits. Love Christ by all means. But do not let your love of Christ serve you as an excuse to repudiate His Church, and to assert that it is of no importance whatever to find that true Church He thought fit to establish.

Catholic Claims Are Absolute

294. I can't find references to any definite religion of Christ in either the Old or New Testaments.

If so, it is certainly not because the references are not there. Take one classical passage from the Old Testament: The prophet Isaiah, II., 2-4, certainly predicted a very definite and new form of religion to be given by Christ. The passage says, "The house of the Lord shall be prepared on the top of the mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it. And many people shall go, and say, Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob; and He will teach us His ways, and we will walk in His paths. For the law will come forth from Sion; and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And He shall judge the Gentiles and rebuke many people." The correct sense of that passage is as follows: When the Christ shall come, He will solidly establish the religion of God in a visible form which all men will be able to recognize. As opposed to the one chosen people of the Jews, all nations will be represented amongst its members. And they will learn from it the ways of God, and will walk in His paths under its guidance. This promised religion will originate in Jerusalem. Now, if we turn to the New Testament, we find Christ carefully fulfilling this prophecy of the Old Testament. He says in Matt. XVI, 18, "I will build my Church." He prescribed its doctrine and commissioned it to go forth from Jerusalem teaching men, as He says in Matt. XXVIII., 20, "To observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you." In Matt. XVIII., 18, He gives this Church His authority. "Amen. I say to you, whatsoever you shall bind on earth shall be bound also in heaven." In the preceding verse He gives the Church judicial power. "If a man will not hear the Church, let him be as the heathen." And He sends that Church, no longer to the Jews only, but to the Gentiles also. In Matt. XXVIII., 19, "Going, therefore," He says. "Teach all nations." His Church must remain one Church, for it is to be "one fold under one shepherd." It is to last with the constitution He gave it all days till the end of the world. "The gates of hell shall not prevail against it." And again. "Behold, I am with you all days even to the consummation of the world." All this obviously indicates a very definite religion, and a very definite Church.

295. If I were to embrace Catholicism, would I, if at any time I was not satisfied, be at liberty to leave the Catholic Church?

Firstly, so long as you think it even possible that you would want to leave the Church in the future, you have not attained an absolute conviction of its truth. And you cannot become a Catholic with lingering doubts in your mind. When a person has really attained to the gift of Faith, all such vague fears vanish. But, secondly, if you did receive the gift of Catholic Faith in all its fullness and certainty, yet after becoming a Catholic you were to lose that Faith through your own fault, you would be under no physical compulsion to continue to profess the Catholic religion and fulfill its duties. You could walk off, declare you had left the Catholic Church, tell your friends that you had become a Christadelphian, or anything else you might wish; and nothing would be done to restrain you. The only thing that really prevents Catholics from abandoning their Church is their own interior conviction of its truth, and of their personal obligation to remain loyal to conscience and to God. Whilst they have that conviction, they themselves do not feel at liberty to leave the Church. Should they lose that conviction, they would feel at liberty to do as they pleased. But, if ever you receive the gift of Catholic Faith, I can assure you that you won't be afraid lest you cannot get away from it; you will rather dread lest anybody or any thing should get it away from you. For you will find that, instead of robbing you of your liberty, it has given to you the liberty of the children of God; liberty from error, and weakness, and sin; and the liberty to use wonderful means of divine grace, thus to progress in virtue and holiness of life before God and man.

296. What does your Church teach concerning the fate of a man who was brought up as a Catholic, but who leaves the Church, and dies still rejecting the Catholic Faith?

The Catholic Church has no teaching concerning the ultimate fate of any individual soul. She leaves that to God. But she does teach that no Catholic who has been brought up as such can ever have a sufficient reason to justify his abandoning it. If, therefore, a Catholic should lose his faith and abandon the Church he has certainly been guilty of sin; and if he dies in that state without repenting of his sin he will lose his soul. Whether any particular soul goes from this world without interior repentance God alone, of course, can say.

297. What if a man reasoned himself out of his faith?

In such a case the man would have misused his reasoning powers. No instructed Catholic can renounce the Catholic Faith without a grave fault on his part. Always he has a grave duty to adhere to his faith, and always he has reasonable grounds for doing so. If he abandons it, he does so by a wrong and guilty choice as well as by an unreasonable choice. If any reading awakens or fosters doubt in the mind of a Catholic, he knows at once that he must cease reading things which endanger his faith. If he goes on reading such things, he does so at the price of violating his conscience. Then, too, when some difficulty presents itself, he behaves most unreasonably in thinking that because he can't solve it, therefore there is no solution of it. Ordinary prudence dictates that he seek advice from some competent guide. Certainly, if such a Catholic did end by losing the faith, it would involve the resistance of grace, the neglect of prayer, the refusal of ordinary prudent consultation, and the guilty following of an evil will.

298. Supposing that he carefully studies the Catholic religion in the light of science, and finds it untrue?

As God is the Author of the Catholic Faith, and also the Author of all natural truth, there can never be any real conflict between the authoritative teachings of the Catholic religion, and the true findings of science. Any man who thinks that science proves the Catholic religion to be untrue, either does not know the Catholic religion, or has wrong ideas of science. And a man who has but an inadequate knowledge of Catholicism, and who is quite untrained in science, should know that he is simply incompetent to form such a judgment as you indicate unless he is sublimely unconscious of his limitations. He has not the elements of humility, and a sin of pride and presumption at least has preceded his fall. Most men have a general instinctive knowledge of what they must do to safeguard their bodily health. But if any serious trouble threatens, they are sensible enough not to rely upon such inadequate knowledge of physiology or medical information which they have picked up by their own reading. They seek advice from one who has received definite medical training in a qualified university. So, too, the average man has a sufficient working knowledge of the law for ordinary purposes. But if he finds himself in a legal tangle, he rightly distrusts his own knowledge and capacity, and consults one whose very business it is to be trained in legal matters. Yet, when not his bodily health, and not his temporal affairs, but his eternal destiny is at stake, this same man will consider himself fully competent to decide the gravest issues for himself. He chooses to throw to the winds a prudence he would never dream of abandoning in lesser matters. And the choice is a guilty violation of reason and conscience. The ordinary Catholic has sufficient working knowledge to save his soul. But where special religious difficulties occur, he is obliged to consult those qualified to advise him. Ignorance alone can conclude that science conflicts with Catholicism, as that famous scientist, Louis Pasteur, ever maintained. When people marveled that so great a scientist should have such fervent faith in the Catholic religion, he would reply, "I believe as firmly as the Breton peasant; and, if I had a little more knowledge, I would believe as firmly as the Breton peasant's wife." The man you suggest for consideration would be guilty of pride in setting up his judgment against the authority of the Church established by God to leach mankind the truths of religion; guilty of imprudence in not seeking counsel; and guilty of presumption in not seeking light from God by prayer. If he lost the faith, he would be responsible for doing so; and if he died without repenting of his sin, he would lose his soul.

A Clerical Hierarchy

299. Protestants, guided by the Gospels, cannot see the use of priests.

The Catholic idea seems strange to ^-them, riot because they are guided by the Gospels, but because, whilst they concentrate on the fact that Christ is their Re­deemer and Sanctifier, they fail to grad) the means by which He desires to carry out His work in the souls of men. The Church is the kingdom of Christ in this world. Within that kingdom, an ordained priesthood, deriving its powers front Christ, com­municates to the faithful in the name of a Christ the benefits of redemption. The priesthood, then, represents Christ and continues His mission. It is commissioned to forgive sin as He forgave sin; arid to teach arid to sanctify men in His name.

300. Priests are only men after all; and how Catholics keep their faith in them is a mystery to me.

Priests as such are not "only men" after all. They are men who have been ordained and have had confided to their keeping the very priesthood of Christ. And any reverence shown by Catholics towards their priests is reverence for this priesthood of Christ. It is not reverence for anything merely human in the priest. And Catholics so esteem the priesthood of Christ that the sight of an unworthy priest mere­ly impresses them with the lofty character of his state. It is precisely because the priesthood is not proper to man but belongs to Christ that tile necessity of valid ordination becomes evident. If it be not rightly communicated to a man, that man lacks priesthood entirely in the Christian sense of the word, no matter how firmly convinced he may be that he is a priest and no matter how many people accept him as such. Finally, it is indeed a mystery how Catholics keep their faith in their priests. It is a mystery to priests themselves as well as to the Catholics who have that faith. For it is the mystery of grace itself — of God's working within their souls. In fact, so great is the mystery that no natural factors can account for it. And we are certain of one thing only — that God must be responsible for it. And this is another indication that God is indeed with the Catholic Church as with no other.

301. Did not Jesus say that the clergy were of their father the devil?

He did not say that. He did riot mention the clergy. The text you have in mind is Jo. VIII., 44. There He was streaking; to it particular group of Jews who rejected His claim to divinity, and who took up stones to kill Him because of that claim. It is strange that Judge Rutherford who misuses that text against the clergy should himself deny absolutely Christ's claim to be God — thus identifying himself with the very ones whom Christ declared to be of their father the devil, who stood not in the truth, for the truth was not in him.

302. Should servants of the Lord wear special dress to distinguish themselves from others?

There is no need for servants of the Lord who do not happen to be specially consecrated to God to do so. But those servants of the Lord who happen to be priests should wear special dress. God Himself legislated in the Old Law that His priests should wear a special dress. And human wisdom also realizes that those in official position, as in the army, or in the navy, should wear special uniforms. Thus, those from whom people desire official directions can easily be found.

303. How do you harmonize the fact that priests are called "Father" with Christ's words, "Call no man your father on earth."?

Our Lord's words were simply a strong way of saying, in the Hebrew style, that no earthly father must come before God, the one supreme Father of all, in one’s allegiance. So Christ said, "He that loveth father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me." His words were not intended to forbid a boy to call a parent "father," and if you may call the man on earth to whom you owe your earthly life, and education, and constant care, "father," so you may call "father" that man on earth to whom you owe your spiritual life. So St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, "You have not many fathers. Yet by the Gospel I have begotten you in Christ Jesus," 1 Cor. IV., 15. He knew quite well that in thus calling himself their spirit­ual father in Christ he was not violating any commandment of Christ.

304. How is the priest a father of one's spiritual life?

In a purely spiritual sense a priest does all for the life of grace in a soul that ordinary parents do for the natural life of the children God gives them. It is the priest who gives spiritual life to souls at the baptismal font. He educates those brought forth to life in Christ by their baptismal rebirth; he teaches, warns, cor­rects, and advises his spiritual children, and nourishes them with the bread of life in the Sacraments. When souls go out of this world to meet God, it is the priest who is at their death-beds, soothing their last hours, allaying their fears, and consoling them as no others could do. Having no family, the priest belongs to every family; and all in his parish; men, women, and children, love him and venerate him, and look up to him as their spiritual guide and friend, summing up everything in that term of supreme respect and reverence — "Father." Catholics rightly, there­fore, call the, priest "father," not to the exclusion of their Father in heaven, but as a manifestation on earth of the supreme Fatherhood of God in the spiritual order, even as an earthly parent is a similar manifestation of that same Fatherhood in the natural order.

305. Priestcraft seems to be everything in your Church, filling Catholics with superstitious dread.

The priesthood established by Jesus Christ has nothing to do with "priestcraft." Nor does superstition enter into the high regard Catholics have for the priestly vocation. The priesthood of Christ, communicated to men, is undoubtedly the high­est dignity in the world. And in a way it is everything in the Church. For it is the essential manifestation of the Church. The Church is but a "collective priest," the spiritual and mystical body of Christ, the One High Priest. Through the Church Christ offers Himself to us; and He makes use of a specially ordained priesthood in order to do so. From this point of view, the priesthood is the most important function in the Church. Bishops are for this priesthood. They are to ordain priests, and control the exercise of priestly powers. And those powers are chiefly for the Eucharist. Priests are ordained to consecrate the Eucharist, and to prepare the faithful for the reception of the Eucharist by instruction and by forgiving them their sins.

306. Catholics are told that they owe the greatest respect and reverence to priests independently of their personal character and in spite of their faults.

That is true. But notice that the respect is independently of a priest's char­acter, and in spite of his faults. If he has faults, no one is expected to reverence those faults. And even charity, which overlooks those faults, does not demand that we deny them if they do exist. Of course, a priest is obliged to make his personal character correspond with the sacred character of his office, and deserve personally the respect which his position secures for him. If he fails to do this, he will answer to God for his infidelity. But others are never dispensed from the duty of reverence for those who are called to the office of priesthood. Such respect is included in the reverence one has for his religion.

307. I do not see why this should be so.

It is really a question of justice, which inspires us to render to others what is due to them. Now we know that people differ, and always will differ, in education, ability, virtue, authority, dignity, and in many other ways. And it is but just to recognize these differences in practice. If religion is a just recognition of God's excellence and majesty, so in a lesser way we should respect the office and dignity of such men as exercise religious authority given by God. Thus, we all admit that a child should treat his parents with respect. And the faults of those parents do not dispense the child from that duty. If a mother has faults, the child is not obliged to call those faults virtues; but he will at least say, "Anyway, she is my mother, I respect her for the office God gave her in relation to me, and I prefer not to discuss her with others." But there are other bonds between people besides parentage. For example, justice demands that we render to a king or president the respect due to him as holding authority from God. And the respect we owe to him is extended to a governor or an ambassador appointed by him. The governor may have his personal faults. But they do not dispense us from honouring him in virtue of his office. In the same way, a priest is a representative of Jesus Christ fulfilling duties entrusted to him by our Saviour, and acting in His name. Our very respect for Christ is extended to those He has deigned to choose as His ambassadors to men. And one's respect will be proportionate to one's own faith in Christ.

308. 1 read a book which said that a slanderer of a priest was a most despica­ble creature, and it quoted, "Touch not my holy ones," or some such phrase from Scripture.

The slanderer of anybody is a most despicable creature. But if the slandering of anybody is evil, it is worse when one slanders it priest. The text to which you refer is from Ps. 104, where God says, "Touch ye not My anointed." He insists^, on respect for His religion being extended to His appointed ministers of religion. There are some people who try to excuse their irreligious conduct by saying that they are not anti-Christian, but merely anticlerical. But whatever theoretical value that dis­tinction may have, it has practically none in practice. Anticlericalism inevitably leads to a decrease or even a complete loss of the Christian Faith  in the end. If a priest is guilty of disedifying conduct, he will be blamed on all sides because of his very identity with religion. It will be argued that he cannot but bring disgrace on the Church and the cause he represents. But this must apply both ways. To slander a priest is also to bring contempt on the Church and on the cause of Christ. And that is treachery on the part of any professing Christian.

309. What are the duties of Catholics in this matter?

They are three. Firstly, to allow one's respect for Christ to extend to it priest by reason of his office. Secondly, to think no evil, to avoid rash judgments, and to overlook in a spirit of charity such obvious human faults and frailties as a priest may exhibit, dismissing them completely from consideration and conversation. Thirdly, to continue most faithfully in one's own religious duties, never dreaming that neglect of duty in a priest could possibly justify neglect of duty by others.

310. Despite their privileged position, priests are often a disappointment to their own people.

The fact that Catholics are disappointed when individual priests fail to set an edifying example shows that they at least have right ideas as to what a priest ought to be. A priest does not need to be holy for the validity of his ministrations. In him it is the priesthood of Christ which is at work, and Christ is holy. At the same time it would be wrong for one called to dispense grace and spiritual gifts to others in the name of Christ to lack grace and spirituality himself. And if the salt lose its savour, at the possibility of which Christ so sadly hinted, the only remedy is the reform and greater sanctification of the clergy, and an increased spirit of faith in the laity. The priest is in a privileged position as regards salvation by his intimate contact with religion and holy things. But he is in a perilous position also. His responsibilities are much greater than those of others, and his judgment will be much more exacting than that of others. His priesthood will not save him of itself. He has to work out his own salvation, and his fate will depend upon the use he makes of his gifts, and his fulfilment of the duties of his exalted state. To whom much has been given, of him much will be required by God.

311. The Church is not merely an organization, but its members are members of Christ's body.

Those who belong to the Church are members of Christ's body. But the Church is definitely an organization. Christ called His Church a kingdom, and a kingdom supposes organized authority, not anarchy.

312. Why has not the laity a say in the administration of your Church just as in Protestant Churches?

Because the Catholic Church is not a Protestant Church. The Protestant idea of the Church is radically opposed to the Catholic idea. By their very departure from the Catholic Church, Protestants were forced to deny the constitutional and divine authority vested in the Pope and the bishops. Whilst they said that God is related to us through Christ, they repudiated the idea that Christ is related to us through the Church. Consequently, for them the Church lost its significance. They felt free to form Churches for themselves, insofar is they thought such associations helpful. Different men, therefore, formed different types of Churches. Hence the diversity. But all these Protestant Churches were what men made them, and had constitutions which men had given them. Their constitutions are always dependent upon men, and are revisable by men. Bat case is very different with the Catholic Church.

313. We Protestants do not believe in a "passive laity."

Nor do Catholics. The Catholic Church is a living organism, and no element is passive in a living organism. Jesus came to cast fire upon the earth, and the laity has its part to do in the  enkindling of that fire. But the laity’s activities are not extinguished by submission to a hierarchy; they are stimulated. Catholics are not governed without their cooperation, and the Church relies upon their active good will. The recent appeal of the Pope for "Catholic Action" is precisely an appeal that the laity should banish all passivity and do that work which lies within their province. The whole body benefits by the proper functioning of every unit. But the best government is that which unites the participation of all lesser activities with higher  functions, controlling and centralizing everything in the harmony of one directing principle. This is accomplished in the Catholic Church, and Christ has given her the best possible constitution. In their very workings, the constitutions of Protestant Churches betray their purely human origin.

314.  How do priests differ from Protestant ministers?

Protestantism does not acknowledge a sacrament of Holy Orders in the Catholic sense of the word. It repudiates anything savouring of sacerdotalism or of a priest­hood distinct by its very nature from the condition of the laity. Some Protestant ministers are so insistent upon this that on principle they refuse to wear a dress distinguishing them from the layman. And many of them feel little incongruity in changing from a clerical to a secular career. On the other hand, the Catholic priest receives the very priesthood of Christ indelibly stamped upon his soul by the sac­rament of Holy Orders. He is no longer a layman after his ordination, and knows that he can never be a layman again. He is forever consecrated and raised to a sacred dignity far above all earthly levels. Even did he return to a secular career, he would ever be conscious that he was still a priest. And knowing that the priest­hood of Christ was communicated to him that he might offer sacrifice to God for the sins of men, and that he might dispense to men sacramental graces, he would know that a return to a secular career would be an insult to Christ, a guilty neglect of the grace of his ordination, and treachery to the souls of men for whom he was ordained.

315. Jesus is our Great High Priest. Let us glorify Him, and not man.

Catholics fully agree that Jesus is our Great High Priest. So even did you become a Catholic you would not have to change your views on that point. Where you do go wrong, however, is in thinking that, because Jesus is our High Priest, no human being could be empowered by Him to exercise the office of priesthood on His behalf. That Jesus is our High Priest does not forbid Him to exercise His priesthood through human instruments of His own choosing, who will thus be secondary priests. Any honour given to priests would then be honour given to Him; for apart from Christ from whom they derive their priesthood they would be nothing.

316. Christ is the Head of the Church and the Holy Spirit is the life-giving soul.

Christ is the Head of the Catholic Church, and the Holy Spirit is the soul of the Catholic Church. But Christ, the one invisible Head of the Church, is visibly represented in the visible Christian assembly by the Pope. As successor of St. Peter, the Pope is simply the "Agent General" of Christ.

317. The hierarchy claims that whatever it binds on earth is binding in heaven. But Christ Himself did not have an open order from His Father to do or say what He liked.

The only restriction on Christ was His inability to contradict Himself, or to commit sin of any  kind. He Himself said, "All power is given to the Me heaven and on earth." And He said to the Apostles, "Whatever you bind on earth will be bound also in heaven."

318. As Christ did not make one new law, and warned us about the “com­mandments of men,” is it likely that He would give men the power to make new laws?

Christ made many new laws. I cannot spare the time to enumerate them all. But take this one example. When He said at the Last Supper to the Apostles, "Do this in commemoration of Me. and as often as you do it, you will show the death of the Lord until He comes," He gave them a new law not to be found, as previously binding, in the Old Law. So, too, when He commanded men to be baptized by water and the Holy Spirit. When Christ gave the about the “commandments of men” He was addressing the Scribes and the Pharisees. But their unauthorized impositions under the Old Law did not prevent Him from authorizing His own apostles to legislate in His name under the New Law, promising to safeguard them from error by the gift of the Holy Ghost. It is that same Holy Spirit who preserves the Church from any essential errors opposed to Christian principles to her official teaching concerning faith and morals.

319. Christ told them to teach what He had commanded them, not what they thought fit to devise.

Part of what He had taught them was that they had the power to legislate in His name. And that constitutional power has been handed on in the Church.

320. Dean Inge says: "If those who are bitterly opposed to Christianity will take the trouble to trace those things in it which arouse their indig­nation to their sources, they will find, I think, that almost everything which offends them comes from ecclesiasticism, not from Christianity."

Dean Inge is wrong. His appeal to the distinction between Churchianity and Christianity may have weight with Protestants who protest against the Catholic Church, and whose religion has become so self-centred and individualistic that they have little respect for their own Churches. But the distinction will avail nothing with those bitterly opposed to Christianity. They do not object to the corporate view which identifies the Church with Christ. They object to the idea of a supernatural revelation at all. They will not entertain the notion that God Himself ever pre­scribed a definite religion for man. And Dean Inge could attack ecclesiasticism till his dying day without converting a single one of its enemies to Christianity. It is true that bitter opponents of Christianity rejoice when professing Christians attack the clergy. They gladly repeat such utterances. But their joy is not in any hope that pure and undefiled Christianity will emerge from the painful criticism; their hope is that anticlericalism will put one more nail in the coffin of Christianity.

321. "Religious societies must exist," writes Dean Inge, "and it is not likely that a class of officials will ever be found who do not wish to increase their power."

I deny that, in the Catholic Church at least, the priesthood and the bishops, as an official class, will ever want to make their authority a personal matter, to be in­creased to their own advantage. I say that I deny that of them as it class. But I agree with Dean Inge to this extent: It is not likely that, in a society composed of human beings, there will ever exist a class of officials in which some of the officials will not abuse their office, and seek to increase their motives from motives of per­sonal pride and ambition. That may be true of leaders in the Catholic Church, as of every other society, secular or religious in this world. Not for a moment would I deny that there have been Catholic bishops and priests who have forsaken the spirit of Christ, neglected their duties, exceeded their rights, been guilty of in­tolerable tyranny, and sickened those who have known them of the religion they claimed to represent. But they are the exception. Christ predicted that they would exist, and warned us not to let such failures and disappointments due to human frailty and sin shake our faith in the Church as such. The Church is to be judged by mass of those who have lived in accordance with her requirements; not by the comparative few whose conduct is their own, and possibly guilty of a violation of what the Church declares they should be and should do.

322. "As soon as we recognise that the history of the Great Church is a monstrous abuse," added Dean Inge, "which has made the Word of God of no effect by its traditions, we shall be more ready to go back to the fountain-head, and judge of the modern problems by the broad principles of the New Testament."

In the first place, if any history depicts the Catholic Church as a monstrous abuse, that history itself is a monstrous abuse. One may agree with historians bring­ing out abuses of which members of the Church have undoubtedly been guilty. But to transfer the guilt from recalcitrant members or officials to the Church they disgraced is monstrous. Still more monstrous is Dean Inge's bland assertion that the traditions of the Great Church have made the Word of God of no effect and that people who learn to despise the Church will be then ready to go back to the fountain-head is against all experience. An ever-growing loss of interest in any Christianity at all is the outstanding characteristic of those whose forefathers abandoned the Catholic Church at the time of the Protestant Reformation. As for judging modern problems by the broad principles of the New Testament, those who make such statements sel­dom get beyond vague generalizations. They do not tell us what they think those principles to be, lest in defining them they should scene to be narrow. The main thing, apparently, is to keep on talking about the broad principles of the New Tes­tament, but at all costs to keep them so broad that they cease to be principles.

323. What is needed, according to Dean Inge, is "entire detachment from ecclesiastical tradition which has completely upset the moral standards of the Gospels, counting disobedience to the hierarchy a graver offence than sins against love, truthfulness, humility or purity."

Where the Catholic Church is concerned it is sheer nonsense to say that eccle­siastical tradition has completely upset the moral standards of the Gospels. Apart from the extravagance of the statement, the Gospels themselves declare it to be impossible. As for disobedience to the hierarchy being a graver sin than sins against the theological virtue of charity or love of God, the Catholic Church expressly teaches that sins against the theological virtues are worse than sins against the cardinal virtues of justice, which includes obedience and truthfulness, and of temperance, which includes humility and purity. Apparently, too, the Dean wants to convey the idea that, in the Catholic Church, sins against love, truthfulness, humility or purity, do not matter so long as one is obedient to the hierarchy. That is a calumny. It may be argued that the Dean does not want to convey such an idea, arid that lie admits that they are regarded as sins. But he took care to destroy that impression by declaring that ecclesiastical tradition has completely upset the moral standards of the Gospels. One wonders why he remains an ecclesiastic even in the Church of England!

324. Could not the outward form of a Church, frequently borrowed from earlier systems, be so engrossing as to blind one to its development through human weakness and vanity from a simple truth?

That could happen. But I deny such is true of the Catholic Church. On the other hand, a superficial knowledge of earlier religious systems, and a fascination for the discovery of remote parallelisms in Christianity, can blind one to the historical facts concerning the independent origin of the Christian religion, and the immense differences which far outweigh what are for the most part imagined similarities. And still further, one can be blind to the laws of logic, and fall into the fallacy of thinking that similarities are of themselves sufficient proof of derivation.

325. What powers did Christ confer upon His Church?

All can really be reduced to three. Firstly, magisterial power or the authority to teach the truth in His name. Thus He said "Go teach all nations." Secondly, sanctifying powers for the forgiving of sin and the conferring of graces necessary for salvation and virtue. Thus He said "Whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven them." Thirdly, legislative power or the right to make laws for the disciplinary needs of the Church. Thus He said "Whatsoever you bind you bind on earth will be bound in heaven; arid whatsoever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven,"

326. You maintain that the Church will remain permanently the same till the end of the world?

Yes. For Christ said, "Behold, I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world. Matt. 28, 20. By the consummation of the world is meant, not the death of the Apostles, but the end of time, and of the human race on earth. And the Church must remain with the constitution, powers, and authority given it by Christ, or it would cease to be the Church as Christ established it, and no longer, therefore, His Church, The Catholic Church, just as Christ intended it and founded it, is imperishable. It is not subject to any essential changes.

327. Would you kindly read St. Mark, XV1., 17-18?

Those verses are as follows: "These signs shall follow them that believe: in My name they shall cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues. They shall take up serpents; and if they shall drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them: they shall, lay their hands upon the sick, and they shall recover."

328. If the Catholic hierarchy desires to secure belief in itself, let its members do these things.

You are asking what the Gospels themselves do not require; for you are reading more into the words of Christ than they contain. Christ said, "These signs shall follow." He did not say that they would follow always, and in every single age, and be in the power of every believer in Him, or even of every priest. Christ's predic­tion was verified, for such signs did follow the preaching of the Gospel. If you read the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles of St. Paul you will find that such things certainly did occur. Again, although such miraculous manifestations are not so abundant today as in the early Church, when they were more necessary to secure its rapid and solid extension, they have not entirely ceased. They have continued intermittently through the ages, as we know from the lives of the Saints. But, if you have any faith in the predictions of Christ, instead of urging an exaggerated extension of a particular prediction beyond any limits intended by our Lord, why not face His prediction that the Church He established will continue till the end of time, the very gates of hell failing to prevail against it? The Church is still in this world, and it is the Catholic Church.

329. Priests can’t do these things today.

There is no particular reason why they should be empowered to do so. Our Lord did not predict that every single believer in any given age would be endowed with the ability to do all the remarkable things He enumerated. In the various ages, and more particularly in Apostolic times, some believers did some of them; others did others. And since those signs did follow those who believed in Christ, His prophecy was fulfilled. Your difficulty arises from your having read too hastily and superficially an isolated text, accepting conclusions far wider than the premises afforded by it could possibly justify. If the answer to a sum in arithmetic is to be correct, it must not contain more than the preceding figures warrant. And it is a great test of sound reasoning to go back to the propositions from which you began, and make sure you have got their right sense, and that you have not read more into them than they really say.

330. If these promises were made to the disciples only, why are not other promises so interpreted, such as the promise of the power of binding and loosing in the Church?

The promises of miraculous powers were not for the disciples only. I merely maintain that they were not for all believers always. Christ promised the gift of miracles, not to anyone who would believe in Him at all, but to the community of the faithful, to be exercised by some of them individually according to the will of God and the interests of the Church. The cases quoted in the passage from St. Mark are merely possible examples chosen from amongst others. So St. Paul describes in 1 Cor. XII., 28-31, the various gifts, saying that God gave to some the gift of miracles —  that in the Church were graces of healings, helps, kinds of tongues, interpretations of speeches. But he adds, “Are all Apostles? Are all prophets? Are all workers of miracles? Have all the grace of healing? . . . Be zealous for the better gifts.” And he goes on to show that charity and personal virtue are the things that really matter. The dispositions of extraordinary gifts can be left to God.

Papal Supremacy

331. You have repeatedly said that the Pope is the head on earth of your priestly hierarchy. But Christ is the Head of the Church, and there cannot be two heads to one body.

There can be, in the Catholic sense, the one on earth being but secondary, and Vicar of Christ, the Supreme Head of the Church. Thus, a plenipotentiary ambassador has the power of the king. It is not a power different from that of the king. In fact, it is the king's power exercised through the ambassador. So the Pope is head of the Church on earth insofar as to him is delegated the power of Christ by Christ Himself. The Pope teaches and governs in the name of Christ. And he must be strictly faithful to the doctrines taught by Christ, interpreting them, defining them, defending them, and settling disputes concerning them. He is there for that, and such an authority is the secret of the success of the Catholic Church. And, of course, it is the provision made for His Church by the wisdom of Christ.

332. It is wrong for the Pope to arrogate to himself the title of "Vicar of God" on earth.

He does not do so. A person is said to arrogate to himself a title when he assumes it without any right to possess it. But, as the rightful head of the Catholic Church in this world, the Pope lawfully succeeds to an office whose occupant is rightfully regarded as God's Vicar on earth.

333. It is the height of presumption for any man to be called the Vicar of God.

I am afraid you do not understand what the word "vicar" means. If you imagine that it supposes authority even over God, I must ask you to dismiss that idea at once. A vicar is one who has authority as the delegate of another. Anyone who exercises authority in the name of another can rightly be termed that others vicar. Thus, in writing of the king, Carlyle says, "The authority of the king is that of law, or of right, not that of wrong. The king, therefore, should use the authority of law or right as being the vicar and servant of God on earth." So speaks Carlyle, and quite correctly. But if he who holds supreme authority in the State for purposes of temporal administration may be termed the Vicar of God, surely the term is still more justified when we speak of the supreme head of the Church, to whom the care of our spiritual welfare has been entrusted.

334. Why is the Pope called "Holy Father"? Christ never called Peter by that title.

Christ conferred upon St. Peter a very holy office, and appointed him as head of the household of the faith constituted by the great family of all the spiritual children of God. By doing this, Christ appointed him as the "holy father" of the whole Christian family on earth; and we Catholics as true children of the family rightly grant to him and to the Pope as his successor, the title of "Holy Father."

335. In early times the title of Pope was given to all bishops.

That is true. The word "Pope" simply means "Father," and the bishops from the beginning were regarded as entrusted in a particular way with the paternal care of their respective flocks. It was not until the fourth century that the word "Pope" began to be a distinctive title of the Bishop of Rome.

336. Then how were the successors of St. Peter distinguished from other bishops by the early Christians?

Chiefly by the title of their Bishopric. Rome, as the See of St. Peter, was acknowledged to be the supreme source of authority in the Church; and it was enough to speak of the Bishop of Rome for all to know that the supreme head of the Church on earth was intended. Yet, besides the title of Bishop of Rome, even in the earliest times when all bishops were called Popes, other distinctive titles were given to those to whom the title of Pope is now restricted. Thus, the Bishop of Rome was called the "Supreme Pontiff," or the "Roman Pontiff," or again the "Bishop of Bishops.'" But in general, it is enough to say that the supremacy of the Pope was annexed to the Bishopric inherited from St. Peter, and the very mention of Rome was enough to indicate supreme authority in the Church. "Rome has spoken; the case is finished" is an axiom which sums up the attitude of the early Christians.

337. How can the Pope be Peter's lawful successor, when there was no Pope from St. Peter's death until the fourth century?

In the second century, St. Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons, gives the list of the Popes until his day. "The Blessed Apostles," he wrote, "transmitted the office of the episcopate to Linus. To him succeeded Anacletus; and after him, in the third place from the Apostles, to Clement is allotted the episcopacy." So he continues, giving the names of the Popes down to Eleutherius, "Who now," he says, "in the twelfth place, holds the inheritance of the episcopate from the Apostles." How could St. Irenaeus, in the second century, enumerate the names of twelve Popes, if there were no Popes before the fourth century?

338. Then the Primacy is bound to find sanctuary in Rome, or Christendom will be without its head. What if Italy were invaded and the Pope expelled?

The Primacy will always be attached to the episcopal See of Rome. The diocese of Rome, therefore, will never be destroyed nor suppressed. Despite any possible political changes, there will always be some faithful Christians in the diocese of Rome, and the Pope will be their bishop. The true "Eternal Rome," to use a popular expression, is not political Rome, but the Rome of St. Peter and of his successors; in other words, perpetuity belongs to ecclesiastical Rome, whatever political changes the centuries may bring.

339. Where was Peter given power to transmit his office to others?

Christ Himself gave St. Peter the power of transmitting his privileges and authority as head of the Church by declaring that Church to be perpetual. As a building is supported by its foundation, so the whole Church will ever rest upon the constitutional office and authority to be transmitted by Peter. If the Church is to remain all days till the end of the world protected by Christ, it must remain just as He established it. No one could alter the essential constitution He gave it, or it would no longer be the same society. As the Church is perpetual, so the Primacy is perpetual, and, therefore, to be transmitted by Peter to his successors. Those who deny this must face the formidable consequence that the Church for nearly two thousand years has been heretical, leading the overwhelming majority of Christians through all the ages into error, so that the gates of hell have indeed prevailed against the Church Christ established and guaranteed. They must concede that the Church has no single visible head on earth; that unity in faith and worship is not necessary; and that division amongst the Churches with all their variations of discipline and indiscipline is quite in accordance with the mind of Christ. And that is indeed a reduction to the absurd.

340. Matthew XVI., 18, 19, are ambiguous verses, which claim or claimed a respectable heterodoxy.

The text, "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church," has, of course, been violently disputed by those who desired to reject Catholicism. But the heterodox interpretations of these people, however respectable in their own eyes and in those of their followers, remained, nevertheless, heterodox. Error does not cease to be error because it becomes widespread and popular. Protestant scholars are becoming rapidly ashamed of the absurd interpretations adopted in order to escape the Catholic sense. So we find the Protestant Dr. Plummer insisting that the word rock must refer to Peter, and not to Christ Himself, nor to Peter's faith, nor to Peter's confession of faith. Dr. Briggs, a Presbyterian scholar, writes, "All attempts to explain the rock in any other way than as referring to Peter have ignominiously failed." The German Protestant scholar Kuinoel wrote, "Many interpreters wrongly said that the 'rock' referred to Christ Himself or to the confession of Peter. They would not have taken refuge in these distorted interpretations if the Popes had not used the words to vindicate their own authority." Loisy, the French Modernist, said, "Protestant interpretations are based on polemical interests. But, if one does accept the Gospels in an historical sense, their interpretations are only subtle distinctions doing violence to the text." Heterodox interpretations, therefore, are still heterodox; and they are growing less and less respectable.

341. Any pretended religion trying to function on a couple of flagrantly distorted verses, to wit, Matthew XVI., 18, and XVIII., 17, is based on a very precarious foundation.

I agree. But the Catholic Church does not try to function on a couple of verses of Scripture; and she does not flagrantly distort Matthew XVI., 18. and XVIII., 17. even when those particular verses happen to be quoted. If you hear them quoted fairly often, it is because those who write to me, and profess to believe in the Bible, seem to forget that they exist.

342. But then, Romanism, being infallible, can make and unmake, bind and loose, dictate the lives and words and consciences of men, make and unmake laws.

Being infallible means that the Catholic Church is unable, even if she would, to teach or legislate officially, in matters of faith or morals, in any way opposed to the revelation given by God to mankind. The infallibility of the Church does not give her the right to depart from the principles of Christ. It is a restriction, taking away that possibility. There is no guarantee that a noninfallible Church will not go astray.

343. Judge Rutherford says that the Pope is antichrist, and the "seven-headed, ten-horned Beast"; whilst the Roman Church is "Satan's Organisation."

That is sufficiently refuted by the fact that it is Judge Rutherford who supplies such information.

344. Who is the "man" referred to in Rev. XIII., 18?

He is a symbol of the evil spirit of revolt against God throughout the ages. St. John personifies by his expression the forces of evil struggling against the work of Christ. Ever there is an antichrist. It may be this Emperor or that; or some group of irreligious men, or a collection of groups. Whether, when the worlds history approaches its climax, the antagonist is to be represented by one man, or by one system of government, or even by a dominant system of thought cannot be defined. But that matters little. Certainly the generalized visions of St. John do not justify us in insisting that the "man" referred to must be a definite human or diabolical personality. And still more certainly, the expression in no way refers to the Pope.

345. There have been evil Popes. Was it God's will that they should be head of the Church?

It was at least God's permissive will. It was quite against God's positive will that the few unworthy Popes should have lived in a disedifying way. But we should quarrel, not with the fact that they were Popes, but with the fact that they did not live up to their obligations, and set a good personal example to the faithful.

346. Yet you have to believe that those Popes, sinful themselves, could do no wrong where the affairs of the Church were concerned?

Catholics certainly must and do believe that no Pope, whatever his personal character, has ever defined an erroneous doctrine to be true. But the gift of infallibility does not extend to matters of practical administration. And Popes have undoubtedly been guilty of imprudence in such matters. The Church, however, being indefectible in virtue of Christ's promise to be with her all days till the end of the world, has survived all such mistakes in management and policy on the part of the Popes.

347. Still Catholics are obliged to obey the Pope in all things.

There is no authority in the Church to command what is evil. If any authority did so, Catholics are obliged to disobey such commands. If, for example, the Pope sent me a special command to murder some special enemy of the Church, I would absolutely refuse to obey. And if the Pope charged me with disobedience, I would reply, "I owe you no obedience when you command what is clearly sinful." But there is not the least likelihood of any Pope commanding anyone to do what is sinful.

348. Can you quote any testimonies to Papal claims to supremacy before the year 300 A. D.?

Yes. In the year 96, Pope Clement of Rome, wrote to the Corinthians. His letter was official, written in his capacity as successor of St. Peter, and it gave not only advice but definite commands. After his instructions he wrote, "If you obey what we have written by the Holy Spirit, you will be our joy and consolation. But if some do not obey what God has said by us, let them know that they will be involved in no small sin and danger." Harnack, the German Protestant scholar, admitted that this letter of Clement proves that the primacy of the Bishop of Rome was an accepted fact even in the first century. Again, we have the testimony of St. Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch from 69-107 A. D. He writes that the Church at Rome "presides over the whole assembly united in charity." And he asks for prayers for the Church in Syria confided to him subject to Christ and the supreme authority of Rome. This testimony of St. Ignatius has particular value, for St. Peter had been Bishop of Antioch. If St. Peter had remained and died at Antioch, the Bishop of Antioch would have obtained the supremacy. But St. Ignatius expressly rejects the idea that he has authority over the Christians at Rome, and admits that the Bishop of Rome is the principal and presiding bishop. Thirdly, St. Irenaeus, 130-202 A. D., Bishop of Lyons in Gaul, wrote as follows of the Roman See: "On account of its supremacy it is necessary that every Church in which is the tradition of the Apostles should be in harmony or unity with this Church." Fourthly, St. Cyprian, 210-258 A. D., an African bishop, writing of certain heretics, says, "They even dare to invade the See of Peter and the principal Church whence the unity of the priesthood has its source." Again he writes, "We exhort all to acknowledge and hold that Rome is the mother and root-source of the Catholic Church."

349. If the Pope was supreme head of the Church, why did the Emperors convene and preside over the Oecumenical Councils prior to the Greek Schism?

It is true that the early Councils were convened by the Emperors, but never with any idea that they could grant any ecclesiastical jurisdiction or authority to the members of those Councils or to their decisions. Whilst the Emperor might demand that the bishops assemble, the Pope alone could give the character of an Oecumenical Council to the gathering, either by sending Legates, as at the Nicene Council; or by delegating authority to one of the bishops to preside, as at Ephesus; or by confirming the Decrees, as with the Second Council of Constantinople. In no case had the Decrees oecumenical value without the ratification of the Pope. The reason for the prior action of the Emperor in convening the Councils should be clear. When the same people are subjects of both civil and ecclesiastical authority, civil disturbance can affect their spiritual welfare, and religious disturbance can affect their civil welfare. Heresies in those times greatly disturbed social peace; and the Emperors wanted questions of faith and order in the Church rectified for the good of the Empire. But they knew that questions of faith as such were subject to the authority of the Pope. They had no say in deciding such matters.

350. If the Pope were supreme in the Church, the bishops at the Council of Nicea, and the Bishop of Rome, surely would be aware of it.

All were aware of it. They could not be unaware of the testimonies of Clement, Ignatius, Irenaeus, Cyprian, and many others. Hosius, who presided at the Council of Nicea, was the Legate of Pope Sylvester. Yet Pope Sylvester's predecessor, Pope Julius I., had written to the Eusebian bishops, "The ecclesiastical canon forbids any decrees to be sanctioned without the judgment of the Roman Bishop." That canon was certainly known to all the bishops assembled at Nicea.

351. Then why did the Council of Nicea confer on the Pope the title of Patriarch, but junior to the Patriarchs of Constantinople and Alexandria?

The Council did not do so. You have been misled by a wrong interpretation of the 6th Canon of the Nicene Council. That Canon did not allot junior patriarchal rights to the Bishop of Rome. It vindicated the patriarchal rights of Alexandria against the usurper, Meletius of Lycopolis. The Bishop of Alexandria complained to the Council of this usurpation. The Council then vindicated the patriarchal rights of the great Sees of Alexandria and Antioch in their own spheres, even as all admitted the patriarchal rights of Rome. The authoritative interpretation of this 6th Canon of Nicea can be found in the 16th transaction of the Council of Chalcedon. Paschasius was asked to quote the 6h Canon of Nicea. He did so as follows: "The Roman Church has always had the primary. Let Egypt however hold that the Bishop of Alexandria has power over all members there, because such is the custom with the Roman Bishop. So, in Antioch, and in the other provinces, let the Churches of the greater cities have the primacy." All present at Chalcedon agreed to the safeguarding of the patriarchal rights of Alexandria and Antioch in relation to their suffragan bishops, but added: "We declare that the primacy, and chief honor, according to the Canons, he preserved to the Archbishop of ancient Rome."

352. Let us go back a little further. What did the supreme Pope Victor do to the Asiatic Christians in 188-189?

What you here think adverse to the papal claims is really strong evidence for them. Take the history of the whole affair. From the earliest times, the Christians in Asia Minor used to celebrate Easter at the same time as the Jewish Passover, the 14th day of the Jewish month Nisan, on whatever day of the week it might fall. Elsewhere, and especially at Rome, Easter was celebrated always on a Sunday, as amongst us today. A controversy arose about this divergence of custom, and Pope Victor instructed the bishops to meet in order to settle the question. Lest Jewish ideas should invade the Church in Asia Minor, nearly all the bishops declared that the Roman custom should be observed everywhere. But the bishops of Asia Minor refused this, and the Pope condemned them, and excommunicated them. St. Irenaeus wrote to the Pope begging him not to enforce the censure for the sake of peace, and Pope Victor yielded. However, the Jewish custom was gradually abandoned, and before long the Roman custom of Easter observance was accepted in Asia Minor also.

353. What was the action of the bishops, and the results thereof?

I have explained that. No conclusion detrimental to papal jurisdiction can be drawn from the incident. Dr. B. J. Kidd, the Protestant scholar, says: "At no point in its history is this pre-eminence so evident as under Pope Victor, when from Gaul to Osrhoene on the Euphrates his invitation for the summoning of Councils to effect a settlement of the Paschal Controversy was everywhere accepted." And he quotes Duchesne's statement that this matter "shows how evident in those ancient times was the oecumenical authority of the Roman Church." And certainly no bishop other than the Bishop of Rome claimed such a right to intervene; nor would any other have been so heeded. Though some of the bishops refused to obey, and at the request of Irenaeus the Pope did not enforce the decree of excommunication, it does not follow that they denied his authority. As a matter of fact, the letter of Irenaeus shows that his authority was admitted, for Irenaeus pleaded that so many Christians should not be cut off from the Church for observing a long-standing custom. That is an admission that if the Pope did enforce the excommunication, the effect would be their exclusion from the Church. Harnack, the German Protestant historian, saw that. "How could Victor threaten such an edict of excommunication," he writes, "unless it was commonly admitted that it belonged to the Roman Church to define the conditions of unity in those things that pertained to the faith."

354. From whom did Spain seek advice during the disturbances created by Basilides?

Let us take the facts, and then discuss their significance. In the year 253 A. D., two bishops in Spain named Basilides and Martialis denied their faith during a persecution, and went over to paganism. Neighboring bishops thereupon consecrated two other bishops, Sabinus and Felix, to take their places. The two apostate bishops later repented and wanted to take over their previous dioceses from Sabinus and Felix. Meeting with opposition, they went to Rome, gave a false account of affairs to Pope Stephen, and implored him to use his supreme authority to restore them to their bishoprics. They were very plausible, and deceived the Pope, who ordered their reinstatement. The distressed local Catholics then appealed for advice to Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage in Africa. Cyprian told them not to reinstate Basilides and Martialis, but to keep Sabinus and Felix, declaring that the Pope's decision was based on the wrong information supplied by the two unworthy renegades. But in all this there is no indication that either the Spanish Catholics or Cyprian of Carthage rejected the Pope's supremacy. The mere fact that Basilides and Martialis had recourse to the Holy See shows the primacy of Rome as an accepted fact. Cyprian himself in his writings on the subject strongly maintained all the Catholic principles of the Roman Primacy. In practice, during the stress of controversies, persecutions, and schisms, he did not always observe his own principles, and allowance can easily be made for mistakes in administration.

355. How does this square with papal claims to supremacy?

The incident affords no real difficulty. Cyprian, without denying the supreme authority of the Pope, seems to have ignored it in a particular difficulty, giving his reasons for doing so. Probably he thought he did what was for the best in the circumstances; but even had he been moved by some traces of pride or prejudice, which are latent even in the best of men, no argument against papal claims could be drawn from his conduct. In the year 257, Cyprian died a martyr for the faith, and is a canonized Saint in the Catholic Church. Writing in the fourth century, St. Augustine speaks of Cyprian's many mistakes, and says, "Either Cyprian did not say all that his enemies declare him to have said; or else he later corrected his views in the light of truth; or else the immense charity which filled his heart covered such blemishes in his life. In any case, he expiated all by his sufferings and death for Christ."

356. What of the incident concerning Apiarius, 451 A. D.?

That case is often quoted where the right of appeal to the Pope against the disciplinary decisions of other bishops is concerned. About the year 417 A. D., Apiarius, a priest in Africa, was deposed and excommunicated by his own bishop.

Apiarius appealed to the Pope, who took up his case, and reversed the decision of the African bishop, ordering Apiarius to be reinstated. After the death of Pope Zosimus, the case was again put to Pope Boniface, his successor. For five years, letters were exchanged between Africa and Rome concerning the principles involved, and Pope Boniface died without concluding the discussion. He was succeeded by Pope Celestine I., who settled the case by admitting that Apiarius was justly condemned by his own bishop, and should be deposed; but he insisted that, by virtue of their primacy, the Popes retained the right to hear and judge appeals from Africa, or anywhere else in the world.

357. What is your interpretation of the African Synod's letters to Boniface?

It is not a question of my interpretation. It is a question of their objective historical significance. There is certainly not one word in them that can validly be urged against the Roman Primacy. The African bishops complained to Pope Boniface of the high-handed behavior of the Legate Faustinus, though without disputing in any way the fact of his authority. They also asked the Pope to verify certain Canons which had been quoted by his predecessor, Zosimus. It is to be noted that St. Augustine was a member of the committee of African bishops who wrote to Pope Boniface. Now St. Augustine was absolutely convinced of the primacy of the Pope, and would never have sanctioned letters which could be interpreted as opposed to that primacy. For example, writing against the Donatist heretics, St. Augustine said that the Bishop of Carthage had no need to worry about enemies so long as he knew that he was in communion with the Roman Church, in which the primacy of the Apostolic Chair had always existed, and from which the Gospel had come to Africa. In Ep. 209, he acknowledges that appeal may be made from his own episcopal decisions to Rome. And in sermon 131 he declares that Councils derive their authority from the approbation of the Supreme Pontiff. "For that reason," he writes, "the two Councils sent their transactions to the Apostolic See, and the Decrees duly came back. The cause is finished." From these words of St. Augustine the axiom arose, "Rome has spoken; the cause is finished."

358. What was the trouble over the Nicene and Sardican Canons?

In vindicating the right of appeals to Rome from Africa against local decisions there, Pope Zosimus had quoted two Canons which in all good faith he attributed to the Council of Nicea instead of to the Council of Sardica. The African bishops could not find them amongst the Nicene Canons, and as Zosimus died just at that time, they wrote to Boniface asking him to verify the quotation. Pope Boniface made inquiries, and found that Zosimus had mistakenly quoted the Sardican Canons as Nicene. The Council of Sardica (now Sofia, in Bulgaria) had met in 343, and had restated most clearly the law that there is always the right of appeal to the Pope "out of reverence for the Blessed Apostle Peter." But the Council of Sardica, whilst a lawful provincial Synod of Eastern bishops, was not an Oecumenical Council as was that of Nicea. But this merely technical point makes no difference whatever to the substance of the claim of the Popes to the primacy, and its continuous and general admission.

359. In the light of all this, can you still hold that primacy of jurisdiction belongs to the Pope?

Of course. There is no point in searching history for isolated incidents in which the exercise of this primacy provoked opposition. Many, at various times, did not perceive fully the nature of that primacy, even though admitting it. Many did not know clearly how far it extended. Many, for personal reasons, resisted it, whilst still professing to be Catholics. Others lost the faith altogether and denied it. But the primacy was always there. I myself am not surprised by the number of cases in which the authority of the Pope was discussed, and its practical applications disputed. I marvel that there were not more. Any solicitor could tell you that there is a vast difference between a law and its application. Lawyers themselves will dispute as to the sense and amplitude of various civil laws. Test cases are brought to determine their interpretation. The wisest legal men will argue sincerely and strongly for opposing views. And out of such disputes the correct application emerges. In the same way the fact of the primacy of the Pope has ever stood, whilst disputes and discussions have but enabled us to state its implications with precision.

360. In a previous reply you mentioned the Council of Chalcedon. Very well. What was stated in its 28th Canon?

The section which suits your purpose is as follows: "Always following the rules of the holy Fathers, and knowing the Canon of the 150 most God-beloved bishops which has just been read, we also define and vote the same things concerning the primacy of the Most Holy Church of Constantinople, the New Rome. And indeed, the Fathers wisely gave the primacy to the See of Elder Rome because that city was the ruler; and the 150 most God-beloved bishops, moved by the same purpose, appointed a like primacy to the most Holy See of New Rome, rightly judging that the city honored because of her rule and her Senate, should enjoy a like primacy to that of the Elder Imperial Rome, and should be powerful in Church affairs, just as she is, and should be, the second after her." Such is the famous 28th Canon of Chalcedon. It must be noted that, whilst this Canon admits the primacy of Rome, it was dictated by the ambition of Constantinople to supplant the Patriarchates of Alexandria and Antioch; and it wrongly states the origin of and the reasons for Rome's primacy.

361. You deny that the Council gave the Pope his privileges?

Yes. Pope Leo the Great had himself convoked the Council of Chalcedon in 451. But when the Council met, Attila and the Huns were ravaging Italy, and many Western bishops could not attend. However, Pope Leo sent Paschasius, a Sicilian bishop, to preside in his name, with four other bishops to assist him. There were 630 Eastern bishops, the 5 Papal Legates, and 2 African bishops present. The Eastern bishops were anxious to exalt the See of Constantinople, not to the level of Rome, but above all other Churches. At the 15th Session, on Oct. 31st, the Papal Legates being absent, the Eastern bishops formulated their 28th Canon. But when they wrote to Pope Leo formally asking him to confirm their Decrees, the Pope confirmed the doctrinal decisions, but refused the Canons drawn up in the absence of the Papal Legates.

362. If the Pope had the primacy, why did the Greek bishops give him such privileges?

The Greek bishops gave no privileges. They acknowledged the primacy of Rome, and sought privileges for Constantinople to render the Patriarch of that city next in dignity after the Pope, and above the Sees of Alexandria and Antioch. They wrote to Pope Leo that they only wanted Constantinople to be "second," and added, "We beg you then to honor our decisions so that we may add the consent of the head of the Church." Pope Leo refused, telling them that they were confusing civil and divine things; and as a result the Canon was never inserted into any Code of Canon Law, either Eastern or Western, till the Greeks revised it some 400 years later at the time of the Schism of Photius and the commencement of the Greek Orthodox Church.

363. Does Papal Supremacy still stand?

Yes. At that very Council of Chalcedon, when Pope Leo's dogmatic letter to Flavian, Patriarch of Constantinople, was read, all the bishops cried out, "That is the faith of the Fathers; that is the faith of the Apostles. Peter has spoken by Leo." And the appeal of the Eastern bishops themselves to the Pope as the head of the Church in order to secure the ratification of their 28th Canon, leaves no doubt as to their convictions concerning the Roman Primacy. In his book on "Church Unity," Dr. C. A. Briggs, a Presbyterian professor of theology, writes as follows: "We have to admit that the Christian Church from the earliest times recognized the primacy of the Roman Bishop, and that all other great Sees at times recognized the supreme jurisdiction of Rome in matters of doctrine, government, and discipline. It can easily be shown that the assumptions of the Bishops of Rome were often resented; their intrusions into the rights of other Patriarchates, provinces, and dioceses, were often resisted; their decisions were often refused; but when the whole case has been carefully examined and all the evidences sifted, the statement of Irenaeus stands firm." Irenaeus stated that "it is a matter of necessity for every Church to agree with the great, ancient, and universally known Church founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious Apostles, Peter and Paul, on account of its pre-eminent authority."

364. Was Pope Gregory I. in error when he protested against the title of "Universal Bishop," saying that it was sacrilegious for any man to so call himself?

In so protesting Gregory exercised his universal jurisdiction as Bishop of Bishops, not hesitating to condemn John the Faster, Patriarch of Constantinople.

365. Was he unaware of his own universal jurisdiction?

He could not have been, since he exercised it. In many of his letters, also, he insists that the Bishop of Rome holds the place of Peter, that he is the head of the "Faith," and "of all the Churches." And he declares that all the bishops are subject to the Apostolic See. To understand the sense in which Pope Gregory condemned the expression "universal Bishop," you must understand the sense in which John the Faster intended it. It has always been Catholic teaching that the bishops are not mere agents of the Pope, but true successors of the Apostles. The supreme authority of Peter is perpetuated in the Popes; but the power and authority of the other Apostles is perpetuated in the other bishops in the true sense of the word. The Pope is not the "only" Bishop; and, although his power is supreme, his is not the "only" power. But John the Faster, Patriarch of Constantinople, wanted to be bishop even of the dioceses of subordinate bishops, reducing them to mere agents, and making himself the universal or only real bishop. Pope Gregory condemned this intention, and wrote to John the Faster telling him that he had no right to claim to be universal bishop or "sole" bishop in his Patriarchate.

Temporal Power

366. The absolute supremacy of the Pope raises the question as to why Catholics of America or Australia should be subject to a foreign bishop of a foreign city.

From the national point of view we are not subject to the Pope. From the spiritual point of view the word "foreign" is without meaning. All Catholics are equally members of the one great family of the children of God.

367. Throughout the world Roman Catholics accept as their final authority neither the Word of God, nor the law of the land; but the will of a foreign potentate.

The authority of the Word of God does not enter into this matter. Protestants themselves would restrict the authority of the Bible to religious matters, even did they still accept it at all. Multitudes of them no longer accept it as having any real authority, and where they do, they read into it whatever they want it to mean. It is the Catholic Church today which stands for the authority of the Bible against rationalists and unbelievers. The statement that Catholics do not accept the laws of the land as supreme in their own sphere is an inexcusable calumny. Their very religion insists upon obedience to the law of the land in which they happen to dwell. It forbids them to do the will of a "foreign potentate" in opposition to the laws of their own country. And the Pope, as their supreme Bishop and leader in religious matters, never tires of urging his subjects wherever they may be to fulfill the duties of good citizenship.

368. Still, since the Pope is a temporal ruler in his own right, it follows that the organization of Roman Catholicism is in part a Church, and in part a political State.

That does not follow. In no way whatever can the Catholic Church be called partly a political State. If it were, then I, as a Catholic priest, would owe political allegiance to my country, and also a political allegiance to the Catholic Church. But I acknowledge only one political allegiance-that to my country, Australia. Surely as a Catholic priest I ought to know what claims the Catholic religion makes upon me. I in no way acknowledge the Catholic Church as being in part a political State. The Pope is the spiritual head of the Catholic Church, and I acknowledge spiritual allegiance to him as to my supreme Bishop. He happens also to be temporal ruler of the territory known as Vatican City, in order to be independent of Italian civil authority. But I am not a citizen dwelling in that territory, and have no political affiliations with it.

369. The temporal interests of the Pope's political State might easily conflict with the real interests of the Commonwealth.

If the political interests of Vatican City ever really menaced the political interests of our Commonwealth, Catholics would be obliged in conscience to defend our country against Papal aggression. If the Pope sent two Cardinals and an altar boy in a rowing boat to annex Australia as a further temporal possession of the Holy See, it would be the duty of Catholics in Australia to enlist at once in the Army, Navy, and Air-force, and to concentrate on the task of repelling the invader even at the cost of their own lives.

370. A Protestant bishop has recently declared that Roman Catholicism is an extra-national institution functioning within the State in defiance of the sovereignty of the State.

That is absurd. If the Catholic Church in this country is an extra-national institution functioning in Australia, how would he rank his own Church? It is a religious institution; and not being a national institution, since Australia professes no national religion, it, too, must be classed as an extra-national institution.

371. He said that the Roman Church could not help moulding citizens to an Italian conception of citizenship rather than British.

That is not true. On her own principles the Catholic Church is obliged to inculcate in this country an Australian conception of citizenship of the loftiest character, even as she teaches her children fidelity to their conscience and religion. As a professor of theology, in a recent lecture to our own students preparing for the priesthood, I spoke as follows; and I leave it to my listeners to judge for themselves as to whether my words could be branded as propaganda for Italian ideals. These were my words: "Love of country is an integral part of human nature. Patriotism awakens deep feelings within us, and it stands for love of the place, of the actual soil, the scenery, the history of the land of our origin. Now divine grace perfects nature. There is not a single natural virtue which our Lord is not prepared to consecrate and render divine and supernatural. Our loyalty to country is caught up and blended through Jesus Christ with our loyalty to God. So the Catholic Church has ever respected national characteristics. She unites people in the same faith and worship without in the least asking them to renounce their national differences. We are not only allowed to love our country, we are obliged before God to do so. It would be a sin not to do so. But we must ever remember that love of our own country does not warrant our blaming other people for loving theirs. They, too, have a duty of patriotism. And we must rejoice to see Frenchmen loving France; Irishmen loving Ireland; Americans loving America; Englishmen loving England; Germans loving Germany. If I were working in Japan, I would teach Japanese children that it was their duty to love Japan, even as Australian children must be taught to love Australia."

372. In times of national crisis Catholics are liable to be influenced, directly or indirectly, by their Church, which is primarily controlled outside the British Empire.

The spiritual control to which Catholics are subject does not vary with national ups and downs, nor does it ever interfere with genuine national duties. In times of political crisis, it would not conflict in any way with genuine obligations of loyalty to the country, whether directly or indirectly. It would urge the fulfillment of those duties. But, of course, that does not mean that Catholics, any more than other citizens, are obliged to agree with what any would-be fanatical patriot chooses to declare to be the demands of loyalty. There are many people who think that what they advocate is the only true form of loyalty to their country. But others have the right to differ with them. With the genuine obligations of loyalty Catholicism can never conflict.

Infallibility

373. When one looks at the Catholic Church as she is in herself, one is amazed at the apparent self-righteous and supreme egotism of her teachings.

The Catholic Church certainly claims to be infallible; but she cannot be accused of self-righteousness when she declares that the rightness of her doctrines is due, not to herself, but to the fact that they have been revealed by Almighty God. Nor can she be accused of egotism when she explains that she is not free to compromise God's rights by admitting that human thoughts contradicting His teachings are equally correct. You yourself may not agree that the Catholic Church has such certainty that her teachings are revealed by God; but, granted that the Catholic Church believes it, she cannot be accused of adopting a self-righteous and egotistical attitude.

374. I cannot agree that your Church has a monopoly of the eternal truths.

We do not make that claim. People can know many eternal truths quite independently of the Catholic Church. It is not necessary to be a Catholic, for example, to know that there is a God, or that there is a moral law obliging us to do what is right and avoid what is wrong. What we do maintain is that the Catholic Church has a monopoly of divine authority and certainty in teaching the eternal truths in their fullness as revealed by God. As you do not admit that any other body in this world possesses such a divine teaching authority, you will not resent the denial of the Catholic Church that any other possesses it. The only thing that you could resent would be the fact that the Catholic Church claims it. All I can suggest is that you study the grounds on which she bases that claim.

375. If the Pope is infallible, you make him God.

Since we deny vehemently that he is God, you cannot say that we make him God. But, of course, you mean that our doctrine seems impossible to you save on the hypothesis that the Pope is accepted as God. But that is not necessary. A violin giving out beautiful music is not a musician. You may say that the violin doesn't think the music, but that the Pope thinks the dogmas. Yet insofar as the Pope thinks, he is not infallible, and we have not got to believe his thought but his official declaration of the traditional teaching of Christ. Popes have committed their thoughts to writing, yet their books have much less authority in the Church than the works of a simple monk like St. Thomas Aquinas. It is not the Pope's thoughts, but the Pope's office which counts. To him in his official capacity as successor of St. Peter, our Lord's words apply, "I have prayed for thee, Peter, that thy faith fail not; and do thou confirm thy brethren." God can certainly preserve the Pope from making a wrong definition of doctrine, and He has promised to do so.

376. You have to admit that infallibility is superhuman, and that if the Pope has the duty of a superman, he is a superman.

I will not admit anything of the kind. He is not a superman. The personal powers of the Pope do not enter into the matter. Christ has prayed for him. Christ preserves him from mistakes when, in his official capacity, he defines a doctrine for the universal Church. That is enough. Before a definition, the Pope has no greater personal certainty than any other theologian. After a definition, the Pope is as bound to believe it as any other Catholic. And he believes it as a thing above him, of which he has been the humble instrument.

377. Upon what precisely is the Catholic claim based?

Upon the will of Christ who established the Catholic Church and declared that she would be infallible as the guardian of the Faith.

378. The Christian religion does not need to be guarded. It is from God, and that is sufficient guard.

The New Testament itself does not sanction that idea. St. Paul wrote to Timothy: "I charge thee before God and Jesus Christ, who shall judge the living and the dead . . . preach the word. Be instant in season, out of season; reprove, entreat, rebuke in all patience and doctrine, for there shall be a time when they will not endure sound doctrine; but according to their desires they will heap up to themselves teachers, and will turn away their hearing from the truth." 2 Tim. IV., 1-4. And again he wrote to Titus that a bishop must embrace "that faithful word which is according to doctrine, that he may be able to exhort in sound doctrine, and to convince the gainsayers. For there are many disobedient who must be reproved, who subvert whole houses, teaching things they ought not. Wherefore rebuke them sharply that they may be sound in faith." Tit. I., 9-13. St. Paul knew that God had entrusted His religion to the guardianship of the Catholic Church which he calls the "pillar and ground of truth." I Tim. III., 15.

379. I presume that, before a definition is given, the matter is thoroughly discussed in order to eliminate the danger of a faulty verdict, and the definition based on a majority decision?

You seem to suppose, quite wrongly, that the infallibility of the Church depends ultimately upon human prudence. It does not. It depends ultimately upon the assistance of the Holy Ghost. It is to be noted that we say "assistance," and not "inspiration." The Holy Spirit does not necessarily inspire the Pope in such matters. Before a pronouncement is made, the matter is thoroughly discussed, theologians studying the whole question deeply in the light of Scripture, Apostolic tradition, the writings of the Fathers, and doctrinal analogies. If they decide that the proposed definition is in conformity with the revelation given by Christ, they so inform the Pope. He personally then weighs the question, pondering over it and praying for light. So far no definition has been made. Now what if, after all care has been taken, the proposed doctrine is false? Then, in virtue of the gift of infallibility, the Pope would be prevented from defining the doctrine by the Holy Spirit. How? By some special illumination of mind, or by some external miraculous sign, if necessary; or, if despite these things, the Pope were to determine to define the error, he would drop dead before he would be allowed to use his supreme authority to impose an heretical definition upon the whole Church. Whatever means might be used by God to prevent the Pope from defining error, he would certainly not be permitted to issue an erroneous definition.

380. What if, in previous discussions, the minority of Cardinals and theologians were right, and the majority wrong?

In discussions prior to a Papal definition, if the minority were right, the majority would be wrong; and if a majority were right, the minority would be wrong. But there could be no infallible knowledge as to which group was right and which wrong, unless the Pope decided to define the issue. Should he do so, we would know infallibly that the group which had previously maintained the defined doctrine was right-whether it was the majority or the minority. We must keep in mind that discussions prior to an infallible definition do not contribute to the infallibility of that decision. Infallibility is due to the influence of the Holy Spirit.

381. If at any time the whole hierarchy of the Catholic Church were to become vicious, would not that suggest a withdrawal of Christ's protection - and, therefore, a loss of infallibility?

Infallibility consists in certainty as regards the defined teachings of the Church, not in the impeccability of her officials. At the same time, if the whole hierarchy were to fall into moral corruption, one could possibly challenge the doctrine of Christ's protection of the Church on the score that one of her essential notes is holiness even in the lives of her members in general. But no stage of the history of the Catholic Church could justify the grotesque charge that the whole of the Catholic hierarchy was utterly corrupt.

382. As the Church relies for her doctrines on St. Jerome's Version of the Bible, must we believe that St. Jerome was infallible?

St. Jerome was definitely not infallible. The original writers of Sacred Scripture were infallible, not subsequent translators or transcribers. St. Jerome's translation derives its real value from the fact that the Catholic Church has approved it; but even that approval is disciplinary rather than doctrinal. The Church does not say that no error ever occurred in St. Jerome's Version. But your difficulty arises from your erroneous notion as to the source of the infallibility of the Church. It is not derived from any human sources. If it were, that would be the end of infallibility, for merely human sources are necessarily fallible. If the Pope is asked to define infallibly the sense of some teaching of Scripture, theologians and Scripture scholars are appointed to study the matter in question. They study both text and context in the Vulgate of St. Jerome, compare it with other Versions and Manuscripts, search out the unanimous teaching of the Fathers if such unanimity is to be had, watch carefully the analogy of Catholic dogma, and present their conclusions to the Pope. The Pope may decide not to define the question, and the conclusion of scholars will then remain a probable or perhaps a certain conclusion of theologians without its becoming an infallible decision binding as a matter of strict faith. But if the Pope does give a decision ex cathedra as head of the whole Church, the Holy Spirit will safeguard him from defining any error. The definition then derives its value, not from the previous researches of theologians, nor from any personal thought bestowed upon the subject by the Pope himself, but from the protection and assistance of the Holy Ghost. From all this you can see that natural efforts at the translation of Scripture, whether by St. Jerome or anybody else, are not the foundation for the infallibility of the Catholic Church.

383. Is it not strange that scientists, and not the infallible Church, have revealed those momentous Divine Laws of nature which have resulted in man's progress?

It is not in the least strange that purely natural forces should be discovered and made known to man as a result of human study rather than by the infallible Church. For the Catholic Church does not exist for the purpose of making known the natural secrets of the universe. She exists to safeguard and teach the supernatural revelation of man's eternal and supernatural destiny made known by God through the Prophets and His only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ. You may think that the teaching of science should have been included in the scope of the mission of the Church. But our own speculations must give way before facts. And the fact is that Christ commissioned His Church to teach all nations all things whatsoever He had taught in the name of His Father.

384. Is not the material progress of mankind important?

It is worthy of his attention. But so far as natural development is concerned, God has left that to man himself. He does not make civilization, but wills that man should. However, He has not willed to reveal in advance the natural knowledge which can and should be the fruit of man's own initiative and the progressive exercise of his natural powers. The Church encourages men in their efforts at material and cultural progress; but her specific duty is to see that they do not neglect their spiritual welfare, nor the claims of God upon them. She must keep reiterating from age to age what God has said of Himself and of man's supreme destiny beyond the confines of this life. She must warn men of what they are in constant danger of forgetting-that they must serve God and save their souls, rather than allow themselves to be hypnotized by the transitory things of this life.

385. Scientific inventions, such as radio transmission, have a great influence for good and evil.

Of themselves they have no moral influence either for good or for evil. Such influence is due to the moral goodness or to the wickedness of the men who make use of them; and it is the duty of the Church to induce men to be morally good. To equip the Church for this work the religion of Christ was entrusted to her keeping.

386. Did not the Pope became infallible only in 1870?

No. All through the ages the Popes have been infallible. In 1870, the fact that he is infallible was defined as an article of faith, whilst a more precise decision was given concerning the matters concerning which his infallibility could be exercized and under what conditions.

387. When was the first claim made for papal infallibility?

Implicitly the infallibility of the Pope was admitted from the very beginning, for it was a necessary accompaniment of the Primacy over the whole Church against which Christ promised that the forces of error and evil would never prevail. All the declarations of the Fathers from the earliest times insisting that the Roman Church was the standard, especially in matters of faith, to which all Christians must conform, contain the principles and formulas summed up in the term infallibility. I do not give you a long list of quotations from Ignatius of Antioch, Irenaeus, Cyprian, Jerome, Augustine, and the other Fathers; nor of various early documents issued by the Popes themselves. All I do say is that, as men got clearer and clearer notions of the teaching authority of the whole Church and of the Primacy of the Bishop of Rome, so they secured clearer notions of the infallibility of the Pope. In 433 A. D., we find Pope Sixtus III. declaring that all know that to assent to his decision is to assent to St. Peter who lives in his successors, and whose faith fails not. The Council of Chalcedon in 451 A. D., on receiving the dogmatic letters of Pope Leo the Great, said, "Peter has spoken by Leo." In the year 1270, 600 years before the definition of the doctrine by the Vatican Council, St. Thomas Aquinas wrote as follows: "Renewed statements of doctrine are necessary to avoid new errors. Therefore, he has authority to issue definitions of faith who has authority to determine what is of faith, and to be held by all who profess the faith. But this belongs to the authority of the Supreme Pontiff, to whom matters more difficult and of more serious moment are referred. Therefore, our Lord said to Peter, whom He constituted Supreme Pontiff: "I have prayed for thee, Peter, that thy faith fail not." In 1870, the Vatican Council officially defined this infallibility of the Pope, thus making explicit what had been contained implicitly in Christian revelation from the beginning.

388. Why was the infallibility of the Pope defined only in 1870? Did the Popes before then know that they were infallible?

Before the definition of infallibility in 1870, the Popes did not know that they were infallible with the same full certainty of faith as that possessed by later Popes. But they were infallible in fact. The gift of papal infallibility was essential to the Church, not the definition of the gift. You wonder why it was defined only in 1870. But definitions are not given unnecessarily. If no discussion arises on a given point, and no one disputes it, there is no need of a definition. But in the seventeenth century the question of the Pope's doctrinal authority came more and more to the front, until in 1870, the Vatican Council was asked to settle the question once and for all. The time had come for the Church to know herself fully on this point, so she looked herself in the face, and defined this particular aspect of her teaching authority. If you ask why such a definition only after nearly 2,000 years, I ask why is a man fully developed only after some thirty years? The vitality of the Church supposes growth ever retaining stability of type. And remember that the Catholic Church is very young yet. A thousand years are as a day to her; and she will last till the end of the world.

389. Did the Church in 1870 take new stock of herself?

The Church must ever be taking new stock of herself, even to the extent of discovering new things about herself concerning which she was not so clear before. But notice that this acquiring of new knowledge concerning herself does not imply a denial of anything already known.

390. In other words, was the definition of infallibility revisional in its effects?

That question cannot be called an alternative rendering of your previous question. For the Church can take new stock of herself without repudiating former estimates. Treating this, therefore, as a separate question, I reply definitely that the definition of infallibility was not revisional in its effects. The Church defined in 1870 that the Pope is infallible when he solemnly decides matters of faith or moral teaching, speaking in virtue of his supreme office and intending to declare an article of faith binding upon all the faithful throughout the world. That definition did away with no previous definition to the contrary. If some individual Catholics thought, prior to 1870, that the Pope was not infallible under these conditions, then they, of course, had to revise their opinions after 1870. But their opinions prior to 1870 did not reflect the official teaching of the Church.

391. Before 1870 would it be difficult to distinguish ex cathedra pronouncements from others less distinguished?

No. That is evident from the fact that from the earliest ages the Church has defined the truth against heretics, all Catholics acknowledging the definitions given by the various Councils once the Pope had authorized them ex Cathedra in his official capacity as head of the Church.

392. Does infallibility belong to the Pope only?

Infallibility belongs to the teaching Church, and, therefore, to all Catholic bishops throughout the world, taken as a collective episcopate. The Catholic bishops, of whom the Pope is one, of course, have infallibility in their collective unity. But, as the Pope is the supreme bishop in the Church, this unity is procured by and derived from him. A council of bishops not confirmed by the Pope would lack infallibility. The Pope without a general Council of bishops enjoys infallibility; a Council of bishops without the Pope does not. In other words, the body of bishops, when in union with the Pope, has a confirmed infallibility. But the Pope alone has the infallibility which confirms. This is the logical application of our Lord's words to St. Peter, "I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not, and do thou confirm thy brethren."

393. Is it not true that before the Vatican Council, the doctrine of papal infallibility was strongly maintained by one party in the Church, tolerated by another, and utterly rejected by a third?

It is true that a division of opinion existed; and that is precisely why it was deemed advisable to settle the problem. Over 400 bishops had presented a petition in the Vatican Council that the matter should be settled once and for all. The vote at the Council was overwhelmingly in favor of defining the question. And accordingly the definition was given on July 18th, 1870, giving us, not a new doctrine, but a new statement in definite terms of the teaching contained in the original revelation of Christ.

394. Did not many prelates and theologians of the Roman Church express opposition to the decree?

It is quite normal that there should have been a division of opinion on the subject prior to the definition. It is precisely when men are divided on the question as to whether some major doctrine is part of divine revelation or not that a definition is necessary. At the Vatican Council, therefore, those who were for the definition, and those who were against it, were given freedom to express their views.

395. Historians tell us that the most unseemly brawling took place at the Council,

The Council was not characterized by unseemly brawling. The greatest possible freedom of discussion was granted, and on a question of such magnitude and importance, it would be surprising if opinions were not strong, and voiced with earnestness and even tenacity.

396. Newman, apparently, was altogether against the decree.

He declared that he personally believed the Pope to be infallible, but that he did not think it opportune to define the doctrine at that particular time. He was quite at liberty to be of that opinion. When the definition was given, he accepted it without hesitation.

397. Most of the Irish bishops were against it.

They enjoyed the same freedom as Newman and all the others prior to the definition. The opinions held by those opposed to the definition did not constitute an infallible indication that the definition was wrong.

398. In the Council at first the opposition represented one-fourth of the total attendance, and a great many withdrew by way of protest.

Against 430 bishops, about 100 bishops, chiefly from France, Austria, and Germany, said that they disapproved of the definition being given. When they saw that the overwhelming majority was against them, 44 of these 100 bishops at once accepted the inevitable. Fifty-six said that they personally disapproved of the definition being given then, but that they would faithfully and with true devotion to the Church accept the definition if indeed it were pronounced. Meantime, they withdrew from Rome quietly and privately, leaving a written declaration that they did not do so by way of protest against the decree, but simply because they did not wish to appear lacking in reverence towards the Pope by expressing in his presence their belief that the contemplated action was inopportune. Two bishops from amongst the inopportunists who remained did express their disapproval personally of the proposed definition; but the moment it was given, accepted at once, acknowledging the teaching authority of the Church, just as the 56 had guaranteed to do who had withdrawn.

399. Although in the end all the bishops gave their adhesion, still there was a strong body of influential men in Europe who refused consent despite the yielding of the recalcitrant bishops.

The term "recalcitrant bishops" is not justified. A man is recalcitrant when he refuses to do what he is obliged to do. Prior to the definition, any bishop was quite free to express his reluctance to have the matter defined. After the definition, he was not free to refuse his assent. If he refused then, he would indeed be recalcitrant. But no bishop refused. It is true that some influential men - not a strong body of them - did refuse consent. These could truly be called recalcitrant Catholics; and they found themselves outside the Church as heretics.

400. Amongst these was the famous Professor Dollinger, who protested against the definition as "a Christian, an historian, a theologian, and a citizen."

His capacity as a citizen, of course, had no bearing on the subject, so we can eliminate that. As a Christian, historian, and theologian he was quite free to express his adverse opinion before the definition. But afterwards, his duty as a Christian, historian, and theologian, was to accept the verdict of the teaching authority of the Catholic Church. He had not the humility to do so, and his pride in his own proficiency led him into the obstinacy of heresy.

401. For this he was excommunicated.

That is true. I would expect to be excommunicated if I rejected it also. You see, once a doctrine has been defined by the Church as a dogma, no Catholic can deny it without being guilty of heresy. A man who denies a dogma of the Catholic Church renounces his belief in that Church, and cannot still belong to it. The Catholic Church was sent by Christ to teach all nations. If, in the course of her duty, she teaches us solemnly and with her supreme authority that this doctrine is undoubtedly part of the teaching given by Christ, then any man who rejects her teaching denies her essential authority, and a truth revealed by Christ. Dollinger had no excuse for refusing to follow the example of others by accepting the definition. Nor does his denial prove the doctrine wrong. The definition of the dogma absolutely proves that Dr. Dollinger was wrong.

402. In September, 1871, Dr. Dollinger's followers held a Congress, and formed the "Old Catholic" Church for those who could not conscientiously accept the definition of papal infallibility.

Those who refused to accept the dogma were no longer Catholics. Though they called themselves the "Old Catholics," they were in reality the "New Protestants." It is to be remarked that Dr. Dollinger himself protested strongly against the new organization his admirers desired to establish. He declared that he would have nothing to do with the formation of a new schism. At the very Congress of September, 1871, he protested against the motion that an independent Church opposed to Rome should be formed. The attitude of these "Old Catholics" was a constant source of irritation to him. When he heard, in 1878, that they had abolished the celibacy of their clergy, he despaired altogether of their future. On Oct. 12th, 1887, he wrote, "I have no wish to be a member of a schismatic Church. I am alone." But the defection of Dr. Dollinger and of his adherents has not affected the Catholic Church. The "Old Catholics," few at any time, are disintegrating. The Catholic Church is more solid than ever, and her 400 million of adherents have no doubts whatever on the subject. We all believe in the infallibility of the Pope as firmly as we believe in the Incarnation of the Eternal Son of God. The doctrine is a dogma of our faith.

403. If the Popes were always infallible, how does Pope Liberius measure up to the doctrine?

In every necessary way. In their efforts to refute the Catholic doctrine, enemies of the Church have ransacked history in the hope of finding a Pope who has taught heretical ideas. They thought they had found such a Pope in Liberius, urging that he subscribed to the Arian heresy condemned by the Council of Nicea in 325 A. D. But let us take the facts. Liberius became Pope in the year 352. From the outset he fought against the continued efforts of the Arians to corrupt the faith. The Emperior Constantius, himself an Arian, seized Pope Liberius by force and exiled him to Berea, in Thrace. It is said that, to escape this exile, and induced by fraud and threats, Pope Liberius signed a formula drawn up by the Arians. But historical research has shown that it is doubtful whether he signed the document at all. If he did sign, he was not a sufficiently free agent for a lawful exercise of his duty. And in any case, the document he is supposed to have signed was not directly heretical, but ambiguous, admitting of an orthodox as well as a heterodox interpretation according to the viewpoint taken by the reader. St. Athanasius and St. Hilary, who thought he did sign, insist that no charge of heresy could be made against Liberius, on the score that the document was not necessarily heretical. Moreover, the absolute orthodoxy of Liberius is so well known from other sources that it is impossible to say that he ever entertained heretical Arian views, and so erred in matters of faith. On his return from exile he defended the Nicene decisions against Arianism, and remained a most uncompromising defender of the orthodox doctrine until his death in 366 A. D. To all this you can add one point. Even if Liberius signed the document, and even if that document were heretical, and even if Liberius personally held and believed heretical doctrine, no argument even then could be drawn from the case against the Catholic doctrine of papal infallibility. For the Catholic Church has never defined that the Popes are always infallible in all that they personally believe. The Catholic Church declares that the Pope is infallible when he gives an official definition of doctrine concerning faith or morals, it being required that he acts freely, that he declares himself to be acting in his capacity as head of the whole Church, and that he intends his definition to be binding upon all the faithful throughout the world. Not one of these last requirements was verified in the case of Liberius, and whatever view one takes of the case historically, it is invalid as a test of infallibility.

404. How does Pope Honorius measure up to infallibility?

Nothing that Pope Honorius ever said or did in his life conflicts in any way with the Catholic doctrine of infallibility. He has been accused of having taught the Monothelite heresy in two letters to Sergius, Patriarch of Constantinople. Sergius favored the Monothelite heresy, or the doctrine that there was only one will in Christ, not two wills, the one Divine, and the other human. He wrote a very deceptive letter to Pope Honorius begging him not to condemn the doctrine, since such a condemnation would greatly disturb the peace of the Church. Honorius wrote to Sergius, praising him for his good intentions, and sanctioning his explanations, though interpreting them in a perfectly orthodox way which Sergius did not accept for a moment. But Sergius had got all he wanted, staving off papal condemnation. If there is one thing clear, it is that Honorius neither taught heresy in either of his letters to Sergius (nor anywhere else), and that he gave no dogmatic definition on the subject. This case, also, therefore, is beside the point where infallibility is concerned.

405. Honorius was condemned as a heretic by subsequent Councils, a condemnation ratified by Pope Leo II.

After the death of Honorius in 638 A. D. the Monothelites continued their heretical teachings, and in 680, the Sixth General Council was convoked to deal with them. The assembled bishops condemned the heresy together with Sergius and his supporters, including the name of Pope Honorius with them. They sent their decisions to Pope Agathon saying, "We leave it to you to decide what is to be done in your capacity as Bishop of the First See in the Universal Church." But Pope Agathon died before he could ratify the decrees, and was succeeded by Pope Leo II. Pope Leo approved and ratified the decisions. Later, writing to the bishops in Spain, he said that he had no intention of condemning Honorius for any heretical teaching, but because he was negligent in dealing with the Monothelites, fostering their heresy by his very inactivity. Even when he saw that the bishops of the Council had condemned Honorius for supporting the teachings of Sergius, Pope Leo II corrected their decree by saying that he unbecomingly permitted them to flourish. Far from being condemned as a heretic, then, Pope Honorius was condemned for not using his supreme and infallible authority to settle the dispute.

406. Why was the anathema repeated till 1590, and then dropped?

The statement that the Sixth General Council had condemned the Monothelite heresy together with Sergius, Cyrus, Honorius, Pyrrhus, and others who supported it, used to appear in the ancient Roman Breviaries. No one paid much attention to it until the sixteenth century, when a new impetus was given to historical research. The discovery of the special qualifications Pope Leo II. had made when approving the decisions of the Sixth General Council made it clear that the name of Honorius was unjustly bracketed with that of Sergius, and those of the others; and his name was rightly deleted in future editions of the Breviary.

407. Is papal infallibility still possible?

It is a fact. But here once more I must point out that, even if Pope Honorius had been guilty of heresy in his writings (as he was not) papal infallibility would not be affected. For he was not pronouncing an official definition in virtue of his supreme office in the Church and with the intention of obliging the whole Church to accept his teaching under pain of heresy. But where these historical cases are concerned, surely you do not think that the bishops of the world assembled at the Vatican Council would be so foolish as to define the doctrine without deeply considering the facts of history? You can be quite sure that they knew all the facts about Pope Honorius, even as they knew that those facts were available to the world. Do you think that they would have defined infallibility, knowing that hostile critics had only to quote Honorius to prove them utterly wrong?

408. Pope John XXII. declared that the doctrine of the poverty of Christ was heretical. But his predecessor, Nicholas III had declared that the doctrine of the poverty of Christ was the true doctrine, and that to deny it was heresy. Therefore, if one Pope was infallible, the other was not.

Another "therefore" suggests itself: and that is that you have not correctly grasped the facts. Surely you should suspect that Pope John XXII. was quite aware of the decision given by Nicholas III and would never have dreamed of defining the exact opposite! As a matter of fact, Pope John XXII. was not even dealing with the same subject as Pope Nicholas III. The question submitted to Pope John XXII. was this: Was the poverty of Christ so absolute that He retained no personal possessions whatever? The Pope replied: No; for it would be quite against Scripture and heretical to maintain such poverty in Christ. But now, what was the question submitted to Pope Nicholas III.? It was this: Is it in keeping with the ideals of poverty taught by Christ that members of Religious Orders should vow absolute poverty and possess nothing? This Pope said: Yes; and to deny that would be heretical. Pope John XXII., therefore, said that it would be heretical to assert the absolute personal poverty of Christ. Pope Nicholas III. said that it would be heretical to assert that members of Religious Orders may not vow absolute poverty, despite the fact that Christ Himself did not personally practice such absolute poverty. There is no trace of contradiction between those two definitions.

Unity of the Church

409. In speaking of infallibility, you said that it was necessary to the unity of the Church. But is unity necessary to the Church?

Yes. Christ predicted that His Church would be characterized by unity. The Catholic Church is one throughout the world under the one supreme head on earth, the Pope as successor of St. Peter. Our Lord said, "There shall be one fold, and one shepherd." That prediction is verified in the Catholic Church." She is one in teaching, worship, and authority wherever she may extend her activities.

410. In the very first century there were two factions known as the Peterites and the Paulites.

That cannot rightly be said. There was a natural tendency amongst some of the first Christians to manifest an exaggerated loyalty towards particular Apostles and teachers; and St. Paul himself corrected this tendency from the very beginning. Thus he wrote to the Corinthians, "One saith, I indeed am of Paul; and another, I am of Apollo. But what is Apollo, and what is Paul? The ministers of Him whom you have received ... I have planted, Apollo watered, but God gave the increase . . . Let no man therefore glory in men. Whether it be Paul, or Apollo, or Cephas ... all are yours, and you are Christ's, and Christ is God's." 1 Cor. 4-6, 22-23. Thus St. Paul forbade from the very beginning any development of two distinct and rival Pauline and Petrine factions. St. Peter also excludes any possibility of a rival Pauline faction, urging Christians of the first century to be diligent in the sanctifying of their lives, and adding, "As our dear brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, hath written to you." 2 Pet. III., 15.

411. Scholars admit that in early Rome there were two sections amongst the Christians, a Jewish section adhering to Peter, and a Gentile section adhering to Paul.

That is a probability. But these sections were not rival factions. For example, one section of the Catholic Church consists of Catholics in Southwark diocese in London under Archbishop Amigo; another section in Westminster diocese under Cardinal Hinsley. But these sections in the same city are not rival factions. It is certain that both St. Peter and St. Paul labored in Rome, and that both enjoyed Apostolic jurisdiction. Each would retain the particular loyalty of his own converts, Gentiles predominating among the converts of St. Paul, and Jews among those of St. Peter. But in no way can this be construed as evidence for rival factions of "Peterites" and "Paulites."

412. History says that the two factions were united under the gentle and orthodox Clement.

St. Peter and St. Paul were not less orthodox, nor less gentle for that matter, than St. Clement. And all were quite united in the one Church. Under Clement it was not so much the union of two sections as the union of the two jurisdictions in the one man Clement, which both sections automatically accepted, as they would not have done had they not been united in the one faith.

413. For a confused term, much longer than the then expectancy of human life, the Church, however much it did owe, certainly did not owe allegiance to a single Pope. How, then, can any subsequent endorsement of a particular line prove an unbroken descent?

I could be content with asking you simply to what period of the history of the Church you refer. However, as the longest period during which there was confusion as to which of three claimants was the true Pope, occurred at the time of the Great Western Schism, I will deal with that case. Although there were three rival claimants to the office of Pope at that time, each with his own following, it is clear that, as a matter of fact, Catholics were not subject to one single Pope. But, as a matter of law, they were. And that makes all the difference. No Catholic said that there ought to be three Popes. All admitted that there should be only one, and that only one of the three could be the lawful Pope. There was, then a lawful Pope, however confused people may have been as to which one was the lawful Pope. The office for which the claimants were contending was the office of St. Peter. And it was to this office that the authority of St. Peter was annexed. In the civil order, no one will admit that the authority attached to the throne in some given kingdom is lost because some pretender wins the allegiance of a certain number of subjects. And when the pretender dies, or renounces his claim, and the subjects revert to a single king whom all acknowledge as lawful ruler, no one holds that his authority is due to the return of the subjects who were deceived. The authority all along was inherent in his office. So the authority annexed to the office of the Pope persisted continuously and in unbroken descent from St. Peter. Subsequent endorsement of that authority by parties who had been led astray did not confer that authority, but merely acknowledged it as possessed by one particular Pope to the exclusion of all pretenders.

Holiness of the Church

414. The Catholic religion may be all right in itself; but I could not join it, because it is not carried out as Christ intended.

If you believe the Catholic religion to be right, the infidelity of some who profess it does not justify your infidelity in refusing to join it and live up to it.

415. Most believing Catholics seem to me as worldly as anyone else.

Were your judgment right, the question of the truth of the Church would not be affected. A right belief does not necessarily mean right behavior in all who possess it. Nor does wrong behavior necessarily mean a wrong belief. If a Catholic did wrong, and the Catholic Church told him that it was right, there would be a case for consideration. But the Catholic Church will never say that what is wrong is right. For the rest, things are not always as they seem; and most Catholics are not so worldly in outlook as you imagine.

416. We have the right to demand fruits. "By their fruits ye shall know them."

You have not the right to demand the fruit of holiness in every single member of the Catholic Church. For, as I have said, such fruit depends on the free cooperation of each soul with the grace of God. But whilst each has the power to check the influence of grace, the Catholic Church herself is holy and sanctifying. However, whilst you have not the right to demand holiness in every Catholic, holiness will, as a matter of fact, be manifest in a large number of Catholics. Not all men are evil and negligent. There will always be great souls of genuine good will; and these will exhibit visible fruits of holiness as a result of living up to their faith. The Catholic Church has always had Saints. In fact, all the great Saints of history have belonged to her, and have never dreamed of leaving her.

417. There was only one Christian, and He was crucified.

If you believe that, it is your duty to be the other. Instead of that, so long as you refuse to fulfill your own obligations, you take your place amongst the crucifiers.

418. Why do you pretend that everything is well with the Catholic Church?

Because everything is well with the Catholic Church. But I do not say that everything is well with all the members of the Church. Repeatedly I have quoted our Lord's words that His Church is like a net holding good and bad fish. It is wrong to have eyes only for the bad fish, and to make that an excuse for remaining a bad fish oneself. It is necessary to see the good fish as well as the bad fish, and to insist on the necessity of turning the bad fish into good ones.

419. You talk about an ideal spiritual Church as it should be. But I face the actual Church as she really is.

You wrongly interpret both my attitude and your own. It is I who sees the actual Church in the world, with all her beauty and all her defects. You see only defects, and concentrate on those as if there were no other aspects to be considered. There is a human element in the Church, and that human element is ever liable to fail. But there is also a Divine element which can never fail. But whilst admitting the human element, I do not intend to admit every single charge evil people choose to make against the members of the Church. There are types of people who cannot see any good in Catholicism. They see any amount of evil where there is none; or if they do see some, they persuade themselves that all are evil, and that no good exists in the Catholic Church.

420. It is a pity that the Catholic Church does not retain only those possessing quality, and not concentrate on quantity as at present.

The Catholic Church has the identical mission of Christ who said, "I come to call, not the just who need not repentance, but sinners." Also He said that He came to save that which was lost. How could the Church cry, "Come to me, all ye holy people of good quality-no sinners need apply?" Then, too, the Church was sent to teach all nations, seeking as many souls as possible. There is a touch of hardness and pride in your very question. Hardness upon the frailties of others almost to the point of denying to them the mercy of Christ is foreign to the spirit of Christ. And it is pride that suggests the notion that you would perhaps become a Catholic if only she would concentrate on souls of quality. Is it that you are a soul of quality? That mere thought could be an obstacle to your salvation. Our Lord knew this, and He insisted upon humility as being absolutely fundamental. He was vehement about it. "Unless you become as little children you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven." "He that will be the greatest, let him be as the least." He condemned the proud Pharisee and praised the Publican who was a sinner.  I am sure you will not mind my recommending to you the humility and gentle charity Christ so insisted upon.

421. I always judge an organization, religious or otherwise, by the people who belong to it.

That is unreasonable. For, firstly, unless you meet every single person who belongs to some given Church, you will be judging all by some. In the second place, if you did meet some bad Catholic, he would not be living up to his belief; and the fault would be in himself, not in the Church whose teachings he neglected. Thirdly, we are forbidden to judge people, and, therefore, to base further judgments on our judgement of them. "Judge not, and you shall not be judged" is the law. And again, "Charity thinketh no evil." We must abstract from the faults of individuals, and study a religion in itself and on its own merits. In other words, we take the official teachings of a religion and ask, "Would these teachings of their very nature tend to make one who observed them good or bad?"

422. I see nothing in Roman Catholics that I would care to emulate.

Have you ever looked for anything in them that you would care to emulate? In every one of your fellow men you will find good and bad, virtues and faults. But people usually see only what they want to see. Sympathies and antipathies have an extraordinary effect upon one's judgment. We easily blind ourselves to faults in those we happen to like, whilst we refuse to understand those whom we dislike, putting an evil construction upon all that they do. Now you intensely dislike the Catholic Church. You do not know why, but you do. And that dislike affects your outlook upon all who profess the Catholic religion. I do not say that all Catholics are without their faults. But I do say that a good deal of your trouble finds its source within yourself.

423. History cannot lie. And history tells us that certain Popes were immoral, had illegitimate children, and honored them with titles and property as bribes for silence.

Genuine history does not lie. But those who claim the name of historians certainly can falsify their accounts; and they have often done so. It is true, however, that a few Popes have been unworthy of their office, had illegitimate children, and endowed them with titles and property. But there was no question of bribing them to secrecy. Secrecy was not necessary in the ages when these things occurred. Public opinion was at so low a stage that moral laxity was condoned in an extraordinary way. Illegitimate children were not held in less honor than legitimate offspring. The Popes who provided for their children did so through paternal interest, not in order to secure secrecy. The matter was public knowledge. The evils, of course, have been magnified by legend, idle gossip, and calumny; but the historical foundation for charges against these Popes exists. And these internal disorders in the Church were far more dangerous to her welfare than any external forces. But, under the protection of Christ, the Church survived, and has been purified of such abuses in the Papacy.

424. I am surprised that you did not deny the charge, and try to convince me that I was wrong.

Defense of the Church does not demand a denial for everything we do not like. The Church has nothing whatever to fear from the simple truth. If a thing is historical, it is historical. We must, of course, sift what is legendary from what is said to be history. But once a thing is proved to be history, it must be admitted. It does not follow, however, that every interpretation based upon it is necessarily true. I have no desire to convince you that any facts are not facts. But I do say that you would be wrong if you regarded the disgraceful conduct of any individual Pope in his personal life as an argument against the truth of the Catholic Church. Meantime, if you turn your attention to those good Popes who have been canonized by the Catholic Church as Saints, and who really did exhibit an example of all that the Church expects a Pope to be, you will find that there is nothing whatever wrong with the Catholic ideal.

425. You still insist that bad Popes are no argument against the truth of the Catholic Church?

I do. They afford a condemnation, not of the Catholic Church, but of themselves. A criminal who breaks the laws of his country does not brand his country as a land whose legislation makes criminals. If he had observed the laws he would have been a good citizen. In the same way, if a man breaks the laws of God, that is no argument against God. Then why should a man who breaks the laws of the Catholic Church be an argument against the Catholic Church? It is not just, of course, to continue pointing to a small minority of bad Popes, whilst ignoring the majority of good ones. But as regards their official duties the personal wickedness even of bad Popes will not necessarily make them bad administrators. Just as a judge could be guilty of much evil in his personal life, yet give excellent decisions in his official capacity, so a bad Pope in his private life could quite well fulfill his public duties well.

426. They could not but do harm to the Church.

Christ promised to be with His Church all days, and that the gates of hell would not prevail against it. Those forces of evil can be external or internal; that is, there can be persecution of the Church by open enemies, or internal evils by the sinful lives of its very officials. It was in virtue of Christ's promise that not even the personal wickedness of an Alexander VI. could do any lasting harm to the Catholic Church.

427. It is incredible that you should know the facts, as you seem to do, yet that you do not see their significa