Chapter I: Part 1

PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM

BY ROBERT HUGH BENSON

_These sermons (which the following pages contain in a much abbreviated form) were delivered, partly in England in various places and at various times, partly in New York in the Lent of 1912, and finally, as a complete course, in the church of S. Silvestro-in-Capite, in Rome, in the Lent of 1913. Some of the ideas presented in this book have already been set out in a former volume entitled "Christ in the Church" and a few in the meditations upon the Seven Words, in another volume, but in altogether other connexions. The author thought it better, therefore, to risk repetition rather than incoherency in the present set of considerations. It is hoped that the repetitions are comparatively few.

Italics have been used for all quotations, whether verbal or substantial, from Holy Scripture and other literature_.

ROBERT HUGH BENSON HARE STREET HOUSE, BUNTINGFORD EASTER, 1913

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTORY
(i) JESUS CHRIST, GOD AND MAN
(ii) THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, DIVINE AND HUMAN

I PEACE AND WAR

II WEALTH AND POVERTY

III SANCTITY AND SIN

IV JOY AND SORROW

V LOVE OF GOD AND LOVE OF MAN

VI FAITH AND REASON

VII AUTHORITY AND LIBERTY

VIII CORPORATENESS AND INDIVIDUALISM

IX MEEKNESS AND VIOLENCE

X THE SEVEN WORDS

XI LIFE AND DEATH

PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM

INTRODUCTORY

(i) JESUS CHRIST, GOD AND MAN

_I and My Father are one_.--JOHN X. 30.

_My Father is greater than I_.--JOHN XIV. 20.

The mysteries of the Church, a materialistic scientist once announced to an astonished world, are child's play compared with the mysteries of nature.[1] He was completely wrong, of course, yet there was every excuse for his mistake. For, as he himself tells us in effect, he found everywhere in that created nature which he knew so well, anomaly piled on anomaly and paradox on paradox, and he knew no more of theology than its simpler and more explicit statements.

[Footnote 1: Professor Huxley.]

We can be certain therefore--we who understand that the mysteries of nature are, after all, within the limited circle of created life, while the mysteries of grace run up into the supreme Mystery of the eternal and uncreated Life of God--we can be certain that, if nature is mysterious and paradoxical, grace will be incalculably more mysterious. For every paradox in the world of matter, in whose environment our bodies are confined, we shall find a hundred in that atmosphere of spirit in which our spirits breathe and move--those spirits of ours which, themselves, paradoxically enough, are forced to energize under material limitations.

We need look no further, then, to find these mysteries than to that tiny mirror of the Supernatural which we call our self, to that little thread of experience which we name the "spiritual life." How is it, for example, that while in one mood our religion is the lamp of our shadowy existence, in another it is the single dark spot upon a world of pleasure--in one mood the single thing that makes life worth living at all, and in another the one obstacle to our contentment? What are those sorrowful and joyful mysteries of human life, mutually contradictory yet together resultant (as in the Rosary itself) in others that are glorious? Turn to that master passion that underlies these mysteries--the passion that is called love--and see if there be anything more inexplicable than such an explanation. What is this passion, then, that turns joy to sorrow and sorrow to joy--this motive that drives a man to lose his life that he may save it, that turns bitter to sweet and makes the cross but a light yoke after all, that causes him to find his centre outside his own circle, and to please himself best by depriving himself of pleasure? What is that power that so often fills us with delights before we have begun to labour, and rewards our labour with the darkness of dereliction?

I. If our interior life, then, is full of paradox and apparent contradiction--and there is no soul that has made any progress that does not find it so--we should naturally expect that the Divine Life of Jesus Christ on earth, which is the central Objective Light of the World reflected in ourselves, should be full of yet more amazing anomalies. Let us examine the records of that Life and see if it be not so. And let us for that purpose begin by imagining such an examination to be made by an inquirer who has never received the Christian tradition.

(i) He begins to read, of course, with the assumption that this Life is as others and this Man as other men; and as he reads he finds a hundred corroborations of the theory. Here is one, born of a woman, hungry and thirsty by the wayside, increasing in wisdom; one who works in a carpenter's shop; rejoices and sorrows; one who has friends and enemies; who is forsaken by the one and insulted by the other--who passes, in fact, through all those experiences of human life to which mankind is subject--one who dies like other men and is laid in a grave.

Even the very marvels of that Life he seeks to explain by the marvellous humanity of its hero. He can imagine, as one such inquirer has said, how the magic of His presence was so great--the magic of His simple yet perfect humanity--that the blind opened their eyes to see the beauty of His face and the deaf their ears to hear Him.

Yet, as he reads further, he begins to meet his problems. If this Man were man only, however perfect and sublime, how is it that His sanctity appears to run by other lines than those of other saints? Other perfect men as they approached perfection were most conscious of imperfection; other saints as they were nearer God lamented their distance from Him; other teachers of the spiritual life pointed always away from themselves and their shortcomings to that Eternal Law to which they too aspired. Yet with this Man all seems reversed. He, as He stood before the world, called on men to imitate Him; not, as other leaders have done, to avoid His sins: this Man, so far from pointing forward and up, pointed to Himself as the Way to the Father; so far from adoring a Truth to which He strove, named Himself its very incarnation; so far from describing a Life to which He too one day hoped to rise, bade His hearers look on Himself Who was their Life; so far from deploring to His friends the sins under which He laboured, challenged His enemies to find within Him any sin at all. There is an extraordinary Self-consciousness in Him that has in it nothing of "self" as usually understood.

Then it may be, at last, that our inquirer approaches the Gospel with a new assumption. He has been wrong, he thinks, in his interpretation that such a Life as this was human at all. "_Never man spake like this man_." He echoes from the Gospel, "_What manner of man is this that even the winds and the sea obey Him_? How, after all," he asks himself, "could a man be born without a human father, how rise again from the dead upon the third day?" Or, "How even could such marvels be related at all of one who was no more than other men?"

So once more he begins. Here, he tells himself, is the old fairy story come true; here is a God come down to dwell among men; here is the solution of all his problems. And once more he finds himself bewildered. For how can God be weary by the wayside, labour in a shop, and die upon a cross? How can the Eternal Word be silent for thirty years? How can the Infinite lie in a manger? How can the Source of Life be subject to death?

He turns in despair, flinging himself from theory to theory--turns to the words of Christ Himself, and the perplexity deepens with every utterance. If Christ be man, how can He say, _My Father and I are one_? If Christ be God, how can He proclaim that _His Father is greater than He_? If Christ be Man, how can He say, _Before Abraham was, I am_? If Christ be God, how can He name Himself _the Son of Man_.

(ii) Turn to the spiritual teaching of Jesus Christ, and once more problem follows problem, and paradox, paradox.

Here is He Who came to soothe men's sorrows and to give rest to the weary, He Who offers a sweet yoke and a light burden, telling them that no man can be His disciple who will not take up the heaviest of all burdens and follow Him uphill. Here is one, the Physician of souls and bodies, Who _went about doing good_, Who set the example of activity in God's service, pronouncing the silent passivity of Mary as the better part that shall not be taken away from her. Here at one moment He turns with the light of battle in His eyes, bidding His friends who have not swords to _sell their cloaks and buy them_; and at another bids those swords to be sheathed, since _His Kingdom is not of this world_. Here is the Peacemaker, at one time pronouncing His benediction on those who make peace, and at another crying that He _came to bring not peace but a sword_. Here is He Who names as _blessed those that mourn_ bidding His disciples to _rejoice and be exceeding glad_. Was there ever such a Paradox, such perplexity, and such problems? In His Person and His teaching alike there seems no rest and no solution--_What think ye of Christ? Whose Son is He_?

II. (i) The Catholic teaching alone, of course, offers a key to these questions; yet it is a key that is itself, like all keys, as complicated as the wards which it alone can unlock. Heretic after heretic has sought for simplification, and heretic after heretic has therefore come to confusion. Christ is God, cried the Docetic; therefore cut out from the Gospels all that speaks of the reality of His Manhood! God cannot bleed and suffer and die; God cannot weary; God cannot feel the sorrows of man. Christ is Man, cries the modern critic; therefore tear out from the Gospels His Virgin Birth and His Resurrection! For none but a Catholic can receive the Gospels as they were written; none but a man who believes that Christ is both God and Man, who is content to believe that and to bow before the Paradox of paradoxes that we call the Incarnation, to accept the blinding mystery that Infinite and Finite Natures were united in one Person, that the Eternal expresses Himself in Time, and that the Uncreated Creator united to Himself Creation--none but a Catholic, in a word, can meet, without exception, the mysterious phenomena of Christ's Life.

(ii) Turn now again to the mysteries of our own limited life and, as in a far-off phantom parallel, we begin to understand.

For we too, in our measure, have a double nature. _As God and Man make one Christ, so soul and body make one man_: and, as the two natures of Christ--as His Perfect Godhead united to His Perfect Manhood--lie at the heart of the problems which His Life presents, so too our affinities with the clay from which our bodies came, and with the Father of Spirits Who inbreathed into us living souls, explain the contradictions of our own experience.

If we were but irrational beasts, we could be as happy as the beasts; if we were but discarnate spirits that look on God, the joy of the angels would be ours. Yet if we assume either of these two truths as if it were the only truth, we come certainly to confusion. If we live as the beasts, we cannot sink to their contentment, for our immortal part will not let us be; if we neglect or dispute the rightful claims of the body, that very outraged body drags our immortal spirit down. The acceptance of the two natures of Christ alone solves the problems of the Gospel; the acceptance of the two parts of our own nature alone enables us to live as God intends. Our spiritual and physical moods, then, rise and fall as the one side or the other gains the upper hand: now our religion is a burden to the flesh, now it is the exercise in which our soul delights; now it is the one thing that makes life worth living, now the one thing that checks our enjoyment of life. These moods alternate, inevitably and irresistibly, according as we allow the balance of our parts to be disturbed and set swaying. And so, ultimately, there is reserved for us the joy neither of beasts nor of angels, but the joy of humanity. We are higher than the one, we are lower than the other, that we may be crowned by Him Who in that same Humanity sits on the Throne of God.

So much, then, for our introduction. We have seen how the Paradox of the Incarnation alone is adequate to the phenomena recorded in the Gospel--how that supreme paradox is the key to all the rest. We will proceed to see how it is also the key to other paradoxes of religion, to the difficulties which the history of Catholicism presents. For the Catholic Church is the extension of Christ's Life on earth; the Catholic Church, therefore, that strange mingling of mystery and common-sense, that union of earth and heaven, of clay and fire, can alone be understood by him who accepts her as both Divine and Human, since she is nothing else but the mystical presentment, in human terms, of Him Who, though the Infinite God and the Eternal Creator, was _found in the form of a servant_, of Him Who, _dwelling always in the Bosom of the Father_, for our sakes _came down from heaven_.

(ii) THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, DIVINE AND HUMAN

_Blessed art thou Simon Bar-jona; because flesh and blood hath not revealed it to thee, but My Father Who is in heaven.... Go behind me, satan, for thou savourest not the things that are of God, but the things that are of men_.--MATT. XVI. 17, 23.

We have seen how the only reconciliation of the paradoxes of the Gospel lies in the Catholic doctrine of the Incarnation. It is only to him who believes that Jesus Christ is perfect God and perfect Man that the Gospel record is coherent and intelligible. The heretics--men who for the most part either rejected or added to the inspired record--were those who, on the one side, accepted Christ's Divinity and rejected the proofs of His Humanity, or accepted His Humanity and rejected the proofs of His Divinity. In the early ages, for the most part, these accepted His Divinity and, rejecting His Humanity, invented childish miracles which they thought appropriate to a God dwelling on earth in a phantom manhood; at the present day, rejecting His Divinity, they reject also those miracles for which His Divinity alone is an adequate explanation.

Now the Catholic Church is an extension of the Incarnation. She too (though, as we shall see, the parallel is not perfect) has her Divine and Human Nature, which alone can account for the paradoxes of her history; and these paradoxes are either predicted by Christ--asserted, that is, as part of His spiritual teaching--or actually manifested in His own life. (We may take them as symbolised, so to speak, in those words of our Lord to St. Peter in which He first commends him as a man inspired by God and then, almost simultaneously, rebukes him as one who can rise no further than an earthly ideal at the best.)

I. (i) Just as we have already imagined a well-disposed inquirer approaching for the first time the problems of the Gospel, so let us now again imagine such a man, in whom the dawn of faith has begun, encountering the record of Catholicism.

At first all seems to him Divine. He sees, for example, how singularly unique she is, how unlike to all other human societies. Other societies depend for their very existence upon a congenial human environment; she flourishes in the most uncongenial. Other societies have their day and pass down to dissolution and corruption; she alone knows no corruption. Other dynasties rise and fall; the dynasty of Peter the Fisherman remains unmoved. Other causes wax and wane with the worldly influence which they can command; she is usually most effective when her earthly interest is at the lowest ebb.

Or again, he falls in love with her Divine beauty and perceives even in her meanest acts a grace which he cannot understand. He notices with wonder how she takes human mortal things--a perishing pagan language, a debased architecture, an infant science or philosophy--and infuses into them her own immortality. She takes the superstitions of a country-side and, retaining their "accidents," transubstantiates them into truth; the customs or rites of a pagan society, and makes them the symbols of a living worship. And into all she infuses a spirit that is all her own--a spirit of delicate grace and beauty of which she alone has the secret.

It is her Divinity, then, that he sees, and rightly. But, wrongly, he draws certain one-sided conclusions. If she is so perfect, he argues (at least subconsciously), she can be nothing else than perfect; if she is so Divine she can be in no sense human. Her pontiffs must all be saints, her priests shining lights, her people stars in her firmament. If she is Divine, her policy must be unerring, her acts all gracious, her lightest movements inspired. There must be no brutality anywhere, no self-seeking, no ambition, no instability. How should there be, since she is Divine?

Such are his first instincts. And then, little by little, his disillusionment begins.

For, as he studies her record more deeply, he begins to encounter evidences of her Humanity. He reads history, and he discovers here and there a pontiff who but little in his moral character resembles Him Whose Vicar he is. He meets an apostate priest; he hears of some savagery committed in Christ's name; he talks with a convert who has returned complacently to the City of Confusion; there is gleefully related to him the history of a family who has kept the faith all through the period of persecution and lost it in the era of toleration. And he is shaken and dismayed. "How can these be in a Society that is Divine? I had _trusted_ that it had been_ She _who should have redeemed Israel;_ _and now--_!"

(ii) Another man approaches the record of Catholicism from the opposite direction. To him she is a human society and nothing more; and he finds, indeed, a thousand corroborations of his theory. He views her amazing success in the first ages of Christianity--the rapid propagation of her tenets and the growth of her influence--and sees behind these things nothing more than the fortunate circumstance of the existence of the Roman Empire. Or he notices the sudden and rapid rise of the power of the Roman pontiff and explains this by the happy chance that moved the centre of empire to the east and left in Rome an old prestige and an empty throne. He sees how the Church has profited by the divisions in Europe; how she has inherited the old Latin genius for law and order; and he finds in these things an explanation of her unity and of her claim to rule princes and kings. She is to him just human, and no more. There is not, at first sight, a phenomenon of her life for which he cannot find a human explanation. She is interesting, as a result of innumerable complicated forces; she is venerable, as the oldest coherent society in Europe; she has the advantage of Italian diplomacy; she has been shrewd, unweary, and persevering. But she is no more.

And then, as he goes deeper, he begins to encounter phenomena which do not fall so easily under his compact little theories. If she is merely human, why do not the laws of all other human societies appear to affect her too? Why is it that she alone shows no incline towards dissolution and decay? Why has not she too split up into the component parts of which she is welded? How is it that she has preserved a unity of which all earthly unities are but shadows? Or he meets with the phenomena of her sanctity and begins to perceive that the difference between the character she produces in her saints and the character of the noblest of those who do not submit to her is one of kind and not merely of degree. If she is merely mediaeval, how is it that she commands such allegiance as that which is paid to her in modern America? If she is merely European, how is it that she alone can deal with the Oriental on his own terms? If she is merely the result of temporal circumstances, how is it that her spiritual influence shows no sign of waning when the forces that helped to build her are dispersed?

His theory too, then, becomes less confident. If she is Human, why is she so evidently Divine? If she is Divine, whence comes her obvious Humanity? So years ago men asked, If Christ be God, how could He be weary by the wayside and die upon the Cross? So men ask now, If Christ be Man, how could He cast out devils and rise from the dead?

II. We come back, then, to the Catholic answer. Treat the Catholic Church as Divine only and you will stumble over her scandals, her failures, and her shortcomings. Treat her as Human only and you will be silenced by her miracles, her sanctity, and her eternal resurrections.

(i) Of course the Catholic Church is Human. She consists of fallible men, and her Humanity is not even safeguarded as was that of Christ against the incursions of sin. Always, therefore, there have been scandals, and always will be. Popes may betray their trust, in all human matters; priests their flocks; laymen their faith. No man is secure. And, again, since she is human it is perfectly true that she has profited by human circumstances for the increase of her power. Undoubtedly it was the existence of the Roman Empire, with its roads, its rapid means of transit, and its organization, that made possible the swift propagation of the Gospel in the first centuries. Undoubtedly it was the empty throne of Caesar and the prestige of Rome that developed the world's acceptance of the authority of Peter's Chair. Undoubtedly it was the divisions of Europe that cemented the Church's unity and led men to look to a Supreme Authority that might compose their differences. There is scarcely an opening in human affairs into which she has not plunged; hardly an opportunity she has missed. Human affairs, human sins and weaknesses as well as human virtues, have all contributed to her power. So grows a tree, even in uncongenial soil. The rocks that impede the roots later become their support; the rich soil, waiting for an occupant, has been drawn up into the life of the leaves; the very winds that imperilled the young sapling have developed too its power of resistance. Yet these things do not make the tree.

(ii) For her Humanity, though it is the body in which her Divinity dwells, does not create that Divinity. Certainly human circumstances have developed her, yet what but Divine Providence ordered and developed those human circumstances? What but that same power, which indwells in the Church, dwelt without her too and caused her to take root at that time and in that place which most favored her growth? Certainly she is Human. It may well be that her rulers have contradicted one another in human matters--in science, in policy, and in discipline; but how is it, then, that they have not contradicted one another in matters that are Divine? Granted that one Pope has reversed the policy of his predecessor, then what has saved him from reversing his theology also? Certainly there have been appalling scandals, outrageous sinners, blaspheming apostates--but what of her saints?

And, above all, she gives proof of her Divinity by that very sign to which Christ Himself pointed as a proof of His own. Granted that she _dies daily_--that her cause fails in this century and in that country; that her science is discredited in this generation and her active morality in that and her ideals in a third--how comes it that she also rises daily from the dead; that her old symbols rise again from their ruins; that her virtues are acclaimed by the children of the men who renounced her; that her bells and her music sound again where once her churches and houses were laid waste?

Here, then, is the Catholic answer and it is this alone that makes sense of history, as it is Catholic doctrine which alone makes sense of the Gospel record. The answer is identical in both cases alike, and it is this--that the only explanation of the phenomena of the Gospels and of Church history is that the Life which produces them is both Human and Divine.

I

PEACE AND WAR

_Blessed are the peacemakers; for they shall be called the children of God._--MATT. V. 9.

_Do not think that I am come to send peace on earth; I came not to send peace but the sword._--MATT. X. 34.

We have considered how the key to the Paradoxes of the Gospel and the key to the Paradoxes of Catholicism is one and the same--that the Life that produces them is at once Divine and Human. Let us go on to consider how this resolves those of Catholicism, especially those charged against us by our adversaries.

For we live in a day when Catholicism is no longer considered by intelligent men to be too evidently absurd to be argued with. Definite reasons are given by those who stand outside our borders for the attitude they maintain; definite accusations are made which must either be allowed or refuted.

Now those who stand without the walls of the City of Peace know nothing, it is true, of the life that its citizens lead within, nothing of the harmony and consolation that Catholicism alone can give. Yet of certain points, it may be, in the large outlines of that city against the sky, of the place it occupies in the world, of its wide effect upon human life in general, it may very well be that these detached observers may know more than the devout who dwell at peace within. Let us, then, consider their reflections not necessarily as wholly false; it may be that they have caught glimpses which we have missed and relations which either we take too much for granted or have failed altogether to see. It may be that these accusations will turn out to be our credentials in disguise.

I. Every world-religion, we are told, worthy of the name has as its principal object and its chief claim to consideration its establishing or its fostering of peace among men. Supremely this was so in the first days of Christianity. It was this that its great prophet predicted of its work when its Divine Founder should come on earth. Nature shall recover its lost harmony and the dissensions of men shall cease when He, the Prince of Peace, shall approach. The very beasts shall lie down together in amity, _the lion and the lamb_ and _the leopard and the kid_. Further, it was the Message of Peace that the angels proclaimed over His cradle in Bethlehem; it was the Gift of Peace which He Himself promised to His disciples; it was the _Peace of God which passeth knowledge_ to which the great Apostle commended his converts. This then, we are told, is of the very essence of Christianity; this is the supreme benediction on the peacemakers that _they shall be called the children of God_.

Yet, when we turn to Catholicism, we are bidden to see in it not a gatherer but a scatterer, not the daughter of peace but the mother of disunion. Is there a single tormented country in Europe to-day, it is rhetorically demanded, that does not owe at least part of its misery to the claims of Catholicism? What is it but Catholicism that lies at the heart of the divided allegiance of France, of the miseries of Portugal, and of the dissensions of Italy? Look back through history and you will find the same tale everywhere. What was it that disturbed the politics of England so often from the twelfth to the fifteenth century, and tore her in two in the sixteenth, but the determined resistance of an adolescent nation to the tyranny of Rome? What lay behind the religious wars of Europe, behind the fires of Smithfield, the rack of Elizabeth, and the blood of St. Bartholomew's Day but this intolerant and intolerable religion which would come to no terms even with the most reasonable of its adversaries? It is impossible, of course, altogether to apportion blame, to say that in each several instance it was the Catholic that was the aggressor; but at least it is true to say that it was Catholic principles that were the occasion and Catholic claims the unhappy cause of all this incalculable flood of human misery.

How singularly unlike, then, we are told, is this religion of dissension to the religion of Jesus Christ, of all these dogmatic and disciplinary claims and assertions to the meekness of the Poor Man of Nazareth! If true Christianity is anywhere in the world to-day it is not among such as these that it lies hid; rather it must be sought among the gentle humanitarians of our own and every country--men who strive for peace at all cost, men whose principal virtues are those of toleration and charity, men who, if any, have earned the beatitude of being _called the children of God_.

II. We turn to the Life of Jesus Christ from the Life of Catholicism, and at first indeed it does seem as if the contrast were justified. We cannot deny our critic's charges; every one of his historical assertions is true: it is indeed true that Catholicism has been the occasion of more bloodshedding than has any of the ambitions or jealousies of man.

And it is, further, true that Jesus Christ pronounced this benediction; that He bade His followers seek after peace, and that He commended them, in the very climax of His exaltation, to the Peace which He alone could bestow.

Yet, when we look closer, the case is not so simple. For, first, what was, as a matter of fact, the direct immediate effect of the Life and Personality of Jesus Christ upon the society in which He lived but this very dissension, this very bloodshedding and misery that are charged against His Church? It was precisely on this account that He was given into the hands of Pilate. _He stirreth up the people. He makes Himself a King._ He is a contentious demagogue, a disloyal citizen, a danger to the Roman Peace.

And indeed there seem to have been excuses for these charges. It was not the language of a modern "humanitarian," of the modern tolerant "Christian," that fell from the Divine Lips of Jesus Christ. _Go and tell that fox_, He cries of the ruler of His people. _O you whited sepulchres full of dead men's bones! You vipers! You hypocrites!_ This is the language He uses to the representatives of Israel's religion. Is this the kind of talk that we hear from modern leaders of religious thought? Would such language as this be tolerated for a moment from the humanitarian Christian pulpits of to-day? Is it possible to imagine more inflammatory speech, more "unchristian sentiments," as they would be called to-day, than those words uttered by none other but the Divine Founder of Christianity? What of that amazing scene when He threw the furniture about the temple courts?

And as for the effect of such words and methods, our Lord Himself is quite explicit. "Make no mistake," He cries to the modern humanitarian who claims alone to represent Him. "Make no mistake. I am _not come to bring peace_ at any price; there are worse things than war and bloodshed. I am _come to bring not peace but a sword_. I am come to _divide families_, not to unite them; to rend kingdoms, not to knit them up; I am come _to set mother against daughter and daughter against mother_; I am come not to establish universal toleration, but universal Truth."

What, then, is the reconciliation of the Paradox? In what sense can it be possible that the effect of the Personality of the Prince of Peace, and therefore the effect of His Church, in spite of their claims to be the friends of peace, should be _not peace, but the sword?_

III. Now (1) the Catholic Church is a Human Society. She is constituted, that is to say, of human beings; she depends, humanly speaking, upon human circumstances; she can be assaulted, weakened, and disarmed by human enemies. She dwells in the midst of human society, and it is with human society that she has to deal.

Now if she were not human--if she were merely a Divine Society, a far-off city in the heavens, a future distant ideal to which human society is approximating, there would be no conflict at all. She would never meet in a face-to-face shock the passions and antagonisms of men; she could suppress, now and again, her Counsels of Perfection, her calls to a higher life, if it were not that these are vital and present principles which she is bound to propagate among men.

And again, if she were merely human, there would be no conflict. If she were merely ascended from below, merely the result of the finest religious thought of the world, the high-water mark of spiritual attainment, again she could compromise, could suppress, could be silent.

But she is both human and divine, and therefore her warfare is certain and inevitable. For she dwells in the midst of the kingdoms of this world, and these are constituted, at any rate at the present day, on wholly human bases. Statesmen and kings, at the present day, do not found their policies upon supernatural considerations; their object is to govern their subjects, to promote the peace and union of their subjects, to make war, if need be, on behalf of the peace of their subjects, wholly on natural grounds. Commerce, finance, agriculture, education in the things of this world, science, art, exploration--human activities generally--these, in their purely natural aspect, are the objects of nearly all modern statesmanship. Our rulers are professedly, in their public capacity, neither for religion nor against it; religion is a private matter for the individual, and governments stand aside--or at any rate profess to do so.

And it is in this kind of world, in this fashion of human society, that the Catholic Church, in virtue of her humanity, is bound to dwell. She too is a kingdom, though not of this world, yet in it.

(2) For she is also Divine. Her message contains, that is to say, a number of supernatural principles revealed to her by God; she is supernaturally constituted; she rests on a supernatural basis; she is not organized as if this world were all. On the contrary she puts the kingdom of God definitely first and the kingdoms of the world definitely second; the Peace of God first and the harmony of men second.

Therefore she is bound, when her supernatural principles clash with human natural principles, to be the occasion of disunion. Her marriage laws, as a single example, are at conflict with the marriage laws of the majority of modern States. It is of no use to tell her to modify these principles; it would be to tell her to cease to be supernatural, to cease to be herself. How can she modify what she believes to be her Divine Message?

Again, since she is organized on a supernatural basis, there are supernatural elements in her own constitution which she can no more modify than her dogmas. Recently, in France, she was offered the _kingdom of this world_ if she would do so; it was proposed to her that she actually retain her own wealth, her churches and her houses, and yield up her principle of spiritual appeal to the Vicar of Christ. If she had been but human, how evident would have been her duty! How inevitable that she should modify her constitution in accordance with human ideas and preserve her property intact! And how entirely impossible such a bargain must be for a Society that is divine as well as human!

Take courage then! We desire peace above all things--that is to say, the Peace of God, not _that peace which the world_, since it _can give_ it, can also _take away_; not that peace which depends on the harmony of nature with nature, but of nature with grace.

Yet, so long as the world is divided in allegiance; so long as the world, or a country, or a family, or even an individual soul bases itself upon natural principles divorced from divine, so long to that world, that country, that family, and that human heart will the supernatural religion of Catholicism bring _not peace, but a sword_. And it will do so to the end, up to the final world-shattering catastrophe of Armageddon itself.

"I come," cries the Rider on the White Horse, "to bring Peace indeed, but a peace of which the world cannot even dream; a peace built upon the eternal foundations of God Himself, not upon the shifting sands of human agreement. And until that Vision dawns there must be war; until God's Peace descends indeed and is accepted, till then _My Garments must be splashed in blood_ and from My Mouth comes forth _not peace, but a two-edged sword_."

II

WEALTH AND POVERTY

_Make to yourselves friends of the Mammon of iniquity_.

_You cannot serve God and Mammon_.-LUKE XVI. 9, 13.

We have seen how the Church of the Prince of Peace must continually be the centre of war. Let us go on to consider how, as a Human Society dwelling in this world, she must continually have her eyes fixed upon the next, and how, as a Divine Society, she must be open to the charge of worldliness.

I. (i) The charge is a very common one: "Look at the extraordinary wealth and splendour that this Church of the Poor Man of Nazareth constantly gathers around her and ask yourself how she can dare to claim to represent Him! Go through Holy Rome and see how the richest and most elaborate buildings bear over their gateways the heraldic emblems of Christ's Vicar! Go through any country which has not risen in disgust and cast off the sham that calls herself 'Christ's Church' and you will find that no worldly official is so splendid as these heavenly delegates of Jesus Christ, no palaces more glorious than those in which they dwell who pretend to preach Him who _had not where to lay His head!_

"Above all, turn from that simple poverty-stricken figure that the Gospels present to us, to the man who claims to be His Vicegerent on earth. See him go, crowned three times over, on a throne borne on men's shoulders, with the silver trumpets shrilling before him and the ostrich fans coming on behind, and you will understand why the world cannot take the Church seriously. Look at the court that is about him, all purple and scarlet, and set by that the little band of weather-beaten fishermen!

"No; if this Church were truly of Christ, she would imitate Him better. It was His supreme mission to point to _things that are above;_ to lift men's thoughts above dross and gold and jewels and worldly influence and high places and power; to point to _a Heavenly Jerusalem, not made with hands;_ to comfort the sorrowful with a vision of future peace, not to dabble with temporal matters; to speak of grace and heaven and things to come, and _to let the dead bury their dead!_ The best we can do for her, then, is to disembarrass her of her riches; to turn her temporal possessions to frankly temporal ends; to release her from the slavery of her own ambition into the _liberty of the poor and the children of God!"_

(ii) In a word, then, the Church is too worldly to be the Church of Christ! _You cannot serve God and Mammon_. Yet in another mood our critic will tell us that we are too otherworldly to be the Church of Christ. "The chief charge I have against Catholicism," says such a man, "is that the Church is too unpractical. If she were truly the Church of Jesus Christ, she would surely imitate Him better in that which, after all, was the mark of His highest Divinity--namely in His Humanity towards men. Christ did not come into the world to preach metaphysics and talk forever of a heaven that is to come; He came rather to attend to men's simplest needs, _to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked_, to reform society on better lines. It was not by His dogma that He won men's hearts; it was by His simple, natural sympathy with their common needs. He came, in a word, to make the best of this world, to use the elements that lay ready to His hand, to sanctify all the plain things of earth with which He came in contact.

"These otherworldly Catholics, then, are too much apart from common life and common needs. Their dogmas and their aspirations and their metaphysics are useless to a world which wants bread. Let them act more and dream less! Let them show, for example, by the prosperity of Catholic countries that Catholicism is practical and not a vision. Let them preach less and philanthropize more. Let them show that they have the key to this world's progress, and perhaps we will listen more patiently to their claim to hold the key to the world that is to come!"

But, surely, this is a little hard upon Catholics! When we make ourselves at home in this world, we are informed that Jesus Christ _had not where to lay His Head_. When we preach the world that is to come, we are reminded that Jesus Christ after all came down from that world into this to make it better. When we build a comfortable church, we are told that we are too luxurious. When we build an uncomfortable one we are asked how we expect to do any good unless we are practical.

II. Now, of course, both these charges were also objected against our Blessed Lord. For He too had His double activities. It is true that there were times when He gave men earthly bread; it is also true that He offered them heavenly bread. There were times when He cared for men's bodies; there were other times when He bade them sacrifice all that makes bodily life worth living; times when He sat at meat in the house of a rich man, and times when He starved, voluntarily, in the desert.

And the world found Him wrong whichever He did. He was too worldly when He healed men on the Sabbath; for is not the Law of God of more value than a man's bodily ease? Why can He not wait till to-morrow? He was too worldly when He allowed His disciples to rub corn in their hands; for does not the Law of God forbid a man to make bread on the Sabbath? He was too worldly, too unpractical, too sense-loving when He permitted the precious ointment to be spilled on His feet; _for might not this ointment have been sold for much and given to the poor?_ Is not spirituality enough, and the incense of adoration?

And He was too otherworldly when He preached the Sermon on the Mount. What is the use of saying, _Blessed are the Meek_, when the whole world knows that "Blessed are the Self-Assertive"? He was too otherworldly when He spoke of Heavenly Bread. What is the use of speaking of Heavenly Bread when it is earthly food that men need first of all? He was too otherworldly when He remained in the country on the feast day. _If He be the Christ_, let Him be practical and say so!

It was, in fact, on these very two charges that He was arraigned for death. He was too worldly for Pilate, in that He was Son of Man and therefore a rival to Caesar; and too otherworldly for Caiphas, since _He made Himself Son of God_ and therefore a rival to Jehovah.

III. The solution, then, of this Catholic Paradox is very simple. (i) First, the Church is a Heavenly Society come down from above--heavenly in her origin and her birth. She is the _kingdom of God_, first and foremost, and exists for His glory solely and entirely. She seeks, then, first the extension of His kingdom; and compared with this, nothing is of any value in her eyes. Never, then, must she sacrifice God to Mammon; never hesitate for one instant if the choice lies between them. For she considers that eternity is greater than time and the soul of man of more value than his body. The sacraments therefore, in her eyes, come before an adequate tram-service; and that a man's soul should be in grace is, to her, of more importance than that his body should be in health--if the choice is between them. She prefers, therefore, the priest to the doctor, if there is not time for both, and Holy Communion to a good breakfast.

Therefore, of course, she appears too otherworldly to the stockbroker and the provincial mayor, since she actually places the things of God before the things of man and "seeks first His Kingdom."

(ii) "And all these things shall be added" to her. For she is Human also, in that she dwells in this world where God has placed her, and uses therefore the things with which He has surrounded her. To say that she is supernatural is not to deny her humanity any more than to assert that man has an immortal soul is to exclude the truth that he also has a body. It is this Body of hers, then--this humanity of hers which enshrines her Divinity--that claims and uses earthly things; it is this Body that _dwells in houses made with hands_ and that claims too, in honour to herself and her Bridegroom, that, so long as her spirituality is not tarnished, these houses shall be as splendid as art can make them. For she is not a Puritan nor a Manichee; she does not say that any single thing which God has made can conceivably be of itself evil, however grievously it may have been abused; on the contrary, she has His own authority for saying that _all is very good_.

She uses, then, every earthly beauty that the world will yield to her, to honour her own Majesty. It may be right to set diamonds round the neck of a woman, but it is certainly right to set them round the Chalice of the Blood of God. If an earthly king wears vestments of cloth of gold, must not a heavenly King yet more wear them? If music is used by the world to destroy men's souls, may not she use it to save their souls? If a marble palace is fit for the President of the French Republic, by what right do men withhold it from the King of kings?

But the world does withhold its wealth sometimes? Very well then, she can serve God without it, in spite of her rights. If men whine and cringe, or bully and shout, for the jewels with which their forefathers honoured God, she will fling them back again down her altar stairs and worship God in a barn or a catacomb without them. For, though she does not _serve God and Mammon_, she yet _makes to herself friends of the Mammon of iniquity_. Though she does not and never can serve God and Mammon, she will and can, when the world permits it, make Mammon serve her. For the Church is the Majesty of God dwelling on earth. She is there, in herself, utterly independent of her reception. If it is _her own_ to whom _she comes, and her own do not receive her_, they are none the less hers by every right. For, though she will use every earthly thing to her honour, though she considers no ointment wasted, however precious, that is spilled by love over her feet, yet her essential glory does not lie in these things. She is _all glorious within_, whether or not her _vesture is of gold_, for she is a _King's Daughter_. She is, essentially, as glorious in the Catacombs as in the Roman basilicas; as lovely in the barefooted friar as in the robed and sceptred Vicar of Christ; as majestic in Christ naked on the Cross as in Christ ascended and enthroned in heaven.

Yet, since she is His Majesty on earth, she has a right to all that earth can give. All _the beasts of the field are hers, and the cattle on a thousand hills_, all the stars of heaven and the jewels of earth; all the things in the world are hers by Divine right.

_All things are hers, for she is Christ's._ Yet, nevertheless, _she will suffer the loss of all things_ sooner than lose Him.

III

SANCTITY AND SIN

_Holy, Holy, Holy!_--IS. VI. 3.

Christ Jesus came into this world to save sinners_. I TIM. I. 15.

A very different pair of charges--and far more vital--than those more or less economic accusations of worldliness and otherworldliness which we have just considered, concern the standards of goodness preached by the Church and her own alleged incapacity to live up to them. These may be briefly summed up by saying that one-half the world considers the Church too holy for human life, and the other half, not holy enough. We may name these critics, respectively, the Pagan and the Puritan.

I. It is the Pagan who charges her with excessive Holiness.

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

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