Paradoxes of Catholicism Part 2

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 G.o.d_, 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 a.s.sert 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d. 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 G.o.d without it, in spite of her rights. If men whine and cringe, or bully and shout, for the jewels with which their forefathers honoured G.o.d, she will fling them back again down her altar stairs and wors.h.i.+p G.o.d in a barn or a catacomb without them. For, though she does not _serve G.o.d and Mammon_, she yet _makes to herself friends of the Mammon of iniquity_. Though she does not and never can serve G.o.d and Mammon, she will and can, when the world permits it, make Mammon serve her. For the Church is the Majesty of G.o.d 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

SANCt.i.tY 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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sions 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 G.o.d. 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 G.o.d.

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was His Holiness, then, that first drew on Him the hostility of the world--that radiant white-hot sanct.i.ty in which His Sacred Humanity went clothed. _Which of you convinceth me of sin?... Let him that is without sin amongst you cast the first stone at her!_ These were words that pierced the smooth formalism of the Scribe and the Pharisee and awoke an undying hatred. It was this, surely, that led up irresistibly to the final rejection of Him at the bar of Pilate and the choice of Barabbas in His place. "_Not this man!_ not this piece of stainless Perfection!

Not this Sanct.i.ty that reveals all hearts, _but Barabbas_, that comfortable sinner so like ourselves! This robber in whose company we feel at ease! This murderer whose life, at any rate, is in no reproachful contrast to our own!" Jesus Christ was found too holy for the world.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For she alone has this power. She alone is so utterly confident in the presence of the sinner because she alone has the secret of his cure.

There in her confessional is the Blood of Christ that can make his soul clean again, and in her Tabernacle the Body of Christ that will be his food of eternal life. She alone dares be his friend because she alone can be his Saviour. If, then, her saints are one sign of her ident.i.ty, no less are her sinners another.

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

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

IV

JOY AND SORROW

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

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

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

"This world," exclaims her critic, "is on the whole a very sad and uncertain place. There is no silver lining that has not a cloud before it; there is no hope that may not, after all, be disappointed. Any religion, then, that claims to be adequate to human nature must always have something of sadness and even hesitancy about it. Religion must walk softly all her days if she is to walk hand in hand with experience.

Death is certain; is life as certain? The function of religion, then, is certainly to help to lighten this darkness, yet not by too great a blaze of light. She may hope and aspire and guess and hint; in fact, that is her duty. But she must not proclaim and denounce and command. She must be suggestive rather than exhaustive; tender rather than virile; hopeful rather than positive; experimental rather than dogmatic.

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

"And how unlike, too, all this is to the spirit of the Man of Sorrows!

We read that _Jesus wept_, but never that He laughed. His was a sad life, from the dark stable of Bethlehem to the darker hill of Calvary.

He was what He was because He knew what sorrow meant; it was in His sorrows that He has touched the heart of humanity. '_Blessed_,' he says, '_are those that mourn_.' Blessed are they that expect nothing, for they shall not be disappointed."

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

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

Let us leave the things that are behind and press forward to the things that are before. Let us insist that the world is white with a few black spots upon it, be optimistic, happy, and confident.