Paradoxes of Catholicism Part 3

"You Catholics, however, are but a poor-spirited, miserable race. While other denominations are, little by little, eliminating melancholy, you are insisting upon it. While the rest of us are agreeing that h.e.l.l is but a bogy, and sin a mistake, and suffering no more than remedial, you Catholics are still insisting upon their reality--that h.e.l.l is eternal, that sin is the deliberate opposition of the human will to the Divine, and that suffering therefore is judicial. Sin, Penance, Sacrifice, Purgatory, and h.e.l.l--these are the old nightmares of dogma; and their fruits are tears, pain, and terror. What is wrong with Catholicism, then, is its gloom and its sorrow; for this is surely not the Christianity of Christ as we are now learning to understand it. Christ, rightly understood, is the Man of joy, not of Grief. He is more characteristic of Himself, so to speak, as the smiling shepherd of Galilee, surrounded by His sheep; as the lover of children and flowers and birds; as the Preacher of Life and Resurrection--He is more characteristic of Himself as crowned, ascended, and glorified, than as the blood-stained martyr of the Cross whom you set above your altars.

_Rejoice, then, and be exceeding glad_, and you will please Him best."

Once more, then, we appear to be in the wrong, to whatever side we turn.

The happy red-faced monk with his barrel of beer is a caricature of our joy. Can this, it is asked, be a follower of the Man of Sorrows? And the long-faced ascetic with his eyes turned up to heaven is the world's conception of our sorrow. Catholic joy and Catholic sorrow are alike too ardent and extreme for a world that delights in moderation in both sorrow and joy--a little melancholy, but not too much; a little cheerfulness, but not excessive.

II. First, then, it is interesting to remember that these charges are not now being made against us for the first time. In the days even of the Roman Empire they were thought to be signs of Christian inhumanity.

"These Christians," it was said, "must surely be bewitched. See how they laugh at the rack and the whip and go to the arena as to a bridal bed! See how Lawrence jests upon his gridiron." And yet again, "They must be bewitched, because of their morbidity and their love of darkness, the enemies of joy and human mirth and common pleasure. In either case they are not true men at all." Their extravagance of joy when others would be weeping, and their extravagance of sorrow when all the world is glad--these are the very signs to which their enemies appealed as proofs that a power other than that of this world was inspiring them, as proofs that they could not be the simple friends of the human race that they dared to pretend.

It is even more interesting to remember that our Divine Lord Himself calls attention to these charges. "_The Son of Man comes eating and drinking._ The Son of Man sits at the wedding feast at Cana and at meat in the rich man's house and you say, _Behold a glutton and a winebibber!_ The Son of Man comes rejoicing and you bid Him to be sad.

And _John the Baptist came neither eating nor drinking._ John the Baptist comes from the desert, an ascetic with his camel-hair about him and words of penance and wrath in his mouth, and you say, _He hath a devil.... We have piped unto you and you have not danced_. We have played at weddings like children in a market-place, and you have told us to be quiet and think about our sins. _We have mourned unto_ you, we have asked you to play at funerals instead, and you have told us that it was morbid to think about death. _We have mourned and you would not lament._"

III. The fact is, of course, that both joy and sorrow must be an element in all religion, since joy and sorrow together make up experience. The world is neither white with black spots nor black with white spots; it is black and white. It is quite as true that autumn follows summer as that spring follows winter. It is no less true that life arises out of death than that death follows life.

Religion then cannot, if it is to be adequate to experience, be a pa.s.sionless thing. On the contrary it must be pa.s.sionate, since human nature is pa.s.sionate too; and it must be a great deal more pa.s.sionate.

It must not moderate grief, but deepen it; not banish joy, but exalt it.

It must weep--and bitterer tears than any that the world can shed--with them that weep; and rejoice too--with _a joy which no man can take away_--with them that rejoice. It must sink deeper and rise higher, it must feel more acutely, it must agonize and triumph more abundantly, if it truly comes from G.o.d and is to minister to men, since His thoughts are higher than ours and His Love more burning.

For so did Christ live on earth. At one hour He _rejoiced greatly in spirit_ so that those that watched Him were astonished; at another He sweated blood for anguish. In one hour He is exalted high on the blazing Mount of Transfiguration; in another He is plunged deeper than any human heart can fathom in the low-lying garden of Gethsemane. _Behold and see if there be any sorrow like to My Sorrow._

III. For, again, the Church, like her Lord, is both Divine and Human.

She is Divine and therefore she rejoices--so filled with the New Wine of the Kingdom of her Father that men stare at her in contempt.

It is true enough that the world is unhappy; that hearts are broken; that families, countries, and centuries are laid waste by sin. Yet since the Church is Divine, she knows, not merely guesses or hopes or desires, but _knows_, that _although all things come to an end, G.o.d's commandment is exceeding broad_. Years ago, she knows--and therefore not all the criticism in the world can shake her--that her Lord came down from heaven, was born, died, rose, and ascended, and that He reigns in unconquerable power. She knows that He will return again and take the kingdom and reign; she knows, because she is Divine, that in every tabernacle of hers on earth the Lord of joy lies hidden; that Mary intercedes; that the saints are with G.o.d; that _the Blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin_. Look round her earthly buildings, then, and there are the symbols and images of these things. There is the merry light before her altar; there are the saints stiff with gold and gems; there is Mary, "Cause of our Joy," radiant, with her radiant Child in her arms. If she were but human, she would dare but to shadow these things forth--shadows of her own desires; she would whisper her creed; murmur her prayers; darken her windows. But she is Divine and has herself come down from heaven; so she does not guess, or think, or hope--she knows.

But she is human too and dwells in the midst of a human race that does not know and therefore will not wholly take her at her word, and the very height of her exaltation must also be, then, the measure of her despair. The fact that she knows so certainly intensifies a thousandfold her human sorrow, as she, who has _come that they may have life_, sees how _they will not come_ to her and find it, as she sees how long the triumph which is certain is yet delayed through their faithlessness. "If _thou hadst known_," she cries in the heart-broken words of Jesus Himself over Jerusalem, "_if thou hadst but known the things that belong to thy peace! Behold and see, then, if there be any sorrow like to mine_, if there be any grief so profound and so piercing as mine, who hold the Keys of Heaven and watch men turn away from the Door."

So, then, in church after church stand symbolic groups of statuary, representing joy and tragedy, compared with which Venus and Adonis are but childish and half-civilized images--Mary as triumphant Queen, with the gold-crowned Child in her arms, and Mary the tormented Mother, with her dead Son across her knees. For she who is both Divine and Human alone understands what it is that Humanity has done to Divinity.

Is it any wonder, then, that the world thinks her extravagant in both directions at once; that the world turns away on Good Friday from the unutterable depths of her sorrow, and on Easter Day from the unscalable heights of her joy, calling the one morbid and the other hysterical? For what does the world know of such pa.s.sions as these? What, after all, can the sensualist know of joy, or the ruined financier of sorrow? And what can the moderate, self-controlled, self-respecting man of the world know of either?

Lastly, then, in the Paradox of Love, the Church holds both these pa.s.sions, at full blast, both at once. As human love turns joy into pain and suffers in the midst of ecstasy, so Divine Love turns pain into joy and exults and reigns upon the Cross. For the Church is more than the Majesty of G.o.d reigning on earth, more than the pa.s.sionless love of the Eternal; she is the Very Sacred Heart of Christ Himself, the Eternal united with Man, and both suffering and rejoicing through that union. It is His bliss which she at once experiences and extends, in virtue of her ident.i.ty with Him; and in the midst of a fallen world it is the supremest bliss of that Sacred Heart to suffer pain.

V

LOVE OF G.o.d AND LOVE OF MAN

_Thou shalt love the Lord thy G.o.d with thy whole heart ... and thy neighbour as thyself_.--LUKE x. 27.

We have already considered two charges brought against Catholicism from opposite quarters; namely, that we are too worldly and too otherworldly, too much busied with temporal concerns to be truly spiritual, and too metaphysical and remote and dogmatic to be truly practical. Let us go on to consider these same two charges produced, so to speak, a little further into a more definitely spiritual plane; charges that now accuse us of too great activities in our ministry to men and too many attentions paid to G.o.d.

I. (i) It is a very common complaint against Catholics, laymen as well as clergy, that they are overzealous in their attempts to proselytize.

True and spiritual religion, we are told, is as intimate and personal an affair as the love between husband and wife; it is essentially private and individual. "The religion of all sensible men," it has been said, "is precisely that which they always keep to themselves." Tolerance, therefore, is a mark of spirituality, for if I am truly religious I shall have as much respect for the religion of my neighbour as for my own. I shall no more seek to interfere in his relations with G.o.d than I shall allow him to interfere with mine.

Now Catholics are notoriously intolerant. It is not merely that there are intolerant Catholics, for intolerance is of course to be found in all narrow-minded persons, but it is Catholic principles themselves that are intolerant; and every Catholic who lives up to them is bound to be so also. And we can see this ill.u.s.trated every day.

First, there is the matter of Catholic missions to the heathen. There are no missionaries, we are told, so untiring and so devoted as those of the Church. Their zeal, of course, is a proof of their sincerity; but it is also a proof of their intolerance: for why, after all, cannot they leave the heathen alone, since religion is, in its essence, a private and individual matter? Beautiful pictures, accordingly, are suggested to us of the domestic peace and happiness reigning amongst the tribes of Central Africa until the arrival of the Preaching Friar with his destructive dogmas. We are bidden to observe the high doctrines and the ascetic life of the Brahmin, the significant symbolism of the Hindu, and the philosophical att.i.tudes of the Confucian. All these various relationships to G.o.d are, we are informed, entirely the private affairs of those who live by them; and if Catholics were truly spiritual they would understand that this was so and not seek to supplant by a system which is now, at any rate, become an essentially European way of looking at things, these ancient creeds and philosophies that are far better suited to the Oriental temperament.

But the matter is worse, even, than this. It may conceivably be argued, says the modern man of the world, that after all those Oriental religions have not developed such virtues and graces as has Christianity. It may perhaps be argued that in time the religion of the West, if missionaries will persevere, will raise the Hindu higher than his own obscenities have succeeded in doing, and that the civilization produced by Christianity is actually of a higher type, in spite of its evil by-products, than that of the head-hunters of Borneo and the b.l.o.o.d.y savages of Africa. But at any rate there is no excuse whatever for the intolerant Catholic proselytizer in English homes. For, roughly speaking, it is only the Catholic whom you cannot trust in your own home circle; sooner or later you will find him, if he at all lives up to his principles, insinuating the praises of his own faith and the weaknesses of your own; your sons and daughters he considers to be fair game; he thinks nothing of your domestic peace in comparison with the propagation of his own tenets. He is characterized, first and last, by that dogmatic and intolerant spirit that is the exact contrary of all that the modern world deems to be the spirit of true Christianity. True Christianity, then, as has been said, is essentially a private, personal, and individual matter between each soul and her G.o.d.

(ii) The second charge brought against Catholics is that they make religion far too personal, too private, and too intimate for it to be considered the religion of Jesus Christ. And this is ill.u.s.trated by the supreme value which the Church places upon what is known as the Contemplative Life.

For if there is one element in Catholicism that the man-in-the-street especially selects for reprobation it is the life of the Enclosed Religious. It is supposed to be selfish, morbid, introspective, unreal; it is set in violent dramatic contrast with the ministerial Life of Jesus Christ. A quant.i.ty of familiar eloquence is solemnly poured out upon it as if nothing of the kind had ever been said before: it is said that "a man cannot get away from the world by shutting himself up in a monastery"; that "a man should not think about his own soul so much, but rather of what good he can do in the world in which G.o.d has placed him"; that "four whitewashed walls" are not the proper environment for a philanthropic Christian.

And yet, after all, what is the Contemplative Life except precisely that which the world just now recommended? And could religion possibly be made a more intimate, private, and personal matter between the soul and G.o.d than the Carthusian or Carmelite makes it?

The fact is, of course, that Catholics are wrong whatever they do--too extreme in everything which they undertake. They are too active and not retired enough in their proselytism; too retired and not active enough in their Contemplation.

II. Now the Life of our Divine Lord exhibits, of course, both the Active and the Contemplative elements that have always distinguished the Life of His Church.

For three years He set Himself to the work of preaching His Revelation and establishing the Church that was to be its organ through all the centuries. He went about, therefore, freely and swiftly, now in town, now in country. He laid down His Divine principles and presented His Divine credentials, at marriage feasts, in market-places, in country roads, in crowded streets, and in private houses. He wrought the works of mercy, spiritual and corporal, that were to be the types of all works of mercy ever afterwards. He gave spiritual and ascetic teaching on the Mount of Beat.i.tudes, dogmatic instructions in Capharnaum and the wilderness to the east of Galilee, and mystical discourses in the Upper Chamber of Jerusalem and the temple courts. His activities and His proselytisms were unbounded. He broke up domestic circles and the routine of offices. He called the young man from his estates and Matthew from custom-house and James and John from their father's fishing business. He made a final demonstration of His unlimited claim on humanity in His Procession on Palm Sunday, and on Ascension Day ratified and commissioned the proselytizing activities of His Church for ever in His tremendous charge to the Apostolic band. _Going, therefore, teach ye all nations ... teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you; and behold I am with you all the days, even to the consummation of the world._

Yet this, it must be remembered, was not only not the whole of His Life on earth, it was not even a very considerable part of it, if reckoned by years. For three years He was active, but for thirty He was retired in the house of Nazareth; and even those three years are again and again broken by retirement. He is now in the wilderness for forty days, now on the mountain all night in prayer, now bidding His disciples come apart and rest themselves. The very climax of His ministry too was wrought in silence and solitude. He removed Himself _about a stone's throw_ in the garden of Gethsemane from those who loved Him best; He broke His silence on the Cross to bid farewell even to His holy Mother herself. Above all, he explicitly and emphatically commended the Life of Contemplative Prayer as the highest that can be lived on earth, telling Martha that activity, even in the most necessary duties, was not after all the best use to which time and love could be put, but rather that _Mary had chosen the best part ... the one thing that is necessary_, and that it _shall not be taken away from her_ even by a sister's loving zeal.

Finally, fault was found with Jesus Christ, as with His Church, on precisely these two points. When He was living the life of retirement in the country He was rebuked that He did not go up to the feast and state His claims plainly--justify, that is, by activity, His pretensions to the Messiahship; and when He did so, He was entreated to bid his acclaimants _to hold their peace_--to justify, that is, by humility and retirement, His pretensions to spirituality.

III. The reconciliation, therefore, of these two elements in the Catholic system is very easy to find.

(i) First, it is the Church's Divinity that accounts for her pa.s.sion for G.o.d. To her as to none else on earth is the very face of G.o.d revealed as the Absolute and Final Beauty that lies beyond the limits of all Creation. She in her Divinity enjoys it may be said, even in her sojourn on earth, that very Beatific Vision that enraptured always the Sacred Humanity of Jesus Christ. With all the company of heaven then, with Mary Immaculate, with the Seraphim and with the glorified saints of G.o.d, she _endures, seeing Him Who is invisible_. Even while the eyes of her humanity are held, while her human members _walk by faith and not by sight_, she, in her Divinity, which is the guaranteed Presence of Jesus Christ in her midst, already _dwells in heavenly places_ and is already _come to Mount Zion and the City of the living G.o.d and to G.o.d Himself_, Who is the Light in which all fair things are seen to be fair.

Is it any wonder then that, now and again, some chosen child of hers catches a mirrored glimpse of what she herself beholds with unveiled face; that some Catholic soul, now and again, chosen and called by G.o.d to this amazing privilege, should suddenly perceive, as never before, that G.o.d is the one and only Absolute Beauty, and that, compared with the contemplation of this Beauty--which contemplation is, after all, the final life of Eternity to which every redeemed soul shall come--all the activities of earthly life are nothing; and that, in her pa.s.sion for this adorable G.o.d, she should run into a secret room and _shut the door and pray to her Father Who is in secret_, and so remain praying, a hidden channel of life to the whole of that Body of which she is a member, an intercessor for the whole of that Society of which she is one unit? There in silence, then, she sits at Jesus' feet and listens to the Voice which is _as the sound of many waters_; in the whiteness of her cell watches Him Whose _Face is as a Flame of Fire_, and in austerity and fasting _tastes and finds that the Lord is gracious._

Of course this is but madness and folly to those who know G.o.d only in His Creation, who imagine Him merely as the Soul of the World and the Vitality of Created Life. To such as these earth is His highest Heaven and the beauty of the world the n.o.blest vision that can be conceived.

Yet to that soul that is Catholic, who understands that the Eternal Throne is indeed above the stars and that the Transcendence of G.o.d is as fully a truth as His Immanence--that G.o.d in Himself, apart from all that He has made, is all-fair and all-sufficient in His own Beauty--to such a soul as this, if called to such a life, there is no need that the Church should declare explicitly that the Contemplative Life is the highest. She knows it already.

(ii) The _First Great Commandment_ of the Law, then, is inevitably followed by the Second, and the Catholic interpretation of the Second is thought by the world, which understands neither, to be as extravagant as her interpretation of the First.

For this Divine Church that knows G.o.d is also a Human Society that dwells among men, and since she in herself unites Divinity and Humanity, she cannot rest until she has united them everywhere else.

For, as she turns her eyes from G.o.d to men, she sees there immortal souls, made in the image of G.o.d and made for Him and Him alone, seeking to satisfy themselves with Creation instead of with the Creator. She hears how the world preaches the sanct.i.ty of the temperament, and the holiness of the individual point of view, as if there were no Transcendent G.o.d at all and no objective external Revelation ever made by Him. She sees how men, instead of seeking to conform themselves to G.o.d's Revelation of Himself, attempt rather to conform such fragments of that Revelation as have reached them to their own points of view; she listens to talk about "aspects of truth" and "schools of thought" and the "values of experience" as if G.o.d had never spoken either in the thunders of Sinai or the still voice of Galilee.

Is it any wonder, then, that her Proselytism appears to such a world as extravagant as her Contemplation, her pa.s.sion for men as unreasonable as her pa.s.sion for G.o.d, when that world sees her bring herself from her cloisters and her secret places to proclaim as with a trumpet those demands of G.o.d which He has made known, those Laws which He has promulgated, and those rewards which He has promised? For how can she do otherwise who has looked on the all-glorious Face of G.o.d and then on the vacant and complacent faces of men--she who knows G.o.d's infinite capacity for satisfying men and men's all but infinite incapacity for seeking G.o.d--when she sees some poor soul shutting herself up indeed within the deadly and chilly walls of her own "temperament" and "individual point of view," when earth and heaven and the Lord of them both is waiting for her outside?

The Church, then, is too much interested in men and too much absorbed in G.o.d. Of course she is too much interested and too much absorbed, for she alone knows the value and capacity of both; she who is herself both Divine and Human. For Religion, to her, is not an elegant accomplishment or a graceful philosophy or a pleasing scheme of conjectures. It is the fiery bond between G.o.d and man, neither of whom can be satisfied without the other, the One in virtue of His Love and the other in virtue of his createdness. She alone, then, understands and reconciles the tremendous Paradox of the Law that is Old as well as New. _Thou shalt love the Lord thy G.o.d with thy whole heart ... and thy neighbour as thyself _.

VI

FAITH AND REASON