Given from the Catholic Broadcasting Station 2SM Sydney Australia
Choose a topic from Vol 4:
Before answering that question I would have to know how you imagine Protestants have been treated in Spain in recent years. If you imagine that they are persecuted in Spain just for being Protestants, and that they have been refused due freedom to practice their religion, then you have wrong ideas that need correcting. It is not of much use to take Spain as the test if you do not know the conditions prevailing there, or even have positively wrong ideas about them. Leaving Spain out of it, therefore, it would be better to state what you fear might happen in this country if Catholics were in the majority. For example, you could ask simply whether if Catholics were in the majority Protestants would be persecuted. The answer to that would be no. Or you could ask whether Protestants would be granted freedom of worship. The answer to that would be yes. I leave it to you to think out other possible enquiries.
The Catholic Church uses no coercion either to convert or to retain people. She knows quite well that if Catholics are not held loyal to their religion by their own spirit of faith, such loyalty can never be compelled by force. But where the Catholic Faith is that of the people of a country, as it is overwhelmingly in Spain: and where that Faith is officially acknowledged by the State to be the religion of the nation, she rightly expects the State authorities, not to coerce people into becoming or remaining Catholics, but to prevent enemies of the Catholic religion from active efforts to destroy the faith of the people. On the other hand, in countries which declare straight out that they acknowledge no official religion, but grant liberty to all religions, as in our country, the Catholic Church avails herself of the same liberties as are granted to all other religions. There is not the slightest inconsistency in her doing this. Nor is there any reason why she should advocate that the conditions under which she exists in a secular State should be the model of conditions prevailing in a Catholic State.
The axiom you quote is valid within the limits of the law of God, not beyond those limits. For example, if a burglar happened to come across another burglar trying to break into a house, he would not be justified in saving: "Under similar circumstances I'd like him to help me, so I'll help him!" I give that as an example to show that there must be some limits. Now take the question of religion. If all religious organizations and beliefs in the world were merely of human origin, only a matter of human ideas and opinions, you would be right. But supposing that God Himself stepped into this world and, amidst all the conflicting religious beliefs and institutions hitherto existing, established a definite religious organization of His own, and taught a definite set of beliefs, declaring men obliged to accept His provision for their religious needs and no other, would you not agree that those who knew this must refuse to rank other merely human organizations and beliefs as equal to God's own institution and teachings? You may say that you do not believe that God ever did that. But that is not the point. I ask what if you did believe that? Catholics do; and they are convinced that the Catholic Church and her teachings possess the very authority of God, and that they have no right whatever to make concessions at the expense of the Catholic religion in order to please their fellow men. In other words, where it would involve compromising their God-given religion, Catholics know that the axiom that what we would that men should do to us, we should do to them, does not apply. The man who believes that all religions in this world are no more than merely human inventions may think that there should be equality all round. But not the man who is convinced that one religious system: has been established, guaranteed and preserved by God, whilst all others are of merely human origin. And it is of no use for the man who has not got such a conviction to ask the man who has it to behave as if he also had not got it at all!
"THAT CATHOLIC CHURCH
A Radio Analysis"
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