Radio Replies Vol 3 - Catholic Apologetics Online

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Catholic idea seems strange to them, not because they are guided by the Gospels, but because, whilst they concentrate on the fact that Christ is their Redeemer and Sanctifier, they fail to grasp the means by which He desires to carry out His work in the souls of men. The Church is the kingdom of Christ in this world. Within that kingdom, an ordained priesthood, deriving its powers from Christ, communicates to the faithful in the name of a Christ the benefits of redemption. The priesthood, then, represents Christ, and continues His mission. It is commissioned to forgive sin as He forgave sin; and to teach and to sanctify men in His name.

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

God

Man

Religion

The Religion of the Bible

The Christian Religion

A Definite Christian Faith

The Problem of Reunion

The Truth of Catholicism

The Church and the Bible

The Dogmas of the Catholic Church

Moral Teachings of the Catholic Church

The Church in Her Worship

The Church and Social Welfare

Catholic Apologetics in Question & Answer Form

God

Man

Religion

The Religion of the Bible

The Christian Religion

A Definite Christian Faith

The Problem of Reunion

The Truth of Catholicism

The Church and the Bible

The Dogmas of the Catholic Church

Moral Teachings of the Catholic Church

The Church in Her Worship

The Church and Social Welfare

QUESTIONS IN VOLUME 3

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

219. Mutual recriminations are so futile.

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

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

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

223. How far should tolerance go?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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