Catholic Apologetics in Question & Answer Form
QUESTIONS IN VOLUME 4
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301. No mere theories can stand against the facts of history, and history shows that the Popes have been anything but infallible.
No facts can be produced from history which show that the Popes have not been infallible in the true sense of the definition as given by the Vatican Council. In every case so far produced either the facts are not as they have been alleged to be, or the doctrine of infallibility as defined by the Church has not been involved at all.
302. Was not Pope Marcellinus guilty of sacrificing to idols?
If he had been, that would in no way be opposed to the doctrine of Papal Infallibility. At least he did not define officially that everybody else | ought to fall into idolatry! But in any case, the charge against him is a false one. Marcellinus was Pope from 296 A.D. till 304 A.D. That was during the severe persecution of Christians under the pagan Roman Emperor Diocletian. The most that can be said against Marcellinus is that he was too lenient in his treatment of lapsed Christians who, under the stress of persecution, had renounced their faith, gone over to paganism, and then sought reconciliation with the Church. Marcellinus himself died a martyr for the faith and is a canonized Saint of the Catholic Church. The Donatist heretics in Africa later put round the story that he himself had lapsed into idolatry, and said that he had confessed his guilt at the "Synod of Sinuessa." But historical research has shown that that Synod never took place.
303. Did not Sylverius and Vigilius obtain the Popedom by simony, buying their election with money?
No. Even if they did - which would be highly irregular - that would not affect the infallibility of their office once they had been validly elected. Sylverius, who is honored by the Catholic Church as a Saint and a Martyr, was Pope from 536 A.D. till 537 A.D. It is true that his election was due to political pressure, to prevent the Empress Theodora from intruding an Eastern Bishop into the Roman See. But there was no question of simony on the part of Sylverius. The Empress Theodora revenged herself by having Sylverius arrested and put to death. Vigilius then became Pope, and held office from 537 A.D. till 555 A.D. His election was due to the influence of Belisarius, the General of Theodora's army. But there was no simony on the part of Vigilius. Belisarius thought Vigilius would be ready to comply with all Theodora's wishes; but both Belisarius and Theodora were very disappointed in that. However, Vigilius, though not unworthy of his office in his personal life, was not a strong Pope, and was altogether too weak in dealing with heresies. But nothing in any of his transactions was in any way opposed to Papal Infallibility as defined by the Church.
304. How does Pope Alexander VI, in his debaucheries, measure up to infallibility?
Without granting any notions you may have about his debauchery after his election as Pope, to which period alone infallibility could apply, I must simply point out that no debauchery on his part could affect the question. Infallibility and impeccability are not the same thing. We claim that the Pope is infallible in his official teaching capacity. We do not claim that he is impeccable in his personal conduct. Bad personal conduct on the part of a Pope is indeed reprehensible. But it cannot be urged as an argument against infallibility as that doctrine is taught by the Catholic Church. From the viewpoint of infallibility in its true sense no official utterance of Pope Alexander VI affords the least difficulty.
305. There is one matter I must challenge you to explain.
State it freely.
306. Is it a fact that a book called "Keenan's Catechism" was published in 1846 with the imprimatur of the Scotch Catholic Bishops?
Yes.
307. Is it a fact that it was recommended by the Irish Catholic Bishops?
Yes.
308. Was it, in 1860, in its 17th thousand?
Yes.
309. Was it, in 1870, in its 21st thousand?
Yes.
310. Is it a fact that the following passage was then removed? "Question: Must not Catholics believe the Pope himself to be infallible? Answer: This is a Protestant invention. It is no article of the Catholic Faith. No decision of his can oblige under pain of heresy, unless it be enforced and received by the teaching body, that is, by the Bishops of the Church".
That passage, as you suggest, was then removed.
311. Note the words: "This is a Protestant invention. It is no article of the Catholic Faith."
They afford no difficulty. Before 1870, as "Keenan's Catechism" then said, the infallibility of the Pope was not an article of Faith defined as a dogma and to be believed "under pain of heresy." Protestants at the time were inventing something for themselves in declaring it to be so. After the definition in 1870 the book omitted the passage to make allowance for the fact that henceforth the doctrine was to be accepted by Catholics as an Article of Faith. Personally I think it would have been better for the book not to omit all reference to the matter, but to alter its wording, saying: "Since its definition in 1870, the doctrine is an Article of Faith binding under pain of heresy, that the Pope is infallible; but the assertion that that was the case before 1870 was a Protestant invention. The Pope was then infallible, of course, but belief in his infallibility was not then a defined Article of Faith binding upon all Catholics under pain of heresy." There is no more difficulty here than in the case of the minority of the Bishops at the Vatican Council who were opposed to the defining of the doctrine but who accepted it as soon as it was defined and returned to their dioceses to declare that what had not hitherto been a dogma of the Faith was henceforth to be accepted as such.
312. Of what use is the doctrine of the infallibility of the Pope when he speaks officially "ex cathedraif no one can tell us what are "ex cathedra" Papal utterances?
It is not true that such utterances cannot be known. Normally, of course, the doctrines of the Catholic Church are made sufficiently clear in the Creeds, in the Liturgy, and in the ordinary teachings of the Church. It is only rarely that individual Popes have made use of their own special and personal infallibility to define particular doctrines which they have thought it necessary to stress.
313. I have been told, and have read in books, that there are not more than a dozen or so of these "ex cathedra" infallible pronouncements by various Popes; but even so nowhere have I been able to find what they are.
With all the publicity given to them you cannot possibly be unaware of the more recent ones.
314. Will you please list for me all the infallible pronouncements made by different Popes since the time of Christ and the Apostles. I mean those made on their sole authority, not by Councils of the Church under their direction.
You cannot expect really adequate treatment of such a question in a radio session essentially devoted to brief explanations. However, I will do what I can for you, reducing things to a minimum of description. In each case I will merely name the Pope, the document, the date and the subject matter of the Decree. They are as follows: (1) Pope Leo I Decree: "Lectis Dilectionis Tuae," to Flavian, Patriarch of Constantinople, June 13, 449 A.D. On the Divinity of Christ. 1 (2) Pope Agatho Decree: "Omnium Bonorum Spes," 680 A.D. On the Divine and Human Wills in Christ. (3) Pope Boniface VIII Decree: "Unam Sanctam," Nov. 18, 1302. On Papal Supremacy in the Church. (4) Pope Benedict XII Decree: "Benedictus Deus," Tan. 29 1336 On the Heavenly Destiny of the Saints. (5) Pope Leo X Decree: "Exsurge Domine," June 15, 1520. Condemning the Errors of Martin Luther. (6) Pope Innocent X Decree: "Cum Occasione," May 31, 1653. Condemning the Errors of the Jansenists. (7) Pope Innocent XI Decree: "Coelestis Pastor," Nov. 19, 1687. Condemning the Errors of the Quietists. (8) Pope Clement XI Decree: "Unigenitus," Sept. 8, 1713. Condemning the False Teachings of Paschasius Quesnel. (9) Pope Pius VI Decree: "Auctorem Fidei," Aug. 28, 1794. Condemning the False Teachings of the Synod of Pistoia. (10) Pope Pius IX Decree: "Ineffabilis Deus," Dec. 8, 1854. Defining the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Same Pope. Decree:"Quanta Cura," Dec. 8, 1864. Condemning Secularism and Communism. NOTE: Under the presidency of Pope Pius IX, July 18, 1870, the Vatican Council defined Papal Infallibility. (11) Pope Leo XIII Decree: "Apostolicae Curae," Sept. 13, 1896. Condemned Anglican Orders as null and void. Same Pope. Decree: "Testem Benevolentiae," Jan. 22, 1899. Condemned merely Naturalistic Interpretations of Christian Activities. NOTE: There are some Catholic theologians who hold that, although these two decrees of Pope Leo XIII are of the utmost authority, they still fall short of technical requirements for infallible "ex cathedra" utterances. In practice all hold that they are binding on all the faithful. (12) Pope Pius X Decree: "Lamentabili," July 3, 1907; and again, Decree: "Pascendi," Sept. 7, 1907. Condemning the Errors of the Modernists. (13) Pope Pius XI. Two utterances very probably comply with the requirements of an "ex cathedra" decision, namely, the solemn declaration that contraceptive birth control is, of its very nature, a grave violation of the Law of God ("Casti Connubii," Dec. 31, 1930) and the condemnation of materialistic Socialism as quite opposed to the Christian religion ("Quadragesimo Anno," May 15, 1931). (14) Pope Pius XII Decree: "Munificentissimus Deus," Nov. 1, 1950. Defining the Dogma of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into Heaven.
315. It is the thing itself you are discussing which is the scandal today. We object to dogmas of any kind.
The objection is quite unreasonable.
316. In her dogmatic intolerance the Roman Catholic Church thinks everyone out of step except herself.
She declares everyone to be religiously out of step who contradicts the teaching of Christ. If she claims that she alone is the infallible exponent of the teaching of Christ, she proves that it is also the teaching of Christ that she herself was meant to be that infallible exponent throughout all the ages.
317. She accepts no compromise.
That is true where it is a question of the truth revealed by God. There she has no right to compromise. She is the guardian of that truth, not the author of it. Once God has declared something to be true, she denies that she herself, or anybody else, has the right to tamper with it, or distort it, or contradict it.
318. This dogmatic attitude results in a religious training which leads to all the evils of sheer sectarianism.
That is not true. It is quite possible to give a religious training which in no way results in any spirit of sectarianism. But it is not possible to give a religious training which is not dogmatic. For one simply cannot train a child to live religiously without any definite teaching of religious truth in the light of which the child must live! The moment you tell a child that there is a God whom we must love and serve, you are being dogmatic. If you refuse to be that dogmatic, you cannot give a child a religious training at all.
319. It is far better to have a wholesome hatred of that sectarian spirit which paralyzes thought and dries up the springs of charity in the human heart.
Any sectarian spirit which paralyzes thought and dries up the springs of charity in the human heart should undoubtedly be rejected. But that does not mean that one must reject a dogmatic religion and refuse to have any definite religious convictions at all. Let us have charity by all means. But the Christian religion is not an utterly vague and indefinite thing. It stands for something, and you cannot state that something without stating a dogmatic teaching.
320. That's all very well. But the dogmas of Rome are merely the traditions of men offered to the world instead of the Bible.
The divine and Apostolic traditions handed down in the Catholic Church are not merely the traditions of men, nor are they offered as a substitute for Holy Scripture. It is simply a fact of history that God never gave Scripture apart from tradition. Scripture merely recorded a part of the original Apostolic teachings. I am speaking here, of course, of the New Testament. And it is a false scripturalism which would stake all on the Bible alone. The Bible, interpreted officially by the living voice of the Catholic Church in accordance with Apostolic tradition, is the only way to understand the Bible itself, for only in that way was the Bible first given to us.
321. Rome has been adding its dogmas all through the ages.
Not in the seme of adding new teachings out of harmony with the traditional doctrines received from Christ and the Apostles. You must remember that men have intelligence and that by the sheer progress of thought the meaning of the original teachings has been more clearly seen and stated. This may appear to have resulted in an enlarged body of doctrine, but it has not meant any alteration of basic teachings. Whenever the development of ideas has got on to wrong lines, with the consequent danger of corrupting basic doctrines, then the Catholic Church, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, has stepped in and defined as a dogma, or a definite truth and an Article of Faith, the correct sense of Christian teaching. So the great definitions of the Faith given by the Catholic Church have neither added to nor altered the original Christian revelation, but have preserved and safeguarded it against corruption.
322. Let men read the Bible sincerely and of itself it will speak to them of God.
That is just what it will not do. No book can speak, or correct those who are reading wrong meanings into it. The authors of the New Testament, who wrote down part of God's revelation, were members of the Church Christ established; and it is in the teachings of that Church—the Catholic Church-that we find the real meaning of what they wrote. The living Church can speak to us. A dead and silent book cannot.
323. It all seems so dreadfully complex. Twelve poor uneducated men formed the true Church in the first place. Why the need of so much study and learning today?
Not all twelve Apostles could be called uneducated men. Some of them were simple fishermen. But St. Matthew had sufficient education to be an official in the Roman taxation department, and to write the first Gospel in Hebrew and also, later on, in Greek. St. John also had sufficient education to write the fourth Gospel in Greek, and in addition to that the Book of Revelation. You must remember, too, that the twelve Apostles were given three years training by Christ Himself and had additional and most profound doctrines of the Christian religion miraculously revealed to them afterwards by the Holy Spirit, sent upon them by Christ after His ascension to teach them all truth. We, who have not been taught miraculously, must study and learn the religion which has been handed down through the ages from the Apostles.
324. Professor Murdoch says that there is a religion which does not depend on the authority of an infallible institution, nor on the authority of an infallible book, but which draws its power from the conscience and inner spirit of man.
If there be such a religion, repudiating not only the authority of the Catholic Church but also belief in Holy Scripture as the inspired Word of God, it would not be the Christian religion, whatever else it might be. As for the suggestion that there is a necessary antagonism between a religion of authority and a religion of the spirit, that is nonsense. The Catholic religion is one of authority which positively demands in its practice fidelity to conscience and the copperation of the inner spirit of man, assisted by the grace of God.
325. The Professor quoted a book entitled, "Religions of Authority and the Religion of the Spiritby the great French writer Auguste Sabatier.
Rejecting the authority of the Catholic Church, he leans upon the authority of Auguste Sabatier. He has not improved things by that. Sabatier himself, a French Protestant who has drifted to Modernism, admits that his idea of religion, which ignores the authority of any Church as well as of the Bible, is not the religion Christ personally held and gave to His disciples. But then, Sabatier tells us, Christ's own Christianity was defective. It took Sabatier to distill from the crude religion of Christ the highest and purest religion man can know! But few indeed will prefer Sabatier as a substitute for Christ.
326. Professor Murdoch agrees that religions of authority may be useful and even indispensable to those who need an external authority to lean upon. But he says that it is the religion of the spirit which is essential to a nation's well-being.
If a religion of the spirit is essential to a nation's well-being, then so also is a religion of authority. The two go together. A religion of authority without religion of the spirit would be but empty externalism. A religion of the spirit without a religion of authority would result in endless aberrations, if it did not evaporate completely. Baron von Hugel has rightly pointed out in his classical work, "The Mystical Element in Religion," that religion must embrace the whole man as God made him; and that it must include the social element of Church, Sacraments and public worship; the intellectual element of dogmatic exposition; and the personal element of an interior religious spirit. To think that the last only will do is to go off to a dream-world, and a crazy one at that. But Professor Murdoch is out of his depth in these matters. He is not a theologian. He is nominally a Presbyterian layman, whose proper subject is English literature which he teaches in an Australian University, i t would certainly be fatal to lean upon his authority in matters of religion.
327. Do you deny that man can find God in his own inner experience?
A man can certainly experience an inner need for God. But that manifests a merely natural religious instinct. It does not follow that all a man's stray thoughts prompted by his religious inclinations are necessarily true.
328. Does not God sufficiently reveal Himself within us?
No. He Himself deemed it necessary to teach us from external sources by sending the Prophets of old, and eventually His own Son in the Person of Jesus Christ. People who rely only upon their own ideas and upon their own inner experiences become victims to their own ever-changing moods, however contradictory and eccentric those moods may be. Many such people end in the lunatic asylum.
328. you agree, where would be the need of any authoritative Church?
I do not agree. We need an external guide to educate us in sound objective doctrine. And it is a matter of history that Christ established the Catholic Church, intending the authoritative teachings of that Church to be the criterion of doctrinal truth. Those who will not accept the teachings of the Catholic Church find themselves bewildered and vaguely wandering in all directions.
330. I believe, not in belonging to a Church, but in seeking the truth with absolute sincerity.
I presume you believe in seeking the truth in order to find it. Now supposing you found the truth to be that you ought to belong to the Catholic Church, accepting her teachings as the very revelation of God, would you join that Church? And would your doing so mean in any way the sacrifice of absolute sincerity? Let me assure you, as one who took that step myself, that it would not.
331. People accept formal creeds only because they want to. The dogma of heaven appeals to their cupidity, whilst the dogma of hell makes the very thought of denial fill them with fear.
You are playing with a two-edged sword. I could retort that unbelievers do not want to accept Christian teachings because of their own cupidity and fear. There are people so filled with cupidity for the temporal and material pleasures of earthly life that they do not want to believe in the higher eternal and spiritual realities of heaven; and the very degradation of their choice fills them with such fear of the mere thought of judgment and hell that they deny those also. The desire to discredit religion can be every bit as strong as any desire to credit it. And of course it is easier not to believe than to believe, from the viewpoint of present moral obligations. Belief carries with it duties of self-denial of which unbelief knows nothing.
332. I am a Christian to whom spiritual experience, not any intellectual definition of it, really matters. I feel no need to formulate my beliefs into a creed.
God expects you to serve Him with all your powers, not only with heart and will, but with your mind also. A Christian must have certain convictions, and of their very nature they constitute a creed. For example, you believe in God, in the fact of sin, in Christ as your Redeemer, If you say you love Christ you must claim to know something about Him; that He did and does exist, that He is the Eternal Son of God who was born^-into this world of the Virgin Mary, that He died on the Cross and rose again from the dead, that He still exercises a great influence upon you, and that you love Him for all that He is and has done for you. All these things are elements of a creed that the mind is compelled to formulate, unless one simply ignores the demands of reason altogether. And one owes it to God not to ignore the intellect He gave us.
333. Faith in Christ does not mean faith in a creed.
It does, unless Christ be nothing and taught nothing. But you could not love a Christ like that. If you love Him you must believe something about Him; and if you believe Him to be your Supreme Lord and Master, you must believe all that He taught. But once you state what you believe about Christ and what you believe to be the doctrines He taught, you are making a credal statement. Then the important question arises as to whether you do rightly understand what a Christian should believe about Christ, what exactly Christ taught, and what He prescribed that we should do.
334. Christ is not so much concerned about our opinions in secondary matters as He is that we should be true honest men who believe in and live by the Gospel.
Christ is the God both of Truth and of Love. He cares for both. He Himself commanded His Apostles to teach all things whatsoever He had made known to them and said: "He who believes not shall be condemned." Mk.,XVI,16. When you yourself say that He wants us to be true honest men who believe and live by the Gospel, you admit the duty of knowing what the Gospel contains and of believing it. And teachings which the Catholic Church declares to be an essential part of the Gospel message cannot be dismissed as merely "opinions in secondary matters." To those teachings the words apply: "He that believeth not shall be condemned."
335. I know people whom I firmly believe to be good Christians regardless of the articles of their creed.
No one can be a Christian regardless of the articles of his creed. What if the articles of his creed include no belief in Christ or Christianity at all? You may be thinking of the good kind of life people who profess to be Christians ought to lead. But that does not justify your saying that all who live that good kind of life are Christians regardless of the creed they profess.
336. Therefore to my mind being a Christian means not a mode of of belief but a way of life.
That won't do. Being a good Christian means both a mode of belief and a way of life in keeping with one's beliefs. A man who does not live a good life may still be a Christian; but he will be a bad one. On the other hand, a man who does live a good life but does not believe in Christianity, will be a good man but not a Christian. I have a Jewish friend whose way of life is admirable. It would put many Christians to shame. Yet he would deny absolutely that he is a Christian. For Christianity does not mean merely a way of life. It means also a mode of belief.
337. I cannot think of religion as a matter of rigid convictions or dogmas instead of sincere worship of God and personal goodness.
The Catholic Church certainly would not ask you to do so. For it is not a question of convictions or dogmas instead of sincere worship and personal goodness. Both are neccessary. Dorothy Sayers, in her book "Creed or Chaos," says that "any stigma will do to beat a dogma," but that when Christ said to the woman of Samaria: "Ye worship ye know not what, "John, IV, 22. He certainly implied that it is necessary to know what one is worshipping! And unless you are worshipping nothing in particular, the very statement of what you are worshipping involves a dogma. We can never get away from that.
338. Matthew asked Jesus: "Good Master, what good shall I do, that I may inherit eternal life?"
St. Matthew who was a tax-gatherer, did not put that question to Jesus. A certain rich young, man did so.
339. Jesus did not say that He was the Second Person of the Trinity. He did not say you must be baptized. He did not say you must believe the Bible to be the inspired Word of God. He did not say you must repeat something and believe something!
You cannot logically conclude from the fact that Jesus gave a particular reply to a particular question on a particular occasion that He never made any other declarations on other occasions! The Gospels themselves record elsewhere that Jesus said: "He who believes and is baptized shall be saved; he who believes not shall be condemned." Mark, XVI, 16. That was certainly exacting belief in something. The very Commandments Jesus Himself quoted to the rich young man were quoted from the Bible and drew their authority from the fact that both Jesus and the young man himself accepted the Bible as the inspired Word of God!
340. What right has the Church to add to this direct answer to a direct question conditions of salvation which Jesus did not think necessary
Jesus declared far more things to be necessary for salvation than you imagine. His command to His Apostles to teach all nations all things whatsoever He had made known to them obviously implies the necessity for people taught those things to believe them. And what will you make of such words as: "Except you eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His blood, you shall not have life in you"? Jn., VI, 54. Or, again, "If a man will not hear the Church, let him be as the heathen"? Matt.^XVIII, 17.
341. By your insistence on authority and dogma you prove yourself an enemy of a religion of freedom.
One of the outstanding characteristics of Christ, put before us in the Gospels, is that He "taught as one having authority." Would you make the same charge against Him? The true Church, sent by Him with His own mission to teach all nations, and with the words: "He who hears you hears me," must also teach with authority. And it was of the truth taught with such divine authority that Christ said: "The truth shall make you free." Jn.,VIII,32. You must not think that a religion of authority is opposed to a religion of freedom. A reliable authority is a guarantee of freedom from error; and that is a freedom every sensible man wants.
342. It is only natural for man to want to be free to seek the truth for himself.
It is natural to man to want to know the truth. But it is also natural to man to accept on authority such truth as has already been sought and found by others. In no branch of knowledge is it natural to reject all that has previously been ascertained and to start all over again for oneself. At Universities students are taught all that is already known on special subjects, in order that they may be free from the trouble of having to find out all that for themselves, and that they may go on from where others left off. It would be equally unreasonable to reject the religious teachings of the Catholic Church merely because those teachings must be accepted on her authority.
343. Every man feels that the quest for religious truth is his own personal concern.
Every man should feel that his attitude towards religion is his own personal responsibility. But not every man feels that his only hope of getting religious truth is by working it out for himself. Catholics, and there are millions of them, convinced of the divine authority of their Church, are quite happy to be taught by that Church the religious truth revealed by God. It is a superstition to think that, if we. give up all authority, we shall certainly arrive at the truth.
344. Theological convictions cannot but restrict freedom of thought.
If they be correct, theological convictions are merely a restriction of one's freedom to think erroneously. But no sensible person complains of that. Any knowledge of truth in any field is a restriction on one's mental freedom to think otherwise. The astronomer who knows that the earth has but one moon experiences no sense of grievance because he does not feel free to think it has two or more moons.
345. I have always looked upon dogma-fed Catholics with pity.
Your attitude is not an intelligent one. Take this matter of dogma. Do you even know what dogma means? It is a definite Christian teaching accepted on the grounds of divine authority for it. Do you object to its being definite? Or do you hold that man is not obliged to believe what God has declared to be true? If you dogmatically assert that there ought to be no dogma, then that is your own dogma.
346. A man should be free entirely from any outside influences and directives.
Since when was refusal to be taught a virtue? If it is a crime to be influenced by others older and wiser than ourselves, or to submit to their directives, then education itself would be impossible, and we would have a rising generation of undisciplined fools. You may say that you are referring only to the field of religious ideas. But even there what I have said holds good. The spiritual advice of St. Bernard of Clairvaux is still valid: "He who takes himself as his guide has a fool for his master and a bigger fool for his disciple."
347. Any persuasion arrived at by bamboozling oneself is not worth having.
That is true, if you are thinking of truth and of conscience. But if a man does not bother about those, then by self-deception he can arrive at persuasions well worth having, although from unworthy motives. People accomplish that every day. I have known people to fight against their growing conviction of the truth of the Catholic religion, and who have succeeded in persuading themselves that they are justified in remaining non-Catholics. From the viewpoint of their own comfort and social relationships, that persuasion was well worth having. But from the viewpoint of truth and in the sight of God it was certainly not worth having. But one who has the Catholic faith has not to bamboozle himself into accepting the authoritative teachings of the Catholic Church. He is wholeheartedly convinced of their truth.
348. As regards the dogmas of your Church, could a Catholic privately think differently without being considered to have denied his faith?
A dogma is a doctrine which has been defined by the Church as an essential part of the Christian faith. A Catholic who knows this, and would continue to hold a personal opinion opposed to it, would by the very fact have denied and abandoned the Catholic Faith, interiorly at least. You may say: "But if a man thinks the opposite, it's no use telling himself that he doesn't think the opposite." The solution of that problem is not very difficult. If a man thinks a thought, he thinks it; but it does not follow that what he thinks is necessarily right. One is not obliged to believe that every thought coming into his head is true. Now if stray thoughts opposed to a Catholic dogma come into the mind of a Catholic, he knows at once that those thoughts are erroneous and he abandons them. He realizes that he cannot hold on to and maintain such thoughts to be true without denying the Catholic Faith. I am speaking here of the defined dogmas of the Catholic religion. There are many matters, outside the field of defined dogmas, in which Catholics are quite free to form and to maintain their own opinions. But these are outside the scope of your question.
349. I mean, of course, that he adheres externally and publicly to all Church pronouncements.
A Catholic's public profession of belief in the Catholic religion without any interior personal belief in it would be but a pretence. Such a person would have denied the Faith in his own mind and heart but merely without telling anyone about it. It won't do. A Catholic is obliged, not only to profess publicly his belief in all the defined dogmas of the Catholic religion, but inwardly to believe in them, assenting wholeheartedly to them, and making them his dearest personal convictions. His motive is confidence in the fact that God, who has revealed them to be true, must know all things and is incapable of a lie. A Catholic knows that to hold an opinion opposed to a Catholic dogma is to deny by the very fact God's knowledge or His veracity. He is certainly not free to do that, even though he does so only inwardly whilst conforming outwardly to the teachings of the Church. Did he do so, he would have lost the Faith. But keep in mind that I am speaking of the defined dogmas of the Catholic religion, not of other matters in which freedom of opinion is permissible.
350. As a lawyer, with all respect I wish to submit that Catholics, for all their reliance on the infallible dogmatic authority of their Church, are in no better position than Protestants who rely on their own fallible private judgment.
That you are mistaken in your line of argument I hope to show in a moment. For the time being let me give you this analogy, though it is no more than an analogy. An ordinary citizen would not trust his own private judgment to conduct an involved lawsuit. He would trust his own judgment in so far as it told him that he lacked sufficient knowledge of legal procedure, and that he ought to seek out a lawyer. But having entrusted his case to the lawyer, he would then rely on the judgment of the lawyer and not on his own private opinion as to how the case should be conducted. And you, as a legal man, would certainly not say that he would be in no better a position than a citizen who would refuse legal assistance and rely on his own private judgment only.
351. The point I wish to make is that, whilst you rely on what you believe to be an infallible Church, you accept your Church as infallible by an act of your own private judgment. So you are back to the same position as the Protestant in the end.
You have not rightly estimated the Catholic position. I accept the infallibility of the Catholic Church by an act of faith in God, who has revealed the fact of its infallibility. In other words, I rely on God's authority for that, not on my own private judgment. I admit that I had to use my own private judgment or human reasoning in weighing the claims of the Catholic Church as contrasted with those of all other Churches. But my faith in the truth of the Catholic Church, whilst presupposing such rational inquiry, does not rest upon it. I could have arrived at all the conclusions to which my own private judgment led me without attaining to faith in the infallibility of the Catholic Church at all; and in that case I would believe in it as little as you do. As a matter of fact I have put before intelligent men all the evidences that convinced me, only to obtain from them the admission that there was no flaw in the argument although they themselves have not shown the slightest trace of conviction that they too ought to accept the guidance of the Catholic Church as infallible. As one agnostic, a member of your own legal fraternity, said to me: "I agree that if there's any true Church, it can only be the Catholic Church. But her claims mean nothing to me. They just don't register." The conviction that the Catholic Church is infallible and that one is obliged to accept her guidance require something more than any person's own natural reasoning can provide. Faith in the infallibility of the Catholic Church, therefore, cannot be reduced to an act of one's own private judgment only.
352. As your own private judgment is fallible and therefore liable to mislead you, you could be as mistaken in thinking your Church infallible as the Protestant could be mistaken in judging for himself what doctrines he should believe.
I deny that the cases are similar. The human judgment is, of course, fallible. But we must beware of extravagances. We must not go so far as to say that human reason can never arrive at a certainly valid conclusion within its own proper sphere of natural realities. For example, there are many facts of history of which we are all quite certain. Now I maintain that if a man examines impartially and adequately the historical evidence for the claim of the Catholic Church to have been established by Christ and to have been promised infallibility by Him, he will find that claim reasonably substantiated. Of course that only involves the admission that there was a Christ, that He established the Catholic Church, and that He taught that it would be infallible. Reason could go that far, without a man's having any faith in Christ as God, or in the Catholic Church He established as being of God, or in the infallibility Christ promised it. Such faith is the gift of God, and it is given in answer to the prayer of a man of goodwill. The one who gets that gift receives from Him an interior and very definite realization that the infallibility of the Catholic Church is indeed a divinely revealed truth; and he accepts it on the au- . thority of God Himself, not as an inference based on efforts at merely human reasoning. There is a vast difference between the position of the Catholic who then believes all that the infallible Catholic Church teaches as Articles of Faith, and the position of the man who never gets beyond his own private judgment, and who insists on deciding for himself what he will believe, even in the realm of mysterious and supernatural religious realities which of their very nature surpass the capacity of unaided human reason. I do not pretend that this is a simple and easy problem. I may even seem to be talking a foreign language to one who does not already possess the Catholic Faith. But all who do possess that Faith have the experience of what I have described, even though they themselves could not describe it; and they know that their faith cannot be reduced to any mere act of private judgment.
353. There is one big difficulty in all this. Your dogmas suppose that an answer is possible to the question: "What is Truth?" - although there is the highest authority in existence for leaving that question unanswered altogether, that of Christ Himself!
You have in mind the incident during the trial of Christ when Pilate said to Him: "What is Truth?" St. John tells us in his Gospel that Pilate, John, XVIII, 38, having said that, went out again to the Jews from the Judgment Hall, without waiting for an answer. In reality Pilate's words were not a question at all, but an exclamation of cynical impatience. He had often presided at trials and. knew how difficult it was to be sure on which side truth really was. As, therefore, he was not really asking a question, it cannot be said that Christ deliberately left such a question unanswered.
354. At any rate, no answer was given. Is there one?
There is. We can, of course, speak of the truth of a thing in itself, or the truth of our idea about the thing. An architect may say of a completed building that it is true. He means that it conforms perfectly to what he intended it to be. A visitor, studyipg the building later on, will have the truth about it if his ideas correspond perfectly with the building. Usually, when speaking of truth, we understand it in this latter sense. And the answer to the question: "What is truth?" will then be that truth is the conformity of our ideas with realities as they are in themselves. To have the truth is simply to have the right idea of a thing; and right ideas can be had of many things, both in heaven and on earth.
355. Did Christ on any occasion say that an answer was possible?
Yes. Alluding to truth of "thought", He said: "You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free." Jn., VIII,32. Alluding to truth of "being", He said: "I am the Truth." Jn., XIV,6. As God is Truth itself and Christ was God expressed personally amongst men on their own human level in the human nature He had assumed in the Incarnation, Christ rightly said: "I am the Truth." The dogma of the Divinity of Christ is absolutely and infallibly true.
356. Do you not think Christianity needs re-stating from age to age in order to adjust it to current modes of thought?
Its unalterable doctrines need to be stated in every age, in order that people may know them. But those doctrines cannot be altered in order to adjust them to current modes of thought alien to them. The obligation of men is to adjust their ideas to the teachings of Christ if they wish to remain Christians in the face of new and destructive theories put forward by people who have themselves drifted from the Christian Faith. The Christian religion has been revealed by God. It has not to be adjusted to men. Men have to adjust themselves to it. We are not free to water down the truth declared by God. We have to accept it just as He taught it.
357. To talk like that is to admit the charge that Catholicism is essentially obscurantist, and allied with all the forces of reaction today.
It is not the Catholic Church which is obscurantist. An obscurantist is one who seeks to obscure important issues, or to suppress large tracts of knowledge. Yet whilst the Catholic Church makes every allowance for scientific knowledge and encourages the pursuit of it, many who work in the field of science think theirs the only branch of knowledge and resolutely shut their eyes to the important truths of philosophy and theology which the Catholic Church could teach them. They are the obscurantists. As for the forces of reaction, much depends upon what you mean by that. Reaction is a universal function in nature. A healthy existence depends upon one's ability to react against disease. The Catholic Church reacts against false teaching, moral depravity, and all that is destructive of human welfare. If that is a crime, she pleads guilty. But not otherwise.
358. Unless Christianity is continually restated it is bound to lose ground.
The trouble is that you want Christianity restated in such a way that it becomes something different. The shelves of libraries are full of books written by people who tried to restate Christianity in that way, adjusting it to ideas that were up-to-date when they wrote, but which are out-of-date now; and their books are equally out-of-date. The truth that God has revealed is absolutely and permanently true. There is no question here of a guess or of a mere working hypothesis, perpetually subject to change. The only restatement possible is that made by the Catholic Church, keeping the truth the same, only making it clearer by more precise definitions. And more and more people who want the truth are beginning to realize that they will find it only in the Catholic religion.
359. How do you account for so many professing Christians losing their hold on Christian beliefs?
The vast majority of them have neither known nor understood the Christian beliefs they say they reject. For every one of these fallen-away Christians who has studied the teachings that made our Christian civilin zation you will 'find a thousand who have contented themselves with the vaporings and breezy comments of critical newspaper articles, or of cheap editions of flippant and sceptical books. From such mental food what can one expect? There are answers to all this vague nonsense, of courseoverwhelming and convincing answers. But millions never hear or read the answers. They are victims of any rubbish that happens to be current and popular. And their driftage from religion is the fruit, not of knowledge, but of ignorance.
360. To me - I speak as a non-Catholic - your Roman dogmas seem completely irrational and do not make sense.
Were you to receive adequate instruction in the Catholic religion you would realize that the genuine dogmas of the Catholic religion are never contrary to reason even though they surpass our limited powers of comprehension. But that we should not fully understand them is not surprising. Even on the natural level the explanation of nuclear fission would surpass the powers of understanding in innumerable intelligent people who would be content with the assurance of authorities as to its reality. They would not dream of denying it merely because they could not fully understand it.
361. I doubt whether they could ever have any meaning for me.
Divinely revealed doctrines can never cease to be mysterious. But you must not imagine that a doctrine lacks all meaning for us merely because it is mysterious. Reason, if developed, admits an infinity of things beyond it; and the truth about God and the things of God satisfy reason precisely because they surpass it. When they are revealed to us we only partially understand them. We believe what we do not fully understand because of our faith in the God who understands all. For the rest, what we do understand of what God has revealed is full of meaning; for us and has very practical consequences in our lives.
362. The Church would have great power by preaching the simple moral principles of Christ if only she did not associate them with dogmas reasoning men cannot accept.
Firstly, the dogmas you say reasoning men cannot accept are accepted by reasoning men, and by millions of them. Secondly, not wellinformed, but ill-informed people imagine that it is in any way against reason to do so. Thirdly, the Church does not weaken her power by associating the moral teachings of Christ with dogmas. Just the opposite is true. And without the dogmatic teachings of the Christian religion Christian moral principles will not survive. For the authority of Christ to rule our conduct depends entirely on the dogmas about His Person— that He is God, who came into this world as only God could come, by a virgin birth; that the Second Divine Person, the Eternal Son, could do this because there is an Eternal Son amongst the Trinity of Persons in God; that, as Christ, He rose from the dead, still the Living God. And if He, still living, is not visibly on earth today, it is only because He has ascended into Heaven; not, however, without having told us that He will come again to judge the living and the dead, so that all of us without exception will have to account for our lives eventually to Him. Rob Christianity of these dogmas, and there is no ultimate reason why Christian moral teachings should be observed by anyone who does not feel like doing so.
363. More and more people are abandoning the Churches because they no longer believe in the fundamental doctrines on which those Churches have built their ethical superstructures.
I will grant the truth of that in the case of the Protestant Churches. But the driftage is the fruit of the merely secular education most Protestants have received. They have had little training in religious teaching or in religious practices; and they lack knowledge of the basic reasons for them. It is easy for people who see no reasons for doing a thing to regard that as a reason for not doing it; above all, when doing it calls for some self-sacrifice, whilst to neglect it is the easier road. To the lack of religious training amongst Protestants we can add the lack of confidence in the Protestant Churches themselves owing to their divisions and contradictions, and owing to their inability to speak with any certainty on matters vital to the Christian religion.
364. Putting it plainly, people are ceasing to go to Church because the dogmas of the virgin birth of Christ, the Trinity, the Resurrection and Ascension of Christ are becoming less and less believable as reason, and not emotional faith, is applied as the test to postulates of all kinds.
That cannot pass muster. If the reason why people don't go to Church is because the Church insists on belief in the dogmas mentioned, why is it that the Catholic Church which does insist upon them finds her churches filled to overflowing, whilst Protestant Churches, many of which are prepared to sanction a denial of them, are the ones to complain of empty pews? But all through you are taking too much for granted. The dogmas of the Christian religion are not mere postulates. They are definite truths revealed by God. As for reason as the test, of what is it the test? It may test the evidence for the fact of revelation; but once assured that God has revealed a doctrine to be true, it is for reason to accept it, not to dispute it, and to try to understand it as far as reason's limited capacity will permit. The idea of "emotional faith" is due, of course, to the Protestant confusion of faith with sentiment. For a Catholic, faith is an act of the intelligence by which one acknowledges the truth of what God has revealed because God has revealed it and could not reveal an untruth. What God has revealed may or may not awaken an emotional response as one adverts to its significance. But if it does awaken such a response, the emotion is an effect and not a constituent element of faith.
365. Your Church is the greatest offender in its refusal to adapt itself to modern thinking.
If the Catholic Church agreed to adjust its teaching to suit the modern thinking of those who have already abandoned the Christian Faith, she, too, would abandon it! If people want to be true, it's no use looking for the merely new. The truth of the Gospel is never out-of-date. It is permanent. People may think it clever to say whatever happens to be fashionable at the moment. But it is better to be right than bright. And the Catholic religion is right - as permanently right as the Gospel itself. Men must come back to that, or go on dwelling in the dark.
366. Would not even a little wordly wisdom show the folly of such rigid conservatism?
Worldly wisdom doesn't come into the matter. There have been, of course, non-Catholic religious teachers who have listened to the dictates of your worldly wisdom. And what has happened? By the time they have got their new religion ready, modern thinking has changed and the world they thought to please simply ignores them. Professor C. E. M. Joad rightly said: "A creed in harmony with the thought of today will be out of harmony with that of tomorrow. And a religion based on the discoveries of modern science will be discredited by the discoveries of a science still more modern." Where the Catholic Church is concerned men know where they stand. She speaks with consistency and the authority of truth. They can either accept or reject that truth; but they cannot complain that the Catholic Church does not put her claims before them exactly as they are and as they will ever remain.
367. The Protestant Churches offer new versions of Christianity, where Catholic dogmatism only repels.
In the vast majority of cases the so-called new versions of Christianity consist mainly of denials. We hear of Protestant clergymen saying that they cannot accept the traditional ideas about God. They deny the Divinity of Christ. They declare that they can no longer believe in the Bible as our forefathers did. They reject the virgin birth. They profess that they can no longer believe in hell. There is scarcely a basic Christian doctrine that they do not reject, or so modify as almost completely to change its meaning. Such procedures do not result in new versions of Christianity, but in the denial of it. And far from respecting Churches which are thus ready to compromise with the spirit of the age, men lose confidence in them and drift from them. Meantime the Catholic Church, with her unswerving fidelity to Divine Revelation, continues ever ancient and ever new with undiminished vitality.
368. An ex-Anglican clergyman, the Rev. Stuart Watts, said that he found great difficulty in reciting the Creed, a formula drafted centuries ago.
The real difficulty for one who speaks like that is not that the Creed was drafted centuries ago, but that he himself has lost the Faith which has been that of Christians throughout the centuries. The Creed cannot be true in one age and then by a mere lapse of time become untrue in another age. Modernists would like to say that, whatever the Creed meant to people of earlier centuries, it cannot have the same meaning for us. But that is sheer nonsense. They would not dare to speak like that of any other writings. What Plato and Aristotle wrote centuries before Christ made sense then and makes the same sense now. The meaning of the writings of Plato and Aristotle has not changed and become meaningless for us. But Modernists want to retain the Christian name, whilst rejecting the Christian Faith; so they fall back on a difference between the truth and the formula expressing it, saying that they merely reject the formula. But it is the doctrine in which they no longer believe.
369. He said he had hoped that the Church would have been able to work out a synthesis between the old faith and the new knowledge.
There is no new knowledge which in any way makes the ancient Faith less acceptable today than when it was first given to the world by Christ and the Apostles, and as it has been held through the ages by the Catholic Church. Writing of Modernism, one of the Rev. Stuart Watts' fellow Anglicans, Mr. Sidney Dark, says: "Today the most dangerous enemies of the Faith are not the men who acclaim themselves atheists, but the men who claim to be Christians and reject the Christian dogmas; who are so impressed by the 'spirit of the age' that they re-write the Creeds after every meeting of the British Association." And he adds: "While it is fundamentally illogical, Modernism also offers no encouragement for the struggling, no hope for the bewildered. The Modernist is always eager to tell the world what he does not believe, and the world is left in considerable doubt as to what he does believe. This is particularly true of the Modernists in the Church of England."
370. The Presbyterian, the Rev. Dr. Cox, of New Zealand, said that the repetition of the Apostles' Creed should be discontinued in public worship because it repels educated people.
Those Presbyterians who have ceased to believe in any particular Christian teaching should, of course, cease to say that they do believe in it. But the Rev. Dr. Cox was not justified in saying that educated people no longer believe in the Apostles' Creed as if those who do believe in it are not educated. He knows, or should know, that multitudes of educated people accept it; and do so wholeheartedly. The Rev. Dr. Cox exemplifies the liberalism and rationalism which are sapping Presbyterianism the world over of its remaining elements of Christian teaching. The American Dr. J. Gresham Machen, a Presbyterian professor of theology, declares in his book, "Christianity and Liberalism," that the greatest danger to the Presbyterian Church comes from enemies in the ministry itself who lack faith themselves and do all they can to undermine the faith of others. He declares that the gulf between the Church of Rome and the Presbyterian Church is indeed profound; but that that gulf is trifling compared with the abyss between the true Presbyterians and many unbelieving ministers of their own Church.
371. What do you yourself think about the Athanasian Creed, which gives a definition of the Catholic Faith purely and simply?
It does not give a definition of the Catholic Faith purely and simply. It-declares what one who has the Catholic Faith must believe about certain particular doctrines pertaining to that Faith, chiefly concerning the Holy Trinity, the Incarnation of the Son of God, and the Last Judgment of mankind. As for what I think of it, much depends on from what point of view you want my opinion. If you are concerned about its authorship, it was certainly not composed by St. Athanasius himself, who died in 373 A.D. However, it certainly sums up the doctrines about the Trinity and the Incarnation which St. Athanasius so strenuously vindicated. Probably it was composed by Caesarius, Bishop of Aries, in Gaul, who died in 543 A.D. If you are concerned about the authority of the Athanasian Creed, I can but say that it has the same authority as the Apostles' or the Nicene Creed; and all Catholics are obliged to accept all its teachings.
372. I do not understand the Athanasian Creed; and emphatically I do not believe anyone else does.
can accept your confession of your own ignorance; but that cannot be accepted as evidence of the ignorance of everybody else. You reflect the mentality of those multitudes of non-Catholics who have drifted so far from the Christian religion that they hardly know what they believe themselves, or why they believe, or what good belief does them; and who object to any clear and dogmatic teaching about God at all.
373. The Athanasian Creed is a melancholy example of how clever men can come to grief when they try to cage in exact and precise words what must forever remain a profound mystery.
It is evident that you have not the remotest idea of the purpose of the Athanasian Creed. Its purpose certainly was not to make the doctrines of the Trinity and of the Incarnation any less a profound mystery to be believed by faith than before it was composed. Its purpose was to exclude wrong explanations of the doctrine revealed by God about the Trinity and the Incarnation; and to give an exact and precise statement of the doctrine so revealed, and to be held by all Christians. We have to hold that there are three Persons in one and the same God; and that the second of these three Persons became man as Jesus Christ in order to redeem mankind. The Athanasian Creed excludes all explanations which would undermine these essential truths, but it leaves the inner reality of the Trinity and of the Person of Christ as at once God and man still in the order of the most profound mysteries.
374. Apparently the authors of the Creed felt that the doctrine of the Trinity meant polytheism, and that they had to try to show that it did not.
That is not the explanation. The Athanasian Creed was intended to safeguard the faith of Christians against the false teachings of heretics. Some heretics denied that the three Divine Persons in the Trinity were equally God. Others denied the unity of God in the Divine Nature possessed by the three Divine Persons. Others again denied the Divinity of Christ as the Incarnate Son of God. As often as a new error appears concerning a vital element of the Faith the Church has to give an authoritative decision, condemning the error and declaring the truth.
375. Some of the most subtle brains of those early centuries tied themselves into knots over these questions.
Some saw difficulties they were not able to solve, tied themselves into knots, were too proud to accept the teaching-authority of the Church, and became heretics. But the Church defined the truth against these heretics, God raising up men who had not only the highest intellectual gifts but the insight of Saints to see both the fallacies in the arguments of heretics and the true explanation of Christian doctrine.
376. The simple unphilosophical members of the early Church must have felt themselves at limes hopelessly bewildered.
The vast majority of simple unphilosophical members of the early Church had the faith and were content with the faith, leaving it to the ecclesiastical authorities to deal with the errors of heretical theologians. When the Church condemned the errors of these men and defined the right doctrine, ordinary Christians accepted without question the decisions of the Church.
377. The authors wanted to make the orthodox position crystal clear once and for all.
And they succeeded admirably. No one is left in any doubt by the Athanasian Creed as to what Christians must believe about the Holy Trinity and the Divinity of Christ. People who no longer believe in those doctrines find the ideas in the Athanasian Creed foreign to them; but that is because they have abandoned the Christian Faith, not because of any fault in the Creed.
378. To us today it seems to clarify nothing, but only to make confusion worse confounded
As I have suggested, that is true only of those who have drifted so far from the Christian Faith that it has become quite foreign to their way of thinking.
379. We can sympathize with the American theologian who says that the best thing we know about Athanasius is that he was not the author of the Athanasian Creed.
One who says that the best thing he knows of St. Athanasius is merely that he did not personally write a certain document knows very little indeed of St. Athanasius! Meantime, whilst it is true that St. Athanasius was not the actual author of the Athanasian Creed, it would be absolutely false to suggest that he would not have subscribed to every one of its propositions. Those who drew up the statement, and those who named it after him, knew that there could be no doubt whatever that the Creed embodied the doctrines for which St. Athanasius had ever made so uncompromising a stand against heretical denial of them.
380. Acceptance of your dogmas, you repeatedly say, can only be by an act of faith; but can you explain what that act of faith is, or analyze it, or dissect it?
One can certainly explain what an act of faith it, its proper motive, and its object. One can analyze all that contributes towards its production, such as the part played by a man's intelligence, or by his will, or by divine grace in the making of an act of faith.
381. How would you define faith?
Faith in the Christian sense of the word is a supernatural gift of God with the help of which a man intelligently and willingly believes all that he knows God to have revealed because God must know the truth and could not reveal as true that which is false.
382. Is it reasonable to accept without hesitation another man's word for what happened twenty centuries ago?
Quite, if there are reasonable grounds for believing that the man who tells you is rightly informed and truthful. It is quite reasonable for university students to accept the word of their professor when he tells them that twenty-four centuries ago Aristotle studied philosophy under Plato and in turn became the teacher of Alexander the Great. Later on they can verify the professor's statement if they like by the study of documentary sources for themselves. But they behave quite reasonably in taking his word for it in the meantime.
383. For the facts about Christ we are referred to the Bible as an historical source.
The Bible is quite a reliable historical source.
384. You forget that the Bible has been retranscribed and retranslated time and again during twenty centuries.
That is beside the point. The point is whether or not the Bible has been correctly transcribed and translated. A critical, thoroughly scientific and comparative study of all ancient manuscripts proves that substantial accuracy has been preserved. You could have no more reason for rejecting the word 6f experts in this matter than you could for rejecting the word of experts in physical science for the existence of cosmic rays.
385. One cannot have more than either general opinion or one's own private opinion that the Bible contains the truth.
Whether what is written in the Bible is true is a totally different problem from that concerning the accuracy of our copies of the original writings. But take the question as to whether what the Bible contains is infallibly true because* the writers were inspired by God Himself in what they wrote. Is it true that we have only general or private opinion for that? It is certainly not so in the case of a Catholic. For the Catholic has the authoritative and infallible teaching of the Catholic Church as his guarantee to that effect. To refute that teaching one would have to refute the credentials of the Catholic Church as a divine institution for the guidance of mankind in such matters connected with religion.
386. Your definition of faith sounds very strange to me. In fact I was astounded to hear you declare on one occasion that the faith of a Christian does not mean assurance of salvation.
It is a delusion for anyone, however good he may be, to imagine that he cannot possibly lose his soul. Holy Scripture tells us: "He that shall persevere unto the end, he shall be saved." Matt., X, 22. No one can be absolutely sure that he will persevere in good dispositions; and faith does not mean such an assurance. Christian faith means belief in the Christian religion and in all that it implies. Faith is not merely a personal mood of confidence in one's future salvation. It is essential to have right ideas as to the nature of faith.
387. Whatever faith may be, is it not founded on sentiment rather than on reason?
No. No one is asked to have faith in the Catholic religion as a divinely revealed religion without reasonable grounds for such a conviction. And those reasonable grounds consist in external objective facts which can be apprehended by a person quite devoid of sentiment.
388. More converts to your religion are made through sentiment and emotion than through reason.
No converts have ever been made either through sentiment or through reason. All owe their conversion to the grace of God, which enlightens the mind and inspires the will of man. The gift of faith, however, presupposes certain dispositions in the one who receives it; and in their approach to the faith motives will vary according to the different psychological temperaments of the people concerned. In all people both sentiment and reason play a part here; in some, sentiment predominating without excluding reason; in others, reason predominating without excluding sentiment. But the act of faith itself will be the willing intellectual acceptance of the teachings of the Catholic Church, under the influence of the grace of God.
389. Mr. H. L. Mencken says that faith "may be defined as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable; or, psychoanalytically, as a wish neurosis".
Mr. Mencken's description is so little in accordance with the facts that if a man went to any Catholic priest and asked to be received into the Catholic Church, declaring that he thought he had the faith because he had attained to "an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable," that priest would positively reject his application. Far from being illogical, faith demands a sound and reasonable foundation. Far from being wishful thinking, it involves the acceptance of much we would have hosts of natural reasons for wishing to reject. And men who could not in the slightest degree be termed neurotics have accepted and professed the Catholic Faith. A definition which does not fit the facts is worthless.
390. "There is thus," he declares, "a flavor of the pathological in it."
He begins by describing faith, not as it is in reality, but inaccurately to suit the conclusions he wants to draw from it. Then he merrily goes ahead. But anyone can do that kind of thing. Let Mr. Mencken justify his definition before proceeding to base conclusions upon it.
391. "Faith," he continues, "goes beyond the normal intellectual processes and passes into the murky domain of transcendental metaphysics".
Faith goes beyond no normal human processes. If I phone the Railway I Information Office to ask when a certain train departs, it is a normal intellectual process for me to argue that the official who supplies the information would not have the position unless he was able to supply the required knowledge and was accustomed to telling the truth. I therefore quite reasonably take his word for it that the train will depart at the time he says. I The same intellectual process is employed when we have faith in what | God has revealed. In reality Mr. Mencken is concerned, not with the intellectual process, but with the object of religious faith—the doctrines that we believe. Because they are mysterious and supernatural, not wholly understood and beyond the range of normal sense-experience, Mr. Mencken speaks of them as belonging to the "murky domain of transcendental metaphysics." But you don't refute what other people believe merely by a I contemptuous description of it.
392. "A man full of faith," he tells us, "is simply one who has lost the capacity for clear and realistic thought."
To write a sentence like that is to make oneself ridiculous. That men like Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Kepler, Newton, Pasteur, Gladstone, Sir Thomas More, Cardinal Newman, and a host of philosophers, historians I and scientists who were men of deep faith were incapable of clear and i realistic thought is absurd on the face of it.
393. "Such a man," he writes, "is not a mere ass; he is actually ill. Worse, he is incurable, for disappointment being essentially an objective phenomenon, cannot permanently affect his subjective infirmity."
Mr. Mencken began by saying that faith is "an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable." Now he argues that, when the improbable does not happen, the disappointment cannot cure the believer. Why not? Because faith is an illogical and even pathological internal condition, independent of outside influences. He is trying to prove his point from the false definition he invented for himself! I'm afraid it is Mr. Mencken who is not merely an ass, but suffering from an incurable mental illness.
394. He adds that the man of faith usually says in substance: "Let us trust God, who has always fooled us in the past."
The man of faith does not say that in substance or in any other way. Mr. Mencken himself thinks trust in God is foolish. He therefore thinks that Christians must be foolish to trust in God, and takes it for granted that they always find their trust misplaced. But of what avail is the opinion of one who does not trust in God against the unanimous testimony of millions through the centuries who have trusted in God and have actually I experienced God's protection and blessing in extraordinary ways? Mr. Mencken may reply that that is their "incurable persuasion." But the retort to that is evident. Such is Mr. Mencken's incurable opinion. And it is worth only the evidence he can produce for it. He produces none. He thinks it because he thinks it. And he offers it to those who have faith in Mr. Mencken-a faith which he is welcome to describe as an illogical belief in the improbable; or, psychoanalytically, as a wishful neurotic affliction.
395. It is difficult for me to understand how a person with a keen and analytical mind can accept a religion as a divine revelation when there is not a tittle of real evidence to prove its authenticity.
You admit that men with keen analytical minds do so. Does not the possibility strike you that they may be aware of evidence of which you are not aware? May not your verdict that there is not a tittle of real evidence available be due, not to knowledge, but to lack of knowledge? If one has carefully studied all that has been advanced in favor of divine revelation and has definitely refuted it all, then and then only is he entitled to say that he personally has a reasoned conviction that there is not a tittle of real evidence for it.
396. The Bible, which is said to contain a divine revelation, is accepted according to a person's credulity.
That is not true. The Bible has a twofold aspect. Apart from the question as to whether what it contains has been divinely revealed, one can simply ask whether it is an historically genuine and authentic account of things said and done by certain persons. Its reliability from that point of view is beyond reasonable dispute. No credulity is required for that admission. But whilst one might admit that, as an historical fact, Christ really lived, and said and did the things recorded of Him in the Bible, it is another matter to admit the claim He made to be God in human form. Acceptance of that claim does require an act of faith. But faith must not be confused with credulity. Credulity is a disposition to believe without sufficient grounds for confidence, whilst faith is a well-founded conviction. The Bible we accept as historically accurate, not by credulity, but on the evidence. The message of the Bible as the revelation of God we accept, not by credulity, but by faith.
397. All your dogmas seem to me to be related to faith and not to any intellectual concept.
Faith is the acceptance by one's intellect of those concepts which God has revealed to be true. It supposes an intelligent grasp of the reasons justifying the fact of divine revelation, and an intelligent belief in those truths that have been revealed. Your own very statement is related to an unreasoning unbelief, not to any intellectual concept.
398. All religious people are alike. In the end they fall back on their infallible faith and say: "J feel it here," with their hands on their stomachs!
It is true that, where revealed doctrines are concerned, Christians rely upon their supreme and intelligent conviction of the truth of their religion. But they do not profess to believe in it in or with their stomachs. To have to fall back on such a sarcastic caricature of faith betrays the insincerity of one trying not to believe in a Christianity he cannot entirely dismiss from his thoughts, and which he uncomfortably feels may be true after all.
399. Is it not amazing that the people of olden times had miracles performed regularly to convince them of the existence of God and of the claims of Christ whilst we are left without such assistance towards such faith?
People of olden times did not have miracles performed regularly in order to convince them, though miracles were more common then. But it is not amazing that they should be more frequent in the initial stages of the Church. One spends more care on a seedling, watering and fertilizing it till it safely takes root, than one does on a solidly established tree. St. Augustine, in the fourth century, said that Christianity Was rapidly and solidly established either with the help of miracles or without the help of miracles. If with the help of miracles, it was obviously from God. If without the help of miracles, then that in itself would be as great a miracle as any that could be wrought on its behalf. As a matter of fact, the Catholic Church herself, with her extraordinary persistence and development, whilst ever retaining her unity, through all the centuries till our own times, would be more than enough to warrant belief in the existence of God and in the divinity of her Founder, Jesus Christ.
400. According to a report in the "Sydney Daily Telegraph Bishop Fulton Sheen, in his convert classes, used to "prove God is a fact with much the same kind of demonstration as when proving elementary problems of geometry on a schoolroom blackboard That was not an appeal to faith.
If we ask people to believe in what God has revealed to be true, we presuppose their conviction that there is a God. To arrive at that conviction one does not need faith. One can arrive at that conviction by reason only, for God's existence is capable of logical demonstration by a process of reasoning from effects to their cause. If a prospective convert is already firmly convinced that there is a God, it is not strictly necessary to take him through the philosophical proofs of the fact. But Bishop Fulton Sheen thought it good that those attending his classes should be made to advert fully to the reasonable grounds upon which the conviction is based.