John Henry Newman on Poetical Feeling and Correct Moral Perception

[22] Originality may perhaps be defined the power of abstracting for one's self, and is in thought what strength of mind is in action. Our opinions are commonly derived from education and society. Common minds transmit as they receive, good and bad, true and false; minds of original talent feel a continual propensity to investigate subjects and strike out views for themselves;—so that even old and established truths do not escape modification and accidental change when subjected to this process of mental digestion. Even the style of original writers is stamped with the peculiarities of their minds. When originality is found apart from good sense, which more or less is frequently the case, it shows itself in paradox and rashness of sentiment, and eccentricity of outward conduct. Poetry, on the other hand, cannot be separated from its good sense, or taste, as it is called; which is one of its elements. It is originality energizing in the world of beauty; the originality of grace, purity, refinement, and good feeling. We do not hesitate to say that poetry is ultimately founded on correct moral perception; that where there is no sound principle in exercise there will be no poetry; and that on the whole (originality being granted) in proportion to the standard of a writer's moral character will his compositions vary in poetical excellence. This position, however, requires some explanation.

Of course, then, we do not mean to imply that a poet must necessarily display virtuous and religious feeling; we are not speaking of the actual material of poetry, [23] but of its sources. A right moral state of heart is the formal and scientific condition of a poetical mind. Nor does it follow from our position that every poet must in fact be a man of consistent and practical principle; except so far as good feeling commonly produces or results from good practice. Burns was a man of inconsistent life; still, it is known, of much really sound principle at bottom. Thus his acknowledged poetical talent is in nowise inconsistent with the truth of our doctrine, which will refer the beauty which exists in his compositions to the remains of a virtuous and diviner nature within him. Nay, further than this, our theory holds good, even though it be shown that a depraved man may write a poem. As motives short of the purest lead to actions intrinsically good, so frames of mind short of virtuous will produce a partial and limited poetry. But even where this is instanced, the poetry of a vicious mind will be inconsistent and debased; that is, so far only poetry as the traces and shadows of holy truth still remain upon it. On the other hand, a right moral feeling places the mind in the very centre [sic] of that circle from which all the rays have their origin and range; whereas minds otherwise placed command but a portion of the whole circuit of poetry. Allowing for human infirmity and the varieties of opinion, Milton, Spenser, Cowper, Wordsworth, and Southey may be considered, as far as their writings go, to approximate to this moral centre. The following are added as further illustrations of our meaning. Walter Scott's centre is chivalrous honor; Shakspeare [sic] exhibits the characteristics of an unlearned and undisciplined piety; Homer the religion of nature and conscience, at times debased by polytheism. All [24] these poets are religious. The occasional irreligion of Virgil's poetry is painful to the admirers of his general taste and delicacy. Dryden's Alexander's Feast is a magnificent composition, and has high poetical beauties; but to a refined judgment there is something intrinsically unpoetical in the end to which it is devoted, the praises of revel and sensuality. It corresponds to a process of clever reasoning erected on an untrue foundation—the one is a fallacy, the other is out of taste. Lord Byron's Manfred is in parts intensely poetical; yet the delicate mind naturally shrinks from the spirit which here and there reveals itself, and the basis on which the drama is built. From a perusal of it we should infer, according to the above theory, that there was right and fine feeling in the poet's mind, but that the central and consistent character was wanting. From the history of his life we know this to be the fact. The connexion [sic] between want of the religious principle and want of poetical feeling is seen in the instances of Hume and Gibbon, who had radically unpoetical minds. Rousseau, it may be supposed, is an exception to our doctrine. Lucretius, too, had great poetical genius; but his work evinces that his miserable philosophy was rather the result of a bewildered judgment than a corrupt heart.

According to the above theory, Revealed Religion should be especially poetical—and it is so in fact. While its disclosures have an originality in them to engage the intellect, they have a beauty to satisfy the moral nature. It presents us with those ideal forms of excellence in which a poetical mind delights, and with which all grace and harmony are associated. It brings us into a new world—a world of overpowering interest, of the sublimest [25] views and the tenderest and purest feelings. The peculiar grace of mind of the New Testament writers is as striking as the actual effect produced upon the hearts of those who have imbibed their spirit. At present we are not concerned with the practical, but the poetical, nature of revealed truth. With Christians, a poetical view of things is a duty,—we are bid to color all things with hues of faith, to see a Divine meaning in every event, and a superhuman tendency. Even our friends around are invested with unearthly brightness—no longer imperfect men, but beings taken into Divine favor, stamped with His seal, and in training for future happiness. It may be added that the virtues peculiarly Christian are especially poetical—meekness, gentleness, compassion, contentment, modesty, not to mention the devotional virtues; whereas the ruder and more ordinary feelings are the instruments of rhetoric more justly than of poetry—anger, indignation, emulation, martial spirit, and love of independence.

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Source: John Henry Newman, Poetry, with Reference to Aristotle's Poetics, ed. Albert S. Cook (Boston: Ginn & Company, 1894), 22–25.

Saint Gregory the Great: On the Pastoral Rule

[Originally written for a class. In light of all the recent scandals among the episcopacy, I thought posting the following would be relevant.]

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“So exalted is the view of the episcopal calling taken by the Regula Pastoralis, that it has been said that it made the bishops who made the modern nations.”[1]

Saint Gregory the Great’s On the Pastoral Rule (Liber Regulae Pastoralis) immediately established itself as a classic of pastoral theology and spirituality.[2] Written in response to a criticism that St. Gregory had attempted to flee from his responsibilities upon election to the papacy,[3] the Pastoral Rule was circulated in Spain, translated into Greek and distributed among the Eastern Churches by order of the Emperor Maurice, and spread throughout Ireland and England by SS. Columban and Augustine.[4] Nor did its influence wane, for by the 9th century, Alfred the Great, desiring to reform the clergy of England, translated the work into Old English and commanded each bishop in his kingdom to read it.[5] In France around the same time, each newly consecrated bishop received a copy of the Canons along with the Pastoral Rule.[6] By the 13th century, St. Thomas Aquinas relied on it as the principal basis for his exposition on the episcopacy in the Summa Theologiae.[7] Finally, in the 20th century, Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, OP, commended it as contributing to a proper notion of priestly perfection.[8] The Pastoral Rule not only sets high standards but hands on the practical wisdom of a great contemplative saint who did not shirk from laboring in the world. Its enduring impact on the spirituality of the priest and bishop combined with its sheer abundance of excellent advice in navigating the delicate balance between the contemplative and active lives make the work incontestably important for the seminarian and priest. In reading the work, two points struck me most powerfully: first, the focus on balance that St. Gregory brings in explaining the work of the pastor, and second, the necessity of great sanctity in order for the pastor to conduct an effective apostolate. I will explain these points and their relevance for growth in the spiritual life.

The Pastoral Rule eminently (while not consciously) embodies the Aristotelian-Thomistic notion that virtue lies in the golden mean between excess and defect.[9] St. Gregory makes use of the balance between contrasting elements in order to explain the virtues and knowledge necessary for the pastor. For example, a man may rightfully flee from the office of pastor out of humility, yet if God calls him to this duty, to deny it would reveal prideful obstinacy.[10] The pastor must exercise prudence in keeping silence but be forthright and profitable in speech, avoiding the defect of an excessive silence that would imply approval of the sinful behavior of those deserving correction and, on the other hand, the excess of careless and immoderate rebuke.[11] Similarly, the pastor must balance gentleness and rigor, gently correcting sins of weakness or ignorance, reprimanding more sternly sins of malice, yet without excessive harshness, for “when reproof blazes forth immoderately, the hearts of the sinners fall into dejection and despair.”[12] St. Gregory elaborates on the careful balance required between the contemplative and active aspects of pastoral life. The pastor’s contemplation must be exalted above all others, yet like St. Paul, who made provision for married life to faithful under his care out of concern for the concupiscence of the flesh, he must accommodate himself to the needs of the weak.[13] Like the example of our Lord, Who ascended the mountain to pray to His Father and descended to minister to sinners during the day, so “good rulers, who, though they strive after the highest things by contemplation, should nevertheless by their compassion share in the needs of the weak.”[14] St. Gregory explains beautifully that “charity rises to sublime heights, when in pity it is drawn by the lowly […] and the more kindly it stoops to infirmity, the mightier is its reach to the highest.”[15] Ultimately, St. Gregory establishes that contemplation takes priority since the faithful must receive from the spiritual abundance of the pastor, like water overflowing from an interior cistern,[16] but his contemplation must not be so prolonged that the pastor neglects his responsibilities to his flock.[17]

The other type of balance on which St. Gregory expounds regards the pastor’s knowledge so that he may adapt his manner of teaching to each class of individual, temperament, and character. Here St. Gregory reveals a profound understanding of psychology combined with the most developed prudence and breadth of experience. The saint compares the pastor’s work to the playing of a harp, where each listener is a different string, to which the harpist must apply a different stroke suited to each in order to produce a skillful and harmonious melody.[18] Gregory goes on to elucidate around 40 different classes of people, of various temperaments, characters, virtues, vices, and experiences, and how the preacher is effectively to teach them all. His discussion of encouraging the overly taciturn provides an example of the saint’s penetrating insight into the human heart that depreciates the supposed genius of Freud’s “talking cure”:

Often when the taciturn suffer injustice, they come to feel keener grief from not speaking about what they are suffering. […] Wounds that are closed are the more painful. […] People, therefore, who are more silent than is expedient, should realise [sic] that they but aggravate the vehemence of their grief in withholding speech [….][19]

Clearly, to achieve this remarkable balance and depth requires profound sanctity and docility to the movements of the Holy Ghost as for example when St. Gregory states: “Humility is to be preached to the proud in a way not to increase fear in the timorous, and confidence [to the timorous] as not to encourage the unbridled impetuosity in the proud. […] The highest good is to be so praised, that the good in little things is not discarded.”[20] Gregory’s insistence on striking that balance and reaching that summit of virtue for an effective pastoral ministry brings me to my second point of interest.

One of St. Gregory’s principal points in his Pastoral Rule is the sanctity requisite for the great responsibility of pastoral ministry. As St. Thomas succinctly puts it, in a manner with which St. Gregory would undoubtedly have agreed, the bishop is the perfector of others.[21] The pastor must be holy by reason of the dignity of his office as the life of the shepherd is so far above the life of the sheep.[22] St. Gregory warns, “No one ventures to teach any art unless he has learned it after deep thought,” and that the government of souls is “the art of arts.”[23] The saint compares the pastor to a physician who would be rash to attempt to heal others without having first mastered the art of medicine himself, and further than the physician, in order for the pastor to heal souls, he himself must first be healed of sinfulness and even attachment to sin: “If, then, in [the physician’s] practice ailments still thrive in him, with what presumption does he hasten to heal the afflicted while he carries a sore on his own face?”[24] St. Gregory makes the vivid comparison between the sinful pastor and an untrustworthy mediator sent to intercede for a party: “For we all know full well that when a person is out of favour [sic] and sent to intercede, the mind of the incensed person is moved to greater anger,”[25] so too a pastor stuck in the mire of sin will not only fail to draw down the graces of God for his flock but will also lead to his own ruin and that of those under his care. Pastors who are still beginners in the spiritual life are like fledgling birds attempting “to fly upwards before their wings are fully developed” and therefore “fall down from where they tried to soar.”[26] With many other different analogies, St. Gregory argues that the pastor must teach what he has learned through personal experience more than abstract study,[27] must lead by the example of his own virtuous conduct,[28] must please men by the goodness of his character so as to draw men to a love of truth and holiness,[29] and in short, must

make himself heard rather by deeds than by words, and that by his righteous way of life should imprint footsteps for men to tread in [….] Let [pastors] first rouse themselves up by lofty deeds, and then make others solicitous to live good lives. […] Then, and only then, let them set in order the lives of others by their words.[30]

On the other hand, St. Gregory’s overwhelming emphasis on the pastor’s personal holiness may perhaps confuse some readers: why does St. Gregory not also focus on the pastor’s sacramental ministry? With the Pastoral Rule St. Gregory intends to guide bishops in their pastoral ministry rather than priests in their sacramental ministry, and one should keep in mind that Gregory’s vision of the pastor as spiritual physician and exemplar implies that the effectiveness of the pastor’s ministry corresponds with the degree of his holiness. This difference of focus reveals why he spends so much time focusing on the personal qualifications of the pastor as well as the prudential knowledge needed to guide properly the various classes of individuals under his care. Despite this difference, the necessity of holiness applies also to priests as Fr. Antonio Royo Marin, OP, notes forcefully, for while it is true that the sacramental aspect of priestly ministry possesses an intrinsic efficacy derived ex opere operato,

one cannot entertain the slightest doubt that in all those other activities the efficacy of which depend on the proper dispositions of the instrument, i.e. ex opere operantis (and these are all those activities of the priest except those we referred to in the valid administration of the sacraments), the supernatural efficacy of his apostolate will be in direct and immediate proportion to the degree of sanctity and perfection of the minister of God, and a poor curate in Ars, ignorant and scorned yet aflame with divine love, will convert more sinners and bring more souls to God than all the professors of the Sorbonne in Paris combined.[31]

The importance of both points discussed should be clear for the seminarian and priest. The success of his extra-sacramental ministry hinges on the degree to which he is docile to the Holy Ghost and acts in persona Christi not only in an official manner but also a personal manner, and St. Gregory provides us with an eminently trustworthy guide to develop those virtues specific to pastoral ministry.

St. Gregory’s Pastoral Rule is truly a sobering read. After enumerating the degree of exalted virtues and the vastness of necessary wisdom to pastor souls effectively, the saint closes his work with a chapter on the importance of remaining humble. He writes, “It is necessary that […] the eye of the soul should turn its gaze on its infirmities […] and as [pastors] are not able to overcome the very little [faults], they should not presume to pride themselves on the great things they accomplish.”[32] This book provides us an opportunity to reflect seriously on the maturity and the balance required for priestly ministry as well as the heavy burden of responsibility that accompanies it. It also emphasizes in another manner the fact that God is the author of all good things, that any good we possess is from Him (Jas. 1:17); as St. Paul asks, “What has thou that thou hast not received?” (1 Cor. 4:7). And reminiscent of our Lord’s parable of the talents, St. Gregory reminds us that those who have been given much are expected to help others, for “the gifts which they have received [are] not for their own sakes only, but for the sake of others also.”[33] Our Lord “came forth from the bosom of His Father into our midst, that He might benefit many,” and hence the love of God must overflow into the love of neighbor for God’s sake.[34] May we learn from the example of St. Gregory the Great, who, despite his personal protests to the contrary,[35] preached through the lofty holiness of his life in addition to his words.

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Footnotes:

1. Horace K. Mann, The Lives of the Popes in the Early Middle Ages, Part 1: 590–657 (St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Co., 1925), 1:241. On the influence of the Pastoral Rule, see St. Gregory the Great, Pastoral Care, trans. Henry Davis, in Ancient Christian Writers: The Works of the Fathers in Translation, eds. Johannes Quasten and Joseph C. Plumpe, no. 11 (Westminster, MD: The Newman Press, 1950), 9–12 [hereafter Davis, Pastoral Care, page, book, and chapter].

2. Abbot Snow, St. Gregory the Great: His Work and His Spirit (London: Burns Oates & Washbourne, Ltd., 1924), 90–91.

3. Davis, Pastoral Care, 4, translator’s introduction.

4. Ibid., 10.

5. Ibid., 11.

6. Mann, The Lives of the Popes, 242.

7. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, vol. 47: 2a2ae. 183–189: The Pastoral and Religious Lives, ed. Jordan Aumann (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 60–61, footnote a [hereafter ST].

8. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, On the Sanctification of Priests According to the Needs of Our Times, trans. Paul M. Kimball, (Camillus, NY: Dolorosa Press, 2013), ch. 1, art. 3.

9. Cf. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, The Three Ages of the Interior Life, trans. M. Timothea Doyle (Rockford, IL: TAN Books, 1989), 1:64–65.

10. Davis, Pastoral Care, 32, I, 6. St. Thomas expands on this argument in ST 2a2ae.185.2, even quoting from the same passage of St. Gregory’s Pastoral Rule.

11. Ibid., 51–55, II, 4.

12. Ibid., 85, II, 10.

13. Ibid., 56–57, II, 5.

14. Ibid., 58.

15. Ibid.

16. Ibid., 175, III, 24. St. Gregory writes, “The preacher drinks the water of his own cistern [.…] To be sure, it is proper that he should drink first, and then give others to drink by his preaching” (ibid.). This image anticipates St. Bernard’s striking comparison between the reservoir and the canal, which forms a perfect summary of St. Gregory’s thought on those seeking too eagerly for the pastoral office: “Today there are many in the Church who act like canals, the reservoirs are far too rare. So urgent is the charity of those through whom the streams of heavenly doctrine flow to us, that they want to pour it forth before they have been filled; they are more ready to speak than to listen, impatient to teach what they have not grasped, and full of presumption to govern others while they know not how to govern themselves” (“Sermon 18” in On the Song of Songs, trans. Kilian Walsh, in Cistercian Fathers Series: Number Four: The Works of Bernard of Clairvaux, ed. M. Basil Pennington [Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1971] 1:134, n. 3).

17. Ibid., 68–75, II, 7. St. Thomas famously perfects this line of argumentation when demonstrating that the mixed life rises above both the contemplative and active, for “just as it is better to illumine than merely to shine, so it is better to give to others the things contemplated than simply to contemplate” (ST 2a2ae.188.6). Interestingly, St. Thomas also argues that this mixed life is more perfect because it more closely resembles the perfection of the episcopal state (ibid.).

18. Ibid., 89–90, III, prologue.

19. Ibid., 130–131, III, 14.

20. Ibid., 227, III, 36.

21. ST 2a2ae.184.7.

22. Davis, Pastoral Care, 45, II, 1.

23. Ibid., 21, I, 1.

24. Ibid., 38, I, 9.

25. Ibid., 39.

26. Ibid., 180, III, 25.

27. Ibid., 23–25, I, 2.

28. Ibid., 48–51, II, 3.

29. Ibid., 77, II, 8.

30. Ibid., 232–233, III, 40.

31. Antonio Royo Marin, Teología de la perfección cristiana (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autore Cristianos, 2015), 806–807, n. 669, 5 (my translation). Cf. also St. John of the Cross who writes, “As for the one who teaches, the profit is usually commensurate with his interior preparedness. […] We frequently see, insofar as it is possible to judge here below, that the better the life of the preacher the more abundant the fruit, no matter how lowly his style, poor his rhetoric, and plain the doctrine” (Ascent of Mount Carmel, trans. K. Kavanaugh and O. Rodriguez, in The Collected Works of Saint John of the Cross, eds. K. Kavanaugh and O. Rodriguez [Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1973], 291, III, 45).

32. Davis, Pastoral Care, 237, IV.

33. Ibid., 29–30, I, 5.

34. Ibid., 31.

35. Ibid., 237, IV.

Alfred the Great and Tradition: Reflections on G.K. Chesterton's Ballad of the White Horse

[Originally written for a class.]

G.K. Chesterton’s The Ballad of the White Horse is a beautiful and electrifying epic poem, steeped in English culture and proving its merit by how it captures the past to invigorate the present and the future. The poem was met with wide acclaim when it was first published, even being read by English soldiers during World War I.[1] Interestingly, J.R.R. Tolkien had quite a critical view of the poem, “[It] is not as good as I thought. The ending is absurd. […] G.K.C. knew nothing whatever about the ‘North’, heathen or Christian.”[2] Nevertheless, I very much like the poem, and my favorite character is certainly King Alfred, for he is the personification of the best of tradition. My interest in Alfred stems from my love of traditionalism and all of its societal implications. First, I will define tradition as it is relevant here and its relation to kingly character. Then I will discuss how Alfred personifies tradition by contrasting him with the barbarian and Christian chiefs, comparing him to two other notable symbols of tradition in the poem, namely, the White Horse and the playing child, and finally showing how his particular faults and virtues illustrate the development of tradition.

Chesterton was an eminent and excellent defender of tradition, memorably defining it as “the democracy of the dead” in his essay “The Ethics of Elfland.”[3] In the prefatory note to the Ballad, Chesterton points out the function of tradition: “It telescopes history.”[4] In a separate essay on King Alfred, Chesterton expands on this telescopic function, writing, “Fable is more historical than fact, because fact tells us about one man and fable tells us about a million men. […] We are in the presence of a thousand lies all pointing with their fantastic fingers to one undiscovered truth.”[5] Tradition presents us with the most noble, the best of human history. Living tradition is also necessarily popular. Chesterton chose to include certain episodes of Alfred’s life based simply on the fact that “it is a popular tale” as he says in the prefatory note. These tales reveal something of Alfred but, deeper than that, something valuable for English culture to preserve. Tradition connects us to the past in order to strengthen us in the present and prepare us for the future. We can call it “trans-historical” because while it derives from concrete history, it is not a mere restatement of dry facts but a distillation of the themes of human virtue and supernatural grace at war against selfishness and the forces of evil. Anthropologists even define tradition along the same lines:

Over the course of centuries, the actions of ancestral heroes, imitated directly and then represented in myth, become transformed, simplified, streamlined and quickened [….] Culture is therefore the “sum total” of surviving historically-determined, hierarchically-arranged behaviors […] into a single pattern of behavior—into a single system of morality [….][6]

Finally, in Western culture the figures of the father and the king have frequently embodied tradition: “‘Culture’ binds ‘nature.’ […] The protective capacity of benevolent tradition, embodied in the form of political order, constitutes a common mythological/narrative theme.”[7] We already see hinted here the profound link between Alfred and the continued existence of the White Horse, “cultivated” in the hillside of “nature” by human agency over time. Chesterton does not hesitate to paint Alfred in this archetypal manner; even the title of “the Great” brings into sharper relief the formative impact that the legends of Alfred brought to English society: “Every nation requires to have behind it some historic personality, the validity of which is proved, as the validity of a gun is proved, by its long range.”[8]

It is Alfred’s personification of tradition and the content of that tradition that make him worthy of the title “the Great.” However, in order to illuminate more clearly this relationship between Alfred and his greatness, it will be useful to contrast Alfred with the barbarian and Christian chiefs in the Ballad. The Danish chiefs represent vices antithetical to tradition. Harold represents lust and gluttony, in short, hedonism and materialism: “But we, but we shall enjoy the world, / The whole huge world a toy. / Great wine like blood from Burgundy / […] And the great smooth women like ivory / That the Turks sell in the street.”[9] Elf represents pride and curiosity[10] of the sort that end in disillusionment: “There is always a forgotten thing, / And love is not secure.”[11] I note disillusionment, for the poem relates how those who listen to Elf’s music grow sad. Later in the poem, the reader learns that Elf acquired a magical spear after encountering water-maids, further revealing Elf’s curiosity into the occult and demonic (note even Elf’s own name, which suggests the mythical and forbidden, the gnostic). Ogier, like an ogre, represents wrath: “Well if [a man] find in his soul at last / Fury, that does not fail. […] And hate alone is true.”[12] Finally, Guthrum represents despair and nihilism: “And a man may still lift up his head / But never more his heart.”[13] These virtues are antithetical to tradition. Lust and gluttony consume a person with himself, but tradition and culture draw a man out of himself to consider the common and higher good. Elf’s curiosity is the seeking of the novel and strange, the “forgotten thing,” but tradition cultivates and preserves the good proper to a community, establishing barriers to prevent possibly damaging foreign intrusion. Wrath and hatred prevent any sense of tradition from developing, for whereas today we often hear in the news of growing mob mentalities and the deepening divisions of identity politics, tradition on the other hand draws men together in common bonds of mutual concern and respect. Finally, despair and nihilism overturn the very foundation of tradition, which is the firm faith in the true, good, and beautiful.

The Christian chiefs represent foils of the barbarians, each chief focusing on some quality necessary for the promotion and preservation of tradition. Colan contrasts with Harold by representing purity and asceticism, which shift a man’s focus away from himself and refuse to see others merely in terms of his own gain or pleasure: “For Colan was hung with raiment / Tattered like autumn leaves, / And his men were all as thin as saints, / And all as poor as thieves.”[14] Mark represents humility, orderliness, and studiousness: “But Mark was come […] / Where men can number and expound, And his faith grew in a hard ground / Of doubt and reason and falsehood found, / Where no faith else could grow.”[15] As the narrator tells us, Mark’s environment so valued the truth that falsehood could not take root there, for example, the falsehood of heresy and pagan mysticism. Hence Mark later defeats Elf in battle: “But the shield [of Mark] shifted never,” that is, Mark’s humble commitment to the true was not swayed by Elf’s curious knowledge of the “forgotten things.” Eldred symbolizes humility and meekness. He is “down to earth” and focused on the concrete realities of life: “I will watch the certain things.”[16] In the midst of battle, Eldred’s heart is focused on his crops as he thanks God “for good eating / And corn and quiet times,”[17] and this focus and gratitude are the foundation of culture, the cultivation of the earth leading to the worship of God, offering Him the first-fruits. However, this simplicity, left on its own, is susceptible to manipulation, which is how Elf with his cleverness, symbolized by the enchanted spear, kills Eldred. Finally, Alfred represents hope. Although defeated, he keeps his conviction in the triumph of good over evil: “But our king Alfred, lost from fame, / […] Has still some song to sing.”[18] When combined these virtues form the bedrock of a healthy culture: mortification, consideration for others, a commitment to the truth that never becomes arrogant, and finally, to hope in the good and the true “against hope” as Saint Paul says.[19]

Only when the Christian chiefs are united can they defeat the barbarians; as individuals they fall. Alfred unites the Christian chiefs precisely for their different strengths. Similarly, tradition binds men across their individual differences and skills, tempering and directing them for the sake of the good beyond each individual. Tradition orients a man by placing him between the past and the future, and Alfred does exactly the same by seeking out his allies and organizing them to defeat the threat of the Danes, to keep the White Horse, and to preserve Christendom.

In order to draw out further how Alfred personifies tradition, I would like to focus also on two other symbols of tradition in the Ballad, namely, the White Horse itself and the child at play during the battle. The White Horse is the artifact of tradition where Alfred represents the agent who preserves tradition. The White Horse exists only because of the intention and dedication of men across time to preserve its existence. In other words, tradition is maintained to the precise degree that those who possess tradition choose to hand it on for future generations. The processes of degeneration, decay, and forgetfulness are constantly repeated throughout the Ballad: “The great White Horse was grey [sic], / […] Since the foes of settled house and creed / Had swept old works away.”[20] Alfred states frankly, “I know that weeds shall grow in it / Faster than men can burn.”[21] Hence the determination and commitment to preserve tradition must be equally insistent, patient, and renewed. The hope of Alfred is represented in the continued scouring of the White Horse; thus the Horse is an abiding sign of hope even to the extent that it is called “a live thing, / The scoured chalk.”[22] This is the hope that Our Lady speaks of to Alfred, the hope that God will triumph in the end despite every external indication to the contrary while journeying in the world. This hope of heaven is even called “a doubtful star / On the waste wind whirled and driven,”[23] reinforcing its seemingly elusive, intangible quality. The manner in which Colan defeats Harold illustrates the paradox of this hope: “Man shall not taste of victory / Till he throws his sword away,”[24] that is, precisely when one is in the condition of complete helplessness and humility can one be redeemed, modeled by Christ’s death on the cross. This hope is so efficaciously transformative that by it “men signed of the cross of Christ / Go gaily in the dark.”[25] Here we see a striking collision or coordination between circumstances that seem utterly beyond one’s control and the Christian’s free abandonment to Providence, which is sometimes so obscure to human vision that to persevere requires “joy without a cause, / Yea, faith without a hope.”[26]

Chesterton opens Book VII with a surprising divergence from the battle scene by focusing on a child playing in the grass and building a tower out of stones. In the poem, the child clearly represents Christ: “The child played on, alone, divine [….] The child whom Time can never tire.”[27] The child’s building of the tower represents both the plan of redemption and God’s invitation of salvation to men, repeatedly offered throughout history, as well as the building up of the Kingdom of God on earth, which is a necessary corollary of the spreading of the Church as individuals cooperate with that divine plan. The child has infinite patience, infinite determination, infinite hope. The child also represents Alfred as the poem explicitly states: “And this was the might of Alfred, / At the ending of the way [….] Alfred fought as gravely / As a good child at play.”[28] Because of Alfred’s complete surrender to this hope beyond hope, the poem notes that whereas the other chiefs will be forgotten, Alfred will not and hence “rules England till the doom”[29] in the figures of the White Horse and English culture. The act of building the tower is another representation of the scouring of the White Horse and therefore of the act of handing on tradition, the cultivation and raising of civilization from the chaos of untamed nature. Time can never tire the child or Alfred because of his hope; the White Horse is preserved “though skies alter and empires melt.”[30]

Lastly, an examination of Alfred’s other faults and virtues will reveal how Alfred signifies tradition. Before the battle against the Danes begins, Alfred confesses grievous sins he committed in the past, an act of humiliation reminiscent of the “nobis quoque” in the Canon at Mass. This act has a twofold significance: 1) it is a remembrance of the past in its mistakes and failures; and 2) it is a resolution to amend one’s life. By growing in self-knowledge and humility, man equips himself in the struggle to grow in virtue, and on the societal level the knowledge of one’s own history helps prevent repeating the mistakes of the past. By immortalizing Alfred’s contrition, Chesterton conveys the important notion of tradition as a light to know our fallen nature (remembrance of past sins) and to guide our future behavior (amendment of life).[31]

Alfred’s idealism is both a virtue and a fault. Originally, his idealism lacked humility: after his initial defeat by the Danes, Alfred despaired: “And naught was left King Alfred / But shameful tears of rage, / [….] He was broken to his knee.”[32] Later when Alfred is tending the fire in the peasant woman’s hut, his arrogant idealism causes him to pity the woman’s poverty and wax eloquently in his mind on lofty theological ideas of Providence. His failure to do a simple task, and the humility that follows, temper his idealism by rooting him in the concrete present: “Pride flings frail palaces at the sky, / […] But the firm feet of humility / They grip the ground like trees.”[33] All of Alfred’s daydreaming not only brought about no good but led to waste. This episode illustrates that hope must not make us ignore the realities of the present and fail in our daily responsibilities. Near the end of the poem, when asked why he does not expand his kingdom, Alfred reveals how deeply this humility has sunk in: “That a sage feels too small for life, / And a fool too large for it. […] I am not wise enough / To rule so small a thing [i.e. Athelney].”[34] Tradition is the embodiment of hope in the future, but it exists only in the present and is preserved only in the present. Alfred’s humbled idealism reflects the balance necessary for tradition to be effective.

Alfred’s self-knowledge is another important virtue. Not only is Alfred’s contentment in ruling the small isle of Athelney a reflection of this humility, but the fact that he rides a gray horse into battle further demonstrates his self-knowledge, specifically that he must die. Chesterton uses the color gray to represent old age and the apparent ends of things, from Colan’s solitary gray cave, to the old woman in the forest, to the graying White Horse that has been neglected, and the “grey [sic] twilight” when Alfred’s army despairs of victory and begins to flee from the Danes. Alfred has the humility to recognize that his time for preserving tradition will shortly pass. Additionally, although Alfred predicts that the heathens will return in the distant future in more subtle, insidious ways, he cannot see “in what wise men shall smite him [the neo-pagan].”[35] Alfred existed for his own time, for the struggles of his day; although he symbolically models how tradition and the defenders of tradition must act, he himself remains a person rooted in a particular moment in history and thus cannot give the precise solutions that we who live in the present must discern and utilize as we scour the White Horse anew. 

With The Ballad of the White Horse Chesterton is at his literary best. He dresses deep paradoxes in stunning poetry by focusing the telescope of our attention on a great man of the past who yet remains ever relevant: “To study humanity in the present is like studying a mountain with a magnifying glass; to study it in the past is like studying it through a telescope.”[36] The dead speak to us and are necessary for us, for “the only possible peacemaker is a dead man, ever since by the sublime religious story a dead man only could reconcile heaven and earth.”[37] Chesterton shows us why Alfred is great: he possessed the kind of heroism that remains in popular imagination precisely because his actions led to the preservation of present-day English society from the invading paganism of the past. The “thousand years” blazed by Guthrum’s baptism marks the 1,000 years of Christendom, in which “Christian men / Guard even heathen things.”[38] Through the inspiration and intercession of Our Lady, Alfred was fortified to become a pillar that Providence used to build up the tower of Christian society, symbolized by the keeping of the White Horse and the child at play. Tradition marks our identity, forges us in virtue, and impels us into the future. It reveals our potential while simultaneously setting our prudent limits. It requires constant vigilance, defense, and maintenance yet endures beyond any individual and even empires, from the “end of the world long ago” to the “children of some second birth.”[39] I agree with Chesterton that Alfred deserves to be called “the Great”; his poem articulates more movingly than a plain logical argument why Alfred is great. The Ballad addresses exactly my concern for tradition and my desire to care for it, to take up the duty of scouring the White Horse, and like Alfred be counted among “the kind of Christ,” who “are ignorant and brave” with “wars you hardly win / And souls you hardly save.”[40]

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Footnotes:

1. Robert Wiesner, “The Ballad of the White Horse: An Introduction and Analysis,” Seton Magazine, Oct. 11, 2013.

2. “Letter 80: From an airgraph to Christopher Tolkien,” in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, eds. Humphrey Carpenter and Christopher Tolkien (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000), 92.

3. This essay is found in Orthodoxy.

4. G.K. Chesterton, The Ballad of the White Horse, Prefatory Note. The noted anthropologist Mircea Eliade describes the function of tradition in exactly the same way: “[…] to telescope all events in the same atemporal horizon of the mythical beginning.” Mircea Eliade, Rites and Symbols of Initiation: The Mysteries of Birth and Rebirth, trans. W.R. Trask (New York, NY: Harper and Row, 1965), xi.

5. G.K. Chesterton, “Alfred the Great,” in Varied Types (New York, NY: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1903), 201–202.

6. Jordan Peterson, Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief (New York, NY: Routledge, 1999), 156.

7. Ibid., 161.

8. Chesterton, “Alfred the Great,” 202.

9. Chesterton, Ballad, Book III. The Harp of Alfred.

10. Father Walter Farrell, O.P., notes that curiosity is “merely a tool of pride.” Walter Farrell, A Companion to the Summa, vol. 3, “Chapter XIX—Modesty and Miracles.”

11. Chesterton, Ballad, Book III. The Harp of Alfred.

12. Ibid.

13. Ibid.

14. Ibid., Book V. Ethandune: The First Stroke.

15. Ibid., Book VI. Ethandune: The Slaying of the Chiefs.

16. Ibid., Book II. The Gathering of the Chiefs.

17. Ibid., Book VI. Ethandune: The Slaying of the Chiefs.

18. Ibid., Book III. The Harp of Alfred.

19. Rom. 4:17.

20. Chesterton, Ballad, Book III. The Harp of Alfred.

21. Ibid., Book VIII. The Scouring of the Horse.

22. Ibid.

23. Ibid., Book IV. The Woman in the Forest.

24. Ibid., Book V. Ethandune: The First Stroke.

25. Ibid., Book I. The Vision of the King.

26. Ibid.

27. Ibid., Book VII. Ethandune: The Last Charge.

28. Ibid.

29. Ibid.

30. Ibid., Book VIII. The Scouring of the Horse.

31. The Catechism of the Catholic Church gives an example of tradition acting as a warning and corrective when it states that ignorance of man’s wounded nature “gives rise to serious errors in the areas of education, politics, social action, and morals” (CCC §407), in a word, culture itself.

32. Chesterton, Ballad, Book I. The Vision of the King.

33. Ibid., Book IV. The Woman in the Forest.

34. Ibid., Book VIII. The Scouring of the Horse.

35. Ibid.

36. Chesterton, “Alfred the Great,” 199–200.

37. Ibid., 199.

38. Ballad, Book III. The Harp of Alfred.

39. Ibid., Book I. The Vision of the King.

40. Ibid.

Repost: Review of Jesuit Education by Robert Schwickerath, S.J. (1905)

[539] There is no end to the discussions and laying down of doctrines and methods touching the education of our youth; and indeed there should not be. For, although the fundamental principles and broad outlines of all moral and intellectual training are given us in a sound philosophy whose efficiency is attested by its harmony with right reason, divine revelation, and an experience of centuries under varying conditions, there yet remains the ever changeable application to the growing development of individual temperament and character, under the progressive influences of racial, national, social, and religious life and environment.

Education in the ordinary acceptation of the term has a twofold scope, the moral and the intellectual. The moral scope may be said to have been ultimately defined for us by Christianity. The Divine Founder of the Church has unalterably fixed in the evangelical principles the lines that divide right and wrong and further the steps that lead unquestionably to a perfecting of the moral qualities according to the divine model. What is greatest and best in all Christian ages has attested the inherent value of the evangelical counsels, although that value has at times been obscured by what is usually termed institutionalism, a process of observance in which the letter of the Christian law is made to supplant the spirit.

The secondary scope of education is the intellectual, the training of the mind; and although I have called it secondary, it is nevertheless capable of enhancing the vital worth of moral or religious education, so as to complete thereby the type of perfect manhood destined for the attainment of its end in God's service, and of absolute happiness.

Both the training of the heart to the attainment of the highest moral sense, and the training of the mind which illuminates the right moral sense to a more perfectly balanced and conscious as well as spontaneous observance of the Divine will, require certain exercises by which, as in military drill, the faculties are directed and habituated [540] to their proper use. When St. Ignatius founded his great educational Order he provided for both these fields of moral and intellectual training a set of rules and observances, perfected in part by his disciples, and known respectively as the Spiritual Exercises and the Ratio Studiorum. The precepts and directions of these two sets of exercises are based upon the constitution, necessities, and ultimate purpose of human nature in the service of its Creator through the love of man for his neighbor; and the method is regulated by the effort of a gradual and harmonious development of all the higher faculties of man,—memory, imagination, intellect, and will. The process of development must be gradual and harmonious. This is effected by exercising the faculties upon certain phenomena and facts, as they present themselves, and the result is dependent upon the capacity of the faculties to take in the phenomena or facts, and to cover them or go out to them. Thus we have a double process of drawing out and putting in, both working simultaneously like the sunlight which draws moisture from and gives heat to the vegetation in the same act. It stands to reason that the "putting in" process is that which gives quality to the mind, and that if we put either too much or the wrong thing into it, we fail to draw out its proportionate activity by overloading or unbalancing the carrying capacity. Old things, out-of-the-way things, as well as untrue things are not as apt to stir the power of observing and comparing in a young mind, as are things present, things new and evidently true. Hence whatever the excellence of our educational principles and methods, if they are exercised upon objects that do not appeal to the young sense by their freshness and reality, the exercise is apt to frustrate the primary object of intellectual education, by failing to properly illuminate moral truth; and although the youth thus educated may be good, he is out of harmony with his environment and therefore incapable of exercising any direct influence upon his fellows.

It is this charge of ill-timed, antiquated exercises employed in their educational methods, which is made against the Jesuits and their instructors of to-day. Whatever the value of the principles and the methods of the Ratio Studiorum in the past and in the abstract, they fail, so it is argued, in an application which demands essentially new objects of illustration and experiment. Father Schwickerath contests this view by showing in an exhaustive and critical way that the Ratio Studiorum has never been employed or regarded by the Society as a system whose precepts are intended permanently to fix the programme [sic] [541] of studies; that its primary object is to maintain intact the essentials of an educational process by which the faculties of the mind are gradually and harmoniously developed. He shows how as a matter of fact the theory of adaptation to actual conditions is marked throughout the history of the educational system of the Society of Jesus from the time of its foundation, when it undertook to gather up the threads of earlier scholasticism and to bring them into contact with the nobler aspirations of the Humanists, giving due attention alike to solid thought and classic form.

It is a very interesting story, this effort to draw up plans, to test, adjust, and revise the Ratio Studiorum, and to note the effects not only of its application at different periods and in different countries, but also of the interference with it during the seasons of suppression by outside elements. Not quite one-half of the volume is taken up with this history of the great educational code, and the difficulties it had to meet in its being carried out by the teachers of the Order.

The principal and really important part of the volume, however, is devoted to an exposition of the principles themselves which constitute the Jesuit method of education. We have already indicated what the vital and pervading element of the Ratio Studiorum is in itself. But one of its characteristics is what the author calls its adaptability. It is not without reason that the Jesuits as a body are credited with a prudent conservatism as the keystone of their public activity. That same conservatism is found in the Ratio Studiorum. Hence our author is able to examine with a certain impartiality arising from his very standpoint the modern systems in which "cramming," "premature specialization," "electivism," have become a more or less distinguishing feature. He contrasts the probable and indeed proved results of a classical training insisted on by the followers of the Ratio with the colorless culture imparted by the elective systems in which the Latin and Greek authors have a subordinate place; he shows how the modern lecture system has brought a tendency to undervalue real teaching; how the neglect of philosophy as a definite system of mental training has induced an atmosphere of vague speculation and exalted personal assertiveness. And then he points the way to a restoration of the ideal teaching with its essential phases of all-sided discipline and training to the use of freedom and of all that appeals to the youth's sense of right and goodness and beauty.

It would lead us too far to discuss here separate and detailed phases of the education which Father Schwickerath advocates. His [542] book needs to be not only read, but studied in order to understand the futility of the arguments advanced against the Jesuit system of education in its fundamental outlines and principles. No doubt here and there in Jesuit colleges there is to be found an excessive and one-sided insistence on traditional details, and this because of the inherent conservatism which we have already pointed out. But neither the Order nor the Ratio Studiorum is responsible for this kind of limitation to which all institutions are liable, and the more so in proportion to their general excellence. The average religious feels as though he or she were better than the religious of other orders or than seculars, not because there is really any conviction of personal superiority, but because the institute, the army and country, so to speak, to which the individual belongs, has a greater claim upon the admiration and gratitude of its members than any other of similar kind. Thus we do what those did and commanded who preceded us in a worthy capacity, as if their acts were not only an example, but an infallible guide never to be deviated from without guile or dishonor. Our author shows that this is not the spirit of St. Ignatius, or of Aquaviva, or of the great leaders of the Order down to our own day. Let us have the Ratio in our education, and the adjustment to modern conditions may easily be accomplished without opposition or misunderstanding on the part of all true educators in or out of the Society.

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Source: Review of Jesuit Education: Its History and Principles Viewed in the Light of Modern Educational Problems, by Robert Schwickerath, SJ, American Ecclesiastical Review 32 (May 1905): 539–542.

Repost: Church and State (1891)

[20] I.

Society as we now find it, and as far back as history reveals it to us, lives and moves, and has hitherto lived and moved, under the influence of the two-fold principle of Church and State. It is not simply the State, nor is it simply the Church, but it is made up of a union of both Church and State.[1] Association for the pursuit of temporal happiness gives rise to the State; association in a community of spiritual goods for the pursuit of eternal happiness gives rise to the Church.[2] Just as a man is not all body nor all soul, but the intimate union of body and soul, even so is society composed of the intimate and inseparable union of a temporal organization and a spiritual informing principle. For what the soul is to the body, religion is to the State. "No State," says Walter, "can subsist without religion, which fills and interpenetrates every sphere of life with the sense of the obligation of duty. Religion, which respects and maintains every right of high and low, of strong and weak, is the conservative element of society. . . . . By the strength of character which she forms, she preservers the youth of nations, and when they fall away and decay, keeps them from the withering up of mind and heart. Religion is the groundwork of family life, and of the purity and piety nurtured therein. . . . . She brings rich and poor nearer together, urging upon the rich sympathy and active help to the poor, and instilling into the poor gratitude and consolation. Thus she softens every condition of life, and teaches man that he can be elevated and ennobled by submission. Religion, then, is the true bond which holds the State together, makes it strong, and saves it from degeneracy."[3] Now, religion without a Church is a mere abstraction. "The Church is the external manifestation, the realization and the expression of the Christian religion in an independent organism."[4] The early Fathers recognized this intimate union of Church and State. St. Isidor of Pelusium, wrote from his hermitage in Egypt: "The government of the world rests on kinghood [sic] and on priesthood; although the two differ widely—for one is as the body, the other as the soul—they are nevertheless destined to one end, the [21] well-being of their subjects."[1] And St. John Chrysostom boldly carries out the metaphor of soul and body to its limits: "The Church," he says, "is above the State, in the same way the soul is above the body."[2]

II.

Going back to pagan days we find that philosophers never dreamed of separating religion from the State. Plato strives to impress the citizens of his ideal republic with the necessity of keeping the Divine law if they would preserve the State: "God, as the old tradition declares, holding in His hand the beginning, middle and end of all that is, moves, according to His nature, in a straight line towards the accomplishment of His end. Justice always follows Him, and is the punisher of those who fall short of the Divine law. To that law he who would be happy holds fast, and follows it in all humility and order. . . . . Wherefore, seeing human things are thus ordered, . . . . every man ought to make up his mind that he will be one of the followers of God. Henceforth all citizens must be profoundly convinced that the gods are lords and rulers of all that exists, that all events depend upon their word and will, and that mankind is largely indebted to them."[3] Aristotle, with less unction, though not with less conviction, pronounces worship to be the first of the six leading administrations without which the State cannot subsist, assigns the first rank to the priesthood, would have special edifices dedicated to worship, and the fourth part of the soil and land devoted to purposes of religion.[4]

The relations of Church and State vary with times and occasions. In the gentile world the Church was absorbed by the State. It was the tool and instrument of the State. The number and nature of the household gods were regulated by the State. The ceremonies connected with the worship of them were enjoined by the State. The titular deities of the State were carefully served; they were to be placated in times of calamity, appealed to for aid in times of war; their ire was to be appeased in the hour of defeat, or they were to receive public thanksgiving in the hour of victory. Every ceremony was legislated for by the State. The ruler was also the Pontifex Maximus. He united in himself the plenitude of civil and priestly power. In all else was the State equally paramount. The family was absorbed in the State. The individual lived for the State, continued to breathe by favor of the State, and died when the State so decreed. The State was the source whence all things drew the breath of life, and the seat of all wisdom and authority.

[22] Such was the condition of things when Christianity first dawned upon the world's horizon, and revealed another order of things. It revealed to man a kingdom other than the kingdoms of this world, to which he had a flawless title. It taught him the value of his immortal soul, redeemed by the blood of Christ. It taught him how to pray and how to overcome his passions. How much there was in this teaching we will let Döllinger explain: "When," he says, "the attention of a thinking heathen was directed to the new religion spreading in the Roman Empire, the first thing to strike him as extraordinary would be, that a religion of prayer was superseding the religion of ceremonies and invocations of gods; that it encouraged all, even the humblest and most uneducated to pray, or, in other words, to meditate and exercise the mind in self-scrutiny and contemplation of God. . . . . This region of Christian metaphysics was open even to the mind of one who had no intellectual culture before conversion. In this school of prayer he learned what philosophy had declared to be as necessary as it was difficult, and only attainable by few—to know himself as God knew him. And from that self-knowledge prayer carried him on to self-mastery. If the heathen called upon his gods to gratify his passions, for the Christian tranquility of soul, moderation, and purifying of the affections were at once the preparation and the fruit of prayer. And thus, prayer became a motive-power of moral renewal and inward civilization, to which nothing else could be compared for efficacy."[1] Justin Martyr called attention to this benign influence of Christianity in his day: "We Christians contribute most to the tranquillity [sic] of the State, since we teach that God governs all; that the evil-doer, the avaricious, the assassin, as well as the virtuous man are known to Him; that each one who passes out of this life will receive an eternal reward or an eternal punishment according to his deserts. Now, if all believed these truths, assuredly none would continue a moment longer in sin, but all would restrain themselves, and strive to do right, in order finally to obtain the promised reward and to escape punishment. For those who do evil know that they can escape from your laws; but if they had learnt, and were fully convinced, that nothing, not an action, nor even a thought can remain hidden from God, they would, at least from fear of punishment, strive to do right."[2] In this manner did Christianity become a new civilizing element. Now, society is perfect in proportion as the individuals composing society are perfect. But the perfection of the individual consists in submission to the Divine law. "When we [23] revere and honor God," says the Angelical Doctor, "our mind is subject to Him, and in this our perfection consists. For everything is perfected by its subjection to that which is above it, as the body when it is vivified by the soul."[1]

III.

Let us now endeavor to make clear to ourselves the meaning both of Church and of State. We will begin with the Church. The Church is an organism. It is a visible embodiment of Divine influences addressing itself with authority to the souls of men in the name of God and for an eternal and supernatural end. It is the visible custodian of the natural law and the revealed or positive law. It has not created or invented or discovered these laws. They are eternal. The Church could not change them if it would. But every church, be it true or false, speaks to man in the name of Divine authority, and every true member of that Church recognizes the Divine sanction. A church without such sanction and such authority is meaningless. A church on a human basis, promulgating a purely human doctrine, looking no higher than human reason, bears upon it the impress of its own fallible, short-lived nature. It is branded with the seal of imposition. Not the combined genius of a Comte, a Littré and a Frederick Harrison can make the church of positivism other than a religious by-play. Gautama and Mohammed established their doctrines and built up their churches only in the name of God and as His ministers. Had they presented themselves upon a purely human basis they would have passed away unheeded. But they were in earnest; they believed themselves sent of God; therefore, they were accepted for what they represented themselves to be, and accordingly they succeeded. The Protestant synod of Alain, in 1620, excommunicated by virtue of the Divine authority which it conceived to be vested in it: "We, ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ, whom God hath furnished with spiritual arms . . . to whom the eternal Son of God hath given the power to bind and to loose upon earth, declare that what we shall bind upon earth shall be bound in heaven."[2] The Puritan fathers would not and dare not make laws opposed to the teachings of their church. They recognized its supremacy. Believing that they alone were right and the favored ones of God's providence, they stood out against the whole world and persecuted and outlawed all who presumed to hold religious opinions different from the tenets which they believed to be God's [24] own teaching. They stood upon an elevated but a very narrow spiritual plane of religious opinion.

Of course, not everybody speaking as the mouthpiece of the Divine is inspired. Brigham Young made thousands believe that he had a divinely-inspired mission; few believe in the Divinity of that mission to-day. But we are not here concerned with determining the notes by which true inspiration is to be distinguished from pure illusion and imposition. We are simply calling attention to the fact that every church has meaning only by reason of its Divine origin and the Divine authority in whose name it teaches. We will define the Christian Church as it appears to us in its oldest and most authentic form.

Christ organized the Church. The Apostles were the first bishops. From the beginning was a hierarchy established. Peter was made head of the Church and was recognized as such by his colleagues; priests and deacons, and the other clerical orders were established. The Church as thus organized is endowed with a three-fold power; namely, the power to administer the sacraments, the power of jurisdiction and the power of teaching. Of the seven sacraments recognized by the Church as the seven channels instituted by Christ, by which His grace is conveyed to the soul and man is raised up into the sphere of the supernatural, five can be administered by none other than a bishop or priest. Therefore it has been with the most scrupulous care that succession in the orders of bishops and priests has been preserved in the Church from the days of the Apostles. And so the faithful of every period in this visible organism, the Church, have had these seven sacraments and a duly ordained and properly authorized priesthood to administer them.

The Church has a power of jurisdiction, that is to say, she has the right to exercise authority over Christians in those things which belong to religion. This power flows directly from the authority of the Divine Founder. It alone makes licit the sacramental power of the clergy. Indeed, no pastoral act may be performed within the Church without participation in ecclesiastical authority. That authority may be delegated or it may belong to the office for which one has been ordained. But the main point to hold in view is this: That no jot or tittle of ecclesiastical jurisdiction is derived from the laity within the Church or from the State or from any source other than the Divine authority on which the Church is founded. Therefore, wherever there is lay or State interference in the matter of the sacraments, or of doctrine or of religious jurisdiction, there is an element foreign to the Divine institution established by Christ. A Church, for instance, that would be organized and legislated for by Congress could [25] scarcely command the respect and submission of men. It might, indeed, be a very wise human institution, but no one would dare call its Congressional enactments the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. Equally human and equally fallible would be a Church created by act of Parliament.

The jurisdiction of the Church is, then, the jurisdiction of a visible independent organism, and is judicial, legislative and executive. She has the right to make laws within her own spiritual sphere of action, and to execute those laws. She has the right to impose upon her members the obligation of accepting without reserve her declarations concerning faith and morals under ecclesiastical penalties. As the custodian of the natural law and of the revealed law, she is entitled to interpret and administer them in religious matters. She has, moreover, the power to make and to enforce laws of her own. These laws, be it remembered, contain within themselves so much of a purely human element that they may be changed, or dispensed with, or abrogated. Thus it is that in certain countries certain holidays of obligation have been abrogated. Thus it is that the Church daily grants dispensation regarding marriage within certain degrees of kindred. In like manner does she dispense persons from vows o commute their vows under certain circumstances and with sufficient reason. All this she could not do with regard to the Divine law, whether it be natural or positive. She could not, for instance, permit or tolerate an act of injustice as between man and man, nor could she allow her highest dignitaries, any more than her humblest layman, to injure their neighbor's reputation by any act, overt or covert, direct or indirect; nor in such supposition could she dispense them from making such reparation as is within their power. She cannot change the eternal principle of right and wrong.[1] All these are primary truths.

IV.

Next, consider the teaching power of the Church. Her Divine Founder gave her the mission to go forth and teach all nations in His name. He that heareth you heareth me. This mission extends to all subjects bearing upon religion. It includes both the natural and the positive law of God, as well as the revealed truths and mysteries of faith. The teaching power resides in its plenitude in the Roman pontiff as it did in his predecessor, the Apostle Peter. He is unerring in defining maters pertaining to faith and [26] morals. His infallibility does not extend beyond this domain. In all matters of political action or of private opinion the Pope is as liable to err as any layman equally instructed. An ecumenical council is also unerring when defining matters of faith and morals; but it is only the papal approval that renders the council ecumenical and stamps its decrees with the seal of authority. The teaching power is communicated to bishops and priests, but not in its plenitude. They may err in their teachings, even as they may be culpable in their conduct. Their words have authority only in proportion to the accuracy with which they transmit the doctrines of the Church. Personally, the weight of their utterance depends on the learning and the soundness of judgment they bring to bear upon their subject-matter.

And here, we would dwell upon a grave misconception entertained of our mental attitude as Catholics by those not of the body. We give the misconception as stated by an American writer who would not voluntarily do us an injustice. Speaking of the Church in America this writer says: "There is almost as much dissent, agnosticism, free thought—call it what you will—among educated Catholics as among other people in America. This is at once the source of peculiar strength and of unique weakness to the Catholic Church."[1] We do not see how this can be a source of anything real, since it is a condition of things that does not exist outside of the writer's mind. We Catholics—the ignorant layman no less than the learned theologian—all profess the same creed and hold by the same truths of faith, upon the same ground of belief, namely, upon the veracity of God revealing them to us through the Holy Roman Catholic Church. This and nothing more. The learned theologian may attempt to account for the faith that is in him; he may seek to reconcile it with his reason; he may answer objections raised against certain articles of his faith; but he cannot pare away or minimize that faith; he cannot drop a single jot or tittle of that faith without ceasing to be Catholic. He accepts it all—neither more nor less—with the same sincerity with which his unlettered brother accepts it. The mental attitude of Catholics toward their faith is simply one of absolute certitude. In matters of opinion, or of credence, or of speculation, or of mere probability, we exercise our own judgments like the rest of men on those same matters, and come to our own conclusions according to personal bias and the tone of our intellectual training. Even in matters of faith our explanations of the various articles of our creed may vary and some may even be erroneous. There are men, for instance, who find the presence of design in the material [27] world a strong argument for the existence of God; others refuse to be convinced by that argument, but find their strongest demonstration in a recognition of the moral sense. But it is clearly an abuse of terms to call our honest divergence of opinion concerning all matters upon which we are free to diverge, free thinking or agnosticism in the accepted meaning of these words. You cannot conceive a Catholic agnostic. As well might you think a positive negation. One term is as meaningless as the other. You might conceive a minister of the Church, whether priest or bishop, continuing to exercise the functions of his ministry long after he has ceased to believe in their efficacy, but sooner or later he shirks the discipline of his position, and the world takes at his worth the man who sails under false colors or who dares not assume the responsibility of his convictions. Now, it would be a vile slander upon the Catholic priesthood in America—and the writer from whom we have quoted would be the last to put it upon them intentionally—to say that any number of them were praying to a God in whose existence they did not believe, or administering sacraments in whose efficacy they had no faith.

Our Catholic writers are of all shades of opinion upon the issues of the day, and they may be so without incurring ecclesiastical censure. Take, for instance, the burning questions of modern science and modern thought. Some there are who think that as children of the age it is their duty to face the problems of the age and effect their solution as best they may. Others, again, are alarmed at the hostile attitude of certain leaders of modern thought towards the Church, and, identifying the person with the cause, condemn the whole without a fair hearing. They seek refuge in extreme rigidity of doctrine. In their opinion the Decalogue is incomplete, the sermon on the mount too mild, and Rome too lenient. The non-Catholic world is only too prone to identify this class of writers with the Church. Their extreme views bring odium upon religion. They seem incapable of learning from the blunders of the past. They speak and write as though the Inquisition had never made Galileo say that the earth did not move round the sun, or the Sorbonne had not dictated to Buffon what he should write concerning this world's formation. Every educated Catholic knows that neither the Inquisition nor the Sorbonne is the Church, and though both were formidable bodies, they had no claim to infallibility. Why should these over-hasty writers attempt to force a repetition of such blunders? They are misleading, and are not to be considered in any respect representative. You will find other Catholic writers holding views as broad as theirs are narrow. The children of the Church have great liberty of action and opinion. It is the liberty of children in a well-regulated [28] household. They know the limit beyond which they must not pass.

The doctrinal life of the Church consists in this, that she at all times and under all circumstances preserves unity of doctrine in the midst of multiplicity of opinion. The doctrine she teaches to-day she has always and everywhere and to all men taught from the beginning. This is the secret of her strength and her endurance as a teaching body. Permit me to quote for you an impartial witness to the fact. Speaking of the characteristic of absolute infallibility Mr. Mallock says: "Any supernatural religion that renounces its claim to this, it is clear can profess to be a semi-revelation only. It is a hybrid thing, partly natural and partly supernatural, and it thus practically has all the qualities of a religion that is wholly natural. In so far as it professes to be revealed, it of course professes to be infallible; but if the revealed part be in the first place hard to distinguish, and in the second place hard to understand—if it may mean many things, and many of those things contradictory—it might just as well have been never made at all. To make it in any sense an infallible revelation, or in other words, a revelation at all, to us, we need a power to interpret the testament that shall have equal authority with that testament itself. Simple as this truth seems, mankind have been a long time learning it. Indeed, it is only in the present day that its practical meaning has come generally to be recognized. But now, at this moment, upon all sides of us, history is teaching it to us by an example so clearly that we can no longer mistake it. That example is Protestant Christianity, and the condition to which, after three centuries, it is now visibly bringing itself. It is at last beginning to exhibit to us the true results of the denial of infallibility to a religion that professes to be supernatural. We are at last beginning to see in it neither the purifier of a corrupted revelation, nor the corrupter of a pure revelation, but the practical denier of all revelation whatsoever. It is fast evaporating into a mere natural theism, and is thus showing us what, as a governing power, natural theism is. Let us look at England, Europe and America and consider the condition of the entire Protestant world. Religion, it is true, we shall find in it; but it is religion from which not only the supernatural element is disappearing, but in which the natural element is fast becoming nebulous. It is, indeed, growing, as Mr. Leslie Stephen says it is, into a religion of dreams. All its doctrines are growing vague as dreams, and like dreams their outlines are forever changing. . . . . There is hardly any conceivable aberration of moral license that has not in some quarter or other embodied itself into a rule of life and claimed to be the proper outcome of Protestant [29] Christianity."[1] So far Mr. Mallock. His remarks make it clear to us that a church regarding itself as Divine in its origin and inspiration and at the same time not unerring as a guide would be a self contradiction.

But there are limitations to the teaching mission of the Church. The fulfilment [sic] of Christ's promise to be with His Church and to guide and direct her in her mission extends only to those things for which she has been commissioned. She has no mission to teach purely secular science. She may utilize the sciences she finds her children possessed of, and speak to them in the language of that science, but she never descends to take issue upon every new scientific theory. Should science trespass upon her domain and assert anything opposed to her fixed and immutable principles she cautions her children against such teachings. Individual members of the Church may dispute over certain issues, but the Church bides her own time with the patient tranquility of one who has outlived many disputes and seen many brilliant and aggressive theories dashed to spray at her feet. And when science shall have winnowed the chaff from the grain and human reason shall have become possessed of an additional fact or an additional law of nature, the Church shall be found precisely where she stood before the discovery. She is not the one who has been obliged to shift her lines. It is in this attitude of the Church that we have the clue to her whole bearing towards science in the course of its development and its variations.

Here it may be asked: Since the teaching mission of the Church is thus circumscribed, why does she make such persistent efforts to control education in all its roots and branches? To this we would say: The Church cannot recognize any system of training for the child from which religion is excluded. With her religion is an essential factor in education. Among Christian peoples the child has always combined Christian doctrine and Christian practices with purely secular teaching in the school-room. The child of Christian parents is entitled to this Christian education. To impose upon him any system of education calculated to weaken his hold upon the Christian heritage into which he was born, were an act of gross injustice. Our Catholic clergy, as the pastors of souls, answerable to God for those confided to their care, are in duty bound to see that the children of their parish are instructed in the doctrines and practices of that Church which they believe to be the pillar and the ground of Truth. This can be properly and efficiently done only by means of a system of education especially provided for the purpose. Given a clergy believing in the Divine [30] origin of their religion, believing that religion to be so great a boon that they would gladly die for it, believing that unless the child is at an early age taught religious doctrine and religious practices he runs the risk of growing up wholly indifferent to the priceless value of his Christian heritage, and you cannot conceive that clergy holding any other attitude towards a purely secular education for their Catholic children than one of hostility. It were a betrayal of their trust, an abandonment of the birthright of those confided to them, to acquiesce in a school system from which Catholic doctrine, Catholic prayer, and Catholic practices of devotion had been banished. Therefore it is that the Church binds the consciences of pastors and of people to keep their Catholic children aloof from such schools, and to establish parochial schools whenever and wherever it is possible.

Her mission to teach gives the Church the right to safeguard the child against any influence that would be injurious to faith and morals. Hers is the right to see that the books made use of, the men and women imparting instruction, and the character of the instruction given, be such as aid in the work of spiritualizing and elevating the child, and making his soul worthy of its heavenly abode. Hers is the duty to forbid to her children the use of books in which there is doctrine contrary to that which she teaches, in which is to be found any system or principle of mental philosophy that she has condemned, or in which history is compiled with a view to misrepresenting Catholicity or undermining Catholic influences. Children, or even young men and young women, are not in position to take in both sides of religious, philosophical or historical questions; they lack maturity of judgment and the information essential to determine truth from error. It were folly to leave their weak, half-trained, ill-informed minds to grapple alone with issues that exercise the most ripened scholars to comparatively little purpose. And so it happens that while the Church has no mission as regards the imparting of purely secular education, it belongs to her function to exercise due vigilance over every branch of science and letters that would be likely, directly or indirectly, to affect religious belief.

V.

We now come to the State. The State is also a social organism. It grows out of the very nature of society. The family, and not the individual, is the unit of the State. "The human family," says Cardinal Manning, "contains the first principles and laws of authority, obedience, and order. These three conditions of society are of Divine origin; and they are the constructive laws of all civil [31] or political society."[1] Therefore, the State is of Divine origin. It is organized for the protection of society and the common weal. It has rights and duties and responsibilities. Its rights are embodied in the natural law, and come not from society, nor from its own intrinsic nature, but from God who is the source and sanction of all authority, obedience and order. The State is organized directly for the happiness and well-being of man in this life. It protects his person and property; it guarantees him liberty of action in the fulfilment of his duties; it frames such laws as promote his welfare and the welfare of the nation. The form of government established in the State is determined by the people. There is no Divine ordinance as to what that form may be. Nor has the Church a preference. If our theologians speak of the king and the kingly form of government, it is because that is the form with which when writing they were most familiar. But the present Pope, Leo XIII., has clearly defined the position of the Church as regards form of government: "While being the guardian of her rights," he says, "and most careful against encroachment, the Church has no care what form of government exists in a State, or by what custom the civil order of Christian nations is directed; of the various kinds of government there is none of which she disapproves, so long as religion and moral discipline live untouched."[2] But while the form is determined by external circumstances, the authority and the sanction come from God. No man, for instance, has the power of life and death over another; and yet in the interests of society, the State condemns the criminal to be hanged. Whence derives it this dread power? Not from society, for the command Thou shall not kill is as applicable to a body of individuals as to a single person. Not in the State itself, for the State is only the society composing it, and society cannot give what it does not possess. The power and the sanction of that power come to the State from God alone. And since the State is of God as well as the Church, complete harmony should exist in all their relations. But the history of modern civilization is the history of unintermitting struggle between Church and State. Whence arises this struggle? The sphere of action of each is distinct. "Both Church and State have each an individual domain; wherefore in fulfilling their separate duties neither is subject to the other within the limits fixed by their boundary lines."[3] So speaks the reigning pontiff. To understand the struggle we must go back to the origin of Christianity. Christianity found itself face to face with Pagan Rome. Its Divine Founder counselled His disciples to [32] render unto Caesar the things that were Caesar's and to God the things that were God's. And St. Paul threw the whole face of his energetic soul into insistance [sic] on obedience to the State. "Let every soul be subject to higher powers; for there is no power but from God; and those that are are ordained of God. Therefore he that resisteth the power resisteth the ordinance of God and they that resist purchase to themselves damnation. . . . Render therefore to all men their dues. Tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honor to whom honor."[1] But there were clearly defined limitations beyond which the Christian could not submit. He could not worship the false gods of the pagan world. He could not share in the national rites and ceremonies that cloaked the most disgusting orgies and crimes. The Christian had learned the holy nature of the living God, the heinousness of sin and the necessity of keeping his soul spotless before the all-penetrating Presence. He had learned that many pagan practices, sanctioned by religion, were sinful, and he preferred death to sin. This gave rise to a bitter struggle between the State and the early Christian Church. There was no compromise. Under all circumstances God is to be obeyed rather than men. And so the Roman empire reeked with the blood of martyrs. It was a death-struggle. On the one side was the all-powerful, all-absorbing empire of the world, and on the other were a few scattered Christians, weak in numbers, weak in rank and position, weak in every respect but in the moral courage to live up to their convictions. But moral courage, animated by a burning idea, is an irresistible force. The vast material resources of the Roman Empire could not withstand its progress. Rome under Constantine proclaimed herself Christian. Her very law became regenerated.

St. Augustine had said—and his words bore with them great weight throughout the Middle Ages—that true justice has no existence save in that republic whose founder and ruler is Christ.[2] In the light of Christian truth and in the practice of Christian justice, always tempered by Christian mercy, the absolute law of pagan Rome came to be regarded as supreme injustice. Public opinion was gradually educated up to a higher conception of right and equity. Men became impressed with the sanctity of human life. From the beginning the Church had set her face against abortion and infanticide. In the course of time the State imbibed the same horror for these crimes and enacted laws against them. Gladiatorial games, in which lives were cast away to pander to a depraved taste, were abolished. A sense of universal brotherhood [33] grew apace. The dignity of labor became recognized. Charity extended a helping hand in many directions to the relief of want and the assuaging of misery and suffering. Immediately after the days of Constantine it is no longer the emperor who is remembered in men's last will and testament; it is the Church as the dispenser of charities. Here is already a great revolution of ideas. But the greatest of all revolutions in Roman jurisprudence is the recognition of the woman's rights in the marriage law as standing upon an equal footing with those of the man. This change renders the Justinian Code an immortal landmark in the history of human progress. The world has ceased to be Roman; the Galilean has conquered.

In like manner did the Church educate the barbarian up to the same sense of the sanctity of human life, the same respect for others' rights and others' goods, and the same idea of a universal brotherhood. In legislating for sin she was legislating for crime. The early Christian kings frequently made the Penitentials the basis of their criminal code. Her bishops and clergy in their councils enacted laws as beneficial to the State as they were helpful to souls. And so almost imperceptibly did modern jurisprudence receive a Christian tone till in its whole substance and meaning it has become solely and peculiarly Christian.[1] Well might Lecky write of the influence of the Church: "She exercised for many centuries an almost absolute empire over the thoughts and actions of mankind and created a civilization which was permeated in every part with ecclesiastical influence."[2] Let us not close our eyes to the nature of that influence. It was an influence achieved only after a long and patient struggle. The Church begins by teaching the barbarian his letters. By means of literature and ritual and ceremonial and plain chant she speaks to his imagination, and he understands and appreciates her language and his nature grows refined beneath the refining influence. By means of prayer and the grace of the sacraments she moulds [sic] his character and forms his soul to virtue. Her mission was one of civilization. It was the effort of mind to predominate over matter, the taming of lawless natures, the lifting up into a higher plane of thought, exertion and aspiration, a humanity that had otherwise been content to live within the most circumscribed sphere of earthly existence. An Ambrose stays the footsteps of Theodosius at the Church-door because his hands were stained with wanton bloodshed. This sublime act embodies the spirit and the mission of the Church towards the State. "The resistance," [34] says Bryce, "and final triumph of Athanasius proved that the new society could put forth a power of opinion such as had never been known before; the abasement of Theodosius the emperor before Ambrose the bishop admitted the supremacy of spiritual authority."[1] And so we find the Church at all times and under all circumstances, without respect of persons, regulating conduct and preserving purity of faith and morals.

VI.

In the midst of this civilizing process there loom up two powers, each the embodiment of a distinct idea, each claiming supremacy. In the struggle between these two powers we have the clue to all mediaeval and modern history. One is the Papacy; the other is the Holy Roman Empire. From the days of Constantine, according as the people became Christian, bishops exercised more and more influence in temporal affairs. They performed the functions of magistrates and judges, and so even-handed were they in administering the law the very pagans brought suit before them in preference to the civil courts. They were the counsellors [sic] and ministers of rulers. It was the bishops of France who made of France a nation. Her kings in consequence recognized their jurisdiction. Charles the Bald (A.D. 859) said that "by them he had been crowned, and to their paternal corrections and chastisements he was willing to submit."[2] What bishops were in their respective dioceses, the Pope came to be regarded by all Christendom. How else keep international relations upon a footing of equity? A weaker nation was helpless to right the wrongs inflicted by one more powerful. Countries far apart would find difficulty in coming to a mutual understanding. But, under the authority and through the mediation of the Supreme Head of Christendom, whom all looked upon as the father of the whole Christian family, the representative of justice and the avenger of evil-doing, wrongs might be righted and reconciliations effected under difficulties which might otherwise lead to disastrous results. And so the Pope became, by virtue of public law and by the consent of the Christian people—not by Divine right—the arbiter between sovereigns and the peacemaker among nations. His power as then recognized scarcely knew a limit. He could for sufficient reason depose kings, absolve people from allegiance to their rulers, place whole nations under interdict, quell wars, decide upon the justice of a cause, and more than once have we seen rulers place their kingdoms in fiefdom at his feet, as their only protection against a too-powerful enemy. Thus in 1214, we find Innocent III. forbidding [35] any bishop or cleric, without a special mandate from the Holy See, to censure King John of England, as he had become a vassal of the Pope.[1]

Side by side with the Papacy, stood the Holy Roman Empire. The Emperor was the champion of the Church, pledged to her defence [sic] against all secular enemies. According to Frederick I., "Divine Providence had especially appointed the Roman Empire to prevent the continuance of schism in the Church."[2] The Empire was the creation of the Pope; it was not hereditary. The first Emperor was Charlemagne, crowned such at the Christmas of the year 800, by Leo III. It was Leo's own work, done for the peace and protection of the Church. The office was, like that of the Papacy itself, non-hereditary. "Each of these lofty offices," says Freeman, "is open to every baptized man; each alike is purely elective; each may be the reward of merit in any rank of life or in any corner of Christendom. While smaller offices were closely confined by local or aristocratic restrictions, the Throne of Augustus and the Chair of Peter were, in theory at least, open to the ambition of every man of orthodox belief. Even in the darkest times of aristocratic exclusiveness, no one dared to lay own as a principle that the Roman Emperor, any more than the Roman Bishop, need be of princely or Roman ancestry. Freedom of birth—Roman citizenship, in short, to clothe mediaeval ideas in classical words—was all that was needed."[3] And so the Holy Roman Empire, now a shadow, now a power, continued to exist by the grace of the Holy See, sometimes to aid, more frequently to hinder, the Church in the exercise of her functions and prerogatives. With the hereditary title came an hereditary tendency of reversion to the absolutism of the Caesars. Ecclesiastical privileges at first granted the emperors by the Popes, their successors in the Holy Roman Empire sought to convert into rights beyond the jurisdiction of the Papacy. The quarrel may read to us like a story of petty spites and personal squabbles; but its meaning is deeper. The very existence of the Church was involved. When bishoprics were put up for sale to the highest bidder, or were kept vacant for years that their revenues might flow into the royal or imperial coffers, it becomes evident that religion, and spiritual life, and morality must suffer, and the whole mission of the Church be frustrated. Upon more than one Pope must we accept the verdict of Neander concerning the indomitable Hildebrand: "Gregory VII. was animated by something higher than by self-seeking and selfish ambition; it was an idea which swayed him and to which he sacrificed [36] all other interests. It was the idea of the independence of the Church, and of a tribunal to exercise judgment over all other human relations; the idea of a religious and ethical sovereignty over the world to be exercised by the Papacy."[1] Those were stormy times, and it took a strong hand to curb the headlong career of the powerful when they would ride roughshod over the most sacred rights. When Philip Augustus, of France, violated the sanctity and indissolubility of the marriage-bond, it was the Popes who brought him to a sense of his duty, and compelled him to undo the great wrong he had done his injured wife, the beautiful and virtuous Ingeburge. Instances might be multiplied, in which the Popes shall be found struggling against might and prestige in the cause of the honor and dignity of womanhood. "Go through the long annals of Church history," says Cardinal Newman, "century after century, and say, was there ever a time when her bishops, and notably the Bishop of Rome, were slow to give their testimony in behalf of the moral and revealed law and to suffer for their obedience to it, or forgot that they had a message to deliver to the world? Not the task merely of administering spiritual consolation, or of making the sick-bed easy, or of training up good members of society, and of 'serving tables' (though all this was included in their range of duty); but specially and directly to deliver a message to the world, a definite message to high and low, from the world's Maker, whether men would hear or whether they would forbear. The history, surely, of the Church, in all past times, ancient as well as mediaeval, is the very embodiment of that tradition of Apostolical independence and freedom of speech, which in the eyes of man is her great offence now."[2]

Great is the debt the nations owe the Church for having preserved throughout the ages this independence of action and of speech. Despotism and tyranny would have had little respect for any or every element that enters into our modern civilization, if there were no authority to call a halt and say in tones that were unmistakeable [sic] and that commanded respect: "Thus far shalt thou go and no farther!" This was the temporal mission of the Papacy. How staunchly and how efficiently she fulfilled her mission has been recognized by all competent historians. Few there are who are not willing to subscribe to the verdict of Ancillon: "In the Middle Ages, when there was no social order, the Papacy, and perhaps the Papacy alone, saved Europe from a state of absolute barbarism. It created relations amongst nations far removed from each other, was a common centre [sic] for all, a point of union for States otherwise isolated. [37] It was a supreme court of justice raised in the midst of universal anarchy. Its judgments were from time to time received with the respect they merited. It fenced in and restrained the despotism of emperors. It compensated for the want of a due balance of power and lessened the injurious effects of feudal governments."[1] Let us add that the Papacy was more than a merely compensating principle. Based upon the supremacy of the spiritual over the material, recognized and acted upon by Christian nations possessing the same faith, it was a most secure, a most economic and a most impartial tribunal of arbitration. Has modern political science been able to furnish a better substitute?

When kings ceased to look to the Papacy for recognition and sanction, and no longer feared interdict or excommunication, they sought shelter in the Divine right of royalty to do all things. They refused to hold themselves amenable to any tribunal. "It is notorious," says the late Henry Summer Maine, "that as soon as the decay of the Feudal System had thrown the mediaeval constitutions out of working order, and when the Reformation had discredited the authority of the Pope, the doctrine of the Divine right of kings rose immediately into an importance which had never before attended it."[2] We all know how that doctrine brought a Charles I. to the block. Where else is despotism likely to lead? The kings of France complained of Papal interference; they found theologians to exaggerate the Papal pretensions; they sighed for the freedom of the Caliph. Well, they reduced that interference to a minimum; they endeavored to make every bishop a pope in his own diocese; they placed their tools in the diocesan seats. The theory of a national Church became popular; Gallicanism reigned; Rome received but scant respect, and what was the result? The people, exasperated against the oppressions of a century, rose in defence of rights and liberties which they were denied, and in the reeking horrors of the Revolution, became intoxicated with the blood of king and priest. Were there no Gallican Church identified with a long record of tyrannies and oppressions—had Rome been uniformly free to select its own bishops—its clergy would have been wholly identified with the people; their power and influence would have guided the storm, and instead of the guillotine and the orgies with which every student of history is familiar, a peaceful adjustment of the difficulties between king and people might have been made. This is all the more evident when we remember that the principle of the Revolution is the great underlying idea of modern times. All modern thought, all great political movements, all great social reforms are based upon the [38] sublime principle of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity rightly understood. Now, this principle has in it nothing to alarm. All the nations of the earth are marching towards its realization. In some, the awakening is earlier than in others. This was the underlying idea of the old Republic of Florence, "which would have no king because its king was Jesus Christ;"[1] it was the underlying idea that led to the Constitution of 1688, in England; it nerved the cantons of Switzerland to struggle against Austrian domination till they were free as the chamois ranging their beloved Alps; it gave birth to our own republic. Its spirit is in the air and will not down. Statesmen and governments may slight or ignore or even resist it; but such a course is one of folly. They who will not recognize it and give it direction and prepare men for its coming, will be borne down by its fierce impetus.

Again, since the treaty of Westphalia, Europe has been adjusted by what is known as balance of power. According to this principle, no one nation will be allowed to assume control beyond a certain limit. She may absorb a certain number of districts or provinces belonging to a weaker power, but, in order to preserve an equilibrium, she must not destroy that power. Or, a weaker power is a source of trouble to more powerful nations in her neighborhood. As a solution to the difficulty, why may they not—even as happened to Poland—carve the weaker nation up and distribute a share to each, still preserving, the equilibrium? These are events that could not have occurred under the arbitration of the Popes. A merely mechanical principle, with no other basis than expedience, no other motive than policy, such as is this principle of balance of power, must needs be immoral in its very nature and lead to acts of gross injustice. It is bearing its fruits to-day in Europe. Look at the attitude of all the great powers on the Continent! Each is in arms, grimly awaiting war. The strong and the young are idly consuming the products of the soil, and the nations are becoming impoverished. All human ingenuity and all triumphs of physical science are concentrated upon the discovery of the most rapid and most effectual methods of destroying human life. This state of affairs is radically wrong. Who would not rejoice to see every nation of Europe disarm, go back to the arts of peace, and leave the arbitration of all international difficulties to the Pope?

The Holy Roman Empire has passed into shadow-land. The doctrine of the absolute right of kings to perpetrate all acts in God's name, and under the Divine sanction, is no more. Even where crowned heads still exist in Europe, not they, but their peoples—Russia being excepted—rule. The world's future is altogether in the hands of the people. The relations of Church [39] and State in the new order of things may easily prove far more satisfactory than in the old order. In our own American Republic these relations are almost ideal. We know that purely ideal relations between Church and State obtain only where religion is one in society. Then might the secular power be subject to the spiritual power, as the body is subject to the soul; then might the State co-operate [sic] with the Church, aiding her when necessary in her work of establishing the kingdom of God in souls, knowing that all else, bearing upon temporal happiness, will surely follow. Here, where the forms of Christian belief are many, this order of things is impossible. But the order of things, guaranteed us by our Constitution and our laws, is admirable.

The noble patriots who framed our Constitution and laid so firmly the foundations of our republic, built upon the rights and liberties inherent in man. Now these rights and liberties with their accompanying duties and responsibilities, as between man and ma, are not of the State. They are above and beyond the State. They are the vital principle that gives being to the State. They are the natural law, which is a participation in the eternal law of God. The State is simply the mouth-piece to proclaim this law, and the instrument to enforce it. The principles of right and wrong existed before they were made to enter into statutory decrees, just as the Decalogue was engraved on the hearts of men before Moses inscribed it on tablets of stone. Those principles are eternal, and it is our pride and our glory and the secret of our prosperity as a people that the great charter of our liberties is based upon them. In consequence the State admits the right of every many to worship God according to the dictates of his conscience. Every man has his rights of conscience not as privileges conceded by the State, but as rights existing among his other natural rights, recognized and acknowledged by the State as held under a higher law than its own. Church and State do not here exist upon a system of mutual concessions or privileges. There is here no absorption of one into the other. They are distinct, but they are not separated. On the contrary, their union is most intimate and most harmonious. "There is nothing," says Brownson, "which Gregory VII., Innocent III., Boniface VIII. and other great popes struggled for against the German emperors, the kings of France, Aragon and England, and the Italian republics that is not recognized here by our republic to be the right of the spiritual order. Here the old antagonism between Church and State does not exist. There is here a certain antagonism, no doubt, between the Church and the sects, but none between the Church and the State or civil society. Here the Church has, so far as civil society is concerned, all that she has ever claimed, all that she has ever struggled for. Here [40] she is perfectly free. She summons her prelates to meet in council when she pleases, and promulgates her decrees for the spiritual government of her children without leave asked or obtained. The placet of the civil power is not needed, is neither solicited nor accepted. She erects and fills sees as she judges proper, founds and conducts schools, colleges, and seminaries in her own way, without let or hindrance; she manages her own temporalities, not by virtue of a grant or concession of the State, but as her acknowledged right, held as the right of conscience, independently of the State."[1]

Where society is split up into a diversity of creeds, there is supreme wisdom in the attitude of the State towards all, granting freedom of conscience so long as conscience dictates nothing contrary to the principles of natural right, or calculated to outrage the moral sense of society. We ask no closer relations of Church and State. So far as our religion is concerned, our sole cry is: "Hands off!" The State is incompetent to pronounce upon religious matters; it has no mission to determine the validity of a religious creed. To discriminate in favor of any one to the exclusion of all the others, were an act of injustice to every citizen not holding the favored creed. It were un-American because it were unconstitutional. It is a primary duty of the State to aid and protect its citizens in the fulfilment of their respective duties, to secure to them their inalienable rights, to see that justice is done between man and man; above all it is a duty of the State to safe-guard the weak minorities in their rights and immunities against the more powerful majorities.

In every man and woman there is an inseparable union of Church and State. Each holds certain religious tenets; many belong to some visible form of Christianity; but in proportion as all live up to their religious convictions, in that proportion are they good citizens, faithful in the performance of their civic duties—honest and honorable and just in all relations of life. Christian virtue in Christian society has never dimmed the civic virtues. Tell us, would the New England Puritans—the revered ancestors of many whom we now address—have left so lasting an impression upon this republic if they had been less intensely religious? The fierceness and asperity and intolerance that entered into their religious convictions and dictated the Colonial Blue Laws, also shaped the rigid honesty and integrity of character that would die rather than deviate a hair's breadth from the path of rectitude. When that noble son of Connecticut, Nathan Hale, was about to be hanged as a spy, his sole regret was that he had not other lives to give [41] for his country. Think you he was any the less sturdy a patriot because he had been strictly and religiously brought up in the stern tenets of his Puritan father? Can you imagine Charles Carroll of Carrollton, throwing his broad acres and his spotless name into the country's cause, any the less a patriot because he had been carefully trained by the Jesuits? Did he find any difficulty in reconciling his allegiance to Rome with his allegiance to the new-born republic? Was his cousin John Carroll, the first Catholic Archbishop of Baltimore, less a patriot, when he accompanied the commission who sought the alliance of Canada in the cause of independence, than John Jay, when by his fanatical address to the people of Great Britain, he rendered that alliance an impossibility?[1] This is a subject over which men have needlessly waxed wroth. Let us raise ourselves above prejudices and look facts full in the face, and we will find, each in his own person, complete reconciliation between Church and State. Is not every full and perfect life an harmonious blending of these two orders of duties?" In this fact is the solution to the whole problem of Church and State. The name of God may not be in our Constitution, but His hand is discernible in every line of it. With far-seeing wisdom was that first amendment inserted: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

Footnotes:

Page 20:
1. Brownson's Works, vol. xiii., p. 265.
2. Cardinal Mazzella, De Religione et Ecclesia, p. 449.
3. Naturrecht und Politik, p. 237, Bonn, 1871.
4. Schema concerning the Church prepared by the Fathers of the Vatican Council, apud Hergenröther, Church and State, vol. 1., p. 52.

Page 21:
1. Isid. Pelus., 1., iii, ep. 249.
2. Hom. 15, in 2 Cor., n. 5; Migne xi., 509.
3. De Legg, iv., p. 288.
4. Politics, viii., 8–12.

Page 22:
1. The First Age of the Church, vol. ii., pp. 216, 217.
2. Apol. I., pro Christ xii.

Page 23:
1. Summa Theologiae, II., ii., qu. xxxi., art. 7.
2. Actes eccles. et civiles de tous les Synodes nationaux de l'Eglise reformée de France, ii, 181, 182.

Page 25:
1. "But all theologians and laymen know that the Pope can do nothing against the Divine law; that he cannot dispense from the observance of the Fourth Commandment; that all Papal laws, even if they must be regarded as irreformable, still do not cease to be human."—Cardinal Hergenroether, Anti-Janus, p. 42.

Page 26:
1. The Westminster Review, June, 1888.

Page 29:
1. Is Life Worth Living? pp. 274, 275.

Page 31:
1. The Vatican Decrees in Their Bearing on Civil Allegiance, p. 46. Am. ed.
2. Encyclical, January 10, 1890. [Sapientiae Christianae, n. 28]
3. Ibid. [n. 30]

Page 32:
1. Romans xiii., 1–7.
2. De Civ. Dei., ii., 4.

Page 33:
1. See Bluntschli, Allgemeines Statsrecht, p. 6.
2. History of European Morals, ii. p., 15.

Page 34:
1. Holy Roman Empire, 3d ed., p. 120.
2. Hefele, iv., p. 197.

Page 35:
1. Migne, ccxvii., p. 226. Supplem. ep. 185.
2. Letter to the Prelates of Germany.
3. Historical Essays, vi., p. 136.

Page 36:
1. Church History, ii., p. 375. Third edition.
2. Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, p. 24.

Page 37:
1. Tableau des Revolutions du Système Politique de l'Europe, ti., introd. p. 133.
2. Ancient Law, p. 334.

Page 38:
1. Cardinal Capecelatro: Life of St. Philip Neri, vol. i., p. 34.

Page 40:
1. Works, vol. xiii., p. 142.

Page 41:
1. See a valuable article by John Gilmary Shea, in the U. S. Catholic Historical Magazine, vol. iii., No. x., "Why Canada is not a Part of the United States."

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Source: Brother Azarias, "Church and State," The American Catholic Quarterly Review 16 (January–October 1891): 20–41.