[The Spirit of Catholicism] [Previous]
Needs must scandals come (Luke xvii, 1).
In the previous Chapters we have been busy with the question, What is Catholicism? We have described and insisted on the fundamental conception that the Church is the Body of Christ and God's Kingdom on earth, and by means of this fundamental conception we have illustrated her dogma, worship, constitution and community life; we have shown that she is distinctively both popular and universal; we have explained her claim to be the sole source of salvation; and finally we have described the particular means she employs in saving men. We have striven to set forth the essential and permanent, that which lies outside the changes of time, and therefore to discover and expound the idea of Catholicism in the clearest possible way and apart from the conditions of space and time. In this last Chapter we shall answer the question, How is this idea realized in actual fact? From ideal Catholicism we pass to actual Catholicism, and we ask how is the one related to the other, and how does actual Catholicism fulfill the divine idea.
That there is no perfect equation between the ideal and the real, that actual Catholicism lags considerably behind its idea, that it has never yet appeared in history as a complete and perfect thing, but always as a thing in process of development and laborious growth: such is the testimony of ecclesiastical and social history, and it is unnecessary to establish these points in detail. The primitive Church was never at any time a Church "without spot or wrinkle" as St. Paul puts it. One need only read his epistles and the epistles of St. James and St. John, and for a later period to consult Hemmas, Irenaeus and Tertullian, to find that the early Church for all its brilliant light had grievously dark shadows also. And the same is true in general of the Church throughout the centuries. As long as Catholicism lasts, it will feel the need for reform, for a more perfect assimilation of its actuality to the ideal which illumines its path. Bishop Keppler declared that "the trend to reform is native to the being of the Church. It is sufficient to recall the magnificent reforming work of her numerous founders of religious orders and of so many popes. And the same trend to reform is still active."[1] But the existence of such a trend implies a need for reform, and implies the belief that the ideal has not yet achieved realization. Consequently there is no need to waste words in showing that ideal Catholicism is not yet realized and has never so far been realized in history. Our business today is rather to explain why it is that the ideal cannot be realized in this world. We wish in the first place to trace the causes of the great tragedy of this continual conflict between the ideal and the real, and secondly to expound the Catholic solution of these tragic conflicts.
The first and most obvious cause of these conflicts lies in the very nature of revelation, just because divine truth and grace are therein conveyed to us in earthly vessels (cf. 2 Cor. iv, 7). God's revelation makes use of human instruments, the infinite of the finite, the ineffable and transcendent is clothed in visible forms and signs. Two distinct factors here impinge on each other, factors which of their nature cannot be simply assimilated the one to the other, but can only achieve a relation of similarity, a relation of analogy.
Let us go into details. We can grasp the actuality of the absolute and infinite and incomprehensible, the essence and existence of God, only by means of conceptions borrowed from the world of our experience. No man has ever seen God. We have no immediate perception of the essence of God. Therefore we can know and describe God only by means of "alien species" (per species alienas), that is to say by means of concepts which originally denote created things, and which must first be purified of their creaturely imperfection and in their positive content infinitely intensified, before they can be used by us to represent the divine essence. So that no assertion that we make about God is an exhaustive assertion. It contains truth, but not the whole truth, and therefore possesses only an analogous value. We can speak of God only by comparisons (Wisdom xiii, 5). We are therefore aware that all our conceptions of God's being lag infinitely behind the reality. All our names of God are but "shy gestures, which would gladly approach God nearer and yet can only greet him from afar."[2]
But even God's supernatural revelation, even all those truths which go beyond the data of nature and are directly taught us by divine revelation, especially through God's revelation in His Son, do not enter our consciousness in their original nature and in their self-evident force and immediacy, but are mediated through human conceptions and notions. The dogmas, in which these supernatural truths have been authoritatively formulated by the Church, denote the Absolute, but are not themselves the Absolute. The conceptual forms in which they are stated belong to specific periods of time, being borrowed mostly from Greek philosophy, and express the supernatural truths truly and aptly and in a form intelligible in every age, but by no means exhaustively or perfectly. "We see now as in a mirror, in a dark manner." Those words of St. Paul hold true of all supernatural knowledge.
So there lies over the whole of our supernatural knowledge, and over the life which is rooted in this knowledge, an air of insufficiency, of sorrowful resignation, a touch of melancholy, such as Nietzsche discerned in Greek sculpture. We walk not in the sun, but in semi-darkness. It is true that our faith gives us the strongest certainty that the world of the supernatural is no mere dream, but absolutely genuine reality, the reality of God and His eternal life. And therefore our goal is clear, and the way is clear. But we see this sublime reality only through a veil and from afar, like a mountain wrapped in clouds. Of course that fact gives our life of faith its nobility of spirit and its moral character. Were divine truth to come to us unveiled, then faith would not bring any separation of souls and would not discriminate the noble, pure and unselfish man from the calculating, self-seeking egoist. The Kingdom of God would be so obvious that it would be a mere matter for argumentation and cold reasoning, and would not call forth magnanimous souls who show the purity of their love for the ideal and for duty by the very fact that they remain faithful even in the darkness of night and amid the raging tempest. Yet, on the other hand, the semi-darkness and the permanently enigmatical character of the truths of our faith may sometimes lame our glad initiative and entangle us in conflict and trouble, so that our faith is not always a quickening grace and blessed gift of God, but also a hard and difficult task, a wrestling with God that occupies our whole life and calls upon our best powers.
We have seen that the Divine, the Absolute, can in the nature of the case be conveyed to us mortal men only in inadequate human conceptions and notions. And in the second place those instruments, by whom our faith is conveyed to us, are men, that is to say intelligences conditioned by space and time, restricted by the limitations of their age and of their individuality. Above all they are conditioned by the limitations of their age. Every period of time has its special character, its "spirit," i.e. a characteristic way, conditioned by its special circumstances, of seeing, feeling, judging and acting. The eternal light of revelation is differently reflected in the prism of each age, with different angles of refraction. The supernatural reality is not manifested in naked truth, as it is in itself, but enters into the particular age and therefore in a form determined by that age. In this way it becomes an enkindling and fruitful and present force; but at the same time it loses in the process something of the austerity and majesty of its supernatural being. It suffers a sort of "emptying" (kenosis), it despoils itself, and takes the form of a slave, as the Divine Word despoiled Himself when He became man. And supernatural truth may sometimes be so far "emptied," and so much modified by time and circumstance, that the eternal is scarcely visible any more through the veils of time and we are puzzled and distressed. The faithful Catholic is distressed by the "servile" forms which disfigured the Church in certain periods of the Middle Ages. He is distressed, today more than ever, by the medieval Inquisition and by the auto-da-fe. However much he knows that these contrivances are explained by the boundless zeal with which the medieval man, in his utterly objective attitude, willed to protect the stem reality and sublime dignity of supernatural truth; and however much he appreciates the intimate inter-connection of Church and state in the medieval period: yet he cannot but grieve that zeal for objective values in religion and society should have sometimes weakened men's understanding of personal values, especially of the rights and dignity of conscience, albeit erroneous. He cannot but grieve that pure logic restricted the power of psychological sympathy, so that men sometimes were blind to several of the most luminous teachings of the Gospel, as for instance to the teaching that the Kingdom of God is not of this world and is not a kingdom of the sword, that a man should forgive his offending brother seventy times seven times, and that fire should not be invoked from heaven upon unbelieving cities. And the Catholic is grieved also by the witch trials and their numerous victims. However much he may be aware that this delusion must be regarded, not as a Catholic and religious phenomenon, but as one belonging rather to social history, and that many hundreds of witches were persecuted and put to death in Protestant countries also, and that the first enlightened men to have the courage to range themselves with the Calvinist doctor, Johannes Weyer, and to fight in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries against the general delusion, such men as Loos, Tanner, Laymann and Spee, were Catholics and mostly Jesuits; yet he grieves very deeply for the "Witch Hammer"[3] and for the Bull "Summis desiderantes" (1484) of Pope Innocent VIII, which although it had, as is clear from the context, no "ex cathedra" and official authority, yet "incontestably helped to further the witch delusion."[4] The Catholic sorrowfully recognizes that even the holders of the highest and most exalted office on earth can be children of their age and slaves of its conceptions, and that the Holy Spirit in governing the Church does not guard every act of the pope and every papal pronouncement from error and delusion, but is infallibly operative only when the pope speaks "ex cathedra," i.e. when basing himself on the sources of the faith and in the fullness of his power as Head of the Church and successor of St. Peter, he pronounces a decision in matters of faith or morals which embraces and binds the whole Church.
Therefore the men through whom God's revelation is mediated on earth are by the law of their being conditioned by the limitations of their age. And they are conditioned also by the limitations of their individuality. Their particular temperament, mentality, and character are bound to color, and do color, the manner in which they dispense the truth and grace of Christ. And these influences will operate also in their hearers, that is to say in the "learning Church" as well as in the "teaching Church." So it may happen, and it must happen, that pastor and flock, bishop, priest, and layman are not always worthy mediators and recipients of God's grace, and that the infinitely holy is sometimes warped and distorted in passing through them. Wherever you have men, you are bound to have a restricted outlook and narrowness of judgment. For talent is rare, and genius comes only when God calls it. Eminent popes, bishops of great spiritual force, theologians of genius, priests of extraordinary graces and devout layfolk: these must be, not the rule, but the exception. God raises them up only at special times, when He needs them for His Church. We may and should pray for them, but we cannot reckon on their coming. And so as a rule it is the ordinary and average man who bears God's truth and grace through the world. The Church has from God the guarantee that she will not fall into error regarding faith or morals; but she has no guarantee whatever that every act and decision of ecclesiastical authority will be excellent and perfect. Mediocrity and even defects are possible. "The weak and the little hath God chosen that He may confound the strong." It is true that the power of divine truth and grace is manifested all the more gloriously because of this weakness. But reflective Catholics must feel and be pained by the conflict which arises out of the contrast between the sublimity, depth and power of divine revelation and the weakness of the human, too- human factor. The same phenomenon is repeated in the history of the Church throughout the centuries which so tragically moulded the relation of our Lord to His disciples. They were unable in their small mirrors to receive all the rays of light which went forth from His divine Person and to transmute them without loss into living forces.
Still more palpable and painful does the conflict between the power of God and the weakness of man become when the in-streaming life of grace and truth is checked by human passions, by sin and vice, when Christ as He is realized in human history is dragged through the dust of the street, through the commonplace and the trivial, and over masses of rubbish. That is the deepest tragedy, the very tragedy of the Divine, when It is dispensed by unworthy hands and received by unworthy lips. An immoral laity, bad priests, bishops and popes—these are the saddest wounds of the Body of the mystical Christ. This is what grieves the earnest Catholic and inspires his sorrowful lamentation, when he sees these wounds and is unable to help. "The Church," says Cardinal Newman, "is ever ailing, and lingers on in weakness, 'always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in her body.'"[5] It is an essential property of the Church to be so, because of her vocation to save men. Nowhere else does evil become so visible, because nowhere else is it so keenly fought. "She can never work out of the sphere of evil."[6] As her Master came not for the whole, but for the sick, so the Church in this world will always have her sick, will always have sores in her members, great and small.
To sum up: the first series of tragic conflicts arises out of the nature of Christianity as a supernatural and revealed religion. When the Absolute expresses itself in time, when God's eternal decrees take temporal form, it cannot but be that human imperfection should come into inward conflict with divine perfection. In this respect Schopenhauer, and before him Schelling, and later Hartmann have judged correctly. Those philosophers erred only in this that they attributed God's entrance into time, not to a free and loving act of the personal God, but to a necessity of God's being. And so they went on to conclude that creation was the Fall of God.
The second source of these conflicts lies, not in the nature of supernatural revelation in general, but in the nature of Catholicism in particular, in that which constitutes the special character of Catholicism.
In the first place there is that conflict between authority and human liberty which necessarily results from the Catholic doctrine of authority. This conflict may be seen whenever the human ego runs up against alien, rigid and inexorable facts, against laws and ordinances which seem to crib and confine the free movement of the mind. This is especially the case, therefore, in the region of theology, in the science of our faith. Supernatural revelation is not human wisdom, but the Word of God. Its new truth does not originate in humanity as its primal source, not even in the depths of human sub- consciousness, but is essentially given from above. Therefore it can be communicated to men only by the way of authority, by that living series of bishops who are descended from the apostles and conjoined to them in a spiritual unity through the sacrament of the imposition of hands, and especially by the successor of St. Peter. Church authority is a necessary correlative of supernatural revelation. So that Church authority is the one pole of the Catholic life of faith. The Catholic does not get his final decision regarding the truths of revelation from philologists and historians, but from the primary witnesses and depositories of this truth, from the messianic authority of the Word, Christ, perpetuated through the centuries in pope and bishops. Consequently the Catholic is in his faith inwardly bound to obey the authoritative teaching of his Church, which is the echo of the preaching of Jesus. On the other hand the Church prohibits all blind faith and merely external conformity. The affirmation accorded to the Church's teaching must be a convinced and inward affirmation, and so an affirmation of the free moral personality, and an affirmation which rests, in proportion to a man's degree of education, upon personal insight into the grounds of faith and into its historical and philosophical presuppositions. And since this personal insight cannot be attained by a scholar without severely scientific method, therefore the Church cannot possibly be an enemy to sober criticism, least of all to the so-called "historico-critical" method. Even the much-attacked anti-modernist encyclical of Pope Pius X (Pascendi) and the anti-modernist oath, do not forbid this method, but rather presuppose it. What they forbid is simply this, that men should make the affirmation of supernatural faith dependent exclusively on the results of this method, thereby subjecting it wholly to philologists and historians, and to profane science. Our faith does not rest upon dead documents, but upon the living witness of that stream of tradition which has brought its doctrines down from Christ through the apostles and the apostolical succession of bishops to the present day. Christianity is not a religion of dead documents and fragmentary records, but a life in the Holy Spirit preserved from generation to generation by the apostolical succession of commissioned preachers. The historico-critical method, if it would not lose itself in extravagant and unlimited criticism, must adjust itself to this life which pulsates through the heritage of revealed truth. That was what the papal encyclical meant when it declared—in words that have been so much misunderstood—that holy Scripture and the Fathers are not to be interpreted "merely by the principles of science" (non solis scientiae principiis). The surging life of the Christian present flows over the dead records of primitive documents, or rather, these documents are themselves nothing but that life grown stiff and numb, nothing but a deposit of that holy and supernatural life which still enfolds us in the present. Therefore those documents can be fully deciphered and yield their true revealed sense only in the light of this life. So the Church does not quarrel with the historico-critical method, or dispute the right and duty of scientific research. What she does is to guard against the abuse of these things, to prevent the neglect of that living element in Christianity wherein these methods should find their final norm and standard. By means of this life of hers, by means of the clear daylight of her revealed knowledge, she is ever throwing new light upon the problems of the lower and higher criticism, upon the problems of scriptural and patristic theology. And when she believes that central thoughts of the Christian revelation are menaced, then by means of her Congregations—not in the name of science, but in the name of her faith—she utters her prohibition against such teaching.
And here is the point where Church authority and the individual's right to give himself an account of the faith that is in him, may come into conflict. It is possible that the teaching authority of the Church, as in the case of Galileo, may in the name of the faith forbid a scientific opinion which is only in apparent contradiction with fixed dogmatic truth, and which becomes later on an irrefutable certainty. Of course the Catholic knows that the decisions of these Congregations, even though confirmed by the pope himself in the ordinary form (in forma communi), may be and have been erroneous. And he knows that the true inward assent which they require can therefore not be an unqualified assent, but only a qualified one. For although such decisions, as emanating from the Church's teaching authority, claim an eminent degree of consideration, and although they are generally protected from error by the assistance of the Holy Spirit, yet they remain the decisions of a fallible authority. For this reason the faithful Catholic knows that he is by no means forbidden in special cases and for weighty reasons to reckon with the possibility of error in such decisions, and that he is permitted to prepare the way by more thorough study for a final solution of the question. He knows also that the Church, when such a a decisive solution has been reached, has withdrawn her veto, so that that veto did not tend to the suppression of truth, but rather to its thorough demonstration, and in any case safeguarded her theology from hasty and insufficiently- supported hypotheses. Theology is the science of life, and its propositions influence life directly. The teaching authority of the Church, as being appointed by God to guard the supernatural life of the faithful, cannot and may not stand quietly by and let the congregation of the faithful be disturbed by revolutionary assertions which are devoid of a sound scientific basis, and which for the most part bear within them the seeds of decay before they have rightly got into the world. All this the Catholic knows. In theory therefore there is a balance established between the official teaching authority and theological freedom of movement. But in the practical activity of research, where the questions dealt with are not such that an exact solution, an unobjectionable, exhaustive proof can be submitted to the Church's teaching authority, but rather problems which of their nature do not lend themselves to solution by a severely exact method, but ultimately only by intuition and by a comprehensive grasp of all the data, then conflicts are possible. In such a case the scholar suffers from the conflict of his ideals, when the service of truth seems to be at variance with his loyalty to the Church. It is a sacred suffering, yet a very real one. He is nailed to the "cross of his ideals," and no man can take him down from this cross.
Furthermore the special character of Catholicism gives rise to a conflict between the claims of personality and those of the community. The Church is primarily a community, it is that unity of redemption-needing mankind which is established in the person of the Incarnate God. But she is at the very same time a community of persons. The Church shows herself to be the living Body of Christ only in so far as she realizes herself in living persons. Both these things, therefore, both community and personality, are of the substance of the Church, and neither can subsist without the other. From out of the community of faith and of love the personality draws its new life. And the new-born personality in its turn gives the community the best that it has, the awakening and enkindling power of its faith and of its love, and thereby gives the community fruitfulness and growth. But a community implies a common life, and therefore there must be a definite norm for the community, a creed and a law. And the individual must willingly accept this norm, in dogma, morals, law and worship. Here is the point where conflict is possible. Individualities are too rich and too variously made—being each a unique historical creation, each the result of a separate and special word of God—to be able to adapt themselves always and everywhere, fully and without friction, to the organism of the community. There are bound to be interior difficulties and obstacles, and the process calls for self-sacrifice and devoted self-denying love. And the richer a personality is, the more does it suffer from the community, especially from that average level of life and its requirements which go necessarily with a common organization. It is true that the community richly repays whatever the personality sacrifices to it. The community exercises an educative force, for it compels the individual to love and sacrifice, to humility and simplicity. The community deepens our personalities, for it enlarges them by all that goodness which we show to our brethren and they to us. And- -its highest excellence—the community is the Body of Christ, the true sphere of all the truth and grace of Jesus. But however precious the community is, there remain sacrifice, and self-denial, and self-subordination and suffering with the members of Christ. For "if any member suffer, all the members suffer with it."
Connected with this, is that third and last series of conflicts which arises from the nature of Catholicism. We shall refer to it only briefly. It is the conflict between living piety and Church authority, between the enthusiasm of Pentecost and the rigidity of Church law. This conflict is vividly represented in the life of St. Francis of Assisi. Both these factors are necessary for the life of the Church. The Spirit of Pentecost must always and will always awaken new life. Ever and anon it will touch the depths of the Church's soul and set free mighty impulses and stirring movements. But so that these movements may not come to nothing, but may be permanently fruitful, they must be guided by Church authority by means of rules and laws, fixed ordinances and regulations. So personal piety requires that the Church regulate it, and define it and give it strict form, if it is not to ebb uselessly away. But on the other hand the form needs the flow of life and experience if it is not little by little to become rigid and crusted over. It needs it the more, the older and more venerable it is. In the right co-ordination of these two factors lies the secret of the Church's vigorous life. When this co-operation is not maintained, or not sufficiently maintained, then the Catholic suffers. And there is no pain that a Catholic may endure so profound and penetrating, yet so sacred and pure, as this is. The letters of St. Catherine of Siena illustrate it, as does also the life of St. Clement Maria Hofbauer. Well may the Catholic soul exclaim with Peter Lippert: "O Catholic Church, thou angel of the Lord, thou Raphael sent to guide us in our pilgrimage, mayest thou ever find the strength to walk with such mighty strides that thou thyself mayest be able to shatter the forms that have grown stiff and antiquated. Catholic Church, angel of the Lord, mayest thou ever find strength so to stir thy wings as to raise a mighty wind and blow away the dust of centuries."[7]
We have spoken of the conflicts which arise from the nature of revelation and from the nature of Catholicism. What solution do Catholics find for these conflicts?
They solve them in the light of eschatology, in the light of the fact, that according to our Lord's promises the perfection of the Church is yet to be, that the Church of glory will not appear until the end of time, and that therefore it is according to the economy of salvation that the Church of the present should remain unfinished, incomplete and imperfect until the Coming of the Son of Man. This incompleteness is therefore not something forced upon us for the first time by the cold logic of facts. On the contrary our Lord Himself from the beginning left us in no doubt about it. From the beginning He described the Kingdom of Heaven as a net that contains bad fish as well as good, as a field that contains cockle as well as wheat. When He warned His disciples against coveting the "first places" in His Kingdom He indicated the possibility of jealousy and strife among the leaders of the Church (Newman). When He delineates the steward who began to "strike the menservants and maid-servants, and to eat and to drink and be drunk," we think involuntarily of those stewards of the Kingdom of God, to whom as successors of St. Peter were committed the Keys of the Kingdom, and who so grievously abused their sacred office. As Cardinal Newman says, our Lord expressly warns us not to expect the Church of this world to be without spot or wrinkle. And His disciples give us that same warning. In particular it is a favorite thought of St. Paul's that the Church of the present, albeit pervaded by Christ, bears the marks not of His glory but of His suffering, manifests his "dying" (nekrosis, 2 Cor. iv, 10) and His wounds (Gal. vi, 17); that the sufferings of Christ "abound" in His members (2 Cor. i, 5), so that one must speak of a "fellowship of His sufferings" (Phil iii 10) Therefore suffering in all its forms is an essential trait of the Church of this world. As St. Augustine says of the present state of the Church: "It is still night" (Adhuc nox est). And again: "The Church stands in darkness, in this time of her pilgrimage, and must lament under many miseries.[8]
But on the other hand—and this is the second principle whereby the conflict is solved—if Christ plainly prophesies sin and distress, weakness and imperfection for the earthly Church, He promises quite as definitely that the gates of hell will not prevail against her and that His spirit will abide with us unto the end of the world. The Church is a leaven which works slowly, and yet will in uninterrupted process leaven the whole resisting mass of humanity. So the Catholic cannot fear, even when the Church at times seems to sink into a state of torpor, or even of lingering death. History has shown over and over again that bad periods are followed by happy recoveries, recoveries so glorious that the time of stagnation seems to be a sort of transitional stage, preparatory to the wondrous thing that is to be, a kind of winter sleep wherein the powers are collected before the awakening of spring.
That which is true of the life of the Church in general, is true in particular of her preaching of the truth. The Spirit of Truth, the Comforter, abides with the Church for ever, and He will constantly bring truth to light and truth in its complete fullness, in all its heights and depths. Though many of the depths of truth and many of its heights may have been obscured for centuries, yet a day comes when the beam of the Holy Spirit pierces the darkness and discloses the truth to the faithful. The history of the fortunes of Aristotelianism in the Church is an instructive illustration of this fact. Catholic theologians are using in our own day, for the philosophical statement of Catholic doctrine, essentially that same Aristotelian philosophy which eminent Fathers of the Church called the "source of all heresies," in particular of Nestorianism and Monophysitism, and which, when it found its way into scholastic circles in the thirteenth century, was several times forbidden by ecclesiastical authority to be used in the public lectures of the University of Paris, chiefly on account of its misinterpretation in Latin Averroism. Thoughts are like living organisms. They need not only their special soil, but also their due time, so that they may strike root and develop. And the Church has abundance of time. She does not reckon in decades, but in centuries and millennia. So she can wait until thoughts have in the light of her teaching become perfectly clear and pure, until what is genuine, true and permanent in them is recognized and disengaged from what is spurious, false and transitory. The Church believes in the development of the supernatural knowledge of the truth. She teaches a progress of faith, and that not merely in a subjective, but also in an objective sense. The Vatican Council expressly defined the dogma that not only the individual believer, but also the Church herself can and should penetrate ever more perfectly and more profoundly into the depths of revealed truth.[9] And so the Catholic scholar has the glad assurance that no seed of truth is vainly sown in the field of the Church. The spirit of truth will bring every seed to maturity, when its time is come. And therefore the faithful Catholic scholar can never lose faith in his Church, since his confidence in the complete triumph of truth in the Church is unlimited and unshakable. Though he be not understood by his own age, yet he is never solitary. His thought, provided it be based on truth, will be taken into the life- stream of the Church and clarified in those pure waters, so that it may in some future time, in this stream and through it, become the fertilizing water of life for many souls.
If we ask in conclusion for the ultimate and deepest reason why the "Church below" (ecclesia deorsum) as St. Augustine calls it[10] shall never in this world attain the spotlessness and beauty of the "Church above" (ecclesia sursum), and why we may never do more than look forward hopefully to the Church of glory, we are seeking to know the mind of God Himself, and to search into the depths of His counsel. "Who hath known the mind of the Lord? Or who hath been His counselor?" (Rom. xi, 34). We are face to face with a mystery which we shall never completely comprehend. We may only suppose this much about it, that the fundamental forces of God's revealed action, His Holiness, Justice and Goodness, will prevail in this mystery also.
Wherever we encounter the God of revelation, we do not find Him to be the characterless God of some feeble pastoral play, but a God of holiness and justice, a God who requires vigorous action and moral decision, the athlete's struggle for the crown and perseverance in the race until the prize be won. The new order of grace does not displace the old order of moral responsibility before God. And that is true not only of the members of the Church, but also of the Church as such. The Church too is subject to the great law that the Kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence. It is true that as the supra-personal unity of redeemed mankind, a unity based upon the God-man, the Church has her own essential nature, her own law and her own life. And the Holy Spirit will abide always with her, so that she may remain true to her God-given nature. But on the other hand it is equally true that the nature of the Church must be expressed through the faithful, and not without them. The Body of Christ must maintain and perfect itself in its members and through them. Therefore the Church is not only a gift to the faithful, but also a task for them. They have to prepare and foster that good earthly kingdom in which the seed of the Kingdom of Heaven may take root and flourish. In other words, the life of the Church, the development of her faith and her love, the progress of doctrine, morals, worship and law, stand in an immediate relation to the faithful and loving personal life of the members of the Body of Christ. God rewards the merit or punishes the demerit of the faithful by the rise and fall of the earthly Church. We may therefore truly say with St. Paul (Eph. ii, 21, 22) that the Church founded by Christ is at the same time co-built by the faithful. St. Augustine says profoundly: "The temple of God is still a building" and "The house (i.e. the Church) is now being constructed."[11] God willed a Church which in her ripening and perfecting should be the fruit of the true grace-inspired life of the faithful, of their prayer and love, of their fidelity, penitence and devotion, and therefore He did not found her from the beginning as a thing complete and perfect, but as an incomplete thing, which leaves room for and calls for a continual activity of construction, and in whose inward history His Holiness and Justice continually triumph.
And God permits so much weakness and wretchedness in the earthly Church just because He is good. One may even venture the paradox that the mystical Christ has taken so much weakness upon Himself for our sakes and for our welfare. For how might we, who are "prone to evil from our youth," who are constantly stumbling, constantly struggling, and never spotless, not even in our fairest virtue—how might we gladly adhere to a Church, which displayed holiness not as a chaste hope, but as a radiant achievement? Her very beauty would be a stumbling block to us. Her glory would accuse and condemn us. How would we dare to call her, the rich and glorious, our mother, the mother of poor and wretched mortals? No, we need a Redemptress Mother, one who, however celestial she be in the deepest recesses of her being, never turns coldly away from her children, when their soiled fingers touch her, and when folly and wickedness rend her marriage robe. We need a poor mother, for we ourselves are poor.
And we need this same mother that we may not, in the radiance of her glory, become subject to a repulsive self-satisfaction or a loveless pride. Such was ever the fate of those sectaries who have regarded themselves as already pure and holy, here and now, in the full sense of those words, from the ancient Montanists and Donatists to the Cathari of the Middle Ages and to heretics of our own day. And, even if we did not fall into this spiritual pride, we should perhaps, blinded by the glory of the earthly Church, incur the danger of idolizing it, of worshipping the merely human, a Peter, or a Paul, or an Apollo. So God's Goodness and Mercy are manifested even in the imperfections which we lament in the members of the Church. Through her weakness we are healed.
Therefore we love our Church in spite of, nay just because of, her poor outward appearance. The Catholic affirms the Church just as it is. For in its actual form the Church is to him the revelation of the divine Holiness, Justice and Goodness. The Catholic does not desire some ideal Church, a Church of the philosopher or the poet. Though his mother be travel-stained with long journeying, though her countenance be furrowed with care and trouble—yet, she is his mother. In her heart burns the ancient love. Out of her eyes shines the ancient faith. From her hands flow ever the ancient blessings. What would heaven be without God? What would the earth be without this Church? I believe in One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.
Nihil Obstat: Arthur J. Scanlan, S.T.D. Censor Librorum Imprimatur: Patrick Cardinal Hayes, Archbishop, New York. New York, January 12th, 1935
Endnotes
1. "Uber wahre und falsche Reform," 1903, p. 24. Paul Wilhelm von Keppler (died, 1926), Bishop of Rottenburg, was a most influential and revered figure in Catholic Germany. The earlier editions of this book were dedicated to him.
2. P. Lippert, "Credo," Vol. I, 1916, p. 62.
3. "Malleus Maleficarum," a book written by two Dominican inquisitors, Henry Kramer and James Sprenger, and published at Cologne in 1489, which became the standard textbook of witchcraft in Germany. An English translation, sumptuously printed, has just been published (London, 1928).
4. A. Ehrhard, "Der Katholizismus und das 20 Jahrhundert," 1902, p. 168.
5. "Via Media," 1877, Vol. I, Lect. XIV, 19, pp. 354, 355.
6. Mohler, "Symbolism," London, 1843, Vol. II, p. 29.
7. "Das Wesen des katholischen Menschen," 1923, p. 54.
8. Obscura videtur ecclesia in tempore peregrinationis suae, inter multas iniquitates gemens, Ep. LV, 6, 10.
9. Sess. III, cap. 4.
10. Enarr. in Ps. CXXXVII, 4.
11. Adhuc aedificatur templum Dei (Sermo CLXIII, 3). Modo enim fabricatur domus (Enarr. in Ps. XXIX, 2, 6).
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