He is before all things a Catholic ecclesiastic, and may well have been one of the presbyters or bishops of the churches in which the inst.i.tution of a monarchical episcopate took root.[64] The narratives peculiar to Matthew have the character rather of legendary developments than of genuine reminiscences. The historical value of these additions is _nil_. As a witness to fact, Matthew ranks below Mark, and even below Luke.[65] In particular, the chapters about the birth of Christ seem not to have the slightest historical foundation. The fict.i.tious character of the genealogy is proved by the fact that Jesus seems not to have known of His descent [from David]. The story of the virgin birth turns on a text from Isaiah. Of this part of the Gospel, Loisy says, "rien n"est plus arbitraire comme exegese, ni plus faible comme narration fictive."[66] Luke has taken more pains to compose a literary treatise than Mark or Matthew. The authorities which he follows seem to be--the source of our Mark, the so-called Matthew _logia_, and some other source or sources. But he treats his material more freely than Matthew. "The lament of Christ over the holy city, His words to the women of Jerusalem, His prayer for His executioners, His promise to the penitent thief, His last words, are very touching traits, which may be in conformity with the spirit of Jesus, but which have no traditional basis."[67] "The fict.i.tious character of the narratives of the infancy is less apparent in the Third Gospel than in the First, because the stories are much better constructed as legend, and do not resemble a _midrash_ upon Messianic prophecies. "Le merveilleux en est moins ba.n.a.l et moins enfantin. II parait cependant impossible de leur reconnaitre une plus grande valeur de fond.""[68]
The Gospel of Luke was probably written (not by a disciple of St. Paul) between 90 and 100 A.D.; but the earliest redaction, which traced the descent of Jesus from David through Joseph, has been interpolated in the interests of the later idea of a virgin birth. The first two chapters are interesting for the history of Christian beliefs, not for the history of Christ. As for the Fourth Gospel, it is enough to say that the author had nothing to do with the son of Zebedee, and that he is in no sense a biographer of Christ, but the first and greatest of the Christian mystics.[69]
The result of this drastic treatment of the sources may be realised by perusing chapter vii of Loisy"s "Les evangiles Synoptiques," The following is a brief a.n.a.lysis of this chapter, ent.i.tled "La Carriere de Jesus." Jesus was born at Nazareth about four years before the Christian era. His family were certainly pious, but none of His relatives seems to have accepted the Gospel during His lifetime. Like many others, the young Jesus was attracted by the terrifying preaching of John the Baptist, from whom He received Baptism. When John was imprisoned He at once attempted to take his place. He began to preach round the lake of Galilee, and was compelled by the persistent demands of the crowd to "work miracles." This mission only lasted a few months; but it was long enough for Jesus to enrol twelve auxiliaries, who prepared the villages of Galilee for His coming, travelling two and two through the north of Palestine. Jesus found His audience rather among the _decla.s.ses_ of Judaism than among the Puritans. The staple of His teaching was the advent of the "kingdom of G.o.d"--the sudden and speedy coming of the promised Messiah. This teaching was acceptable neither to Herod Antipas nor to the Pharisees; and their hostility obliged Jesus to fly for a short time to the Phoenician territory north of Galilee. But a conference between the Master and His disciples at Caesarea Philippi ended in a determination to visit the capital and there proclaim Jesus as the promised Messiah. As they approached Jerusalem, even the ignorant disciples were frightened at the risks they were running, but Jesus calmed their fears by promising that they should soon be set on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. "Jesus n"allait pas a Jerusalem pour y mourir."[70]
The doomed prophet made his public entry into Jerusalem as Messiah, and, as a first act of authority, cleared the temple courts by an act of violence, in which He was doubtless a.s.sisted by His disciples. For some days after this He preached daily about the coming of the kingdom, and foiled with great dexterity the traps which His enemies laid for Him.
"But the situation could only end in a miracle or a catastrophe, and it was the catastrophe which happened."[71] Jesus was arrested, after a brief scuffle between the satellites of the High Priest and the disciples; and the latter, without waiting to see the end, fled northwards towards their homes. When brought before Pilate, Jesus probably answered "Yes" to the question whether He claimed to be a king; but "la parole du Christ johannique, Mon royaume n"est pas de ce monde, n"aurait jamais pu etre dite par le Christ d"histoire." This confession led naturally to His immediate execution; after which
"on peut supposer que les soldats detacherent le corps de la croix avant le soir et le mirent dans quelque fosse commune, ou l"on jetait pele-mele les restes des supplicies. Les conditions de sepulture furent telles qu"au bout de quelques jours il aurait ete impossible de reconnaitre la depouille du Sauveur, quand meme on l"aurait cherchee."[72]
The disciples, however, had been too profoundly stirred by hope to accept defeat. None of them had seen Jesus die; and though they knew that He was dead, they hardly realised it. Besides, they were fellow-countrymen of those who had asked whether Jesus was not Elijah, or even John the Baptist, come to life again. What more natural than that Peter should see the Master one day while fishing on the lake? "The impulse once given, this belief grew by the very need which it had to strengthen itself." Christ "appeared also to the eleven," So it was that their faith brought them back to Jerusalem, and Christianity was born.
"The supernatural life of Christ in the faithful and in the Church has been clothed in an historical form, which has given birth to what we might somewhat loosely call the Christ of legend." So the Italian manifesto sums up the result of this reconstruction or denudation of the Gospel history.[73] "Such a criticism," say the authors not less frankly than truly, "does away with the possibility of finding in Christ"s teaching even the embryonic form of the Church"s later theological teaching."[74]
Readers unfamiliar with Modernist literature will probably have read the foregoing extracts with utter amazement. It seems hardly credible that such views should be propounded by Catholic priests, who claim to remain in the Catholic Church, to repeat her creeds, minister at her altars, and share her faith. What more, it may well be asked, have rationalist opponents of Christianity ever said, in their efforts to tear up the Christian religion by the roots, than we find here admitted by Catholic apologists? What is left of the object of the Church"s worship if the Christ of history was but an enthusiastic Jewish peasant whose pathetic ignorance of the forces opposed to Him led Him to the absurd enterprise of attempting a _coup d"etat_ at Jerusalem? Is not Jesus reduced by this criticism to the same level as Theudas or Judas of Galilee? and, if this is the true account, what sentiment can we feel, when we read His tragic story, but compa.s.sion tinged with contempt?
And on what principles are such liberties taken with our authorities?
What is the criterion by which it is decided that Christ said, "I am a king," but not "My kingdom is not of this world"? Why must the resurrection have been only a subjective hallucination in the minds of the disciples? To these questions there is a plain answer. The non-intervention of G.o.d in history is an axiom with the Modernists.
"L"historien," says M. Loisy, "n"a pas a s"inspirer de l"agnosticisme pour ecarter Dieu de l"histoire; il ne l"y rencontre jamais."[75] It would be more accurate to say that, whenever the meeting takes place, "the historian" gives the Other the cut direct.
But now comes in the peculiar philosophy by which the Modernists claim to rehabilitate themselves as loyal and orthodox Catholics, and to turn the flank of the rationalist position, which they have seemed to occupy themselves. The reaction against Absolutism in philosophy has long since established itself in Germany and France. In England and Scotland the battle still rages; in America the rebound has been so violent that an extreme form of anti-intellectualism is now the dominant fashion in philosophy. It would have been easy to predict--and in fact the prediction was made--that the new world-construction in terms of will and action, which disparages speculative or theoretical truth and gives the primacy to what Kant called the practical reason, would be eagerly welcomed by Christian apologists, hard-pressed by the discoveries of science and biblical criticism. Protestants, in fact, had recourse to this method of apologetic before the Modernist movement arose. The Ritschlian theology in Germany (in spite of its "static" view of revelation), and the _Symbolo-fideisme_ of Sabatier and Menegoz, have many affinities with the position of Tyrrell, Laberthonniere, and Le Roy.
It is exceedingly difficult to compress into a few pages a fair and intelligible statement of a _Weltansicht_ which affects the whole conception of reality, and which has many ramifications. There is an additional difficulty in the fact that few of the Modernists are more than amateurs in philosophy. They are quick to see the strategic possibilities of a theory which separates faith and knowledge, and declares that truths of faith can never come into collision with truths of fact, because they "belong to different orders." It suits them to follow the pragmatists in talking about "freely chosen beliefs," and "voluntary certainty "; Mr. Tyrrell even maintains that "the great ma.s.s of our beliefs are reversible, and depend for their stability on the action or permission of the will." But philosophy is for them mainly a controversial weapon. It gives them the means of justifying their position as Catholics who wish to remain loyal to their Church and her formularies, but no longer believe in the miracles which the Church has always regarded as matters of fact. Nevertheless, an attempt must be made to explain a point of view which, to the plain man, is very strange and unfamiliar.
Two words are constantly in the mouth of Modernist controversialists in speaking of their opponents. The adherents of the traditional theology are "intellectualists," and their conception of reality is "static." The meaning of the latter charge may perhaps be best explained from Laberthonniere"s brilliantly written essay, "Le Realisme Chretien et l"Idealisme Grec." The Greeks, he says, were insatiable in their desire to _see_, like children. Blessedness, for them, consisted in a complete vision of reality; and, since thought is the highest kind of vision, salvation was conceived of by them as the unbroken contemplation of the perfectly true, good, and beautiful. Hence arose the philosophy of "concepts"; they idealised nature by considering it _sub specie aeternitatis_. Reality resided in the unchanging ideas; the mutable, the particular, the individual was for them an embarra.s.sment, a "scandal of thought." The sage always tries to escape from the moving world of becoming into the static world of being. But an ideal world, so conceived, can only be an abstraction, an impoverishment of reality.
Such an idealism gives us neither a science of origins nor a science of ends. Greek wisdom sought eternity and forgot time; it sought that which never dies, and found that which never lives.
"An abstract doctrine, like that of Greek philosophy or of Spinoza, consists always in subst.i.tuting for reality, by simplification, ideas or concepts which they think statically in their logical relations, regarding them at the same time as adequate representations and as essences immovably defined."[76]
h.e.l.lenised Christianity, proceeds our critic, regarded the incarnation statically, as a fact in past history. But the real Christ is an object of faith. "He introduces into us the principles of that which we ought to be. That which He reveals, He makes in revealing it." In other words, Christ, and the G.o.d whom He reveals, are a power or force rather than a fact. "A G.o.d who has nothing to become has nothing to do." G.o.d is not the idea of ideas, but the being of beings and the life of our life. He is not a supreme notion, but a supreme life and an immanent action. He is not the "unmoved mover," but He is in the movement itself as its principle and end. While the Greeks conceived the world _sub specie aeternitatis_, G.o.d is conceived by modern thought _sub specie temporis_.
G.o.d"s eternity is not a sort of arrested time in which there is no more life; it is, on the contrary, the maximum of life.
It is plain that we have here a one-sided emphasis on the dynamic aspect of reality no less fatal to sound philosophy than the exclusively static view which has been falsely attributed to the Greeks. A little clear thinking ought to be enough to convince anyone that the two aspects of reality which the Greeks called sthasist and khinesist are correlative and necessary to each other. A G.o.d who is merely the principle of movement and change is an absurdity. Time is always hurling its own products into nothingness. Unless there is a being who can say, "I am the Lord, I change not," the "sons of Jacob" cannot flatter themselves that they are "not consumed."[77] But Laberthonniere and his friends are not much concerned with the ultimate problems of metaphysics; what they desire is to shake themselves free from "brute facts" in the past, to be at liberty to deny them as facts, while retaining them as representative ideas of faith. If reality is defined to consist only in life and action, it is a meaningless abstraction to snip off a moment in the process, and ask, "Did it ever really take place?" This awkward question may therefore be ignored as meaningless and irrelevant, except from the "abstract" standpoint of physical science.
The crusade against "intellectualism" serves the same end. M. Le Roy and the other Christian pragmatists have returned to the Nominalism of Duns Scotus. The following words of Fra.s.sen, one of Scotus" disciples, might serve as a motto for the whole school:
"Theologia nostra non est scientia. Nullatenus speculativa est, sed simpliciter practica. Theologiae obiectum non est speculabile, sed operabile. Quidquid in Deo est practic.u.m est respectu nostri."
M. Le Roy also seems to know only these two categories. Whatever is not "practical"--having an immediate and obvious bearing on conduct--is stigmatised as "theoretical" or "speculative." But the whole field of scientific study lies outside this cla.s.sification, which pretends to be exhaustive. Science has no "practical" aim, in the narrow sense of that which may serve as a guide to moral action; nor does it deal with "theoretical" or "speculative" ideas, except provisionally, until they can be verified. The aim of science is to determine the laws which prevail in the physical universe; and its motive is that purely disinterested curiosity which is such an embarra.s.sing phenomenon to pragmatists. And since the faith which lies behind natural science is at least as strong as any other faith now active in the world, it is useless to frame categories in such a way as to exclude the question, "Did this or that occurrence, which is presented as an event in the physical order, actually happen, or not?" The question has a very definite meaning for the man of science, as it has for the man in the street. To call it "theoretical" is ridiculous.
What M. Le Roy means by "interpreting dogmas in the language of practical action" may be gathered from his own ill.u.s.trations. The dogma, "G.o.d is our Father," does not define a "theoretical relation" between Him and us. It signifies that we are to behave to Him as sons behave to their father. "G.o.d is personal" means that we are to behave to Him as if He were a human person. "Jesus is risen" means that we are to think of Him as if He were our contemporary. The dogma of the Real Presence means that we ought to have, in the presence of the consecrated Host, the same feelings which we should have had in the presence of the visible Christ.
"Let the dogmas be interpreted in this way, and no one will dispute them."[78]
The same treatment of dogma is advocated in Mr. Tyrrell"s very able book "Lex Orandi." The test of truth for a dogma is not its correspondence with phenomenal fact, but its "prayer-value." This writer, at any rate before his suspension by the Society of Jesus, to which he belonged, is less subversive in his treatment of history than the French critics whom we have quoted. Although in apologetics the criterion for the acceptance of dogmas must, he thinks, be a moral and practical one, he sometimes speaks as if the "prayer-value" of an ostensibly historical proposition carried with it the necessity of its truth as matter of fact.
"Between the inward and the outward, the world of reality and the world of appearances, the relation is not merely one of symbolic correspondence. The distinction that is demanded by the dualism of our mind implies and presupposes a causal and dynamic unity of the two. We should look upon the outward world as being an effectual symbol of the inward, in consequence of its natural and causal connection therewith."[79]
But Mr. Tyrrell does not seem to mean all that these sentences might imply. He speaks repeatedly, in the "Lex Orandi," of the "will-world" as the only real world.
"The will (he says) cannot make that true which in itself is not true. But it can make that a fact relatively to our mind and action which is not a fact relative to our understanding.... It rests with each of us by an act of will to create the sort of world to which we shall accommodate our thought and action. ....It does not follow that harmony of faith with the truths of reason and facts of experience is the best or essential condition of its credibility....
Abstractions (he refers to the world as known to science) are simple only because they are barren forms created by the mind itself. Faith and doubt have a common element in the deep sense of the insufficiency of the human mind to grasp ultimate truths.... The world given to our outward senses is shadowy and dreamy, except so far as we ascribe to it some of the characteristics of will and spirit.... The world of appearance is simply subordinate to the real world of our will and affections."
Because the "abstract" sciences cannot and do not attempt to reach ultimate truth, it is a.s.sumed that they are altogether "barren forms,"
This is the error of much Oriental mysticism, which denies all value to what it regards as the lower categories. In his later writings Mr.
Tyrrell objects to being cla.s.sed with the American and English pragmatists--the school of Mr. William James. But the doctrine of these pa.s.sages is ultra-pragmatist. The will, which is illegitimately stretched to include feeling,[80] is treated as the creator as well as the discerner of reality. The "world of appearance" is plastic in its grasp. It is this metaphysical pragmatism which is really serviceable to Modernism. If the categories of the understanding can be so disparaged as to be allowed no independent truth, value, or importance, all collisions between faith and fact may be avoided by discrediting in advance any conclusions at which science may arrive. a.s.sertions about "brute fact" which are scientifically false may thus not be untrue when taken out of the scientific plane, because outside that plane they are harmless word-pictures, soap-bubbles blown off by the poetical creativeness of faith Any a.s.sertion about fact which commends itself to the will and affections and which is proved by experience to furnish nutriment to the spiritual life, may be adhered to without scruple. It is not only useful, but true, in the only sense in which truth can be predicated of anything in the higher sphere.
The obvious criticism on this notion of religious truth as purely moral and practical is that it is itself abstract and one-sided. The universe as it appears to discursive thought, with its vast system of seemingly uniform laws, which operate without much consideration for our wishes or feelings, must be at least an image of the real universe. We cannot accept the irreconcilable dualism between the will-world and the world of phenomena which the philosophical Modernists a.s.sume. The dualism, or rather the contradiction, is not in the nature of things, nor in the const.i.tution of our minds, but in the consciousness of the unhappy men who are trying to combine two wholly incompatible theories. On the critical side they are pure rationalists, much as they dislike the name.
They claim, as we have seen, to have advanced to philosophy through criticism. But the Modernist critics start with very well-defined presuppositions. They ridicule the notion that "G.o.d is a personage in history"; they a.s.sume that for the historian "He cannot be found anywhere"; that He is as though He did not exist. On the strength of this presupposition, and for no other reason, they proceed to rule out, without further investigation, all alleged instances of divine intervention in history. Unhampered by any of the misgivings which predispose the ordinary believer to conservatism, they follow the rationalist argument to its logical conclusions with startling ruthlessness. And then, when the whole edifice of historical religion seems to have been overthrown to the very foundations, they turn round suddenly and say that all their critical labours mean nothing for faith, and that we may go on repeating the old formulas as if nothing had happened. The Modernists pour scorn on the scholastic "faculty-psychology," which resolves human personality into a syndicate of partially independent agents; but, in truth, their attempt to blow hot and cold with the same mouth seems to have involved them in a more disastrous self-disruption than has been witnessed in the history of thought since the fall of the Nominalists. In a sceptical and disillusioned age their disparagement of "intellectualism" or rather of discursive thought in all its operations, might find a response. But in the twentieth century the science which, as critics, they follow so unswervingly will not submit to be bowed out of the room as soon as matters of faith come into question. Our contemporaries believe that matters of fact are important, and they insist, with ever-increasing emphasis, that they shall not be called upon to believe, as part of their religious faith, anything which as a matter of fact, is not true.
The Modernist critic, when pressed on this side, says that it is natural for faith to represent its ideas in the form of historical facts, and that it is this inevitable tendency which causes the difficulties between religion and science. A sane criticism will allow that this is very largely true, but will not, we are convinced, be constrained to believe with M. Loisy that the historical original of the Christian Redeemer was the poor deluded enthusiast whom he portrays in "Les evangiles Synoptiques."
However this may be--and it must remain a matter of opinion--the very serious question arises, whether it is really natural for faith to represent its ideas in the form of historical facts when it knows that these facts have no historical basis. The writers with whom we are dealing evidently think it is natural and inevitable, and we must a.s.sume that they speak from their own spiritual experience. But this state of mind does not seem to be a very common one. Those who believe in the divinity of Christ, but not in His supernatural birth and bodily resurrection, do not, as a rule, make those miracles the subject of their meditations, but find their spiritual sustenance in communion with the "Christ who is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. Those who regard Jesus only as a prophet sent by G.o.d to reveal the Father, generally pray only to the G.o.d whom He revealed, and cherish the memory of Jesus with no other feelings than supreme grat.i.tude and veneration.
Those, lastly, who worship in G.o.d only the Great Unknown who makes for righteousness, find myths and anthropomorphic symbols merely disturbing in such devotions as they are still able to practise. In dealing with convinced Voluntarists it is perhaps not disrespectful to suggest that the difficult position in which they find themselves has produced a peculiar activity of the will, such as is seldom found under normal conditions.
We pa.s.s to the position of the Modernists in the Roman Catholic Church.
It is well known that the advisers of Pius X have committed the Papacy to a wholesale condemnation of the new movement. The reasons for this condemnation are thus summed up by a distinguished ecclesiastic of that Church[81]:
"Why has the Pope condemned the Modernists? (1) Because the Modernists have denied that the divine facts related in the Gospel are historically true. (2) Because they have denied that Christ for most of His life knew that He was G.o.d, and that He ever knew that He was the Saviour of the world. (3) Because they have denied the divine sanction and the perpetuity of the great dogmas which enter into the Christian creed. (4) Because they have denied that Christ Himself personally ever founded the Church or inst.i.tuted the Sacraments. (5) Because they deny and subvert the divine const.i.tution of the Church, by teaching that the Pope and the bishops derive their powers, not directly from Christ and His Apostles, but from the Christian people."
The official condemnation is contained in two doc.u.ments--the decree of the Holy Inquisition, "Lamentabili sane exitu," July 3, 1907, and the Encyclical, "Pascendi dominici gregis," September 8, 1907. These p.r.o.nouncements are intended for Catholics; and their tone is that of authoritative denunciation rather than of argument. In the main, the summary which they give of Modernist doctrines is as fair as could be expected from a judge who is pa.s.sing sentence; but the papal theologians have not always resisted the temptation to arouse prejudice by misrepresenting the views which they condemn. We have not s.p.a.ce to a.n.a.lyse these doc.u.ments, nor is it necessary to do so. It will be more to the purpose to consider whether, in spite of their official condemnation, the Modernists are likely in the future to make good their footing in the Roman Church.
Even before the Encyclical the Modernists had used very bold language about the authority of the Church.
"The visible Church (writes Mr. Tyrrell in his "Much-abused Letter") is but a means, a way, a creature, to be used where it helps, to be left where it hinders.... Who have taught us that the consensus of theologians cannot err, but the theologians themselves? Mortal, fallible, ignorant men like ourselves! ... Their present domination is but a pa.s.sing episode in the Church"s history.... May not history repeat itself? [as in the transition from Judaism to Christianity].
Is G.o.d"s arm shortened that He should not again out of the very stones raise up seed to Abraham? May not Catholicism, like Judaism, have to die in order that it may live again in a greater and grander form? Has not every organism got its limits of development, after which it must decay and be content to survive in its progeny? Wine-skins stretch, but only within measure; for there comes at last a bursting-point when new ones must be provided."
In a note he explains: "The Church of the Catacombs became the Church of the Vatican; who can tell what the Church of the Vatican may not turn into?"
It is thus on a very elastic theory of development that the Modernists rely. "The differences between the larval and final stages of many an insect are often far greater than those which separate kind from kind."
And so this Proteus of a Church, which has changed its form so completely since the Gospel was first preached in the subterranean galleries of Rome, may undergo another equally startling metamorphosis and come to believe in a G.o.d who never intervenes in history. We may here remind our readers of Newman"s tests of true development, and mark the enormous difference.
Mr. Tyrrell"s "Much-abused Letter" reaches, perhaps, the high-water mark of Modernist claims. Not all the writers whom we have quoted would view with complacency the prospect of the Catholic Church dying to live again, or being content to live only in its progeny. The proverb about the new wine-skins is one of sinister augury in such a connection. If the Catholic Church is really in such an advanced stage of decay that it must die before it can live, why do those who grasp the situation wish to keep it alive? Are they not precisely pouring their new wine into old bottles? Mr. Tyrrell himself draws the parallel with Judaism in the first century. Paul, he says, "did not feel that he had broken with Judaism," But the Synagogue did feel that he had done so, and history proved that the Synagogue was right.
Development, however great the changes which it exhibits, can only follow certain laws; and the development of the Church of Rome has steadily followed a direction opposite to that which the Modernists demand that it shall take. Newman might plausibly claim that the doctrines of purgatory and of the papal supremacy are logically involved in the early claims of the Roman Church. The claim is true at least in this sense, that, given a political Church organised as an autocracy, these useful doctrines were sure, in the interests of the government, to be promulgated sooner or later. But there is not the slightest reason to suppose that the next development will be in the direction of that peculiar kind of Liberalism favoured by the Modernists. It is difficult to see how the Vatican could even meet the reformers half-way without making ruinous concessions." This supernatural mechanism," M. Loisy says in his last book, "Modernism tends to ruin completely," Just so; but the Roman Church lives entirely on the faith in supernatural mechanism. Her sacramental and sacerdotal system is based on supernatural mechanism--on divine interventions in the physical world conditioned by human agency; her theology and books of devotion are full of supernatural mechanism; the lives of her saints, her relics and holy places, the whole literature of Catholic mysticism, the living piety and devotion of the faithful, wherever it is still to be found, are based entirely on that very theory of supernaturalistic dualism which the Modernist, when he acts as critic, begins by ruling out as devoid of any historical or scientific actuality. The attractiveness of Catholicism as a cult depends almost wholly on its frank admission of the miraculous as a matter of daily occurrence. To rationalise even contemporary history as M. Loisy has rationalised the Gospels would be suicide for Catholicism.
It is tempting to give a concrete instance by way of ill.u.s.trating the impa.s.sable chasm which divides Catholicism as a working system from the academic scheme of transformation which we have been considering.
"The French Catholics (writes the _Times_ correspondent in Paris on June 25, 1908) are awaiting with concern the report of a special commission on a mysterious affair known as the Miraculous Hailstones of Remiremont. On Sunday, May 26, 1907, during a violent storm that swept over that region of the Vosges, among the great quant.i.ty of hailstones that fell at the time a certain number were found split in two. On the inner face of each of the halves, according to the local papers that appeared the next day, was the image of the Madonna venerated at Remiremont and known as Notre Dame du Tresor. The local Catholics regarded it as a reply to the munic.i.p.al council"s veto of the procession in honour of the Virgin. So many people testified to having seen the miraculous hailstones that the bishop of Saint-Die inst.i.tuted an inquiry; 107 men, women, and children were heard by the parish priest, and certain well-known men of science [names given] were consulted. The report has just been published in the _Semaine Religieuse_, and concludes in favour of the absolute authenticity of the fact under inquiry. ....The last word rests with the bishop, who will decide according to the conclusions of the report of the special commission."
This is Catholicism in practice. Those who think to reform it by their contention that supernatural interventions can never be matters of fact, are liable to the reproach which they most dislike--that of scholastic intellectualism, and neglect of concrete experience.
This denial of the supernatural as a factor in the physical world seems to us alone sufficient to make the position of the Modernists in the Roman Church untenable. That form of Christianity stands or falls with belief in miracles. It has always sought to bring the divine into human life by intercalating acts of G.o.d among facts of nature. Its whole sacred literature, as we have said, is penetrated through and through by the belief that G.o.d continually intervenes to change the course of events. What would become of the cult of Mary and the saints if it were recognised that G.o.d does not so interfere, and that the saints, if criticism allows that they ever existed, can do nothing by their intercessions to avert calamity or bring blessing? The Modernist priest, it appears, can still say "Ora pro n.o.bis" to a Mary whose biography he believes to be purely mythical. At any rate, he can tell his consultants with a good conscience that if they pray to Mary for grace they will receive it. But what is the good of this make-believe? And, if it is part of a transaction in which the worshipper pays money for a.s.sistance which he believes to be miraculous and only obtainable through the good offices of the Church, is it even morally honest? The worshipper may be helped by his subjective conviction that his cheque on the treasury of merit has been honoured; but if, apart from the natural effects of suggestion, nothing has been given him but a mere _placebo_, is the sacerdotal office one which an honourable man would wish to fill?
We have no wish whatever to make any imputation against the motives of the brave men who have withstood the thunders of the Vatican, and who in some cases have been professionally ruined by their courageous avowal of their opinions. Perhaps none but a Catholic priest can understand how great the sacrifice is when one in his position breaks away from the authority of those who speak in the name of the Church, and deliberately incurs the charge, still so terrible in Catholic ears, of being a heretic and a teacher of heresy. Not one man in twenty would dare to face the storm of obloquy, hatred, and calumny which is always ready to fall on the head of a heretical priest. The Encyclical indicates the measures which are to be taken officially against Modernists. Pius X ordains that all the young professors suspected of Modernism are to be driven from their chairs in the seminaries; that infected books are to be condemned indiscriminately, even though they may have received an _imprimatur_; that a committee of censors is to be established in every diocese for the revision of books; that meetings of liberal priests or laymen are to be forbidden; that every diocese is to have a vigilance committee to discover and inform against Modernists; and that young clerical Modernists are to be put "in the lowest places," and held up to the contempt of their more orthodox or obsequious comrades. But this persecution is as nothing compared with the crushing condemnation with which the religious world, which is his only world, visits this kind of contumacy; the loss of friendships, the grief and shame of loved relatives, and the haunting dread that an authority so august as that which has condemned him cannot have spoken in vain. a.s.suredly all lovers of truth must do homage to the courage and self-sacrifice of these men.
The doubt which may be reasonably felt and expressed as to the consistency of their att.i.tude reflects no discredit on them personally.
Nevertheless, the alternative must be faced, that a "modernised"
Catholicism must either descend to deliberate quackery, or proclaim that the bank from which the main part of her revenues is derived has stopped payment.
What will be the end of the struggle, and in what condition will it leave the greatest Church in Christendom? There are some who think that the Church will grow tired of the att.i.tude of Canute, and will retreat to the chair which Modernism proffers, well above high-water mark. But the policy of Rome has never been concession, but repression, even at the cost of alienating large bodies of her supporters; and we believe that in the present instance, as on former occasions, the Vatican will continue to proscribe Modernism until the movement within her body is crushed. She can hardly do otherwise, for the alternative offered is not a gradual reform of her dogmas, but a sweeping revolution. This we have made abundantly clear by quotations from the Modernists themselves. If the Vatican once proclaimed that such views about supernaturalism as those which we have quoted are permissible, a deadly wound would be inflicted on the faith of simple Catholics all over the world. The Vicar of Christ would seem to them to have apostatised. The whole machinery of piety, as practised in Catholic countries, would be thrown out of gear.