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Page 28
Here, then, is the Paradox, and here are two characteristics of the
Catholic Church: that she is at once too meek and too self-assertive,
too gentle and too violent. It is a paradox exactly echoed by our Divine
Lord Himself, Who in the Upper Chamber bade His disciples who _had no
sword_ to _sell their cloaks and buy them_, and Who yet, in the garden
of Gethsemane, commanded the one disciple who had taken Him at His word
to _put up the sword into its sheath_, telling him that _they who took
the sword should perish by it_. It is echoed yet again in His action,
first in taking the scourge into His own Hand, in the temple courts, and
then in baring His shoulders to that same scourge in the hands of
others. How, then, is this Paradox to be reconciled?
II. The Church, let us remind ourselves again, is both Human and Divine.
(i) She consists of human persons, and those persons are attached both
to one another and to the world outside by a perfectly balanced system
of human rights known as the Law of Justice. This Law of Justice, though
coming indeed from God, is, in a sense, natural and human; it exists to
some extent in all societies, as well as being closely defined and
worked out in the Old Law given on Sinai. It is a Law which men could
have worked out, at any rate in its main principles, by the light of
reason only, unaided by Revelation, and it is a Law, further, so
fundamental that no Revelation could conceivably ever outrage or set it
aside.
At the coming of Christ into the world, however, Supernatural Charity
came with Him. The Law of Justice still remained; men still had their
rights on which they might insist, still had their rights which no
Christian may refuse to recognize. But such was the torrent of Divine
generosity which Christ exhibited, so overwhelming was the Vision which
He revealed of the supernatural charity of God towards men, that a set
of ideals sprang into life such as the world had never dreamed of; more,
Charity came with such power that her commands actually overruled in
many instances the feeble claims of Justice, so that she bade men
henceforward to forgive, for example, not merely according to Justice,
but according to her own Divine nature, to _forgive unto seventy times
seven_, to give _good measure, heaped up and running over_, and not the
bare minimum which men had merely earned.
It was from this advent of Charity, then, that all these essentially
Christian virtues of generosity and meekness and self-sacrifice sprang
which Nietsche condemned as hostile to material progress.
For, from henceforth, if _a man take thy coat, let him take thy cloak
also; if he will compel thee to go with him one mile, go two; if he
strike thee on one cheek, turn to him the other also_. The Law of
Natural justice is transcended and the Law of Charity and Sacrifice
reigns instead. _Resist not evil_; do not insist always, that is to say,
on your natural rights; give men more than their due, and be yourself
content with less. _Learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly of heart, and
find rest to your souls. Forgive one another your trespasses_ with the
same generous charity with which God has forgiven and will forgive you
yours. _Judge not and you shall not be judged._ Do not, in personal
matters, insist upon bare justice for yourself, but act on that scale
and by those principles by which God Himself has dealt with you.
Meekness, then, is undoubtedly a Christian virtue. Sometimes it is
obligatory, sometimes it is but a Counsel of Perfection; it stands, in
any case, high among those ideals which it has been the glory of
Christianity to create.
(ii) But there are other elements in life besides the human and the
natural, beyond those personal rights and claims which a Christian may,
if he is aiming at perfection, set aside out of charity. The Church is
Divine as well as Human.
For the Church has entrusted to her, besides the rights of men, which
may be sacrificed by their possessors, the rights and claims of God,
which none but He can set aside. He has given into her keeping, for
example, a Revelation of truths and principles which, springing out of
His own Nature or of His Will, are as immutable and eternal as Himself.
And it is precisely in defence of these truths and principles that the
Church exhibits that which the world calls _intransigeance_ and Jesus
Christ _violence_.
Here, for example, is the right of a baptized Catholic child to be
educated in his religion, or rather, the right of God Himself to teach
that child in the manner He has ordained. Here is the revealed truth
that marriage is indissoluble; here that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.
Now these are not human rights or opinions at all--rights and opinions
which men, urged by charity or humility, can set aside or waive in the
face of opposition. They rest on an entirely different basis; they are,
so to speak, the inalienable possessions of God; and it would neither be
charity nor humility, but sheer treachery, for the Church to exhibit
meekness or pliancy in matters such as these, given to her as they are,
not to dispose of, but to guard intact. On the contrary here, exactly,
comes the command, _He that hath not, let him sell his cloak and buy a
sword,_, for here comes the line between the Divine and the Human; let
all personal possessions go, all merely natural rights and claims be
yielded, and let a sword take their place. For here is a matter that
must be _resisted, even unto blood_.
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