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Page 29
The Catholic Church then is, and always will be, _violent_ and
intransigeant when the rights of God are in question. She will be
absolutely ruthless, for example, towards heresy, for heresy affects not
personal matters on which Charity may yield, but a Divine right on which
there must be no yielding. Yet, simultaneously, she will be infinitely
kind towards the heretic, since a thousand human motives and
circumstances may come in and modify his responsibility. At a word of
repentance she will readmit his person into her treasury of souls, but
not his heresy into her treasury of wisdom; she will strike his name
eagerly and freely from her black list of the rebellious, but not his
book from the pages of her Index. She exhibits meekness towards him and
_violence_ towards his error; since he is human, but her Truth is
Divine.
It is, then, from a modern confusion of thought with regard to the
realms of the Divine and the Human that the amazing inability arises, on
the world's part, to understand the respective principles on which the
Catholic Church acts in these two and utterly separate departments. The
world considers it reasonable for a country to defend its material
possessions by the sword, but intolerant and unreasonable for the Church
to condemn, _resisting even unto blood_, principles which she considers
erroneous or false. The Church, on the other hand, urges her children
again and again to yield rather than to fight when merely material
possessions are at stake, since Charity permits and sometimes even
commands men to be content with less than their own rights, and yet
again, when a Divine truth or right is at stake, here she will resist
unfaltering and undismayed, since she cannot be "charitable" with what
is not her own; here she will _sell her cloak_ and _buy that sword_
which, when the dispute was on merely temporal matters, she thrust back
again into its sheath.
To-day[1] as Christ rides into Jerusalem we see, as in a mirror, this
Paradox made plain. _Thy King cometh to thee, meek_. Was there ever so
mean a Procession as this? Was there ever such meekness and charity? He
Who, as His personal right, is attended in heaven by a _multitude on
white horses_, now, in virtue of His Humanity, is content with a few
fishermen and a crowd of children. He to Whom, in His personal right,
the harpers and the angels make eternal music is content, since He has
been made Man for our sakes, with the discordant shoutings of this
crowd. He Who _rode on the Seraphim and came flying on the wings of the
wind_ sits on the colt of an ass. He comes, meek indeed, from the golden
streets of the Heavenly Jerusalem to the foul roads of the Earthly,
laying aside His personal rights since He is that very Fire of Charity
by which Christians relinquish theirs.
[Footnote 1: This sermon was preached on Palm-Sunday.]
But, for all that, it is _riding_ that _thy King cometh to thee_.... He
will not relinquish His inalienable claim and He will have nothing
essential left out. He has His royal escort, even though a ragged one;
He will have His spearmen, even though their spears be only of palm; He
will have His heralds to proclaim Him, however much the devout Pharisees
may be offended by their proclamation; He will ride into His own Royal
City, even though that City casts Him out, and He will have His
Coronation, even though it be with thorns. So, too, the Catholic Church
advances through the ages.
In merely human rights and personal matters again and again she will
yield up all that she has, making, it may be, but one protest for
Justice' sake and then no more. And she will urge her children to do the
same. If the world will let her have no jewels, then she will put glass
beads in her monstrance, and for marble she will use plaster, and tinsel
for gold.
But she will have her Procession and insist upon her Royalty. It may
seem as poor and as mean and as tawdry as the entrance of Christ Himself
through the royal gate; for she will yield up all that the world demands
of her, so long as her Divine Right itself remains intact. She will
issue her orders, though few be found to obey them; she will cast out
from her the rebellious who question her authority, and cleanse her
Temple Courts even though with a scourge at which men mock. She will
give up all that is merely human, if the world will have it so, and will
_resist not evil_ if it merely concerns herself. But there is one thing
which she will not renounce, one thing she will claim, even with
_violence_ and "intransigeance," and that is the Royalty with which God
Himself has crowned her.
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