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Page 5
His theory too, then, becomes less confident. If she is Human, why is
she so evidently Divine? If she is Divine, whence comes her obvious
Humanity? So years ago men asked, If Christ be God, how could He be
weary by the wayside and die upon the Cross? So men ask now, If Christ
be Man, how could He cast out devils and rise from the dead?
II. We come back, then, to the Catholic answer. Treat the Catholic
Church as Divine only and you will stumble over her scandals, her
failures, and her shortcomings. Treat her as Human only and you will be
silenced by her miracles, her sanctity, and her eternal resurrections.
(i) Of course the Catholic Church is Human. She consists of fallible
men, and her Humanity is not even safeguarded as was that of Christ
against the incursions of sin. Always, therefore, there have been
scandals, and always will be. Popes may betray their trust, in all human
matters; priests their flocks; laymen their faith. No man is secure.
And, again, since she is human it is perfectly true that she has
profited by human circumstances for the increase of her power.
Undoubtedly it was the existence of the Roman Empire, with its roads,
its rapid means of transit, and its organization, that made possible the
swift propagation of the Gospel in the first centuries. Undoubtedly it
was the empty throne of Caesar and the prestige of Rome that developed
the world's acceptance of the authority of Peter's Chair. Undoubtedly
it was the divisions of Europe that cemented the Church's unity and led
men to look to a Supreme Authority that might compose their differences.
There is scarcely an opening in human affairs into which she has not
plunged; hardly an opportunity she has missed. Human affairs, human sins
and weaknesses as well as human virtues, have all contributed to her
power. So grows a tree, even in uncongenial soil. The rocks that impede
the roots later become their support; the rich soil, waiting for an
occupant, has been drawn up into the life of the leaves; the very winds
that imperilled the young sapling have developed too its power of
resistance. Yet these things do not make the tree.
(ii) For her Humanity, though it is the body in which her Divinity
dwells, does not create that Divinity. Certainly human circumstances
have developed her, yet what but Divine Providence ordered and developed
those human circumstances? What but that same power, which indwells in
the Church, dwelt without her too and caused her to take root at that
time and in that place which most favored her growth? Certainly she is
Human. It may well be that her rulers have contradicted one another in
human matters--in science, in policy, and in discipline; but how is it,
then, that they have not contradicted one another in matters that are
Divine? Granted that one Pope has reversed the policy of his
predecessor, then what has saved him from reversing his theology also?
Certainly there have been appalling scandals, outrageous sinners,
blaspheming apostates--but what of her saints?
And, above all, she gives proof of her Divinity by that very sign to
which Christ Himself pointed as a proof of His own. Granted that she
_dies daily_--that her cause fails in this century and in that country;
that her science is discredited in this generation and her active
morality in that and her ideals in a third--how comes it that she also
rises daily from the dead; that her old symbols rise again from their
ruins; that her virtues are acclaimed by the children of the men who
renounced her; that her bells and her music sound again where once her
churches and houses were laid waste?
Here, then, is the Catholic answer and it is this alone that makes sense
of history, as it is Catholic doctrine which alone makes sense of the
Gospel record. The answer is identical in both cases alike, and it is
this--that the only explanation of the phenomena of the Gospels and of
Church history is that the Life which produces them is both Human and
Divine.
I
PEACE AND WAR
_Blessed are the peacemakers; for they shall be called the
children of God._--MATT. V. 9.
_Do not think that I am come to send peace on earth; I
came not to send peace but the sword._--MATT. X. 34.
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