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Page 6
We have considered how the key to the Paradoxes of the Gospel and the
key to the Paradoxes of Catholicism is one and the same--that the Life
that produces them is at once Divine and Human. Let us go on to consider
how this resolves those of Catholicism, especially those charged against
us by our adversaries.
For we live in a day when Catholicism is no longer considered by
intelligent men to be too evidently absurd to be argued with. Definite
reasons are given by those who stand outside our borders for the
attitude they maintain; definite accusations are made which must either
be allowed or refuted.
Now those who stand without the walls of the City of Peace know nothing,
it is true, of the life that its citizens lead within, nothing of the
harmony and consolation that Catholicism alone can give. Yet of certain
points, it may be, in the large outlines of that city against the sky,
of the place it occupies in the world, of its wide effect upon human
life in general, it may very well be that these detached observers may
know more than the devout who dwell at peace within. Let us, then,
consider their reflections not necessarily as wholly false; it may be
that they have caught glimpses which we have missed and relations which
either we take too much for granted or have failed altogether to see. It
may be that these accusations will turn out to be our credentials in
disguise.
I. Every world-religion, we are told, worthy of the name has as its
principal object and its chief claim to consideration its establishing
or its fostering of peace among men. Supremely this was so in the first
days of Christianity. It was this that its great prophet predicted of
its work when its Divine Founder should come on earth. Nature shall
recover its lost harmony and the dissensions of men shall cease when He,
the Prince of Peace, shall approach. The very beasts shall lie down
together in amity, _the lion and the lamb_ and _the leopard and the
kid_. Further, it was the Message of Peace that the angels proclaimed
over His cradle in Bethlehem; it was the Gift of Peace which He Himself
promised to His disciples; it was the _Peace of God which passeth
knowledge_ to which the great Apostle commended his converts. This then,
we are told, is of the very essence of Christianity; this is the supreme
benediction on the peacemakers that _they shall be called the children
of God_.
Yet, when we turn to Catholicism, we are bidden to see in it not a
gatherer but a scatterer, not the daughter of peace but the mother of
disunion. Is there a single tormented country in Europe to-day, it is
rhetorically demanded, that does not owe at least part of its misery to
the claims of Catholicism? What is it but Catholicism that lies at the
heart of the divided allegiance of France, of the miseries of Portugal,
and of the dissensions of Italy? Look back through history and you will
find the same tale everywhere. What was it that disturbed the politics
of England so often from the twelfth to the fifteenth century, and tore
her in two in the sixteenth, but the determined resistance of an
adolescent nation to the tyranny of Rome? What lay behind the religious
wars of Europe, behind the fires of Smithfield, the rack of Elizabeth,
and the blood of St. Bartholomew's Day but this intolerant and
intolerable religion which would come to no terms even with the most
reasonable of its adversaries? It is impossible, of course, altogether
to apportion blame, to say that in each several instance it was the
Catholic that was the aggressor; but at least it is true to say that it
was Catholic principles that were the occasion and Catholic claims the
unhappy cause of all this incalculable flood of human misery.
How singularly unlike, then, we are told, is this religion of
dissension to the religion of Jesus Christ, of all these dogmatic and
disciplinary claims and assertions to the meekness of the Poor Man of
Nazareth! If true Christianity is anywhere in the world to-day it is not
among such as these that it lies hid; rather it must be sought among the
gentle humanitarians of our own and every country--men who strive for
peace at all cost, men whose principal virtues are those of toleration
and charity, men who, if any, have earned the beatitude of being _called
the children of God_.
II. We turn to the Life of Jesus Christ from the Life of Catholicism,
and at first indeed it does seem as if the contrast were justified. We
cannot deny our critic's charges; every one of his historical assertions
is true: it is indeed true that Catholicism has been the occasion of
more bloodshedding than has any of the ambitions or jealousies of man.
And it is, further, true that Jesus Christ pronounced this benediction;
that He bade His followers seek after peace, and that He commended them,
in the very climax of His exaltation, to the Peace which He alone could
bestow.
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