THE CHURCH AND MODERN IDEAS

New Zealand Tablet, 4 October 1906, Page 11

THE CHURCH AND MODERN IDEAS

(Bl'v-HIS GItACE THE ARCHBISHOP OF WELLINGTON.)

Most of what goes by - the name of ' ModernIdeas ' may .be condensed into the well-known formula dating from the French Revolution, and to-day inscribed with 'bitter irony, alas ! on most public buildings in France : Liberty, ecjuaH-ty, and fraternity. Now it can be lrrefragably proved (1) that the ideas of liberty, equality, and fraternity are by no means irreconcilable with Christian dogmas, nay, that they were brought into the world by the Church'; (2) that they cannot subsist without the Church

I. (1) Liberty, is a magic word, It stirs the soul to its -deepest depths ! Ail men thrill at its name all men respond to its appeal. So proud is man of his liberty that he prizes no good, unless he has liberty prior to it. So zealous is he of it that he will not lose a particle of it, and he regards any attempt against his liberty as an attempt against himself And he is right; for it is liberty that enables -him to put forth all his energies, and imparts to h-im his strength, greatness, and moral value

Now on the first appearance of the Church in the world these sentiments of liberty so human, so deeply rooted in our inmost nature, were unknown First there was in regard to the bulk of mankind, no individual liberty, the most elementary and indispensable °p *- ' u W .r lch consists in- nian having the enjoyment of his 'body, person, and life ; in his having the right io .possess the fruits of his labor, to found a family to make a home. In the heathen world, despite its' great advance in civilisation, mankind were divided into two classes : on the one side a few millions of freemen, on the other hundreds of millions of slaves Ami this division was held to be a law of nature' It was nature,' said Aristotle, ' that, with a view of preservation, made certain beings to command, and otto to obey. It willed that the being endowed with foresight should command as a master, and that the being, capable, by its bodily faculties to execute orders, should obey as a slave.' But Jesus Christ came upon earth and said : ' The truth shall make you free.' (John viii., 32); and, on the strength ot these words, the Church broke off the fetters of slaves and restored to them their human liberty

Next, there was no political liberty, because it s-upposes equality, and equality was as much unknown as liberty ; as we shall shortly see. Again there was no religious liberty. The State, whether in the lorra of a republic or an empire, was the arbiter of the conscience and the destinies of mankind, the absolute maste r of badies and souls But Qne d utteied these pregnant words : ' Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things ihL ale ?° ds ; (Luke xx ' 25 >- The c ' hurc h took up !mt e tv W °f? S +t od Ca ,. Use ? £ em J° Penetrate and leaven society, at the cost of the death of myriads of her fibirf rr v n; iH fOr 'r. aft , cr + a11 ' J f. was to establish- religious liberty, the liberty to believe and worship according to conscience, and not according to Caesar's behests thJ rK 1 ?; °*. n } a . rty £ s . ? hed their bIood ; Henceforth the Chuich and the State were distinct ; obeying Kw T' Tf S , not identic with obeying God. Thanks to* Ohrist thanks to His Church, human conscience was need irom

The Yoke of Governments. But if the Church liberated human conscience from me yoke of Governments, was it in order to bend it under another yoke, to hold it captive under its own domination ? No. Here we touch the grave and irri+K- ?g? g S' ues^? n JP £ lib <*ty of conscience— the liberty to think the liberty to act. No question in our day has raised such clamor and hatred against the Church this. Let us attempt its solution, in the light of reason and history, as 'briefly as possible, but also as completely as possible, on account of its import-

Hits solution, it seems, . will not -be hard to find if we make a necessary distinction^between liberty and right. God in creating man gave- to 'him the sublime and kmgly privilege of liberty. Man is free : that is a fact. He can choose between truth and falsehood, good and evil. ~" But does it follow that he . can determine himself indifferently, according to the whim of .- ,the < x moment, either to truth or falsehood,, good or evil? By ,no means ; if he has .the liberty 'to do so, -he ?r a T™ ot t he £ eht " He CAN Physically, 'but morally he ,?y / *' 9 ur reas on, indeed, informs lis that our liberty of action has necessary limitations, which are honesty, morality, the liberty of others, which we have no right to infringe ; which, are, in a word, • tho limits of the rights of God and the v rights of man But as our reason Ms fallible, and bur. will weak, society comes to our> help and takes its precautions against them by putting necessary barriers to our liberty, which prevent its abuse and keen it within the bounds of right. Thus civil society toy its code of laws puts salutary and indispensable restrictions 'to our liberty, as, for instance, when it forbids- us to excite others to debauchery, or rebellion, to -desertion or provocation to desertion, etc. Nor does the rel ligious society, called -the Church, proceed otherwise when she says to us : You ought to do that because it is good, you ought to avoid this because it is bad. By enacting these principles of -morality she is only conforming to the essential laws of reason-, she points out where good is ; she regulates and directs; she does not destroy our liberty of action. It is just the same with the liberty of thought We have radically the liberty of . remaining -undecided and wavering between error and truth ; nay, more we have the liberty to prefer error to truth. But we have not the right to do so, and here, too our reason protests and cries out that our liberty dishonors itself when it does not choose what it knows to be true, and that no interest, however sacred, and lawful, can allow man to sacrifice truth to error There is such an adaptation of our intellect t<F the truth, such an equation between reason and truth that we are shocked when we perceive a disjunction between these two terms. Hence it happens that- in ordinary life we maintain even trivial things which we" think true, with an obstinacy and an intolerance which will not give way ; so true it is that we feel that truth has imprescriptible rights and is unyielding. Hence it has been aptly said : ' Error has " no claims to liberty.' But who can flatter -himself that he has the truth? Only the Church. She does not teach the opinions more or less sure, more or less disputed, chancine and reformable, of human sciences ; she teaches the doctrine of Christ, Who said : « I am the truth ' Jesus Christ has committed to her the guardianship of this truth, and she has never failed in her mission lhis sacred deposit she keeps most preciously -never allowing a syllable to be added to or taken from it For its prefect preservation she has never ceased iii the course of ages, to point out error and- deter from ■it the. souls entrusted to her charge, with superhuman energy, like a mother defending her offspring In matters of -doctrine the Church is superbly intolerant— and she glories in it— because she is the truth as the sun is intolerant of darkness because it is 'the sun. But, in practice, in her relations with souls what tolerance she exhibits ! And of whom has she learnt it ? Of her Founder, Jesus Christ. Christ did not employ force,- but persuasion. Remember His words • If any man will come after me.' It is an in vita* tion, not a restraint. Remember that beautiful scene in the Gospel : Christ had sent His apostles to announce the good tidings to the Samaritans who refused to hear them, and sent the apostles away Angered by this check and this resistance to grace ? S!?£ s JP d John came our Saviour and said : Wilt thou that we bid fire from heaven to fall UDOn these men and consume them?' How did Christ' an swer this appeal to force ? Listen to His words and retain them for ever. In a tone of severe reproach He said : .' You know .not to what spirit you belong The Son of Man came not to slay men but to save them.' It was also persuasion and not mieht that He put into the hands of His apostles -whin, about to ,^ av^ the carth ' He sentl them to conquer the world. « Go, and teach all nations. . . When you go into a house salute it saying : peace be to this house. And if they do not receive you . nor hearken to your words, go out of that house-and shake off the. dust from your shoes.' No violence vau X«» • liberty is respected. ' J bCT '

" That is All the Gospel. But has the Church continued the Gospel ? Yes • that is certain. Observe that we are not ' speakW ol Christian kin-gs and princes, nor of people beloneine to the Church; they are not the Church, and thf

Church cannot -be answerable for their errors and sins, Which are explained, though not excused, by the man- • ners of the times, or by statecraft. ' If, you wish to know the tenets of the Churoh on this matter • you should peruse the books which contain her authentic teaching. It" is ' all comprised in one principle riot presently invented to plead her cause, since' it goes back to the thirteenth century, to medieval times, when the Church,' having supreme ' sway, - could easily have appealed to ' might ; it was formulated by St. Thomas, the Philosopher of genius and the prince of theology. Here it is : ' The civil government ought to imitate God's government. Now God suffers, tolerates, permits errors and vices on earth, because in His goodness and justice He can draw from them a greater good ; in like manner the Government ought to be tolerant for the greater good of its subjects.'

Such is the Doctrine of the Church, her authentic doctrine, what she always taught prior to St. Thomas, what she always practised.' Let us illustrate these principles by citing some examples', which we shall borrow from certain facts on which the Church nowadays has been most fiercely and wantonly attacked. 'When Charlemagne waged those wellknown sanguinary wars with the Saxons to force them to embrace the Christian religion, one of his courtiers, a monk of wide renown, Alcuin, rose to remind the monarch of the rules of the true apostolate 'Truth,' said 'he, 'is an act of the will, and not -of restraint. You attract men to the faith, you cannot force them. Let the propagators of the faith be instructed by the example of the apostles ; let them be preachers and not plunderers.'

After the massacre of Protestants called in history the ' Saint Bartholomew,' Pope Gregory XIII had the Te Deum chanted and ordered processions by way of thanksgiving. Intolerance, cruelty ! you exclaim. No ; a mere mistake, a mistake shared in by the other European courts ; for King Charles IX. had by his ambassadors spread the news- of a conspiracy which he had escaped. When the Pope learnt the truth he ' shed tears,' says Brantome, both regarding his mistake and this abomination. And when, later, the Cardinal of Lorraine presented to the Vatican ' Mareueilles, the very man who had slain Coligny on the 22nd of August, Pope Gregory exclaimed': 'He is an assassin ! '

Now listen to the words uttered by Pope Innocent XI., when he heard of the constraint put on the consciences of Protestants under Louis XIV., which prepared the fatal and impolitic ' Revocation of the edict of Nantes ' : ' Christ never employed that method • men must be 'brought, not dragged, into the Church ' ■ Such 'has been the invariable policy of the Church When the Jews, pursued and persecuted in all direc- ' tions 'because of their exactions, were at a loss to find a refuge, they found protection in Rome, the city ■ of the Popes ; there, under the aegis of the Popes they freely practised their religion. Like Christ the Ohurch stretches out her motherly hands to all men invites them all, proposes the truth to all, but imposes it on none, out of respect for liberty. (To be concluded in our next issue)..