The * New Theology *

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXV, Issue 49, 5 December 1907, Page 10

The 'New Theology'

The old errors tricked out under the label of ' New Theology ' -no longer share with the latest murder or ship wreck or-, conflagration the questionable honor of lengthy columns in the daily press of Australia a/nd New Zealand. Yet even still' short spasms or tremors of the fuzzy old-new pantheism occasionally shake the weekly brimstone columns sof sundry of our secular papers. Last Saturday, for instance; brief reference- was made in one of . our Northern contemporaries to a • convert Catholic writer — of shallow philosophy and' brilliant prose— who has been captured, not indeed by the ' New Theology ', but by Will-o'-the-Wisp ideas that, if followed up, may land him at last in that morass. ' His , conceptions of religious truth ', says our contemporary, ' are gradually taking shape '. It would, we think, be difficult to give less felicitous expression to the drift oft the Catholic author in question. For, instead of taking, his ideas of religious truth are losing", shape— unless we are prepared to compare his new position with the ' execrable shape ' in Milton's ' Paradise Lost '—

' If shape it might be called that shape had none '

For the '< New Theology ' is a vague, fuzzy; shapeless Something of pantheistic character. It is not so much a religdous system as a bankrupt philosophy.

.Omar Khayyam. 1 grieved that the idols which he vaguely worshipped ' Ha>ve done my credit in this world much wrongHave droiwned my glory in a shallow cup, - And sold my reputation for a song '.

But those that 'are deep in philosophy will not drown their glory in the shallow cup of the New Pantheism. The passing glorification ol the vague, the fuzzy, and the foggy recalls Arthur Helps's fable of the mist. It is told in his l Friends in Council ' :—: — '

' There was a gathering together of creatures hurtful and terrible to man, to -name -their king. Blight, mildew, darkness, mighty waves, fierce winds, Will-o'--the^Wisps, and shadows ' of grim, objects, told fearfully their .doings and preferred their -claims, none prevailing. But when evening came on, a thin mist, curled up, derisively, amidst the assemblage and said :— " I gather round a iran going to his own home ovempaths made by his daily foot-steps; and lie becomes at once helnless and tame as a child. The lights meant to assist him, then betray. You find him wandering, or need the aid of other terrors to subdue him-. I am, alone, confusion to him." And all the assemblage bowed before the mist, and mode it king-, and set it -on the- brow of many a mountain, where, 'when it is not doing evil it 1 may be often seen toi' this day.'

• The reader can readily find, in the old ' New Theology ' anfcl in Modernist errors, . the fog or mist ""that misleads the - footsteps of many a man on Ills way to his heavenly Home, and "leaves him wandering 'helplessly and in ccmfusion through the dark valley of a darkened -life. '- During the. Gal way - trials many years ago, in which the notorious Judge Ke'bgh played so ignoble a , part, two old Claddagih fishwives sat side by side ' near^ the entrance to the court. The day's proceedings had terminated, and the judge, (lawyers, ajrid officials' were leaving. ' Who's that ?' asked one fishwife of the other, Mn the mellow Gaelic tongue. 'That,' replied the other, 'is Keogh ' (the name in Irish means ' fog '). ' May an eternal fog encompass him ! ' flamed, out the first old dame. The quick-witted aird resentful author of the terliblp punning curse probably realised its fierce significance. At any rate, to be, spirifcuallyjn a fog is to be in the sad plight of those who. sit. in darkness -and in '4.he shadow of death. • ' - '~- -