(I)
"I shall be delighted, Monsignor," said the thin, clever-faced
statesman, in his high, dry voice; "I shall be delighted to
sketch out what seem to me the principal points in the
century's development."
A profound silence fell upon all the table.
Really, Monsignor Masterman thought to himself, as he settled
down to listen, he had done very well so far. He had noticed the
old priest opposite smiling more than once, contentedly, as
their eyes met.
Father Jervis had come to him as he had promised, for half an
hour's good talk before lunch; and they had spent a very earnest
thirty minutes together. First they had discussed with great care
all the persons who would be present at lunch--not more than
eight, besides themselves; the priest had given him a little plan
of the table, showing where each would sit, and had described
their personal appearance and recounted a salient fact or two
about every one. These were all priests except Mr. Manners
himself and his secretary. The rest of the time had been occupied
in information being given to the man who had lost his memory,
with regard to a few very ordinary subjects of conversation--the
extraordinary fairness of the weather; a new opera produced with
unparalleled success by a "well-known" composer of whom Monsignor
had never heard; a recent Eucharistic congress in Tokio, from
which the Cardinal had just returned; and the scheme for
redecorating the interior of Archbishop's House.
There had not been time for more; but these subjects, under the
adroit handling of Father Jervis, had proved sufficient; and up
to the preconcerted moment when Monsignor had uttered the
sentence about his study of Mr. Manners' _History of Twentieth
Century Development_ which had drawn from the author the words
recorded above, all had gone perfectly smoothly.
There had been a few minor hitches; for example, the food and the
manner of serving it and the proper method of consuming it had
furnished a bad moment or two; and once Monsignor had been
obliged to feign sudden deafness on being asked a question on a
subject of which he knew nothing by a priest whose name he had
forgotten, until Father Jervis slid in adroitly and saved him.
Yet these were quite unnoticed, it appeared, and could easily be
attributed to the habit of absent-mindedness for which, Monsignor
Masterman was relieved to learn, he was almost notorious.
And now the crisis was past and Mr. Manners was launched.
Monsignor glanced almost happily round the tall dining-room, from
which the servants had already disappeared, and, with his glass
in his hand, settled himself down to listen and remember.
* * * * *
"The crisis, to my mind, in the religious situation," began the
statesman, looking more professional than ever, with his closed
eyes, thin, wrinkled face, and high forehead--"the real crisis is
to be sought in the period from 1900 to 1920.
"This was the period, you remember, of tremendous social
agitation. There was the widespread revolution of the Latin
countries, beginning with France and Portugal, chiefly against
Authority, and most of all against Monarchy (since Monarchy is
the most vivid and the most concrete embodiment of authority);
and in Teutonic and Anglo-Saxon countries against Capital and
Aristocracy. It was in these years that Socialism came most near
to dominating the civilized world; and, indeed, you will remember
that for long after that date it did dominate civilization in
certain places.
"Now the real trouble at the bottom of all this was the state in
which Religion found itself. And you will find, gentlemen," said
the quasi-lecturer in parenthesis, glancing round the attentive
faces, "that Religion always is and always has been at the root
of every world-movement. In fact it must be so. The deepest
instinct in man is his religion, that is, his attitude to eternal
issues; and on that attitude must depend his relation to temporal
things. This is so, largely, even in the case of the individual;
it must therefore be infinitely more so in large bodies or
nations; since every crowd is moved by principles that are the
least common multiple of the principles of the units which
compose it. Of course this is universally recognized now; but it
was not always so. There was a time, particularly at this period
of which I am now speaking, when men attempted to treat Religion
as if it were one department of life, instead of being the whole
foundation of every and all life. To treat it so is, of course,
to proclaim oneself as fundamentally irreligious--and, indeed,
very ignorant and uneducated.
"To resume, however:
"Religion at this period was at a very strange crisis. That it
could possibly be treated in the way I have mentioned shows how
very deeply irreligion had spread. There is no such thing, of
course, really as Irreligion--except by a purely conventional
use of the word: the 'irreligious' man is one who has made up
his mind either that there is no future world, or that it is so
remote, as regards effectivity, as to have no bearing upon
this. And that is a religion--at least it is a dogmatic
creed--as much as any other.
"The causes of this state of affairs I take to have been as follows:
"Religion up to the Reformation had been a matter of authority,
as it is again now; but the enormous development of various
sciences and the wide spread of popular 'knowledge' had, in the
first flush, distracted attention from that which is now, in all
civilized countries, simply an axiom of thought, viz., that a
Revelation of God must be embodied in a living authority
safeguarded by God. Further, at that time science and exact
knowledge generally had not reached the point which they reached
a little later--of corroborating in particular after particular,
so far as they are capable of doing so, the Revelation of God
known as Catholicism; and of knowing their limitations where they
cannot. Many sciences, at this time, had gone no further than to
establish certain facts which appeared, to the very imperfectly
educated persons of that period, to challenge and even to refute
certain facts or deductions of Revelation. Psychology, for
example, strange as it now appears in our own day, actually
seemed to afford other explanations of the Universe than that of
Revelation. (We will discuss details presently.) Social Science,
at that time, too, moved in the direction of Democracy and even
Socialism. I know it appears monstrous, and indeed almost
incredible, that men who really had some claim to be called
educated seriously maintained that the most stable and the most
reasonable method of government lay in the extension of the
franchise--that is, in reversing the whole eternal and logical
order of things, and permitting the inexpert to rule the expert,
and the uneducated and the ill-informed to control by their
votes--that is, by sheer weight of numbers--the educated and the
well-informed. Yet such was the case. And the result was--since
all these matters act and react--that the idea of authority from
above in matters of religion was thought to be as 'undemocratic'
as in matters of government and social life. Men had learnt, that
is to say, something of the very real truth in the theory of the
Least Common Multiple, and, as in psychology and many other
sciences, had presumed that the little fragment of truth that
they had perceived was the whole truth."
Mr. Manners paused to draw breath. Obviously he was enjoying
himself enormously. He was a born lecturer, and somehow the rather
pompous sentences were strangely alive and strangely interesting.
Above all, they fascinated and amazed the prelate at the head of
the table, for they revealed to him an advance of thought, and an
assurance in the position they described, that seemed wholly
inexplicable. Such phrases as "all educated men," "the
well-informed," and the rest--these were vaguely familiar to him,
yet surely in a very different connection. He had at the back of
his mind a kind of idea that these were the phrases that the
irreligious or the agnostics applied to themselves; yet here was a
man, obviously a student, and a statesman as he knew, calmly
assuming (scarcely even giving himself the trouble to state) that
all educated and well-informed persons were Catholic Christians!
He settled himself down to listen with renewed interest as Mr.
Manners began once more.
"Well," he said, "to come more directly to our point; let us next
consider what were those steps and processes by which Catholic
truth once more became the religion of the civilized world, as it
had been five centuries earlier.
"And first we must remark that, even at the very beginning of
this century, popular thought--in England as elsewhere--had
retraced its steps so far as to acknowledge that if Christianity
were true--true, really and actually--the Catholic Church was the
only possible embodiment of it. Not only did the shrewdest
agnostic minds of the time acknowledge this--such men as Huxley
in the previous century, Sir Leslie Stephen, Mallock, and scores
of others--but even popular Christianity itself began to turn in
that direction. Of course there were survivals and reactions, as
we should expect. There was a small body of Christians in England
called Anglicans, who attempted to hold another view; there was
that short-lived movement called Modernism, that held yet a third
position. But, for the rest, it was as I say.
"It was the Catholic Church or nothing. And just for a few years
it seemed humanly possible that it might be nothing.
"And now for the causes of the revival.
"Briefly, I should say they were all included under one head--the
correlation of sciences and their coincidence into one point. Let
us take them one by one. We have only time to glance very
superficially at each.
"First there was Psychology.
"Even at the end of the nineteenth century it was beginning to be
perceived that there was an inexplicable force working behind
mere matter. This force was given a number of names--the
'subliminal consciousness,' in man, and 'Nature' in the animal,
vegetable, and even mineral creation; and it gave birth to a
series of absurd superstitions such as that now wholly extinct
sect of the 'Christian Scientists,' or the Mental Healers; and
among the less educated of the Materialists, to Pantheism. But
the force was acknowledged, and it was perceived to move along
definite lines of law. Further, in the great outburst of
Spiritualism it began gradually to be evident to the world that
this force occasionally manifested itself in a personal, though
always a malevolent manner. Now it must be remembered that even
this marked an immense advance in the circles called scientific;
since in the middle of the nineteenth century, even the phenomena
so carefully recorded by the Church were denied. These were now
no longer denied, since phenomena, at least closely resembling
them, were matters of common occurrence under the eyes of the
most sceptical. Of course, since the enquiries were made along
purely 'scientific' lines--lines which in those days were nothing
other than materialistic--an attempt was made to account for the
phenomena by new anti-spiritual theories hastily put together to
meet the emergency. But, little by little, an uneasy sense began
to manifest itself that the Church had already been familiar with
the phenomena for about two thousand years, and that a body,
which had marked and recorded facts with greater accuracy than
all the 'scientists' put together, at least had some claim to
consideration with regard to her hypothesis concerning them.
Further, it began to be seen (what is perfectly familiar to us
all now) that Religion contributed an element which nothing else
could contribute--that, for example, 'Religious Suggestion,' as
it was called in the jargon of the time, could accomplish things
that ordinary 'Suggestion' could not. Finally, the researches of
psychologists into what was then called the phenomenon of
'Alternating Personality' prepared the way for a frank acceptance
of the Catholic teaching concerning Possession and
Exorcism--teaching which half a century before would have been
laughed out of court by all who claimed the name of Scientist.
Psychology then, up to this point, had rediscovered that a Force
was working behind physical phenomena, itself not physical; that
this Force occasionally exhibited characteristics of Personality;
and finally that the despised Catholic Church had been more
scientific than scientists in her observation of facts; and that
this Force, dealt with along Christian lines, could accomplish
what it was unable to accomplish along any other.
"The next advance lay along the lines of Comparative Religion.
"The study of Comparative Religion was practically a new science
at the end of the nineteenth century, and like all new sciences,
claimed at once, before it had constructed its own, to destroy
the schemes of others. For instance, there were actually educated
persons who advanced as an argument against Christianity the fact
that many Christian dogmas and ceremonies were to be found in
other religions. It is extremely difficult for us now, even in
imagination, to sympathize with such a mentality as this; but it
must be remembered that the science was very youthful, and had
all the inexperience and the arrogance of youth. As time went on,
however, this argument began to disappear, except in very
elementary rationalistic manuals, as the fact became evident that
while this or that particular religion had one or more identities
with Christian doctrines, Christianity possessed them all; that
Christianity, in short, had all the principal doctrines of all
religions--or at least all doctrines that were of any strength to
other religions, as well as several others necessary to weld
these detached dogmas into a coherent whole; that, to use a
simple metaphor, Christianity stood in the world like a light
upon a hill, and that partial and imperfect reflections of this
light were thrown back, with more or less clearness, from the
various human systems of belief that surrounded it. And at last
it became evident, even to the most unintelligent, that the only
scientific explanation of this phenomenon lay in the theory that
Christianity was indeed unique, and, at the very least, was the
most perfect human system of faith--perfectly human, I mean, in
that it embodied and answered adequately all the religious
aspirations of the human race--the most perfect system of faith
the world had ever seen.
"A third cause was to be found in the new philosophy of evidence
that began to prevail soon after the dawn of the century.
"Up to that period, so-called Physical Science had so far
tyrannized over men's minds as to persuade them to accept her
claim that evidence that could not be reduced to her terms was
not, properly speaking, evidence at all. Men demanded that purely
spiritual matters should be, as they said, 'proved,' by which
they meant should be reduced to physical terms. Little by little,
however, the preposterous nature of this claim was understood.
People began to perceive that each order of life had evidence
proper to itself--that there were such things, for instance, as
moral proofs, artistic proofs, and philosophical proofs; and that
these proofs were not interchangeable. To demand physical proof
for every article of belief was as fantastic as to demand, let us
say, a chemical proof of the beauty of a picture, or evidence in
terms of light or sound for the moral character of a friend, or
mathematical proof for the love of a mother for her child. This
very elementary idea seems to have come like a thunderclap upon
many who claimed the name of 'thinkers'; for it entirely
destroyed a whole artillery of arguments previously employed
against Revealed Religion.
"For a time, Pragmatism came to the rescue from the philosophical
camp; but the assault was but a very short one; since, tested by
Pragmatic methods (that is, the testing of the truth of a
religion by its appeal to human consciousness), if one fact stood
out luminous and undisputed, it was that the Catholic Religion,
with its eternal appeal in every century and to every type of
temperament, was utterly supreme.
"Let us turn to another point----"
(Mr. Manners lifted the glass he had been twirling between his
fingers, and drank it off with an appearance of great enjoyment.
Then he smacked his lips once or twice and continued.)
"Let us turn to the realm of politics--even to the realm of trade.
"Socialism, in its purely economic aspect, was a well-meant
attempt to abolish the law of competition--that is, the natural
law of the Survival of the Fittest. It was an attempt, I say; and
it ended, as we know, in disaster; for it established instead, so
far as it was successful, the law of the Survival of the
Majority, and tyrannized first over the minority and then over
the individual.
"But it was a well-meant attempt; since its instinct was
perfectly right, that competition is not the highest law of the
Universe. And there were several other ideals in Socialism that
were most commendable in theory: for example, the idea that the
Society sanctifies and safeguards the individual, not the
individual the Society; that obedience is a much-neglected
virtue, and so forth.
"Then, suddenly almost, it seems to have dawned upon the world
that all the _ideals_ of Socialism (apart from its methods and
its dogmas) had been the ideals of Christianity; and that the
Church had, in her promulgation of the Law of Love, anticipated
the Socialist's discovery by about two thousand years. Further,
that in the Religious Orders these ideals had been actually
incarnate; and that by the doctrine of Vocation--that is by the
freedom of the individual to submit himself to a superior--the
rights of the individual were respected and the rights of the
Society simultaneously vindicated.
"A very good example of all this is to be found in the
Poor-law system.
"You remember that before the Reformation, and in Catholic
countries long after, there was no Poor-law system, because the
Religious Houses looked after the sick and needy. Well, when the
Religious Houses were destroyed in England the State had to do
their work. You could not simply flog beggars out of existence,
as Elizabeth tried to do. Then the inevitable happened, and it
began to be a mark of disgrace to be helped by the State in a
workhouse: people often preferred to starve. Then at the
beginning of the twentieth century a well-meant attempt was made,
in the Old-Age Pensions and George's State Insurance Act, to
remedy this and to help the poor in a manner that would not
injure their self-respect. Of course that failed, too. It is
incredible that statesmen did not see it must be so. Old-Age
Pensions, too, and State-Insurance (so soon as it was socially
digested), began to be considered a mark of disgrace--for the
simple cause that it is not the receiving of money that is
resented, but the motive for which the money is given and the
position of the giver. The State can only give for economic
reasons, however conscientious and individually charitable
statesmen may be; while the Church gives for the Love of God, and
the Love of God never yet destroyed any man's self-respect. Well,
you know the end. The Church came forward once more and, under
certain conditions, offered to relieve the State of the entire
burden. Two results followed--first, all grievances vanished; and
secondly, the whole pauper population of England within ten years
was Catholic in sympathies. And yet all this is only a reversion
to medieval times--a reversion made absolutely necessary by the
failure of every attempt to supplant Divine methods by human.
"Now look at it all in another way--the general situation, I mean.
"The Socialist saw plainly the rights of the Society; the
Anarchist saw the rights of the Individual. How therefore were
these to be reconciled? The Church stepped in at that crucial
point and answered, By the Family--whether domestic or
Religious. For in the Family you have both claims recognized:
there is authority and yet there is liberty. For the union of
the Family lies in Love; and _Love is the only reconciliation of
authority and liberty_.
"Now, as I have put it--and as we all now see it--the argument is
simplicity itself. But it took a long time to be recognized; and
it was not until after the appalling events of the first twenty
years of the century, and the discrediting of the absurd
Socialistic attempt to preach the Law of Love by methods of Force,
that civilization as a whole saw the point. Yet for all that it
was beginning to mould popular opinion even as early as 1910.
"Turn now to a completely different plane. Turn to Art. This,
too, drove men back to the Church."
(Mr. Manners' air was becoming now less professional and more vivid.
He glanced quickly from face to face with a kind of sharp triumph;
his long, thin hands waved a slight gesture now and again.)
"Art, you remember, in the end of the Victorian era had attempted
to become realistic--had attempted, that is, the absurdly
impossible; and photography exposed the absurdity, For no man can
be truly a realist, since it is literally impossible to paint or
to describe all that the eye sees. When photography became
general, this began to be understood; since it was soon seen that
the only photographer who could lay any claim to artistic work
was the man who selected and altered and posed--arranged his
subject, that is to say, in more or less symbolic form. Then
people began to see again that Symbolism was the underlying
spirit of Art--as they had known perfectly well, of course, in
medieval days: that Art consisted in going beneath the material
surfaces that reflected light, or the material events that
happened, in painting and literature respectively, and, by a
process of selection, of symbolizing (not photographically
representing) the Ideas beneath the Things--the Substance beneath
the Accidents--the Thought beneath the Expression--(you can call
it what you like). Zola in literature, Strauss in music, the
French school of painting--these reduced Realism _ad absurdum_.
Thus once more the Catholic Church, in this as in everything
else, was discovered to have possessed the secret all along. The
Symbolic Reaction therefore began, and all our music, all our
painting, and all our literature to-day are frankly and
confessedly Symbolic--that is, Catholic. And this too, you see,
pointed to the same lesson as Psychology, that beneath phenomena
there was a Force which transcended phenomena; and that the
Church had dealt with this Force, knowing It to be Personal,
through all her history.
"Finally--and this was the crowning argument of all, that
correlated all the rest--there was the growing scientific and
popular perception of the Recuperative Power of the Church--that
which our Divine Lord Himself called the Sign of the Prophet
Jonas, or Resurrection.
"There were of course countless other lines of advance, in
practically every science, and they all pointed in the same
direction, and met, so to speak, from every quarter of the
compass the end of the tunnel which the Church had been boring
through all the heaped-up stupidities and ignorances of man.
Psychology tunnelled, and presently heard the voices of the
exorcists and the echoes of Lourdes through the darkness. Human
religions tunnelled--Hinduism with its idea of a Divine
Incarnation, Buddhism with its coarse apprehension of the Eternal
Peace of a Beatific Vision, North American Religion with its
guesses at Sacramentalism, Savage Religion with its caricature of
a Bloody Sacrifice; all from various points; and presently heard
through the tumult the historical dogma of the Incarnation of
Christ, the dogma of Eternal Life, the Sacramental System and the
Sacrifice of the Cross--all proclaimed in one coherent and
perfectly philosophical Creed. Ideals of Social Reform met with
the same experiences. The Socialist with his dream of a Divine
Society, the Anarchist with his passionate nightmare of complete
individual liberty, both ran up together, in the heart of the
black darkness, against the vast outline of a Divine Family that
was a fact and not a far-off ambition--a Family that fell in Eden
and became a competitive State; a Holy Family that redeemed
Nazareth and all the world; a Catholic Family in whom was neither
Jew nor Greek, nor masters against men--in whom the doctrine of
Vocation secured the rights and the dignities of the Society on
one side and the Individual on the other. Finally Art, wandering
hither and thither in the mazes of Realism, saw light ahead, and
found in Catholic Art and Symbolism the secret of her life.
"This, then, was the result--that the Church was found to be
eternally right in every plane. In plane after plane she had
been condemned. Pilate--the Law of Separate Nations--had found
her guilty of sedition; Herod--the miracle-monger at one instant
and the sceptic at the next--the Scientist, in fact--had
declared her guilty of fraud; Caiaphas had condemned her in the
name of National Religion. Or, again, she had been thought the
enemy of Art by the Greek-spirited; the enemy of Law by the
Latins; the enemy of Religion by the Hebraic Pharisee. She had
borne her title written in Greek and Latin and Hebrew. She had
been crucified, and taunted as she hung there; she had seemed to
die; and, to and behold! when the Third Day dawned she was alive
again for evermore. From every single point she had been
justified and vindicated. Men had thought to invent a new
religion, a new art, a new social order, a new philosophy; they
had burrowed and explored and digged in every direction; and, at
the end, when they had worked out their theories and found, as
they thought, the reward of their labours, they found themselves
looking once more into the serene, smiling face of Catholicism.
She was risen from the dead once more, and was seen to be the
Daughter of God, with Power."
There was a moment's silence.
"There, gentlemen," said Mr. Manners, dropping back again into the
quiet professor, "that, I think, in a few words, is the outline for
which Monsignor asked. I hope I have not detained you too long."
(II)
"It is the most extraordinary story I have ever heard," said
Monsignor Masterman ten minutes later, as he threw himself down
in his chair upstairs, with Father Jervis sitting opposite.
"Certainly he puts it very well," said the old priest, smiling.
"I think every one was interested. It's not often that we can
hear such a clear analysis of events. Of course Manners has it
all at his fingers' ends. It's his special subject, and----"
"But the amazing thing to me," interrupted the other, "is that this
isn't just a dream or a prophecy, but a relation of facts. . . . Do
you mean to tell me that the whole world is Christian?"
The priest looked at him doubtfully.
"Monsignor, surely your memory isn't----"
Monsignor made an impatient gesture.
"Father," he said, "it's exactly as I told you before lunch. I'll
promise to tell you if my memory comes back. At present I
remember practically nothing at all, except instinctively. All I
know is that this story we have heard simply astounds me. I had a
sort of idea that Christianity was ebbing from the world; that
most thinking men had given up all belief in it; and now I find
it's exactly the other way. Please treat me as if I had stepped
straight out of the beginning of the century. Just tell me the
facts as if for the first time. Is it really true that
practically the whole world is Christian?"
The priest hesitated.
"You mean that, Monsignor?"
"Certainly."
"Very well, then." He paused again. "But it's extraordinarily
hard to know where to begin."
"Begin anywhere. It's all new to me."
"Very good. Well, yes: roughly we may say that the world is
Christian, in the same sort of way, at least, in which Europe was
Christian, say in the twelfth century. There are survivals, of
course, particularly in the East, where large districts still
cling to their old superstitions; and there are even eminent men
here and there who are not explicitly Catholics; but, as a whole,
the world is Christian."
"Do you mean Catholic?"
The priest stared a moment.
"Why, yes. What else---?"
"All right; go on."
"Well then, to begin with England. Catholicism is not yet
established as the State Religion; but it'll only be a question
of time, and it may be said that all the laws are Christian."
"Divorce?"
"Divorce was abolished thirty years ago, and fornication was made
a felony ten years later," said the priest quietly. "Benefit of
clergy also was restored three years ago; and we have our own
courts for heresy, with power to hand over convicted criminals to
the secular arm."
"What?"
"Certainly. It has been in force now for three years."
"Then what do you mean by saying that the Church isn't established?"
"I mean that no religious test is demanded of officers of state,
and that bishops and abbots have no seat in Parliament. It was the
enfranchisement of women that turned the tide once and for all."
"Do you mean that all women have the vote?"
"They are under the same conditions as men. There's a severe
educational test now, of course. Not more than about one in
seventy adults ever get the vote at all. But the result is that
we're governed by educated persons."
"Stop. Is it a Monarchy?"
"Certainly. Edward IX--a young man--is on the throne."
"Go on."
"Christianity, then, holds the field. Of course there are
infidels left, who write letters to the newspapers sometimes, and
hold meetings, and so on. But they are practically negligible. As
regards Church property, practically everything has finally been
given back to us;--I mean in the way of buildings, and, very
largely, revenues too. All the cathedrals are ours, and all
parish churches built before the Reformation, as well as all
other churches in parishes where there was not organized
Protestant resistance."
"I thought you said there were no Protestants."
Father Jervis suddenly laughed aloud.
"Monsignor, are you really serious? Do you really mean you
wish me to go on?"
"Good God, man! I'm not playing a game. . . . Go on, please. Tell
me about the Protestants."
"Well, of course there are some Protestants left. I think they've
got four or five churches in London, and . . . and . . . yes, I'm
sure of it, they've got some kind of bishop. But really I
scarcely know. I shall have to look it up."
"Well, go on."
"Well, that's the state of England. Practically everybody is a
Catholic--from the King downwards. The last remains of Church
property was only actually given back to us last year. That's why
the monks haven't come back to Westminster yet."
"What about the rest of the world?"
"Well, first Rome. Austria drove out the House of Savoy nearly
twenty-five years ago; and the Holy Father----"
"What's his name?"
"Gregory the Nineteenth. He's a Frenchman. Well, the Holy
Father is Temporal Ruler of the whole of Italy; but the Emperor
of Austria administers it. Then France is, of course, a very
small country."
"Why small?"
"Well, you know the European War of 1914 . . .?" Monsignor
interrupted by a large sigh.
"Good heavens!" he said. "How I shall have to read. I'm sorry.
Go on, please."
"Well, France is a very small country, but intensely Catholic.
The Church is re-established there,----"
"Is it a monarchy too?"
"Certainly. The Orleans line came back after the war. Louis
XXII is king. I was saying that the Church is re-established
there, and is practically supreme. That is traceable entirely
to Pius X's policy."
"Pius X! Why----"
"Yes, Monsignor?"
"I know all about that. But I thought Pius X simply ruined everything."
"So they said at the time. His policy was to draw the lines tight
and to make no concessions. He drove out every half-hearted
Catholic by his regulations, and the result was a small but
extraordinarily pure body. The result has been that the country
was re-evangelized, and has become almost a land of saints. They
say that our Lady----"
"Well, go on with the other countries."
"Spain and Portugal are, of course, entirely Catholic, like
France. The Monarchy was re-established in both of them in about
1935. But Germany--Germany's the weak spot."
"Well?"
"You see the Emperor isn't a Christian yet; and Socialism lingers
on there with extraordinary pertinacity. Practically Berlin is
the Holy City of Freemasonry. It's all organized from there--such
as it is. And no one is quite comfortable about Germany. The
Emperor Frederick is a perfectly sincere man, but really rather
uneducated; he still holds on to some sort of materialism; and
the result is----"
"I see."
"But there are hopes of his conversion. He's to be at Versailles
next week; and that's a good sign."
"Well, what about America?"
"Oh! America's chiefly English; and very like England."
"You mean she isn't republican?"
"Of course not. My dear Monsignor----"
"Please go on, as I asked you. Tell me when she ceased to
be republican."
"Why, I scarcely know," murmured the priest. "It must have been
about 1930, I suppose. I know there was a lot of trouble before
that--civil wars and so forth. But at any rate that was the end.
Japan got a good deal of the Far West; but the Eastern States
came in with Canada and formed the American Colonies; and the
South of course became Latinized, largely through ecclesiastical
influence. Well, then America asked England----"
"Stop, please. I shall get bewildered. What about the religion?"
"Well, the Empire of Mexico----"
"Eh?"
"The Empire of Mexico."
"Who's Emperor?"
"The King of Spain, Monsignor," said the priest patiently. "Well,
that used to be called South America. It's all the Empire of
Mexico now, and belongs to Spain. That's solidly Catholic, of
course. And the American Colonies--old North America--that's like
England. It's practically Catholic, of course; but there are a
few infidels and Socialists."
"Australia?"
"Australia's entirely Irish, and Catholic."
"And Ireland itself?"
"Oh! Ireland developed enormously as soon as she had gained
independence, but emigration continued, and the Irish strength
really lies abroad. Then an odd thing happened. Ireland continued
to empty, obeying some social law we don't even yet understand
properly; and the Religious began to get possession of the
country in an extraordinary way, until they owned all the large
estates, and even most of the towns. You may say that Ireland is
practically one Religious Enclosure now. Of course, she's a part
of the British Empire; but her real social life lies in her
colonies. Australia succeeded in getting Home Rule from Ireland
about twenty-five years ago."
Monsignor pressed his hands to his head.
"It sounds like the wildest dream," he said.
"Hadn't I better---?"
"No; go on. I only want an outline. What about the East?"
"Well, old superstitions still linger on in the East,
especially in China. But the end is quite certain. It is simply
a matter of time----"
"But . . . but I don't understand. If the whole world is
practically Christian, what is there left to do?"
The priest smiled.
"Ah! but you must remember Germany. There are great forces in
Germany. It's there that the danger lies. And you must remember too
that there is no Universal Arbitrator yet. Nationalism is still
pretty strong. There might easily be another big European war."
"Then you hope----"
"Yes. We're all working for the recognition of the Pope as
Universal Arbitrator, as he was practically in Europe in the
Middle Ages. Of course, as soon as the sovereigns acknowledge
officially that they hold all their rights at the will of Rome,
the thing will be done. But it's not done yet, except----"
"Good God!"
"Look here, Monsignor, you've had enough," said the priest, rising.
"Though I must say you have followed it closely enough. Are you
certain that it is quite new to you? Don't you remember---"
"It's not only new; it's inconceivable! I understand it
perfectly; but----"
"Well, you've had enough. Now what about coming to see the
Cardinal? I feel sure he'll insist upon your taking a rest
instantly. I feel rather guilty----"
"Stop. Tell me about languages. Why did you talk to me in
Latin this morning?"
"Ecclesiastics generally do. And so do the laity a good deal.
Europe is practically bi-lingual. Each country keeps up its
own tongue, and learns Latin as well. You must rub up your
Latin, Monsignor."
"Wait a moment. What are you going to say to the Cardinal?"
"Well, hadn't I better tell him the whole thing, just as it
happened? Then you needn't explain."
The other pondered a moment.
"Thanks very much, father. . . . Stop. Do I talk English all right?"
"Perfectly."
"But----Oh well. . . . And I . . . did I do all right at lunch?
Did any one suspect anything?"
"You did perfectly. You seemed a little absent-minded once or
twice; but that was quite in keeping."
The two smiled at one another pleasantly.
"Then I'll be going," said the priest. "Will you wait here till
I come for you?"