(i) She consists of human persons, and those persons are attached both
to one another and to the world outside by a perfectly balanced system
of human rights known as the Law of Justice. This Law of Justice, though
coming indeed from God, is, in a sense, natural and human; it exists to
some extent in all societies, as well as being closely defined and
worked out in the Old Law given on Sinai. It is a Law which men could
have worked out, at any rate in its main principles, by the light of
reason only, unaided by Revelation, and it is a Law, further, so
fundamental that no Revelation could conceivably ever outrage or set it
aside.
At the coming of Christ into the world, however, Supernatural Charity
came with Him. The Law of Justice still remained; men still had their
rights on which they might insist, still had their rights which no
Christian may refuse to recognize. But such was the torrent of Divine
generosity which Christ exhibited, so overwhelming was the Vision which
He revealed of the supernatural charity of God towards men, that a set
of ideals sprang into life such as the world had never dreamed of; more,
Charity came with such power that her commands actually overruled in
many instances the feeble claims of Justice, so that she bade men
henceforward to forgive, for example, not merely according to Justice,
but according to her own Divine nature, to _forgive unto seventy times
seven_, to give _good measure, heaped up and running over_, and not the
bare minimum which men had merely earned.
It was from this advent of Charity, then, that all these essentially
Christian virtues of generosity and meekness and self-sacrifice sprang
which Nietsche condemned as hostile to material progress.
For, from henceforth, if _a man take thy coat, let him take thy cloak
also; if he will compel thee to go with him one mile, go two; if he
strike thee on one cheek, turn to him the other also_. The Law of
Natural justice is transcended and the Law of Charity and Sacrifice
reigns instead. _Resist not evil_; do not insist always, that is to say,
on your natural rights; give men more than their due, and be yourself
content with less. _Learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly of heart, and
find rest to your souls. Forgive one another your trespasses_ with the
same generous charity with which God has forgiven and will forgive you
yours. _Judge not and you shall not be judged._ Do not, in personal
matters, insist upon bare justice for yourself, but act on that scale
and by those principles by which God Himself has dealt with you.
Meekness, then, is undoubtedly a Christian virtue. Sometimes it is
obligatory, sometimes it is but a Counsel of Perfection; it stands, in
any case, high among those ideals which it has been the glory of
Christianity to create.
(ii) But there are other elements in life besides the human and the
natural, beyond those personal rights and claims which a Christian may,
if he is aiming at perfection, set aside out of charity. The Church is
Divine as well as Human.
For the Church has entrusted to her, besides the rights of men, which
may be sacrificed by their possessors, the rights and claims of God,
which none but He can set aside. He has given into her keeping, for
example, a Revelation of truths and principles which, springing out of
His own Nature or of His Will, are as immutable and eternal as Himself.
And it is precisely in defence of these truths and principles that the
Church exhibits that which the world calls _intransigeance_ and Jesus
Christ _violence_.
Here, for example, is the right of a baptized Catholic child to be
educated in his religion, or rather, the right of God Himself to teach
that child in the manner He has ordained. Here is the revealed truth
that marriage is indissoluble; here that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.
Now these are not human rights or opinions at all--rights and opinions
which men, urged by charity or humility, can set aside or waive in the
face of opposition. They rest on an entirely different basis; they are,
so to speak, the inalienable possessions of God; and it would neither be
charity nor humility, but sheer treachery, for the Church to exhibit
meekness or pliancy in matters such as these, given to her as they are,
not to dispose of, but to guard intact. On the contrary here, exactly,
comes the command, _He that hath not, let him sell his cloak and buy a
sword,_, for here comes the line between the Divine and the Human; let
all personal possessions go, all merely natural rights and claims be
yielded, and let a sword take their place. For here is a matter that
must be _resisted, even unto blood_.
The Catholic Church then is, and always will be, _violent_ and
intransigeant when the rights of God are in question. She will be
absolutely ruthless, for example, towards heresy, for heresy affects not
personal matters on which Charity may yield, but a Divine right on which
there must be no yielding. Yet, simultaneously, she will be infinitely
kind towards the heretic, since a thousand human motives and
circumstances may come in and modify his responsibility. At a word of
repentance she will readmit his person into her treasury of souls, but
not his heresy into her treasury of wisdom; she will strike his name
eagerly and freely from her black list of the rebellious, but not his
book from the pages of her Index. She exhibits meekness towards him and
_violence_ towards his error; since he is human, but her Truth is
Divine.
It is, then, from a modern confusion of thought with regard to the
realms of the Divine and the Human that the amazing inability arises, on
the world's part, to understand the respective principles on which the
Catholic Church acts in these two and utterly separate departments. The
world considers it reasonable for a country to defend its material
possessions by the sword, but intolerant and unreasonable for the Church
to condemn, _resisting even unto blood_, principles which she considers
erroneous or false. The Church, on the other hand, urges her children
again and again to yield rather than to fight when merely material
possessions are at stake, since Charity permits and sometimes even
commands men to be content with less than their own rights, and yet
again, when a Divine truth or right is at stake, here she will resist
unfaltering and undismayed, since she cannot be "charitable" with what
is not her own; here she will _sell her cloak_ and _buy that sword_
which, when the dispute was on merely temporal matters, she thrust back
again into its sheath.
To-day[1] as Christ rides into Jerusalem we see, as in a mirror, this
Paradox made plain. _Thy King cometh to thee, meek_. Was there ever so
mean a Procession as this? Was there ever such meekness and charity? He
Who, as His personal right, is attended in heaven by a _multitude on
white horses_, now, in virtue of His Humanity, is content with a few
fishermen and a crowd of children. He to Whom, in His personal right,
the harpers and the angels make eternal music is content, since He has
been made Man for our sakes, with the discordant shoutings of this
crowd. He Who _rode on the Seraphim and came flying on the wings of the
wind_ sits on the colt of an ass. He comes, meek indeed, from the golden
streets of the Heavenly Jerusalem to the foul roads of the Earthly,
laying aside His personal rights since He is that very Fire of Charity
by which Christians relinquish theirs.
[Footnote 1: This sermon was preached on Palm-Sunday.]
But, for all that, it is _riding_ that _thy King cometh to thee_.... He
will not relinquish His inalienable claim and He will have nothing
essential left out. He has His royal escort, even though a ragged one;
He will have His spearmen, even though their spears be only of palm; He
will have His heralds to proclaim Him, however much the devout Pharisees
may be offended by their proclamation; He will ride into His own Royal
City, even though that City casts Him out, and He will have His
Coronation, even though it be with thorns. So, too, the Catholic Church
advances through the ages.
In merely human rights and personal matters again and again she will
yield up all that she has, making, it may be, but one protest for
Justice' sake and then no more. And she will urge her children to do the
same. If the world will let her have no jewels, then she will put glass
beads in her monstrance, and for marble she will use plaster, and tinsel
for gold.
But she will have her Procession and insist upon her Royalty. It may
seem as poor and as mean and as tawdry as the entrance of Christ Himself
through the royal gate; for she will yield up all that the world demands
of her, so long as her Divine Right itself remains intact. She will
issue her orders, though few be found to obey them; she will cast out
from her the rebellious who question her authority, and cleanse her
Temple Courts even though with a scourge at which men mock. She will
give up all that is merely human, if the world will have it so, and will
_resist not evil_ if it merely concerns herself. But there is one thing
which she will not renounce, one thing she will claim, even with
_violence_ and "intransigeance," and that is the Royalty with which God
Himself has crowned her.
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