There needs but a brief introduction from the same pen as that which
composed the essay which follows it.
It must be to this effect.
The general subject “The Catholic Church and History” might be treated
from a hundred different positions. Perhaps the most important in
the eyes of the cultured man of our day is the question whether the
Catholic Church is, or is not, proved by the general story of European
history for the last two thousand years to have been a beneficent
influence. That question, however, I cannot touch upon because the
question whether the Church be beneficent or no is, to a Catholic,
subsidiary to the point whether its claim to be the very truth is valid
or no. If this claim is justified, then certainly the Church must
be beneficent. If it be proved beneficent, that will indeed be some
support of its claim; but a weak one, because we cannot even judge
whether it be beneficent or no until we have decided what we think
better and what worse--and this issue cannot be decided until we are
certain of our philosophy, that is, of our religion.
It is another and more important point to discuss whether the Church in
her long history has, or has not, shown exceptional signs of holiness
and of supernatural power, which are an evidence of her claim. There
are also, as I have said, very many other points of discussion which
the general title suggests.
I have confined myself to _one_, and _one_ only, to wit, the rebutting
of a certain argument drawn from History _against_ the Church. I
have done so for the reason that, in my eyes at least, much the most
formidable assault delivered against the Catholic Church to-day is
the assault delivered from the historical argument. There remains (as
I have said in the Essay that follows) much of the old Protestant
argument, to wit, that an original excellent establishment or message
of divine origin was corrupted in the course of the centuries and that
the Roman Communion still defends that corruption, so that its claim to
authority fails. This I have attempted to meet. But of far more weight
in my judgment, at the present moment, is the general argument that,
regarding History as a whole and adding to it what little we can guess,
and what very little we positively know, about man before he began
to establish records, the Faith is but an illusion, parallel to many
another such illusion to which men have been subject by the process of
projecting their own imaginations upon the void of the universe.
This I am convinced is the chief attack which we of the Faith have to
meet in modern times. The modern white world, the world of the European
races and their oversea expansion, is rapidly becoming divided into
two fairly definite camps: those who accept the full mission of the
Catholic Church and those who are convinced, by the study of geology
and recorded History, that the Catholic Church is but one more example
of man’s power of self-delusion.
Two questions may be asked of me by those who should read the analysis
which makes up my booklet. First, why have I confined myself to
rebutting, that is, to a negative position, instead of advancing
positive evidence from History in favor of the Catholic claim (evidence
drawn from holiness, continuity, unity, etc.)? Secondly, why have
I given but a portion, and not the largest portion, of my space to
what I have called the most important part of the attack, to wit, the
attack from general pre-History and History, the purely Sceptical
attack which I deal with at the end of my Essay? My answer to these two
questions is as follows:
First, that, in my judgment, the action of the Catholic Church is here
a defensive action. The opponent _takes it for granted_ that History
and pre-History _dis_prove the Catholic claim. He must be met as one
attacking.
Secondly, that though the general Sceptical attack is by far the more
important, yet it needs less space in writing for the meeting of it
than does the discussion of the old Protestant attitude. The reason
is that the issue between the Faith and mere scepticism is narrower
and sharper, and at the same time more general. If you are debating
whether the Church declined or was corrupted you must go into more
historical detail. You must in some degree, even in so short an essay
as this, be concrete. But on the other and larger issue you have a
very simple and direct “yes” or “no”; which is, briefly, the answer
to that old, eternal question “whether religion be from God or from
man”; and upon the answer to that question depends the future of our
civilisation.--_The Editor._