(I) THE MINOR OR MORAL ARGUMENT
(a) _That the Church has been historically wrong upon a number of
facts: a Divine Authority would not go wrong in this fashion._
⎧ ⎧ (a) The Catholic Church
⎪ ⎪ has taught things later
⎪ ⎪ proved erroneous--which
⎪ ⎪ no Divine Authority would
⎪ ⎪ do.
⎪ I. The _Minor_ or Moral ⎫ ⎪
⎪ Argument from History ⎪ which ⎪ (b) The Catholic Church
⎪ against the Catholic ⎬ says that ⎨ has taught things erroneous
⎪ claim to Divine ⎪ ⎪ after she knew them to be
⎪ Authority. ⎭ ⎪ erroneous--which no Divine
⎪ ⎪ Authority would do.
History shows ⎪ ⎪
the Catholic ⎪ ⎪ (c) The Catholic Church is
claim to Divine ⎨ ⎪ highly and increasingly
Authority to be ⎪ ⎪ organised--which no Divinely
false, by: ⎪ ⎩ Authorised body would be.
⎪
⎪ ⎧ (a) (Protestant) The
⎪ ⎪ Catholic Church can be
⎪ ⎪ historically proved a mass
⎪ II. The _Major_ or ⎫ ⎪ of man-made accretions upon
⎪ Intellectual argument ⎪ which ⎪ an original basis morally
⎪ from History against ⎬ says that ⎨ true.
⎪ the Catholic claim to ⎪ ⎪
⎪ Divine Authority. ⎭ ⎪ (b) (Sceptical or Pagan)
⎪ ⎪ The Catholic Church can be
⎪ ⎪ historically proved to be
⎪ ⎪ _wholly_ man-made in _all_
⎩ ⎩ its structure.
We begin by defining what we mean by the words “the Church,” or that
body of pronouncement by the Church which we call “the Faith.”
Manifestly, a corporate authority is not responsible for pronouncements
on which it has allowed divergence: manifestly, again, such an
authority is not responsible for pronouncements on which it has
allowed change without protest. Manifestly, it is not responsible
for pronouncements made not by itself through its admitted organs of
universal affirmation, but by certain of its body acting as individuals
or even as parts.
I use the word “manifestly.” This may seem too strong a term in the
ears of those who have heard precisely these false arguments repeated
so often that the statement of their falsity sounds novel and strange.
But if we examine the propositions closely, we shall see that this word
“manifestly” exactly and inevitably applies in the three cases.
A particular body makes the awful claim to Divine Authority and
Infallibility. That claim may be false, and even ridiculous: but
“manifestly” it could not at the same time make the claim and make an
absolutely contradictory claim. For the word “body” substitute the
word “man”; let us suppose a particular man to come forward and say,
“I have Divine Authority to teach. On matters essential to ultimate
human happiness I can give replies which are infallibly true.” If such
a man were asked, “What do you think the weather will be to-morrow?”
or “What was the date of the Battle of Hastings?” and he were to
answer, “The weather may be this or that,” or “I cannot tell you when
the Battle of Hastings was fought, but I seem to remember that it was
on such and such a date,” he is not, when making such replies, acting
within the framework of his tremendous claim. If you say, “A man making
such a claim ought never to speak at all upon any subject save as an
infallible authority,” you are pre-supposing non-human conditions.
There is no sort of reason why such a man should not admit his doubts
or his ignorance in things not pertinent to his authority. There is
not even any reason why he should not say with regard to a particular
proposition, “You ask my definition in this matter: so far I have not
defined it; but I warn you that when I do define it I shall claim my
reply to be infallible.” If he so answer, then the hypotheses he may be
examining in the interval may be numerous and even contradictory one
to the other without their divergence affecting his claim.
Tested by this very simple (and I think, conclusive) parallel, the
historical argument drawn from historical error attributable to the
Church fails. _If any man can give a particular instance in which a
specific affirmation has been made by those organs of affirmation
which the Church solemnly defines as hers, and can say what error,
historically proved, has since attached to such an affirmation then he
shall be met._ But no man has brought forward such a case.
What such affirmation is to be found? The history is a long one; it
extends over nearly two thousand years. It is not difficult at all,
rather it is singularly easy and definite to say in any period, “Here
was the Church, these were its accredited organs of expression, and
this was a solemn affirmation of the Church, not of any individual or
of any part.” For instance, you can read the acts of the first Council
of Ephesus; it was œcumenical; it acted overtly under Papal authority.
Can you give a point therein defined which has been proved since to be
historically erroneous? or in the Council of Trent? or of the Fourth
Lateran? or of the Vatican? or of Nicæa? In which of them have you an
affirmation which History has disproved? There is none. The more you
contemplate that extraordinary historical phenomenon the more you will
be astonished by it. But I do not advance it as a proof of the Church’s
divine claim. I am here only concerned with the negative argument.
There has not been in point of fact any official affirmation proceeding
from the accredited organs of the Catholic Church--not one--from the
beginning to the present day, which has received historical disproof.
Here it may be objected that such affirmations, solemnly pronounced
as the final decision of the Church, concern matters which are not of
their nature susceptible of historical disproof; they concern such
matters as the immortality of the soul, the personality of the Godhead,
its triune quality, the Incarnation, etc. In other words, since the
Church has not touched on historical matters but only on metaphysical,
she has preserved herself from attack upon those lines.
In point of fact, the argument is not strictly conclusive, for there
are exceptional points--for instance, the Resurrection--in which the
Church might very well have been challenged by clear, overwhelming,
multiple, historical proof--and it has not been so challenged. But
take the contention for what it is (and in the main it is true) that
the Church, not having dealt with History but with transcendental
truth, has thus escaped historical error. It at least disposes of the
_historical_ argument against the Faith in that particular. We must
under this particular head--a minor one I admit--accept the fact that
the Faith has not proposed through its authoritative organs in any of
its definitions of dogma something which _History_ has disproved.
But what of divergence, and what of change?
As to divergence, the answer to me seems simple and brief. Where
divergence is admitted, and so long as it is admitted, infallible
pronouncement is neither claimed nor can be at work. The divergence
is openly between the judgments or affirmations of individuals or
of sections. If the Church, having definitely pronounced by the
voice of her head and of any of the great councils with which he
has been in communion and which have acted with his authority--the
Council of Nicæa, for instance--something which in a later age the
same authoritative organs had to deny in the face of new historical
evidence, then there would be a fundamental divergence and an
historical argument against the claim to Divine Authority. I repeat, as
I shall continue to repeat throughout this brief essay, the essential
point that the argument is negative. I am not affirming here, and for
the moment, that such consistency is proof of the divinity of the
claim--though it is certainly very remarkable; I am only pointing out
that the consistency _is_ present throughout History. You may say, if
you will, that it is present because even a human corporation claiming
infallibility would take great care never to contradict itself. Granted
(though I think it would have its work cut out)! But at least it must
be admitted that the consistency is there, and that, therefore, an
historical argument drawn from inconsistency does not lie.
Now what of the more formidable argument drawn from change? It is not
to be doubted as an historical truth that in one era the general mood
of Christians with regard to a particular point lay in one direction,
in another era, in another. It is probable, for instance, that the
early Church expected the Second Advent in a more or less brief period.
It is certain that many holy men, perhaps repeating the mood of their
time, thought, in an earlier age, of the state of the dead as one of
sleep awaiting the Resurrection, with no definition of the Particular
Judgment, and so forth. In one period one devotion prevails; in
another, another. One great doctrine is emphasised in one era; another
in a later era.
Here, then, is change.
To which I answer that the change is never--has never been in any
particular instance which any historian can find and point out--a
change of doctrine. There has never been a definition, never a
pronouncement, by any organ of the Church, saying “This or that is so,”
of which such changes of mood have later compelled a retraction.
Had we, for instance, in the early documents of the Church, a solemn,
definite Apostolic statement that Our Lord would come back to earth in
glory before the destruction of Jerusalem: had we any trace or echo of
a protest raised by some who, disappointed in the delay of their hopes,
laid their disappointment to the Apostles: had we any echo of voices in
the Apostolic or sub-Apostolic period saying, “Since He has not come
again we are deceived by the Church”--then the particular case I have
mentioned (and it is only one out of a great number) would be arguable.
But we have none such.
Had we a solemn pronouncement registered, as of the Faith, that the
dead lay unliving and out of communion with us or with life as a whole
from the moment of their passing to the Resurrection of the Flesh, then
the statement that this was a contradiction with later defined doctrine
on the Particular Judgment and with our prayers for the dead, would be
arguable. But there has been no such pronouncement.
In other words, change, in the sense of change of vague mood, has no
more historical weight in this department than the admitted divergence
between individuals or sections upon matters undefined.
Before authority has spoken, authority has not committed itself.
When authority has spoken, contradiction must be established between
itself and itself: or there is no historical argument against the
claim of authority. You may say that there is no such argument only
because authority is careful not to contradict itself. Well and good;
but it remains true that the contradiction has not taken place, and
that therefore the historical argument based upon it fails. When or
if it shall apparently take place, there will be time to meet such
an argument in its apparent strength. But so far--and the period,
remember, is one far longer than that attached to any other defined
human institution--the argument does not apply.
Now, though it is not logically connected with the strict process of
reason I am here developing, may I not ask the reader rhetorically once
more whether that is not in his eyes a very singular phenomenon?
Here is an organised corporation, a strict society, which has
admittedly existed continuously for this prodigious length of time,
through extreme vicissitudes of knowledge and of ignorance, through
the most violent revolutions of human mood: a society which sprang
up in the brilliant light of Pagan antiquity and of the half-divine
Greek power of thought, and in the open majesty of the Empire, which
persisted through the darkest periods of our material ignorance, which
lived on through phases of gross popular credulity and equally gross
alternate phases of popular scepticism; which has been bathed in the
enthusiasm of the twelfth century, has gloried in the moral splendours
of the thirteenth, has struggled through the filth of our modern time;
has suffered the splendid temptations of the Renaissance; has next
found itself struggling with the base madnesses of Puritan assaults.
Through such endless variety of circumstance it has remained consistent
throughout that long, long term of centuries; centuries filled with
every conceivable reaction of the human mind, with gusts of enthusiasm
blowing from every point, each in exact contradiction to some other
earlier one. Through all these the institution which is historically
the oldest and the most permanent of political human things cannot be
discovered affected to change in any of its final pronouncements by
these human changes. It cannot be discovered in a contradiction.
That such a phenomenon--wholly unique in the story of mankind--should
be of human origin is logically possible. It involves no contradiction
in terms. An unbroken tradition of rigid caution, coupled with
an unceasing consultation of record, might conceivably produce
such consistency by human agency alone and as the result of human
calculation. But the least we can say is that such an effect would be
different from anything we know of men and of their actions.
(b) _That the Church has maintained error after knowing it to be error:
that it has lied._
The second charge under this head is that the Church has not only made,
in good faith, errors which she has had to retract, but has actually
relied on falsehood when she knew it to be falsehood and particularly
in the case of errors originally committed in good faith, but continued
with the deliberate intention to deceive. No Divine Authority would do
that.
Now the value of such assertions--and they are frequently made--may be
tested _a fortiori_, by taking the two principal classical examples
upon which our opponents especially rely. It would be impossible to go
over the whole category of these assertions, for they touch innumerable
points. But since they all have in common one similar misunderstanding,
it will suffice to examine two with perhaps a brief allusion to another.
These two chief examples I take to be the Donation of Constantine and
the eternal Galileo case.
Though in each case the wrongful assertion against the Faith is based
on the same fundamental misunderstanding, yet each exemplifies one of
the two separate chief types of that misunderstanding. The accusation
in connection with the Donation of Constantine exemplifies the supposed
deliberate use of forgery by the Church: the Galileo case exemplifies
her supposed tenacity in demonstrated error--an authority claiming
infallibility and reluctant to admit that it has been clearly proved
fallible.
Let us see how these two test cases come out of a close examination.
It is asserted in the case of the Donation of Constantine that this
document was a forgery: that on that forgery was based a particular
doctrine, to wit, the supremacy of the see of Peter: that when it was
proved a falsehood the Church continued to defend it, and that, since
her spokesmen were compelled at last to abandon it, with it there fell
the necessary prop of the Papal contention.
The Donation of Constantine is a document purporting to be a grant
by the Emperor Constantine to Pope Sylvester, his contemporary, of
civil jurisdiction over the town of Rome; of temporal sovereignty over
certain adjacent districts in Central Italy; of sundry ritual dignities
in dress and public office; of the Lateran Palace for a residence
in perpetuity; and with all this the recognition of the spiritual
jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome over the universal Church.
It first appeared about the time when the French Monarchy was
supporting the Pope against his enemies and particularly against
Byzantium, and when that monarchy was preparing the way for being
declared the Empire of the West. It contains episodes which in a
critical age would clearly stamp it as unauthentic. There is a
ridiculous story of a dragon, for instance, which lived in a cave
under the Capitol. The Emperor Constantine is represented as receiving
baptism from the hands of St. Sylvester before he moved his capital to
Byzantium; whereas we now know that he did not receive baptism till
long after, and then not from the Pope, but from an Eastern Bishop.
It represents the Emperor as being cured by baptism of leprosy--a
disease which he certainly never had--and as making the donation out of
gratitude.
The whole thing is manifestly mythical and legendary. But how does that
false character affect the claim of the Church to infallibility in
doctrine?
To answer that question we must begin by granting all those points,
both doubtful and actually false, which our opponents advance as
historical fact; for we shall see that even with the fullest admission
of their imaginary facts, that case has not a leg to stand upon.
They tell us that the document was a forgery (that is, a falsehood)
produced with deliberate intent to support a novel claim upon the
part of the Papacy. It is in fact nothing of the sort. It is a
conglomeration of legend, arisen for the most part in Syria, the growth
of which can be traced through the centuries. The weight of evidence
would show that it was accepted as true, not first in Rome, but in
Northern France--the policy of whose monarch it exactly suited. It
was first quoted, not in Rome, but in Rheims. It was not brought in
to support the Papal claims even in temporal sovereignty, let alone
in spiritual jurisdiction, till long after even the temporal claims
had been universally admitted throughout the West, and the spiritual
jurisdiction, of course, for centuries. Though not authentic, it does
contain an important substratum of truth. It is pretty evident that
the Pope obtained increased jurisdiction in Rome after the transfer
of Imperial authority to the East. It is virtually certain that the
Lateran Palace became his official residence about the same time, and
though we have not sufficient record of the steps whereby the Papal
Government gradually came to administrate the Roman district in the
place of the Byzantine Government, which had less and less real power
there (especially after the Iconoclastic quarrel), yet we do know that
such jurisdiction was exercised long before we find any mention of the
Donation.
But, I repeat, for the purpose of my argument it is better to grant to
our opponents not only what is doubtful, but what is certainly false
in their supposed facts. Granted that the Donation was a forgery, that
it had for its evil purpose the artificial support of novel temporal
powers in the see of Rome, and even of confirming the ancient and
universally admitted spiritual supremacy: what then? How would such
historical facts, if they were true (which they are not), militate
against Catholic doctrine? Catholic doctrine in the matter may be very
simply stated. You will find it expressed everywhere by all competent
authorities over a prodigious lapse of time in words almost identical;
for it is as clear as it is brief. That doctrine is as follows:
Our Lord constituted the Apostolic College. Of that College he gave
Peter the Primacy. This Primacy by divine constitution successively
attached to the sees which Peter founded, first at Jerusalem, then at
Antioch, finally at Rome. Its power lies not in the fact that Rome was
the capital of the ancient world, but in the fact that St. Peter chose
it for his final see. This Primacy of the see of Rome is superior to,
and more universal than, its patriarchate of the West.
Now against that doctrine historical argument must show that Primacy
was not recognised until the Donation, if the Donation be the argument
in force.
There are many other historical arguments, of course, brought to bear
against the original Primacy of Rome; but I am examining the very
strong example of the Donation as a test case. Take any one of the
innumerable textbooks in which the fixed and accredited doctrine is
laid down, and examine the chain of evidence, not indeed as to the
divine institution of the Papacy (for that is a matter of faith, not
of History), but as to the original Primacy of Rome, as admitted by
Christians, which is a matter of History, not of faith.
The chain reaches down to the very beginnings of our society. One of
our most formidable opponents[1] puts what he calls the “first step in
Papal aggression” as early as St. Clement--that is, within a lifetime
of the Crucifixion. Others may propose later dates; but no one with a
pretence to elementary historical knowledge would postpone it to the
ninth century, when the Donation of Constantine (in its present form)
appeared. All Church history is full of Roman Primacy from the moment
when Church history becomes open to detailed examination. It is implied
in the procedure of the earliest councils; it is openly alluded to in
act after act, as the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries proceed. If you
would call it a corruption, you must put the origin of that corruption
very early; indeed, you will be compelled to put it within the lifetime
of those who had talked familiarly with the Apostles and knew their
mind and all the tradition of the very beginnings of the Church. The
Donation of Constantine was no more the foundation of this Primacy of
Rome than the Revolution of 1688 was the foundation of the House of
Lords in England, or than Lincoln’s Presidential pronouncements during
the Civil War were the foundation of the Presidency of the United
States.
But may it not be said that those who spoke for the Church as
historians claimed the Donation to be authentic long after it had been
questioned? Undoubtedly they did. And it would have been astonishing,
or rather incredible, if they had not, for everybody then thought
the Donation genuine. _But no doctrine was based on it._ In the same
way everybody, Catholic and non-Catholic, accepts the ecclesiastical
history of the Venerable Bede as genuine, and we use it in support of
the connection between the English Church and Rome. But if it were
proved a forgery to-morrow, the thesis of union between the English
Church and Rome would remain. But they did not claim it after it
had been definitely proved to be legendary; and the very fact that
they officially admitted their error and confirmed their admission
in final fashion is an excellent example of the difference between
fallibility as expressed in doctrinal falsehood and the misapprehension
of historical fact. It is an excellent example of a universal truth
present throughout all the history of the Church, that the Church
brings reason to bear upon every problem, and regards reason in its own
sphere as absolute.
The first criticisms of the Donation are of the fifteenth century,
coming from Peacock, Bishop of Chichester, and Valla in Italy. They
make no pretence to being heretical; they have no connection with any
effort to destroy the unity of the Church; they are not particularly
convincing--especially the latter.[2] What exploded the Donation of
Constantine as an historical document was a much longer process of
examination and criticism, which does not reach its final conclusions
till the seventeenth century. During that process you will find many
who, after the breakdown of unity in the sixteenth century, were
frankly enemies of the Church from without, not historical critics
from within, using the unauthenticity of the Donation as a weapon for
attacking the whole Catholic scheme; but I doubt if you will find one
case of a believer who regarded the gradual establishment of the truth
as in any way shaking the doctrine of Papal supremacy. Yet you have
plenty of critics within the Catholic Church examining the problem in
full liberty, and permitted to come to a right decision upon it. You
have to-day, and you will have throughout the centuries to come, an
indefinitely large body of men with the fullest historical confidence,
great scholars and experts in this particular point, who are fully
convinced of the legendary character of the Donation, and yet to whose
minds it is inconceivable (as I confess it is to mine) that anyone
should think the establishment of that historical detail a cause for
doubt in the plain and most ancient doctrine of Roman supremacy with
which it was for some six centuries out of twenty adventitiously
connected.
Now for the Galileo case. It is so continually quoted, it is so much
the accepted type of such things, that I might be tempted to go into it
at greater length; on the contrary, I shall deal with it more briefly,
because the points at issue are as restricted as they are evident, and
the complete misunderstanding upon which the accusation is based may be
exposed by the most elementary statement of it.
The accusation runs thus: “Galileo, having discovered by indubitable
physical proof the motion of the earth, was condemned by the Catholic
Church for stating the same, and her condemnation remained in force
until the nineteenth century, when she was compelled to allow the
matter to lapse.”
That assertion, the commonest made in all this department of
historical attack upon the Faith, contains two elementary and decisive
historical errors. First, the error that Galileo was condemned for
teaching a then novel particular doctrine which he proved true;
secondly, the error that Galileo was condemned by authority of the
Catholic Church upon a point of doctrine: that is, that the Catholic
Church affirmed in the seventeenth century by her Infallible Authority
as a point in doctrine that the earth did not move.
In point of fact, Galileo’s condemnation did not turn upon his teaching
a demonstrated truth, for it was not yet demonstrated. It did not
turn upon a novel idea in Astronomy, but upon an hypothesis which was
already hoary before Galileo was born; and the condemnation was not
originated against the idea as an hypothesis, but against the teaching
of it as an established fact. So much for point _one_.
Next, as to point _two_, the condemnation did not proceed from the
Catholic Church. It proceeded from a particular disciplinary organ
of the Catholic Church, with no authority whatsoever for finally
establishing a point in doctrine. To confuse it with Catholic
definition of doctrine would be like confusing the definition of a
New York court of justice with an amendment to the Constitution. The
Pope himself, as it happened, forbade what would have been a grave
error--though not one binding the Church--I mean, a full definition
of heresy by the inquisitors upon the matter. But all that is neither
here nor there. There was no definition binding upon Christians, and
has been none, nor ever will be in such a purely mechanical affair.
What there _was_ was disciplinary action against a man who had done
everything he could to provoke the constituted authorities of religion
by querulous and bitter insult (he was a difficult character), a
man who was unable to support his own statements in court (nothing
he brought forward at his trial came near to being conclusive on
the motion of the earth, and much that he brought forward was
fantastic),[3] and the action came at the end of an upheaval in which,
by exactly this kind of irrational, angry attitude in graver matters,
the unity of Christendom had been destroyed. No wonder the authorities
had grown touchy. Moreover, as anyone may see who reads the trial (and
as Huxley saw), Galileo could not prove his case. It was still only an
hypothesis.
The theory that the earth was not fixed, but turning on its axis and
moving round the sun, had not only been familiar (as I have said)
to educated[4] Europe from long before Galileo was born, but had
been taught with clerical approval _as an hypothesis_ in Catholic
universities; it was taught again in such universities not long after
the Galileo trial as evidence accumulated, and became a commonplace of
all teaching in Catholic schools and colleges long before the expunging
of the Galilean treatise from the Index--always, and necessarily, a
lengthy process.
The whole attack on the Church in connection with Galileo turns upon
these two misunderstandings, of which the first is unessential, but
the second capital: First, that a proved scientific fact was at issue;
secondly, that this proved scientific fact was denied, because it was
novel, and was denied by that authority which alone throughout the
centuries had been held competent to establish points of doctrine,
the Papacy and the councils of the Church over which it spiritually
presides. The first is wrong and the second is wrong. The Copernican
theory was not novel in Galileo’s time; it was still only a theory.
His condemnation accuses him of returning to the _oldest_ conception
(Pythagorean). He was not condemned by the Church, and the instance of
his condemnation, such as it was, by the appointed committee, was his
persistence in teaching as a proved fact what was still only hypothesis.
Before leaving this overemphasised historical detail, I would like
to make clear to the modern reader what our modern confused habit of
mind often fails to grasp: the difference between teaching a thing
as demonstrated fact and teaching it as hypothesis, coupled with the
difference between teaching demonstrated fact and teaching metaphysical
or doctrinal conclusions supposedly, but erroneously, dependent upon
that fact.
For that purpose I will choose a debate familiar to all our
contemporaries: the discussion on the origins of the human body.
In the last eighty years a very large and increasing body of evidence
has been accumulated which points to the probability of the human
body’s having come out of some original sub-human type, a sort of
cousin to (though not descended from) the greater anthropoids of our
own day.
It may be so. There is nothing in such an hypothesis against any
Catholic doctrine. On the other hand, it is not proved. Still less
is it proved that the process was of an inevitable sort unconnected
with divine Creative Will. Least of all is it proved--and indeed, it
cannot be proved, for the thing is manifestly contradictory to our
senses--that man as we know him is not a fixed type, utterly different
in quality from the beasts.
Now this hypothesis is almost universally stated to-day as a
demonstrated fact--which as yet it most certainly is not; indeed, the
guesses at the process continue to change year by year, as anyone can
see for himself by looking up the common manuals of forty, thirty,
twenty and ten years ago.
Further, there is quite commonly tacked on to it a second statement,
that the so-called demonstrated fact disproves a cardinal Catholic
doctrine, to wit, the Fall of Man.
Now then, supposing a professor avowedly subject to the Catholic
discipline, professing in a Catholic society, were to teach (1) that
the descent of the human body was what the last of our many successive
guesses presumes it to be, and were to teach that as now certain and
indubitable fact, comparable to the fact of the rotundity of the earth;
(2) that this origin of the human body destroyed the Catholic doctrine
of Original Sin. That professor would be condemned exactly as Galileo
was condemned. He would be condemned not because the Church desired
to assert that the human body was _not_ of such hypothetical origin,
but because he had taught as certain what was uncertain; and he would
be condemned upon the infinitely more important second point (which
plain reason is sufficient to establish) that even if the hypothesis
were already established by indubitable proof, it could not affect in
any way the dogma of the Fall of Man: they are on different planes and
concerned with totally different subjects.
The doctrine of the Fall of Man is a transcendental doctrine.
It affirms that man in his completed nature was intended for a
supernatural state, that his free-will rebelled against the will of God
and that on this account his nature is _fallen_ from a supernatural
to a natural condition. To such a doctrine the discovery--if ever
it should be made--as to _how_ the body came to be is utterly
indifferent. If I say, “Young Smith was right enough till he took to
drinking,” it is no answer to tell me that Young Smith was once a baby
who could not take to any evil, that he gradually grew up, and the
whole process was one of increase and maturing, a “progress,” and that
_therefore_ Young Smith _can’t_ have taken to drink. That “can’t” is
nonsensical. The process of becoming full grown is no bar to a moral
fall.
So much for the second of the moral arguments drawn from History. Let
me turn to the third: That the Church cannot be divine because it is
highly organised, with defined dogmas, a hierarchy, a whole machinery
of rites and laws, whereas a divinely inspired thing would remain free
and simple.
(c) _That the Church is organised, therefore not of divine character._
This last or third point made against the Church is one which haunts
the greater part of modern minds with singular persistence. It is odd
that it should do so; because, of all historical objections made to the
Church, this is the least reasonable. But it is characteristic of the
day in which we live that emotion should take the place of reason and
a certain emotional bias towards an indefinite enthusiasm (as in music)
is a modern disease.
The objection is that the Church is organised, whereas whatever is
of divine authority on earth must (so it is presumed) be of a vague,
inspirational sort without organisation or framework--loose, attaching
to the heart and imagination rather than to the intelligence. Such is
the premise--and it is an enormity.
For let it be supposed that there be upon earth one particular defined
Divine Authority--such is the Church’s claim--how would it necessarily
act and be? What would of necessity be its structure?
The reply is no _positive_ argument in favour of that claim, but it
is a conclusive _negative_ argument in proof of the contention that
_if_ such a claim be true, then organisation and, as time proceeded,
more and more minute and detailed organisation, would be an absolutely
inevitable condition of action by such an authority.
For consider carefully what the implications of such an authority are?
Here we are on earth, possessed of certain general instincts of right
and wrong--instincts commonly proceeding to very warped effects in
action. We are surrounded by an infinity of varying circumstances; our
lives are brief; our power of intercommunication between individual
minds is limited. Granted that there be some _Corpus_--some definable
get-at-able person, place, or thing--from which absolute conclusions
may be accepted; then that thing must be in the form of a society
or otherwise it could not be continuous; it could not survive among
ephemeral beings; it must have rules, or it could not bind beings
imperfectly communicating; it must have habits, for it must be a living
organism. Societies cannot live without differentiation of function
and definition thereof; separation of one activity from another;
subordination in command; laws more and more defined; known symbols;
ritual. If anything were designed to act as an institution with divine
authority among men--there might be no such design nor any such
institution--but, I say, _supposing_ there be such, then whatever was
to act in this fashion must be a society, for it must be continuous;
must be corporate, in order to overcome the imperfect connection
between individual minds; must tend to more and more complete
definition in its character and being as time proceeds: for otherwise
it would not have a human framework consonant to the human world for
which it would be designed.
Leave men in doubt as to who is and who is not a member of such
a society; let it be uncertain by what tests membership may be
recognised, acquired or lost, and the whole character and personality
of the divinely appointed Thing disappears: with personality disappears
the faculty of diction, of affirmation, for which (by definition) it
was conceived. And, indeed, so you find the Church from its origins:
sacraments at once appearing, communion and excommunion, doctrine more
and more defined as the generations pass and doubts or controversies
arise, ritual embryonically present at its very outset and rapidly
stabilised: from the beginning you have it certainly hierarchic,
disciplined, bound in a strict framework: and still more certainly
(if that be possible) it shows limitation or outline, a frontier, a
boundary--whereby any man may test who is within and who is without the
Church.
And if this be true of structure, it is still more obviously true
of doctrine. Granted that there be such a society with a claim to
infallible pronouncement upon the things essential to the satisfaction
of the human soul, how can it proceed save by exact definition of its
pronouncements?
Begin with the vague and general, though perhaps intense, conviction
that the soul survives death. Regard it not as a product of affection
or of habit. Accept the mere intuition. What then? Does it survive as
a person or not? The thing is debatable. If it does not survive as a
person, what connection is there between its survival and good or evil
conduct in this life? If it does survive as a person, how can such
survival hold of our personality, which, being human, is manifestly of
this changeable and material world?
If it be said that no answer can be given to these questions, then we
deny the existence of such an authority as I here presume. I do not say
that these questions and the replies to them are a proof of the truth
of such authority. I say that on the hypothesis that such an authority
is to be found on earth, then necessarily it must of its very nature
_define_ doctrine upon such matters as these, pronouncement upon which
is its whole reason for being.
As each controversy of importance arises some new definition will
necessarily be demanded of the authority. Therefore, though doctrine
itself does not grow--for it concerns truths outside time--definition
of doctrine will grow. The time in which we live has so largely lost
the habit of clear thought that I must here admit a digression in order
to emphasise and put in the sharpest light the difference between the
growth of _doctrine_ and the growth of _definition_.
Whenever a new definition is given by the Church--e.g., the definition
of Infallibility in 1870, the definition of Transubstantiation in
1215--confused thinkers, or men who have not read the proceedings,
will assert that a new doctrine has been invented. A little attention
to what passes at the time of such definitions should be enough to set
them right. The whole debate turns upon the proof that the doctrine was
present from the beginning and that innovation lies in the denial of
it. The definition is a new thing to meet a new attack upon an ancient
truth. The truth is aboriginal. Definition no more makes new doctrine
than does a new treatise on geometry make new mathematical truth. Such
matters are expounded and elucidated in increasing volume; they are not
invented. So it is with the Faith.
From this, turn to another consequence of this objection to
_organisation_ in the Church: the objection that its machinery and
instruments of action are continually unworthy, base, insufficient,
affected by worldly motives, and that therefore the claim of the Church
to be divine fails.
That the Church being organised and being human will suffer from
defects inherent to all organisation and to all humanity is equally
certain. There will be bad administrators, wicked men in holy charges,
abuse of powers. But that is no answer to the claim of the Church. For
consider--what is the alternative?
Supposing there be upon earth a definite body of some
kind--corporation, society, officer, what you will: a definable
existent _Thing_ whereto men may turn for ultimate and certain
pronouncements upon the chief matters of their concern (that is, the
nature of man and his destiny). If that Thing, whatever form it were
to be given, were _not_ organised, then must affirmation clash with
affirmation and whatever were common to all would divide into a mere
vague mood.
Now such a mood does not fulfill the requirements of the _Thing_ in
question. You may indeed say (the vast majority of English-speaking
people are saying it to-day) that true religion is of this vague kind;
an instinctive aspiration to unity with the Divine Will; most would
even put it lower still and say “to unity with nature or the universe.”
They therefore feel that all attempts to systematise this aspiration,
to regulate the enthusiasm, to define particular dates and cases, to
set up the machinery of a society with laws, officials and decision,
is a warping of the only true living and direct religious impulse: and
certainly if that original and vague religious impulse in man be the
only true religion and if its value be in proportion to its vagueness,
then organisation is a warping and a lessening of it.
But remember that in making this statement you are denying at the
outset the possibility of an authority and therefore contradicting the
very affirmation you make of some certain common truth in religion. For
any authority beyond mere individual emotion (which changes in each
individual and varies indefinitely among many individuals) must have a
power of definition, must act with a function, and therefore must be
organised in some degree.
The choice is unavoidable between organisation in that which can speak
with authority and the rejection of all claim to authority--which
is the rejection of all common or general certitude on matters not
immediately and universally apparent. In plain words, either you must
admit organisation in your religion or say that no religion is true.
I would like to make this argument quite clear, because the great
majority of our contemporaries, at least in the English-speaking world,
fail to make acquaintance with it. I do not say organisation proves
the truth of the contention that the Church in particular is divine.
I say that _if_ there be such a thing as a divine Church on earth,
that Church will be increasingly organised as the ages proceed, will
perpetually define and re-define, will establish strict tests and will
maintain its vitality by excluding what is not consonant to its nature;
it will operate through differentiation of function as does every other
living thing. It will have a multitudinous co-ordination of detail in
proportion to the exaltation of its status, for only thus can it be
alive with the supremely conscious life of the highest organisms.
I say again, this is not an argument to the effect that organisation is
a witness to divinity in the Church. It is an argument to the effect
that _if_ divinity speaks through any society, _then_ the oracle of
truth will present all the phenomena of organisation; and so far from
these phenomena clashing with the religious instinct, they alone can
give that instinct its full working value.
In other words, you admit or you deny a Church. If you deny it, there
is no certain source of truth present amid mankind; for the religious
emotion of each man changes perpetually, and the emotions of each among
so many millions differ from those of his neighbour. But if there be
a Church, then organisation must necessarily be the very test of its
reality, as it is the test of all the higher forms of life we know.
When, therefore, we Catholics meet, as we do daily and in a thousand
forms, such objections as: “If this dogma were true, it would be
universally apparent”; “If that doctrine were part of the universal
truth, it would not be arrived at by special conclaves of particular
men fulfilling highly defined functions and even dressed in a peculiar
manner of their own”; “This elaborate definition of the Real Presence
jars with true devotion to the Eucharist, which is a thing of the heart
and a mystery beyond analysis,” and so forth, in a myriad different
forms of objection, we reply: “If, of mysteries such as the Eucharist
or the continued life of man after death, or of the more familiar
mysteries of personality, of time, of eternity, we have no definitions,
then falsehood can be present and received as truth. There is indeed no
need to define, so long as all are implicitly agreed; but the moment
one says (of the Eucharist, for instance), ‘There is a Presence here
but it is spiritual only; the bread remains,’ then must, of necessity,
the claimer to infallible truth (unless she is to nullify her own
claim) lay down whether that proposition be true or not: whether the
bread remains, or does not remain, after consecration. Otherwise
two members of a society existing to teach true doctrine will, on a
fundamental and essential doctrine, be holding two contrary views, one
of which at least must be false.”
It would be easy to point to any number of other cases of more interest
to the average modern man than the case of the Eucharist, in which he
has lost all communion; for instance, to the mystery of immortality,
and the discipline rather than the doctrine of our attitude towards
the dead. Two members of this society claiming infallibility are
faced with the practice of necromancy, the calling up of the dead (a
favourite pastime of our day among the wealthy). The one feels in the
strongest fashion that in this exercise he is upon the confines of
positive evil. He smells the Pit. The other is convinced that it is
indeed the blessed dead who visit him and with whom he is in communion.
Which is right? The infallible authority cannot abdicate in such a
crux without denying its own claim. There is no reconciliation of such
a contradiction: it is Hell or Heaven. It must define and it does
define; and we know on which side its definition lies. Necromancy--or
Spiritualism as its modern name goes--is of Hell.
In general, then, the moral arguments against the Church as drawn from
History--that is, from the record of its action--fail from one of two
causes: either they misconceive the nature of the Church (_what_ it is
that speaks with Infallible Authority; _on what_ it has spoken with
Infallible Authority), or they are confused as to the implications of
religion, not perceiving that, if you are to admit any criterion of
truth other than that of common experience, you must admit external
authority; and that, once you admit an external authority in the final
and all important questions, you admit a Church.
Such considerations do not establish the claim of the Catholic Church,
but they destroy certain particular objections to that claim, drawn
from the supposed clash between the moral character of the Church’s
claim and the historical record of the Church making such a claim.
From these I turn to what I have called the major objection of modern
times: the intellectual objection; the objection that History shows the
structure of the Catholic Church to have proceeded from man.