received with favour--and thus far nothing of the kind has appeared--the
result, so far as essential unity is concerned, would be _nil._ There is
a perfectly definite line of division between the Catholic and the
Protestant, and until this line is erased there is no possible unity,
even if this were only official and administrative. The Catholic (and in
respect to this one particular point I include under this title members
of the Roman, Anglican and Eastern Communions) maintains and practices
the sacramental system; the Protestant does not. There is no reason,
there is indeed grave danger of sacrilege, in a joint reception of the
Holy Communion by those who look on it as a mere symbol and those who
accept it as the very Body and Blood of Christ. Protestant clergy are
urged to accept ordination at the hands of Anglican bishops, but the
plea is made on the ground of order, expediency, and the preservation of
tradition; whereas the Apostolical succession was established and
enforced not for these reasons but in order that the grace of God,
originally imparted by Christ Himself, may be continued through the
lines He ordained, for the making and commissioning of priests who have
power to serve as the channels for the accomplishing of the divine
miracle of the Holy Eucharist, to offer the eternal Sacrifice of the
Body and Blood of Christ for the quick and the dead, and to remit the
penalty of sins through confession and absolution. If the laying on of
hands by the bishop were solely a matter of tradition and discipline,
neither Rome nor the Anglican Communion would be justified in holding to
it as a condition of unity; if it is for the transmission of the Holy
Ghost for the making of a Catholic priest, with all that implies and has
always implied, then it is wrong, even in the interests of a formal
unity, to offer it to those who believe neither in the priesthood nor in
the sacraments in the Catholic and historic sense.
The conversion of the individual must take precedence of corporate
action of any sort. When the secularist comes to believe in the Godhead
of Christ he will unite himself with the rest of the faithful in a
Church polity, but he will not do this, he has too much self-respect,
simply because he is told by some ardent but minimizing parson that he
does not have to believe in the Divinity of Christ in order to "join the
church." When a Protestant comes to accept the sacramental system, to
desire to participate in the Holy Sacrifice of the altar, to make
confession of his sins and receive absolution, and to nourish and
develop his spiritual nature by the use of the devotions that have grown
up during nineteen hundred years, he will renounce his Protestantism,
when his self-respect would not permit him to do this just because he
had been assured that he need not really change any of his previous
beliefs in order to ally himself with a Church that had better
architecture and a more artistic ceremonial, and locally a higher social
standing. When Anglicans or the Eastern Orthodox come to believe that a
vernacular liturgy and a married priesthood and provincial autonomy are
of less importance than Catholic unity, and when Roman Catholics can see
that the same is of greater moment than a rigid preservation of
Renaissance centralization and a cold _"non possumus"_ in the matter of
Orders, then the way will be open for the reunion of the West, where
this operation cannot be affected by formal negotiations looking towards
some form of legalistic concordat.
The evil heritage of the sixteenth century is still heavy upon us, and
this heritage is one of jealousy and hate, not of charity and
toleration. It is an heritage of legalism and technicalities, of
self-will and individualism, of shibboleths that have become a dead
letter, of prejudices that are fostered on distorted history and the
propaganda of the self-seeking and the vain. The spirit of Christ is not
in it, but the malice of Satan working upon the better natures of men
and justifying in the name of conscience and principle what are
frequently the workings of self-will and pride and intellectual
obsession. This is the tragedy of it all; that Protestants and Anglicans
and Roman Catholics are, so far as the majority are concerned, honestly
convinced that they are right in maintaining their own divisiveness; in
perpetuating an hundred Protestant sects on the basis of some variation
in the form of baptism or church government or the method of conversion;
in splitting up the Catholic Church because of a thousand year old
disagreement as to a clause in the Creed which has a technical and
theological significance only, or because one sector is alleged to have
added unjustifiably to the Faith while the other is alleged to have
unjustifiably taken away. Self-will and lack of charity, not love and
the common will as these are revealed to the world through the Divine
Will of Christ, are working here. The momentary triumph of evil over
good, the passing victory that yet means the banishment of religion from
the world, and the assurance of disaster still greater than that which
is now upon us unless every man bends all his energies to the task of
making the will of God prevail, first in himself, and so in the secular
and ecclesiastical societies in and through which he plays his part in
the life of the world--these are the fruits of a divided Christendom.
I honestly believe that the first real step towards reunion would be a
prompt cessation of the whole process of criticism, vilification and
abuse, one of the other, that now marks the attitude of what are known
as "church periodicals." Roman, Anglican, Protestant, are all alike, for
all maintain a consistent slanging of each other. I have in mind in
particular weekly religious papers in the United States which maintain
departments almost wholly made up of attacks on Roman Catholicism and
the derision of incidents of bad taste or illiteracy in the Protestant
denominations, and others which lose no opportunity to discredit or
abuse the Episcopal Church and the Protestant denominations, and finally
a curiously malevolent newspaper representing the worst type of
Protestant ignorance and prejudice, which exists on its libelous and
indecent and dishonest assaults on Catholicism wherever it may be found.
These are not alone, for the condition of ascerbity and nagging is
practically universal. It merely echoes the pulpit and a portion of the
general public. We all know of the so called "church" in Boston that is
the forum of "escaped nuns" and "unfrocked priests," but in many places
of better repute the sermon that bitterly attacks Christian Science, or
"High Church Episcopalianism," or the errors of Protestantism generally,
or the "usurpations of Rome" is by no means unknown, while elsewhere
than in Ireland, the public as a whole finds much pleasure in bating any
religion that happens to differ from its own,--or offends its sense of
the uselessness of all religion. Let us have a new "Truce of God," and
for the space of a year let all clergy, lecturers, newspapers, religious
journals, and private individuals, totally abstain from sneering and
ill-natured attacks on other religions and their followers. Could this
be accomplished a greater step would be taken towards the reunion of
Christendom than could be achieved by any number of conferences,
commissions, councils and conventions.
It was the will and the intent of Christ "that they all may be one, that
the world may believe that Thou hast sent Me," and in disunity we deny
Christ. There is no consideration of inheritance, of personal taste, of
interests, of intellectual persuasion that can stand in the way of an
affirmative answer to this prayer. Every man who calls himself a
Christian and yet is not praying and working to break down the self-will
and the self-conceit that, so often under the masquerade of conscience,
hold him back from a return, even if it is only step by step, to the
original unity of the Catholic Faith, is guilty of sin, while it is sin
of an even graver degree that stands to the account of those who
consciously work to perpetuate the division that now exists.
_Sacramentalism._ The stumbling block, the apparently impassable
barrier, is that which was erected when belief was substituted for
faith; it is the intellectualizing of religion that has brought about
the present failure of Christianity as a vital and controlling force in
man and in society. The danger revealed itself even in the Middle Ages,
and through perhaps the greatest Christian philosopher, and certainly
one of the most commanding intellects, the world has known: St. Thomas
Aquinas. In his case, and that of the others of his time, the intellect
was still directed by spiritual forces, the chiefest of which was faith,
therefore the inherent danger in the intellectualizing process did not
clearly reveal itself or come into actual operation, but with the
Renaissance and the Reformation it stood boldly forth, and since then as
mind increased in its dominion faith declined. The Reformation, in all
its later phases, that is to say, after it ceased to be a protest
against moral defects and administrative abuses and became a
revolutionary invention of new dogmas and practices, was the result of
clever, stupid or perverse minds working overtime on religious problems
which could not be solved or even apprehended by the intellect, whether
it was that of an acute and highly trained master such as Calvin, or
that of any one of the hundred founders of less savage but more curious
and uncouth types of "reformed religion."
What we need now for the recovery and re-establishment of Christianity
is not so much increased belief as it is a renewed faith; faith in
Christ, faith in His doctrine, faith in His Church. We lost this faith
when we abandoned the sacraments and sacramentalism as superstitions, or
retained some of them in form and as symbols while denying to them all
supernatural power. If we would aid the individual soul to regain this
lost faith we could do no better than to restore the seven sacraments of
the historic Christian faith, and Christian Church to the place they
once held for all Christians, and still hold in the Roman Catholic
Church, the Eastern Orthodox Churches and (with limitations) in the
Anglican Church. Faith begets faith; faith in Christ brings faith in the
sacraments, and faith in the sacraments brings faith in Christ.
It is disbelief in the efficacy of the sacraments and in the sacramental
principle in life that is the essential barrier between Protestantism
and Catholicism, and until this barrier is dissolved there can be
neither formal unity nor unity by compromise. This is already widely
recognized, and as well the actual loss that comes with the denial and
abandonment of the sacraments. There is in the Presbyterian church of
Scotland a strong tendency towards a reassertion of the full sacramental
doctrine; the "Free Catholic" movement throughout Great Britain is made
up of Congregationalists, Methodists, Baptists, and other
representatives of Evangelical Protestantism, and it is working
unreservedly for the recovery and application of all the Catholic
sacraments, with the devotions and ritual that go with them. Dr.
Orchard, the head, and a Congregational minister, maintains in London a
church where, as a Methodist member of the "Free Catholic" organization
wrote me the other day, "the Blessed Sacrament is perpetually reserved
and 'High Mass' is celebrated on Sundays with the full Catholic
ceremonial." In my own practice of architecture I am constantly
providing Presbyterian, Congregational, and even Unitarian churches, by
request, with chancels containing altars properly vested and ornamented
with crosses and candles, while the almost universal demand is for
church edifices that shall approach as nearly as possible in appearance
to the typical Catholic church of the Middle Ages. Of course some of
this is due to a revived instinct for beauty, that almost sacramental
quality in life which was ruthlessly destroyed by Protestantism, and
also to a renewed sense of the value of symbol and ritual; but back of
it all is the growing consciousness that, as Dr. Newman Smythe says,
Protestantism has definitely failed, or at least become superannuated;
that the essence of religion is spiritual not intellectual, affirmative
not negative, and that the only measure of safety lies in a return
towards, if not actually to, the Catholic faith and practice from which
the old revolt was affected. It is a movement both significant and full
of profound encouragement.
Here then are two tendencies that surely show the way and demand
encouragement and furtherance; recovery of the sense of Christian unity
in Christ and through an united Catholic Church, and the re-acceptance
of sacramentalism as the expression of that faith and as the method of
that Church. I feel very strongly that wherever these tendencies show
themselves they must be acclaimed and cherished. The Protestant
denominations must be aided in every way in their process of recovery of
the good things once thrown away; Episcopalians must be persuaded that
nothing can be wrong that leads souls to Christ, and that therefore they
must cease their opposition to Reservation of the Blessed Sacrament
explicitly for adoration, to such devotions as Benediction and the
Rosary simply because they have not explicit Apostolic sanction, or to
vestments, incense and holy water because certain prescriptive laws
passed four hundred years ago in England have never been repealed. Above
all is it necessary that the Episcopal Church should declare itself
formally for the reinstitution of the seven Catholic sacraments, with
the Mass as the one supreme act of worship, obligatory as the chief
service on Sundays and Holy Days, and both as communion and as
sacrifice. In this connection there is one reform that would I think be
more effective than any other, (except the exaltation of the Holy
Eucharist itself) and that is the complete cessation of the practice of
commissioning lay readers and using them for mission work and clerical
assistance. A mission can be established and made fruitful only on the
basis of the sacraments, and chiefly on those of the Holy Eucharist and
Penance. It is not enough to send a zealous and well intentioned layman
to "a promising mission field" in order that he may read Morning and
Evening Prayer and some sermon already published. What is needed is a
priest to say Mass and hear confessions, and nothing else will serve as
a substitute. How this is to be accomplished, now when the candidates
for Holy Orders are constantly falling off in number, with no immediate
prospect of recovery, is a question. Perhaps we may learn something from
the old custom of ordaining "Mass priests," without cure of souls and
with a commission to celebrate the Holy Mysteries even while they
continue their own secular work in the world. For my own part I am
persuaded that the best solution lies in the establishing of diocesan
monasteries where men may take vows for short terms, and, during the
period of these vows, remain at the orders of the bishop to go out at
any time and anywhere in the diocese and to do such temporary or
periodical mission work as he may direct.
_Unworldliness:_ I have referred to the great falling off in the number
of candidates for the priesthood in the Episcopal Church; the same
phenomenon is apparent in all the Protestant denominations, so far as I
know, but it has not shown itself in the Roman Catholic Church. This
defection parallels the falling-off of membership in the various
churches (except again the Roman Catholic) in proportion to the increase
in population. We are told that the diminution of the ministry is due to
the starvation wages that are paid in the vast majority of cases, and of
course it is true that where a married clergy is allowed, men who
believe they have a calling both to ministerial and to domestic life
will think twice before they follow the call of the first when the
pecuniary returns are such as to make the second impossible, which is,
generally speaking, the situation today. To obviate this difficulty many
religious bodies have recently established pension funds, but even this
form of clerical insurance, together with the increase that has been
effected in clerical stipends, has shown no results in an increase of
students in theological seminaries and in candidates for Orders. The man
who has enough of faith in God and a strong enough call to the ministry
of Christ, will answer the call even if he does think twice before doing
so. The trouble lies, I believe, in the very lack of faith and in a
failure of confidence in organized religion largely brought about by
organized religion itself through the methods it has pursued during the
last two or three generations. There is a widespread belief that it is
compromising with the world; that it is playing fast and loose with
faith and discipline in a vain opportunism that voids it of spiritual
power. Even where distrust does not reach this disastrous conclusion,
there is a growing feeling of repugnance to the methods now being
adopted in high quarters to "sell religion" to the public, as is the
phrase which is sufficient in itself to explain the falling away that
now seems to be in process. The attempt to win unwilling support by the
methods of the "institutional church," the rampant advertising, so
frequently under the management of paid "publicity agents"; the setting
apart of half the Sundays in the year for some one or other special
purpose, usually the raising of money for a specific and frequently
worthy object; the "drives" for millions, the huge and impressive
organizations, "scientifically" conducted, for rounding up lapsed
communicants, or doubtful converts, or cash and pledges for missions, or
pensions, or the raising of clergy stipends; the "Nation-wide Campaign,"
the "Inter-Church World Movement"; these--not to speak of the growing
policy of "making it easy" for the hesitant to "come into the church" by
minimizing unpopular clauses in the Creeds or loosening-up on
discipline, and of attracting "advanced" elements by the advocacy and
exploiting of each new social or industrial or political fad as it
arises--are strong deterrents to those who honestly and ardently hunger
for religion that _is_ religion and neither social service nor "big
business."
Christ said "you _cannot_ serve both God and mammon," and this is one of
the few cases where He stated a moral condition as a fact instead of
indicating the right or the wrong possibility in action. Organized
Christianity has for some time been trying to render this dual service,
and the penalty thereof is now on the world. This consideration seems to
me so important and so near the root of our troubles, and not in the
field of organized religion alone, that I am going to quote at length
from the Rev. Fr. Duffy of the American "Society of the Divine
Compassion." What he has said came to me while I was preparing this
lecture, and it is so much better than anything I could say that for my
present purpose I make it my own.
"To the thoughtful person, and the need of reformation will appeal only
to the thoughtful person, it must on reflection become abundantly
evident that the chief necessity of our times in the religious world is
the recovery of Faith. Probably lack of the true measure of Faith has
been the story of every generation, with few exceptions, in the long
history of Christianity, but there possibly never has been a time when
men talked more of it and possessed less than in our own day. * * * *"
"Christianity is a new thing of splendid vision for each and every
generation of men, unique in its promise and unapproached in its
attraction. And yet how small a factor we have made it in the world's
moulding compared with what it might be. We have not achieved a tiny
part of what we might have achieved, because we lack the essentials of
achievement; Faith and Faith's vision. Obsessed, after centuries of
discussion and persecution, with the notion that faith is made up of
mere belief, we have lost the secret of that victorious power that
overcomes the world, and are weakly dependent upon the world's means for
what spiritual operation we undertake. And so content have we grown with
things as they are, that what they might be comes only as a dream that
passes away quickly with the night; blind to our appalling
money-dependency in modern religion, satisfied that the Kingdom of
Heaven is as nigh to us as is possible under present conditions of
society, we practically have substituted for the theological virtues,
Faith, Hope and Charity, the ascending degrees of belief, resignation,
money. This is partly due to our religious inheritance and partly to
mental and spiritual sloth which dislikes the effort of thinking,
preferring easy acquiescence in conditions that are the resultants of
blinded vision. For dependency upon money is not something merely of the
present, but a condition in the spiritual sphere that is largely a
product of a long past. The really inexcusable thing is our willingness,
in a day of greater light and knowledge, to close our eyes to the true
nature of the unattractive, anaemic thing we _call_ faith, which would
be seen as powerless to achieve at all, if taken out of the soil of
material means in which it has been planted."
He then gives various instances of methods actually put in practice
amongst the churches and denominations which indicate the renunciation
of faith and an exclusive reliance on worldy agencies and he then
continues:
"The Joint Commission on Clergy Pensions, appointed by the General
Convention of 1913, made as the basis for apportionment, not the
services of self-denial of, but the amount of stipend received by, the
clergy eligible for pension, thus penalizing the priest who, for the
love of God, sacrificed a larger income to accept work in the most
needed places where toil is abundant and money scarce. It must be
evident, of course, that the motive of the Commission is not an
endorsement of the blasphemous gospel of Success, by adding penalty to
the self-denying clergy; what is painfully obvious is their apparent
unbounded confidence that there are no clergy sufficiently foolish to
sacrifice stipend at the call of faith's venture! And since the
Armistice, the only real activity in organized religion has been a
series of "drives" for vast sums of money, in most cases professionally
directed.
"A consideration of a few facts such as the forgoing must readily
convince even the most unimaginative person that whatever power faith
might have had in the past, it counts for little today; that its
secrets, its very meaning have been forgotten. Otherwise there could not
be this extraordinary exaggeration of the place of money in spiritual
operation, and the unblushing, tacit admission that mammon, which Christ
so warned against, had been recognized as the master of spiritual
situation, instead of the willing servant and useful adjunct of faith it
was designed to be in the Christian vision. Indeed they all speak of
that, largely unconscious, atmosphere of distrust of God which is so
all-prevailing among Christian people today. If the great, positive vice
of the age is covetousness, the great negative one is distrust of God;
the two invariably go together as parts of a whole--one is the reverse
side of the other--for, it is not that we _must_ not, or _ought_ not,
but that we "_cannot_ serve God and mammon." And this atmosphere is one
in which faith cannot exist, it is stifled, crushed, killed, except it
breathe the pure, sweet air of God, with which it can alone surround
itself when human hearts will.