The Church and Change

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIII, Issue 11, 16 March 1905, Page 30

The Church and Change

In the course of an address at the blessing an.l opening of a ten' cat school at Lithgow his Eminence Cardinal Mo ran in part as follows • — Sometime-, they were told that the Catholic Church was too un hanging in her discipline and in her manifold a'-tioir The vhHe wml<] changed around them, and some people asked w-hy did not the Catholic Church follow suit. While the Church was befit tinply unchanging in .some things, yet looking around them, and looking; back upon the course of history, lie worli say that there was no institution in tilie world so changing in her manifold discipline and in Tier manifold cmlising influence on the v. orld around her as the Catholic C'hurclh Let them take a few instances. Men's thoughts go o\ er to France and they saw how the Ch.irch vras being persecuted tiliere Hut he supposed that hardly anyone would recognise the marvellous change in the France, of to-day from what it was in the days of Clous, fourteen centuries ago. Clo\is, blest by Holy Church, laid the foundation of that great edifice which had grown to perfection, and was now the stately Republic of France. But at was said it was a wondeiful change from the days of Clo\is t 0 our own days of persecution against the Catholic Church, and yet one of the leading Fre; eh diplomatists of the last century, a Protestant leader of political parties, said . 'If you ask me bow has France attained the eminence she possesses to-day, I must reply it was the Catholic Church that built up the glory of France.' If they asked Mr. Gladstone, that great English statesman, who did so much to brild mp the glory of England* in the century just closed, to toll them what was the action of the Catholic Church, he did not hesitate to say that, looking abioad upon the civilised wprld, and considering e\erythmg, they weic Indebted to the Catholic Church foe almost all the great amd ennobling and t i le\ at ivy influences in the world to-day. The fust three centuries of Christian life saw ihe'Cbiuich engaged in deadly struggle, which was nothing loss than to depose the prince of this woJrld. Our Diwne Saviour refer: ed to 8-at.an as ' the prince of this world,' because by the smfulnessi of the human race man had handed himself o1o 1 er to the slavery of Satan. The piince of the woild had entrencheU himself In the rule of Impeual Home , he bad identified paganism, with all its excess, with that imperial lule which governed the whole woild They fo'ind the \er\ names of 01 ie Empei ois associated in the galavy of paganism Aid \et the Catholic OhJurch in its martyrs, in it-, humiliation, m its lowliness, had vanquished Satan and cast him foith fiom all the foil reuses he had built for hit:, self, and cut not rest until the flag of the Cross was unfinled on tie capital of Imperial Rome, and Rome itself, once the central state of ipaganism, became the seat of tie successor of St. Peter, and became the great centie of Christian life for the whole of the cni'lised woild. In the centuries succeeding the Barbarians Rushed Forth and trampled in the dust the Imnenal civilisation, and it became the duty of the Church to take those ' barbarians by the hand and lead them to the waters of \uv*-ti->m, and hajving been regenerated in new Christian l>f,-> those barbarous nations became the great enlightened powers of the modern world. And so in the course of centuries the Catholic Church had been e\er changing It was her mission to exercise a beneficent influence on the world around ner. But at the same time, if Holy Church was the most changing element in the whole civilised world, she was also the most unchanging. The world around in the beneficent action of the sun e\er changes, but! it was the same sim that shed its rays and imparted everywhere the genial heat that was reoui-ed for this planet. In the same way while tlie Church was ever changing in her beneficent action on Society, .she was always umVhanging in that light of Divire 'tiutii which she imparted to the whole world, and un I: anting in tihe beneficent influence of charity. With these two unchanging elements tiiere was a third, and it was that sihe ever takes the young to hei breast and ever nourishes them with the truths and blessings of Christian wisdom. There were other things io which the Church was no less unchanging, but suffice it to mention these, and if they as&ed him why the Church did niot Change in these things, it was because Ihey were a priceless, infinite, divine heritage that s*ie had received from her Divine Fornder, and she wo Id suffer the most intense persecution in every one of her members rather than forfeit the smallest particle of Divine triith, or the smallest ray of heavenly charity, or yieia one of those little ones to become tjic prey of the enemies who might lay in wait for them.