THE CHURCH AND MODERN UNBELIEF'

New Zealand Tablet, 17 November 1910, Page 1890

THE CHURCH AND MODERN UNBELIEF'

(From our Wellington correspondent.)

On Sunday last at St. A line’s Church, Newtown, the* Rev. S. F. Bartley, S.M., M.A., continued his course off sermons on the above subject. Again speaking to a crowded congregation, he preached from the text, ‘ You shalll know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.’ Hei was listened to throughout with great interest, as he gave' a clear and closely reasoned answer to the charge that tho Catholic’s obedience to a teaching authority meant intellectual slavery, suicide of thought, and a warping of mental I power. He showed how men, honest, able, and truthloving men, who had outgrown the pettiness of bigotry and', who shrank from anything mean or unfair in their criticism' of the Catholic Church, withheld their allegiance from her' because they could not fetter their mind and heart to 1 believe whatever does not appeal to their own convictions. The Catholic is thought to be a soul in bondage, one caged in infallible councils and Papal decrees, who must, at the bidding of a man in far-off climes, desist from certain studies, and even at times retract honest opinions and withdraw books from publication. The preacher eloquently showed what is the ultimate reason of a Catholic’s submission. He gives up some cherished opinion, the result perhaps of diligent and honest research, because he comes to learn it is contrary to fact. The sacrifice he makes is often painful, and, in those circumstances, heroic, but a hero could never be a slave. Knowledge could never enslave, and all information if true makes for emancipation. The principle is a cardinal one in every science, and it is strange that thinking men are often illogical enough to deny its use in matters of religious inquiry. The preacher cited the case of Sir Isaac Newton in his examination of the theory of universal gravitation. After nine years of herculean effort and painstaking study, he found that his brilliant theory could not be applied to the motions of the moon, and after vainly modifying his theory, the unrelenting vote of mathematics was still against him, and he firmly, though regretfully, abandoned it. His love of truth was too overmastering a passion to allow him to accept any half measures or any hurried explaining away of unalterable facts. It is true that ten years later he found that the data, relative to the dimensions of the moon, were inaccurate, and with the corrected figures his theory proved triumphant; but still he is not less famous and worthy of undying praise for his previous failure than in his final success. Such is the Catholic position. Tho unerring voice of the Church speaks to him and his conviction that whatever is in contradiction to her is wrong, bids him put away his own imperfect guesswork, no matterhow dearly it has been bought or how fondly cherished. So the Catholic fears to suffer the fate of Icarus, who flew too near the sun, and when the wax that fastened on his; wings melted, fell into the sea and perished. He learns to distrust his own rushlight of reason for the fuller light of. the Church’s teaching. Father Bartley also met the charge that the Catholic: Church has won obedience because she crushed all the aspirations of the human mind and heart by persecution. He denounced as a hateful lie the accusation that the Church ever authorised persecution. Catholics, it is true, persecuted, but only as individuals, and this was in accordance with the spirit of the times, or rather with the disease of intolerance that swept as a plague over all lands. He cited the persecutions of Geneva, Germany, the earlv American States, and especially of England. Every State and every ruler persecuted, and this spirit ravaged all lands, but it died hardest in those non-Catholic. He instanced the Gordon Riots, and even the recent no-Popery procession in London. The preacher showed too that the creed of the Catholic Church is not a long one, and full scope is given to the Catholic for free and untrammelled inquiry in the spheres of .religion, history, science, literature, and art. No door in the palace of Truth is closed against him. The Church wishes him to enlarge his mind, cultivate his heart, and equip himself in every way by the thorough development of all his faculties for the tasks of life. The Church has been the greatest patron of learning in the world. She has founded schools and universities for the dissemination of knowledge, and to her the Catholic looks for guidance, kindly correction, and assurance from error. He is grateful beyond measure to her for the knowledge that frees, that cannot enslave, and feels that she will safely steer his frail craft through all the deceitful currents of life’s ocean; past the Scylla of credulity and the Charybdis of rash speculation,‘for he follows the Church as he would follow Christ, for knowing the truth, the truth shall make him free. Tho course of sermons will be brought to a close next Sunday evening, with an attempt to explain the widespread unbelief of modern times and an appeal to Catholics to make themselves more and more familiar with their rich heritage of the truth.