PROSPERITY AND RELIGION

New Zealand Tablet, 30 March 1911, Page 587

PROSPERITY AND RELIGION

CATHOLIC VERSUS PROTESTANT COUNTRIES GREATEST, WHEN MOST CATHOLIC In a series of lectures to the League of the Cross, the Rev. Father Graham, of Motherwell, has examined the common argument against Catholicism on the ground of national prosperity (says the Catholic Times). Beginning by asking what was really meant by ' prosperity, he pointed out there was a twofold prosperity: one in the material order, the other in the moral and religious sphere. He then took the case of England, and proceeded to show, by an array of facts regarding pauperism, and other social and economic evils, and immorality and crime of all kinds, as well as regarding the religious state of the country' that neither in the one sphere nor in the other could Britain bear comparison either with ' Merrie England' before the ' Reformation,' or with a truly Catholic land at the present day, such as Belgium. Proceeding further to discuss the apparent inferiority of Catholic countries among the great Powers of to-day, Father Graham had no difficulty, in proving that the relative positions of Powers, whether Catholic or Protestant ,depended upon a multitude of considerations that had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with religion, such as the native genius and endowments of the people, the physical features of the countries, their geographical position, and their natural resources. Nations, moreover, had their rise and fall; would Britain or Germany or the United States be exceptions to the rule that never yet had an exception? But the rev. lecturer had another answer to those who asserted that Catholic countries broke down hopelessly in comparison with Protestant ones as regards power and progress and worldly greatness. There is no possibility at the present time, he declared, of finding a really Catholic nation to compare with a really Protestant nation. Our Opponents' Method of Argument is to place Spain and France and Italy alongside Great Britain and Germany, calmly to label the former Catholic

and the latter Protestant Powers; to gloat over the comparison, and to invite people to mark well the inferiority and decadence of nations under Catholicity'. Now, it is precisely this kind of argument we object to : not so much because of its abounding fallacies and unfairness, but rather because of this, that we simply deny their premises. We say: You cannot call Spain or Franco or Italy Catholic nations in the sense in which they once ■were Catholic, and in the sense that is required for instituting a just comparison between the Catholic and Protestant religions in their effect on a nation’s temporal advancement. You may call England and Germany Protestant nations so far as regards their economic ideals and social theories, and their standard of civilisation, and their motives for enlarging their empire; but you have no nation that you can in the same way call Catholic. The Governments of _ every Catholic country have shown themselves the enemies of the Catholic Church. Take Austria, for example, with its Josephism; Italy with its anti-Papa ! Government since 1870; Spain with its Liberal ministries; France with its Napoleonic oppression, and later its Law of Separation; Portugal with its atheistical Republic—matters not, in short, what country you select, whether European or South American, or any other— will find that the secular princes or their cabinets have persecuted, crippled, and endeavoured to enslave the Church. he nation itself, by which I mean the great masses of the people, has remained Catholic, devoted to the Church, obeying her laws, and moulded by her civilisation; but the ruling powers have everywhere turned against her. They have again and again suppressed the religious Orders and secularised their houses; fettered the action of the secular clergy; invaded the cloimHn of the Church and usurped her rights in such matters SI education and marriagein a word, they have attempted, by every possible means, to weaken and paralyze the Church’s influence. Now, to call governments Catholic is simply an abuse of terms They have ceased to be inspired with Catholic ideals; their statesmen and politicians and ministers have lost the Catholic spirit; rather they have come to regard the Church’s teaching and legislation as hostile and in,liinous to their projects; they have, in short, renounced allegiance to her, no longer obeying her laws, and perhaps not even believing her doctrines. , Hence we claim that you cannot call these Powers Catholic in the sense that

they were Catholic in the great Ages of Faith, permeated with Catholic principles, possessed by Catholic ideals, and filled with the grand and sublime, and even supernatural, conceptions fostered by the Church in regard to conquest' and civilisation. Now, strange as it may sound, precisely here is the secret of their present weakness and decadence. Had they remained Catholic they would have been as great as ever, . and much greater; for faith and fatherland go ever hand in hand; and as they lost their Catholicity they lost their power. And how ? and why Their goverments, as all the world knows, are honeycombed with Freemasonry. Now, Freemasonry is a society within a society; and, whatever it may be, in practice, in Great Britain, it leads infallibly in Catholic countries to disloyalty as well as to anticlericalism ; it issues in hatred and secret plotting against king and constitution, no less than against the Pope and the Church. It is common knowledge that Spain suffered in her recent wars through the treachery and cowardice of her Masonic Ministers and officers, while the Catholic soldiers and sailors were heroically loyal. France ,- s notoriously rotten with Masonry; so much so, indeed, that she cannot rely even upon the genuineness of her ships or guns; and as for Italy, the very nation which forced its ' unity ' by the sanguinary intrigues of the Freemasons and other societies, finds now, to its utter dismay, that Masonry is the ruin of its army and navy, and would be glad to stamp it out of every branch of its public service. But it is impossible; the cancer is there, and is spreading, a disease from which there can be no recovery till the whole nation is recreated by a return to the obedience of the Catholic Church. These, then, surely have no right to be called Catholic Powers when we are comparing the imperial greatness of various nations. They are weaker than ever they were. The solid and massive strength imparted to them by their Catholic faith has gone as the strength went from Samson when his locks were shorn by Delilah. There is not, and there cannot be, the same loyalty among tho people, the same nay, even eagerness, to suffer any sacrifices, and contribute their last mite ,towards foreign expeditions, colonial defence, or projects of conquest in distant lands. Anyone who will think of the enthusiasm that once thrilled Catholic nations in support of a Crusade against the infidel. will readily perceive the change that has taken place. A Catholic nation without a "Catholic government is a poor, weak, and emasculated thing. The grandeur and nobility of the religious ideals which gave it such invincible strength has gone, the glory has departed, and it 'can no longer stand as a successful rival either to a Protestant or to a non-Christian Power of the same size. Therefore, I argue, there is . No Comparison Possible, between Catholic and Protestant Powers to-day, for one term of your comparison simply does not exist. . Revive the Spain of Ferdinand and Isabella, or the France of St. Louis, or the Empire of Philip the Second or Charles the Fifth, and allow for their natural expansion; and then we should.not fear comparison with any Protestant rival. And here it will be observed how in these considerations we find support for our previous. claim as to the superiority of Catholic nations in regard to the domestic and social condition of the population. This, the product of centuries of Catholic civilisation, remains, however, the Government may have changed. Not here can an anti-clerical cabinet interfere: the thing is too deep and ancient. The masses of the people of all grades are still Catholic; the Church still has them in her embrace, entering into their daily life and fashioning their character, lightening their toil, hallowing their recreation, and sanctifying their homes! Precisely here "it is that the beneficent achievements of the Church on behalf of the people are still perpetuated; they are conspicuous m the prosperity and happiness, moral and material, of tho inhabitants. That it is an imcomparably more solid and enduring prosperity than that

of Protestant nations has already been shown, and thus we conclude that where the Church has been allowed to hold her sway the country is prosperous; but in the wider sphere from which her influence has" been excluded, there has resulted only humiliation and decay.