THE CHURCH AND THE WAR

New Zealand Tablet, 29 April 1915, Page 27

THE CHURCH AND THE WAR

r Professor J. Phillimore lectured recently before the Edinburgh Catholic Students’ Union on, ‘The Catholic Church and the War.’ Whilst in the main a general survey of the moral causes and factors at work in the present tremendous struggle, the address constituted a most cheering and persuasive apologetic for the Catholic faith—all the more effective because incidental and suggestive rather than directly argumentative or controversial in character. ‘ This tremendous war, in the view of the lecturer, win effect a great break with the past in many ways. It will be the beginning of a new epoch not only in the political but in the social and religious history of the world. Assuming that the physical, financial, and moral resources of England, France, 1 and Russia must inevitably bring victory to them, the future life of each of these three great nations, of Germany, and of the rest .of the occidental' world, must be profoundly affected. Looking back to the politico-religious situation of the world two or three years ago, it was, from a human point of view, not encouraging. The drift of religious thought, or what survived of religious though', in the political management of the three most influential nations of the —England, Germany, and the United States, —was towards an attenuated Unitarianism. . The creed of the late Mr. Joseph Chamberlain might be taken as a fair sample of the religious lines on which the government of these three great Empires would be run. The Influence of Germany on Religious Thought was deep and far-reaching. In the eyes of the literary men of Great Britain and America, Germany was not only the land of Schiller and Goethe, of Ranke and of Mommsen, of Helmholze and Rontgen ; it was above all the land of Luther. Prussiaxxism,-in so far as it had any religion at all, was the development of Luther The tremendous shock of this war, of the object, of the spirit and the methods by which it was waged by Ger-. many, on the mind of other nations, must be enormous. That Unitarian triple ‘alliance adumbrated by Joseph Chamberlain was already dead and buried. On the other hand, the revival of religion in France, already begun before. the war, was immensely stimulated. The effect of our alliance with Belgium and France, of the experiences of our soldiers in these countries, the reward for the generous hospitality bestowed on the Belgian refugees throughout the length and breadth of Great Britain, and the conviction far and wide that it was this heroic little Catholic nation which by its self-immolation stood between Great Britain and frightful disaster— all these factors had co-operated to produce a change in the national attitude towards the Catholic Church that it would be impossible to overestimate. We had only to glance at our halfpenny illustrated papers to see it. The outburst of admiration over Cardinal Mercier’s Pastoral was one symptom. The universal and intense desire to have the sympathy of the Pope on the side of the Allies was another. Again, the effect of the war on the future of the relations of Russia’with the Catholic Church must inevitably be profoundly beneficial. * If, as we had good reason to, hope, one result would be a resuscitated self-

governed Poland under some form of Russian suzerainty, this act of atonement on the part of Russia- should soften the feelings of the ruling power towards ; Catho- : licism, just as u The Long-Delayed Concession of Justice to Ireland by Great Britain; had not only accomplished the good work of winning at last in the hour of need the- friendship and goodwill of Ireland, but had also effected the not less difficult and necessary task of enabling England herself to develop real friendship and goodwill towards Ireland. There was every reason to anticipate that by the end of the war the position of the Pope and his influence would be better and more potent for good than it had been for three hundred years.' The consequences of the revulsion from- the pagan culture of modern Prussia would most probably be deep and lasting in the spiritual life of the western civilised world, and the general outcome should be a powerful trend in the direction of sacramental and dogmatic religion.