'STAND FAST IN THE FAITH'

New Zealand Tablet, 19 August 1915, Page 11

'STAND FAST IN THE FAITH'

(A Weekly Instruction specially written for the N.Z. Tablet by Ghimel.)

STRAY QUESTIONS. 1. Is one religion as good as another? I am always disposed to question the saneness of anyone who in the matter of religion takes up the position that one belief is as good as another. Why Because that same man would not dream of admitting such a principle in any other matter. No one, for example, would hold for an instant that one system in philosophy or in economy is as good as another. It is either better or worse. One social scheme put forward to further the material well-being of a nation cannot be just the same as another ; it is either better or worse. And if this be so even in the relations that exist between the citizens of a state and the governing authorities of that state, how much more is it the case, when, in the matter of religion, God enters into relations with his creatures! ‘No sovereign or prince ever existed who left to his subjects the free, untrammelled choice as to how they were to give expression to the allegiance they owed him ; nor did any government, however liberal or democratic, ever embrace as a principle of its liberalism or mark of its democratic character that the mode of the service of its citizens was to be decided by the humor of each, and altered at his whim.’ 2. hat is'meant hi/ the Inspiration of the. lidde? When we speak of a writing as inspired we mean that God 'directed the mind of the writer to those truths He wished to be committed to wanting, urged that writer; effectively to obey, and assisted him in its execution lest he should err’ (Leo XIII.). It does not turn the writer into a machine, depriving him for the time being of his faculties of memory, will, and intellect; no, it allows these full play, only directing, guarding, and assisting them to this extent that what God wants written down is written down and that no errors creep in. 3. Why do ire held that the boohs contained in the Bible are inspired? This is a fundamental question, and the answers given to it by the various non-Catholic religious bodies would fill a book. I shall content myself with giving the answer of the Catholic Church. Note, in passing, that this answer was not invented recently to meet a pressing need ; it is the answer which the Church gave centuries ago, and which she will always give. This is what the Catholic Church proclaims from the housetops ‘ I am a living teacher. I am the same Church who speaks to you to-day as the Church who spoke on the day of Pentecost. To my custody was the entire body of revealed doctrine committed by Christ and His Apostles. I kept these doctrines and apprehended them and pondered them. In the custody of these revealed doctrines, in keeping them pure and free from all taint or error, the Spirit of Truth was with me. In teaching them I was, and am, infallible by the gift of Him Who was my Founder. A part of that revealed truth was God’s testimony that the documents which I afterwards gathered together, and which are now known as. Scripture, were in deed inspired, were the very words of God.’ That is a plain answer, and there is no uncertain ring about it. One of the keenest thinkers of modern times, a man who knows the ideas of other Churches

from top to bottom, Mr. Mallock, thinks the answer is the only logical, self-consistent, and thinkable one. He writes ‘ There is one body of Christians, and it is older and incomparably more numerous than any of those other Christian bodies distinguished from it, which does give to those questions a distinct and coherent answer, and it is the only distinct and coherent answer which has ever been given or attempted, the answer of the Church of Rome. The fact, therefore, that Rome is provided by the Roman theory with a teaching authority, which it never has lost, or will lose, which is living to-day as on the day of the first Council, which is as ready to meet the philosophic thought of the past, and which is destined, perhaps, to unfold to us a body of Christian doctrine wider and deeper even that that which it has unfolded and defined already; the fact that Rome is provided with an authority of this indestructible kind is the feature by which that Church is most clearly known to be the only Christian body still possessing the means of presenting Christian doctrine to the modern world as a body of truths supported by a system of definite proofs, and destined, like other truths, to develop as knowledge widens.’