Necessity of the Distributive State in Modern Society

New Zealand Tablet, Volume L, Issue 14, 12 April 1923, Page 23

Necessity of the Distributive State in Modern Society

(By Abchbishop Redwood.)

The . modern mind, since the lGth century, has been in industrial and religious revolt. Consequently, if that continued modern revolution is removed, continuity with our settled historical past is again established. Certain things were normal and natural in the economic and religious life of Europe until the Reformation. "We Catholics are striving to restore these normal and natural conditions. We are getting back to normalcy. A stable social ideal existed in the Middle Ages. "We are convinced that the mass of mankind needs such an ideal. Our present capitalistic system is impossible. We are living in what without exaggeration may be called a state of industrial collapse. No hope looms up for the future unless we are able to restore. the past. Capital and labor being in a state of actual war, inevitably lake different views. Radical labor looks to the millenium under Socialism or Bolchevism. Capital looks to the servile Stale, where all labor will be legally at its mercy. On which side must the Catholic be ? The American Catholic Hierarchy has lately given to society a golden means, whore virtue always walks serene. It is the distributive State. There is no middle way. Either go boldly into the camp of the despot or-the Bolchevist. Take your choice. Restore Christian civilisation, or wreck it. It can be truly and emphatically affirmed that the world to-day, consciously or unconsciously, is groping to gather up the threads of a lost tradition in a number of different departments of human endeavor. The Catholic spirit has been, and is, hard at work in modern English literature. By "Catholic" is meant here nothing sectarian or narrow, but instead the broad traditionally Christian outlook upon life, which through many centuries moulded European society into all but its ultra-modern forms. It antedated the agnostic, and it .superceded the pagan; it was both the enemy and the lover of Rome. Although inherently artistic, it condemned art for mere art's sake. "We shall not try to account for it, or to make an apology for what is so obvious that it has been ignored. Catholic art raised every structure worth looking at that has been built since the days of the Parthenon and the Capitol; it wrote the Vivina Comedia, the Morte <VArthur, and, to some extent at least, the plays of Shakcspere. It erected finally a social order in which the art of living was possible. It stood like a rock on two points—belief in God and in man. Theology and politics were written into its poetics. No workman, breathing the Catholic spirit, would have admitted the exclusion of religion from life and art. Christianity sent thousands of its representatives to death for a Roman holiday; it carried armies over\pestilential wastes to the conquest of a blighted town; it was everywhere alarmingly reckless of life; but it tried honestly to make that life worth the trouble. Woman believed and was honored; the slave was freed and the king became a slave; and from one end of Christendom to the other, the Miserere ended in a chorus of gladness. Gradually that spirit died out of the world and its sacred temples were profaned. During nearly four hundred years of English history, it was reviled and spat upon, and then it returned, disguised at first, cautiously showing its face to friends, until it had once more the right to sit in the market-place. It entered into the literature of England wherever men lived again in the past of Christendom, Avherever such yearned for the faith and blessed peace that were symbolised by the spires of Lincoln and Canterbury, wherever the spell of modern pessimism was broken by sacramental mirth. Occasionally the hovels of the poor were shaken, and it got inside gates of Oxford. Poets were thrilled with the rich music of medieval life, and thinkers battled with modern thought, clad in the armor of the schools. The world was shaken with memories, and those who loved them were given new courage and new vigor. They chanted songs that had long been forgotten, and voiced hopes that had been changed into despair. While the world about them reeled in the din of delusion, they stood serene; and when they wept their tears were pure. And now we hear the measured tread of a grand army on the -march. Bands are playing, drums beating, and

colors flying'. Great Popes are leading in person, and Bishops who have visions are cheering us on our way. The voice "of the Catholic Church giving the word of command rings clearly through the air—the voice, of the Catholic Church in modern industrial and social problems, hearkening back to the days of lost tradition. The people are stirring, looking everywhere for leading as well as light. We are the last and only Church to retain the affection of the toiling poor. "We are on the shore of the lost ocean. The whole world awaits us. May no historian of the present ever- write of us hereafter that it was we who failed it!