Making the Countryside Catholic

New Zealand Tablet, Volume L, Issue 37, 20 September 1923, Page 21

Making the Countryside Catholic

(By Louis Vincent, in the London Catholic Times.)

. It has been always a source of surprise and disappointment to me that so little endeavor appears to be made towards enlightening dwellers in the country districts on the great questions of the x Faith. Doubtless the various societies which have undertaken the task of winning back England to the Catholic Church feel that they must cast their nets where the biggest hauls are likely to result, and that the large towns, with their clustering populations, offer better opportunities than the small hamlets. This is self-evident, but there is another side to the question which does not seem to have received the consideration it deserves. In the age of faith the English counties, with their numerous monastic foundations and cathedral towns, were strongholds of the Church. Industrialism, that drab daughter of the "Reformation," shifted the centre of gravity to the cities,'but, even to-day, the real England, like the real France, is not to be found in the capital or in the towns, but in the plains and on the hillside. It is not the clerk, artisan, or shopkeeper, nor yet the scholar or statesman, who determines in the ultimate sense the destiny of a nation, but the lowly peasant. Give England a Catholic peasantry and you will restore to her the Church of her forefathers. Great figures may rise to influence their generations. Schools and movements come and go, but the pastoral heart of every country remains the real dynamic centre of its existence.

A Straight Appeal.

Let us view this proposition in smaller detail. Not only does the peasant need the Faith as much as the townsman, "but one single conversion among the yeoman > and agriculturist class, viewed solely from the point of view of results, would equal a hundred such gains in the city. In the towns the conversion of an individual to the Catholic Faith, unless it be that of a person of eminence, means nothing to the public at large. The general effect, apart from the immeasurable spiritual gain, is negligible. A similar happening in a small rural community would be world-shaking, and the moral effect, humanly speaking, out of all proportion to the event. There is another aspect to be considered. The peasant mind is unsophisticated and pagan. What passes for education has not filled his head with half-baked theories and pseudo-scientific tosh. Nominally he. is a Christian, but in practice he might be an aborigine, so remote from the .realities of Christianity is his outlook and habit.

Reviving an Old Custom.

In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the monks preached on the roadside to his ancestors. Dealing with religious instruction during this period, Cardinal Gasquet says: "The Dominicans and Franciscans were essentially popular preachers in the truest sense of the word. They went from village to village speaking to the people wherever they could, in public places as well as in churches. They gathered their audiences together on the great roadways as readily as in consecrated spots. For the most part they had to do with the masses, and plain unadorned speaking was their forte. As a rule they made no attempt at set and polished discourses, refraining from elaborate argument or the discussion of abstract questions. . . Hence their triumph. The people followed them in crowds, hung upon their words, were carried away by their earnest albeit perhaps rougheloquence, and made their conquest easy." Why cannot we reconstruct those scenes in rural England and see again the white and brown habit of monk and friar on the hedgeways?

Holiness, Not Culture.

If it ever comes about, I hope the eloquence will be earnest and "rough." We are suffocated with intellectuality. In a novel by a well-known priest-author which I read recently, wherein all the characters were painfully patrician, one. of them expresses the hope that Catholic priests will take advantage of the unrivalled and essential cachet of Oxford. I know nothing of the scholastic and cultural limitations of our seminaries. In fact, I am astonished at the implied reflection contained in this state-

ment; but I do know that if we set out to win the countryside it will not be achieved by Oxford scholarship or an Oxford accent. That is all very well for the middle class, to whom it makes an instinctive and irresistible appeal, but for the really uneducatedi.e., the lower and upper classes, so calledwe want plain truth and simple sincerity. Let us leave the subjectivism of Kant, the iinalism of Bergson, and all the Darwinian'backwash to the park tubthumpers and the philosophic greengrocers, beloved of Mr. Wells. Holiness and sincerity are all we need.

Church Caravans.

Finally, I venture to make a suggestion which I believe- fed he eminently practical. I am sure there is no lack of willingness on the part of the preaching Orders to take up the task of bringing the Faith to the villages. It is mainly a question of ways and means. If the Franciscan and Dominican tertiaries in every county of England were to organise a movement for the provision of "endowed" caravans the main difficulty would be solved. Is there anything to prevent every county and shire from having a- caravan of its own. manned by a monk and a lay Brother or a tertiary? The preaching Orders have -shown their willingness by addressing gatherings in the public parks and on the beach. Their zealous co-operation could be assured. I am sure the tertiaries would gladly do their pail. Very small individual contributions would suffice, and the organisation of the tours might be left to one .of the missionary and propaganda societies.