The Future and the Past

New Zealand Tablet, 22 May 1924, Page 21

The Future and the Past

A LECTURE DELIVERED BY FATHER PIUS, C.P., IN THE ALBERT HALL, BOLTON, ENGLAND, OCTOBER 22, 1923.

Christianity appeared in an empire that was Pagan — in the far-flung Empire of Rome, where nearly every act of the day was sanctified, at least in theory, by dedication to some god or goddess. For Paganism was an exceedingly complex and at its best a very beautiful religious system, so identified with the life of the State that they both stood or fell together. Thus, when Christianity with its central doctrine of a crucified, omnipotent God-man began to be preached, it was despised at first by the Romans; then, as the Church grew, as it emerged from the synagogue, it was literally driven underground: its preachers and adherents were perpetually “on the run.” Yet, in spite of a tremendous civilisation, buttressed by such mighty worldly power; in spite of the most terrible bloody persecutions; in spite of a thousand influences more powerful than we can realise now, the Church grew, made converts daily among slaves, freemen, philosophers and soldiers —even from among the courtiers of the Imperial Palace. She became daily a stronger and more coherent society, conquering inwardly and outwardly, enlarging the circle of her influence, strengthening her hold on the .minds and hearts of her children.

It was a phenomenon with absolutely no parallel in history up to that time. The historians, Gibbon and Harnack, have tried to explain it naturally, but their words are vain. The growth of the Church was due to many causesto the special Providence of God, to the miracles of the Apostles, to the splendid enthusiasm of the earliest Christians, to the heroism of the Martyrs; but chiefly I think to this—that the religion of Christ was supremely and sublimely true, that it was the concrete expression and fulfilment of all the truths of prophecy, of all the truth that Paganism had preserved, in however corrupt or pathetic a form, from a primitive revelation. The Church was Truth with Love in her eyes, and, according to the prophecy of her Founder, everyone who was a son of truth —even natural truth — her voice. Religion in the IV. Century. About the beginning of the IV. century Catholicism became the official religion of the Empire under Constantine. Yet, because the Empire was essentially human it followed the course of all merely human institutions. It had had,its infancy, its youth, its heyday; and then it dieddied of its own corruption, and was gathered to Egypt, Babylon, and Assyria. And with the Empire, by every human parallel, Europe ought to have died, and, • with Europe, Christianity, had Catholicism been only the

natural principle, the soul; of post-Constantine European civilisation. But the Church not only did not die; she alone emerged triumphant from the wreck of the Dominions of the Caesars, with a divine light upon her lace, and girt with the strength of the Almighty. She was the path of shining ( light across the Dark Ages; that is an historical fact of which there can be no question.' And all this time she was pleaching, educating, saving souls, giving the Faith to Ireland by Patrick, and to England by Irish monks and Augustine; bestowing on all sides blessings, imparting to man a more abundant life. All this time, also, she-was being constantly attacked from within and without. The whole Christian world “groaned under Arianism,” but Arianism died and the Church lived. The waves of heresy beat against the barque of Peter —and fell back, powerless to do it harm. Barbarian pirates assailed her, and became her bravest subjects. She was always badly beaten, and she always won; often on the point of dying—yet it was her enemies who died. . . And when, in the 12th century, she was given a chance, she showed men how the supernatural can beautify and vivify the natural; and she gave men a life of civilisation, that, for color, variety, bravery, inspiration, and intellectuality, had never been reached before, and has certainly never been reached since. The Renaissance—a harking back to pagan culture and pagan ideaswas the next tendency she had to meet, and before it could finally be overcome, the most terrible thing in all Christian history happened: the great Apostasy of the 16th century. It seemed as if the work of the centuries was undone. Christianity was shattered; our civilisation was violently wrested from the straight road to a path that has led to the hideous Industrial Capitalism we know, and to a Europe where the consciousness of national differences is far more acute than the consciousness of common humanity and common sonship in the Church, England’s Loss. The outcome was that England, built in Catholicism, nourished by Catholicism, whose every noble institution is due directly to the inspiration of the Catholic Churchwent withJdie Reformersand achieved material greatness. Nay, she became the very bulwark of the Reformation, and its apostle wherever she sent her sonsa very violent apostle in Ireland. So rigidly Protestant did she become, so intricate and extensive were the ramifications of the Reformation, that it was absolutely certain, humanly speaking, that the Catholic Church could nevermore find place within her shores.

Yet the Church’s amazing life went on; and she more than compensated for her losses. Bpt what of England? Was she evermore to be left out of Gods grand scheme of redemption? Was she to become for all time like Augustine’s great Church in Northern Africa, after its apostasy—a desert where the Spirit of God scarce breathed? For three centuries it seemed so; for there were in England only a few priests and a handful of Catholic people, harassed, persecuted, impoverished, martyred, without bishops or hierarchy, with scarce a visible sign of life. Then an astounding thing happened, a miracle of grace given, perhaps,'to no other nation under heaven. In the 19th century—about ninety years ago— were new stirrings of Catholic life. The Reformation was found wanting by the noblest souls and keenest intellects in England and there were yearnings for truth and unity with, the Church Catholic. There began in the stronghold of Protestantism in England what we know as the Oxford Movement; an enquiry into the theology of the Fathers, and the doctrines of the early Church. The result of that enquiry, by God’s grace, was that John Henry Newman, the “Light of England,” and his little band, were received in 1845 into the true Church of Christ, and Anglicanism received a blow from which she has never recovered. Return to the Faith. With the influx of the cream of English culture, and the immigration of thousands of Irish people driven from

their own land by famine, the Catholic Church was in England once more as gracious and beautiful, as vital and compelling as at any time before Henry VIII, Churches sprang up as if by magic and dotted the face of the land; the hierarchy came back at the Pope’s bidding;' and from end. to end the great Sacrifice was offered up in thanksgiving to God, and in supplication for the nation from whose midst He had been cast out. It was, I repeat, a miracle of grace scarcely ever. given to any other people; a “second spring” in the order of grace; a special and loving dispensation of God’s mercy. There were /great signs and wonders there, and much speculation. As the Son of God had His Epiphany or manifestation before His hidden life; so His Church in England, after the first shock of conquest, after her first series of brilliant manifestations of tireless energy, entered on her comparatively hidden life; conquering and co-ordinating herself within, that she might be ready in God’s time to conquer without.

. . . So for eighty years she has been losing and winning, adapting herself to a strange environment', assimilating the strangest of elements, growing, on the whole, until now she numbers in Great Britian 2,000,000 souls.

What then of the future? What hopes does our position to-day give us for the time that lies ahead?

This is how we stand.' First with regard to ourselves. We are the best-organised religions body in the land; we know our own mind; we know our demands as a body on every big question—educational, social, moral and theological; we have the tremendous advantage of compact solidarity under the leadership of the hierarchy. Further, we are participating more actively now in the Divine Life by the frequent reception of the sacraments than at any previous time; and there has been, since the war, a very significant increase in the number of religious vocations, especially to the purely contemplative-Orders. On Hie other band, our people have not anything like a sufficient knowledge of the faith. Other Religious Bodies. Secondly, in relation to other- religious bodies. We know they do nut know their own mind, or that there is active diversity of opinion even on matters of the highest moment, and no authority in those bodies competent to settle these disputes. We know that Protestantism is intellectually dead; that it lias no real hold over the vast majority of Englishmen who would describe themselves as Protestants; that it has flung open the avenues to infidelity, rationalism and spiritism, and closed up the avenues to God. We know that at least one section of the Anglicans is anxious for union with Rome; that the leader, Lord Halifax, in his recent pronouncement admitted that the Primacy of the Pope—i.e., his supreme power of teaching and ruling the Universal Church — of Divine right; a very big advance. We know that other parties in the Church of England under the Lisbon of Durham, and the Bishop of Zanzibar,' are not even agreed as to the meaning of the Church, the former characterising the latter’s notion as “the go-as-you-please Church.” We know, thirdly, in relation to the country at large that there is more interest in religion at this moment than at any time since the Oxford Movement; that, given a clear presentation of the Catholic Faith to enquirers honestly seeking the truth, the results are wonderful; that, in particular, there are thousands of men, bitterly disillusioned by (lie war, utterly co winced of the hopeless insufficiency of Protestantism in a crisis, yet with some faith in Christ left, who would he Catholics did they but know the Church. Tiny soul of England is a palimpsest, a manuscript on which Catholicism was written —and the Protestantism that was written over it is fading fast. The faint perfume of a broken vase still clings to England’s soul. If that soul he taken hold of now it can-be filled with the Old Faith before rationalism and materialism have' cast y an eternal blight upon - it: Would it not be, terrible that the Church which conquered’ the paganism of Rome, /that beat the heresies and all the powers of Hell, that made Europe, that gave England all that is best in her, that came back to England after the '.national'apostasy, that is still the

organism through which God energises, would it not be terrible if it were not to go forward now; if it were to remain at a standstill or die once more ? _ Would it not be terrible for English men /and women if, with the heroism of their martyrs to inspire them, they sat down ' with folded arms when there is work to be done that an angel would glory in? The Church’s Mission. The prophets tell us that on all sides Europe is going to pieces, and, certainly, any man who looks at Europe to-day will find reason enough for this riot of pessimism. But, whether the prophets are right or not, there is one thing absolutely certain: the Catholic Church will not decay, because she has eternity and Divine life within her. If Europe drives her out, she will find a home in Africa or Asia; she will still remain God’s organism for saving the world, with the same amazing life that has characterised her through the centuries. But any nation that continues to reject her will do so at the peril of its temporal as, well as of its eternal life. And God help the nation that rejects her twice! She alone has the remedy for all our illsfrom the monstrous incubus of Industrial Capitalism to the sex madness that is driving Europe to the abyss.

Englishmen, I hold, should be violent Catholics on purely patriotic grounds. . . But I refuse to believe that we are not going to make progress in England., I do not believe that God’s special Providence in resurrecting the Church in -tl*s land is going to he thwarted. On the contrary I believe that the great enthusiasm for the sacraments will radiate grace even outside Catholic circles. I believe, that as the tendency of the best Continental thought is “hack to the Church,” so it is, to some extent, in England and will be, in a far greater measure, in the future. I believe that the C.T.S.,‘the C.E.G. and the C.S.G. are doing enormous work now, and will make even greater efforts for the cause. I believe that there' are thousands of English anxious for the truth, and that we can gratify their desire in a great measure by means of the C.T.S. publications. I believe that the Church will grow because she is philosophically true, historically true, theologically true; and that truth can win in England as it did in pagan Rome. I believe it, too, for a purely * supernatural reason that I have kept to the last. - This is a time when movements are ruled and guided by personalities; Lenin in Russia, Mussolini in Italy, and Mgr. Seipel, the great priest, who saved Austria.’ Before I came here I knelt by the body of one of the greatest men that ever walked this land. His name was Dominic Bar-, beri; his name is now venerable Dominic of the Mother of God, Passionist; his name, please God, will one day be St. Dominic. Even as an Italian peasant boy when he did not even know England’s place on the map, he was on fire with a supernatural love of her and her people. And in 1815, when England was „at the zenith of her materia] greatness, this youth was professed, who was bent on conquering her for Christ. To Convert England. / . If I could read you his letters written during the 28 . long years of waiting, you would all he fired with his enthusiasm. Love-letters they were, in the highest sense; earnings for England s soul that he could only express in the exclamations of a lover. And this man was given by God Himself a mission to convert England, a mission as essentially supernatural as that of Abraham to the ’ chosen people, or of Patrick to Ireland. At last he came, in the habit of St. Paul of the —the great saint whose lifelong prayer was for England, and who obliged us Passionists by * rule to pray* daily for the same intention. Dominic came. Protestant England was shocked! What cared he?. His was a glorious daring! An amazing courage! A white-hot intensity! He went about in his habit, preached in his broken English the love of Christ, the truth and beauty of His Church, the tenderness - of His Passion. He was stoned, laughed at, jeered at—he went on: he would give this people faith even if they gave him stones; he would conquer them by love and

truth. He who refuted the great Do Lammenais in Rome, came in his Passionist habit, and received Newman, who had so long opposed 'Home, into the Catholic Church. . . . He died in 1849 at a lonely railway station, with apparently little done his body has lain since then at our monastery in Sutton, St. Helens.

■i' , 1 But do you think he is dead ? Why, he is drawing hearts to himself from the ends of the earth! He is kindling enthusiasm in souls where the Divine fire was all but quenched. He is drawing thousands to his tomb, and the yearning for his canonisation is growing daily. Just think what it would mean if we had a canonized saint —the first in England since the Reformationat the head of the Catholic Forward Movement; if we had a man whose body was broken with labors for England, whose mighty heart embraced all England, whose great soul still watches over England! I believe England will be converted because St. Paul of the Cross believed it; because Dominic believed it, lived for it, died for it; I believe that if we make him leader of the Forward Movement by a grand dedication of our energies to his cause and a universal invocation of his zoal; if we pray daily and passionately for his canonization, England’s attention to the faith will be focussed as it could bo in no other way. Time for Action. Forward, then, under Dominic for the conversion of England! The time is ripe, the Church has had her period of concentration ; she has emerged from the catacombs of obloquy ; she is ready for great expansion. Read the books of the C.T.S. Leave them about in trains and trams. Discuss them, know the reasons for the faith that is in you. There are thousands hungering for that faith. Penetrate yourselves with the knowledge that Christ died for the souls of all men, and that the Church continues His work; that every child validly baptised belongs by Divine right to the Catholic Church. You are unworthy of the name of Catholic, unworthy of the martyrs of Lancashire, if you do not brace up your wills and resolve to work for a cause that is greater than that of any nationality, however noble or fair the spread of Christ’s Kingdom, the spread of Catholic truth, on earth.