A POLITICIAN ON PURGATORY

New Zealand Tablet, Volume LII, Issue 23, 24 June 1925, Page 13

A POLITICIAN ON PURGATORY

When politicians stoop to the Church question, even journalists may aspire to it. Sir William Joy n.son-Hicks, the Home Secretary, is reported as saying "We want no priestly interference, we ask for no purgatory, and we will submit to no compulsory confessional."' The last clause of this declaration is especially a great relief to our minds. No longer shall we see a policeman seizing a man in the. street by the scruff of his neck and dragging him to the nearest confessionalbox. Mo longer will our love of liberty be .outraged by the sinister bulk of Black Maria taking its daily gang of compulsory penitents to Westminster Cathedral. Tin- chief social sinners of our day will no longer be forcibly attired in white sheets and driven to the door of the priest at the point of the spear. All that is to be altered now; auricular confession is no longer a. part of the British Constitution, to be enforced with fixed bayonets. It is to be left freely to the choice and even the caprice of individuals, like all other matters of opinion in a truly modern state. . It is to be as voluntary as attendance at a particular type of State school is for the children of the poor. It is to be left as freely to individual choice as is a particular, scheme of health insurance for the working classes. It is in be as much outside the law as a particular medical theory of. the curative power of cowpox. It is to be as completely voluntary as education in a modern state. II is to be as completely free as military service in a modern war. A government will no more dream of forcing a free man to confess his sins than of forcing him to'insure his: servants or vaccinate; his /children.; Whatever else we may think of that Protestant progress that lias led up to the modern state, everybody kuows at least that in every department the 'modern state bas abandoned the idea of,compulsion.'' .Some have' even doubted whether we : shall establish Prohibition. But the-passage that interests me, even more than the repeal of all the Coercion Acts that have? hitherto imposed the -Confessional on the English people, is the singular phrase that comes before : it. ; I Mass* over the phrase "We want no priestly interference" as having worn a. little too thin to bold many threads of thought; but I pause upon the

(B. 0. K. Chkstuutox, in G.K.'fi Weekly.)

very remarkable phrase "We ask for no purgatory." Ido not pause merely for the obvious flippancy about the man who went further and fared worse. Ido not even ask: Sir William of what it is that he feels so secure that be needs no transition stage. The strictly logical inference, from n man needing no purgatory, is either that he bas nothing to lie purged away or that be does not want anything purged away. But these spiritual speculations'are no business of ours. What interests me is not the strictly religious or theological, but the generally philosophical and logical attitude implied in saying those strange words, "We ask for no purgatory." I mean the attitude, not so much towards theological truth as towards anv truth: towards the very idea of truth. It seems to imply that when Sir William reaches +»-c gates of another world. St. Peter cr some well-trained angel will say to him in a slightlv lowered voice, in the manner of a welltrained butler, "Would you be requiring a purgatory?" , '" Perhaps a. parallel may be to the point. When we of a certain philosopbv open the papers and find them full of arholes, about Science and Religion or the Future of the Churches, we know pretty well the scope of the discussion. Our eye travels rapidly down the column until it nicks out the 'capital C at. the lining of Galileo: and having ■seen that this item lias been duly inserted" we are satisfied and turn to our ordinary avocations. The people who write these articles can be relied on not to disappoint •is. And as Galileo is evidently the only astronomer they have ever heard of, and the stricture upon him by the Inquisitors the only decision of the. Church thev have over heard of. it is natural that they' should judge a great many matters in the'light of this incident, so far as they are acquainted with it. I will not attempt here to extend that acquaintance at any length. I might state a number of things about Galileo that are not without interest. I might point out that whatever else he was, he was not the man they are admiring; the man who suffered for making the first suggestion that the earth goes round the sun. I might advance the paradox that the. Copernican theorv was propounded by Copernicus. I mi<dit

point ""out* that Copernicus taught astronomy at Rome under orthodox official authority. I might point out that long before even Copernicus stated it, -It had been suggested in the very middle of the Middle Ages" by Cusa';" and that the pe: seer ting Church proceeded to persecute him by making him a: Cardinal. 'The truth is, I fancy, the very opposite of the suggestion commonly made. ; Galileo was not blamed for opening the question but for closing it. What annoyed people was that he said: "Galilcus lociitus est; causa finita est," or, in modern scientific language; that he said the thing had passed from a hypothesis to a law. What especially annoyed people, I believe, was that he declared the theory could be found in the Bible; a very annoying habit in anybody. But all this, though amusing in many ways, is familiar to everybody except those who are always mentioning it. And it is not in this controversial connection that I originally mentioned the name of the great Italian. Those who glorify that name so regularly and so inaccurately are in the habit of adding an anecdote which is . also, I believe, inaccurate. They say that as he turned away from the tribunal which bad denied th j molion of the earth, he murmured "And yet it moves." And whether be said it or not, he. and the Inquisitors would at least have agreed that it either moved or didn't, and that neither they nor he. could make any difference to the fact whatever it might be. But it never occurs to Sir William JoynsonHicks that when he says, "We ask for no purgatory," it is exactly as if all the Catholics answered all the champions of Galileo by rising and saying in a chorus, "We ask for no Solar System." If they did, it might begin to dawn on Sir William Joynson-Kicks that the Solar System can exist whether we like it or not, and that Purgatory may exist whether he likes it or not. If it be true, however incredible it may seem, that the powers ruling the universe, think that a politician or a lawyer can reach the point of death, without being in that perfect ecstacy of purity that can see God and live —why then there may be cosmic conditions corresponding to that paradox, and there is an end of it. It may be obvious to us that the politician is already utterly sinless, at one with the saints. It, may bo self-evident to us that the lawyer is already utterly selfless, filled only with God and forgetful; of the very meaning of gain. But if the cosmic power holds that there are still some strange finishing touches, beyond our fancy, to be put to his perfection, then certainly there will be some cosmic provision for that mysterious completion of the seemingly complete. The stars are not clean in His sight and His angels He chargeth with folly; and if Ho should decide that even in a Home Secretary there is room for : improvement, we can but admit that omniscience can heal the defect that we cannot even see.