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Belloc Discusses Ignorance of Church’s Position

,j .;; ■■• Mr. Hilaire Belloc was invited by the ".: Daily Express to contribute to the series of ;. articles now appearing in that paper, from •the pens of well-known novelists, on "My , Religion." He refused, because, as he says below, the ;\ proprietors of our national press would not •i "print Catholic truth save as an occasional ;:j; 'stunt.' " And the "stunt" press, he holds, "is an evil which men who insist on high Catholic culture should avoid like a bad smell." J- Mr. Belloc, in the brilliant article which appears below, originally in the London Universe, shows that the modern rejection p of the Church is based upon ignorance of H vthe things for which the Church stands. Mr. Belloc's Article. Mr. Belloc says it is a political duty to inform fellow-citizens upon the Church's position. His article is as follows: We Catholics have all remarked what may be called the "vicious circle" of our presentation of the Catholic Church to our fellow subjects. The whole purpose of describing Catholicism is to interest non-Cath-olics for Catholics such description is super,|j fluous. Yet nearly all our apologetics in this ;: country must appear in Catholic organs which .the non-Catholic never sees; and this ./- for the simple reason that the English press v v. v will not admit the Catholic standpoint; ; ; partly from dislike, but more from the fact that the Catholic judgment on anything from .; domestic morals to public policy seems to the average Englishman so absurd, eccentric, and Jj perverse, as to be out of place in columns l! intended for general reading. £j Growing in Power. I Apart from the more important (that is, the religious) results of so lop-sided a state I of things, there is a political result which i is most serious and the seriousness of which is increasing. The average non-Catholic in | : this country, the average man representing jj the vast majority of the community and I forming its public opinion, knows nothing of an Institution which (1) is much the \ most powerful in the world and is growing in power, (2) alone accounts for the nature of European civilisation, for it produced that I- civilisation; (3) animates and gives their I general tone to the very much greater part of European communities (outside Russia). r ; , This ignorance of what the Catholic Church ; is lies at the root of misconceptions of the { gravest kind in foreign politics. It lies at < the root of the misjudging and underI estimating, especially of the Poles and of p the Italians. It lies at the root of the ! ..-/absurdly exaggerated admiration of Prussia g^and of the Prussian organisation of modern Germany. It lies at the root of our distorted official history teaching. The distorK. tion of history produced by such ignorance.

WELL KNOWN WRITER EXPLAINS WHY HE DID NOT WRITE FOR THE DAILY EXPRESS.

may seem of small practical importance, but it is a weakening and a dangerous thing none the less. - Cut Off From the Past. ' When men do not know how it was they came to be what they are, their society resembles an individual who should have lost his memory. You get a very good example of this in the conflict between Capitalism and Socialism. The average English non-Catholic, being cut off from his Catholic past, does not know that there ever was a- society in which wealth was well distributed. He imagines Capitalism to have existed from all time, to be native to our blood, and therefore to be the only alternative to Socialism and the inevitable extreme of —Communism. The result is that he fights Socialism with the wrong weapons and, indeed, introduces the worst principles of Socialism in all his attempts to modify the evils produced by Capitalism. He transfers the responsibility for the bringing up of children from the family to the State. He provides State support for the mass of the population in illness and in old age. He registers, tickets, numbers and stamps the whole mass of the proletariat and, when you suggest that the restoration of a peasantry and a more equal distribution of wealth would be a far healthier way of arriving at the support of a population, he cannot believe that such things are possible. He knows and believes that they exist in foreign communities, but he has not only been taught to despise those communities, he is also ignorant of their nature, and the reason that he is ignorant of their nature is that he is ignorant of the force which made Europe. tical duty to inform our fellow-citizens upon the nature of these institutions of which at present they know so little and to give them some working idea of what the Church is in order that they may understand Europe and their past, and, incidentally, attain a wholesome fear of the direction in which they are at present drifting. The other day a certain popular newspaper, not of the most dignified sort, the Daily Express, announced with a, flourish of trumpets that it was going to publish a number of articles by a number of "Best Sellers," each of whom should tell the world what "his religion" was. : .:•>;.. The Views of the Novelists. Observe, in the first place, the characteristic assumption that "religion" means a private opinion or mood; but next that all these vague relations of equally vague moods or opinions were devoid of culture or traditions, and were so provincial as to interest an educated man in one point, only; that .the writers apparently do not know that there

is such a thing on earth -as the Catholic Church nor have the least idea of its quality or power. They talk of "The Churches," using this phrase to connote the very largeff number of Protestant sects, but with; ? no mention or knowledge of Catholicism. .When one of them says (as they all say) that he can no longer accept the "outworn dogmas" of the "churches" he means that he rejects such isolated fragments of Catholic .dogma, as until recently survived in a warped form among an older generation of English Protestants. That there is a consistent body : of philosophy called the faith wherein dogma | is not isolated and meaningless but co-or-dinated and rational he cannot imagine. T It is exactly as if he were to say that he could not bear the smell of petrol "which J is unavoidable in all forms of transport," showing by such a sentence that he had never heard of, or left out of account every steamship and railway in the world. Not only popular writers and best-sellers, from whom after all one does not expect a particularly high standard of culture, but men of real eminence among our contempor-... aries show the same astonishing remoteness from real and living European experience, the same amazing provincialism. Thus one of the most deservedly respected scholars of the Church of England, Dr. Henson, of Durham, wrote on July 8 last in the Evening Standard, an article about the attitude of what he called "religion" (meaning presumably the various Protestant bodies) towards physical science, and said in parenthesis that the Catholic Church had forbidden the study of science, notably, in two docu- ■« ments, to wit tho Syllabus of Pius IX and the Lamentabili of Pius X. I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw this astounding sentence. It was as though a Frenchman had written that the rules of the House of Commons forbade a man to wear boots. I wrote a brief line at once to the paper (which the editor, to my surprise, published), asking the writer if he could give references to the particular passage in either of these documents which would support so enormous an. assertion. He refrained from giving any such reference, for the very simple reason that no such reference exists. I suppose someone had told him that these two documents contained a " Papal injunction against the pursuit of physical science; that he had swallowed the enormous statement; that he had never read the documents himself, and that, on turning to them, as a result of my challenge, he found that they were quite different from what he had expected. ,•; Significant. „V .The incident is of no great magnitude. But is it not significant Here is a man in the very first rank of the 1 national culture, who is. not only ignorant on an elementary point in contemporary history in- a matter which covers the whole of our civilisation, but does not think that his ignorance matters! We may note another very significant and socially important aspect, of the thing in the completely wrong notion which nearly every writer and speaker seems to have -of | what the Catholic attitude is towards any N

-- ' '■'■"■ one_of the great questions of the present day iii economics;,'" in -'science;' in ; in politics. , "- ' v":?'-'. ;I am perpetually coming across sentences Ip-in , which it- is taken for granted .that the E|-Gathplic lies as far as possible-"to the right" - m air extreme position of refusing inquiry, experiment, ' reasearch, redress of error or ' Xf , injustice, speculation in philosophy, restora-- . /iibri or creation of a better commonwealth, ' criticism of documents in history . and of institutions in politics; an extreme position of immobility, routine, and blindness — whence there is supposed to start a gradual progress of thought less and less "conservative" until one reaches what may be called the "extreme left" of materialism, or atheism, or communism, or the rest of them. :; Taboos Outside the Church. : In the present controversy on the origin of the Human Body, for instance, it is taken for granted that the Catholic mind exceeds the most benighted Bibliolater in his literal interpretation of Genesis. In economic de- ■ bate it is taken for granted that the Catholic mind will naturally be in support of plutocracy. In political debate it is taken for ■ granted that the Catholic mind will never. ..admit popular rule, or even the action of public opinion upon government. Nothing is more common to the average educated Englishman than the conception that discussion, s debate, the analysis of causes and the search -■[ for first principles is cut off from the Catholic " through his acceptation of Authority. In : point of fact, as any one of us can testify •" the one and only society of men in the world ; where there is real debate, no shirking of •X facts, and most vigorous and free action of ri the intelligence, is the Catholic. An enemy %> might bring against our age-long history that : ; rfc was burdened with a vast mass of useless discussion and of futile debate, and that we were forever splitting straws and philosophis- : ing about every mortal thing, but it is sheer .ignorance of one's subject to think of the . Catholic community as a portion of humanity railed off, within whose boundaries inquiry, debate, and definition, and all that goes with the use of the human mind, are shut out. It is in society outside the Catholic Church that you find taboos forbidding criticism of "experts," "modern opinion"— even the newly rich. Now, as I have said,- this gross provincialism on the part of those who surround us, this exceptional ignorance upon the chief power in the modern world is becoming a source of national weakness. Is any remedy discoverable for so dangerous a disease? I know of none except the perpetual 'discussion and instruction by the living voice, and, in print, books between covers, and the tract and the pamphlet. For the general agency of the press is not open to what would seem a mere extravagance. Norj it must be added, are the great bulk of those who own our popular press to-day of sufficient education to understand the ,; unique character of the Catholic Church, its to existing society, and the imJ v portance of knowing what it is. Nor would ..they print the Catholic Truth save- as an occasional "stunt," and the "stunt" press

is an evil-which men who boast the high Catholic culture should avoid . like v a bad smell. It is no breach of confidence to tell my readers • that I. was asked by the ;.. owners* of. the Daily Express to- join their last "religious" sensation; that. I. refused? . and that I;' am glad j I refused. .little may, be done by occasional query and occasional ridicule, but very little because, those;who,are thus brought to book—and the great bulk of their readerswill not believe that the thing of which they know so little is what it is or has the importance it has. , For my own part, I fancy the awakening Mill come through some great political change in the larger world of Continental. Europe, which will gradually impress opinion with the results of the growing Catholic strength. Just as those old-fashioned Protestants, who disliked and feared the advance of physical science in our time have been compelled, however ignorant, to accept its results, so this provincial ignorance of what the Catholic Church is, of its increasing power, and of its political significance, may at least be impressed through the discovery that its culture is making.certain great and unmistakable advance upon the Continent of Europe, that its birth-rate is not in perilthat it outbreeds — it thinks more strongly and more clearly, and that its opponents in thought and in international action—such as Prussiahave weakened, while its exemplars—such as Poland and —have grown stronger. The Logic of Facts. To sum up; as it seems to me, nothing can be done through the press, save longrepeated challenge, letter, protest, and query; not by direct and sufficient statement; for such would either not be admitted, or admitted only in vulgar and degraded surroundings in some "yellow" paper as an occasional sensation. Much. may be done through that very slow process of pamphlet, speech, and book by which in the course of a whole generation the theory of Socialism (for example) was gradually extended to millions, where at first it appeared as the eccentricity of a very few. But most will be done, not by us here in England, but by the logic of facts in Europe. Father Damien's "Rule of Life" Among Exhibits at Vatican Among the many precious and interesting relics gathered in the great, Vatican Missionary Exhibit is a note-book containing the written Rule of Life drawn up for himself by the heroic Leper-Priest, Father Damien. This valuable document recalls most vividly a life that was lived solely for God and for the souls of those who were regarded by their fellowmen as outcasts, cut. apart by a loathsome, contagious disease from the rest of their kind. - - , - . Stevenson, who so closely-identified himself with Father Damien, wrote of the Leper Colony at Molokai "It is , a pitiful place to visit, and a hell to dwell in." . A -accursed it might, well be called, this beautiful isle set like a gem in the midst of azure waters. -...,.., .......

":' : 'CZ 'Coming of Damien. ' ■■■.'- -.■■•>£' What did Eternity hold in store' for "the r lepers ? It remained for Damien to r r anßWSrr.l Up to the coming-of this heroic priest, death ; ; . was the end, apparently, for the leper. Dur-'' ing life, "cut off from all healthy; society, deprived of home and family, without occu- : pation, without : interests, " without" any r law and without religion, it was but natural $ that he should indulge in every excess - .'-'-Tims, ' as the lepers sat in their . crowded hovels, playing cards, they drank greedily Of. the juice of the ki-tree, after which they became . as beasts, having cast off the dignity of men. For the juice of the ki-tree is sweet to those who have no hope, and who look not for the\ final resurrection." When a leper died, a hole was dug in the ground, into which the dead man was flung. ' That was the end. He had lived as he died. • But life or deathwhat did they matter? Father Damien appeared to be outwardly, no more than a Flemish peasant. Rough and brusque, his biographers say that he was a man poorly clad. "His hands were hardened with toil, and he was ignorant as the world counts wisdom. But he was content with the truth which embraces knowledge." For ten years Damien worked single-han-ded in Molokai. His accomplishments during this period were marvellous. Not only the spiritual side of his poor lepers .was tenderly looked to. He remedied so far as lay in his power their housing conditions and other circumstances which sorely needed reform. "I am glad there is now no doubt about my sickness. lam a leper," he wrote shortly after the verdict had been passed upon him by the physicians. But he remained calm and resigned in the midst of his chosen people. Fiat voluntas Tua was his ony cry. The service of Father Damien lasted in all, for the space of sixteen years. Then came the welcome summons Home. At the news of his death, a sudden hush fell on the lazaretto. A great heart was. still, "and this man, who had done great deeds among his fellows, was at last called to his reward, while his plague-stricken body was let down into a leper's grave." '■_ '..?■ ../; The Rule of Life of Father Damien and which may be viewed under its case by those who are privileged to visit the Missionary Exhibit at the Vatican reveals, as nothing else could the beauty of a soul wholly dedicated to the service of its God; " v

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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZT19251216.2.36

Bibliographic details

New Zealand Tablet, Volume LII, Issue 50, 16 December 1925, Page 25

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2,908

Belloc Discusses Ignorance of Church’s Position New Zealand Tablet, Volume LII, Issue 50, 16 December 1925, Page 25

Belloc Discusses Ignorance of Church’s Position New Zealand Tablet, Volume LII, Issue 50, 16 December 1925, Page 25