MODERNISM.
[To THE EDITOR Or THE " SPECTATOR."] SIR,—May I, as one of the many ipso facto excommunicated Catholics of these troublous days, attempt an answer to the brilliant letter of your Roman Catholic correspondent in the Spectator of March 14th?
With every word that he writes in condemnation of the Papal Encyclical and the repressive policy of the Pope, not only Liberal Catholics, but also many moderate Catholics, are in full agreement. But when he reduces the whole matter, in his final paragraph, to a dilemma, and says that we must either submit to the Pope altogether or join one of the Evangelical Communions, I feel it a duty to protest, not only on my own behalf, but on behalf of almost every intelli- gent Catholic I know.
(1) Here we have the old Protestant fallacy that Rome stands for absolute authority and absolute unity, and nothing else. "If, then, this authority is not divine," they argue, " it is the worst of usurpations ; and if this unity is not absolute, it is no unity at all." The answer is that absolute authority and absolute unity are ideals, and ideals are never attained, but only approached by humanity as nearly as human frailty will allow. Human language itself forbids the possibility of authority simply absolute and of a unity more than approxi- mate. Nor is it possible to gain a direct divine sanction for any authority except by a continuous miracle witnessed by the whole of humanity at once ; and even then such sanction would be inferential, and therefore indirect, for oven miracles are said to have been worked in favour of false prophets as well as true. The argument for Rome is not, then, absolute authority and absolute unity founded on a divine sanction, but the fact that Catholics have an authority where authority is an absolute necessity, and aim directly at a unity which other Christians either do not attempt at all, or aim at indirectly. The mistake made by your correspondent lies in supposing that we begin the argument for Rome by quoting texts out of Scripture, as Protestants would do themselves. We do not. We begin the argument by proving the absolute necessity for authority in the Christian religion. When that necessity is proved we quote such texts as "Obey them that have the rule over you and submit yourselves," and say that we have an object for such obedience and submission in a sense in which other Com- munions have not. And we can still quote "Thou art Peter" as at least a very early example of the Petrine claims. But texts of divine sanction do not come first with us, but only in confirmation.
(2) "The abstract, paper Catholicism which theorists contend for "! "The concrete Catholicism of Pius X. and the Roman Congregation " ! This is the very contrast and anti- thesis which has been urged against idealists and reformers ever since the world began. You might as well have talked in the days of early Christianity about the abstract, paper Judaism of the Apostles, and contrasted it with the concrete Judaism of the Scribes and Pharisees. Is it not a little too generous to give to Pins X. and the Congregations the whole concreteness of Catholicism ? Is it not a little hard to denounce as the abstract, paper Catholicism of theorists all the other exhibitions of Catholic life and thought ? In what sense is the Catholicism of Pius X. and the Congrega- tions concrete ? In exactly the same sense as the Judaism of the Scribes and Pharisees. In what sense is the concrete Catholicism of the Pope enjoined on us by Christ ? In exactly the same sense as the Judaism of the Scribes and Pharisees was enjoined on the Apostles by Christ. For Christ said: "Whatsoever they say unto you, do it." These words enjoin "absolute submission." A somewhat similar dilemma, therefore, to that which your correspondent proposes to us, he would have proposed to the Apostles when they disobeyed the Scribes and Pharisees. And the Apostles would have answered, as we answer, that we obey authority wherever authority is valid, but that a command to deny facts which we know to be true is a command which it is im- possible to obey, and therefore a command which is invalid. There are some who would reply that the cases are not parallel because Christ was God and the Apostles were inspired, whereas we are only acting on our private judgment. But Christ Himself did not take that ground when He enjoined on the Apostles unconditional obedience to the Scribes and Pharisees. The only limit was the limit neces- sarily annexed to all law,—namely, the impossibility of obey- ing it. We are not acting upon our private judgment, any more than the Apostles acted upon theirs, when we resist authority on scientific and critical grounds,—that is, on grounds of fact. Moral theology authoritatively tells us that we are not bound to an impossibility or to obey a law which contradicts itself, while history has shown us that Popes may be mistaken on scientific, critical, and philosophical matters in a manner far clearer than history had shown that "those who sat in Moses' seat" might be mistaken in a sphere which they supposed to be their own, but which turned out not to be so. When we say that the Catholic Church exhibits a unity not to be found in other Communions, Protestants reply that it is a. dead uniformity. When we say that history shows the Church to have been filled with controversy, and point to the great intellectual differences of the present, Protestants say : "That shows what an imposture your unity is." When we observe that we can neither be accused of a dead uniformity nor of anti-Catholic differences because we have Roger Bacon and Thomas Aquinas, opposite in method, agreeing in aim ; Descartes, the pioneer of modern philosophy ; Simon, the pioneer in modern criticism ; Galileo, the pioneer in modern astronomy ; all the pioneers in modern geology down to the Carmelite Generelli ; as well as such modern-minded thinkers as Leonardo da Vinci, Michael Angelo, Erasmus, Ficino, and a hundred others, all professing themselves Catholics, German mystics, Italians of the Renaissance, saints, artists, philosophers, and statesmen from the days of St. Francis to the days of Cavour, Protestants reply that these were all the results of an accident, that some of them were condemned by authority, and none of them were representatives of Catholicism, but existed in spite of it. Now I do not say that the existence of such men as these in the Catholic Church proves the Catholic Church to be a better religion than the Protestant. But what I do say is that posterity would count us fools indeed if we left the Church of St. Francis, Michael Angelo, and Erasmus to join one of the Evangelical Coin- amnions, even at the behest of the concrete Catholicism of Pius X. and the Congregations ! Posterity would say that we were raking up the mud when we might have been guiding ourselves by the stars.—I am, Sir, 8tc.,
JOHN AMBROSEDEN.
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