IDEALISM AND RELIGION
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.]
SIR,—As a regular reader of The Spectator I have followed with special interest the correspondence on the above subject.; indeed I always read with the respect which they deserve attacks by younger people on the Church of which I am a middle-aged officer. I do not ask for space for continent upon the main thesis of Miss Gilbert-Lodge's letter, though as one who has been a parish priest for most of his life I could say a good deal about the joy of worship and the real happiness of the fellowship of parochial life, a happiness which for many years I was privileged myself to enjoy and which I see reproduced in the 'many different parishes which I now visit. Nor will I comment on the great work which the Church has accomplished for hospitals, education and other agencies of social amelioration. It is perfectly true that these are now largely the province of the State, but it seems a little ungenerous to forget the pioneer work of the Church undertaken long before the State concerned itself with such activities.
Leaving these things on one side, I would comment upon the strange slip which led Miss Gilbert-Lodge to complain of the cruelty of the Church in excommunicating children born out of wedlock. Others have pointed out her error in fact on this matter, but I would call attention to the devoted care' which the Church gives to such children and to their mothers. A quotation from Mr. Milner White's article in the book Essays Catholic and Critical will be, I think, relevant : " The great merciful activities which the sympathy of the Church first found to do, the abolition of slavery, the institution of hospitals, the raising of the status of women, the zeal for education when none other cared, have passed into the very fabric of Western civilisation. But it is seldom noted that even now the hardest works of mercy are still left to those whose devotion to Christ provides them both with the perseverance for the task and the readiness to remain unknown and obscure in the doing of it. The worst wreckage of indulgence and sin can still be dealt with only by the Church's Homes of Mercy. The educational and medical care of backward races is left to the Christian missionary. The bulk of such social work as is unpaid and voluntary is done demonstrably by people who ` go to church.' " What Mr. Milner White here says is most obviously true of what is usually known as Moral Welfare Work. In her letter Miss Gilbert-Lodge shows special interest in and care for those children who come into the world as the result of self-indulgence and sin, and who when they come are all too often " unwanted." Perhaps it will make her feel more kindly towards the Church which she condemns when she thinks of the vast amount of silent inconspicuous work which is being done by the Church and Church workers for these pathetic " unwanted " children and their mothers, and perhaps she may even be moved, instead of criticising from without, to come and help us from within.—Yours, dm,
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