. WARD ON THE CATHOLIC POSITION;
[To THZ EDITOR 07 THZ " SPZCTAT011."3
Sin,—Your correspondent, " Laicus," has to some extent misunderstood the positions maintained in the "Epilogue" to "The Life and Times of Cardinal Wiseman." They are perhaps more clearly developed in the latter part of the " Epilogue" than in the first half to which he confines his attention.
At starting he states that the first position which I defend, as held by Wiseman and Newman, is the claim of the Papal Church to be the one exclusive Church "which has never in- cluded varieties of opinion." My own words are (p. 533) "has never included the totality of Christians of all varieties of opinion." The difference is important, for one of my prin- cipal contentions is (p. 554) that where the existence of the Church as one polity and loyalty to her authority are secure, as they were in the medimval schools, very great freedom in speculative opinion may obtain among Catholics. "The liberty of discussion allowed in medimval times," I wrote, is proverbial." The intellect had a licentious revel" was Newman's own phrase.
No doubt a rigidity unfavourable to such freedom has been) on the whole characteristic of the Church of Rome since the Reformation. Had the desire of Erasmus and Sir Thomas More been fulfilled, for reform within the Church instead of a break-up of the Ecclesiastical polity of Western Christen- dom, the freedom and individuality of the reformers would have acted as a salutary influence in the opposite direction. Cardinal Newman in a well-known passage deplores the diminu- tion of the Teutonic elements in the modern Roman Catholic Church greatly for a similar reason. Though a great moral reform in the Catholic Church dates from the sixteenth century, I think that most historians will dissent from my critic in considering that it has shown greater breadth and assimilative power since the Reformation than before it. My own contention is the reverse, although I admit that in such countries as America, and to some extent in England and Germany, contact with the intellectual life and criticism outside its pale has had a widening effect on thought within it.
With regard to the analogy between polities civil and, ecclesiastical, my critic has, I think, mistaken the primary purport of the argument. It purports to show that certain objections to modern Rome are objections to the action, of the Christian Church in the early centuries. The Church in early times assumed that Christianity was a polity, and I attempt to show (on the lines of Newman's essay) that modern Rome has only consistently developed the system which we see.
in operation at the Council of Nicma. That system was re, cognised by Carlyle, who had at first considered it to be one- of hair-splitting definition, as having saved Christianity from, "dwindling away into a legend." (p. 540.) No doubt I append what my critic calls "the Church's real defence,' but which I expressly deny to be her defence "in her ow.A.
eyes," though it is her defence "to the man of the world;"' (p. 546), who does not concern himself with the truth of religion, but only with its utility. This defence does not amount (as he says) to an appeal to experience tkit "to, deny Rome's infallible authority is to perish," but to the appeal to experience that in the long run all religions belief is preserved for the mass of men by Church, authority; that successfully to get rid in fact as well as in theory, of authority, is gravely to imperil religion ; and that without religion society perishes. I have indicated abundantly in my work the nature of the experience to which I ref** and
the nature of the argument it supplies in favour of Catholicism. I have pointed out that the Authority of the Church, although theoretically denied among Protestants, has largely isivived
under the guise of eustom and tradition. I quote ..he'testi- mony of A. W. Schlegel, Bunsen, the King of Prussia, and others as to the effect of the principles of the ReformatiOn. i.
dissolving religions belief and leading to the scepticisinnf the eighteenth century. I point to the significance of Up
Catholic Revival of this century in France, Germany, AuPtifir,. Italy, and elsewhere as showing that experience has ,iristin many back to the Catholic principle of Authority. -I c• such men as Brunetiere and Pressense; as instancesii width the power of the Catholic principle has been appreciated by those who deny its truth; and I refer to the Anglicaa as showing that the idea of Church Authority i., if some- what illogically, once more gaining explicit appinciation England itself. My contention is that all such iistances are- testimonies to the fact that the original const'intion of ti- Church as as one polity, including an ascertainablnanthoritativn
legislature, is the normal one. Rome has preserved it ; while it has been, as I say towards the end of tlem Epilogue,' "partially or wholly lost elsewhere."
This I maintain to be a strong prima:facie confirmation or , the Catholic view that it is desirable tint the Christian Churches should again be parts, of one orgr,iiisation with as authoritative legislature. My words are as :follows :— "The Catholic Church alone practically re:ognises the func- tions of Authority, by the very constitution o. the human mind,. in preserving our hold on fundamental truths, and acts upon this recognition in the ease of the revelation comin'tted to her. There may have to be great changes within the Church before the- separated bodies can again recognise her. Bu. if .tio other prin- ciple, except that which she has retained, can tilimately withstand the inroads of religious negation, may we not lope that forces on all sides will eventually tend towards the desired reunion ? The central Authority, as a fact, arid not a mere in-me, is an essential, part of the Church thus concei ed. But ite ;tactical claims and action may vary in the future ethey have in the past." (p. 582.)!
—I am, Sir, So., 'WILFRID WARD.
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