ROMAN CATHOLICS AND DEMOCRACY
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR,]
SIR: The Reformed Churches, with better claim to be orthodox in doctrine and catholic in respect of quod server, nbique, ab omnibus, as well as Catholic in the technical sense, are more than half inclined to let the " Eastern " and " Western " Churches have their way in the use of these designations. All the same, the communion claiming to be the Catholic Church does not itself object to the appellation Roman Catholic. The Reformed are content to be simply Christian—any other titles being but diminutives of that greatest denomination.
What is of far greater importance at the present moment, however, is the effect produced on the body politic by these respective types. The Catholic populations, habituated to sacerdotal authority from infancy, are never fit for democratic government as are the free and non-Catholic peoples. By consequence Catholic Italy, Spain, Poland, can hand the reins of government over to dictators ; South Germany gives way to Hitlerism (which would seem- to have engulfed North Germany, too, -for the moment ; only the end is not yet), and Roman Austria- seems to be following suit. East- ward we encounter the colossal collapse of- Orthodox Russia under Lenin and Stalin " tyrannies," with similar tendencies in other- Orthodox lands.
There are countries, however, where dictatorships are out of the question ; their peoples have been reared in freedom and .-self-reliance.: democracies long disciplined in self- government. They are the non-Catholic countries—Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Holland and Protestant Germany (after the eclipse), Great Britain and France (largely in revolt from Rome). Let us add U.S.A. and our Dominions. The crazy cranks among .us who squeak about Fascism should
be taught—ridicule ought to suflice—that, if a superman equal to a combination of all the Continental dictator§ did appear among us, we should perhaps discuss him, and certainly dismiss him. And when all this is said, it is not claimed that democratic government is being worked to full and best
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