t S . 14 . -- - At the risk of being thought dreadfully sec- ti rtan '
may Protest against Monica Furlong s. Christians.' use of such expressions as 'The Church and is Sill must know perfectly well that there s„ Bo such thing in England as a Church with a ;Vital 'C.' For a Protestant or an Anglican to use 1,11°1 general terms as 'The Church' is on the same (-lye). of wistful euphemism as to think that The
lilted Nations' means what it says. •
an ut the
most tiresome aspect of Miss Furlong's
inreles, for a Catholic reader lies in their casual a itre nce--quite deliberate, I should say—that the ie;',101' holds some kind of brief to speak for all the 0.iurehen., Agnostics or pagans, either material or Zwho must form a majority of your readers— a; they do ot your contributors—will gain an curate enough picture of thc author's denomma- n from her articles. Indeed the welter of doctrinal wisc! canonical confusion and the complete lacuna De"rich exists in place of any idea of mental or moral, eh3uilal or corporate, discipline in the non-catholic are brought out extremely well by Miss nihriung. If only she were a bit more specific as to ta,,c1Was writing about what! What is more impor- ni"tht is that any a shrug from self-respecting heathen will turn away the such a picture, for, paradoxically, fer,same reasons as any Catholic will. But the dif- lihtnee is thlt our good heathen countrymen will them.
all the churches together and damn the lot of his is a bit tough on the Church (i.e., the Catholic Church)' which always has, and always will, regard non-Catholic 'Christians' as material heretics or, at least, as schismatics. To say that Catholics do not want to be judged by the antics of Anglicans and Non-Conformists is not, of course, to say that we are guilty of none of their mistakes. We are guilty— not that Miss Furlong knows anything about it.
I once heard a priest say—in all charity—that if only one could sweep all these pleasant and civilised heretics out of the way, it might be possible to get to grips with the pagans without getting clogged down at every step with irrelevancies and loyalties that simply befog the main issue. There is something in this theory.—Yours sincerely (another Protestant word!), J. F. LETHBRIDGE
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