SIE,—AS an orthodox Catholic, I thank you cordially for printing
the letter of "W." in last week's Spectator. The Mass may be of no reality to Englishmen as a whole, but to both Eastern and Western Churches—to three hundred and fifty million Christians—it is the daily offering of the Eternal Son to the Eternal Father for the whole Church; and, Sir, you may perhaps guess how, for us, all our religion and all our faith in God and man would be destroyed if all we hold dear, and all our Church has held dear for nearly two thousand years, is now to be declared vain and of no account. We who bring our little ones to Christ in Baptism and for the bestowal of the Holy Spirit in the Holy Chrism, and again, even as little children, to receive the Mysteries of Christ's Body and Blood, in obedience to His Commandment to let the little ones come to Him, are now told that all these Sacraments or Mysteries are vain. Christianity is then at stake. Some say that Modernism is merely a revolt against Roman scholasticism ; but the teaching of the orthodox Catholic Church is patristic, not scholastic; and yet her Creed and beliefs are likewise challenged, as it seems to me, an ordinaiy layman. There are, no doubt, good aspects of Modernism such as the desire for historical truth and scientific truth. But if the Creed of Christendom is denied; if our holy Liturgies (or Mass), which have satisfied our hearts and souls for nine- teen hundred years, are empty rites; if our faith in the Holy Trinity is false and the Holy Church in continual error for all her years, then either Christianity is a monstrous fraud or Modernists are in great error. Meantime we will hold fast to the Mother of all our holy martyrs, confessors, and saints.
[We are glad to print "X. 0.'s " simple and touching letter, but what an astonishing misunderstanding of the Modernist position it implies ! Men who deny the Creed of Christendom do not trouble to become Modernists, or to suffer as these men suffer. They are Modernists because they are so deeply convinced of Christianity, not because they reject it.—ED. Spectator.]
Previous page
