Survivals and New Arrivals: The Old and New Enemies of the Catholic Church. Hilaire Belloc

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СКАЧАТЬ whether it calls its philosophy by the name of "religion" or no, into what is, in practice, a religion of some kind, the philosophy of any society ultimately falls. The ultimate source of social form is the attitude of the mind; and at the heart of every culture is a creed and code of morals: expressed or taken for granted.

      If it were true that economic circumstances mainly decided the fate of society (and that is a more respectable error than the mechanical, for every human economic system or discovery or adaptation, proceeds from the mind) then we might waste our time, as so many do today, on discussing economic tendencies as determining the future of man. But it is not true that economic circumstance molds our destiny. Industrial Capitalism, for instance, did not develop of itself: it was the slow product of false religion. It arose out of the Reformation; and in particular from the influence of Calvin. But for the Reformation that economic arrangement would not be troubling us today. Its root is still in religion; a change in religion would kill it and its attendant parasite called Socialism.

      Again, chattel slavery in the West slowly disappeared under the influence of the Catholic Church. There are those who regret its disappearance; the majority of us have been taught to approve its disappearance: at any rate it disappeared.

      A group of intellectuals have argued that the gradual action of a Catholicism had no such effect upon the pagan world, and that the slow dissolution of slavery (it took more than a thousand years) was a function of material environment. They are wrong The old, absolute, pagan slavery which seemed essential to civilized society slowly dissolved because it was incompatible with the Catholic doctrine. It was not directly condemned by the Church, but it proved indirectly unable to live in an atmosphere not pagan. It had to be modified; and once it began to be modified it had started on its long road to dissolution: the slave became a serf, the serf a peasant. And by just so much as society is sinking back into paganism today, by just so much the institution of slavery begins to reappear in the new laws regulating labor.

      Neither brute material circumstance, though it is of great effect on society, nor more subtle economic arrangement is the ultimate framer of human politics. As we proceed deeply and more deeply from cause to cause we discover that what gives its nature to a human group is its attitude towards The Last Things: its conception of the End of Man.

      Even when a positive creed has lost its vigor and dwindled under indifference, its remaining effect upon the stuff of society remains profound.

      Should any doubt this let them mark the effects of the two contrasted religious cultures in the West: the Protestant and Catholic; that proceeding from the schism in the sixteenth century, and that which, in the sixteenth century, weathered the storm and maintained tradition.

      All may see the ease with which industrialism grows in a soil of Protestant culture, the difficulty with which it grows in a soil of ancient Catholic culture.

      In the latter, whether that difficulty take the form of negligence or of revolt, it is equally apparent. Industrialism has flourished under Prussia, as in England and the United States; it has starved in Ireland and Spain; it menaces civil war in France and Italy. It is indeed a common matter of reproach against the Catholic culture that there has been such friction between it and the industrial system. (It is true that hypocrisy hesitates to use the words "Catholic Culture." But when it talks of "Celt" or "Latin," Catholicism is what hypocrisy means by such terms.)

      Again, if we look at the grouping of national policies today in Europe, we at once discover the effect of a common religious sympathy. Why else do we hear sneers against the Pole, the Italian, the Frenchman, the Spaniard, the Belgian, and a corresponding admiration for the Dutch, the Scandinavians, the Prussians?

      His popular press and fiction hide from the townsman of today this elementary truth, that upon religion all turns, and that every main political problem, every main economic one, is finally a function of the philosophy which is at work beneath all. He hears of "race" as the ultimate factor. He even hears of "Nordic," "Alpine," "Mediterranean." His attention is drawn to physical conditions: the presence of coal or of ports. Meanwhile the major cause of all social difference is left unmentioned.

      It would be interesting, had I the space, to consider the causes of this strange silence. It is most profound in England though there the most glaring examples of religious effect are beneath the eyes of all: Scotland for centuries the fierce enemy of England now fallen into one commonwealth with her through a common ethical system; Ireland increasingly hostile and now at last separated.

      There is another cause, the truth which all should feel in appreciating the present situation of Catholicism. It is the fact that the Church is unique. The line of cleavage throughout the world lies between what is with, and what is against, the Faith.

      If it were true that the modern world is full of warring creeds, then the situation of the Catholic Church would not be of that transcendent interest. She could not claim to be one of many moral institutions, each based on separate doctrines: Her creed one of many creeds; and we might debate with solemn stupidity (as indeed our contemporaries do debate) whether this, that, or the other, among many sects and opinions, were of the greater value or had the greater chance of survival.

      But that is not the situation at all. There is no parallel between the Catholic Church and any other institution. There is no parallel between the Catholic Church and any other man-made grouping of opinions or of moods. She is wholly distinct. As with Her Founder, so with Her: all that is not of Her is against Her; for She claims, and Her adherents maintain the claim, that Hers is the one and the only authoritative voice upon earth.

      Her doctrines are not conclusions arrived at by experiment, nor slipped into by personal emotion. Still less are they opinions, probabilities, fashions. Her corporate unity is not one of which others are tolerant, or which is itself tolerant of others. She has no borderland of partial agreement with error nor is there a flux or common meeting place between Herself and things more or less similar, more or less neighborly. She has frontiers rigidly defined: not only in Her doctrine and its claim to divinity but in Her very stuff and savor. Within Her walls all is of one kind; without, all is of another.

      It is abundantly clear to those who are members of this Institution that it thus presents throughout the world a unique personality. It is becoming clear to most who are not members. The Church is loved and hated in a degree greater than that which measures other loves or hatreds: even those between nations in our modern fever of exalted nationalism. The loyalty She obtains is more vivid than that produced even by modern patriotism. The hatred She arouses is stronger than the hatred felt for an enemy in arms. And these loves and hatreds have immediate and tremendous reactions upon all around.

      Take one example of Her unique character. The Catholic Church is the one bulwark today against the probably ephemeral but still very dangerous conflagration called Communism. Take another and more profound example: She is the one stronghold against modern pantheism, and its accompanying chaos in art and morals.

      There is, then, no man who cares to understand the character of the world but must acquaint himself with the situation of the Faith. What are its present enemies? What dangers beset it? Where and how is it checked? Where lies its opportunities for growth? These are the outstanding questions. Compared with a judgment upon the present situation of the Catholic Church, a judgment upon the rise and fall of economic systems or of nations is insignificant.

      This is my postulate, and the outset of my inquiry.

      I have said that the situation of the Church at any moment (and therefore in our own time) is best appreciated by judging the rise and decline of the forces opposing Her at that moment.

      Now these, when we pause to estimate the state of the battle in any one phase of it, fall into three fairly distinct groups:

      (i) СКАЧАТЬ