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006 - The Exception Proves the Rule · Catholic Church and Conversion

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  Speaker 1: Chapter five of The Catholic Church and Conversion. This is
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  Speaker 1: a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
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  Speaker 1: For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
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  Speaker 1: The Catholic Church and Conversion by G. K. Chesterton. The
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  Speaker 1: exception proves the rule. The Catholic Church is the only
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  Speaker 1: thing which saves a man from the degrading slavery of
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  Speaker 1: being a child of his age. I have compared it
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  Speaker 1: with the new religions, but this is exactly where it
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  Speaker 1: differs from the new religions. The new religions are in
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  Speaker 1: many ways suited to the new conditions. But they are
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  Speaker 1: only suited to the new conditions. When those conditions shall
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  Speaker 1: have changed in only a century or so, the points
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  Speaker 1: upon which alone they insist at present will have become
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  Speaker 1: almost pointless. If the faith has all the freshness of
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  Speaker 1: a new religion, it has all the richness of an
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  Speaker 1: old religion. It has especially all the reserves of an
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  Speaker 1: old religion. So far as that is concerned, its antiquity
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  Speaker 1: is alone a great advantage, and especially a great advantage
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  Speaker 1: for purposes of renovation and youth. It is only by
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  Speaker 1: the analogy of animal bodies. That we suppose that old
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  Speaker 1: things must be stiff, it is a mere metaphor from
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  Speaker 1: bones and arteries. In an intellectual sense, old things are flexible.
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  Speaker 1: Above all, they are various and have many alternatives to offer.
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  Speaker 1: There is a sort of rotation of crops in religious history,
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  Speaker 1: and old fields can lie follow for a while and
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  Speaker 1: then be worked again. But when the new religion, or
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  Speaker 1: any such notion, has sown its one crop of wild oaths,
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  Speaker 1: which the wind generally blows away, it is barren. A
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  Speaker 1: thing as old as a Catholic church has an accumulated
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  Speaker 1: armory and treasury to choose from. It can pick and
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  Speaker 1: choose among the centuries, and brings one age to the
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  Speaker 1: rescue of another. It can call in the old world
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  Speaker 1: to redress the balance of the new. Anyhow, the new
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  Speaker 1: religions are suited to the new world, and this is
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  Speaker 1: their most damning defect. Each religion is produced by contemporary
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  Speaker 1: causes that can be clearly pointed out. Socialism is a
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  Speaker 1: reaction against capitalism. Spiritualism is a reaction against materialism. It
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  Speaker 1: is also, in its intensified form, merely the trail of
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  Speaker 1: the tragedy of the Great War. But there is a
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  Speaker 1: somewhat more subtle sense, in which the very fitness of
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  Speaker 1: the new creeds makes them unfit, their very acceptability makes
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  Speaker 1: them inacceptable. Thus they all profess to be progressive because
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  Speaker 1: the peculiar boast of their peculiar period was progress. They
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  Speaker 1: claimed to be democratic because our political system still rather
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  Speaker 1: pathetically claims to be democratic. They rushed to a reconciliation
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  Speaker 1: with science, which was often only a premature surrender to science.
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  Speaker 1: They hastily divested themselves of anything considered dowdy or old
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  Speaker 1: fashioned in the way of vesture or symbol. They claim
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  Speaker 1: to have bright services in cheery sermons. The churches competed
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  Speaker 1: with the cinemas. The churches even became cinemas. In its
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  Speaker 1: more moderate form, the mood was merely one of praising
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  Speaker 1: natural pleasures, such as the enjoyment of nature and even
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  Speaker 1: the enjoyment of human nature. These are excellent things, and
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  Speaker 1: this is an excellent liberty, And yet it has its limitations.
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  Speaker 1: We do not really want a religion that is right
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  Speaker 1: where we are right. What we want is a religion
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  Speaker 1: that is right when we are wrong. In these current fashions,
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  Speaker 1: it is not really a question of the religion allowing
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  Speaker 1: us liberty, but at the best of a liberty allowing
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  Speaker 1: us a religion. These people merely take the modern mood,
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  Speaker 1: with much in it that is amiable and much that
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  Speaker 1: is anarchical, and much that is merely dull and obvious,
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  Speaker 1: and then require any creed to be cut down to
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  Speaker 1: fit that mood. But the mood would exist even without
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  Speaker 1: the creed. They say they want a religion to be social,
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  Speaker 1: when they would be social without any religion. They say
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  Speaker 1: they want a religion to be practical, when they would
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  Speaker 1: be practical without any religion. They say they want a
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  Speaker 1: religion acceptable to science, when they would accept the science
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  Speaker 1: even if they did not accept the religion. They say
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  Speaker 1: they want a religion like this, because they are this already.
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  Speaker 1: They say they want it when they mean that they
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  Speaker 1: could do without it. It is a very different matter
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  Speaker 1: when a religion, in the real sense of a binding thing,
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  Speaker 1: binds men to their morality, when it is not identical
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  Speaker 1: with their mood. It is very different when some of
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  Speaker 1: the saints preached social reconciliation to fierce and raging factions
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  Speaker 1: who could hardly bear the sight of each other's faces.
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  Speaker 1: It was a very different thing when charity was preached
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  Speaker 1: to pagans who really did not believe in it, just
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  Speaker 1: as it is a very different thing now when chastity
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  Speaker 1: is preached to new pagans who do not believe in it.
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  Speaker 1: It is in those cases that we get the real
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  Speaker 1: grapple of a religion, and it is in those cases
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  Speaker 1: that we get the peculiar and solitary triumph of the
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  Speaker 1: Catholic faith. It is not merely being right when we
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  Speaker 1: are right, as in being cheerful or hopeful or humane.
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  Speaker 1: It is in having been right when we were wrong,
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  Speaker 1: and in the fact coming back upon us afterwards like
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  Speaker 1: a boomerang. One word that tells us what we do
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  Speaker 1: not know outweighs a thousand words that tell us what
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  Speaker 1: we do know. And the thing is even more striking
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  Speaker 1: if we not only did not know it, but could
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  Speaker 1: not believe it. It may seem a paradox to say
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  Speaker 1: that the truth teaches us more by the words we
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  Speaker 1: reject by the words we receive. Yet the paradox is
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  Speaker 1: a parable of the simplest sort, and familiar to us all.
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  Speaker 1: Any example might be given of it. If a man
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  Speaker 1: tells us to avoid public houses, we think him a tiresome,
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  Speaker 1: though perhaps a well intentioned old party. If he tells
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  Speaker 1: us to use public houses, we recognize that he has
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  Speaker 1: a higher morality and presents an ideal that is indeed lofty,
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  Speaker 1: but perhaps a little too simple and obvious to need defense.
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  Speaker 1: But if a man tells us to avoid the one
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  Speaker 1: particular public house called the pig and Whistle on the
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  Speaker 1: left hand as you turn round by the pond, the
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  Speaker 1: direction may seem very dogmatic and arbitrary, and showing insufficient
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  Speaker 1: process of argument. But if we then fling ourselves into
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  Speaker 1: the pig and Whistle and are immediately poisoned with the gin,
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  Speaker 1: or smothered in the feather bed, and robbed of our money,
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  Speaker 1: we recognize that the man who advised us did know
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  Speaker 1: something about it, and had a cultivated and scientific knowledge
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  Speaker 1: of the public houses of the district. We think it
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  Speaker 1: even more as we emerge half murdered from the pig
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  Speaker 1: and Whistle, if we originally rejected his warning as a
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  Speaker 1: silly superstition, the warning itself is almost more impressive if
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  Speaker 1: it was not justified by reasons, but only by results.
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  Speaker 1: There is something very notable about a thing which is
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  Speaker 1: arbitrary when it is also accurate. We very easily forget
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  Speaker 1: even while we fulfill the advice that we thought was
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  Speaker 1: self evident, since but nothing can measure our mystical and
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  Speaker 1: unfathomable reverence for the advice that we thought was nonsense.
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  Speaker 1: As will be seen in a moment, I do not
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  Speaker 1: mean in the least that the Catholic Church is arbitrary
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  Speaker 1: in the sense of never giving reasons. But I do
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  Speaker 1: mean that the convert is profoundly affected by the fact that,
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  Speaker 1: even when he did not see the reason, he lived
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  Speaker 1: to see that it was reasonable. But there is something
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  Speaker 1: even more singular than this, which it will be well
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  Speaker 1: to note as a part of the convert's experience. In
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  Speaker 1: many cases, as a matter of fact, he did originally
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  Speaker 1: have a glimpse of the reasons, even if he did
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  Speaker 1: not reason about them, but they were forgotten in the
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  Speaker 1: interlude when reason was clouded by rationalism. The point is
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  Speaker 1: not very easy to explain, and I shall be obliged
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  Speaker 1: to take merely per examples in order to explain it.
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  Speaker 1: I mean that we have often had a premonition as
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  Speaker 1: well as a warning, and the fact often comes back
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  Speaker 1: to us after we have disregarded both. It is worth
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  Speaker 1: noting in connection with conversion, because the convert is often
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  Speaker 1: obstructed by a catchword which says that the church crushes
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  Speaker 1: the conscience. The church does not crush any man's conscience.
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  Speaker 1: It is the man who crushes his conscience and then
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  Speaker 1: finds out that it was right when he had almost
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  Speaker 1: forgotten that he had one. I will take two examples
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  Speaker 1: out of the new movements, socialism and spiritualism. Now. It
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  Speaker 1: is perfectly true that when I first began to think
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  Speaker 1: seriously about socialism, I was a socialist. But it is
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  Speaker 1: equally true, and more important than it sounds, that before
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  Speaker 1: I had ever heard of socialism, I was a strong
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  Speaker 1: anti socialist, what has since been called a distributist, though
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  Speaker 1: I did not know it. When I was a child
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  Speaker 1: and dreamed the usual dreams about kings and clowns and
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  Speaker 1: robbers and policemen, I always conceived all contentment and dignity
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  Speaker 1: as consisting in something compact and personal, in being king
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  Speaker 1: of the castle, or captain of the pirate ship, or
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  Speaker 1: the man who owned the shop, or the robber who
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  Speaker 1: was safe in the cavern. As I passed through boyhood,
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  Speaker 1: I always imagined battles for justice as being the defense
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  Speaker 1: of special walls and houses and high defiant shrines, and
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  Speaker 1: I embodied some of those crude but colored versions in
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  Speaker 1: a story called The Napoleon of notting Hill. All this
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  Speaker 1: happened in fancy, at least, when I had never heard
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  Speaker 1: of socialism and was a much better judge of it.
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  Speaker 1: Shades of the prison house began to close, and with
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  Speaker 1: them came a merely mechanical discussion as to how we
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  Speaker 1: were all to get out of prison. Then, indeed, in
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  Speaker 1: the darkness of the dungeon was heard the voice of
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  Speaker 1: mister Sidney Webb telling us that we could only conceivably
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  Speaker 1: get out of our capitalist captivity with a patent chub
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  Speaker 1: key of collectivism, or, to use a more exact metaphor,
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  Speaker 1: he told us that we could only escape from our
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  Speaker 1: dark and filthy cells of industrial slavery by melting all
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  Speaker 1: our private latch keys into one gigantic latch key as
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  Speaker 1: big as a battering ram. We did not really like
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  Speaker 1: giving up our little private keys, or local attachments, or
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  Speaker 1: love of our own possessions, but we were quite convinced
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  Speaker 1: that social justice must be done somehow, and could only
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  Speaker 1: be done socialistically. I therefore became a socialist in the
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  Speaker 1: old days of the Fabian society, and so I think
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  Speaker 1: did everybody else worth talking about except the Catholics. And
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  Speaker 1: the Catholics were an insigniat handful, the dregs of a
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  Speaker 1: dead religion, essentially a superstition. About this time appeared the
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  Speaker 1: encyclical on Labor by Leo the thirteenth, and nobody in
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  Speaker 1: our really well informed world took much notice of it. Certainly,
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  Speaker 1: the Pope spoke as strongly as any socialists could speak
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  Speaker 1: when he said that capitalism quote laid on the toiling
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  Speaker 1: millions a yoke little better than slavery end quote. But
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  Speaker 1: as the Pope was not a socialist, it was obvious
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  Speaker 1: that he had not read the right socialist books and pamphlets,
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  Speaker 1: and we could not expect the poor old gentleman to
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  Speaker 1: know what every young man knew by this time, that
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  Speaker 1: socialism was inevitable. That was a long time ago, and
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  Speaker 1: by a gradual process, mostly practical and political, which I
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  Speaker 1: have no intention of describing here, most of us began
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  Speaker 1: to realize that socialism was not inevitable, that it was
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  Speaker 1: not really popular, that it was not the only way
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  Speaker 1: or even the right way, of restoring the rights of
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  Speaker 1: the poor. We have come to the conclusion that the
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  Speaker 1: obvious cure for private property being given to the few
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  Speaker 1: is to see that it is given to the many,
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  Speaker 1: not to see that it is taken away from everybody,
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  Speaker 1: or given in trust to the dear good politicians. Then,
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  Speaker 1: having discovered that fact as a fact, we look back
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  Speaker 1: at Leo the thirteenth and discover in his old and
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  Speaker 1: dated document of which we took no notice at the time,
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  Speaker 1: that he was saying then exactly what we are saying now.
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  Speaker 1: Quote as many as possible of the working classes should
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  Speaker 1: become owners end quote. That is what I mean by
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  Speaker 1: the justification of arbitrary warning. If the Pope had said
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  Speaker 1: then exactly what we said and wanted him to say,
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  Speaker 1: we should not have really reverenced him then, and we
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  Speaker 1: should have entirely repudiated him afterwards. He would only have
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  Speaker 1: marched with a million who accepted Fabianism, and with them
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  Speaker 1: he would have marched away. But when he saw a
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  Speaker 1: distinction we did not see then and do see now,
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  Speaker 1: that distinction is decisive. It marks a disagreement more convincing
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  Speaker 1: than a hundred agreements. It is not that he was
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  Speaker 1: right when we were right, but that he was right
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  Speaker 1: when we were wrong. The superficial critic of these things,
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  Speaker 1: noting that I am no longer a socialist, will always say,
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  Speaker 1: of course you are a Catholic and you are not
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  Speaker 1: allowed to be a socialist, to which I answer emphatically, no,
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  Speaker 1: that is missing the whole point. The Church anticipated my experience,
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  Speaker 1: but it was experience and not only obedience. I am
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  Speaker 1: quite sure now from merely living in this world and
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  Speaker 1: seeing something of Catholic peasants as well as collectivist officials,
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  Speaker 1: that it is happier and healthier for most men to
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  Speaker 1: become owners than for them to give up all ownership
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  Speaker 1: to those officials. I do not follow the state socialist
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  Speaker 1: in his extreme belief in the state. But I have
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  Speaker 1: not ceased to be credulous about the state merely because
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  Speaker 1: I have become credulous about the Church. I believe less
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  Speaker 1: in the state because I know more of the statesman.
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  Speaker 1: I cannot believe small property to be impossible after I
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  Speaker 1: have seen it. I cannot believe state management to be
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  Speaker 1: impeccable after I have seen it. It is not any
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  Speaker 1: authority except what Saint Thomas calls the authority of the census,
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  Speaker 1: which tells me that the mere community of goods is
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  Speaker 1: a solution that is too much of a simplification. The
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  Speaker 1: Church has taught me, but I could not unteach myself.
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  Speaker 1: I have learned because I have lived, and I could
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  Speaker 1: not unlearn it. If I ceased to be a Catholic,
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  Speaker 1: I could not again be a Communist. As it happens,
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  Speaker 1: my story was almost exactly the same in connection with spiritualism.
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  Speaker 1: There Again, I was modern when I was young, but
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  Speaker 1: not when I was very young, while I had a
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  Speaker 1: vague but innocent nursery religion still hanging about me, I
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  Speaker 1: regarded the first signs of these psychic and psychological things
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  Speaker 1: with mere repugnance. I hated the whole notion of mesmerism
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  Speaker 1: and magnetic tricks with the mind. I loathed their bulging
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  Speaker 1: eyes and stiff attitudes, and unnatural trances, and the whole
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  Speaker 1: bag of tricks. When I saw a girl I admired
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: set down to crystal gazing, I was furious. I hardly
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  Speaker 1: knew why. Then came the period when I wanted to
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  Speaker 1: know why. When I examined my own reasons and found
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  Speaker 1: I had none, I saw that it was inconsistent in
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  Speaker 1: science to revere research and forbid psychical research. I saw
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  Speaker 1: that men of science were more and more accepting these things,
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  Speaker 1: and I went along with my scientific age. I was
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  Speaker 1: never exactly a spiritualist, but I almost always defended spiritualism.
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  Speaker 1: I experimented with a planchette quite enough to convince myself
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  Speaker 1: finely that some things do happen that are not in
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  Speaker 1: the ordinary sense natural. I have since come to think,
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  Speaker 1: for reasons it would require too much space to detail,
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  Speaker 1: that it is not so much supernatural as unnatural and
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  Speaker 1: even anti natural. I believe the experiments were bad for me.
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: I believe they are bad for the other experimentalists. But
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: I found out the fact long before I found out
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  Speaker 1: the Catholic Church, or the Catholic view of that question. Only,
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  Speaker 1: as I have said, when I do find it out,
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: I find it rather impressive, for it is not the
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  Speaker 1: religion that was right when I was right, but the
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: religion that was right when I was wrong. But I
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  Speaker 1: wished to note about both those cases that the common
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  Speaker 1: cant in the matter is emphatically not true. It is
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  Speaker 1: not true that the Church crushed my natural conscience. It
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  Speaker 1: is not true that the Church asked me to give
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  Speaker 1: up my individual ideal. It is not true that collectivism
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  Speaker 1: was ever my ideal. I do not believe it was
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  Speaker 1: ever really anybody else's ideal. It was not an ideal
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  Speaker 1: but a compromise. It was a concession to practical economists
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  Speaker 1: who told us that we could not prevent poverty except
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  Speaker 1: by something uncommonly like slavery. State. Socialism never came natural
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  Speaker 1: to us, and never convinced us that it was natural,
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: and convinced us that it was necessary. In exactly the
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: same way, spiritualism never came as something natural, but only
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: as something necessary. Each told us that it was the
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: only way into the promised land, in the one case
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: of a future life and the other of life in
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  Speaker 1: the future. We did not like government departments and tickets
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  Speaker 1: and registers, but we were told there was no other
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  Speaker 1: way of reaching a better society. We did not like
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: dark rooms and dubious mediums and ladies tied up with rope,
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: but we were told there was no other way to
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  Speaker 1: reach a better world. We were ready to crawl down
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  Speaker 1: a municipal drain pipe or through a spiritual sewer, because
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  Speaker 1: it was the only way to better things, the only
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: way even to prove that there were better things. But
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: the drain pipe had never figured in our dreams like
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  Speaker 1: a tower of ivory, or a house of gold, or
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  Speaker 1: even like the robber's tower of our romantic boyhood or
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: the solid and comfortable house of our matured experience. The
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  Speaker 1: faith had not only been true all along, but it
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  Speaker 1: had been true to the first and the last things,
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  Speaker 1: to our unspoiled instincts and our conclusive experience. And it
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: had condemned nothing but an interlude of intellectual snobbishness and
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: surrender to the persuasions of pedantry. It had condemned nothing
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  Speaker 1: but what we ourselves should have come to condemn, though
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  Speaker 1: we might have condemned it too late. The Church therefore
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  Speaker 1: never made my individual ideal impossible. It would be truer
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  Speaker 1: to say that she was the first to make it possible.
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  Speaker 1: The encyclical's ideal had been much nearer my own instinct
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  Speaker 1: than the ideal I had consented to substitute for it.
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  Speaker 1: The Catholic suspicion of table wrapping was much more like
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  Speaker 1: my own original suspicion than it was like my own
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: subsequent surrender. But in those two cases it was surely
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: clear that the Catholic Church plays exactly the part that
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: she professes to play something that knows what we cannot
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  Speaker 1: be expected to know, but should probably accept if we
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  Speaker 1: really knew it. I am not in this case any
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: more than in the greater part of this study referring
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: to the things that are really best worth knowing. The
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  Speaker 1: supernatural truths are connected with the mystery of grace, and
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: are a matter for theologians, admittedly a rather delicate and
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: difficult matter even for them. But though the transcendental truths
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: are the most important, they are not those that best
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: illustrate this particular point, which concerns the decisions which can
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: be more or less tested by experience. And of all
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: those things that can be tested by experience, I could
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: tell the same story that there was a time when
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: I thought the Catholic doctrine was meaningless, but that even
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: that was not the very earliest time, which was a
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: time of greater simplicity, when I had a sort of
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: glimpse of the meaning. Though I had never even heard
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: of the doctrine. The world deceived me, and the Church
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: would at any time have undeceived me. The thing that
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: a man may really shed at last like a superstition,
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: is the fashion of this world that passes away. I
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: could give many other examples, but I fear they would
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: inevitably tend to be egotistical examples. Throughout this brief study,
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: I am under the double difficulty that all roads lead
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: to Rome, but that each pilgrim is tempted to talk
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: as if all roads had been like his own road.
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: I could write a great deal, for instance, about my
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: early wrestlings with the rather ridiculous dilemma which was put
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: to me in my youth by the optimist and the pessimist.
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: I promptly and properly refused to be a pessimist, and
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: I therefore fell into the way of calling myself an optimist.
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: Now I should not call myself either. And what is
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: more important, I can see that virtue may be entangled
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: in both. But I think it is entangled, and I
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: think that an older and simpler truth can loosen the tangle.
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: But the point in the present connection is this that
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: before I had ever heard of optimists or pessimists, I
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: was something much more like what I am now than
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: could be covered by either of those two pedantic words.
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: In my childhood, I assumed that cheerfulness was a good thing.
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: But I also assumed that it was a bad thing,
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: not to protest against things that are really bad. After
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: an interlude of intellectual formalism and false antithesis, I have
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: come back to being able to think what I could
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: then only feel. But I have realized that the protest
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: can rise to a much more divine indignation, and that
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: the cheerfulness is but a faint suggestion of a much
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: more divine joy. It is not so much that I
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: have found I was wrong, as that I have found
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: out why I was right. In this we find the
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: supreme example of the exception that proves the rule. The
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: rule of which I have given a rough outline in
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: the previous chapter, is that the Catholic philosophy is a
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: universal philosophy found to fit anywhere with human nature and
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: the nature of things. But even when it does not
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: fit in with human nature, it is found in the
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: long run to favor something yet more fitting. It generally
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: suits us, But where it does not suit us, we
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: learn to suit it. So long as we are alive
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: enough to learn anything. In the rare cases where a
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: reasonable man can really say that it cuts across his intelligence,
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: it will generally be found that it is true not
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: only to truth, but even to his deepest instinct for truth.
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: Education does not cease with conversion, but rather begins. The
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: man does not cease to study because he has become
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: convinced that certain things are worth studying, and these things
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: include not only the Orthodox values, but even the Orthodox vetos.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: Strangely enough, in a sense, the forbidden fruit is often
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: more fruitful than the free It is more fruitful in
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: the sense of a fascinating botanical study of why it
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: is really poisonous. Thus, for the sake of an example,
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: all healthy people have an instinct against usury, and the
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: Church has only confirmed that instinct. But to learn how
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: to define usury, to study what it is, and to
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: argue why it is wrong, is to have a liberal education,
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: not only in political economy, but in the philosophy of
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: Aristotle and the history of the Councils of Laterin there
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: almost always is a human reason for all the merely
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: human advice given by the Church to humanity, and to
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: find out the principle of the thing is, among other things,
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: one of the keenest of intellectual pleasures. But in any case,
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: the fact remains that the Church is right in the
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: main in being tolerant. In the main but that where
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: she is intolerant, she is most right and even most reasonable.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: Adam lived in a garden where a thousand mercies were
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: granted to him, but the one inhibition was the greatest
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: mercy of all. In the same way, let the convert,
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: or still more of the semiconvert, face any one fact
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: that does seem to him to deface the Catholic scheme
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: as a falsehood, and if he faces it long enough,
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: he will probably find that it is the greatest truth
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: of all. I have found this myself in that extreme
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: logic of free will which is found in the fallen angels,
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: and the possibility of perdition. Such things are altogether beyond
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: my imagine nation, but the lines of logic go out
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: toward them in my reason. Indeed, I can undertake to
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: justify the whole Catholic theology if I be granted to
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: start with the supreme sacredness and value of two things,
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: reason and liberty. It is an illuminating comment on current
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: anti Catholic talk that they are the two things which
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: most people imagine to be forbidden to Catholics. But the
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: best way of putting what I mean is to repeat
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: what I already said in connection with the satisfying scope
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: of Catholic universality. I cannot picture these theological ultimates, and
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: I have not the authority or learning to define them.
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: But I still put the matter to myself. Thus, supposing
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: I were so miserable as to lose the faith, could
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: I go back to that cheap charity and crude optimism,
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: which says that every sin is a blunder, that evil
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: cannot conquer or does not even exist. I could no
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: more go back to those cushioned chapels than a man
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: who has regained his sanity would willingly go back to
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: a padded cell. I might cease to believe in a
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: god of any kind, but I could not cease to
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: think that a god who had made men and angels
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: free was finer than one who coerced them into comfort.
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: I might cease to believe in a future life of
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: any kind, I could not cease to think it was
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: a finer doctrine that we choose and make our future life,
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: than that it is fitted out for us like an hotel,
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: and we are taken there in a celestial omnibus, as
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: compulsory as a black maria. I know that Catholicism is
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: too large for me, and I have not yet explored
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: its beautiful or terrible truths. But I know that universalism
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: is too small for me, and I could not creep
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: back into that dull safety. Who have looked on the
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: dizzy vision of liberty end of Chapter five