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007 - A Note on Present Prospects · Catholic Church and Conversion

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  Speaker 1: Chapter six 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, A
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  Speaker 1: note on present prospects On Reconsidering these notes, I find
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  Speaker 1: them to be far too personal. Yet I do not
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  Speaker 1: know how any conception of conversion can be anything else.
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  Speaker 1: I do not profess to have any particular knowledge about
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  Speaker 1: the actual conditions and calculations of the Catholic movement at
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  Speaker 1: the moment. I do not believe that anybody else has
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  Speaker 1: any knowledge of what it will be like the next moment.
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  Speaker 1: Statistics are generally misleading, and predictions are practically always faults.
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  Speaker 1: But there is always a certain faint tradition of the
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  Speaker 1: thing called common sense, and so long as a glimmer
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  Speaker 1: of it remains, in spite of all journalism and state instruction,
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  Speaker 1: it is possible to appreciate what we call a reality.
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  Speaker 1: Nobody in his five wits will deny that at this
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  Speaker 1: moment conversion is a reality. Everybody knows that his own
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  Speaker 1: social circle, which fifty years ago would have been a
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  Speaker 1: firm territory of Protestantism, perhaps hardening into rationalism or indifference.
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  Speaker 1: But doing even that slowly and without conscious convulsion, has
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  Speaker 1: just lately shown a curious disposition to collapse softly and suddenly,
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  Speaker 1: first in one unexpected place and then in another, making
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  Speaker 1: great holes in that solid land, and letting up the
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  Speaker 1: leap flames of what was counted an extinct volcano. It
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  Speaker 1: is in everybody's experience, whether he is sad or glad,
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  Speaker 1: or mad or merely indifferent, that these conversions seem to
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  Speaker 1: come of themselves in the most curious and apparently accidental quarters.
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  Speaker 1: Tom's wife, Harry's brother, Fanny's funny sister in law who
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  Speaker 1: went on the stage, Sam's eccentric uncle who studied military strategy.
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  Speaker 1: Of each of these isolated souls, we hear suddenly that
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  Speaker 1: it is isolated no longer. It is one with the
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  Speaker 1: soul's militant and triumphant against these things which we know
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  Speaker 1: as facts and do not merely read as statistics. There
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  Speaker 1: is admittedly something to be set. It is what is
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  Speaker 1: commonly called leakage. And with a paragraph upon this point,
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  Speaker 1: I will close these pages. Father Ronald knocks with that
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  Speaker 1: felicity that is so good that the wit almost seems
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  Speaker 1: like good luck. Has remarked that the Catholic Church really
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  Speaker 1: does have to get on by hook or crook, that is,
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  Speaker 1: by the hook of the fisherman and the crook of
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  Speaker 1: the shepherd. And it is the hook that has to
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  Speaker 1: catch the convert, and the crook that has to keep him.
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  Speaker 1: He said in this connection that the conversions to the
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  Speaker 1: Church just now were so numerous that they would be
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  Speaker 1: obvious and overwhelming, like a landslide, if it were not
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  Speaker 1: that they were neutralized in mere numbers, or rather lessened
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  Speaker 1: in their full claim of numbers by a certain amount
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  Speaker 1: of falling away in other directions. Now, the first fact
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  Speaker 1: to realize is that it is in other directions, in
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  Speaker 1: totally different directions. Some people, especially young people, abandon practicing Catholicism,
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  Speaker 1: but none of them abandon it for Protestantism, all of
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  Speaker 1: negative morality. They have a feeling which is not unreasonable,
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  Speaker 1: that to commit themselves to the Catholic citizenship is to
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  Speaker 1: take responsibilities that continually act as restraints. But they do
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  Speaker 1: not maintain anything like a contrary system of spiritual citizenship
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  Speaker 1: or moral responsibility. For instance, it is perfectly natural that
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  Speaker 1: they should want to act naturally, But they do not
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  Speaker 1: want to act naturally according to any intellectual theory of
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  Speaker 1: the reliability of nature. On the contrary, their young and
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  Speaker 1: brilliant literary representatives are very prone to press upon us
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  Speaker 1: the crudity and cruelty of nature, that is the moral
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  Speaker 1: of mister Aldous Huxley and of many others. State to
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  Speaker 1: them any of the consistent theories of the supreme claim
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  Speaker 1: of nature upon us, such as the pantheistic idea of
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  Speaker 1: God in all natural things, or the Nietzschean theory that
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  Speaker 1: nature is evolving something with superior claims to our own,
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  Speaker 1: or any other definable defense of the natural process itself,
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  Speaker 1: and they will almost certainly reject it as something unproved
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  Speaker 1: or exploded. They do not want to have an exact
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  Speaker 1: imitation of the laws of the physical universe. They want
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  Speaker 1: to have their own way, a much more intelligible desire.
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  Speaker 1: But the result is that they are after all at
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  Speaker 1: a disadvantage in face of those other young people who
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  Speaker 1: have satisfied their reason by a scheme that makes the
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  Speaker 1: universe reasonable. For that is the very simple explanation of
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  Speaker 1: the affair in so far as there is really a
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  Speaker 1: secession among the young, it is but a part of
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  Speaker 1: the same process. As them practically abandon it for paganism,
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  Speaker 1: most of them abandon it for something that is really
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  Speaker 1: rather too simple to be called an ism of any kind.
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  Speaker 1: They abandon it for things and not theories. And when
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  Speaker 1: they do have theories, it may sometimes be Bolshevist theories
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  Speaker 1: or futurist theories, but they are practically never the theological
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  Speaker 1: theories of Protestantism. I will not say they leave Catholicism
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  Speaker 1: for beer and skittles, for Catholicism has never discouraged those
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  Speaker 1: Christian institutions as Protestantism sometimes has. They leave it to
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  Speaker 1: have a high old time, and considering what a muddle
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  Speaker 1: we have made of modern morality, they can hardly be blamed.
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  Speaker 1: But this is reaction which is only that of a section.
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  Speaker 1: But this reaction, which is only that of a section,
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  Speaker 1: is in its nature a reaction of the young, and
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  Speaker 1: as such I do not think it will last. I
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  Speaker 1: know it is the can't phrase of the old rationalists,
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  Speaker 1: that their reason prevents a return to the faith, that
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  Speaker 1: it is false. It is no longer reason, but rather passion.
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  Speaker 1: This may sound a sweeping statement, but if it be examined,
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  Speaker 1: it will be found not unjust and certainly not unsympathetic.
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  Speaker 1: Nothing is more notable if we really study the characteristics
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  Speaker 1: of the Rising generation than the fact that they are
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  Speaker 1: not acting upon any exact and definite philosophy, such as
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  Speaker 1: those which have made the revolution of the past. If
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  Speaker 1: they are anarchical, they are not anarchist. The dogmatic anarchism
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  Speaker 1: of the middle of the nineteenth century is not the
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  Speaker 1: creed they hold, or even the excuse they offer. They
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  Speaker 1: have a considerable negative revolt against religion, a negative revolt
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  Speaker 1: against that conversion of the young of which I wrote
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  Speaker 1: in the first chapter. The rising generation sees the real issue,
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  Speaker 1: and those who are ready for it rally, and those
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  Speaker 1: who are not ready for it scatter. But there can
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  Speaker 1: be but one end to a war between a solid
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  Speaker 1: and a scattered army. It is not a controversy between
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  Speaker 1: two philosophies, as was the Catholic in the Calvinist, or
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  Speaker 1: the Catholic and the materialist. It is a controversy between
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  Speaker 1: philosophers and philanderers. I do not say it in contempt.
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  Speaker 1: I have much more sympathy with the person who leaves
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  Speaker 1: the church for a love affair, than with one who
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  Speaker 1: leaves it for a long winded German theory to prove
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  Speaker 1: that God is evil, or that children are a sort
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  Speaker 1: of morbid monkey. But the very laws of life are
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  Speaker 1: against the endurance of a revolt that rests on nothing
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  Speaker 1: but natural passion. It is bound to change in its
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  Speaker 1: proportion with the coming of experience, and at the worst
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  Speaker 1: it will become a battle between bad Catholics and good Catholics,
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  Speaker 1: with a great dome over all. End of chapter six
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  Speaker 1: read by Carrie Adams your book Boys at Mesa, Arizona,
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  Speaker 1: on the twenty fifth of February twenty twenty two. End
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  Speaker 1: of the Catholic Church and Conversion by G. K. Chesterton