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004 - The Real Obstacles · Catholic Church and Conversion

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Speaker 1: Chapter three 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: Read by Marie Christian The Catholic Church and Conversion by G. K. Chesterton.
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Speaker 1: The Real Obstacles. In the last chapter, I have dealt
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Speaker 1: in a preliminary fashion with the Protestant case in the
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Speaker 1: conventional controversial sense. I have dealt with the objections which
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Speaker 1: I suspected very early of being prejudices, and which I
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Speaker 1: now know to be prejudices. I have dealt, last, and
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Speaker 1: at the greatest length, with what I believe to be
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Speaker 1: the noblest of all the prejudices of Protestantism, that which
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Speaker 1: is simply founded on patriotism. I do not think patriotism
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Speaker 1: is necessarily prejudice, but I am quite sure it must
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Speaker 1: be prejudice and nothing else but prejudice, unless it is
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Speaker 1: covered by some common morality. And a patriotism that does
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Speaker 1: not allow other people to be patriots is not a
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Speaker 1: morality but an immorality. Even such a tribal prejudice, however,
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Speaker 1: is a more respectable thing than most of the rags
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Speaker 1: and tatters of stale slander and muddle headedness, which I
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Speaker 1: am obliged to put first as the official policy of
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Speaker 1: the opposition to the Church. These stale stories seem to
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Speaker 1: count for a great deal with people who are resolved
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Speaker 1: to keep far away from the Church. I do not
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Speaker 1: believe they ever counted with anybody who had begun to
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Speaker 1: draw near to it. When a man really sees the Church,
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Speaker 1: even if he dislikes what he sees, he does not
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Speaker 1: see what he had expected to dislike. Even if he
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Speaker 1: wants to slay it, he is no longer able to
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Speaker 1: slander it, though he hates it at sight. What he
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Speaker 1: sees is not what he looked to see. And that
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Speaker 1: place he may gain a new passion, but he loses
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Speaker 1: his old prejudice. There drops from him the holy armor
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Speaker 1: of his invincible ignorance. He can never be so stupid again.
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Speaker 1: If he has a ready mind, he can doubtless set
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Speaker 1: his new reasons in some sort of order, and even
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Speaker 1: attempt to link them with his lost tradition. But the
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Speaker 1: thing he hates is there. And the last chapter was
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Speaker 1: wholly devoted to the study of things that are not there.
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Speaker 1: The real reasons are almost the opposite of the recognized reasons.
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Speaker 1: The real difficulties are almost the opposite of the recognized difficulties.
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Speaker 1: This is connected, of course, with a general fact now
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Speaker 1: so large and obvious, but still not clearly comprehended and confessed.
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Speaker 1: The whole case of Protestantism against Catholicism has been turned
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Speaker 1: clean round and is facing the contrary way on practically
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Speaker 1: every single point on which the Reformation accused the Church.
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Speaker 1: The modern world has not only acquitted the Church of
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Speaker 1: the crime, but has actually charged it with the opposite crime.
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Speaker 1: It is as if the reformers had mobbed the Pope
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Speaker 1: for being a miser, and then the court had not
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Speaker 1: only acquitted him, but had censored him for his extravagance
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Speaker 1: in scattering money among the mob. The principle of modern
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Speaker 1: Protestantism seems to be that so long as we go
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Speaker 1: on shouting to Hell with the Pope, there is room
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Speaker 1: for the widest differences of opinion about whether he should
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Speaker 1: go to the hell of the misers or the hell
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Speaker 1: of the spendthrifts. This is what is meant by a
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Speaker 1: broad basis for Christianity and the statement that there is
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Speaker 1: room for many different opinions side by side. When the
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Speaker 1: reformer says that the principles of the Reformation give freedom
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Speaker 1: to different points of view, he means that they give
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Speaker 1: freedom to the universalist to curse Rome for having too
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Speaker 1: much predestination, and to the Calvinists to curse her for
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Speaker 1: having too little. He means that in that happy family
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Speaker 1: there is a place for the no popery man who
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Speaker 1: finds purgatory too tender hearted, and also for the other
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Speaker 1: no popery man who finds hell too harsh. He means
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Speaker 1: that the same description can somehow be made to cover
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Speaker 1: the Tolstoyan who blames priests because they permit patriotism, and
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Speaker 1: the diehard who blames priests because they represent internationalism. After all,
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Speaker 1: the essential aim of true Christianity is that priests should
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Speaker 1: be blamed. And who are we that we should set
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Speaker 1: narrow dogmatic limits to the various ways in which various
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Speaker 1: temperaments may desire to blame them. Why should we allow
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Speaker 1: a cold difficulty of the logician technically called a contradiction
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Speaker 1: in terms to stand between us in the warm and
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Speaker 1: broadening human brotherhood of all who are full of sincere
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Speaker 1: and unaffected dislike of their neighbors. Religion is of the heart,
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Speaker 1: not of the head, And as long as all our
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Speaker 1: hearts are full of hatred for everything that our fathers loved,
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Speaker 1: we can go on flatly contradicting each other forever about
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Speaker 1: what there is to be hated. Such is the larger
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Speaker 1: and more liberal modern attack upon the church. It is
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Speaker 1: quite inconsistent with the old doctrinal attack. But it is
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Speaker 1: not propose to lose the advantages arising from any sort
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Speaker 1: of attack. But in a somewhat analogous fashion, it will
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Speaker 1: be found that the real difficulties of a modern convert
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Speaker 1: are almost the direct contrary of those which were alleged
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Speaker 1: by the more ancient Protestants. Protestant pamphlets do not touch
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Speaker 1: even remotely any of the real hesitations that he feels,
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Speaker 1: and even Catholic pamphlets have often been concerned too much
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Speaker 1: with answering the Protestant pamphlets. Indeed, the only sense in
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Speaker 1: which the priests and propagandists of Catholicism can really be
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Speaker 1: said to be behind the times is that they sometimes
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Speaker 1: go on flogging a dead horse and killing a heresy
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Speaker 1: long after it is killed itself. But even that is
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Speaker 1: properly understood a fault on the side of chivalry. The
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Speaker 1: preacher and even the persecutor, really takes the heresy more
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Speaker 1: seriously than it is seen ultimately to deserve. The inquisitor
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Speaker 1: has more respect for the heresy than the heretics have. Still,
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Speaker 1: it is true that the grounds of suspicion or fear
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Speaker 1: that do really fill the convert and sometimes paralyze him
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Speaker 1: at the very point of conversion, have really nothing in
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Speaker 1: the world to do with this old crop of crude
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Speaker 1: slanders and fallacies, and are often the very inversion of them.
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Speaker 1: The short way of putting it is to say that
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Speaker 1: he is no longer afraid of the vices, but very
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Speaker 1: much afraid of the virtues of Catholicism. For instance, he
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Speaker 1: has forgotten all about the old nonsense of the cunning
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Speaker 1: lies of the confessional. In his lively and legitimate alarm
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Speaker 1: of the truthfulness of the confessional, he does not recoil
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Speaker 1: from its insincerity, but from its sincerity, nor is he
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Speaker 1: necessarily insincere in doing so. Realism is really a rock
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Speaker 1: of offense. It is not at all unnatural to shrink
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Speaker 1: from it, and most modern realists only manage to like
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Speaker 1: it because they are careful to be realistic about other people.
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Speaker 1: He is near enough to the sacrament of penance to
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Speaker 1: have discovered its realism, and not near enough to have
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Speaker 1: yet discovered its reasonableness and its common sense. Most of
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Speaker 1: those who have gone through this experience have a certain
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Speaker 1: right to say, like the old soldier to his ignorant comrade,
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Speaker 1: yes I was afraid, and if you were half as
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Speaker 1: much afraid, you would run away. Perhaps it is just
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Speaker 1: as well that people go through this stage before discovering
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Speaker 1: how very little there is to be afraid of. In
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Speaker 1: any case, I will say little more of that example here,
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Speaker 1: having a feeling that absolution, like death in marriage, is
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Speaker 1: a thing that a man ought to find out for himself,
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Speaker 1: it will be enough to say that this is perhaps
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Speaker 1: the supreme example of the fact that the faith is
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Speaker 1: a paradox that measures more within than without. If that
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Speaker 1: be true of the smallest church, it is truer still
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Speaker 1: of the yet smaller confessional box, that is like a
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Speaker 1: church within a church. It is almost a good thing
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Speaker 1: that nobody outside should know what gigantic generosity and even
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Speaker 1: geniality can be locked up in a box, as the
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Speaker 1: legendary casket held the heart of the giant. It is
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Speaker 1: a satisfaction and almost a joke, that it is only
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Speaker 1: in a dark corner and a cramped space that any
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Speaker 1: man can discover that mountain of magnanimity. It is the
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Speaker 1: same with all the other points of attack, especially the
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Speaker 1: old ones. The man who has come so far as
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Speaker 1: that along the road has long left behind him the
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Speaker 1: notion that the priest will force him to abandon his will.
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Speaker 1: But he is not unreasonably dismayed at the extent to
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Speaker 1: which he may have to use his will. He is
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Speaker 1: not frightened because after taking this drug he will be
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Speaker 1: henceforward irresponsible. But he is very much frightened because he
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Speaker 1: will be responsible, he will have somebody to be responsible to,
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Speaker 1: and he will know what he is responsible for, two
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Speaker 1: uncomfortable conditions which his more fortunate fellow creatures have nowadays
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Speaker 1: entirely escaped. There are, of course, many other examples of
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Speaker 1: the same principle, that there is indeed an interval of
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Speaker 1: acute doubt, which is strictly speaking, rather fear than doubt,
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Speaker 1: since in some cases, at least, as I shall point
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Speaker 1: out elsewhere, there is actually least doubt when there is
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Speaker 1: most fear. But Anyhow, the doubts are hardly ever of
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Speaker 1: the sort suggested by ordinary ends anti Catholic propaganda, and
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Speaker 1: it is surely time that such propagandists brought themselves more
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Speaker 1: in touch with the real problem. The Catholic is scarcely
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Speaker 1: ever frightened of the Protestant picture of Catholicism, but he
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Speaker 1: is sometimes frightened of the Catholic picture of Catholicism, which
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Speaker 1: may be a good reason for not disproportionately stressing the
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Speaker 1: difficult or puzzling parts of the scheme. For the convert's sake,
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Speaker 1: it should also be remembered that one foolish word from
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Speaker 1: inside does more harm than one hundred thousand foolish words
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Speaker 1: from outside. The latter he has already learned to expect,
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Speaker 1: like a blind hail or rain beating upon the ark.
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Speaker 1: But the voice is from within, even the most casual
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Speaker 1: and accidental, he is already prepared to regard as holy
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Speaker 1: or more than human. And though this is unfair to
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Speaker 1: people who only profess to be human beings, it is
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Speaker 1: a fact that Catholics ought to wr There is many
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Speaker 1: a convert who has reached a stage at which no
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Speaker 1: word from any Protestant or pagan could any longer hold
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Speaker 1: him back. Only the word of a Catholic can keep
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Speaker 1: him from Catholicism. It is quite false, in my experience
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Speaker 1: to say that Jesuits or any other Roman priests pester
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Speaker 1: and persecute people in order to proselytize. Nobody has any
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Speaker 1: notion of what the whole story is about. Who does
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Speaker 1: not know that, through those long and dark and indecisive days,
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Speaker 1: it is the man who persecutes himself. The apparent inaction
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Speaker 1: of the priest may be something like the statuesque stillness
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Speaker 1: of the angler, and such an attitude is not unnatural
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Speaker 1: in the functions of a fissure of men, but it
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Speaker 1: is very seldom impatient or premature, and the person acted
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Speaker 1: upon is quite lonely enough to realize that it is
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Speaker 1: nothing merely external that is tugging at his liberty. They
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Speaker 1: are probably less wise, for in most communions the ecclesiastical
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Speaker 1: layman is more ecclesiastical than is good for his health,
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Speaker 1: and certainly much more ecclesiastical than the ecclesiastics. My experience
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Speaker 1: is that the amateur is generally much more angry than
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Speaker 1: the professional, and if he expresses his irritation at the
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Speaker 1: slow process, of conversion or the inconsistencies of the intermediate condition,
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Speaker 1: he may do a great deal of harm of the
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Speaker 1: kind that he least intends to do. I know in
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Speaker 1: my own case that I always experienced a slight setback
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Speaker 1: whenever some irresponsible individual interpose to urge me on. It
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Speaker 1: is worth while, for practical reasons to testify to such experience,
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Speaker 1: because it may guide the convert when he, in his
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Speaker 1: turn begins converting. Our enemies no longer really know how
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Speaker 1: to attack the faith, but that is no reason why
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Speaker 1: we should not know how to defend it. Yet, even
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Speaker 1: that one trivial or incidental caution carries with it a
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Speaker 1: reminder of what has been already noted. I mean the
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Speaker 1: fact that, whatever be the Catholic's worries, they are the
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Speaker 1: very contrary of the Protestant's warnings. Merely as a matter
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Speaker 1: of personal experience, I have been led to note here
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Speaker 1: that it is not generally the priest, but much more
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Speaker 1: often the layman who rather too ostentatiously compasses sea and
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Speaker 1: land to make one proselyte all the creepy and uncanny
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Speaker 1: whispers about the horror of having the priest in the home,
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Speaker 1: as if he were a sort of vampire or monster
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Speaker 1: intrinsically different from mankind, vanishes with the smallest experience of
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Speaker 1: the militant layman. The priest does his job, but it
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Speaker 1: is much more his secular co religionists who is disposed
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Speaker 1: to explain it and talk about it. I do not
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Speaker 1: object to layman proselytizing, for I never could see, even
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Speaker 1: when I was practically a pagan, why a man should
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Speaker 1: not urge his own opinions if he liked and that
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Speaker 1: opinion as much as any other. I am not likely
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Speaker 1: to complain of the evangelizing energy of mister Halaire Belloc
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Speaker 1: or mister Eric Gill, if only because I owe to
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Speaker 1: it the most intelligent talks of my youth. But it
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Speaker 1: is that sort of man who proselytizes in that sort
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Speaker 1: of way, and the conventional caricature is wrong again when
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Speaker 1: it always represents him in a cassock. Catholicism is not
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Speaker 1: spread by any particular professional tricks or tones, or secret
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Speaker 1: signs or ceremonies. Catholicism is spread by Catholics, but not
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Speaker 1: certainly in private life, at least merely by Catholic priests.
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Speaker 1: I merely give this here out of a hundred examples,
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Speaker 1: as showing once again that the old traditional version of
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Speaker 1: the terrors of popery was almost always wrong, even where
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Speaker 1: it might possibly have been right. A man may say,
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Speaker 1: if he likes, that Catholicism is the enemy, and he
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Speaker 1: may be stating, from his point of view, a profound
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Speaker 1: spiritual truth. But if he says that Clericalism is the enemy,
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Speaker 1: he is repeating a catchword. It is my experience that
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Speaker 1: the convert commonly passes through three stages or states of mind.
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Speaker 1: The first is when he imagines himself to be entirely detached,
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Speaker 1: or even to be entirely indifferent, but in the old
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Speaker 1: sense of the term, as when the Prayer Book talks
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Speaker 1: of judges who will truly and indifferently administer justice. Some
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Speaker 1: flippant modern person would probably agree that our judges administered
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Speaker 1: justice very indifferently. But the older meaning was legitimate and
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Speaker 1: even logical, and it is that which is applicable here.
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Speaker 1: The first phase is that of the young philosopher who
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Speaker 1: feels that he ought to be fair to the Church
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Speaker 1: of Rome. He wishes to do it justice, but chiefly
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Speaker 1: because he sees that it suffers injustice. I remember that
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Speaker 1: when I was first on the Daily News, the great
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Speaker 1: liberal organ of the nonconformists. I took the trouble to
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Speaker 1: draw up a list of fifteen falsehoods, which I found
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Speaker 1: out by my own personal knowledge, and a denunciation of
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Speaker 1: Rome by Messrs Horton and Hawking. I noted, for instance,
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Speaker 1: that it was nonsense to say that the Covenanters fought
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Speaker 1: for religious liberty when the Covenant denounced religious toleration. That
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Speaker 1: it was false to say the Church only asked for
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Speaker 1: orthodoxy and was indifferent to morality, since if this was
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Speaker 1: true of anybody, it was obviously true of the supporters
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Speaker 1: of salvation by faith and not salvation by works. That
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Speaker 1: it was absurd to say that Catholics introduced a horrible
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Speaker 1: sophistry of saying that a man might sometimes tell a lie,
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Speaker 1: since every sane man knows he would tell a lie
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Speaker 1: to save a child from Chinese torturers. That it missed
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Speaker 1: the whole point in this connection. To quote Ward's phrase,
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Speaker 1: make up your mind that you are justified in lying,
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Speaker 1: and then lie like a trooper. For Ward's argument was
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Speaker 1: against equivocation, or what people call jesuitry. He meant, when
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Speaker 1: the child really is hiding in the cupboard, and the
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Speaker 1: Chinese torturers really are chasing him with red hot pinchers.
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Speaker 1: Then and only then, be sure that you are right
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Speaker 1: to deceive, and do not hesitate to lie, but do
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Speaker 1: not stoop to equivocate. Do not bother yourself to say
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Speaker 1: the child is in a wooden house not far from here,
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Speaker 1: meaning the cupboard, But say the child is in Chiswick
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Speaker 1: or Chimborazoo, or anywhere you choose. I find I made
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Speaker 1: elaborate notes of all these arguments, all that long time ago,
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Speaker 1: merely for the logical pleasure of disentangling and intellectual injustice.
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Speaker 1: I had no more idea of becoming a Catholic than
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Speaker 1: of becoming a cannibal. I imagined that I was merely
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Speaker 1: pointing out that justice should be done even to cannibals.
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Speaker 1: I imagine that I was noting certain fallacies, partly for
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Speaker 1: the fun of the thing, and partly for a certain
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Speaker 1: feeling of loyalty to the truth of things. But as
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Speaker 1: a matter of fact, looking back on these notes, which
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Speaker 1: I never published, it seems to me that I took
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Speaker 1: a tremendous amount of trouble about it. If I really
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Speaker 1: regarded it as a trifle, and taking trouble has certainly
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Speaker 1: never been a particular weakness of mine. It seems to
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Speaker 1: me that something was already working subconsciously to keep me
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Speaker 1: more interested in fallacies about this particular topic than in
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Speaker 1: fallacies about free trade, or female suffrage or the House
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Speaker 1: of Lords. Anyhow, that is the first stage in my
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Speaker 1: own case, and I think in many other cases, the
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Speaker 1: stage of simply wishing to protect papists from slander and oppression,
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Speaker 1: not consciously at least because they hold any particular truth truth,
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Speaker 1: but because they suffer from a particular accumulation of falsehood.
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Speaker 1: The second stage is that in which the convert begins
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Speaker 1: to be conscious not only of the falsehood but the truth,
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Speaker 1: and is enormously excited to find that there is far
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Speaker 1: more of it than he would ever have expected. This
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Speaker 1: is not so much a stage as a progress, and
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Speaker 1: it goes on pretty rapidly, but often for a long time.
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Speaker 1: It consists in discovering what a very large number of
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Speaker 1: lively and interesting ideas there are in the Catholic philosophy,
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Speaker 1: that a great many of them commend themselves at once
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Speaker 1: to his sympathies, and that even those which he would
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Speaker 1: not accept have something to be said for them justifying
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Speaker 1: their acceptance. This process, which may be called discovering the
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Speaker 1: Catholic Church, is perhaps the most pleasant and straightforward part
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Speaker 1: of the business, Easier than joining the Catholic Church, and
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Speaker 1: much easier than trying to live the Catholic life. It
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Speaker 1: is like discovering a new continent, full of strange flowers
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Speaker 1: and fantastic animals, which is at once wild and hospitable.
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Speaker 1: To give anything like a full account of that process
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Speaker 1: would simply be to discuss about half a hundred Catholic
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Speaker 1: ideas and institutions. In turn, I might remark that much
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Speaker 1: of it consists of the act of translation, of discovering
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Speaker 1: the real meaning of words which the Church uses rightly
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Speaker 1: and the world uses wrongly. For instance, the convert discovers
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Speaker 1: that scandal does not mean gossip, and the sin of
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Speaker 1: causing it does not mean that it is always wicked
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Speaker 1: to set silly old women wagging their tongues. Scandal means
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Speaker 1: scandal what it originally meant in Greek and Latin, the
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Speaker 1: tripping up of somebody else when he is trying to
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Speaker 1: be good, or he will discover that Phrases like counsel
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Speaker 1: of perfection or venial sin, which mean nothing at all
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Speaker 1: in the newspapers, means something quite intelligent and interesting in
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Speaker 1: the manuals of moral theology. He begins to realize that
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Speaker 1: it is the secular world that spoils the sense of words,
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Speaker 1: and he catches an exciting glimpse of the real case
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Speaker 1: for the iron immortality of the Latin mass. It is
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Speaker 1: not a question between a dead language and a living
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Speaker 1: language in the sense of an everlasting language. It is
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Speaker 1: a question between a dead language and a dying language,
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Speaker 1: an inevitably degenerating language. It is these numberless glimpses of
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Speaker 1: great ideas that have been hidden from the convert by
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Speaker 1: the prejudices of his provincial culture, that constitute the adventurous
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Speaker 1: and varied second stage of the conversion. It is, broadly speaking,
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Speaker 1: the stage in which the man is unconsciously trying to
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Speaker 1: be converted. And the third stage is perhaps the truest
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Speaker 1: and the most terrible. It is that in which the
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Speaker 1: man is trying not to be converted. He has come
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Speaker 1: too near to the true and has forgotten that truth
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Speaker 1: is a magnet with the powers of attraction and repulsion.
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Speaker 1: He is filled with a sort of fear, which makes
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Speaker 1: him feel like a fool who has been patronizing popery
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Speaker 1: when he ought to have been awakening to the reality
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Speaker 1: of Rome. He discovers a strange and alarming fact which
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Speaker 1: is perhaps implied in Newman's interesting lecture on Blanco White
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Speaker 1: and the Two Ways of attacking Catholicism. Anyhow, it is
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Speaker 1: a truth that Newman and every other convert has probably
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Speaker 1: found in one form or another. It is impossible to
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Speaker 1: be just to the Catholic Church. The moment men cease
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Speaker 1: to pull against it, they feel a tug towards it,
22:43
Speaker 1: the moment they cease to shout it down, they begin
22:45
Speaker 1: to listen to it with pleasure. The moment they try
22:49
Speaker 1: to be fair to it, they begin to be fond
22:51
Speaker 1: of it. But when that affection has passed a certain point,
22:55
Speaker 1: it begins to take on the tragic and menacing grandeur
22:58
Speaker 1: of a great love affair. The man has exactly the
23:02
Speaker 1: same sense of having committed or compromised himself, of having been,
23:06
Speaker 1: in a sense entrapped, even if he is glad to
23:09
Speaker 1: be entrapped, But for a considerable time he is not
23:12
Speaker 1: so much glad as simply terrified. It may be that
23:17
Speaker 1: this real psychological experience has been misunderstood by stupider people
23:22
Speaker 1: and is responsible for all that remains of the legend
23:25
Speaker 1: that Rome is a mere trap. But that legend misses
23:29
Speaker 1: the whole point of the psychology. It is not the
23:32
Speaker 1: pope who has set the trap or the priests who
23:35
Speaker 1: have baded it. The whole point of the position is
23:38
Speaker 1: that the trap is simply the truth. The whole point
23:42
Speaker 1: is that the man himself has made his way towards
23:45
Speaker 1: the trap of truth, and not the trap that is
23:48
Speaker 1: run after the man. All steps except the last step,
23:52
Speaker 1: he has taken eagerly on his own account out of
23:56
Speaker 1: interest in the truth, And even the last step or
23:59
Speaker 1: the last stage, only alarms him because it is so
24:03
Speaker 1: very true. If I may refer once more to a
24:07
Speaker 1: personal experience, I may say that I, for one, was
24:11
Speaker 1: never less troubled by doubts than in the last phase,
24:15
Speaker 1: when I was troubled by fears. Before that final delay,
24:19
Speaker 1: I had been detached and ready to regard all sorts
24:22
Speaker 1: of doctrines with an open mind. Since that delay has
24:26
Speaker 1: ended in decision, I have had all sorts of changes
24:30
Speaker 1: in mere mood, and I think I sympathized with doubts
24:33
Speaker 1: and difficulties more than I did before. But I had
24:36
Speaker 1: no doubts or difficulties just before. I had only fears,
24:41
Speaker 1: fears of something that had the finality and simplicity of suicide.
24:45
Speaker 1: But the more I thrust the thing into the back
24:48
Speaker 1: of my mind, the more certain I grew of what
24:51
Speaker 1: thing it was. And by a paradox that does not
24:55
Speaker 1: frighten me now in the least, it may be that
24:58
Speaker 1: I shall never again have such a absolute assurance that
25:01
Speaker 1: the thing is true as I had when I made
25:04
Speaker 1: my last effort to deny it. There is a PostScript,
25:08
Speaker 1: or smaller point to be added here to this paradox,
25:11
Speaker 1: which I know that many will misunderstand. Becoming a Catholic
25:16
Speaker 1: broadens the mind. It especially broadens the mind about the
25:19
Speaker 1: reasons for becoming a Catholic. Standing in the center where
25:23
Speaker 1: all roads meet, a man can look down each of
25:26
Speaker 1: the roads in turn and realize that they come from
25:29
Speaker 1: all points of the heavens. As long as he is
25:32
Speaker 1: still marching along his own road, that is the only
25:35
Speaker 1: road that can be seen or sometimes even imagined. For instance,
25:40
Speaker 1: many a man who is not yet a Catholic calls
25:43
Speaker 1: himself a medievalist, but a man who is only a
25:47
Speaker 1: medievalist is very much broadened by becoming a Catholic. I
25:51
Speaker 1: am myself a medievalist in the sense that I think
25:54
Speaker 1: modern life has a great deal to learn from medieval life,
25:58
Speaker 1: that guilds are a better social tie system than capitalism,
26:02
Speaker 1: that friars are far less offensive than philanthropists. But I
26:07
Speaker 1: am a much more reasonable and moderate medievalist than I
26:10
Speaker 1: was when I was only a medievalist. For instance, I
26:14
Speaker 1: felt it necessary to be perpetually pitting Gothic architecture against
26:18
Speaker 1: Greek architecture because it was necessary to back up Christians
26:22
Speaker 1: against Pagans. But now I am in no such fuss.
26:26
Speaker 1: And I know what Coventry pat Moore meant when he
26:28
Speaker 1: said calmly that it would have been quite as Catholic
26:32
Speaker 1: to decorate his mantlepiece with the Venus de Milo as
26:35
Speaker 1: with the Virgin. As a medievalist, I am still proudest
26:39
Speaker 1: of the Gothic, But as a Catholic, I am proud
26:43
Speaker 1: of the Baroque. That intensity, which seems almost narrow because
26:47
Speaker 1: it comes to the point like a medieval window, is
26:51
Speaker 1: very representative of that last concentration that comes just before conversion.
26:57
Speaker 1: At the last moment of all, the convert often feels
27:00
Speaker 1: as if he were looking through a leper's window. He
27:04
Speaker 1: is looking through a little crack or crooked hole that
27:06
Speaker 1: seems to grow smaller as he stares at it, but
27:10
Speaker 1: it is an opening that looks towards the altar. Only
27:14
Speaker 1: when he has entered the church he finds that the
27:16
Speaker 1: church is much larger inside than it is outside. He
27:20
Speaker 1: has left behind him the lopsidedness of leper's windows, and
27:25
Speaker 1: even in a sense the narrowness of Gothic doors, and
27:28
Speaker 1: he is under vast domes, as open as the Renaissance,
27:32
Speaker 1: and as universal as the republic of the world. He
27:35
Speaker 1: can say, in a sense unknown to all modern men,
27:39
Speaker 1: certain ancient and serene words, Romanus sivussum, I am not
27:46
Speaker 1: a slave. The point for the moment, however, is that
27:50
Speaker 1: there is generally an interval of intense nervousness, to say
27:54
Speaker 1: the least of it, before this normal heritage is reached
27:58
Speaker 1: to a certain extent. It is a fear which attaches
28:01
Speaker 1: to all sharp and irrevocable decisions. It is suggested in
28:05
Speaker 1: all the old jokes about the shakiness of the bridegroom
28:08
Speaker 1: at the wedding, or the recruit who takes the shilling
28:12
Speaker 1: and gets drunk, partly to celebrate, but partly also to
28:15
Speaker 1: forget it. But it is the fear of a fuller
28:18
Speaker 1: sacrament and a mightier army he has, by the nature
28:22
Speaker 1: of the case, left a long way behind him. The
28:25
Speaker 1: mere clumsy idea that the sacrament will poison him or
28:29
Speaker 1: the army will kill him. He has probably past the point,
28:33
Speaker 1: though he does generally pass it at some time when
28:36
Speaker 1: he wonders whether the whole business is an extraordinarily intelligent
28:40
Speaker 1: and ingenious confidence trick. He is not now in the
28:44
Speaker 1: condition which may be called the last phase of real doubt.
28:48
Speaker 1: I mean that in which he wondered whether the thing
28:50
Speaker 1: that everybody told him was too bad to be tolerable
28:54
Speaker 1: is not too good to be true. Here again the
28:57
Speaker 1: recurrent principle is present, and the obstacle is the very
29:01
Speaker 1: opposite of that which Protestant propaganda has pointed out. If
29:06
Speaker 1: he still has the notion of being trapped, he has
29:09
Speaker 1: no longer any notion of being tricked. He is not
29:12
Speaker 1: afraid of finding the church out, but rather of the
29:16
Speaker 1: Church finding him out. This note on the stages of
29:20
Speaker 1: conversion is necessarily very negative and inadequate. There is, in
29:26
Speaker 1: the last second of time, or hair's breadth of space
29:30
Speaker 1: before the iron leaps to the magnet, an abyss full
29:33
Speaker 1: of all the unfathomable forces of the universe. The space
29:37
Speaker 1: between doing and not doing such a thing is so
29:41
Speaker 1: tiny and so vast. It is only possible here to
29:45
Speaker 1: give the reasons for Catholicism, not the cause of Catholicism.
29:50
Speaker 1: I have tried to suggest here some of the enlightenments
29:53
Speaker 1: and experiences which gradually teach those who have been taught
29:56
Speaker 1: to think ill of the Church to begin to think
29:59
Speaker 1: well of her. That anything described as so bad should
30:03
Speaker 1: turn out to be so good is itself a rather
30:07
Speaker 1: arresting process. Having a savor of something sensational and strange,
30:13
Speaker 1: To come to curse and remain to bless, to come
30:17
Speaker 1: to scoff and remain to pray is always welcome in
30:20
Speaker 1: a spirit of wonder, in the glow of an unexpected good.
30:26
Speaker 1: But it is one thing to conclude that Catholicism is
30:29
Speaker 1: good and another to conclude that it is right. It
30:33
Speaker 1: is one thing to conclude that it is right, and
30:35
Speaker 1: another to conclude that it is always right. I had
30:39
Speaker 1: never believed the tradition that it was diabolical. I had
30:43
Speaker 1: soon come to doubt the idea that it was inhuman,
30:46
Speaker 1: But that would only have left me with the obvious
30:48
Speaker 1: inference that it was human. It is a considerable step
30:53
Speaker 1: from that to the inference that it is divine. When
30:57
Speaker 1: we come to that conviction of divine authority, come to
31:00
Speaker 1: the more mysterious matter of divine aid. In other words,
31:05
Speaker 1: we come to the unfathomable idea of grace and the
31:08
Speaker 1: gift of faith. And I have not the smallest intention
31:11
Speaker 1: of attempting to fathom it. It is a theological question
31:15
Speaker 1: of the utmost complexity, and it is one thing to
31:18
Speaker 1: feel it as a fact, and another to define it
31:21
Speaker 1: as a truth. One or two points about the preliminary
31:25
Speaker 1: dispositions that prepare the mind for it are all that
31:28
Speaker 1: need be indicated here. To begin with, there is one
31:32
Speaker 1: sense in which the blackest bigots are really the best philosophers.
31:37
Speaker 1: The Church really is like Antichrist in the sense that
31:40
Speaker 1: it is as unique as Christ. Indeed, if it not
31:43
Speaker 1: be Christ, it probably is Antichrist. But certainly it is
31:48
Speaker 1: not Moses or Mahomet or Buddha or Plato or Pythagoras.
31:54
Speaker 1: The more we see of humanity, the more we sympathize
31:57
Speaker 1: with humanity, the more we shall see that when it
32:00
Speaker 1: is simply human, it is simply heathen, and the names
32:03
Speaker 1: of its particular local gods or tribal prophets or highly
32:07
Speaker 1: respectable sages are a secondary matter compared with that human
32:12
Speaker 1: and heathen character. In the old paganism of Europe, in
32:16
Speaker 1: the existing paganism of Asia, there have been gods in priests,
32:20
Speaker 1: and prophets and sages of all sorts, but not another
32:23
Speaker 1: institution of this sort. The pagan cults die very slowly.
32:28
Speaker 1: They do not return very rapidly. They do not make
32:32
Speaker 1: the sort of claim that is made at a crisis
32:35
Speaker 1: and then make the same claim again and again at
32:38
Speaker 1: crisis after crisis. Throughout the whole history of the earth,
32:42
Speaker 1: all that people fear in the Church, all that they
32:45
Speaker 1: hate in her, all against which they most harden their hearts,
32:49
Speaker 1: and sometimes one is tempted to say, thicken their heads,
32:53
Speaker 1: all that has made people consciously and unconsciously treat the
32:57
Speaker 1: Catholic Church as a peril is the evidence that there
33:00
Speaker 1: is something here that we cannot look on at languidly
33:04
Speaker 1: and with detachment, as we might look on at hottentots
33:07
Speaker 1: dancing at the new moon, or chinaman burning paper in
33:11
Speaker 1: porcelain temples. The Chinaman in the Taurus can be on
33:15
Speaker 1: the best of terms on a basis of mutual scorn,
33:19
Speaker 1: But in the duel of the Church in the world
33:21
Speaker 1: is no such shield of contempt. The Church will not
33:25
Speaker 1: consent to scorn the soul of a coolie or even
33:28
Speaker 1: a tourist. And the measure of the madness with which
33:31
Speaker 1: men hate her is but their vain attempt to despise.
33:36
Speaker 1: Another element, far more deep and delicate and hard to describe,
33:40
Speaker 1: is the immediate connection of what is most awful and
33:44
Speaker 1: archaic with what is most intimate and individual. It is
33:48
Speaker 1: a miracle in itself that anything so huge and historic
33:52
Speaker 1: in date and design should be so fresh in the affections.
33:56
Speaker 1: It is as if a man found his own parlor
33:58
Speaker 1: and fireside in the part of the Great Pyramid. It
34:02
Speaker 1: is as if a child's favorite doll turned out to
34:04
Speaker 1: be the oldest sacred image in the world, worshiped in
34:07
Speaker 1: Chaldea or Nineveh. It is as if a girl to
34:11
Speaker 1: whom a man made love in a garden, were also,
34:13
Speaker 1: in some dark and double fashion a statue standing forever
34:17
Speaker 1: in a square. It is just here that all those
34:21
Speaker 1: things which were regarded as weakness come in as the
34:24
Speaker 1: fullness of strength. Everything that men called sentimental and Roman
34:29
Speaker 1: Catholic religion, its keepsakes, its small flowers and almost tawdry trinkets,
34:35
Speaker 1: its figures with merciful gestures and gentle eyes, its avowedly
34:39
Speaker 1: popular pathos, and all that Matthew Arnold meant by Christianity
34:44
Speaker 1: with its relieving tears. All this is a sign of
34:48
Speaker 1: sensitive and vivid vitality in anything so vast and settled
34:52
Speaker 1: and systematic. There is nothing quite like this warmth, as
34:57
Speaker 1: in the warmth of Christmas amid ancient hills Hoary. With
35:00
Speaker 1: such snows of antiquity, it can address even God Almighty
35:04
Speaker 1: with diminutives. In all its varied vestments, it wears its
35:08
Speaker 1: sacred heart upon its sleeve. But to those who know
35:12
Speaker 1: that it is full of these lively affections, like little
35:15
Speaker 1: leaping flames, there is something of almost ironic satisfaction in
35:20
Speaker 1: the stark and primitive size of the thing, like some
35:23
Speaker 1: prehistoric monster, in its spires and miters, like horns of
35:27
Speaker 1: giant herds, or its colossal cornerstones like the four feet
35:31
Speaker 1: of an elephant. It would be easy to write a
35:35
Speaker 1: merely artistic study of the strange externals of the Roman religion,
35:39
Speaker 1: which should make it seem as uncouth and unearthly as
35:42
Speaker 1: Aztec or African religion. It would be easy to talk
35:46
Speaker 1: of it as if it were really some sort of
35:48
Speaker 1: mammoth or monster elephant older than the Ice Age, towering
35:52
Speaker 1: over the Stone Age, his very lines traced. It would
35:56
Speaker 1: seem in the earthquakes or landslides of some older creation,
36:00
Speaker 1: his very organs and outer texture akin to unrecorded patterns
36:04
Speaker 1: of vegetation and air and light, the last reciduum of
36:09
Speaker 1: a lost world. But the prehistoric monster is in the
36:13
Speaker 1: zoological gardens and not in the Natural history museum. The
36:17
Speaker 1: extinct animal is still alive, and anything outlandish and unfamiliar
36:22
Speaker 1: in its form accentuates the startling naturalness and familiarity of
36:27
Speaker 1: its mind, as if the sphinx began suddenly to talk
36:31
Speaker 1: of the topics of the hour. The supe elephant is
36:34
Speaker 1: not only a tame animal, but a pet, and a
36:37
Speaker 1: young child shall lead him. This antithesis between all that
36:42
Speaker 1: is formidable and remote, and all that is personally relevant
36:46
Speaker 1: and realistically tender is another of those converging impressions which
36:50
Speaker 1: meet in the moment of conviction. But of all these
36:54
Speaker 1: things that come nearest to the actual transition of the
36:56
Speaker 1: gift of faith, it is far harder to write, and
37:00
Speaker 1: of the rationalistic in the historic preliminaries of the inquiry.
37:05
Speaker 1: It is only with those preliminary dispositions toward the truth
37:09
Speaker 1: that I claim to deal here. In the chapters that follow,
37:12
Speaker 1: I propose to touch upon two of the larger considerations
37:16
Speaker 1: of this class, not because they are in themselves any
37:19
Speaker 1: larger than many other immense aspects of so mighty a theme,
37:23
Speaker 1: but because they happen to balance each other and form
37:26
Speaker 1: a sort of antithesis very typical of all Catholic truth.
37:31
Speaker 1: In the first of the two chapters, I shall try
37:33
Speaker 1: to point out how it is that when we praise
37:35
Speaker 1: the Church for her greatness, we do not merely mean
37:38
Speaker 1: her largeness, but in a rather notable and unique sense,
37:42
Speaker 1: her universality. We mean her power of being cosmos and
37:47
Speaker 1: containing other things. And in the second chapter, I shall
37:51
Speaker 1: point out what may seem to disturb this truth, but
37:53
Speaker 1: really balances it. I mean the fact that we value
37:57
Speaker 1: the church because she is a church, Millie, and sometimes
38:01
Speaker 1: even because she militates against ourselves. She is something more
38:06
Speaker 1: than the cosmos in the sense of completed nature or
38:10
Speaker 1: completed human nature. She proves that she is something more
38:14
Speaker 1: by sometimes being right where they are wrong. These two
38:18
Speaker 1: aspects must be considered separately, though they come together to
38:22
Speaker 1: form the full conviction that comes just before conversion. But
38:27
Speaker 1: in this chapter I have merely noted down a few
38:29
Speaker 1: points or stages of the conversion considered as a practical process,
38:34
Speaker 1: and especially those three stages of it through which many
38:37
Speaker 1: a Protestant or Agnostic must have passed. Many a man
38:42
Speaker 1: looking back cheerfully on them now will not be annoyed
38:46
Speaker 1: if I call the first patronizing the church, and the
38:50
Speaker 1: second discovering the church, and the third running away from
38:54
Speaker 1: the church. When those three phases are over, a larger
38:58
Speaker 1: truth begins to come into sight. It is much too
39:01
Speaker 1: large to describe, and we will proceed to describe it.
39:07
Speaker 1: End of Chapter three