By Henry Aloysius Barry
We read much about methods of apostleship that will bring about an era of "mutual understanding" and "better feeling" between the Church and those not of her. Literature and example augmented by a spirit of personal zeal will no doubt do much, as our Holy Father, Pope Leo XIII. has said:—"the zeal and earnestness of the bishops and clergy do wonders." But when all is done or said, history assures us that religious leaders who are ambitious or actuated by the baser motives will, in order to secure their own ends, juggle the truth and misquote the teachings of the Church with the most ghastly consequences of leading a simple people astray and setting them at the throats of their Catholic fellow citizens. For the most part in alien pulpits our doctrines are not taken up honestly, critically examined and openly reviewed. The vitriolic abuse system? the system of sneering, that creates a heart and sect-bias, rouses prejudice against us and generates a feeling that becomes distinctive and class-like as the years roll on, by the evolution of kindred bonds that flow from it into all the walks of life —this is the stratagem of anti-christian warfare. This morbid uncatholicity is in a great measure the result of suppression of the truth, a criminal evasion of a just and fair treatment of our side, dogmatically and historically. No doubt, many of the simple people who sit under these sectarian pulpiteers are sincere. Charity and love toward their fellowmen is never earnestly advocated in their presence by those who mould their views of life and men and in whom they repose the confidence and trust that the naked truth shall alone guide these religious teachers in the work of spiritual formation. I repeat that this is history and begins with the life of our Lord and the Jewish opposition to Him on no better ground than that the Saviour of mankind spoke the truth to them. The heretics in all ages, when brought face to face with the truth, have resorted to chicanery, to subterfuge and misinterpretation. The world is variant in superficial features, but, in their solid, substantial, intrinsic character and qualities the human family is the same. From this similarity of character and disposition the same virtues and faults, the same likes and dislikes, the same dangers as of yore are now in vogue and will be in vogue. The human family substantially repeats itself.
We have then to do as the Fathers have done—know the faith perfectly, teach the faith in season and out of season with force and conviction, yet with christian courtesy, explain the faith without doing violence to dignity and killing at once the possibility of securing the effect which in the end we should hope to attain, have at heart to defend the faith, as our fathers have done so well before us. The Church must have learned men, clerical and lay, to force the heretics into the open field and show the millions of souls who are kept in darkness the power of our weapons, the strength, the beauty and, above all, the truth of our cause. "Break the captive's fetters, light on blindness pour." Missions for non-Catholics is a healthy sign of Catholic times. Every dogmatic, moral or Catholic historical assertion that comes from the enemy,—press or pulpit, —must be duly examined and refuted in books, in journals and by word of mouth. The Church on earth is militant and it shall remain militant. A church of the heavenly rest is not a church for earth. We must sustain the cause of truth as a sacred duty, as soldiers of Jesus Christ, and, the times call for learning to be linked to the highest moral and spiritual perfection, as Urban called aloud Anselm! Anselm! The lips of the priest are deputed and consecrated by God to guard wisdom and it is revealed that the Lord shall demand the law and wisdom of his lips.
The recruiting sergeants must pick their men. The battle of the Church is to be, as it were, fought out in the courtyard of the university of the christian academy and school. The mechanism of modern warfare is rapidly evolving under the impetus of wealth, and a patriotism, born of intense rivalry among the nations, is brought to bear on the select mechanical inventive genius of every country. The Church of Jesus Christ must always have her learned doctors and these must keep in touch, by their sacred vocation, with the enemies' offensive and defensive methods of science, of philosophy, of history and the rest. There are some— perhaps many—who do not feel the importance of this matter. The militant spirit seems for the greater part to have died out among us. Many seem to forget that beside being Priest, Victim, Prince of Peace and Liberator that Jesus Christ is the Teacher of all nations. No matter how moral a soldier may be, if he cannot fight he has no military vocation. How much the present Pontiff cherishes this spirit. "You must," says he to the bishops and clergy of the world, "look upon it as a chief part of your duty to engrave upon the minds of your people the true knowledge of their likeness to Jesus Christ, to illustrate His charities, His mercies, His teachings, by your writings and your words, in schools, in universities, in the pulpit and wherever opportunity is offered you." Leo XIII. is a model himself of the most progressive science; he can say his prayers with a better profit because he shows the world that he is the nurse of knowledge and can, accordingly, weave exquisite verse and bewilder the world by his keen penetration and splendid grasp of principles and conditions operative in the socialistic fermentations of the day such as the relationship existing between capital and labor. But simply good men never won the battles of the Church at any time. We find this lesson from the Child Jesus with the doctors in the temple. Even at that tender age He knew His prophets and the history of events— humanly speaking. The Fathers of the Church received from their blending of widest and deepest learning with eminence in moral and spiritual perfection the proud title of being "Fathers" of the Church; and, it means much, aye an inculcable amount, to be a Father of the Church, to take the place of ourLord, to be a teacher of the nations, to argue with the Pharisee, with the Jew, with the Gentile, with the heretic and to protect and spread the Church. How dear such men must be to the Holy Ghost! "Ambassadors of Christ, God as it were exhorting by us." (II. Cor. v. 20.) Under all this lies a natural law of life. The heart is reached through the mind or, as St. Augustine says, "There is no love where there is nothing to be loved. As there are two things, namely, mind and its love when it loves itself, so also are there a certain two, namely, the mind and its knowledge when it knows itself. Hence the mind itself, its love and its knowledge are a certain three things and these three are one." (De Trinit. lib. ix. c. 2. n. 2.)
We have then to do as the Fathers have done—know the faith perfectly, teach the faith in season and out of season with force and conviction, yet with christian courtesy, explain the faith without doing violence to dignity and killing at once the possibility of securing the effect which in the end we should hope to attain, have at heart to defend the faith, as our fathers have done so well before us. The Church must have learned men, clerical and lay, to force the heretics into the open field and show the millions of souls who are kept in darkness the power of our weapons, the strength, the beauty and, above all, the truth of our cause. "Break the captive's fetters, light on blindness pour." Missions for non-Catholics is a healthy sign of Catholic times. Every dogmatic, moral or Catholic historical assertion that comes from the enemy,—press or pulpit, —must be duly examined and refuted in books, in journals and by word of mouth. The Church on earth is militant and it shall remain militant. A church of the heavenly rest is not a church for earth. We must sustain the cause of truth as a sacred duty, as soldiers of Jesus Christ, and, the times call for learning to be linked to the highest moral and spiritual perfection, as Urban called aloud Anselm! Anselm! The lips of the priest are deputed and consecrated by God to guard wisdom and it is revealed that the Lord shall demand the law and wisdom of his lips.
The recruiting sergeants must pick their men. The battle of the Church is to be, as it were, fought out in the courtyard of the university of the christian academy and school. The mechanism of modern warfare is rapidly evolving under the impetus of wealth, and a patriotism, born of intense rivalry among the nations, is brought to bear on the select mechanical inventive genius of every country. The Church of Jesus Christ must always have her learned doctors and these must keep in touch, by their sacred vocation, with the enemies' offensive and defensive methods of science, of philosophy, of history and the rest. There are some— perhaps many—who do not feel the importance of this matter. The militant spirit seems for the greater part to have died out among us. Many seem to forget that beside being Priest, Victim, Prince of Peace and Liberator that Jesus Christ is the Teacher of all nations. No matter how moral a soldier may be, if he cannot fight he has no military vocation. How much the present Pontiff cherishes this spirit. "You must," says he to the bishops and clergy of the world, "look upon it as a chief part of your duty to engrave upon the minds of your people the true knowledge of their likeness to Jesus Christ, to illustrate His charities, His mercies, His teachings, by your writings and your words, in schools, in universities, in the pulpit and wherever opportunity is offered you." Leo XIII. is a model himself of the most progressive science; he can say his prayers with a better profit because he shows the world that he is the nurse of knowledge and can, accordingly, weave exquisite verse and bewilder the world by his keen penetration and splendid grasp of principles and conditions operative in the socialistic fermentations of the day such as the relationship existing between capital and labor. But simply good men never won the battles of the Church at any time. We find this lesson from the Child Jesus with the doctors in the temple. Even at that tender age He knew His prophets and the history of events— humanly speaking. The Fathers of the Church received from their blending of widest and deepest learning with eminence in moral and spiritual perfection the proud title of being "Fathers" of the Church; and, it means much, aye an inculcable amount, to be a Father of the Church, to take the place of ourLord, to be a teacher of the nations, to argue with the Pharisee, with the Jew, with the Gentile, with the heretic and to protect and spread the Church. How dear such men must be to the Holy Ghost! "Ambassadors of Christ, God as it were exhorting by us." (II. Cor. v. 20.) Under all this lies a natural law of life. The heart is reached through the mind or, as St. Augustine says, "There is no love where there is nothing to be loved. As there are two things, namely, mind and its love when it loves itself, so also are there a certain two, namely, the mind and its knowledge when it knows itself. Hence the mind itself, its love and its knowledge are a certain three things and these three are one." (De Trinit. lib. ix. c. 2. n. 2.)
