{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_76305/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_76305","id":"gutenberg_76305","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/76305","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Conversion -- Catholic Church"],"text":"THE CALVERT SERIES\n                    HILAIRE BELLOC, _General Editor_\n\n\n\n\n                        THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND\n                               CONVERSION\n\n\n\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\n\n\n                           THE CALVERT SERIES\n                    HILAIRE BELLOC, _General Editor_\n\n                                -------\n\n       _Belloc_: THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND HISTORY\n       _Chesterton_: THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND CONVERSION\n       _McNabb_: THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND PHILOSOPHY\n       _Ward_: THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND THE APPEAL TO REASON\n       _Windle_: THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND ITS REACTIONS WITH SCIENCE\n\n\n\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\n\n\n                          THE CATHOLIC CHURCH\n                             AND CONVERSION\n\n\n\n\n                                   BY\n                            G. K. CHESTERTON\n\n\n\n\n                                New York\n                         THE MACMILLAN COMPANY\n                                  1927\n\n                         _All rights reserved_\n\n\n\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\n\n\n                 Nihil Obstat\n                   Arthur J. Scanlan, S. T. D.\n                     Censor Librorum.\n                 Imprimatur\n                   Patrick Cardinal Hayes\n                     \u2720Archbishop, New York.\n\n                 New York, September 16, 1926.\n\n\n\n\n                            Copyright, 1926,\n                       BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.\n\n                                -------\n\n                        Set up and electrotyped.\n\n                       Published November, 1926.\n                        Reprinted, April, 1927.\n                            September, 1927.\n\n\n\n\n              _Printed in the United States of America by_\n                 THE FERRIS PRINTING COMPANY, NEW YORK.\n\n\n\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\n\n\n                             EDITOR\u2019S NOTE\n\n\nIt is with diffidence that anyone born into the Faith can approach the\ntremendous subject of Conversion. Indeed, it is easier for one still\nquite unacquainted with the Faith to approach that subject than it is\nfor one who has had the advantage of the Faith from childhood. There is\nat once a sort of impertinence in approaching an experience other than\none\u2019s own (necessarily more imperfectly grasped), and an ignorance of\nthe matter. Those born into the Faith very often go through an\nexperience of their own parallel to, and in some way resembling, that\nexperience whereby original strangers to the Faith come to see it and to\naccept it. Those born into the Faith often, I say, go through an\nexperience of scepticism in youth, as the years proceed, and it is still\na common phenomenon (though not so often to be observed as it was a\nlifetime ago) for men of the Catholic culture, acquainted with the\nChurch from childhood, to leave it in early manhood and never to return.\nBut it is nowadays a still more frequent phenomenon\u2014and it is to this\nthat I allude\u2014for those to whom scepticism so strongly appealed in youth\nto discover, by an experience of men and of reality in all its varied\nforms, that the transcendental truths they had been taught in childhood\nhave the highest claims upon their matured reason.\n\nThis experience of the born Catholic may, I repeat, be called in a\ncertain sense a phenomenon of conversion. But it differs from conversion\nproperly so called, which rather signifies the gradual discovery and\nacceptance of the Catholic Church by men and women who began life with\nno conception of its existence: for whom it had been during their\nformative years no more than a name, perhaps despised, and certainly\ncorresponding to no known reality.\n\nSuch men and women converts are perhaps the chief factors in the\nincreasing vigor of the Catholic Church in our time. The admiration\nwhich the born Catholic feels for their action is exactly consonant to\nthat which the Church in its earlier days showed to the martyrs. For the\nword \u201cmartyr\u201d means \u201cwitness.\u201d The phenomenon of conversion apparent in\nevery class, affecting every type of character, is the great modern\n_witness_ to the truth of the claim of the Faith; to the fact that the\nFaith is reality, and that in it alone is the repose of reality to be\nfound.\n\nIn proportion as men know less and less of the subject, in that\nproportion do they conceive that the entrants into the City of God are\nof one type, and in that proportion do they attempt some simple\ndefinition of the mind which ultimately accepts Catholicism. They will\ncall it a desire for security; or an attraction of the senses such as is\nexercised by music or by verse. Or they will ascribe it to that\nparticular sort of weakness (present in many minds) whereby they are\neasily dominated and changed in mood by the action of another.\n\nA very little experience of typical converts in our time makes nonsense\nof such theories. Men and women enter by every conceivable gate, after\nevery conceivable process of slow intellectual examination, of shock, of\nvision, of moral trial and even of merely intellectual process. They\nenter through the action of expanded experience. Some obtain this\nthrough travel, some through a reading of history beyond their fellows,\nsome through personal accidents of life. And not only are the avenues of\napproach to the Faith infinite in number (though all converging; as must\nbe so, since truth is one and error infinitely divided), but the\nindividual types in whom the process of conversion may be observed\ndiffer in every conceivable fashion. When you have predicated of one\nwhat emotion or what reasoning process brought him into the fold, and\nyou attempt to apply your predicate exactly to another, you will find a\nmisfit. The cynic enters, and so does the sentimentalist; and the fool\nenters and so does the wise man; the perpetual questioner and doubter\nand the man too easily accepting immediate authority\u2014they each enter\nafter his kind. You come across an entry into the Catholic Church\nundoubtedly due to the spectacle, admiration and imitation of some great\ncharacter observed. Next day you come across an entry into the Catholic\nChurch out of complete loneliness, and you are astonished to find the\nconvert still ignorant of the great mass of the Catholic effect on\ncharacter. And yet again, immediately after, you will find a totally\ndifferent third type, the man who enters not from loneliness, nor from\nthe effect of another mind, but who comes in out of contempt for the\ninsufficiency or the evil by which he has been surrounded.\n\nThe Church is the natural home of the Human Spirit.\n\nThe truth is that if you seek for an explanation of the phenomenon of\nconversion under any system which bases that phenomenon on illusion, you\narrive at no answer to your question. If you imagine conversion to\nproceed from this or that or the other erroneous or particular limited\nand insufficient cause, you will soon discover it to be inexplicable.\n\nThere is only one explanation of the phenomenon\u2014a phenomenon always\npresent, but particularly arresting to the educated man outside the\nCatholic Church in the English-speaking countries\u2014there is only one\nexplanation which will account for the multiplicity of such entries and\nfor the infinitely varied quality of the minds attracted by the great\nchange; and that explanation is that the Catholic Church is reality. If\na distant mountain may be mistaken for a cloud by many, but is\nrecognised for a stable part of the world (its outline fixed and its\nquality permanent) by every sort of observer, and among these especially\nby men famous for their interest in the debate, for their acuteness of\nvision and for their earlier doubts, the overwhelming presumption is\nthat the thing seen is a piece of objective reality. Fifty men on\nshipboard strain their eyes for land. Five, then ten, then twenty, make\nthe land-fall and recognise it and establish it for their fellows. To\nthe remainder, who see it not or who think it a bank of fog, there is\nreplied the detail of the outline, the character of the points\nrecognised, and that by the most varied and therefore convergent and\nconvincing witnesses\u2014by some who do not desire that land should be there\nat all, by some who dread its approach, as well as those who are glad to\nfind it, by some who have long most ridiculed the idea that it was land\nat all\u2014and it is in this convergence of witnesses that we have one out\nof the innumerable proofs upon which the rational basis of our religion\nreposes.\u2014_The Editor._\n\n\n\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\n\n\n                                CONTENTS\n\n\n                CHAPTER                                   PAGE\n\n             I. INTRODUCTORY: A NEW RELIGION                15\n            II. THE OBVIOUS BLUNDERS                        27\n           III. THE REAL OBSTACLES                          49\n            IV. THE WORLD INSIDE OUT                        75\n             V. THE EXCEPTION PROVES THE RULE               93\n            VI. A NOTE ON PRESENT PROSPECTS                111\n\n\n\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\n\n\n                              INTRODUCTORY\n                             A NEW RELIGION\n\n\n\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\n\n\n                        THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND\n                               CONVERSION\n\n\n\n\n                               CHAPTER I\n\n                      INTRODUCTORY: A NEW RELIGION\n\n\nThe Catholic faith used to be called the Old Religion; but at the\npresent moment it has a recognized place among the New Religions. This\nhas nothing to do with its truth or falsehood; but it is a fact that has\na great deal to do with the understanding of the modern world.\n\nIt would be very undesirable that modern men should accept Catholicism\nmerely as a novelty; but it is a novelty. It does act upon its existing\nenvironment with the peculiar force and freshness of a novelty. Even\nthose who denounce it generally denounce it as a novelty; as an\ninnovation and not merely a survival. They talk of the \u201cadvanced\u201d party\nin the Church of England; they talk of the \u201caggression\u201d of the Church of\nRome. When they talk of an Extremist they are as likely to mean a\nRitualist as a Socialist. Given any normal respectable Protestant\nfamily, Anglican or Puritan, in England or America, we shall find that\nCatholicism is actually for practical purposes treated as a new\nreligion, that is, a revolution. It is not a survival. It is not in that\nsense an antiquity. It does not necessarily owe anything to tradition.\nIn places where tradition can do nothing for it, in places where all the\ntradition is against it, it is intruding on its own merits; not as a\ntradition but a truth. The father of some such Anglican or American\nPuritan family will find, very often, that all his children are breaking\naway from his own more or less Christian compromise (regarded as normal\nin the nineteenth century) and going off in various directions after\nvarious faiths or fashions which he would call fads. One of his sons\nwill become a Socialist and hang up a portrait of Lenin; one of his\ndaughters will become a Spiritualist and play with a planchette; another\ndaughter will go over to Christian Science and it is quite likely that\nanother son will go over to Rome. The point is, for the moment, that\nfrom the point of view of the father, and even in a sense of the family,\nall these things act after the manner of new religions, of great\nmovements, of enthusiasms that carry young people off their feet and\nleave older people bewildered or annoyed. Catholicism indeed, even more\nthan the others, is often spoken of as if it were actually one of the\nwild passions of youth. Optimistic aunts and uncles say that the youth\nwill \u201cget over it,\u201d as if it were a childish love affair or that\nunfortunate business with the barmaid. Darker and sterner aunts and\nuncles, perhaps at a rather earlier period, used actually to talk about\nit as an indecent indulgence, as if its literature were literally a sort\nof pornography. Newman remarks quite naturally, as if there were nothing\nodd about it at the time, that an undergraduate found with an ascetic\nmanual or a book of monastic meditations was under a sort of cloud or\ntaint, as having been caught with \u201ca bad book\u201d in his possession. He had\nbeen wallowing in the sensual pleasure of Nones or inflaming his lusts\nby contemplating an incorrect number of candles. It is perhaps no longer\nthe custom to regard conversion as a form of dissipation; but it is\nstill common to regard conversion as a form of revolt. And as regards\nthe established convention of much of the modern world, it is a revolt.\nThe worthy merchant of the middle class, the worthy farmer of the Middle\nWest, when he sends his son to college, does now feel a faint alarm lest\nthe boy should fall among thieves, in the sense of Communists; but he\nhas the same sort of fear lest he should fall among Catholics.\n\nNow he has no fear lest he should fall among Calvinists. He has no fear\nthat his children will become seventeenth-century Supralapsarians,\nhowever much he may dislike that doctrine. He is not even particularly\ntroubled by the possibility of their adopting the extreme solifidian\nconceptions once common among some of the more extravagant Methodists.\nHe is not likely to await with terror the telegram that will inform him\nthat his son has become a Fifth-Monarchy man, any more than that he has\njoined the Albigensians. He does not exactly lie awake at night\nwondering whether Tom at Oxford has become a Lutheran any more than a\nLollard. All these religions he dimly recognises as dead religions; or\nat any rate as old religions. And he is only frightened of new\nreligions. He is only frightened of those fresh, provocative,\nparadoxical new notions that fly to the young people\u2019s heads. But\namongst these dangerous juvenile attractions he does in practice class\nthe freshness and novelty of Rome.\n\nNow this is rather odd; because Rome is not so very new. Among these\nannoying new religions, one is rather an old religion; but it is the\nonly old religion that is so new. When it was originally and really new,\nno doubt a Roman father often found himself in the same position as the\nAnglican or Puritan father. He too might find all his children going\nstrange ways and deserting the household gods and the sacred temple of\nthe Capitol. He too might find that one of those children had joined the\nChristians in their Ecclesia and possibly in their Catacombs. But he\nwould have found that, of his other children, one cared for nothing but\nthe Mysteries of Orpheus, another was inclined to follow Mithras,\nanother was a Neo-Pythagorean who had learned vegetarianism from the\nHindoos, and so on. Though the Roman father, unlike the Victorian\nfather, might have the pleasure of exercising the _patria potestas_ and\ncutting off the heads of all the heretics, he could not cut off the\nstream of all the heresies. Only by this time most of the streams have\nrun rather dry. It is now seldom necessary for the anxious parent to\nwarn his children against the undesirable society of the Bull of\nMithras, or even to wean him from the exclusive contemplation of\nOrpheus; and though we have vegetarians always with us, they mostly know\nmore about proteids than about Pythagoras. But that other youthful\nextravagance is still youthful. That other new religion is once again\nnew. That one fleeting fashion has refused to fleet; and that ancient\nbit of modernity is still modern. It is still to the Protestant parent\nnow exactly what it was to the pagan parent then. We might say simply\nthat it is a nuisance; but anyhow it is a novelty. It is not simply what\nthe father is used to, or even what the son is used to. It is coming in\nas something fresh and disturbing, whether as it came to the Greeks who\nwere always seeking some new thing, or as it came to the shepherds who\nfirst heard the cry upon the hills of the good news that our language\ncalls the Gospel. We can explain the fact of the Greeks in the time of\nSt. Paul regarding it as a new thing, because it was a new thing. But\nwho will explain why it is still as new to the last of the converts as\nit was to the first of the shepherds? It is as if a man a hundred years\nold entered the Olympian games among the young Greek athletes; which\nwould surely have been the basis of a Greek legend. There is something\nalmost as legendary about the religion that is two thousand years old\nnow appearing as a rival of the new religions. That is what has to be\nexplained and cannot be explained away; nothing can turn the legend into\na myth. We have seen with our own eyes and heard with our own ears this\ngreat modern quarrel between young Catholics and old Protestants; and it\nis the first step to recognise in any study of modern conversion.\n\nI am not going to talk about numbers and statistics, though I may say\nsomething about them later. The first fact to realise is a difference of\nsubstance which falsifies all the difference of size. The great majority\nof Protestant bodies to-day, whether they are strong or weak, are not\nstrengthened in this particular fashion; by the actual attraction of\ntheir new followers to their old doctrines. A young man will suddenly\nbecome a Catholic priest, or even a Catholic monk, because he has a\nspontaneous and even impatient personal enthusiasm for the doctrine of\nVirginity as it appeared to St. Catherine or St. Clare. But how many men\nbecome Baptist ministers because they have a personal horror of the idea\nof an innocent infant coming unconsciously to Christ? How many honest\nPresbyterian ministers in Scotland really want to go back to John Knox,\nas a Catholic mystic might want to go back to John of the Cross? These\nmen inherit positions which they feel they can hold with reasonable\nconsistency and general agreement; but they do inherit them. For them\nreligion is tradition. We Catholics naturally do not sneer at tradition;\nbut we say that in this case it is really tradition and nothing else.\nNot one man in a hundred of these people would ever have joined his\npresent communion if he had been born outside it. Not one man in a\nthousand of them would have invented anything like his church formulas\nif they had not been laid down for him. None of them has any real reason\nfor being in their own particular church, whatever good reason they may\nstill have for being outside ours. In other words, the old creed of\ntheir communion has ceased to function as a fresh and stimulating idea.\nIt is at best a motto or a war cry and at the worst a catchword. But it\nis not meeting contemporary ideas like a contemporary idea. In their\ntime and in their turn we believe that those other contemporary ideas\nwill also prove their mortality by having also become mottoes and\ncatchwords and traditions. A century or two hence Spiritualism may be a\ntradition and Socialism may be a tradition and Christian Science may be\na tradition. But Catholicism will not be a tradition. It will still be a\nnuisance and a new and dangerous thing.\n\nThese are the general considerations which govern any personal study of\nconversion to the Catholic faith. The Church has defended tradition in a\ntime which stupidly denied and despised tradition. But that is simply\nbecause the Church is always the only thing defending whatever is at the\nmoment stupidly despised. It is already beginning to appear as the only\nchampion of reason in the twentieth century, as it was the only champion\nof tradition in the nineteenth. We know that the higher mathematics is\ntrying to deny that two and two make four and the higher mysticism to\nimagine something that is beyond good and evil. Amid all these\nanti-rational philosophies, ours will remain the only rational\nphilosophy. In the same spirit the Church did indeed point out the value\nof tradition to a time which treated it as quite valueless. The\nnineteenth-century neglect of tradition and mania for mere documents\nwere altogether nonsensical. They amounted to saying that men always\ntell lies to children but men never make mistakes in books. But though\nour sympathies are traditional because they are human, it is not that\npart of the thing which stamps it as divine. The mark of the Faith is\nnot tradition; it is conversion. It is the miracle by which men find\ntruth in spite of tradition and often with the rending of all the roots\nof humanity.\n\nIt is with the nature of this process that I propose to deal; and it is\ndifficult to deal with it without introducing something of a personal\nelement. My own is only a very trivial case but naturally it is the case\nI know best; and I shall be compelled in the pages that follow to take\nmany illustrations from it. I have therefore thought it well to put\nfirst this general note on the nature of the movement in my time; to\nshow that I am well aware that it is a very much larger and even a very\nmuch later movement than is implied in describing my own life or\ngeneration. I believe it will be more and more an issue for the rising\ngeneration and for the generation after that, as they discover the\nactual alternative in the awful actualities of our time. And Catholics\nwhen they stand up together and sing \u201cFaith of our Fathers\u201d may realise\nalmost with amusement that they might well be singing \u201cFaith of our\nChildren.\u201d And in many cases the return has been so recent as almost to\ndeserve the description of a Children\u2019s Crusade.\n\n\n\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\n\n\n                          THE OBVIOUS BLUNDERS\n\n\n\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\n\n\n                               CHAPTER II\n\n                          THE OBVIOUS BLUNDERS\n\n\nI have noted that Catholicism really is in the twentieth century what it\nwas in the second century; it is the New Religion. Indeed its very\nantiquity preserves an attitude of novelty. I have always thought it\nstriking and even stirring that in the venerable invocation of the\n\u201cTantum Ergo,\u201d which for us seems to come loaded with accumulated ages,\nthere is still the language of innovation; of the antique document that\nmust yield to a new rite. For us the hymn is something of an antique\ndocument itself. But the rite is always new.\n\nBut if a convert is to write of conversion he must try to retrace his\nsteps out of that shrine back into that ultimate wilderness where he\nonce really believed that this eternal youth was only the \u201cOld\nReligion.\u201d It is a thing exceedingly difficult to do and not often done\nwell, and I for one have little hope of doing it even tolerably well.\nThe difficulty was expressed to me by another convert who said, \u201cI\ncannot explain why I am a Catholic; because now that I am a Catholic I\ncannot imagine myself as anything else.\u201d Nevertheless, it is right to\nmake the imaginative effort. It is not bigotry to be certain we are\nright; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly\nhave gone wrong. It is my duty to try to understand what H. G. Wells can\npossibly mean when he says that the medi\u00e6val Church did not care for\neducation but only for imposing dogmas; it is my duty to speculate\n(however darkly) on what can have made an intelligent man like Arnold\nBennett stone-blind to all the plainest facts about Spain; it is my duty\nto find if I can the thread of connected thought in George Moore\u2019s\nvarious condemnations of Catholic Ireland; and it is equally my duty to\nlabour till I understand the strange mental state of G. K. Chesterton\nwhen he really assumed that the Catholic Church was a sort of ruined\nabbey, almost as deserted as Stonehenge.\n\nI must say first that, in my own case, it was at worst a matter of\nslights rather than slanders. Many converts far more important than I\nhave had to wrestle with a hundred devils of howling falsehood; with a\nswarm of lies and libels. I owe it to the liberal and Universalist\natmosphere of my family, of Stopford Brooke and the Unitarian preachers\nthey followed, that I was always just sufficiently enlightened to be out\nof the reach of Maria Monk. Nevertheless, as this is but a private\nprivilege for which I have to be thankful, it is necessary to say\nsomething of what I might be tempted to call the obvious slanders, but\nthat better men than I have not always seen that the slander was\nobvious. I do not think that they exercise much influence on the\ngeneration that is younger than mine. The worst temptation of the most\npagan youth is not so much to denounce monks for breaking their vow as\nto wonder at them for keeping it. But there is a state of transition\nthat must be allowed for in which a vague Protestant prejudice would\nrather like to have it both ways. There is still a sort of woolly-minded\nphilistine who would be content to consider a friar a knave for his\nunchastity and a fool for his chastity. In other words, these dying\ncalumnies are dying but not dead; and there are still enough people who\nmay still be held back by such crude and clumsy obstacles that it is\nnecessary to some extent to clear them away. After that we can consider\nwhat may be called the real obstacles, the real difficulties we find,\nwhich, as a fact, are generally the very opposite of the difficulties we\nare told about. But let us consider the evidence of all these things\nbeing black, before we go on to the inconvenient fact of their being\nwhite.\n\nThe usual protest of the Protestant, that the Church of Rome is afraid\nof the Bible, did not, as I shall explain in a moment, have any great\nterrors for me at any time. This was by no merit of my own, but by the\naccident of my age and situation. For I grew up in a world in which the\nProtestants, who had just proved that Rome did not believe the Bible,\nwere excitedly discovering that they did not believe the Bible\nthemselves. Some of them even tried to combine the two condemnations and\nsay that they were steps of progress. The next step in progress\nconsisted in a man kicking his father for having locked up a book of\nsuch beauty and value, a book which the son then proceeded to tear into\na thousand pieces. I early discovered that progress is worse than\nProtestantism so far as stupidity is concerned. But most of the\nfree-thinkers who were friends of mine happened to think sufficiently\nfreely to see that the Higher Criticism was much more of an attack on\nProtestant Bible-worship than on Roman authority. Anyhow, my family and\nfriends were more concerned with the opening of the book of Darwin than\nthe book of Daniel; and most of them regarded the Hebrew Scriptures as\nif they were Hittite sculptures. But, even then, it would seem odd to\nworship the sculptures as gods and then smash them as idols and still go\non blaming somebody else for not having worshipped them enough. But here\nagain it is hard for me to know how far my own experience is\nrepresentative, or whether it would not be well to say more of these\npurely Protestant prejudices and doubts than I, from my own experience,\nam able to say.\n\nThe Church is a house with a hundred gates; and no two men enter at\nexactly the same angle. Mine was at least as much Agnostic as Anglican,\nthough I accepted for a time the borderland of Anglicanism; but only on\nthe assumption that it could really be Anglo-Catholicism. There is a\ndistinction of ultimate intention there which in the vague English\natmosphere is often missed. It is not a difference of degree but of\ndefinite aim. There are High Churchmen as much as Low Churchmen who are\nconcerned first and last to save the Church of England. Some of them\nthink it can be saved by calling it Catholic, or making it Catholic, or\nbelieving that it is Catholic; but _that_ is what they want to save. But\nI did not start out with the idea of saving the English Church, but of\nfinding the Catholic Church. If the two were one, so much the better;\nbut I had never conceived of Catholicism as a sort of showy attribute or\nattraction to be tacked on to my own national body, but as the inmost\nsoul of the true body, wherever it might be. It might be said that\nAnglo-Catholicism was simply my own uncompleted conversion to\nCatholicism. But it was from a position originally much more detached\nand indefinite that I had been converted, an atmosphere if not agnostic\nat least pantheistic or Unitarian. To this I owe the fact that I find it\nvery difficult to take some of the Protestant propositions even\nseriously. What is any man who has been in the real outer world, for\ninstance, to make of the everlasting cry that Catholic traditions are\ncondemned by the Bible? It indicates a jumble of topsy-turvy tests and\ntail-foremost arguments, of which I never could at any time see the\nsense. The ordinary sensible sceptic or pagan is standing in the street\n(in the supreme character of the man in the street) and he sees a\nprocession go by of the priests of some strange cult, carrying their\nobject of worship under a canopy, some of them wearing high head-dresses\nand carrying symbolical staffs, others carrying scrolls and sacred\nrecords, others carrying sacred images and lighted candles before them,\nothers sacred relics in caskets or cases, and so on. I can understand\nthe spectator saying, \u201cThis is all hocus-pocus\u201d; I can even understand\nhim, in moments of irritation, breaking up the procession, throwing down\nthe images, tearing up the scrolls, dancing on the priests and anything\nelse that might express that general view. I can understand his saying,\n\u201cYour croziers are bosh, your candles are bosh, your statues and scrolls\nand relics and all the rest of it are bosh.\u201d But in what conceivable\nframe of mind does he rush in to select one particular scroll of the\nscriptures of this one particular group (a scroll which had always\nbelonged to them and been a part of their hocus-pocus, if it was\nhocus-pocus); why in the world should the man in the street say that one\nparticular scroll was _not_ bosh, but was the one and only truth by\nwhich all the other things were to be condemned? Why should it not be as\nsuperstitious to worship the scrolls as the statues, of that one\nparticular procession? Why should it not be as reasonable to preserve\nthe statues as the scrolls, by the tenets of that particular creed? To\nsay to the priests, \u201cYour statues and scrolls are condemned by our\ncommon sense,\u201d is sensible. To say, \u201cYour statues are condemned by your\nscrolls, and we are going to worship one part of your procession and\nwreck the rest,\u201d is not sensible from any standpoint, least of all that\nof the man in the street.\n\nSimilarly, I could never take seriously the fear of the priest, as of\nsomething unnatural and unholy; a dangerous man in the home. Why should\na man who wanted to be wicked encumber himself with special and\nelaborate promises to be good? There might sometimes be a reason for a\npriest being a profligate. But what was the reason for a profligate\nbeing a priest? There are many more lucrative walks of life in which a\nperson with such shining talents for vice and villainy might have made a\nbrighter use of his gifts. Why should a man encumber himself with vows\nthat nobody could expect him to take and he did not himself expect to\nkeep? Would any man make himself poor in order that he might become\navaricious; or take a vow of chastity frightfully difficult to keep in\norder to get into a little more trouble when he did not keep it? All\nthat early and sensational picture of the sins of Rome always seemed to\nme silly even when I was a boy or an unbeliever; and I cannot describe\nhow I passed out of it because I was never in it. I remember asking some\nfriends at Cambridge, people of the Puritan tradition, why in the world\nthey were so afraid of Papists; why a priest in somebody\u2019s house was a\nperil or an Irish servant the beginning of a pestilence. I asked them\nwhy they could not simply disagree with Papists and say so, as they did\nwith Theosophists or Anarchists. They seemed at once pleased and shocked\nwith my daring, as if I had undertaken to convert a burglar or tame a\nmad dog. Perhaps their alarm was really wiser than my bravado. Anyhow, I\nhad not then the most shadowy notion that the burglar would convert me.\nThat, however, I am inclined to think, is the subconscious intuition in\nthe whole business. It must either mean that they suspect that our\nreligion has something about it so wrong that the hint of it is bad for\nanybody; or else that it has something so right that the presence of it\nwould convert anybody. To do them justice, I think most of them darkly\nsuspect the second and not the first.\n\nA shade more plausible than the notion that Popish priests merely seek\nafter evil was the notion that they are exceptionally ready to seek good\nby means of evil. In vulgar language, it is the notion that if they are\nnot sensual they are always sly. To dissipate this is a mere matter of\nexperience; but before I had any experience I had seen some objections\nto the thing even in theory. The theory attributed to the Jesuits was\nvery often almost identical with the practice adopted by nearly\neverybody I knew. Everybody in society practised verbal economies,\nequivocations and often direct fictions, without any sense of essential\nfalsehood. Every gentleman was expected to say he would be delighted to\ndine with a bore; every lady said that somebody else\u2019s baby was\nbeautiful if she thought it as ugly as sin; for they did not think it a\nsin to avoid saying ugly things. This might be right or wrong; but it\nwas absurd to pillory half a dozen Popish priests for a crime committed\ndaily by half a million Protestant laymen. The only difference was that\nthe Jesuits had been worried enough about the matter to try to make\nrules and limitations saving as much verbal veracity as possible;\nwhereas the happy Protestants were not worried about it at all, but told\nlies from morning to night as merrily and innocently as the birds sing\nin the trees. The fact is, of course, that the modern world is full of\nan utterly lawless casuistry because the Jesuits were prevented from\nmaking a lawful casuistry. But every man is a casuist or a lunatic.\n\nIt is true that this general truth was hidden from many by certain\ndefinite assertions. I can only call them, in simple language,\nProtestant lies about Catholic lying. The men who repeated them were not\nnecessarily lying, because they were repeating. But the statements were\nof the same lucid and precise order as a statement that the Pope has\nthree legs or that Rome is situated at the North Pole. There is no more\ndoubt about their nature than that. One of them, for instance, is the\npositive statement, once heard everywhere and still heard often: \u201cRoman\nCatholics are taught that anything is lawful if done for the good of the\nChurch.\u201d This is not the fact; and there is an end of it. It refers to a\ndefinite statement of an institution whose statements are very definite;\nand it can be proved to be totally false. Here as always the critics\ncannot see that they are trying to have it both ways. They are always\ncomplaining that our creed is cut and dried; that we are told what to\nbelieve and must believe nothing else; that it is all written down for\nus in bulls and confessions of faith. In so far as this is true, it\nbrings a matter like this to the point of legal and literal truth, which\ncan be tested; and so tested, it is a lie. But even here I was saved at\na very early stage by noticing a curious fact. I noticed that those who\nwere most ready to blame priests for relying on rigid formulas seldom\ntook the trouble to find out what the formulas were. I happened to pick\nup some of the amusing pamphlets of James Britten, as I might have\npicked up any other pamphlets of any other propaganda; but they set me\non the track of that delightful branch of literature which he called\nProtestant Fiction. I found some of that fiction on my own account,\ndipping into novels by Joseph Hocking and others. I am only concerned\nwith them here to illustrate this particular and curious fact about\nexactitude. I could not understand why these romancers never took the\ntrouble to find out a few elementary facts about the thing they\ndenounced. The facts might easily have helped the denunciation, where\nthe fictions discredited it. There were any number of real Catholic\ndoctrines I should then have thought disgraceful to the Church. There\nare any number which I can still easily imagine being made to look\ndisgraceful to the Church. But the enemies of the Church never found\nthese real rocks of offence. They never looked for them. They never\nlooked for anything. They seemed to have simply made up out of their own\nheads a number of phrases, such as a Scarlet Woman of deficient\nintellect might be supposed to launch on the world; and left it at that.\nBoundless freedom reigned; it was not treated as if it were a question\nof fact at all. A priest might say anything about the Faith; because a\nProtestant might say anything about the priest. These novels were padded\nwith pronouncements like this one, for instance, which I happen to\nremember: \u201cDisobeying a priest is the one sin for which there is no\nabsolution. We term it a reserved case.\u201d Now obviously a man writing\nlike that is simply imagining what might exist; it has never occurred to\nhim to go and ask if it does exist. He has heard the phrase \u201ca reserved\ncase\u201d and considers, in a poetic reverie, what he shall make it mean. He\ndoes not go and ask the nearest priest what it does mean. He does not\nlook it up in an encyclop\u00e6dia or any ordinary work of reference. There\nis no doubt about the fact that it simply means a case reserved for\necclesiastical superiors and not to be settled finally by the priest.\nThat may be a fact to be denounced; but anyhow it is a fact. But the man\nmuch prefers to denounce his own fancy. Any manual would tell him that\nthere is no sin \u201cfor which there is no absolution\u201d; not disobeying the\npriest; not assassinating the Pope. It would be easy to find out these\nfacts and quite easy to base a Protestant invective upon them. It\npuzzled me very much, even at that early stage, to imagine why people\nbringing controversial charges against a powerful and prominent\ninstitution should thus neglect to test their own case, and should draw\nin this random way on their own imagination. It did not make me any more\ninclined to be a Catholic; in those days the very idea of such a thing\nwould have seemed crazy. But it did save me from swallowing all the\nsolid and solemn assertion about what Jesuits said and did. I did not\naccept quite so completely as others the well-ascertained and widely\naccepted fact that \u201cRoman Catholics may do anything for the good of the\nChurch\u201d; because I had already learned to smile at equally accepted\ntruths like \u201cDisobeying a priest is the one sin for which there is no\nabsolution.\u201d I never dreamed that the Roman religion was true; but I\nknew that its accusers, for some reason or other, were curiously\ninaccurate.\n\nIt is strange to me to go back to these things now, and to think that I\never took them even as seriously as that. But I was not very serious\neven then; and certainly I was not serious long. The last lingering\nshadow of the Jesuit, gliding behind curtains and concealing himself in\ncupboards, faded from my young life about the time when I first caught a\ndistant glimpse of the late Father Bernard Vaughan. He was the only\nJesuit I ever knew in those days; and as you could generally hear him\nhalf a mile away, he seemed to be ill-selected for the duties of a\ncurtain-glider. It has always struck me as curious that this Jesuit\nraised a storm by refusing to be Jesuitical (in the journalese sense I\nmean), by refusing to substitute smooth equivocation and verbal evasion\nfor a brute fact. Because he talked about \u201ckilling Germans\u201d when Germans\nhad to be killed, all our shifty and shamefaced morality was shocked at\nhim. And none of those protesting Protestants took thought for a moment\nto realise that they were showing all the shuffling insincerity they\nattributed to the Jesuits, and the Jesuit was showing all the plain\ncandour that they claimed for the Protestant.\n\nI could give a great many other instances besides these I have given of\nthe hidden Bible, the profligate priest or the treacherous Jesuit. I\ncould go steadily through the list of all these more old-fashioned\ncharges against Rome and show how they affected me, or rather why they\ndid not affect me. But my only purpose here is to point out, as a\npreliminary, that they did not affect me at all. I had all the\ndifficulties that a heathen would have had in becoming a Catholic in the\nfourth century. I had very few of the difficulties that a Protestant\nhad, from the seventeenth to the nineteenth. And I owe this to men whose\nmemories I shall always honour; to my father and his circle and the\nliterary tradition of men like George Macdonald and the Universalists of\nthe Victorian Age. If I was born on the wrong side of the Roman wall, at\nleast I was not born on the wrong side of the No Popery quarrel; and if\nI did not inherit a fully civilised faith, neither did I inherit a\nbarbarian feud. The people I was born amongst wished to be just to\nCatholics if they did not always understand them; and I should be very\nthankless if I did not record of them that (like a very much more\nvaluable convert) I can say I was born free.\n\nI will add one example to illustrate this point, because it leads us on\nto larger matters. After a long time\u2014I might almost say after a\nlifetime\u2014I have at last begun to realise what the worthy Liberal or\nSocialist of Balham or Battersea really means when he says he is an\nInternationalist and that humanity should be preferred to the narrowness\nof nations. It dawned on me quite suddenly, after I had talked to such a\nman for many hours, that of course he had really been brought up to\nbelieve that God\u2019s Englishmen were the Chosen Race. Very likely his\nfather or uncle actually thought they were the lost Ten Tribes. Anyhow,\neverything from his daily paper to his weekly sermon assumed that they\nwere the salt of the earth, and especially that they were the salt of\nthe sea. His people had never thought outside their British nationality.\nThey lived in an Empire on which the sun never set, or possibly never\nrose. Their Church was emphatically the Church of England\u2014even if it was\na chapel. Their religion was the Bible that went everywhere with the\nUnion Jack. And when I realised that, I realised the whole story. That\nwas why they were excited by the exceedingly dull theory of the\nInternationalist. That was why the brotherhood of nations, which to me\nwas a truism, to them was a trumpet. That was why it seemed such a\nthrilling paradox to say that we must love foreigners; it had in it the\ndivine paradox that we must love enemies. That was why the\nInternationalist was always planning deputations and visits to foreign\ncapitals and heart-to-heart talks and hands across the sea. It was the\nmarvel of discovering that foreigners had hands, let alone hearts. There\nwas in that excitement a sort of stifled cry: \u201cLook! Frenchmen also have\ntwo legs! See! Germans have noses in the same place as we!\u201d Now a\nCatholic, especially a born Catholic, can never understand that\nattitude, because from the first his whole religion is rooted in the\nunity of the race of Adam, the one and only Chosen Race. He is loyal to\nhis own country; indeed he is generally ardently loyal to it, such local\naffections being in other ways very natural to his religious life, with\nits shrines and relics. But just as the relic follows upon the religion,\nso the local loyalty follows on the universal brotherhood of all men.\nThe Catholic says, \u201cOf course we must love all men; but what do all men\nlove? They love their lands, their lawful boundaries, the memories of\ntheir fathers. That is the justification of being national, that it is\nnormal.\u201d But the Protestant patriot really never thought of any\npatriotism except his own. In that sense Protestantism is patriotism.\nBut unfortunately it is only patriotism. It starts with it and never\ngets beyond it. We start with mankind and go beyond it to all the varied\nloves and traditions of mankind. There never was a more illuminating\nflash than that which lit up the last moment of one of the most glorious\nof English Protestants; one of the most Protestant and one of the most\nEnglish. For that is the meaning of that phrase of Nurse Cavell, herself\nthe noblest martyr of our modern religion of nationality, when the very\nshaft of the white sun of death shone deep into her mind and she cried\naloud, like one who had just discovered something, \u201cI see now that\npatriotism is not enough.\u201d\n\nThere was this in common between the Catholics to whom I have come and\nthe Liberals among whom I was born: neither of them would ever have\nimagined for a moment that patriotism was enough. But that insular\nidealism by which that great lady lived really had taught her\nunconsciously from childhood that patriotism _was_ enough. Not seldom\nhas the English lady appeared in history as a heroine; but generally as\nfacing and defying strangers or savages, not specially as feeling them\nas fellows and equals. Those last words of the English martyr in Belgium\nhave often been quoted by mere cosmopolitans; but cosmopolitans are the\nlast people really to understand them. _They_ are generally trying to\nprove, not that patriotism is not enough, but that it is a great deal\ntoo much. The point is here that hundreds of the most heroic and\nhigh-minded people in Protestant countries have really assumed that it\nis enough to be a patriot. The most careless and cynical of Catholics\nknows better; and so did the most vague and visionary of Universalists.\nOf all the Protestant difficulties, which I here find it hard to\nimagine, this is perhaps the most common and in many ways commendable:\nthe fact that the normal British subject begins by being so very\nBritish. By accident I did not. The tradition I heard in my youth, the\nsimple, the too simple truths inherited from Priestly and Martineau, had\nin them something of that grand generalisation upon men as men which, in\nthe first of those great figures, faced the howling Jingoism of the\nFrench Wars and defied even the legend of Trafalgar. It is to that\ntradition that I owe the fact, whether it be an advantage or a\ndisadvantage, that I cannot worthily analyse the very heroic virtues of\na Plymouth Brother whose only centre is Plymouth. For that rationalism,\ndefective as it was, began long ago in the same central civilisation in\nwhich the Church herself began; if it has ended in the Church it began\nlong ago in the Republic: in a world where all these flags and frontiers\nwere unknown; where all these state establishments and national sects\nwere unthinkable; a vast cosmopolitan cosmos that had never heard the\nname of England, or conceived the image of a kingdom separate and at\nwar; in that vast pagan peace which was the matrix of all these\nmysteries, which had forgotten the free cities and had not dreamed of\nthe small nationalities; which knew only humanity, the _humanum genus_,\nand the name of Rome.\n\nThe Catholic Church loves nations as she loves men; because they are her\nchildren. But they certainly are her children, in the sense that they\nare secondary to her in time and process of production. This is, as it\nhappens, a very good example of a fallacy that often confuses discussion\nabout the convert. The same people who call the convert a pervert, and\nespecially a traitor to patriotism, very often use the other catchword\nto the effect that he is forced to believe this or that. But it is not\nreally a question of what a man is made to believe but of what he must\nbelieve; what he cannot help believing. He cannot disbelieve in an\nelephant when he has seen one; and he cannot treat the Church as a child\nwhen he has discovered that she is his mother. She is not only his\nmother but his country\u2019s mother in being much older and more aboriginal\nthan his country. She is such a mother not in sentimental feeling but in\nhistorical fact. He cannot think one thing when he knows the contrary\nthing. He cannot think that Christianity was invented by Penda of\nMercia, who sent missionaries to the heathen Augustine and the rude and\nbarbarous Gregory. He cannot think that the Church first rose in the\nmiddle of the British Empire, and not of the Roman Empire. He cannot\nthink that England existed, with cricket and fox-hunting and the\nJacobean translation all complete, when Rome was founded or when Christ\nwas born. It is no good talking about his being \u201cfree\u201d to believe these\nthings. He is exactly as free to believe them as he is to believe that a\nhorse has feathers or that the sun is pea green. He cannot believe them\nwhen once he fully realises them; and among such things is the notion\nthat the national claim upon a good patriot is in its nature more\nabsolute, ancient and authoritative than the claim of the whole\nreligious culture which first mapped out its territories and anointed\nits kings. That religious culture does indeed encourage him to fight to\nthe last for his country, as for his family. But that is because the\nreligious culture is generous and imaginative and humane and knows that\nmen must have intimate and individual ties. But those secondary\nloyalties are secondary in time and logic to the law of universal\nmorality which justifies them. And if the patriot is such a fool as to\nforce the issue against that universal tradition from which his own\npatriotism descends, if he presses his claim to priority over the\nprimitive law of the whole earth\u2014then he will have brought it on himself\nif he is answered with the pulverising plainness of the Book of Job. As\nGod said to the man, \u201cWhere were you when the foundations of the world\nwere laid?\u201d We might well say to the nation, \u201cWhere were you when the\nfoundations of the Church were laid?\u201d And the nation will not know in\nthe least what to answer\u2014if it should wish to answer\u2014but will be forced\nto put its hand upon its mouth, if only like one who yawns and falls\nasleep.\n\nI have taken this particular case of patriotism because it concerns at\nleast an emotion in which I profoundly believe and happen to feel\nstrongly. I have always done my best to defend it; though I have\nsometimes become suspect by sympathising with other people\u2019s patriotism\nbesides my own. But I cannot see how it can be defended except as part\nof a larger morality; and the Catholic morality happens to be one of the\nvery few large moralities now ready to defend it. But the Church defends\nit as one of the duties of men and not as the whole duty of man; as it\nwas in the Prussian theory of the State and too often in the British\ntheory of the Empire. And for this the Catholic rests, exactly as the\nUniversalist Unitarian rested, upon the actual fact of a human unity\nanterior to all these healthy and natural human divisions. But it is\nabsurd to treat the Church as a novel conspiracy attacking the State,\nwhen the State was only recently a novel experiment arising within the\nChurch. It is absurd to forget that the Church itself received the first\nloyalties of men who had not yet even conceived the notion of founding\nsuch a national and separate state; that the Faith really was not only\nthe faith of our fathers, but the faith of our fathers before they had\neven named our fatherland.\n\n\n\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\n\n\n                           THE REAL OBSTACLES\n\n\n\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\n\n\n                              CHAPTER III\n\n                           THE REAL OBSTACLES\n\n\nIn the last chapter I have dealt in a preliminary fashion with the\nProtestant case in the conventional controversial sense. I have dealt\nwith the objections which I suspected very early of being prejudices and\nwhich I now know to be prejudices. I have dealt last and at the greatest\nlength with what I believe to be the noblest of all the prejudices of\nProtestantism: that which is simply founded on patriotism. I do not\nthink patriotism is necessarily prejudice; but I am quite sure it must\nbe prejudice and nothing else but prejudice, unless it is covered by\nsome common morality. And a patriotism that does not allow other people\nto be patriots is not a morality but an immorality. Even such a tribal\nprejudice, however, is a more respectable thing than most of the rags\nand tatters of stale slander and muddleheadedness which I am obliged to\nput first as the official policy of the opposition to the Church. These\nstale stories seem to count for a great deal with people who are\nresolved to keep far away from the Church. I do not believe they ever\ncounted with anybody who had begun to draw near to it. When a man really\nsees the Church, even if he dislikes what he sees, he does not see what\nhe had expected to dislike. Even if he wants to slay it he is no longer\nable to slander it; though he hates it at sight, what he sees is not\nwhat he looked to see; in that place he may gain a new passion but he\nloses his old prejudice. There drops from him the holy armour of his\ninvincible ignorance; he can never be so stupid again. If he has a ready\nmind he can doubtless set his new reasons in some sort of order and even\nattempt to link them with his lost tradition. But the thing he hates is\nthere; and the last chapter was wholly devoted to the study of things\nthat are not there.\n\nThe real reasons are almost the opposite of the recognised reasons. The\nreal difficulties are almost the opposite of the recognised\ndifficulties. This is connected, of course, with a general fact, now so\nlarge and obvious but still not clearly comprehended and confessed. The\nwhole case of Protestantism against Catholicism has been turned clean\nround and is facing the contrary way. On practically every single point\non which the Reformation accused the Church, the modern world has not\nonly acquitted the Church of the crime, but has actually charged it with\nthe opposite crime. It is as if the reformers had mobbed the Pope for\nbeing a miser, and then the court had not only acquitted him but had\ncensured him for his extravagance in scattering money among the mob. The\nprinciple of modern Protestantism seems to be that so long as we go on\nshouting \u201cTo hell with the Pope\u201d there is room for the widest\ndifferences of opinion about whether he should go to the hell of the\nmisers or the hell of the spendthrifts. This is what is meant by a broad\nbasis for Christianity and the statement that there is room for many\ndifferent opinions side by side. When the reformer says that the\nprinciples of the Reformation give freedom to different points of view,\nhe means that they give freedom to the Universalist to curse Rome for\nhaving too much predestination and to the Calvinist to curse her for\nhaving too little. He means that in that happy family there is a place\nfor the No Popery man who finds Purgatory too tender-hearted and also\nfor the other No Popery man who finds Hell too harsh. He means that the\nsame description can somehow be made to cover the Tolstoyan who blames\npriests because they permit patriotism and the Diehard who blames\npriests because they represent Internationalism. After all, the\nessential aim of true Christianity is that priests should be blamed; and\nwho are we that we should set narrow dogmatic limits to the various ways\nin which various temperaments may desire to blame them? Why should we\nallow a cold difficulty of the logician, technically called a\ncontradiction in terms, to stand between us and the warm and broadening\nhuman brotherhood of all who are full of sincere and unaffected dislike\nof their neighbours? Religion is of the heart, not of the head; and as\nlong as all our hearts are full of a hatred for everything that our\nfathers loved, we can go on flatly contradicting each other for ever\nabout what there is to be hated.\n\nSuch is the larger and more liberal modern attack upon the Church. It is\nquite inconsistent with the old doctrinal attack; but it does not\npropose to lose the advantages arising from any sort of attack. But in a\nsomewhat analogous fashion, it will be found that the real difficulties\nof a modern convert are almost the direct contrary of those which were\nalleged by the more ancient Protestants. Protestant pamphlets do not\ntouch even remotely any of the real hesitations that he feels; and even\nCatholic pamphlets have often been concerned too much with answering the\nProtestant pamphlets. Indeed, the only sense in which the priests and\npropagandists of Catholicism can really be said to be behind the times\nis that they sometimes go on flogging a dead horse and killing a heresy\nlong after it has killed itself. But even that is, properly understood,\na fault on the side of chivalry. The preacher, and even the persecutor,\nreally takes the heresy more seriously than it is seen ultimately to\ndeserve; the inquisitor has more respect for the heresy than the\nheretics have. Still, it is true that the grounds of suspicion or fear\nthat do really fill the convert, and sometimes paralyse him at the very\npoint of conversion, have really nothing in the world to do with this\nold crop of crude slanders and fallacies, and are often the very\ninversion of them.\n\nThe short way of putting it is to say that he is no longer afraid of the\nvices but very much afraid of the virtues of Catholicism. For instance,\nhe has forgotten all about the old nonsense of the cunning lies of the\nconfessional, in his lively and legitimate alarm of the truthfulness of\nthe confessional. He does not recoil from its insincerity but from its\nsincerity; nor is he necessarily insincere in doing so. Realism is\nreally a rock of offence; it is not at all unnatural to shrink from it;\nand most modern realists only manage to like it because they are careful\nto be realistic about other people. He is near enough to the sacrament\nof penance to have discovered its realism and not near enough to have\nyet discovered its reasonableness and its common sense. Most of those\nwho have gone through this experience have a certain right to say, like\nthe old soldier to his ignorant comrade, \u201cYes, I was afraid; and if you\nwere half as much afraid, you would run away.\u201d Perhaps it is just as\nwell that people go through this stage before discovering how very\nlittle there is to be afraid of. In any case, I will say little more of\nthat example here, having a feeling that absolution, like death and\nmarriage, is a thing that a man ought to find out for himself. It will\nbe enough to say that this is perhaps the supreme example of the fact\nthat the Faith is a paradox that measures more within than without. If\nthat be true of the smallest church, it is truer still of the yet\nsmaller confessional-box, that is like a church within a church. It is\nalmost a good thing that nobody outside should know what gigantic\ngenerosity, and even geniality, can be locked up in a box, as the\nlegendary casket held the heart of the giant. It is a satisfaction, and\nalmost a joke, that it is only in a dark corner and a cramped space that\nany man can discover that mountain of magnanimity.\n\nIt is the same with all the other points of attack, especially the old\nones. The man who has come so far as that along the road has long left\nbehind him the notion that the priest will force him to abandon his\nwill. But he is not unreasonably dismayed at the extent to which he may\nhave to use his will. He is not frightened because, after taking this\ndrug, he will be henceforward irresponsible. But he is very much\nfrightened because he will be responsible. He will have somebody to be\nresponsible to and he will know what he is responsible for; two\nuncomfortable conditions which his more fortunate fellow-creatures have\nnowadays entirely escaped. There are of course many other examples of\nthe same principle: that there is indeed an interval of acute doubt,\nwhich is, strictly speaking, rather fear than doubt, since in some cases\nat least (as I shall point out elsewhere) there is actually least doubt\nwhen there is most fear.\n\nBut anyhow, the doubts are hardly ever of the sort suggested by ordinary\nanti-Catholic propaganda; and it is surely time that such propagandists\nbrought themselves more in touch with the real problem. The Catholic is\nscarcely ever frightened of the Protestant picture of Catholicism; but\nhe is sometimes frightened of the Catholic picture of Catholicism; which\nmay be a good reason for not disproportionately stressing the difficult\nor puzzling parts of the scheme. For the convert\u2019s sake, it should also\nbe remembered that one foolish word from inside does more harm than a\nhundred thousand foolish words from outside. The latter he has already\nlearned to expect, like a blind hail or rain beating upon the Ark; but\nthe voices from within, even the most casual and accidental, he is\nalready prepared to regard as holy or more than human; and though this\nis unfair to people who only profess to be human beings, it is a fact\nthat Catholics ought to remember. There is many a convert who has\nreached a stage at which no word from any Protestant or pagan could any\nlonger hold him back. Only the word of a Catholic can keep him from\nCatholicism.\n\nIt is quite false, in my experience, to say that Jesuits, or any other\nRoman priests, pester and persecute people in order to proselytise.\nNobody has any notion of what the whole story is about, who does not\nknow that, through those long and dark and indecisive days, it is the\nman who persecutes himself. The apparent inaction of the priest may be\nsomething like the statuesque stillness of the angler; and such an\nattitude is not unnatural in the functions of a fisher of men. But it is\nvery seldom impatient or premature and the person acted upon is quite\nlonely enough to realise that it is nothing merely external that is\ntugging at his liberty. The laity are probably less wise; for in most\ncommunions the ecclesiastical layman is more ecclesiastical than is good\nfor his health, and certainly much more ecclesiastical than the\necclesiastics. My experience is that the amateur is generally much more\nangry than the professional; and if he expresses his irritation at the\nslow process of conversion, or the inconsistencies of the intermediate\ncondition, he may do a great deal of harm, of the kind that he least\nintends to do. I know in my own case that I always experienced a slight\nsetback whenever some irresponsible individual interposed to urge me on.\nIt is worth while, for practical reasons, to testify to such experience,\nbecause it may guide the convert when he in his turn begins converting.\nOur enemies no longer really know how to attack the faith; but that is\nno reason why we should not know how to defend it.\n\nYet even that one trivial or incidental caution carries with it a\nreminder of what has been already noted: I mean the fact that whatever\nbe the Catholic\u2019s worries, they are the very contrary of the\nProtestant\u2019s warnings. Merely as a matter of personal experience, I have\nbeen led to note here that it is not generally the priest, but much more\noften the layman, who rather too ostentatiously compasses sea and land\nto make one proselyte. All the creepy and uncanny whispers about the\nhorror of having the priest in the home, as if he were a sort of vampire\nor a monster intrinsically different from mankind, vanishes with the\nsmallest experience of the militant layman. The priest does his job, but\nit is much more his secular co-religionist who is disposed to explain it\nand talk about it. I do not object to laymen proselytising; for I never\ncould see, even when I was practically a pagan, why a man should not\nurge his own opinions if he liked and that opinion as much as any other.\nI am not likely to complain of the evangelising energy of Mr. Hilaire\nBelloc or Mr. Eric Gill; if only because I owe to it the most\nintelligent talks of my youth. But it is that sort of man who\nproselytises in that sort of way; and the conventional caricature is\nwrong again when it always represents him in a cassock. Catholicism is\nnot spread by any particular professional tricks or tones or secret\nsigns or ceremonies. Catholicism is spread by Catholics; but not\ncertainly, in private life at least, merely by Catholic priests. I\nmerely give this here out of a hundred examples, as showing once again\nthat the old traditional version of the terrors of Popery was almost\nalways wrong, even where it might possibly have been right. A man may\nsay if he likes that Catholicism is the enemy; and he may be stating\nfrom his point of view a profound spiritual truth. But if he says that\nClericalism is the enemy, he is repeating a catchword.\n\nIt is my experience that the convert commonly passes through three\nstages or states of mind. The first is when he imagines himself to be\nentirely detached, or even to be entirely indifferent, but in the old\nsense of the term, as when the Prayer Book talks of judges who will\ntruly and indifferently administer justice. Some flippant modern person\nwould probably agree that our judges administer justice very\nindifferently. But the older meaning was legitimate and even logical and\nit is that which is applicable here. The first phase is that of the\nyoung philosopher who feels that he ought to be fair to the Church of\nRome. He wishes to do it justice; but chiefly because he sees that it\nsuffers injustice. I remember that when I was first on the _Daily News_,\nthe great Liberal organ of the Nonconformists, I took the trouble to\ndraw up a list of fifteen falsehoods which I found out, by my own\npersonal knowledge, in a denunciation of Rome by Messrs. Horton and\nHocking. I noted, for instance, that it was nonsense to say that the\nCovenanters fought for religious liberty when the Covenant denounced\nreligious toleration; that it was false to say the Church only asked for\northodoxy and was indifferent to morality, since, if this was true of\nanybody, it was obviously true of the supporters of salvation by faith\nand not of salvation by works; that it was absurd to say that Catholics\nintroduced a horrible sophistry of saying that a man might sometimes\ntell a lie, since every sane man knows he would tell a lie to save a\nchild from Chinese torturers; that it missed the whole point, in this\nconnection, to quote Ward\u2019s phrase, \u201cMake up your mind that you are\njustified in lying and then lie like a trooper,\u201d for Ward\u2019s argument was\nagainst equivocation or what people call Jesuitry. He meant, \u201cWhen the\nchild really is hiding in the cupboard and the Chinese torturers really\nare chasing him with red-hot pincers, then (and then only) be sure that\nyou are right to deceive and do not hesitate to lie; but do not stoop to\nequivocate. Do not bother yourself to say, \u201cThe child is in a wooden\nhouse not far from here,\u201d meaning the cupboard; but say the child is in\nChiswick or Chimbora zoo, or anywhere you choose.\u201d I find I made\nelaborate notes of all these arguments all that long time ago, merely\nfor the logical pleasure of disentangling an intellectual injustice. I\nhad no more idea of becoming a Catholic than of becoming a cannibal. I\nimagined that I was merely pointing out that justice should be done even\nto cannibals. I imagined that I was noting certain fallacies partly for\nthe fun of the thing and partly for a certain feeling of loyalty to the\ntruth of things. But as a matter of fact, looking back on these notes\n(which I never published), it seems to me that I took a tremendous\namount of trouble about it if I really regarded it as a trifle; and\ntaking trouble has certainly never been a particular weakness of mine.\nIt seems to me that something was already working subconsciously to keep\nme more interested in fallacies about this particular topic than in\nfallacies about Free Trade or Female Suffrage or the House of Lords.\nAnyhow, that is the first stage in my own case and I think in many other\ncases; the stage of simply wishing to protect Papists from slander and\noppression, not (consciously at least) because they hold any particular\ntruth, but because they suffer from a particular accumulation of\nfalsehood. The second stage is that in which the convert begins to be\nconscious not only of the falsehood but the truth, and is enormously\nexcited to find that there is far more of it than he would ever have\nexpected. This is not so much a stage as a progress; and it goes on\npretty rapidly but often for a long time. It consists in discovering\nwhat a very large number of lively and interesting ideas there are in\nthe Catholic philosophy, that a great many of them commend themselves at\nonce to his sympathies, and that even those which he would not accept\nhave something to be said for them justifying their acceptance. This\nprocess, which may be called discovering the Catholic Church, is perhaps\nthe most pleasant and straightforward part of the business; easier than\njoining the Catholic Church and much easier than trying to live the\nCatholic life. It is like discovering a new continent full of strange\nflowers and fantastic animals, which is at once wild and hospitable. To\ngive anything like a full account of that process would simply be to\ndiscuss about half a hundred Catholic ideas and institutions in turn. I\nmight remark that much of it consists of the act of translation; of\ndiscovering the real meaning of words, which the Church uses rightly and\nthe world uses wrongly. For instance, the convert discovers that\n\u201cscandal\u201d does not mean \u201cgossip\u201d; and the sin of causing it does not\nmean that it is always wicked to set silly old women wagging their\ntongues. Scandal means scandal, what it originally meant in Greek and\nLatin; the tripping up of somebody else when he is trying to be good. Or\nhe will discover that phrases like \u201ccounsel of perfection\u201d or \u201cvenial\nsin,\u201d which mean nothing at all in the newspapers, mean something quite\nintelligent and interesting in the manuals of moral theology. He begins\nto realise that it is the secular world that spoils the sense of words;\nand he catches an exciting glimpse of the real case for the iron\nimmortality of the Latin Mass. It is not a question between a dead\nlanguage and a living language, in the sense of an everlasting language.\nIt is a question between a dead language and a dying language; an\ninevitably degenerating language. It is these numberless glimpses of\ngreat ideas, that have been hidden from the convert by the prejudices of\nhis provincial culture, that constitute the adventurous and varied\nsecond stage of the conversion. It is, broadly speaking, the stage in\nwhich the man is unconsciously trying to be converted. And the third\nstage is perhaps the truest and the most terrible. It is that in which\nthe man is trying not to be converted.\n\nHe has come too near to the truth, and has forgotten that truth is a\nmagnet, with the powers of attraction and repulsion. He is filled with a\nsort of fear, which makes him feel like a fool who has been patronising\n\u201cPopery\u201d when he ought to have been awakening to the reality of Rome. He\ndiscovers a strange and alarming fact, which is perhaps implied in\nNewman\u2019s interesting lecture on Blanco White and the two ways of\nattacking Catholicism. Anyhow, it is a truth that Newman and every other\nconvert has probably found in one form or another. It is impossible to\nbe just to the Catholic Church. The moment men cease to pull against it\nthey feel a tug towards it. The moment they cease to shout it down they\nbegin to listen to it with pleasure. The moment they try to be fair to\nit they begin to be fond of it. But when that affection has passed a\ncertain point it begins to take on the tragic and menacing grandeur of a\ngreat love affair. The man has exactly the same sense of having\ncommitted or compromised himself; of having been in a sense entrapped,\neven if he is glad to be entrapped. But for a considerable time he is\nnot so much glad as simply terrified. It may be that this real\npsychological experience has been misunderstood by stupider people and\nis responsible for all that remains of the legend that Rome is a mere\ntrap. But that legend misses the whole point of the psychology. It is\nnot the Pope who has set the trap or the priests who have baited it. The\nwhole point of the position is that the trap is simply the truth. The\nwhole point is that the man himself has made his way towards the trap of\ntruth, and not the trap that has run after the man. All steps except the\nlast step he has taken eagerly on his own account, out of interest in\nthe truth; and even the last step, or the last stage, only alarms him\nbecause it is so very true. If I may refer once more to a personal\nexperience, I may say that I for one was never less troubled by doubts\nthan in the last phase, when I was troubled by fears. Before that final\ndelay I had been detached and ready to regard all sorts of doctrines\nwith an open mind. Since that delay has ended in decision, I have had\nall sorts of changes in mere mood; and I think I sympathise with doubts\nand difficulties more than I did before. But I had no doubts or\ndifficulties just before. I had only fears; fears of something that had\nthe finality and simplicity of suicide. But the more I thrust the thing\ninto the back of my mind, the more certain I grew of what Thing it was.\nAnd by a paradox that does not frighten me now in the least, it may be\nthat I shall never again have such absolute assurance that the thing is\ntrue as I had when I made my last effort to deny it.\n\nThere is a postscript or smaller point to be added here to this paradox;\nwhich I know that many will misunderstand. Becoming a Catholic broadens\nthe mind. It especially broadens the mind about the reasons for becoming\na Catholic. Standing in the centre where all roads meet, a man can look\ndown each of the roads in turn and realise that they come from all\npoints of the heavens. As long as he is still marching along his own\nroad, that is the only road that can be seen, or sometimes even\nimagined. For instance, many a man who is not yet a Catholic calls\nhimself a Medi\u00e6valist. But a man who is only a Medi\u00e6valist is very much\nbroadened by becoming a Catholic. I am myself a Medi\u00e6valist, in the\nsense that I think modern life has a great deal to learn from medi\u00e6val\nlife; that Guilds are a better social system than Capitalism; that\nfriars are far less offensive than philanthropists. But I am a much more\nreasonable and moderate Medi\u00e6valist than I was when I was only a\nMedi\u00e6valist. For instance, I felt it necessary to be perpetually pitting\nGothic architecture against Greek architecture, because it was necessary\nto back up Christians against pagans. But now I am in no such fuss and I\nknow what Coventry Patmore meant when he said calmly that it would have\nbeen quite as Catholic to decorate his mantelpiece with the Venus of\nMilo as with the Virgin. As a Medi\u00e6valist I am still proudest of the\nGothic; but as a Catholic I am proud of the Baroque. That intensity\nwhich seems almost narrow because it comes to the point, like a medi\u00e6val\nwindow, is very representative of that last concentration that comes\njust before conversion. At the last moment of all, the convert often\nfeels as if he were looking through a leper\u2019s window. He is looking\nthrough a little crack or crooked hole that seems to grow smaller as he\nstares at it; but it is an opening that looks towards the Altar. Only,\nwhen he has entered the Church, he finds that the Church is much larger\ninside than it is outside. He has left behind him the lop-sidedness of\nlepers\u2019 windows and even in a sense the narrowness of Gothic doors; and\nhe is under vast domes as open as the Renaissance and as universal as\nthe Republic of the world. He can say in a sense unknown to all modern\nmen certain ancient and serene words: _Romanus civis sum_; I am not a\nslave.\n\nThe point for the moment, however, is that there is generally an\ninterval of intense nervousness, to say the least of it, before this\nnormal heritage is reached. To a certain extent it is a fear which\nattaches to all sharp and irrevocable decisions; it is suggested in all\nthe old jokes about the shakiness of the bridegroom at the wedding or\nthe recruit who takes the shilling and gets drunk partly to celebrate,\nbut partly also to forget it. But it is the fear of a fuller sacrament\nand a mightier army. He has, by the nature of the case, left a long way\nbehind him the mere clumsy idea that the sacrament will poison him or\nthe army will kill him. He has probably passed the point, though he does\ngenerally pass it at some time, when he wonders whether the whole\nbusiness is an extraordinarily intelligent and ingenious confidence\ntrick. He is not now in the condition which may be called the last phase\nof real doubt. I mean that in which he wondered whether the thing that\neverybody told him was too bad to be tolerable, is not too good to be\ntrue. Here again the recurrent principle is present; and the obstacle is\nthe very opposite of that which Protestant propaganda has pointed out.\nIf he still has the notion of being trapped, he has no longer any notion\nof being tricked. He is not afraid of finding the Church out, but rather\nof the Church finding him out.\n\nThis note on the stages of conversion is necessarily very negative and\ninadequate. There is in the last second of time or hair\u2019s breadth of\nspace, before the iron leaps to the magnet, an abyss full of all the\nunfathomable forces of the universe. The space between doing and not\ndoing such a thing is so tiny and so vast. It is only possible here to\ngive the reasons for Catholicism, not the cause of Catholicism. I have\ntried to suggest here some of the enlightenments and experiences which\ngradually teach those who have been taught to think ill of the Church to\nbegin to think well of her. That anything described as so bad should\nturn out to be so good is itself a rather arresting process having a\nsavour of something sensational and strange. To come to curse and remain\nto bless, to come to scoff and remain to pray, is always welcome in a\nspirit of wonder and the glow of an unexpected good.\n\nBut it is one thing to conclude that Catholicism is good and another to\nconclude that it is right. It is one thing to conclude that it is right\nand another to conclude that it is always right. I had never believed\nthe tradition that it was diabolical; I had soon come to doubt the idea\nthat it was inhuman, but that would only have left me with the obvious\ninference that it was human. It is a considerable step from that to the\ninference that it is divine. When we come to that conviction of divine\nauthority, we come to the more mysterious matter of divine aid. In other\nwords, we come to the unfathomable idea of grace and the gift of faith;\nand I have not the smallest intention of attempting to fathom it. It is\na theological question of the utmost complexity; and it is one thing to\nfeel it as a fact and another to define it as a truth. One or two points\nabout the preliminary dispositions that prepare the mind for it are all\nthat need be indicated here. To begin with, there is one sense in which\nthe blackest bigots are really the best philosophers. The Church really\nis like Antichrist in the sense that it is as unique as Christ. Indeed,\nif it be not Christ it probably is Antichrist; but certainly it is not\nMoses or Mahomet or Buddha or Plato or Pythagoras. The more we see of\nhumanity, the more we sympathise with humanity, the more we shall see\nthat when it is simply human it is simply heathen; and the names of its\nparticular local gods or tribal prophets or highly respectable sages are\na secondary matter compared with that human and heathen character. In\nthe old paganism of Europe, in the existing paganism of Asia, there have\nbeen gods and priests and prophets and sages of all sorts; but not\nanother institution of this sort. The pagan cults die very slowly; they\ndo not return very rapidly. They do not make the sort of claim that is\nmade at a crisis; and then make the same claim again and again at crisis\nafter crisis throughout the whole history of the earth. All that people\nfear in the Church, all that they hate in her, all against which they\nmost harden their hearts and sometimes (one is tempted to say) thicken\ntheir heads, all that has made people consciously and unconsciously\ntreat the Catholic Church as a _peril_, is the evidence that there is\nsomething here that we cannot look on at languidly and with detachment,\nas we might look on at Hottentots dancing at the new moon or Chinamen\nburning paper in porcelain temples. The Chinaman and the tourist can be\non the best of terms on a basis of mutual scorn. But in the duel of the\nChurch and the world is no such shield of contempt. The Church will not\nconsent to scorn the soul of a coolie or even a tourist; and the measure\nof the madness with which men hate her is but their vain attempt to\ndespise.\n\nAnother element, far more deep and delicate and hard to describe, is the\nimmediate connection of what is most awful and archaic with what is most\nintimate and individual. It is a miracle in itself that anything so huge\nand historic in date and design should be so fresh in the affections. It\nis as if a man found his own parlour and fireside in the heart of the\nGreat Pyramid. It is as if a child\u2019s favourite doll turned out to be the\noldest sacred image in the world, worshipped in Chaldea or Nineveh. It\nis as if a girl to whom a man made love in a garden were also, in some\ndark and double fashion, a statue standing for ever in a square. It is\njust here that all those things which were regarded as weakness come in\nas the fulness of strength. Everything that men called sentimental in\nRoman Catholic religion, its keepsakes, its small flowers and almost\ntawdry trinkets, its figures with merciful gestures and gentle eyes, its\navowedly popular pathos and all that Matthew Arnold meant by\nChristianity with its \u201crelieving tears\u201d\u2014all this is a sign of sensitive\nand vivid vitality in anything so vast and settled and systematic. There\nis nothing quite like this warmth, as in the warmth of Christmas, amid\nancient hills hoary with such snows of antiquity. It can address even\nGod Almighty with diminutives. In all its varied vestments it wears its\nSacred Heart upon its sleeve. But to those who know that it is full of\nthese lively affections, like little leaping flames, there is something\nof almost ironic satisfaction in the stark and primitive size of the\nthing, like some prehistoric monster; in its spires and mitres like the\nhorns of giant herds or its colossal cornerstones like the four feet of\nan elephant. It would be easy to write a merely artistic study of the\nstrange externals of the Roman religion, which should make it seem as\nuncouth and unearthly as Aztec or African religion. It would be easy to\ntalk of it as if it were really some sort of mammoth or monster\nelephant, older than the Ice Age, towering over the Stone Age; his very\nlines traced, it would seem, in the earthquakes or landslides of some\nolder creation, his very organs and outer texture akin to unrecorded\npatterns of vegetation and air and light\u2014the last residuum of a lost\nworld. But the prehistoric monster is in the Zo\u00f6logical Gardens and not\nin the Natural History Museum. The extinct animal is still alive. And\nanything outlandish and unfamiliar in its form accentuates the startling\nnaturalness and familiarity of its mind, as if the Sphinx began suddenly\nto talk of the topics of the hour. The super-elephant is not only a tame\nanimal but a pet; and a young child shall lead him.\n\nThis antithesis between all that is formidable and remote and all that\nis personally relevant and realistically tender is another of those\nconverging impressions which meet in the moment of conviction. But of\nall these things, that come nearest to the actual transition of the gift\nof faith, it is far harder to write than of the rationalistic and\nhistorical preliminaries of the enquiry. It is only with those\npreliminary dispositions towards the truth that I claim to deal here. In\nthe chapters that follow I propose to touch upon two of the larger\nconsiderations of this class, not because they are in themselves any\nlarger than many other immense aspects of so mighty a theme, but because\nthey happen to balance each other and form a sort of antithesis very\ntypical of all Catholic truth. In the first of the two chapters I shall\ntry to point out how it is that when we praise the Church for her\ngreatness we do not merely mean her largeness but, in a rather notable\nand unique sense, her universality. We mean her power of being cosmos\nand containing other things. And in the second chapter I shall point out\nwhat may seem to disturb this truth but really balances it. I mean the\nfact that we value the Church because she is a Church Militant; and\nsometimes even because she militates against ourselves. She is something\nmore than the cosmos, in the sense of completed nature or completed\nhuman nature. She proves that she is something more by sometimes being\nright where they are wrong. These two aspects must be considered\nseparately, though they come together to form the full conviction that\ncomes just before conversion. But in this chapter I have merely noted\ndown a few points or stages of the conversion considered as a practical\nprocess; and especially those three stages of it through which many a\nProtestant or Agnostic must have passed. Many a man, looking back\ncheerfully on them now, will not be annoyed if I call the first,\npatronising the Church; and the second, discovering the Church; and the\nthird, running away from the Church. When those three phases are over, a\nlarger truth begins to come into sight; it is much too large to describe\nand we will proceed to describe it.\n\n\n\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\n\n\n                          THE WORLD INSIDE OUT\n\n\n\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\n\n\n                               CHAPTER IV\n\n                          THE WORLD INSIDE OUT\n\n\nThe first fallacy about the Catholic Church is the idea that it is a\nchurch. I mean that it is a church in the sense in which the\nNonconformist newspapers talk about The Churches. I do not intend any\nexpression of contempt about The Churches; nor is it an expression of\ncontempt to say that it would be more convenient to call them the sects.\nThis is true in a much deeper and more sympathetic sense than may at\nfirst appear; but to begin with, it is certainly true in a perfectly\nplain and historical sense, which has nothing to do with sympathy at\nall. Thus, for instance, I have much more sympathy for small\nnationalities than I have for small sects. But it is simply a historical\nfact that the Roman Empire was the Empire and that it was not a small\nnationality. And it is simply a historical fact that the Roman Church is\nthe Church and is not a sect. Nor is there anything narrow or\nunreasonable in saying that the Church is the Church. It may be a good\nthing that the Roman Empire broke up into nations; but it certainly was\nnot one of the nations into which it broke up. And even a person who\nthinks it fortunate that the Church broke up into sects ought to be able\nto distinguish between the little things he likes and the big thing he\nhas broken. As a matter of fact, in the case of things so large, so\nunique and so creative of the culture about them as were the Roman\nEmpire and the Roman Church, it is not controversial but simply correct\nto confine the one word to the one example. Everybody who originally\nused the word \u201cEmpire\u201d used it of that Empire; everybody who used the\nword \u201cEcclesia\u201d used it of that Ecclesia. There may have been similar\nthings in other places, but they could not be called by the same name\nfor the simple reason that they were not named in the same language. We\nknow what we mean by a Roman Emperor; we can if we like talk of a\nChinese Emperor, just as we can if we like take a particular sort of a\nMandarin and say he is equivalent to a Marquis. But we never can be\ncertain that he is exactly equivalent; for the thing we are thinking\nabout is peculiar to our own history and in that sense stands alone. Now\nin that, if in no other sense, the Catholic Church stands alone. It does\nnot merely belong to a class of Christian churches. It does not merely\nbelong to a class of human religions. Considered quite coldly and\nimpartially, as by a man from the moon, it is much more _sui generis_\nthan that. It is, if the critic chooses to think so, the ruin of an\nattempt at a Universal Religion which was bound to fail. But calling the\nwreckers to break up a ship does not turn the ship into one of its own\ntimbers; and cutting Poland up into three pieces does not make Poland\nthe same as Posen.\n\nBut in a much more profound and philosophical sense this notion that the\nChurch is one of the sects is the great fallacy of the whole affair. It\nis a matter more psychological and more difficult to describe. But it is\nperhaps the most sensational of the silent upheavals or reversals in the\nmind that constitute the revolution called conversion. Every man\nconceives himself as moving about in a cosmos of some kind; and the man\nof the days of my youth walked about in a kind of vast and airy Crystal\nPalace in which there were exhibits set side by side. The cosmos, being\nmade of glass and iron, was partly transparent and partly colourless;\nanyhow, there was something negative about it; arching over all our\nheads, a roof as remote as a sky, it seemed to be impartial and\nimpersonal. Our attention was fixed on the exhibits, which were all\ncarefully ticketed and arranged in rows; for it was the age of science.\nHere stood all the religions in a row\u2014the churches or sects or whatever\nwe called them; and towards the end of the row there was a particularly\ndingy and dismal one, with a pointed roof half fallen in and pointed\nwindows most broken with stones by passers-by; and we were told that\nthis particular exhibit was the Roman Catholic Church. Some of us were\nsorry for it and even fancied it had been rather badly used; most of us\nregarded it as dirty and disreputable; a few of us even pointed out that\nmany details in the ruin were artistically beautiful or architecturally\nimportant. But most people preferred to deal at other and more\nbusiness-like booths; at the Quaker shop of Peace and Plenty or the\nSalvation Army store where the showman beats the big drum outside. Now\nconversion consists very largely, on its intellectual side, in the\ndiscovery that all that picture of equal creeds inside an indifferent\ncosmos is quite false. It is not a question of comparing the merits and\ndefects of the Quaker meeting-house set beside the Catholic cathedral.\nIt is the Quaker meeting-house that is inside the Catholic cathedral; it\nis the Catholic cathedral that covers everything like the vault of the\nCrystal Palace; and it is when we look up at the vast distant dome\ncovering all the exhibits that we trace the Gothic roof and the pointed\nwindows. In other words, Quakerism is but a temporary form of Quietism\nwhich has arisen technically outside the Church as the Quietism of\nFenelon appeared technically inside the Church. But both were in\nthemselves temporary and would have, like Fenelon, sooner or later to\nreturn to the Church in order to live. The principle of life in all\nthese variations of Protestantism, in so far as it is not a principle of\ndeath, consists of what remained in them of Catholic Christendom; and to\nCatholic Christendom they have always returned to be recharged with\nvitality. I know that this will sound like a statement to be challenged;\nbut it is true. The return of Catholic ideas to the separated parts of\nChristendom was often indeed indirect. But though the influence came\nthrough many centres, it always came from one. It came through the\nRomantic Movement, a glimpse of the mere picturesqueness of medi\u00e6valism;\nbut it is something more than an accident that Romances, like Romance\nlanguages, are named after Rome. Or it came through the instinctive\nreaction of old-fashioned people like Johnson or Scott or Cobbett,\nwishing to save old elements that had originally been Catholic against a\nprogress that was merely Capitalist. But it led them to denounce that\nCapitalist progress and become, like Cobbett, practical foes of\nProtestantism without being practising followers of Catholicism. Or it\ncame from the Pre-Raphaelites or the opening of continental art and\nculture by Matthew Arnold and Morris and Ruskin and the rest. But\nexamine the actual make-up of the mind of a good Quaker or\nCongregational minister at this moment, and compare it with the mind of\nsuch a dissenter in the Little Bethel before such culture came. And you\nwill see how much of his health and happiness he owes to Ruskin and what\nRuskin owed to Giotto; to Morris and what Morris owed to Chaucer; to\nfine scholars of his own school like Philip Wicksteed, and what they owe\nto Dante and St. Thomas. Such a man will still sometimes talk of the\nMiddle Ages as the Dark Ages. But the Dark Ages have improved the\nwallpaper on his wall and the dress on his wife and all the whole dingy\nand vulgar life which he lived in the days of Stiggins and Brother\nTadger. For he also is a Christian and lives only by the life of\nChristendom.\n\nIt is not easy to express this enormous inversion which I have here\ntried to suggest in the image of a world turned inside out. I mean that\nthe thing which had been stared at as a small something swells out and\nswallows everything. Christendom is in the literal sense a continent. We\ncome to feel that it contains everything, even the things in revolt\nagainst itself. But it is perhaps the most towering intellectual\ntransformation of all and the one that it is hardest to undo even for\nthe sake of argument. It is almost impossible even in imagination to\nreverse that reversal. Another way of putting it is to say that we have\ncome to regard all these historical figures as characters in Catholic\nhistory, even if they are not Catholics. And in a certain sense, the\nhistorical as distinct from the theological sense, they never do cease\nto be Catholic. They are not people who have really created something\nentirely new, until they actually pass the border of reason and create\nmore or less crazy nightmares. But nightmares do not last; and most of\nthem even now are in various stages of waking up. Protestants are\nCatholics gone wrong; that is what is really meant by saying they are\nChristians. Sometimes they have gone very wrong; but not often have they\ngone right ahead with their own particular wrong. Thus a Calvinist is a\nCatholic obsessed with the Catholic idea of the sovereignty of God. But\nwhen he makes it mean that God wishes particular people to be damned, we\nmay say with all restraint that he has become a rather morbid Catholic.\nIn point of fact he is a diseased Catholic; and the disease left to\nitself would be death or madness. But, as a matter of fact, the disease\ndid not last long, and is itself now practically dead. But every step he\ntakes back towards humanity is a step back towards Catholicism. Thus a\nQuaker is a Catholic obsessed with the Catholic idea of gentle\nsimplicity and truth. But when he made it mean that it is a lie to say\n\u201cyou\u201d and an act of idolatry to take off your hat to a lady, it is not\ntoo much to say that whether or not he had a hat off, he certainly had a\ntile loose. But as a matter of fact he himself found it necessary to\ndispense with the eccentricity (and the hat) and to leave the straight\nroad that would have led him to a lunatic asylum. Only every step he\ntakes back towards common sense is a step back towards Catholicism. In\nso far as he was right he was a Catholic; and in so far as he was wrong\nhe has not himself been able to remain a Protestant.\n\nTo us, therefore, it is henceforth impossible to think of the Quaker as\na figure at the beginning of a new Quaker history or the Calvinist as\nthe founder of a new Calvinistic world. It is quite obvious to us that\nthey are simply characters in our own Catholic history, only characters\nwho caused a great deal of trouble by trying to do something that we\ncould do better and that they did not really do at all. Now some may\nsuppose that this can be maintained of the older sects like Calvinists\nand Quakers, but cannot be maintained of modern movements like those of\nSocialists or Spiritualists. But they will be quite wrong. The covering\nor continental character of the Church applies just as much to modern\nmanias as to the old religious manias; it applies quite as much to\nMaterialists or Spiritualists as to Puritans. In all of them you find\nthat some Catholic dogma is, first, taken for granted; then exaggerated\ninto an error; and then generally reacted against and rejected as an\nerror, bringing the individual in question a few steps back again on the\nhomeward road. And this is almost always the mark of such a heretic;\nthat while he will wildly question any other Catholic dogma, he never\ndreams of questioning his own favourite Catholic dogma and does not even\nseem to know that it could be questioned. It never occurred to the\nCalvinist that anybody might use his liberty to deny or limit the divine\nomnipotence, or to the Quaker that anyone could question the supremacy\nof simplicity. That is exactly the situation of the Socialist.\nBolshevism and every shade of any such theory of brotherhood is based\nupon one unfathomably mystical Catholic dogma; the equality of men. The\nCommunists stake everything on the equality of man, as the Calvinists\nstaked everything on the omnipotence of God. They ride it to death as\nthe others rode their dogma to death, turning their horse into a\nnightmare. But it never seems to occur to them that some people do not\nbelieve in the Catholic dogma of the mystical equality of men. Yet there\nare many, even among Christians, who are so heretical as to question it.\nThe Socialists get into a great tangle when they try to apply it; they\ncompromise with their own ideals; they modify their own doctrine; and so\nfind themselves, like the Quakers and the Calvinists, after all their\nextreme extravagances, a day\u2019s march nearer Rome.\n\nIn short, the story of these sects is not one of straight lines striking\noutwards and onwards, though if it were they would all be striking in\ndifferent directions. It is a pattern of curves continually returning\ninto the continent and common life of their and our civilisation; and\nthe summary of that civilisation and central sanity is the philosophy of\nthe Catholic Church. To us, Spiritualists are men studying the existence\nof spirits, in a brief and blinding oblivion of the existence of evil\nspirits. They are, as it were, people just educated enough to have heard\nof ghosts but not educated enough to have heard of witches. If the evil\nspirits succeed in stopping their education and stunting their minds,\nthey may of course go on for ever repeating silly messages from Plato\nand doggerel verses from Milton. But if they do go a step or two\nfurther, instead of marking time on the borderland, their next step will\nbe to learn what the Church could have taught. To us, Christian\nScientists are simply people with one idea, which they have never learnt\nto balance and combine with all the other ideas. That is why the wealthy\nbusiness man so often becomes a Christian Scientist. He is not used to\nideas and one idea goes to his head, like one glass of wine to a\nstarving man. But the Catholic Church is used to living with ideas and\nwalks among all those very dangerous wild beasts with the poise and the\nlifted head of a lion-tamer. The Christian Scientist can go on\nmonotonously repeating his one idea and remain a Christian Scientist.\nBut if ever he really goes on to any other ideas, he will be so much the\nnearer to being a Catholic.\n\nWhen the convert has once seen the world like that, with one balance of\nideas and a number of other ideas that have left it and lost their\nbalance, he does not in fact experience any of the inconveniences that\nhe might reasonably have feared before that silent but stunning\nrevolution. He is not worried by being told that there is something in\nSpiritualism or something in Christian Science. He knows there is\nsomething in everything. But he is moved by the more impressive fact\nthat he finds everything in something. And he is quite sure that if\nthese investigators really are looking for everything, and not merely\nlooking for anything, they will be more and more likely to look for it\nin the same place. In that sense he is far less worried about them than\nhe was when he thought that one or other of them might be the only\nperson having any sort of communication with the higher mysteries and\nobviously rather capable of making a mess of it. He is no more likely to\nbe overawed by the fact that Mrs. Eddy achieved spiritual healing or Mr.\nHome achieved bodily levitation than a fully dressed gentleman in Bond\nStreet would be overawed by the top-hat on the head of a naked savage. A\ntop-hat may be a good hat but it is a bad costume. And a magnetic trick\nmay be a sufficient sensation but it is a very insufficient philosophy.\nHe is no more envious of a Bolshevist for making a revolution than of a\nbeaver for making a dam; for he knows his own civilisation can make\nthings on a pattern not quite so simple or so monotonous. But he\nbelieves this of his civilisation and his religion and not merely of\nhimself. There is nothing supercilious about his attitude; because he is\nwell aware that he has only scratched the surface of the spiritual\nestate that is now open to him. In other words, the convert does not in\nthe least abandon investigation or even adventure. He does not think he\nknows everything, nor has he lost curiosity about the things he does not\nknow. But experience has taught him that he will find nearly everything\nsomewhere inside that estate and that a very large number of people are\nfinding next to nothing outside it. For the estate is not only a formal\ngarden or an ordered farm; there is plenty of hunting and fishing on it,\nand, as the phrase goes, very good sport.\n\nFor this is one of the very queerest of the common delusions about what\nhappens to the convert. In some muddled way people have confused the\nnatural remarks of converts, about having found moral peace, with some\nidea of their having found mental rest, in the sense of mental inaction.\nThey might as well say that a man who has completely recovered his\nhealth, after an attack of palsy or St. Vitus\u2019 dance, signalises his\nhealthy state by sitting absolutely still like a stone. Recovering his\nhealth means recovering his power of moving in the right way as distinct\nfrom the wrong way; but he will probably move a great deal more than\nbefore. To become a Catholic is not to leave off thinking, but to learn\nhow to think. It is so in exactly the same sense in which to recover\nfrom palsy is not to leave off moving but to learn how to move. The\nCatholic convert has for the first time a starting-point for straight\nand strenuous thinking. He has for the first time a way of testing the\ntruth in any question that he raises. As the world goes, especially at\npresent, it is the other people, the heathen and the heretics, who seem\nto have every virtue except the power of connected thought. There was\nindeed a brief period when a small minority did some hard thinking on\nthe heathen or heretical side. It barely lasted from the time of\nVoltaire to the time of Huxley. It has now entirely disappeared. What is\nnow called free thought is valued, not because it is free thought, but\nbecause it is freedom from thought; because it is free thoughtlessness.\n\nNothing is more amusing to the convert, when his conversion has been\ncomplete for some time, than to hear the speculations about when or\nwhether he will repent of the conversion; when he will be sick of it,\nhow long he will stand it, at what stage of his external exasperation he\nwill start up and say he can bear it no more. For all this is founded on\nthat optical illusion about the outside and the inside which I have\ntried to sketch in this chapter. The outsiders, stand by and see, or\nthink they see, the convert entering with bowed head a sort of small\ntemple which they are convinced is fitted up inside like a prison, if\nnot a torture-chamber. But all they really know about it is that he has\npassed through a door. They do not know that he has not gone into the\ninner darkness, but out into the broad daylight. It is he who is, in the\nbeautiful and beatific sense of the word, an outsider. He does not want\nto go into a larger room, because he does not know of any larger room to\ngo into. He knows of a large number of much smaller rooms, each of which\nis labelled as being very large; but he is quite sure he would be\ncramped in any of them. Each of them professes to be a complete cosmos\nor scheme of all things; but then so does the cosmos of the Clapham Sect\nor the Clapton Agapemone. Each of them is supposed to be domed with the\nsky or painted inside with all the stars. But each of these cosmic\nsystems or machines seems to him much smaller and even much simpler than\nthe broad and balanced universe in which he lives. One of them is\nlabelled Agnostic; but he knows by experience that it has not really\neven the freedom of ignorance. It is a wheel that must always go round\nwithout a single jolt of miraculous interruption\u2014a circle that must not\nbe squared by any higher mathematics of mysticism; a machine that must\nbe scoured as clean of all spirits as if it were the avowed machine of\nmaterialism. In living in a world with two orders, the supernatural and\nthe natural, the convert feels he is living in a larger world and does\nnot feel any temptation to crawl back into a smaller one. One of them is\nlabelled Theosophical or Buddhistic; but he knows by experience that it\nis only the same sort of wearisome wheel used for spiritual things\ninstead of material things. Living in a world where he is free to do\nanything, even to go to the devil, he does not see why he should tie\nhimself to the wheel of a mere destiny. One of them is labelled\nHumanitarian; but he knows that such humanitarians have really far less\nexperience of humanity. He knows that they are thinking almost entirely\nof men as they are at this moment in modern cities, and have nothing\nlike the huge human interest of what began by being preached to\nlegionaries in Palestine and is still being preached to peasants in\nChina. So clear is this perception that I have sometimes put it to\nmyself, as something between a melancholy meditation and a joke. \u201cWhere\n_should_ I go now, if I did leave the Catholic Church?\u201d I certainly\nwould not go to any of those little social sects which only express one\nidea at a time, because that idea happens to be fashionable at the\nmoment. The best I could hope for would be to wander away into the woods\nand become, not a Pantheist (for that is also a limitation and a bore)\nbut rather a pagan, in the mood to cry out that some particular mountain\npeak or flowering fruit tree was sacred and a thing to be worshipped.\nThat at least would be beginning all over again; but it would bring me\nback to the same problem in the end. If it was reasonable to have a\nsacred tree it was not unreasonable to have a sacred crucifix; and if\nthe god was to be found on one peak he may as reasonably be found under\none spire. To find a new religion is sooner or later to have found one;\nand why should I have been discontented with the one I had found?\nEspecially, as I said in the first words of this essay, when it is the\none old religion which seems capable of remaining new.\n\nI know very well that if I went upon that journey I should either\ndespair or return; and that none of the trees would ever be a substitute\nfor the real sacred tree. Paganism is better than pantheism, for\npaganism is free to imagine divinities, while pantheism is forced to\npretend, in a priggish way, that all things are equally divine. But I\nshould not imagine any divinity that was sufficiently divine. I seem to\nknow that weary return through the woodlands; for I think in some\nsymbolic fashion I have walked that road before. For as I have tried to\nconfess here without excessive egotism, I think I am the sort of man who\ncame to Christ from Pan and Dionysus and not from Luther or Laud; that\nthe conversion I understand is that of the pagan and not the Puritan;\nand upon that antique conversion is founded the whole world that we\nknow. It is a transformation far more vast and tremendous than anything\nthat has been meant for many years past, at least in England and\nAmerica, by a sectarian controversy or a doctrinal division. On the\nheight of that ancient empire and that international experience,\nhumanity had a vision. It has not had another; but only quarrels about\nthat one. Paganism was the largest thing in the world and Christianity\nwas larger; and everything else has been comparatively small.\n\n\n\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\n\n\n                     THE EXCEPTION PROVES THE RULE\n\n\n\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\n\n\n                               CHAPTER V\n\n                     THE EXCEPTION PROVES THE RULE\n\n\nThe Catholic Church is the only thing which saves a man from the\ndegrading slavery of being a child of his age. I have compared it with\nthe New Religions; but this is exactly where it differs from the New\nReligions. The New Religions are in many ways suited to the new\nconditions; but they are only suited to the new conditions. When those\nconditions shall have changed in only a century or so, the points upon\nwhich alone they insist at present will have become almost pointless. If\nthe Faith has all the freshness of a new religion, it has all the\nrichness of an old religion; it has especially all the reserves of an\nold religion. So far as that is concerned, its antiquity is alone a\ngreat advantage, and especially a great advantage for purposes of\nrenovation and youth. It is only by the analogy of animal bodies that we\nsuppose that old things must be stiff. It is a mere metaphor from bones\nand arteries. In an intellectual sense old things are flexible. Above\nall, they are various and have many alternatives to offer. There is a\nsort of rotation of crops in religious history; and old fields can lie\nfallow for a while and then be worked again. But when the new religion\nor any such notion has sown its one crop of wild oats, which the wind\ngenerally blows away, it is barren. A thing as old as the Catholic\nChurch has an accumulated armoury and treasury to choose from; it can\npick and choose among the centuries and brings one age to the rescue of\nanother. It can call in the old world to redress the balance of the new.\n\nAnyhow, the New Religions are suited to the new world; and this is their\nmost damning defect. Each religion is produced by contemporary causes\nthat can be clearly pointed out. Socialism is a reaction against\nCapitalism. Spiritualism is a reaction against Materialism; it is also\nin its intensified form merely the trail of the tragedy of the Great\nWar. But there is a somewhat more subtle sense in which the very fitness\nof the new creeds makes them unfit; their very acceptability makes them\ninacceptable. Thus they all profess to be progressive because the\npeculiar boast of their peculiar period was progress; they claim to be\ndemocratic because our political system still rather pathetically claims\nto be democratic. They rushed to a reconciliation with science, which\nwas often only a premature surrender to science. They hastily divested\nthemselves of anything considered dowdy or old-fashioned in the way of\nvesture or symbol. They claimed to have bright services and cheery\nsermons; the churches competed with the cinemas; the churches even\nbecame cinemas. In its more moderate form the mood was merely one of\npraising natural pleasures, such as the enjoyment of nature and even the\nenjoyment of human nature. These are excellent things and this is an\nexcellent liberty; and yet it has its limitations.\n\nWe do not really want a religion that is right where we are right. What\nwe want is a religion that is right where we are wrong. In these current\nfashions it is not really a question of the religion allowing us\nliberty; but (at the best) of the liberty allowing us a religion. These\npeople merely take the modern mood, with much in it that is amiable and\nmuch that is anarchical and much that is merely dull and obvious, and\nthen require any creed to be cut down to fit that mood. But the mood\nwould exist even without the creed. They say they want a religion to be\nsocial, when they would be social without any religion. They say they\nwant a religion to be practical, when they would be practical without\nany religion. They say they want a religion acceptable to science, when\nthey would accept the science even if they did not accept the religion.\nThey say they want a religion like this because they are like this\nalready. They say they want it, when they mean that they could do\nwithout it.\n\nIt is a very different matter when a religion, in the real sense of a\nbinding thing, binds men to their morality when it is not identical with\ntheir mood. It is very different when some of the saints preached social\nreconciliation to fierce and raging factions who could hardly bear the\nsight of each others\u2019 faces. It was a very different thing when charity\nwas preached to pagans who really did not believe in it; just as it is a\nvery different thing now, when chastity is preached to new pagans who do\nnot believe in it. It is in those cases that we get the real grapple of\nreligion; and it is in those cases that we get the peculiar and solitary\ntriumph of the Catholic faith. It is not in merely being right when we\nare right, as in being cheerful or hopeful or humane. It is in having\nbeen right when we were wrong, and in the fact coming back upon us\nafterwards like a boomerang. One word that tells us what we do not know\noutweighs a thousand words that tell us what we do know. And the thing\nis all the more striking if we not only did not know it but could not\nbelieve it. It may seem a paradox to say that the truth teaches us more\nby the words we reject than by the words we receive. Yet the paradox is\na parable of the simplest sort and familiar to us all; any example might\nbe given of it. If a man tells us to avoid public houses, we think him a\ntiresome though perhaps a well-intentioned old party. If he tells us to\nuse public houses, we recognise that he has a higher morality and\npresents an ideal that is indeed lofty, but perhaps a little too simple\nand obvious to need defence. But if a man tells us to avoid the one\nparticular public house called The Pig and Whistle, on the left hand as\nyou turn round by the pond, the direction may seem very dogmatic and\narbitrary and showing insufficient process of argument. But if we then\nfling ourselves into The Pig and Whistle and are immediately poisoned\nwith the gin or smothered in the feather-bed and robbed of our money, we\nrecognise that the man who advised us did know something about it and\nhad a cultivated and scientific knowledge of the public houses of the\ndistrict. We think it even more, as we emerge half-murdered from The Pig\nand Whistle, if we originally rejected his warning as a silly\nsuperstition. The warning itself is almost more impressive if it was not\njustified by reasons, but only by results. There is something very\nnotable about a thing which is arbitrary when it is also accurate. We\nmay very easily forget, even while we fulfil, the advice that we thought\nwas self-evident sense. But nothing can measure our mystical and\nunfathomable reverence for the advice that we thought was nonsense.\n\nAs will be seen in a moment, I do not mean in the least that the\nCatholic Church is arbitrary in the sense of never giving reasons; but I\ndo mean that the convert is profoundly affected by the fact that, even\nwhen he did not see the reason, he lived to see that it was reasonable.\nBut there is something even more singular than this, which it will be\nwell to note as a part of the convert\u2019s experience. In many cases, as a\nmatter of fact, he did originally have a glimpse of the reasons, even if\nhe did not reason about them; but they were forgotten in the interlude\nwhen reason was clouded by rationalism. The point is not very easy to\nexplain, and I shall be obliged to take merely personal examples in\norder to explain it. I mean that we have often had a premonition as well\nas a warning; and the fact often comes back to us after we have\ndisregarded both. It is worth noting in connection with conversion,\nbecause the convert is often obstructed by a catchword which says that\nthe Church crushes the conscience. The Church does not crush any man\u2019s\nconscience. It is the man who crushes his conscience and then finds out\nthat it was right, when he has almost forgotten that he had one.\n\nI will take two examples out of the new movements: Socialism and\nSpiritualism. Now it is perfectly true that when I first began to think\nseriously about Socialism, I was a Socialist. But it is equally true,\nand more important than it sounds, that before I had ever heard of\nSocialism I was a strong anti-Socialist. I was what has since been\ncalled a Distributist, though I did not know it. When I was a child and\ndreamed the usual dreams about kings and clowns and robbers and\npolicemen, I always conceived all contentment and dignity as consisting\nin something compact and personal; in being king of the castle or\ncaptain of the pirate ship or the man who owned the shop or the robber\nwho was safe in the cavern. As I passed through boyhood I always\nimagined battles for justice as being the defence of special walls and\nhouses and high defiant shrines; and I embodied some of those crude but\ncoloured visions in a story called _The Napoleon of Notting Hill_. All\nthis happened, in fancy at least, when I had never heard of Socialism\nand was a much better judge of it.\n\nShades of the prison-house began to close and with them came a merely\nmechanical discussion as to how we were all to get out of prison. _Then_\nindeed, in the darkness of the dungeon, was heard the voice of Mr.\nSidney Webb, telling us that we could only conceivably get out of our\nCapitalist captivity with the patent Chubb key of Collectivism. Or to\nuse a more exact metaphor, he told us that we could only escape from our\ndark and filthy cells of industrial slavery by melting all our private\nlatchkeys into one gigantic latchkey as large as a battering ram. We did\nnot really like giving up our little private keys or local attachments\nor love of our own possessions; but we were quite convinced that social\njustice must be done somehow and could only be done socialistically. I\ntherefore became a Socialist in the old days of the Fabian Society; and\nso I think did everybody else worth talking about\u2014except the Catholics.\nAnd the Catholics were an insignificant handful, the dregs of a dead\nreligion, essentially a superstition. About this time appeared the\nEncyclical on Labour by Leo XIII; and nobody in our really well-informed\nworld took much notice of it. Certainly the Pope spoke as strongly as\nany Socialist could speak when he said that Capitalism \u201claid on the\ntoiling millions a yoke little better than slavery.\u201d But as the Pope was\nnot a Socialist it was obvious that he had not read the right Socialist\nbooks and pamphlets; and we could not expect the poor old gentleman to\nknow what every young man knew by this time\u2014that Socialism was\ninevitable. That was a long time ago, and by a gradual process, mostly\npractical and political, which I have no intention of describing here,\nmost of us began to realise that Socialism was not inevitable; that it\nwas not really popular; that it was not the only way, or even the right\nway, of restoring the rights of the poor. We have come to the conclusion\nthat the obvious cure for private property being given to the few is to\nsee that it is given to the many; not to see that it is taken away from\neverybody or given in trust to the dear good politicians. Then, having\ndiscovered that fact as a fact, we look back at Leo XIII and discover in\nhis old and dated document, of which we took no notice at the time, that\nhe was saying then exactly what we are saying now. \u201cAs many as possible\nof the working classes should become owners.\u201d That is what I mean by the\njustification of arbitrary warning. If the Pope had said then exactly\nwhat we said and wanted him to say, we should not have really reverenced\nhim then and we should have entirely repudiated him afterwards. He would\nonly have marched with the million who accepted Fabianism; and with them\nhe would have marched away. But when he saw a distinction we did not see\nthen, and do see now, that distinction is decisive. It marks a\ndisagreement more convincing than a hundred agreements. It is not that\nhe was right when we were right, but that he was right when we were\nwrong.\n\nThe superficial critic of these things, noting that I am no longer a\nSocialist, will always say, \u201cOf course, you are a Catholic and you are\nnot allowed to be a Socialist.\u201d To which I answer emphatically, No. That\nis missing the whole point. The Church anticipated my experience; but it\nwas experience and not only obedience. I am quite sure now from merely\nliving in this world, and seeing something of Catholic peasants as well\nas Collectivist officials, that it is happier and healthier for most men\nto become owners than for them to give up all ownership to those\nofficials. I do not follow the State Socialist in his extreme belief in\nthe State; but I have not ceased to be credulous about the State merely\nbecause I have become credulous about the Church. I believe less in the\nState because I know more of the statesmen. I cannot believe small\nproperty to be impossible after I have seen it. I cannot believe State\nmanagement to be impeccable after I have seen it. It is not any\nauthority, except what St. Thomas calls the authority of the senses,\nwhich tells me that the mere community of goods is a solution that is\ntoo much of a simplification. The Church has taught me, but I could not\nunteach myself; I have learned because I have lived, and I could not\nunlearn it. If I ceased to be a Catholic I could not again be a\nCommunist.\n\nAs it happens, my story was almost exactly the same in connection with\nSpiritualism. There again I was modern when I was young, but not when I\nwas very young. While I had a vague but innocent nursery religion still\nhanging about me, I regarded the first signs of these psychic and\npsychological things with mere repugnance. I hated the whole notion of\nmesmerism and magnetic tricks with the mind; I loathed their bulging\neyes and stiff attitudes and unnatural trances and the whole bag of\ntricks. When I saw a girl I admired set down to crystal-gazing, I was\nfurious; I hardly knew why. Then came the period when I wanted to know\nwhy, when I examined my own reasons and found I had none. I saw that it\nwas inconsistent in science to revere research and forbid psychical\nresearch. I saw that men of science were more and more accepting these\nthings and I went along with my scientific age. I was never exactly a\nSpiritualist, but I almost always defended Spiritualism. I experimented\nwith a planchette, quite enough to convince myself finally that some\nthings do happen that are not in the ordinary sense natural. I have\nsince come to think, for reasons that would require too much space to\ndetail, that it is not so much supernatural as unnatural and even\nanti-natural. I believe the experiments were bad for me; I believe they\nare bad for the other experimentalists. But I found out the fact long\nbefore I found out the Catholic Church or the Catholic view of that\nquestion. Only, as I have said, when I do find it out, I find it rather\nimpressive; for it is not the religion that was right when I was right,\nbut the religion that was right when I was wrong.\n\nBut I wish to note about both those cases that the common cant in the\nmatter is emphatically not true. It is not true that the Church crushed\nmy natural conscience; it is not true that the Church asked me to give\nup my individual ideal. It is not true that Collectivism was ever my\n_ideal_. I do not believe it was ever really anybody else\u2019s ideal. It\nwas not an ideal but a compromise; it was a concession to practical\neconomists who told us that we could not prevent poverty except by\nsomething uncommonly like slavery. State Socialism never came natural to\nus; it never convinced us that it was natural; it convinced us that it\nwas necessary. In exactly the same way Spiritualism never came as\nsomething natural but only as something necessary. Each told us that it\nwas _the only way_ into the promised land, in the one case of a future\nlife and the other of life in the future. We did not like government\ndepartments and tickets and registers; but we were told there was no\nother way of reaching a better society. We did not like dark rooms and\ndubious mediums and ladies tied up with rope, but we were told there was\nno other way to reach a better world. We were ready to crawl down a\nmunicipal drain-pipe or through a spiritual sewer, because it was the\nonly way to better things; the only way even to prove that there were\nbetter things. But the drain-pipe had never figured in our dreams like a\ntower of ivory or a house of gold, or even like the robbers\u2019 tower of\nour romantic boyhood or the solid and comfortable house of our matured\nexperience. The Faith had not only been true all along, but it had been\ntrue to the first and the last things, to our unspoilt instincts and our\nconclusive experience; and it had condemned nothing but an interlude of\nintellectual snobbishness and surrender to the persuasions of pedantry.\nIt had condemned nothing but what we ourselves should have come to\ncondemn, though we might have condemned it too late.\n\nThe Church therefore never made my individual ideal impossible; it would\nbe truer to say that she was the first to make it possible. The\nEncyclical\u2019s ideal had been much nearer my own instinct than the ideal I\nhad consented to substitute for it. The Catholic suspicion of\ntable-rapping was much more like my own original suspicion than it was\nlike my own subsequent surrender. But in those two cases it is surely\nclear that the Catholic Church plays exactly the part that she professes\nto play: something that knows what we cannot be expected to know, but\nshould probably accept if we really knew it. I am not in this case, any\nmore than in the greater part of this study, referring to the things\nthat are really best worth knowing. The supernatural truths are\nconnected with the mystery of grace and are a matter for theologians;\nadmittedly a rather delicate and difficult matter even for them. But\nthough the transcendental truths are the most important they are not\nthose that best illustrate this particular point, which concerns the\ndecisions which can be more or less tested by experience. And of all\nthose things that can be tested by experience I could tell the same\nstory: that there was a time when I thought the Catholic doctrine was\nmeaningless, but that even that was not the very earliest time, which\nwas a time of greater simplicity, when I had a sort of glimpse of the\nmeaning though I had never even heard of the doctrine. The world\ndeceived me and the Church would at any time have undeceived me. The\nthing that a man may really shed at last like a superstition is the\nfashion of this world that passes away.\n\nI could give many other examples, but I fear they would inevitably tend\nto be egotistical examples. Throughout this brief study I am under the\ndouble difficulty that all roads lead to Rome, but that each pilgrim is\ntempted to talk as if all roads had been like his own road. I could\nwrite a great deal, for instance, about my early wrestlings with the\nrather ridiculous dilemma which was put to me in my youth by the\noptimist and the pessimist. I promptly and properly refused to be a\npessimist; and I therefore fell into the way of calling myself an\noptimist. Now I should not call myself either, and what is more\nimportant I can see that virtue may be entangled in both. But I think it\nis entangled; and I think that an older and simpler truth can loosen the\ntangle. But the point in the present connection is this; that before I\nhad ever heard of optimists or pessimists I was something much more like\nwhat I am now than could be covered by either of those two pedantic\nwords. In my childhood I assumed that cheerfulness was a good thing, but\nI also assumed that it was a bad thing not to protest against things\nthat are really bad. After an interlude of intellectual formalism and\nfalse antithesis, I have come back to being able to think what I could\nthen only feel. But I have realised that the protest can rise to a much\nmore divine indignation and that the cheerfulness is but a faint\nsuggestion of a much more divine joy. It is not so much that I have\nfound I was wrong as that I have found out why I was right.\n\nIn this we find the supreme example of the exception that proves the\nrule. The rule, of which I have given a rough outline in the previous\nchapter, is that the Catholic philosophy is a universal philosophy found\nto fit anywhere with human nature and the nature of things. But even\nwhen it does not fit in with human nature it is found in the long run to\nfavour something yet more fitting. It generally suits us, but where it\ndoes not suit us we learn to suit it, so long as we are alive enough to\nlearn anything. In the rare cases where a reasonable man can really say\nthat it cuts across his intelligence, it will generally be found that it\nis true, not only to truth, but even to his deepest instinct for truth.\nEducation does not cease with conversion, but rather begins. The man\ndoes not cease to study because he has become convinced that certain\nthings are worth studying; and these things include not only the\northodox values but even the orthodox vetoes. Strangely enough, in a\nsense, the forbidden fruit is often more fruitful than the free. It is\nmore fruitful in the sense of a fascinating botanical study of why it is\nreally poisonous. Thus, for the sake of an example, all healthy people\nhave an instinct against usury; and the Church has only confirmed that\ninstinct. But to learn how to define usury, to study what it is and to\nargue why it is wrong, is to have a liberal education, not only in\npolitical economy, but in the philosophy of Aristotle and the history of\nthe Councils of Lateran. There almost always is a human reason for all\nthe merely human advice given by the Church to humanity; and to find out\nthe principle of the thing is, among other things, one of the keenest of\nintellectual pleasures. But in any case the fact remains that the Church\nis right in the main in being tolerant in the main; but that where she\nis intolerant she is most right and even most reasonable. Adam lived in\na garden where a thousand mercies were granted to him; but the one\ninhibition was the greatest mercy of all.\n\nIn the same way, let the convert, or still more the semi-convert, face\nany one fact that does seem to him to deface the Catholic scheme as a\nfalsehood; and if he faces it long enough he will probably find that it\nis the greatest truth of all. I have found this myself in that extreme\nlogic of free will which is found in the fallen angels and the\npossibility of perdition. Such things are altogether beyond my\nimagination, but the lines of logic go out towards them in my reason.\nIndeed, I can undertake to justify the whole Catholic theology, if I be\ngranted to start with the supreme sacredness and value of two things:\nReason and Liberty. It is an illuminating comment on current\nanti-Catholic talk that they are the two things which most people\nimagine to be forbidden to Catholics.\n\nBut the best way of putting what I mean is to repeat what I have already\nsaid, in connection with the satisfying scope of Catholic universality.\nI cannot picture these theological ultimates and I have not the\nauthority or learning to define them. But I still put the matter to\nmyself thus: Supposing I were so miserable as to lose the Faith, could I\ngo back to that cheap charity and crude optimism which says that every\nsin is a blunder, that evil cannot conquer or does not even exist? I\ncould no more go back to those cushioned chapels than a man who has\nregained his sanity would willingly go back to a padded cell. I might\ncease to believe in a God of any kind; but I could not cease to think\nthat a God who had made men and angels free was finer than one who\ncoerced them into comfort. I might cease to believe in a future life of\nany kind; but I could not cease to think it was a finer doctrine that we\nchoose and make our future life than that it is fitted out for us like\nan hotel and we are taken there in a celestial omnibus as compulsory as\na Black Maria. I know that Catholicism is too large for me, and I have\nnot yet explored its beautiful or terrible truths. But I know that\nUniversalism is too small for me; and I could not creep back into that\ndull safety, who have looked on the dizzy vision of liberty.\n\n\n\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\n\n\n                      A NOTE ON PRESENT PROSPECTS\n\n\n\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\n\n\n                               CHAPTER VI\n\n                      A NOTE ON PRESENT PROSPECTS\n\n\nOn reconsidering these notes I find them to be far too personal; yet I\ndo not know how any conception of conversion can be anything else. I do\nnot profess to have any particular knowledge about the actual conditions\nand calculations of the Catholic movement at the moment. I do not\nbelieve that anybody else has any knowledge of what it will be like the\nnext moment. Statistics are generally misleading and predictions are\npractically always false. But there is always a certain faint tradition\nof the thing called common sense; and so long as a glimmer of it\nremains, in spite of all journalism and State instruction, it is\npossible to appreciate what we call a reality. Nobody in his five wits\nwill deny that at this moment conversion is a reality. Everybody knows\nthat his own social circle, which fifty years ago would have been a firm\nterritory of Protestantism, perhaps hardening into rationalism or\nindifference but doing even that slowly and without conscious\nconvulsion, has just lately shown a curious disposition to collapse\nsoftly and suddenly, first in one unexpected place and then in another,\nmaking great holes in that solid land and letting up the leaping flames\nof what was counted an extinct volcano. It is in everybody\u2019s experience,\nwhether he is sad or glad or mad or merely indifferent, that these\nconversions seem to come of themselves in the most curious and\napparently accidental quarters; Tom\u2019s wife, Harry\u2019s brother, Fanny\u2019s\nfunny sister-in-law who went on the stage, Sam\u2019s eccentric uncle who\nstudied military strategy\u2014of each of these isolated souls we hear\nsuddenly that it is isolated no longer. It is one with the souls\nmilitant and triumphant.\n\nAgainst these things (which we know as facts and do not merely read as\nstatistics) there is admittedly something to be set. It is what is\ncommonly called leakage; and with a paragraph upon this point I will\nclose these pages. Father Ronald Knox, with that felicity that is so\ngood that the wit almost seems like good luck, has remarked that the\nCatholic Church really does have to get on by hook or crook. That is, by\nthe hook of the fisherman and the crook of the shepherd; and it is the\nhook that has to catch the convert and the crook that has to keep him.\nHe said in this connection that the conversions to the Church just now\nwere so numerous that they would be obvious and overwhelming, like a\nlandslide, if it were not that they were neutralised in mere numbers, or\nrather lessened in their full claim of numbers, by a certain amount of\nfalling away in other directions. Now the first fact to realise is that\nit is in other directions, in totally different directions. Some people,\nespecially young people, abandon practising Catholicism. But none of\nthem abandon it for Protestantism. All of them practically abandon it\nfor paganism. Most of them abandon it for something that is really\nrather too simple to be called an _ism_ of any kind. They abandon it for\nthings and not theories; and when they do have theories they may\nsometimes be Bolshevist theories or Futurist theories, but they are\npractically never the theological theories of Protestantism. I will not\nsay they leave Catholicism for beer and skittles; for Catholicism has\nnever discouraged those Christian institutions as Protestantism\nsometimes has. They leave it to have a high old time; and considering\nwhat a muddle we have made of modern morality, they can hardly be\nblamed. But this reaction, which is only that of a section, is in its\nnature a reaction of the young and as such I do not think it will last.\nI know it is the cant phrase of the old rationalists that their reason\nprevents a return to the Faith, but it is false: it is no longer reason\nbut rather passion.\n\nThis may sound a sweeping statement, but if it be examined it will be\nfound not unjust, and certainly not unsympathetic. Nothing is more\nnotable if we really study the characteristics of the rising generation\nthan the fact that they are _not_ acting upon any exact and definite\nphilosophy, such as those which have made the revolutions of the past.\nIf they are anarchical, they are not anarchist. The dogmatic anarchism\nof the middle of the nineteenth century is not the creed they hold, or\neven the excuse they offer. They have a considerable negative revolt\nagainst religion, a negative revolt against negative morality. They have\na feeling, which is not unreasonable, that to commit themselves to the\nCatholic citizenship is to take responsibilities that continually act as\nrestraints. But they do not maintain anything like a contrary system of\nspiritual citizenship, or moral responsibility. For instance, it is\nperfectly natural that they should want to act naturally. But they do\nnot want to act naturally according to any intellectual theory of the\nreliability of Nature. On the contrary, their young and brilliant\nliterary representatives are very prone to press upon us the crudity and\ncruelty of Nature. That is the moral of Mr. Aldous Huxley, and of many\nothers. State to them any of the consistent theories of the supreme\nclaim of Nature upon us, such as the pantheistic idea of God in all\nnatural things; or the Nietzschean theory that nature is evolving\nsomething with superior claims to our own; or any other definable\ndefence of the natural process itself, and they will almost certainly\nreject it as something unproved or exploded. They do not want to have an\nexact imitation of the laws of the physical universe; they want to have\ntheir own way, a much more intelligible desire. But the result is that\nthey are, after all, at a disadvantage in face of those other young\npeople who have satisfied their reason by a scheme that makes the\nuniverse reasonable.\n\nFor that is the very simple explanation of the affair. In so far as\nthere is really a secession among the young, it is but a part of the\nsame process as that conversion of the young, of which I wrote in the\nfirst chapter. The rising generation sees the real issue; and those who\nare ready for it rally, and those who are not ready for it scatter. But\nthere can be but one end to a war between a solid and a scattered army.\nIt is not a controversy between two philosophies, as was the Catholic\nand the Calvinist, or the Catholic and the Materialist. It is a\ncontroversy between philosophers and philanderers. I do not say it in\ncontempt; I have much more sympathy with the person who leaves the\nChurch for a love affair than with one who leaves it for a long-winded\nGerman theory to prove that God is evil or that children are a sort of\nmorbid monkey. But the very laws of life are against the endurance of a\nrevolt that rests on nothing but natural passion; it is bound to change\nin its proportion with the coming of experience; and, at the worst, it\nwill become a battle between bad Catholics and good Catholics, with the\ngreat dome over all.\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n                          Transcriber\u2019s Notes\n\n \u2022 Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.\n \u2022 Typographical errors were silently corrected.\n \u2022 Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only when\n   a predominant form was found in this book.\n \u2022 Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).","title":"The Catholic Church and conversion","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":24966}