"The evil of infallibility is that it cannot retract, or confess to error. The Pope has been endowed with this fatal gift of infallibility, a personal charisma, and through it he has become an incarnation of the Divine Wisdom, even as the Dalai Lama becomes an incarnation of the Buddha. To the historian, the heretical Pope Honorius, condemned equally by Councils, and by his successors, is sufficient to disprove your claims. But the Church can triumph over facts of history. What it cannot triumph over is the spirit of the age. You have a large body of adherents, who describe themselves as Catholic without knowing what the term implies. You have a smaller, body, whose principal business in life seems to lie in reconciling, by innumerable sophistries and subterfuges, your dogmas with the modern world. The smallest body of all is made up of those of your adherents, who accept you as the sole fount of truth. But in each of these three sections there is not a solitary individual who accepts your teaching without colouring it with his own ideas. Each will explain a dogma from the point of view of his own prejudices, and only accepts it with a kind of mental reservation. Of course it always has been so. Your peril lies in the rapid exchange of ideas which characterises modern life, the ease of communication, and the lack of any effective machinery for preventing their diffusion. The moment any crisis arises you cease to act as a solid body; and the action of your leaders has far less influence upon public opinion than the action of your laity excusing, or justifying, or explaining, the multitudinous diversities which exist among you. If this lay action be not public, it is the more insidious. I have noticed that when any important pronouncement is published from the chair of Peter, your lay apologists make no sign. There is an ominous silence. All are disenchanted. All are suspect. They seem to turn away, silent and troubled, from what they imagined to be the ultimate authority, and seek for their justification at the tribunal of their private conscience."
"Oh!" interrupted Leo brusquely, "I for one do not regret that these gentlemen should be made uncomfortable. A lay theologian has no adequate reason for existing. It is altogether undesirable that laymen, mere amateurs, should concern themselves with these things."
"Eh bien!" said Renan. "It is entirely owing to the laity that a certain type of converts accrues to your ranks. Liberal Catholicism, though you and I know what a vain, chimerical, and ridiculous thing it is, is, as it were, the first step. Take Newman's theory of 'development' as an example. Newman is the prophet dearest to the heart of laymen; because, in a sense, his works are popular. The Anglican may read him as a classic, and, while enchanted with the magic of that exquisite prose, lays himself open to the attacks of a peculiarly subtile and insidious mind. A certain temper is created in him. He becomes receptive of Catholic ideas, and one watches him progressing more or less unconsciously toward Rome, blind to his master's casuistry by reason of the ineffable charm. He is like one implected with a morbid craving for some narcotic drug, gradually increasing the dose as its effect lessens. Liberal Catholics are the lures for such. Your Holiness had good reason for saying that the Church had been founded by successive heresies. The first step to a conversion is always a misunderstanding."
"It is perfectly true," said Leo; "but Liberal Catholicism is finished. Only Newman's hat protects him from censure. The doctrine of development ceased to have any value after the definition of infallibility. It was valuable as leading up to the definition, but afterwards it became an excuse for the introduction of novelties. Its sole value now is as a proselytising medium. But, Monsieur, why do we continue? The Church is dissolving; even Christianity itself seems to be dissolving, to take on a fluid, personal form. That singular body, the Society of Friends, alone seems to be untouched by the solvent of criticism. It has nothing upon which the solvent may act, no dogmas, no sacraments, no depository of tradition, no hierarchical organisation. It recognises only the inward spirit, that informing and subtile essence which alone seems capable of interpreting the righteousness of God, a religion of silence, and of sudden illumination, a religion of patient hope, of resignation, of a tacit understanding."
"Ah," said Renan, smiling, "a religion without forms, without enthusiasms, is scarcely one to satisfy all men. It is fascinating to consider the future of Christianity. After Catholicism no other form will satisfy the Latins, and if criticism destroys Protestantism with its infallible Bible, as it is destroying Catholicism with its infallible Pope, these sophisticated nations will scarcely replace one object of worship by another. You have said that a religion needs an uncritical people, a people who do not think; so for any further development we must turn toward a less complete civilisation, to a virgin soil. Perhaps we find this in Russia. I can imagine that dreamy and unsophisticated people, who have kept unpolluted through the ages the temperament of wonder, reforming and developing the Greek Church. When their Revolution comes, whether it be gradual and humane, or a violent upheaval of disastrous passion, the Church will be metamorphosed; the stock only will remain, and new boughs will be grafted upon it. I can imagine a great growth because the field has lain fallow for so long, and the modern spirit will scarcely touch it, not only because the new Christianity will be more flexible in itself, but also because the people will have inherited our results without having endured our conflicts."
The clouds in front of them suddenly trembled and parted; the figure of a man appeared.
"Mocenni!" exclaimed Leo.
He rose and went toward the newcomer.
"Who is Pope?" he enquired.
And the Cardinal Mocenni answered him in ill-humour.