This provincial attitude towards the Papal position appears in all manner of phrases scattered up and down this part of Mr. Wells’s work, as, for instance, that “men of faith and wisdom believe in growth and their fellow-men; but Priests, even such Priests as Gregory VII, believe in the false ‘efficiency’ of an imposed discipline.” Here is a phrase which might have been written by a man in his sleep as to the first part, and which is composed of mere chapel doctrine as to the second—“believing in growth and one’s fellow-men” means nothing; nothing whatsoever. It is gas. And, on the other hand, it is not a special sort of lurking animal called “Priests,” who believe in the efficiency of an imposed discipline, it is everyone who ever organized Man for any end whatsoever; from coming down in time for breakfast to the salvation of the human race.
I wonder that a man of Mr. Wells’s desire for intellectual distinction should lend himself to such things.
But the worst historical blunder in all this is the repetition, at this time of day, that the simple faith of the Dark Ages gradually broke down through the increasing knowledge and intellectual activity of the Middle Ages until at last it came to the complete disruption of the Reformation.
That sort of thing was already blown upon when Froude was writing a lifetime ago. To-day it lingers in a local tradition, but it has quite disappeared—and for ever—from intelligent discussion of that great religious catastrophe, from which we are at last, perhaps, slowly recovering.
We all know, of course, what really happened. A civilization bursting into increasing vigour, the rise of nations and of vernacular literatures, an expansion of knowledge, all these tended, as does all growth, to disrupt unity. Something much worse than any good force (and learning is good), the catastrophe of the Black Death, shook society, yet unity was preserved. Even the great schism of the fourteenth century was healed.
The shipwreck called “the Reformation” came, as all shipwrecks come, by blundering. So little was it inevitable, that once it had taken place the warning was immediately taken to heart. The Church recovered itself, only failed by an error of French policy to recover all Europe, is still (if Mr. Wells will look about him) remarkably alive, and is increasing its hold upon the intelligence of Europe.
Why, that is the very commonplace of our time! Yet, in these pages Mr. Wells talks as though he were the contemporary of those worthy gentlemen who cheered for the victory of Garibaldi in Exeter Hall and thought the Faith would die with Pio Nono.
Thus he discovers with joy in certain ecclesiastics of the Dark Ages “the spirit of Jesus still alive in them” (p. 422). He is persuaded that Salerno (i.e. Physical Science) “cast a baleful light upon Rome” (p. 425). He will have it that the Church “had become dogmatic,” as though (Great Heavens!) it were not dogmatic in the Earliest Fathers. He will have it that “Jesus of Nazareth” and His preaching was “overlaid,” and, worst of all, he’s back at the old nonsense that “Priests”—that is the organization of the Church—think only about “their own power,” and not about the Divine, unique thing which it is their business to preserve.
What on earth does Mr. Wells think that the average Catholic from the beginning (say, in the second century) to the present day has accepted in the matter of the Hierarchy? Does he think that this vast body called the Catholic Church (vast in time, as in space, as in numbers) is a pack of dupes, run by a few supernaturally cunning rogues? That he should think us wrong and mistaken, subject to illusion in our doctrines, is fair matter for discussion; but the idea of our being fascinated by insincere conjurers is asinine.
That word is violent. I will repeat it. For it is exact. It is asinine to judge of the Hierarchy (Innocent III, Gregory the Great, Anselm, Langton, Ximenes, Bossuet, Leo XIII—I pick at random) that it is a conspiracy of charlatans, and of the laity (St. Monica, St. Louis, Lamoricière, O’Connell, Maritain, St. Francis, Pasteur) that they are gaping yokels who swallow any tale.