The contrast here is as great as that between civilization and barbarism itself. Certainly definition, like any other activity, can be carried to excess, as Pope Leo XIII recognized in his Encyclical on Scholasticism, wherein he mentions the “too great subtlety” of certain of the mediæval doctors. But, as certainly, it is the essential intellectual difference between civilized and barbarous man that the barbarian willingly accepts vagueness of mind, whereas the civilized man is continually striving to seize and formulate the laws which govern the universe about him in so far as his reason is in any way capable of comprehending them.
Secondly, there is another vast difference in the urgency of the social and political considerations making for the two movements. As we saw in the first chapter, mediæval man had built up a society in which all men had definite functions, and in which destructive competition between classes and individuals was reduced to a minimum. Despite insufficient checks upon cruelty and brutality, and despite the scantiness of its knowledge of history and of natural science, the time had produced a general level of craftsmanship as unknown since the sixteenth century as it was unequalled before the twelfth (the short best period of Greece only excepted). In promoting the happiness of mankind as a whole, mediæval society seems never to have been equalled. Certainly the cheerfulness of the memorials which the thirteenth century has left us is unique. And in this society the Church was central and indispensable. To the educated mediæval man (who, while inferior to his modern colleagues in range of information, at the same time surpassed us in clarity and rationality)—to the educated mediæval man, I say, it was evident that to shatter the Church by attacking her Faith and Morals would be to shatter his balanced society altogether, and set men preying wolfishly upon one another. The common man, by a sort of instinct, was equally determined upon the point. And what is more, their fear was justified, as the last three centuries have abundantly proved, although the age of expansion has postponed to our own day the fulness of the evil of strife between man and man. Therefore the men of the Middle Ages were correct in resisting attacks upon the Church as attacks upon all they valued in civil society as well as in religion.
The secular case for Prohibition is not nearly so strong as the secular case for the Inquisition. It might be argued that industrialism is central and fundamental in our society, and that Prohibition, which is said to aim at “greater industrial efficiency,” therefore resembles the Inquisition in being the servant of the fundamental thing in the life of the community in which it has arisen. But even if the truth of this idea, so far as it goes, be conceded, still obstinate facts remain. Industrialism flourished before Prohibition. Furthermore, it remains to be seen whether the attempt to abolish one of the chief pleasures of mankind will result to the advantage even of the industrial system. It is at least equally probable if the industrial labourer were to be really deprived of his liquor that his energy would decline because of a slackening in the zest for life characteristic of Christendom. Certainly the history and present condition of the Prohibitionist Mohammedans indicate energy far inferior to that of Christian men, merry with their beer, their cider and their wine. Even if an increasing energy on the part of the industrial labourer under Prohibition be assumed, still there is no assurance that he will concentrate that energy on his work. In such a case, it is at least equally probable that he will find the dulness and monotony of his life, already devastatingly dull and monotonous, so increased under Prohibition that he will decide to expend a large part of his vigour in industrial strife or in revolutionary movements. For the ordinary modern man does not love industrialism as mediæval man loved the world which he had made. The thirteenth century guildsman would cheerfully fight for his guild and his customs, the modern man sacrifices himself to the life of the factory as heavily as the heathen Semites sacrificed men to Moloch. The Inquisition was a measure of defence. Its fires burnt in behalf of things which the mass of mankind saw and felt to be good. The Prohibition movement is an act of aggression, of questionable value even for its own ugly purpose. The one Prohibition counterpart of the twelfth century spontaneous popular lynchings of heretics was the bar-smashing activities of the virago Carrie Nation.
Last of all, there is, at the very least, a difference in the degree of contradiction to the teaching and example of Our Lord (as recorded in the Canonical Gospels), between the Inquisition and the Prohibition movement. So as to meet possible opposition half way, let us abandon the conclusions of the Rev. A. Vermeersch, S.J., who seems to hold that there was no contradiction between the Inquisition on the one hand and the doctrine and example of Our Lord on the other. The present writer must confess that the learned Jesuit’s forceful work is somewhat weakened by traces of a curious obliquity of mind, as when he defines “religious liberty” as “the liberty of the true religion!” For the sake of the arguments against the Prohibitionists, let us rest our case upon the conclusions of Vacandard, whose book is entrenched behind an array of “Nihil Obstat” and “Imprimatur” from Roman Catholic ecclesiastical authority equal in impressiveness to that displayed by Vermeersch. Vacandard calls the Inquisitorial forms of procedure “despotic and barbarous,” and flatly says that “severe penalties, like the stake and confiscation ... were alien to the spirit of the Gospel.” Nevertheless, the contradiction between Inquisitorial severity and the “spirit of the Gospel” must to some extent be qualified. The logical conclusion is irresistible that if (as all Christians must) we assume Our Lord’s doctrine and example to be of inestimable value to mankind, we must admit that any attempt to pervert that doctrine and example so as to make Our Blessed Lord say and do as he did not is a more serious matter than any crime recognized by law. Furthermore, this argument from reason is, in a measure, supported by authority in the person of Our Lord himself because of the extreme bitterness with which he denounced the Pharisees for perverting religion.
On the other hand, the contradiction between Prohibition and the Gospels is complete and absolute. According to the Gospels, Our Lord spent most of his time in the society of men and women. Especially he hallowed, by his continual use of it, the adornment of social life by wine, so much so that his enemies called him “a gluttonous man and a wine-bibber.”[46] We find him working a miracle so that a wedding party, including himself, might be abundantly supplied with wine ... as if any wedding party since the creation would have cared whether or not they were indefinitely supplied with grape-juice. He did even more—he made wine a part of the Sacrament—the one ceremonial act which he prescribed. Bacchus-Dionysus also, so the pagan Greeks taught, had made wine a sacrament of fellowship, human and divine. In contrast with the dull and repulsive fanaticism taught in so-called Christian Protestant churches in the United States to-day, the traditional Christian, like the heathen worshipper of Bacchus, seeks and has ever sought communion with his God in the drinking of wine.
FOOTNOTES:
[37] Isaiah, chap. v, verse 2.
[38] “This and That and the Other,” Hilaire Belloc, pp. 18, 19.
[39] Chesterton on Shaw, p. 43.
[40] “Thought and Expression in the Sixteenth Century,” by Henry Osborn Taylor, published by Macmillan Co., New York. 1920. Chapter on Calvin.