Apart from the fact that the Pope and some lesser religious leaders have denounced and deplored the conflict, and that a comprehensive answer to Mr. McCabe's question would somewhat modify the implied moral impotence of the clergy, we might ask the same questions of the leaders of secularist morality. What have they done to prevent the conflict? Why have their intellectual giants failed to impress upon mankind the folly of war? They have had freedom of speech and action, they have
wielded incisive criticism and strength of invective. They have had many decades in which to put into practice the theory of the greatest happiness of the greatest number. But the problem of the persistence of war has somehow escaped atheists and rationalists, just as it has eluded theologians and revivalists.
We may admit that the clergy are more blameworthy than the orators of rationalism. If the teachings of Jesus Christ are to be applied to the art of war, then the art of war is doomed to extinction. If the Church be an international society, based on mutual love and peace, then the perpetration of war on members of the Church is clearly wrong. If the ideals of the Christian life be charity, gentleness, forgiveness, non-resistance to evil, then all war is a violation of the faith. The question is not unimportant. It is not a subject which you can toy with, or put aside as having no immediate bearing on life and duty. If the literal application of the teaching of Christ to social and political life be impossible, then the rationalists are right when they urge us to drop a religion which we profess on Sunday and repudiate on Monday. If the fault lies not in the teaching itself but in the feebleness of the Church, then the Church
must clearly be counted a failure. If the cause of the discrepancy is to be found merely in the slowness and obstinacy of the human soul in following the path of righteousness, the practical realization of the Christian ideal will be but a question of time and effort.
The attitude of Christianity towards war may at best be described as a chapter of inconsistencies. “Can it be lawful to handle the sword,” asked Tertullian, “when the Lord Himself has declared that he who uses the sword shall perish by it?” By disarming Peter, he stated, the Lord “disarmed every soldier from that time forward.” To Origen, Christians were children of peace who, for the sake of Jesus, shunned the temptations of war, and whose only weapon was prayer. The difficulty of reconciling the profession of Christianity with the practice of war constantly exercised the minds of the early Christians. St. Basil advocated a compromise in the form of temporary exclusion from the sacrament after military service. St. Augustine came to the conclusion that the qualities of a good Christian and a good warrior were not incompatible. Gradually the dilemma ceased to trouble the minds of Christians as the needs of the State and citizenship of this
world were recognized. After some centuries the Church not only approved of war, but herself became one of the most powerful instigators to military conquest. The Crusades and the ceaseless wars of religious intolerance became “holy” as the spiritual objection to bloodshed receded before the triumphant demands of primitive passions.
Now, as heretofore, we have episcopal reminders of the blessings of war. “May it not be,” wrote the Bishop of London soon after the outbreak of the war in 1914, “that this cup of hardship which we drink together will turn out to be the very draught which we need? Has there not crept a softness over the nation, a passion for amusement, a love of luxury among the rich, and of mere physical comfort among the middle class?”
He leaves the questions unanswered, and incidentally omits to dwell on the shortcomings of the poor in the direction of softness and luxury. He continues:
Not such was the nation which made the Empire, which crushed the Armada, which braved hardships of old, and drove English hearts of oak seaward round the world. We believe the old spirit is here just the same, but it needed a purifying, cleansing
draught to bring it back to its old strength and purity again, and for that second reason the cup which our Father has given us, shall we not drink it?