The Progress of the Century

by Unknown

THE SOCIAL MOVEMENT

Through the whole century one line of thought and action has been gradually disengaging itself from all others and dominating them. That is the social movement, or the tendency towards a more evenly just and natural conception of all the relations that arise from the common dwelling of mankind in organized society. It has long taken the form of institutions and plans for the betterment of the conditions of the people, of woman, of all who suffer or think they suffer from the actual organization of society. If there is something Utopian in certain plans or hopes, there is too much that is justifiable at the root of other attempts to reorganize our social conditions. Not to speak of the undesirable inheritances of the past, the new conditions created for the common man by the spread of industrialism and commercialism have often been painful in the extreme, and have aroused both violent protests and deep sympathy. By the help of God we have abolished the reproach of slavery in every civilized land, but we hear from the laboring multitudes a vague cry that they are already in the throes of a return to that accursed institution.

Here the doctrines of Catholicism are eminently in accord with the right conception of human nature, the functions of authority and mutual help or charity, the duty to live, and the right to all the necessary means for that end. She is sympathetic, historically and naturally, to the toiling masses, who, after all, form everywhere the bulk of her adherents, and have been always the most docile and affectionate of her members. It is she who created in the world the practical working idea of a common humanity, the basis of all genuine social improvement. The trials of Catholicism have come more often from the luxury and the sin of those in high places than from the disaffection of its great masses. As this movement has gathered force, and passed from theories into the domain of action, the Catholic Church, through her head, has followed it with attention and respect. The whole pontificate of Leo XIII. is remarkable for acts and documents which have passed into the history of social endeavor in the nineteenth century. His personal charities, large and enlightened, are as nothing in comparison with the far-reaching acts like the refusal to condemn the association of the Knights of Labor. His encyclical on the Condition of Workingmen recalls the only possible lines of a final concord between labor and capital—the spirit and teachings of Jesus Christ, the best Friend our common humanity ever had. In the same way, his latest encyclical on Jesus Christ, with which the religious history of the century closes, emphasizes the true basis for the restoration of peace and harmony and justice between the poor and the rich, between the producers of capital and the capital that stimulates and regulates production. We may be confident that the papacy of the future will not show less enlightenment and sympathy in its attempts to solve these delicate and grave problems with the least injustice and the greatest charity.

LIGHTS AND SHADOWS

It would be idle to deny or to palliate the many shadows that fall across the history of Catholicism in the century that has elapsed. I scarcely need refer to the weaknesses and errors of her individual children: such acts she repudiates, and when she can chastises remedially. But the Church has not recovered that vast inherited moral power over the public life which it enjoyed before the French Revolution. In many ways the consequences of atheism, materialism, and even of deism, have been deduced into manners and institutions, to the detriment of the ancient Christian morality. The sterner Christian virtue of previous centuries, founded on the Christian revelation, has been forced out of the public life of whole peoples. Expediency, opportunism, moral cowardice have often triumphed over the plain right and the fair truth. The principle has been established that God is on the side of the great battalions, is ever with the strong men of blood and iron. Ancient and venerable sovereignties have been hypocritically dispossessed. Small nationalities have been erased from the world’s political map, and the history of the near past almost justifies the rumors of impending steps in the same direction. With the increase of greatness in states comes an increase of warlike perils, not only from commercial rivalry, but from that root of ambition and domination which grows in every heart, unless checked and subdued in time, and which in the past has been too often the source of violent injustice on the greatest scale.

These deeds and principles we believe to be a necessary result of naturalism, of the exclusion of the supernatural and revealed elements of Christianity from our public life, and not only these, but others of a graver character, that must one day follow from their logical and unchecked evolution. Divorce, a cause of ruin in every land, grows with rapidity in many civilized nations, so much so that not only Catholicism, its inveterate enemy, is shocked, but Christian men of every persuasion believe that some public and authoritative steps ought to be taken to prevent the pollution of the family life, that fixed and natural source of public morality. Religion has been officially thrust out of the systems of education, in every grade, and the young mind taught that it is quite a private and unimportant thing. Thus, under the plea of indifference, many States have practically made themselves the champions of that agnosticism which is the arch-enemy not only of religion, but also of patriotism from time immemorial connected with religion. The average man soon ceases to make great sacrifices, above all to die for the public good, when he is satisfied that there is no other life, or that it is not worth while living for the uncertainties of approval and reward by an eternal God, who is just and true and holy.

REASONS FOR ENCOURAGEMENT

On the other hand, the Catholic man or woman knows that there are great spiritual forces at work in the world, however unhappily its public life may be developing from the view-point of Christian morality. There are innumerable lives guided by the principles of Christian virtue, some of them even culminating in the highest sanctity. Though not all such are known to men, yet not a few become public examples and incitements to virtue. Even outside of the Catholic faith there are not a few who regulate their lives by the natural virtues and also by inherited Christian virtues that work sometimes unconsciously, but whose practice can only be pleasing to our common Father. Sweet Charity is yet a queen in Christian lands; her services and utility are too great to permit her dethronement. Great misfortunes of any kind still touch the hearts of men that are Christian yet when their minds have become clouded by indifference to, or dislike of, the supernatural verities. Luxury and wealth, greater perhaps than the world has yet seen, are still conscious of duties to the common weal. Educational institutions of every character and philanthropical enterprises of every variety have flourished on the means thus provided. But from our point of view it is better that all such phenomena, to be lasting, should have their root and origin in Christian purposes and belief. It is yet true, as it was of old on the hill-sides of Judæa: “Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. Except the Lord keepeth the city, he watcheth in vain that keepeth it.” (Psalm 126.)

THE FUTURE OF CATHOLICISM

We entertain no doubt that the organization which has weathered the storms and stress of so many centuries will continue to do so in the future. The Catholic Church has the promises of her Divine Founder that the gates of hell shall not prevail against her. How could she doubt of her future? It does not seem likely that any vicissitudes can arise which have not their counterpart or analogy in the past, so old is she on this earth, and so many are the forms of government and the kinds of human culture with which she has lived. We are confident that she will be equal to all the emergencies of the future, for while the Church is always identical with and present to herself in a conscious way, her children and her agents may grow in experience and wisdom, as they undoubtedly do, and may bring both of these factors to bear upon the future problems of our common humanity. Of one thing we may feel certain: she will never cease to desire and to work for that efficacious unity of all Christendom, which is the permanent wish of its Holy Founder, and for which her bishops and priests have never ceased to pray in those opening words of the Roman Canon of the Mass that we repeat daily: “Therefore, O Most Clement Father, we suppliantly pray to Thee through Jesus Christ Our Lord... especially for Thy Holy Catholic Church, which mayst Thou vouchsafe to pacify, keep, unite, and govern throughout the world.”