XI. NEW PHASE OF THE CHURCH.
There are signs which indicate that the members of the church have not only entered upon a deeper and more spiritual life, but that from the same source has arisen a new phase of their intellectual activity.
The notes of the divine institution of the church—and the credibility of divine revelation—with her constitution and organization, having been in the main completed on the external side, the notes which now require special attention and study are those respecting her divine character, which lie on the internal side.
The mind of the church has been turned in this direction for some time past. One has but to read the several Encyclical letters of the present reigning Supreme Pontiff, and the decrees of the Vatican Council, to be fully convinced of this fact.
No pontiff has so strenuously upheld the value and rights of human reason as Pius IX.; and no council has treated so fully of the relations of the natural with the supernatural as that of the Vatican. It must be remembered the work of both is not yet concluded. Great mission that, to fix for ever those truths so long held in dispute, and to open the door to the fuller knowledge of other and still greater verities!
It is the divine action of the Holy Spirit in and through the church which gives her external organization the reason for its existence. And it is the fuller explanation of the divine side of the church and its relations with her human side, giving always to the former its due accentuation, that will contribute to the increase of the interior life of the faithful, and aid powerfully to remove the blindness of those—whose number is much larger than is commonly supposed—who only see the church on her human side.
As an indication of these studies, the following mere suggestions, concerning the relations of the internal with the external side of the church, are here given.
The practical aim of all true religion is to bring each individual soul under the immediate guidance of the divine Spirit. The divine Spirit communicates himself to the soul by means of the sacraments of the church. The divine Spirit acts as the interpreter and criterion of revealed truth by the authority of the church. The divine Spirit acts as the principle of regeneration and sanctification in each Christian soul. The same Spirit clothes with suitable ceremonies and words the truths of religion and the interior life of the soul in the liturgy and devotions of the church. The divine Spirit acts as the safeguard of the life of the soul and of the household of God in the discipline of the church. The divine Spirit established the church as the practical and perfect means of bringing all souls under his own immediate guidance and into complete union with God. This is the realization of the aim of all true religion. Thus all religions, viewed in the aspect of a divine life, find their common centre in the Catholic Church.
The greater part of the intellectual errors of the age arise from a lack of knowledge of the essential relations of the light of faith with the light of reason; of the connection between the mysteries and truths of divine revelation and those discovered and attainable by human reason; of the action of divine grace and the action of the human will.
The early Greek and Latin fathers of the church largely cultivated this field. The scholastics greatly increased the riches received from their predecessors. And had not the attention of the church been turned aside from its course by the errors of the XVIth century, the demonstration of Christianity on its intrinsic side would ere this have received its finishing strokes. The time has come to take up this work, continue it where it was interrupted, and bring it to completion. Thanks to the Encyclicals of Pius IX. and the decisions of the Vatican Council, this task will not now be so difficult.