It will be seen that we are a long way from Protestantism already, and that we have here a very different kind of church, which, be it right or wrong, rests on a very deep and firm foundation. At least this must be said of it by all: Granting its truth, there is no stronger foundation conceivable. Granting it to be false even, it is hard to conceive a stronger foundation, or one that could commend itself with more force and assurance of safety to reasonable men. If there be a God living and moving in this world, this looks very like God’s handiwork.
Mr. Mallock concedes that “the Catholic Church can still claim, in the face of all the new lights thrown on her history, to be sprung from a supernatural root.” But it may be that she “will be found to be betrayed by her fruits” when these are inspected in detail. Her primary dogmas and her general sacred character may be conceded; but “numberless deductions from them and indirect consequences” may “revolt our common sense and our moral sense, though we have no exact means of disproving them.” Such difficulties, he finds, do exist; “but if we examine them carefully, many, at least, will be found to rest upon misconceptions.”
The difficulties in question are that Catholicity “makes salvation depend on our assenting to a number of obscure propositions”; that to many Catholic ritual seems to be an integral part of the church’s mystical body, and that thus salvation is made to hang “not only on an assent to occult propositions of philosophy, but upon altar-candles and the colored clothes of priests”; again, “the temper and intellectual tone which she seems to develop in her members” makes the church “a rock of offence to many”; there are “a number of miraculous legends and quaint beliefs which are or have been prevalent amongst Catholics.” Of all these difficulties Mr. Mallock himself very lucidly and effectively disposes, and shows that they “will be seen to be not really formidable.” There are other difficulties, however, which he finds “worse than these.” They consist of “certain moral objections to the Catholic Church’s scheme altogether, and objections of science and common sense to other necessary parts of it.”
“The moral objections consist principally of these: the exclusiveness of the church, which leaves the rest of mankind uncared for; the church’s doctrine of rewards and punishments, which are barbarous or ridiculous in their details, and which, besides that, make all virtue venal; and the doctrine of a vicarious satisfaction for sin, which to many minds carries its own condemnation on the face of it. Lastly, besides these, there is the entire question of miracles.”
Into all these matters Mr. Mallock goes with the same patient purpose and honest mind that distinguish him everywhere. His conclusion, as a whole, is given at the head of this article. Space forbids us to follow him any farther, but we cannot resist the temptation to quote for the benefit of our non-Catholic readers what he says on infallibility and on the “exclusiveness” of the Catholic Church:
“The doctrine of the church’s infallibility,” he says, “has a side that is just the opposite of that which is commonly thought to be its only one. It is supposed to have simply gendered bondage, not to have gendered liberty. But as a matter of fact it has done both; and if we view the matter fairly we shall see that it has done the latter at least as completely as the former. The doctrine of infallibility is undoubtedly a rope that tethers those that hold it to certain real or supposed facts of the past; but it is a rope that is capable of indefinite lengthening. It is not a fetter only; it is a support also, and those who cling to it can venture fearlessly, as explorers, into currents of speculation that would sweep away altogether men who did but trust to their own powers of swimming. Nor does, as is often supposed, the centralizing of this infallibility in the person of one man present any difficulty from the Catholic point of view. It is said that the pope might any day make a dogma of any absurdity that might happen to occur to him; and that the Catholic would be bound to accept these, however strongly his reason might repudiate them. And it is quite true that the pope might do this any day, in the sense that there is no external power to prevent him. But he who has assented to the central doctrine of Catholicism knows that he never will. And it is precisely the obvious absence of any restraint from without that brings home to the Catholic his faith in the guiding power from within.”
Of the “exclusiveness” of the Catholic Church, or, as it is more commonly put, of the doctrine that “out of the Catholic Church there is no salvation,” Mr. Mallock thus writes:
“As to the exclusiveness of the Catholic Church, it must be of course confessed that much perplexity is caused by any view of the world which obliges us to think of the most saving truths, and the most precious helps to a right life, being confined to a minority of the human race. But, supposing we attach to a knowledge of the truth any real importance, let us hold the supreme truths of life to be what we may, until the whole human race are unanimous about them we shall have to regard a part, probably through no fault of their own, as condemned to disastrous error. But of all creeds Catholicism is the one that does most to alleviate this perplexity. Of all religious bodies the Roman Church has the largest hope and charity for those outside her own pale. She condemns men, not for not accepting her teaching, but only for rejecting it; and they cannot reject it until they know it, what it is—know its inner spirit as well as its outward forms and formulas. Such a knowledge, in the opinion of many Catholics, it may be a very hard thing to convey to some men. Prejudices for which they themselves are not responsible may have blinded their eyes; and if they have been blind they will not have had sin. They will be able to plead invincible ignorance; and the judgments the church pronounces are not against those who have not known, but against those only who have known and hated. Nor is it too much to say that a zealous Catholic can afford to harbor more hope for an infidel than a zealous Protestant can afford to harbor for a Catholic.”
And now comes the final question, What is to be the future of faith? As we regard the matter, the answer to that, humanly speaking, rests mainly with those who have the faith. Faith is a sacred deposit, to be used, spread, and propagated over the world; to lead men to a right manner of living, to the true knowledge of God, and up to God. Thus the future of faith is in the hands of the faithful. Faith has two antagonists: the devil and, in a sense, man’s free-will. Of course modern thought scornfully dismisses the first antagonist as a myth. We cannot follow modern thought in this; we have a very profound belief in the existence of an ever-active and intelligent spirit of evil, who can and does tempt man into revolt against God, and who finds his readiest instrument, where he ought to find his chief resistance, in that highest prerogative of freedom which God confers on man. We take, then, first the devil, and, in a secondary sense, man’s free-will as the two great antagonists to faith. That is to say, if man will rebel, if he will not accept the faith, there is no power to hinder his rebellion.
And here we leave the devil aside and turn only to man. The future of faith is for him to say. What will he do with it? Why does he not accept it? Why should his free-will reject it, if it is good and approves itself so strongly to human intelligence, and if, moreover, God and all heaven are for ever standing on its side? There was at one time a united faith in Christendom; why was it ever broken?