Three popular errors reappear with depressing regularity in any discussion about a convert to the Roman Catholic Church. It may be useful to mention these before going on to a more positive explanation of my position. They are:
1. The Jesuits have got hold of him. I have heard this often in the last few years and have come to realise that there are a great number of English people who regard this pious and erudite body as a kind of spiritual pressgang, out for head-money; millionaires and great noblemen are the real quarry, but if, in the course of the hunt, they can bag a novelist or two, so much the better. This is very far from the truth. Instruction is, of course, necessary for anyone who wants to join the Roman Catholic Church, and Jesuits, like other priests, are ready to give help to those who need it. There is no coaxing or tricking people into acquiescence. They state or explain their doctrine, and the proselyte decides for himself whether it is true.
2. He is captivated by the ritual. This is certainly arranged to a great extent as an aid to devotion, but it would be a very superficial person who would accept a whole theological and moral system on these grounds alone. Indeed it seems to me that in this country, where all the finest ecclesiastical buildings are in the hands of the Anglican Church, and where the liturgy is written in prose of unexampled beauty, the purely aesthetic appeal is, on the whole, rather against the Roman Catholic.
3. He wants to have his mind made up for him. The suggestion here is that the convert cannot face the responsibility of thinking problems out for himself, but finds it convenient to swallow whole a complete explanation of the universe. The answer to this is that if he has a lazy mind it is easy enough to stagnate without supernatural assistance, and if he has an active mind, the Roman system can and does form a basis for the most vigorous intellectual and artistic activity.
I think one has to look deeper before one will find the reason why in England today the Roman Church is recruiting so many men and women who are not notably gullible, dull-witted or eccentric.
It seems to me that in the present phase of European history the essential issue is no longer between Catholicism, on one side, and Protestantism, on the other, but between Christianity and Chaos. It is much the same situation as existed in the early Middle Ages. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries conflicting social and political forces rendered irreconcilable the division between two great groups of Christian thought. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the choice before any educated European was between Christianity, in whatever form it was presented to him in the circumstances of his upbringing, and, on the other side, a polite and highly attractive scepticism. So great, indeed, was the inherited subconscious power of Christianity that it was nearly two centuries before the real nature of this loss of faith become apparent.
Today we can see it on all sides as the active negation of all that western culture has stood for. Civilization – and by this I do not mean talking cinemas and tinned food, nor even surgery and hygienic houses, but the whole moral and artistic organisation of Europe – has not in itself the power of survival. It came into being through Christianity, and without it has no significance or power to command allegiance. The loss of faith in Christianity and the consequential lack of confidence in moral and social standards have become embodied in the ideal of a materialistic, mechanized state, already existent in Russia and rapidly spreading south and west. It is no longer possible, as it was in the time of Gibbon, to accept the benefits of civilization and at the same time deny the supernatural basis upon which it rests. As the issues become clearer, the polite sceptic and with him that purely fictitious figure, the happy hedonist, will disappear.
That is the first discovery, that Christianity is essential to civilization and that it is in greater need of combative strength than it has been for centuries.
The second discovery is that Christianity exists in its most complete and vital form in the Roman Catholic Church. I do not mean any impertinence to the many devout Anglicans and Protestants who are leading lives of great devotion and benevolence; I do find, however, that other religious bodies, however fine the example of certain individual members, show unmistakable signs that they are not fitted for the conflict in which Christianity is engaged. For instance, it seems to me a necessary sign of completeness and vitality in a religious body that its teaching shall be coherent and consistent. If its own mind is not made up, it can hardly hope to withstand disorder from outside. In the Anglican Church today matters of supreme importance in faith and morals are still being discussed indecisively, while the holders of high offices are able to make public assertions which do violence to the deepest feelings of many of their people.
Another essential sign one looks for is competent organization and discipline. Obedience to superiors and the habit of submitting personal idiosyncrasies to the demands of office seem to be sure signs of a real priesthood. Any kind of ‘crankiness’ or individual self-assertion in the ministers of a religious body shakes one’s confidence in them.
Most important of all, it seems to me that any religious body which is not by nature universal cannot claim to represent complete Christianity. I mean this as a difference in kind, not in extent. The Church in the first century, when its membership was numerically negligible, was by nature as universal as in the time of the Crusaders; but many religious sects seem to pride themselves upon exclusion, regarding themselves as a peculiar people set aside for salvation. Others claim regional loyalty. Those who regard conversion to Roman Catholicism as an unpatriotic defection – a surrender to Italian domination – seem to miss the whole idea of universality.
There are a few signs by which in its public affairs one would recognise the Church one is seeking. There also remain the devotional needs of the individual members, for, however, imposing the organisation of the Church, it would be worthless if it did not rest upon the faith of its members. No one visiting a Roman Catholic country can fail to be struck by the fact that the people do use their churches. It is not a matter of going to a service on Sunday; all classes at all hours of the day can be seen dropping in on their way to and from their work.
Roman Catholic people are notable for this ability to pray without any feeling of affectation, and the explanation of it seems to me that prayer is not associated in their minds with any assertion of moral superiority. You never see in Roman Catholics going to Mass, as one sees on the faces of many people going to Chapel, that look of being rather better than their neighbours. The Protestant attitude seems often to be, ‘I am good; therefore I go to church,’ while the Catholic’s is, ‘I am very far from good; therefore I go to church.’
