Newspapers / North Carolina Catholic (Nazareth, … / Oct. 13, 1946, edition 1 / Page 3
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How the Reformation Came, About by Hilaire Belloc COPYRIGHT 1927 BY HILAIRE BELLOC • I.—THE PROBLEM I PROPOSE to approach in these pages an historical problem which has never yet been solved: The answer to the general ques tion, “How and why did the Re formation happen?” The answer, could it be fully given, would be . the solution of an historical prob lem which may be formulated as follows: “What were the total causes (and in what proportion did they act) of that disruption in our civ ilization which took place between four hundred and three hundred years ago? How came our Euro pean unity to be destroyed?” This problem, I say, has never been solved, and is in my judg ment not fully to be solved by men; because it concerns one of those major spiritual phenomena the causes of which must include a number of factors outside our human and terrestrial experience. Heaven and Hell were at work. Nevertheless, the knowledge of at least the human factors at work can be increased, and (what is much more valuable) these factors Can be put into the right order of importance. We can discover what historical events had what particular effects. We can cor rect the legends which have dis figured historical reality, and we can estimate the relative weight of each. Yet this, I say, has never been done. There are libraries upon libraries of writing and discussion upon every aspect of the period and every detail of it; yet the mind of that inquirer who is most fit ted to inquire, and to whom a reply is most necessary—I mean, the Catholic—remains quite unsat isfied. To the anti-Catholic, whether he belong to the Protestant culture and have inherited its conceptions (feven though he have lost its doctrine), or whether he be of the Catholic culture, but an anti Catholic opposed, as it were, from within to. the religious side of his social traditions, the answer seems simple enough. To the first, the man of Protest ant culture, the process leading to the Reformation seems obvious. A somewhat barbaric state of mind, uncritical, merely imagi native, and docile, called “Cath olicism” or “Mediaeval Religion” (of which he knows little, but which at any rate, he disliked and regards as irrational and in some ways inhuman), was discredited by the better minds in Europe (that is by people like himself) as knowledge and experience sud denly and rapidly expanded to wards the end of the Middle Ages. Under this new enlightenment Catholicism was rejected as insuf ficient, as puerile, as cruel, as in sulting- to the reason—and so forth. It was, indeed, retained by some of the more cultivated; but this retention was due either to their cowardice or their rou tine. In part the continued prac tice of superstitutions was due to racial inferiority; more often to the forceable action of persecuting governments which forbade in quiry and put out the growing light of knowledge. To people in this attitude (which I need hardly say is enor mously and fantastically unhistor ical) the Reformation presents no problem at all. It was a natural sequence, like that whereby a peo ple sunk into barbarism become civilized again by recovering the knowledge of their original cul ture. Neither is there a problem ap parent to your atheist or sceptical historians (until recently they have been much the most promi nent) writing within the Catholic culture, notably in France. To these men Catholicism seems a phase of thought present among their ancestry, when all the world was indifferent to reason and ex periment, and when critical ex amination of the past and of ideals was unknown. It lamely survives to-day—principally in women— through a mere adhesion to tra ditional and homely things. It has naturally disappeared under the effect of advancing knowledge, advancing intelligence, and an ad vancing critical faculty. The pro cess is, with calm assurance, com pared, in that particular world of anti-clerical historical work, to the growing up of an individual. When he was a child he believed in fairy-tales, but he has reached maturity, and he now laughs at the fairy-tales which he formerly entertained with such charming simplicity. This kind of historical writer— until recently a typical French and Italian academic type, and still, on the whole, perhaps, the most common one in Catholic countries-—has the great advant age of knowing what the Catho lic Church is all about. He does not write ignorant stuff, nor is he necessarily warp ed by hatred. Some, indeed, of his sort are spoiled by a spirit of mere antagonism, but the greater part—on account of their early memories, of their friendships, of the Catholic air about them, and of unbroken social traditions from the past—have, for at least some portion or another of the Catholic scheme, a real affection (much what a grown-up man would feel for the innocent illu sions of his boyhood). To them the Protestantism of the Reformation is ridiculous and intellectually contemptible — far lower than the Catholic past—and they despise the Protestant culture of to-day. Yet that the united Catholic scheme of Europe should have broker Ug in the" sixteenth cenfiry sems^to them inevitable; it&Hoss they regard as an advant age to mankihd, though they smile at the odd (now ending) interval of Bible worship and the rest. Though, then, such Continental “anti-clericals” are far better fit ted to deal with European histori cal problems than writers of Prot estant culture (who are out of the main stream), yet they also find the problem easily solved—only because they do not know in what terms it should be stated. It is to the Catholic (that is, to the man in the very heart of Euro pean tradition), to the man who knows fully what it was that was abandoned, to the man who can test, as. it were, the quality of the loss involved, that the full prob lem appears. He knows the balance, the sat isfaction, the fullness of that which was rejected. How on earth came it ever to be rejected for, such grotesque and petty aber rations as the various sects indulge in? Thqs, anyone who thinks Greek sculpture to be dull, barbaric stuff would see no problem in the neg lect and destruction of it in the dark ages. The man who thinks it, though excellent as an attempt, inferior to modern work will equally think that he understands the later neglect of it and even its wanton destruction. But a man who 5 knows what Greek sculpture is has a very different problem before him. He has to try to understand how a thing so manifestly excellent, satisfactory to our civilised sense, enpobliitgr and, as it were, part and parcel of our expression at its highest, could possibly have been left aside and, still worse, destroyed. The Catholic can easily understand how there should arise an indif ference towards Catholic practice, or even a reaction of hatred against official Catholic action and individual' Catholic authorities; but what remains for him a prob lem still unsolved is how that which was the very nature of Eu rope, and surely necessary to the European mind; that in which it had been nurtured and which was intimately itself, so that European and Catholic meant the same thing, so that “civilisation,” “oc cidental,” “Catholic,” meant the same thing—should have what was, as it were, its own being ut terly rooted out of it in certain regions, and an original, stable, character, h^ppy because it was in tune with itself, transformed into a new, uneasy and unhappy thing which yet preferred to re main transformed. That is the problem; that is the difficulty. To take the individual case. We all know of Catholics ■ who lapse into indifference and who cease to practise. We all know of individ uals—the cases are not very com mon—who upon coming across a bad member of the official Church, or a tyrannical or foolish action on the part of an official of the Church—or one that seems to them such—enter into a vio lent quarrel with strong Catholic discipline. That is understanda ble enough. But what is not normally understandable to a Catholic is that a person arriving at maturity in Catholic surround ings should develop a general dis taste fpr all the Catholic atmos phere and social tradition. That, I fardly ever, if ever, happens i individual. If it did, it be like a loss of memory, i of those strange phenomena pathologists now and then discover in neurotic subjects. Yet exactly that thing did hap pen to great groups of Europeans from three to four centuries ago, and what we have to try, in part at least, to explain is how so as tonishing a revolution and loss of personality was made possible: and in so many places achieved. That is the problem. That is the question for which we have to try to find an answer. (Part II, Next Week) I The Catholic and the Neg.ro by Bishop Francis Haas With respect to Catholics and race equality, Bishop Haas said: “It would seem appropriate on this occasion to take up two ques tions. 'The first is ‘What is the Catholic position regarding Ne groes?’ and the second, ‘What does that position require Catholics to do?’ The first calls for a discus sion of doctrine, the second for that of action.” Catholic reasons for interracial equality, Bishop Haas declared, run far deeper than those of' a good American who finds his reasons in the nation’s Constitu tion and the Declaration of Inde pendence. “It was into the human race that Jesus Christ was born Man,” .Bishop Haas reminded. “It was for the human race in its entirety — Caucasoid, Monogoloid and Ne groid—that He suffered and died and rose gloriously from the dead. And we may pot forget that He prayed that the human race be one in Him, in order, as He Hipiself declared, that the world should have visible proof of His divinity. Oneness through Him was to be the evidence that men could see that God has sent Him as His Divine Son.” Used carelessly and selfishly, Bishop Haas said, the term “race” has been employed to incite class hatred, exalt the national ego and even to promote war. The pre late declared it unnecessary “to spend any time on the widely held differences between Negroes and whites, such for example, as to blood constitution, body odor and natural gifts.” “Needless to say,” he continued, “these supposed differences are completely without foundation. Sister Mary Ellen of Rosary Col lege, Chicago, has examined them from a scientific standpoint in her splendid pamphlet, ‘Racial Myths,’ found them to be wholly wthout factual basis and rightly consigned them to the realms of imagina tion and prejudice.” Bishop Haas concluded that the idea of minority groups is direct ly in conflict with the concept of oneness in Christ and is essenti ally pagan. He also concluded that in Catholic thinking there can be no such thing as isolation ism, political or racial. The virtue on which the obligations rest that men as equals have toward one another, Bishop Haas said, is charity, the mother of justice. j“Justice, t* be sure,” the Bish op said, “has different forms: the justice binding a government to apportion burdens and privi leges equitably to all its citizens, which is called distributive; the justice, binding each citizen in proportion to his ability, to dis charge his duties to the entire body politic, which is so called social; and the justice binding the citizen to render to every other what is his, which is called com mutative. But whatever form justice assumes, in Christian thinking it has its roots in char ity of Him who taught; ‘By this will all men know that you afe my disciples, if you have love for one another.’ This then is the Catholic doctrine on race equality and the duties it entails. It is the answer to the question, ‘What is the Catholic position regarding Negroes.’ ” Bishop Haas asserted that the question of what this position re quires Catholics to do, goes with out saying that it means not mere ly belief but a resort to action. There is need/ Bishop Haas said, for many more conferences -'on the racial problem in the. Church and besides organized action, there is an urgent need for individual acton by Catholics. “Unfortunately,” the prelate declared, “the number of Cath olics is all too few who make it a matter of conscience to be fair and just and charitable to Negroes the same as to their other fel low citizens. Nevertheless there are such Catholics, both men and women ,and some who have even immunized themselves against the ridicule and ‘razzing’ of shallow friends and acquaintances. They are the salt of the earth.” The Bishop recalled an instance of a Catholic man and his wife who refused to sign a petition in their neighborhood binding home owners against selling their homes to Negroes and hereby received the sarcasm and abuse of their neighbors. This he said was “he roic action.” Bishop Haas declared that an un-Christian attitude toward Ne groes is more prevalent among employes than it is among em ployers in the field of industry. He said that individual Catholics and non-Catholics should call on Federal and State governments to enact Fair Employment Practices legislation, which merely would prevent an employer from deny ing a man an opportunity to earn a livelihood or to improve him self because his skin is black or because he belongs to a minority group. In conclusion, Bishop Haas de clared: “What should Catholics do? What should all our people do? The Saviour answers: ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart . . . And thy neighbor as thyself. Do this and thou shalt live.’ ”
North Carolina Catholic (Nazareth, N.C.)
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Oct. 13, 1946, edition 1
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