The Catholic Church and history

The first criticisms of the Donation are of the fifteenth century, coming from Peacock, Bishop of Chichester, and Valla in Italy. They make no pretence to being heretical; they have no connection with any effort to destroy the unity of the Church; they are not particularly convincing—especially the latter.⁠[2] What exploded the Donation of Constantine as an historical document was a much longer process of examination and criticism, which does not reach its final conclusions till the seventeenth century. During that process you will find many who, after the breakdown of unity in the sixteenth century, were frankly enemies of the Church from without, not historical critics from within, using the unauthenticity of the Donation as a weapon for attacking the whole Catholic scheme; but I doubt if you will find one case of a believer who regarded the gradual establishment of the truth as in any way shaking the doctrine of Papal supremacy. Yet you have plenty of critics within the Catholic Church examining the problem in full liberty, and permitted to come to a right decision upon it.

You have to-day, and you will have throughout the centuries to come, an indefinitely large body of men with the fullest historical confidence, great scholars and experts in this particular point, who are fully convinced of the legendary character of the Donation, and yet to whose minds it is inconceivable (as I confess it is to mine) that anyone should think the establishment of that historical detail a cause for doubt in the plain and most ancient doctrine of Roman supremacy with which it was for some six centuries out of twenty adventitiously connected.

Now for the Galileo case. It is so continually quoted, it is so much the accepted type of such things, that I might be tempted to go into it at greater length; on the contrary, I shall deal with it more briefly, because the points at issue are as restricted as they are evident, and the complete misunderstanding upon which the accusation is based may be exposed by the most elementary statement of it.

The accusation runs thus: “Galileo, having discovered by indubitable physical proof the motion of the earth, was condemned by the Catholic Church for stating the same, and her condemnation remained in force until the nineteenth century, when she was compelled to allow the matter to lapse.”

That assertion, the commonest made in all this department of historical attack upon the Faith, contains two elementary and decisive historical errors. First, the error that Galileo was condemned for teaching a then novel particular doctrine which he proved true; secondly, the error that Galileo was condemned by authority of the Catholic Church upon a point of doctrine: that is, that the Catholic Church affirmed in the seventeenth century by her Infallible Authority as a point in doctrine that the earth did not move.

In point of fact, Galileo’s condemnation did not turn upon his teaching a demonstrated truth, for it was not yet demonstrated. It did not turn upon a novel idea in Astronomy, but upon an hypothesis which was already hoary before Galileo was born; and the condemnation was not originated against the idea as an hypothesis, but against the teaching of it as an established fact. So much for point one.

Next, as to point two, the condemnation did not proceed from the Catholic Church. It proceeded from a particular disciplinary organ of the Catholic Church, with no authority whatsoever for finally establishing a point in doctrine. To confuse it with Catholic definition of doctrine would be like confusing the definition of a New York court of justice with an amendment to the Constitution. The Pope himself, as it happened, forbade what would have been a grave error—though not one binding the Church—I mean, a full definition of heresy by the inquisitors upon the matter. But all that is neither here nor there. There was no definition binding upon Christians, and has been none, nor ever will be in such a purely mechanical affair. What there was was disciplinary action against a man who had done everything he could to provoke the constituted authorities of religion by querulous and bitter insult (he was a difficult character), a man who was unable to support his own statements in court (nothing he brought forward at his trial came near to being conclusive on the motion of the earth, and much that he brought forward was fantastic),⁠[3] and the action came at the end of an upheaval in which, by exactly this kind of irrational, angry attitude in graver matters, the unity of Christendom had been destroyed. No wonder the authorities had grown touchy. Moreover, as anyone may see who reads the trial (and as Huxley saw), Galileo could not prove his case. It was still only an hypothesis.

The theory that the earth was not fixed, but turning on its axis and moving round the sun, had not only been familiar (as I have said) to educated⁠[4] Europe from long before Galileo was born, but had been taught with clerical approval as an hypothesis in Catholic universities; it was taught again in such universities not long after the Galileo trial as evidence accumulated, and became a commonplace of all teaching in Catholic schools and colleges long before the expunging of the Galilean treatise from the Index—always, and necessarily, a lengthy process.

The whole attack on the Church in connection with Galileo turns upon these two misunderstandings, of which the first is unessential, but the second capital: First, that a proved scientific fact was at issue; secondly, that this proved scientific fact was denied, because it was novel, and was denied by that authority which alone throughout the centuries had been held competent to establish points of doctrine, the Papacy and the councils of the Church over which it spiritually presides. The first is wrong and the second is wrong. The Copernican theory was not novel in Galileo’s time; it was still only a theory. His condemnation accuses him of returning to the oldest conception (Pythagorean). He was not condemned by the Church, and the instance of his condemnation, such as it was, by the appointed committee, was his persistence in teaching as a proved fact what was still only hypothesis.

Before leaving this overemphasised historical detail, I would like to make clear to the modern reader what our modern confused habit of mind often fails to grasp: the difference between teaching a thing as demonstrated fact and teaching it as hypothesis, coupled with the difference between teaching demonstrated fact and teaching metaphysical or doctrinal conclusions supposedly, but erroneously, dependent upon that fact.

In the last eighty years a very large and increasing body of evidence has been accumulated which points to the probability of the human body’s having come out of some original sub-human type, a sort of cousin to (though not descended from) the greater anthropoids of our own day.

It may be so. There is nothing in such an hypothesis against any Catholic doctrine. On the other hand, it is not proved. Still less is it proved that the process was of an inevitable sort unconnected with divine Creative Will. Least of all is it proved—and indeed, it cannot be proved, for the thing is manifestly contradictory to our senses—that man as we know him is not a fixed type, utterly different in quality from the beasts.

Now this hypothesis is almost universally stated to-day as a demonstrated fact—which as yet it most certainly is not; indeed, the guesses at the process continue to change year by year, as anyone can see for himself by looking up the common manuals of forty, thirty, twenty and ten years ago.

Now then, supposing a professor avowedly subject to the Catholic discipline, professing in a Catholic society, were to teach (1) that the descent of the human body was what the last of our many successive guesses presumes it to be, and were to teach that as now certain and indubitable fact, comparable to the fact of the rotundity of the earth; (2) that this origin of the human body destroyed the Catholic doctrine of Original Sin. That professor would be condemned exactly as Galileo was condemned. He would be condemned not because the Church desired to assert that the human body was not of such hypothetical origin, but because he had taught as certain what was uncertain; and he would be condemned upon the infinitely more important second point (which plain reason is sufficient to establish) that even if the hypothesis were already established by indubitable proof, it could not affect in any way the dogma of the Fall of Man: they are on different planes and concerned with totally different subjects.

The doctrine of the Fall of Man is a transcendental doctrine. It affirms that man in his completed nature was intended for a supernatural state, that his free-will rebelled against the will of God and that on this account his nature is fallen from a supernatural to a natural condition. To such a doctrine the discovery—if ever it should be made—as to how the body came to be is utterly indifferent. If I say, “Young Smith was right enough till he took to drinking,” it is no answer to tell me that Young Smith was once a baby who could not take to any evil, that he gradually grew up, and the whole process was one of increase and maturing, a “progress,” and that therefore Young Smith can’t have taken to drink. That “can’t” is nonsensical. The process of becoming full grown is no bar to a moral fall.

So much for the second of the moral arguments drawn from History. Let me turn to the third: That the Church cannot be divine because it is highly organised, with defined dogmas, a hierarchy, a whole machinery of rites and laws, whereas a divinely inspired thing would remain free and simple.

This last or third point made against the Church is one which haunts the greater part of modern minds with singular persistence. It is odd that it should do so; because, of all historical objections made to the Church, this is the least reasonable. But it is characteristic of the day in which we live that emotion should take the place of reason and a certain emotional bias towards an indefinite enthusiasm (as in music) is a modern disease.

The objection is that the Church is organised, whereas whatever is of divine authority on earth must (so it is presumed) be of a vague, inspirational sort without organisation or framework—loose, attaching to the heart and imagination rather than to the intelligence. Such is the premise—and it is an enormity.

The reply is no positive argument in favour of that claim, but it is a conclusive negative argument in proof of the contention that if such a claim be true, then organisation and, as time proceeded, more and more minute and detailed organisation, would be an absolutely inevitable condition of action by such an authority.

Here we are on earth, possessed of certain general instincts of right and wrong—instincts commonly proceeding to very warped effects in action. We are surrounded by an infinity of varying circumstances; our lives are brief; our power of intercommunication between individual minds is limited. Granted that there be some Corpus—some definable get-at-able person, place, or thing—from which absolute conclusions may be accepted; then that thing must be in the form of a society or otherwise it could not be continuous; it could not survive among ephemeral beings; it must have rules, or it could not bind beings imperfectly communicating; it must have habits, for it must be a living organism. Societies cannot live without differentiation of function and definition thereof; separation of one activity from another; subordination in command; laws more and more defined; known symbols; ritual. If anything were designed to act as an institution with divine authority among men—there might be no such design nor any such institution—but, I say, supposing there be such, then whatever was to act in this fashion must be a society, for it must be continuous; must be corporate, in order to overcome the imperfect connection between individual minds; must tend to more and more complete definition in its character and being as time proceeds: for otherwise it would not have a human framework consonant to the human world for which it would be designed.

Leave men in doubt as to who is and who is not a member of such a society; let it be uncertain by what tests membership may be recognised, acquired or lost, and the whole character and personality of the divinely appointed Thing disappears: with personality disappears the faculty of diction, of affirmation, for which (by definition) it was conceived. And, indeed, so you find the Church from its origins: sacraments at once appearing, communion and excommunion, doctrine more and more defined as the generations pass and doubts or controversies arise, ritual embryonically present at its very outset and rapidly stabilised: from the beginning you have it certainly hierarchic, disciplined, bound in a strict framework: and still more certainly (if that be possible) it shows limitation or outline, a frontier, a boundary—whereby any man may test who is within and who is without the Church.

And if this be true of structure, it is still more obviously true of doctrine. Granted that there be such a society with a claim to infallible pronouncement upon the things essential to the satisfaction of the human soul, how can it proceed save by exact definition of its pronouncements?

Begin with the vague and general, though perhaps intense, conviction that the soul survives death. Regard it not as a product of affection or of habit. Accept the mere intuition. What then? Does it survive as a person or not? The thing is debatable. If it does not survive as a person, what connection is there between its survival and good or evil conduct in this life? If it does survive as a person, how can such survival hold of our personality, which, being human, is manifestly of this changeable and material world?

If it be said that no answer can be given to these questions, then we deny the existence of such an authority as I here presume. I do not say that these questions and the replies to them are a proof of the truth of such authority. I say that on the hypothesis that such an authority is to be found on earth, then necessarily it must of its very nature define doctrine upon such matters as these, pronouncement upon which is its whole reason for being.

As each controversy of importance arises some new definition will necessarily be demanded of the authority. Therefore, though doctrine itself does not grow—for it concerns truths outside time—definition of doctrine will grow. The time in which we live has so largely lost the habit of clear thought that I must here admit a digression in order to emphasise and put in the sharpest light the difference between the growth of doctrine and the growth of definition.

Whenever a new definition is given by the Church—e.g., the definition of Infallibility in 1870, the definition of Transubstantiation in 1215—confused thinkers, or men who have not read the proceedings, will assert that a new doctrine has been invented. A little attention to what passes at the time of such definitions should be enough to set them right. The whole debate turns upon the proof that the doctrine was present from the beginning and that innovation lies in the denial of it. The definition is a new thing to meet a new attack upon an ancient truth. The truth is aboriginal. Definition no more makes new doctrine than does a new treatise on geometry make new mathematical truth. Such matters are expounded and elucidated in increasing volume; they are not invented. So it is with the Faith.

From this, turn to another consequence of this objection to organisation in the Church: the objection that its machinery and instruments of action are continually unworthy, base, insufficient, affected by worldly motives, and that therefore the claim of the Church to be divine fails.

That the Church being organised and being human will suffer from defects inherent to all organisation and to all humanity is equally certain. There will be bad administrators, wicked men in holy charges, abuse of powers. But that is no answer to the claim of the Church. For consider—what is the alternative?

Supposing there be upon earth a definite body of some kind—corporation, society, officer, what you will: a definable existent Thing whereto men may turn for ultimate and certain pronouncements upon the chief matters of their concern (that is, the nature of man and his destiny). If that Thing, whatever form it were to be given, were not organised, then must affirmation clash with affirmation and whatever were common to all would divide into a mere vague mood.

Now such a mood does not fulfill the requirements of the Thing in question. You may indeed say (the vast majority of English-speaking people are saying it to-day) that true religion is of this vague kind; an instinctive aspiration to unity with the Divine Will; most would even put it lower still and say “to unity with nature or the universe.” They therefore feel that all attempts to systematise this aspiration, to regulate the enthusiasm, to define particular dates and cases, to set up the machinery of a society with laws, officials and decision, is a warping of the only true living and direct religious impulse: and certainly if that original and vague religious impulse in man be the only true religion and if its value be in proportion to its vagueness, then organisation is a warping and a lessening of it.

But remember that in making this statement you are denying at the outset the possibility of an authority and therefore contradicting the very affirmation you make of some certain common truth in religion. For any authority beyond mere individual emotion (which changes in each individual and varies indefinitely among many individuals) must have a power of definition, must act with a function, and therefore must be organised in some degree.

The choice is unavoidable between organisation in that which can speak with authority and the rejection of all claim to authority—which is the rejection of all common or general certitude on matters not immediately and universally apparent. In plain words, either you must admit organisation in your religion or say that no religion is true.

I would like to make this argument quite clear, because the great majority of our contemporaries, at least in the English-speaking world, fail to make acquaintance with it. I do not say organisation proves the truth of the contention that the Church in particular is divine. I say that if there be such a thing as a divine Church on earth, that Church will be increasingly organised as the ages proceed, will perpetually define and re-define, will establish strict tests and will maintain its vitality by excluding what is not consonant to its nature; it will operate through differentiation of function as does every other living thing. It will have a multitudinous co-ordination of detail in proportion to the exaltation of its status, for only thus can it be alive with the supremely conscious life of the highest organisms.

I say again, this is not an argument to the effect that organisation is a witness to divinity in the Church. It is an argument to the effect that if divinity speaks through any society, then the oracle of truth will present all the phenomena of organisation; and so far from these phenomena clashing with the religious instinct, they alone can give that instinct its full working value.

In other words, you admit or you deny a Church. If you deny it, there is no certain source of truth present amid mankind; for the religious emotion of each man changes perpetually, and the emotions of each among so many millions differ from those of his neighbour. But if there be a Church, then organisation must necessarily be the very test of its reality, as it is the test of all the higher forms of life we know.