Catholic Belloc Hilaire The Old And New Enemies Of The Catholic Church

[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

side to them which is allied to innocence.
Among the Survivals they now take a very small place. They feel themselves
to be out of the running. Their hearts have been broken with abuse and
insult and with base desertion by their friends, who reject in chorus and
with indignation the horrid title of Materialist. Therefore have most of
them become apologetic. They commonly talk as an uneducated man among
scholars; saying as it were:
"I know I am only a poor blunt fellow, and no doubt I'm
old-fashioned, still, commonsense is commonsense after all. I
can't talk Latin and Greek or German, but I can talk plain
English, damn you, and that's good enough for me."
Now I like that.
But Explicit Materialism is not keeping up with the world. I rarely
discover it today outside the columns of French provincial journals (for
the clarity of Materialism appeals to the French temper), in a couple of
obscure English weeklies, and in faded manuals a generation old treasured
by elderly men. The Materialist has been left behind, and, for my part, I
don't mind lingering in the rear of the column and making friends with the
foot-sore straggler.
Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com
SURVIVALS AND NEW ARRIVALS 29
The Materialist will not recover strength in our own day. If I may be
allowed to dogmatize enormously I will tell you why. He will not do so
because the Devil has, for the moment, no further use for him.
The Devil used the Materialist (though the Materialist had no use for the
Devil) for his own ends, between the middle of the eighteenth and the last
third of the nineteenth centuries. Now the Devil has impatiently ordered
the Materialist to get out of the way, and, like Youth, the Devil will be
served.
He has made our generation too grand to deal with the Materialist.
Spiritual forces have been awakened in us. We must talk about the "will to
peace," "the will to power." "The will to" this and that and the other (a
horrible piece of bad English). We want to live our "full life" and have
discovered (oddly enough) that you cannot do that without a living
principle--that is, without a soul.
So one may take it that the Materialist is today, after the Bible
Christian, the last and weakest of the Survivals. And that is why I have
put him second on the list.
He will not have wholly disappeared before my death I hope--though I fear
he will--for when he has I shall feel very lonely.
There was a time--yes, up to the end of the '80's--when he was a constant
companion, and one could be certain of meeting him pretty well anywhere.
The world will be emptier without him, but he is on his last legs.
I beg that no one will mix him up with his more powerful, but nastier,
modern brethren who are so angry at having the relationship mentioned. The
Pantheist especially abhors him. But he is better than them all.
Should he die in my own time, which is likely enough, I will follow piously
at his funeral, which is more than I will do for any of the others.
But when he dies his works will live after him and in due time he will
return. He is irrepressible. He lurks in the stuff of mankind.
(iii) The "Wealth and Power" Argument
At this point we pass a dividing line between the Survivals that are
patently exhausted and those which, though defeated, are still in activity
and still play a considerable part in the modern offensive against the
Faith. The Bible Christian is nearly a fossil; the avowed Materialist is a
rare specimen dating from long ago. But the Historical Argument against
Catholicism, the spirit of Scientific Negation, and this "Wealth and Power"
contention which we are about to examine, are of great remaining weight
though declining. They form part, still, of active discussion and they
still affect the issue.
The "Wealth and Power" argument is briefly as follows:
The Catholic Church is false because nations of Catholic culture have
declined steadily in temporal wealth and power as compared with the nations
of an anti-Catholic culture, which, in this particular instance, means the
Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com
SURVIVALS AND NEW ARRIVALS 30
Protestant culture.
The first remark we make upon hearing such an argument is that, supposing
it to be true, it suffers from two defects in application: (a) It is
irrelevant; (b) It does not establish a chain of cause and effect.
The second remark we make is that it is not true.
We stand, when confronted by this "Wealth and Power" argument, much as a
man might stand when confronted by the argument that the broad streets and
the careful planning of such a town as Washington, D.C., was misuse of [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

Tematy