Paradoxes of Catholicism by Robert Hugh Benson
page 25 of 115 (21%)
page 25 of 115 (21%)
|
her own ambition into the _liberty of the poor and the children of
God!"_ (ii) In a word, then, the Church is too worldly to be the Church of Christ! _You cannot serve God and Mammon_. Yet in another mood our critic will tell us that we are too otherworldly to be the Church of Christ. "The chief charge I have against Catholicism," says such a man, "is that the Church is too unpractical. If she were truly the Church of Jesus Christ, she would surely imitate Him better in that which, after all, was the mark of His highest Divinity--namely in His Humanity towards men. Christ did not come into the world to preach metaphysics and talk forever of a heaven that is to come; He came rather to attend to men's simplest needs, _to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked_, to reform society on better lines. It was not by His dogma that He won men's hearts; it was by His simple, natural sympathy with their common needs. He came, in a word, to make the best of this world, to use the elements that lay ready to His hand, to sanctify all the plain things of earth with which He came in contact. "These otherworldly Catholics, then, are too much apart from common life and common needs. Their dogmas and their aspirations and their metaphysics are useless to a world which wants bread. Let them act more and dream less! Let them show, for example, by the prosperity of Catholic countries that Catholicism is practical and not a vision. Let them preach less and philanthropize more. Let them show that they have the key to this world's progress, and perhaps we will listen more patiently to their claim to hold the key to the world that is to come!" But, surely, this is a little hard upon Catholics! When we make ourselves at home in this world, we are informed that Jesus Christ _had |
|