A very different pair of charges--and far more vital--than those more or
less economic accusations of worldliness and otherworldliness which we
have just considered, concern the standards of goodness preached by the
Church and her own alleged incapacity to live up to them. These may be
briefly summed up by saying that one-half the world considers the Church
too holy for human life, and the other half, not holy enough. We may
name these critics, respectively, the Pagan and the Puritan.

I. It is the Pagan who charges her with excessive Holiness.

"You Catholics," he tells us, "are far too hard on sin and not nearly
indulgent enough towards poor human nature. Let me take as an instance
the sins of the flesh. Now here is a set of desires implanted by God or
Nature (as you choose to name the Power behind life) for wise and
indeed essential purposes. These desires are probably the very fiercest
known to man and certainly the most alluring; and human nature is, as we
know, an extraordinarily inconsistent and vacillating thing. Now I am
aware that the abuse of these passions leads to disaster and that Nature
has her inexorable laws and penalties; but you Catholics add a new
horror to life by an absurd and irrational insistence on the offence
that this abuse causes before God. For not only do you fiercely denounce
the "acts of sin," as you name them, but you presume to go deeper still
to the very desire itself, as it would seem. You are unpractical and
cruel enough to say that the very thought of sin deliberately
entertained can cut off the soul that indulges in it from the favour of
God.

"Or, to go further, consider the impossible ideals which you hold up