Kingdom, He could not suffer the presence of so many who were its
enemies. Yet He sits there at Zacchaeus' table, silent and smiling,
instead of crying on the roof to fall in; He calls Matthew from the
tax-office instead of blasting him and it together; He handles the leper
whom God's own Law pronounces unclean.

III. These, then, are the charges brought against the disciples of
Christ, as against the Master, and it is undeniable that there is truth
in them both.

It is true that the Catholic Church preaches a morality that is utterly
beyond the reach of human nature left to itself; that her standards are
standards of perfection, and that she prefers even the lowest rung of
the supernatural ladder to the highest rung of the natural.

And it is also true, without doubt, that the fallen or the unfaithful
Catholic is an infinitely more degraded member of humanity than the
fallen Pagan or Protestant; that the monumental criminals of history are
Catholic criminals, and that the monsters of the world--Henry VIII for
example, sacrilegious, murderer, and adulterer; Martin Luther, whose
printed table-talk is unfit for any respectable house; Queen Elizabeth,
perjurer, tyrant, and unchaste--were persons who had had all that the
Catholic Church could give them: the standards of her teaching, the
guidance of her discipline, and the grace of her sacraments. What, then,
is the reconciliation of this Paradox?

(1) First the Catholic Church is Divine. She dwells, that is to say, in
heavenly places; she looks always upon the Face of God; she holds
enshrined in her heart the Sacred Humanity of Jesus Christ and the
stainless perfection of that Immaculate Mother from whom that Humanity