the largest significance. He is a religious man who constantly praises
Reason, and urges his hearers to trust Reason; but who, at a given
moment, falls back on Faith, cleaves to Faith, insists that Faith alone
brings its own warrant. Hence arise paradoxes, hence contradictions
which elude a reasonable solution. For instance, in one discourse
Benedetto says: "The Catholic Church, which proclaims itself the
fountain of truth, opposes to-day the search for Truth when it is
carried on on its own foundations, on the holy books, on the dogmas,
on its asserted infallibility. For us this means that it has no longer
faith in itself. The Catholic Church which proclaims itself the minister
of Life, to-day shackles and stifles whatever lives youthfully within
it, and to-day it props itself on all its decadent and antiquated
usages." Yet a little farther on he exclaims: "But what sort of faith
is yours, if you talk of leaving the Church because certain antiquated
doctrines of its heads, certain decrees of the Roman congregations,
certain ways in a pontiff's government offend you? What sort of sons are
you who talk of renouncing your mother because she wears a garment which
does not please you? Is the mother's heart changed by a garment? When,
bowed over her, weeping, you tell your infirmities to Christ and Christ
heals you, do you think about the authenticity of a passage in _St.
John_, about the real author of the Fourth Gospel or about the two
Isaiahs? When you commune with Christ in the sacrament do the decrees of
the _Index_ or the Holy Office disturb you? When, giving yourself up to
Mother Church, you enter the shadows of death, is the peace she breathes
in you less sweet because a Pope is opposed to Christian Democracy?"

So far, therefore, as Fogazzaro is the spokesman of loyal yet
intelligent Catholics, he shows that among them also the process of
theological solution has been going on. Like Protestants who still
profess creeds which they do not believe, these intelligent Catholics