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C l a s s i c A p o l o g e t i c s
CAN I STAY WHERE I AM?
By HUGH POPE, O.P.
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This Rock
Volume 4, Number 12
 December 1993 
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THE title prefixed to these few pages will
sound curious to some, but those for whom they are primarily intended,
and whom--it is hoped--they will help, will readily understand
its meaning. These pages are intended for those many souls in the
Anglican communion who have been compelled to face the question: Can
I stay where I am? At the outset we will venture on the liberty of
addressing ourselves to them personally.
What is your position? It is briefly this: For years, many years,
you have been taught to believe a body of doctrines which were presented
to you by faithful men of unimpeachable life, who gave themselves
out to be, and indeed believed they were, duly ordained priests of
the Catholic Church. This claim of theirs you accepted. There was
no contradiction between their lives and their teaching. They practiced
what they taught, and they taught with an earnestness which was contagious.
At first, it may be, their doctrines sounded to you strange; but little
by little you fell under the sweet influences of Catholic devotions.
The Blessed Sacrament was a reality to you; devotion to the Mother
of God became well-nigh an instinct. As years passed you felt within
you the fruits of that teaching; you learned the " secret of
God," you found that he has indeed "a strong tower against
the face of the enemy," so that you said with the Psalmist: "This
is my resting-place for ever; here will I dwell, for I have desired
it."
It would be idle to say that doubts never troubled you, for who is
always free from fears? There were many, doubtless, who scoffed; there
were not a few who condemned outright. But your faith grew with opposition.
There were perhaps times when that faith seemed almost dead, when
its foundations seemed to melt into thin air, and you may have been
tempted to say with Elijah, "It is enough; now, O Lord, take
away my life, for I am not better than my fathers."
Yet even then there came the "still small voice" which you
knew to be God's, and your faith revived and "your youth was
renewed as the eagle's." In these times of trouble it was your
pastors, whom you had rightly learned to love and revere, who stood
by you and with words of exhortation urged you to "cast your
care upon the Lord"; it was to them you looked for help and counsel,
and they never failed you.
Then came the shock! You had known of the Roman Church, from which,
for reasons which were probably beyond your ken, your church was separated.
This separation was, you were assured, only for a time, and God in
his own good time would heal the breach. You often heard that church
spoken of. Many hated it; you did not; neither did your pastors. But
it was not your church.
You were not, as so many were, brought up in it. Those who were brought
up in it were, of course, loyal to it as you were loyal to yours.
You heard, indeed, from time to time of some who left your church
and joined that other church. Perhaps you thought them weak; perhaps
you attributed to them various motives, either good or bad, to explain
their taking a step which you could not understand. Possibly you at
times felt an uneasy sense of envy of those who had taken this step,
for they seemed to be in such perfect peace. But
you felt that you could trust your pastors who stood firm and who
when such crises occurred were always full of kindness and sympathy,
who never judged, however much they might deplore, such defections.
It was then, I say, the shock came. Some of those very pastors were
guilty of the same defection, and many whom you knew went with them,
for they said, "We have always followed in their lead and where
they feel secure, we can safely tread." You heard them discussing
the "claims" of Rome; you knew, too, that they prayed earnestly
for light to do God's will, and you saw them one by one rise up and
brave contempt and even hatred for conscience's sake.
Perhaps you yourselves were at first inclined to follow. You had endured
plenty of contradiction for your religion; a few more unpleasantnesses
could hardly cost much. You may have had talks with your friends on
the subject. You may have borrowed books which told of Catholic doctrine,
and you may have honestly set yourself to study the question, for
you knew well that one of the principles laid down by those same pastors
whose loss you were deploring had always been, in Cardinal Newman's
words, that "Nothing but a simple, direct call of duty is a warrant
for any one leaving our Church; no preference of another Church, no
delight in its services, no hope of greater religious advancement
in it, no indignation, no disgust, at the persons and things, among
which we may find ourselves in the Church of England. The simple question
is: Can I (it is personal, not whether another, but can I) be saved
in the English Church? Am I in safety, were I to die tonight? Is it
a mortal sin in me, not joining another communion?" (Letter of
January 8, 1845). Therefore you faced the question sternly; you read,
as far as you could, books written from the Roman Catholic standpoint.
But as you read, an awful thought dawned upon you, and it chilled
you to the bone! The Roman Church teaches that the orders of Anglican
ministers are invalid. But if their orders are invalid, it follows
that all the sacraments they have ever administered--except baptism--are
invalid also! It follows, then (as you may have honestly, but too
hastily, inferred), that you have never even been absolved from your
sins, that all your past confessions have been so much waste of time
and profited you nothing. Worse than all--it follows with inexorable
logic that even your Communions have meant nothing, that you have
never really received the body of the Lord!
And then perhaps you have thrown the book aside in disgust--such
teaching is too horrible! Rightly do men say that the Roman
Church is hard, a veritable Juggernaut, ruthlessly grinding men to
powder beneath the wheels of her car. As you pondered in a very agony
of soul, the conviction came back to you that you were right, for
your whole past seemed to give the lie to such conclusions as the
perusal of these Roman books would seem to necessitate--if their
teaching were true.
You felt an inner conviction that you had had the grace of God, that
your sins had been forgiven over and over again, that you had learned
in those churches and at the feet of these pastors, whom you so loved,
to put away sin and lead a good life. Moreover, you were convinced--and
felt that nothing would change your conviction--that you had grown
in virtue under their guidance, that you were not now as you had been
before--without God. As for your Communions--why, you knew,
with what appeared to you to be moral certainty, that you had received
God himself again and again, that you had gone away from the altar
conscious of his presence and with renewed strength for the day's
work. No Church, no priest, no logic, so you felt, would ever avail
to alter those convictions. And so, with renewed confidence of spirit
you made up your mind to stay where you were, for you argued, "If
I have to acknowledge that I have never hitherto received any sacraments
since my baptism, I shall lose my reason. I shall not only lose my
faith in sacraments of any kind, but even in God himself. What have
all my past experiences been worth? What has been the value of those
innermost convictions if they have all been built upon a delusion?"
Yet it has been a heart-rending experience. Even in resolving to make
no change and to stay where you are, you cannot quite banish a sense
of insecurity, for the thought is ever presenting itself: "My
own clergy took the step, and it must have cost them far more than
it would cost me. If I have received no sacraments, I at least have
never led others into thinking that I could absolve them and could
communicate to them the body of the Lord. I never have the appalling
sense--which must be to them a veritable nightmare--that I
have been a priest only in name all these years, that I have stood
at the altar day after day and yet was no priest at all."
Then the thought has come to you again and again, "What they
have had the courage to face I also can face; why should I not do
as they have done?" But once again the thought of the delusion
of those past years--if what the Roman Church says be true--came
back with renewed force, and you have felt perhaps that you could
not face it, but would go on quietly as you were. And to those who
questioned you on the point, to those who perhaps were as anxious
as yourself, you have said, "No, I have decided to remain where
I am, for to change would be to give the lie to my whole past life;
I should lose my faith in God as well as in grace and sacraments."
Who could fail to sympathize with souls whose agony is so great? Yet
who does not envy them in a very real sense? They are but proving
in their own persons the truth of the words of Paul and Barnabas that
"through many tribulations we must enter into the Kingdom of
God"; when such tribulations come, they furnish the best proof
that those whose lot it is to experience them are among God's chosen
ones. They must take to themselves the words of the Son of Sirach:
"Take all that shall be brought upon thee, and in thy sorrow
endure, and in thy humiliation keep patience. For gold and silver
are tried in the fire, but acceptable men in the furnace of humiliation"
(Sir. 2:4-5).
But while fully sympathizing with those whose heartfelt cry is so
bitter, we must ask whether all that they say is true. Is there not
a good deal of misconception about it? Have they really painted the
Roman Church in her true colors? Is she so stern a task-mistress?
Are not their fears rather the voice of the tempter saying: "There
is a lion in the path"? Their picture of Almighty God quite a
just one? After all, even though mistaken, they have served him these
many years--is it likely that he will cast them off now? "According
to his greatness, so also is his mercy with him" (Sir. 2:18).
In order to clear the way, we will begin by laying down certain essential
and elementary points of doctrine.
Faith is defined as a gift of God by which we firmly believe those
things to be true which he has revealed. It concerns both mind and
will, endowing them severally with light and strength, and this through
no merits of our own, but as a free gift from him. The object upon
which that light falls, and to which our grace-strengthened wills
adhere, is not truth ascertainable by reason, but revealed truth.
God's revelation is the first object of faith, just as God's truthfulness
is its motive.
How can we tell what is God's revelation? Just as the light of the
sun is necessary if we would direct our powers of vision to the various
objects around us, so in order that our faculty of divine faith may
be directed toward God, we need some means to assure us what we are
to believe about him. In other words, we must be told by some duly
accredited authority (since God does not ordinarily deal with us directly)
what he has revealed about himself for us to believe. This is the
office of the Church, the guardian of all revealed truth and the dispenser
of it to us men. When our faith is thus directed by the Church of
God toward revealed truth, we are said to have not only divine faith,
but divine Catholic faith.
Grace is another free gift of God. It is divided into actual grace--or
a divine impulse to do good--and habitual grace--an indwelling
quality of the soul bestowed by God and making us in a way partakers
in the divine nature, according to the apostle's phrase (2 Pet. 2:4).
This habitual grace is also called sanctifying grace, since it is
that which renders us pleasing in God's sight.
Merit is the deserving character of our acts, i. e., a meritorious
act is one which deserves a reward. There can, however, be no real
proportion between any merely human acts and a reward bestowed by
God. Hence, until God elevates our nature by his grace and so in a
sense establishes a certain proportion between himself and us, no
acts of ours can be meritorious of eternal life, which is the possession
of God. Since, then, grace is the very starting-point of merit, it
will be clear that we can never merit the first grace at the outset
of our spiritual life, nor the first grace necessary to begin again
if we have fallen into mortal sin and so lost God's friendship. Similarly,
the possession of grace today gives us no claim, absolutely speaking,
to its continued possession. Further, just as the first grace is in
God's gift and cannot be merited by us, so also the last grace, or
the crowning act of a good life--namely, dying in the love of
God--is also in his hands, and we can never claim any absolute
right to it.
In other words, the end of our probation being already determined
and our tenure of grace (since our wills are free) precarious, God
does not guarantee that our death shall coincide with our being in
his friendship, and we cannot as a right deserve that it should. We
can, however, in the strictest sense, merit from God regular increase
in grace, and in the same way, too, we can merit eternal life--i.e.,
we can, by his grace, perform acts which deserve eternal life. But
that we should continue to do so to the end we cannot, absolutely
speaking, merit.
So far we have spoken of merit in its strictest sense. But though
there is much, as we have seen, which we cannot, strictly speaking,
merit, we must remember that when we have the grace of God we are
his friends, and there are many things which, while they do not fall
within the category of things which can be merited as rights, do yet
fall within the category of those things which we can fittingly expect
from God our friend. For example, we cannot claim eternal life in
the sense of being able to claim in justice that we shall not die
except in a state of grace, but we can say that it is fitting that
God should give us this final perseverance.
Similarly, when we pray for ourselves or others, while
we can never absolutely merit to be heard in their favor or in
our own, we have always a fitting claim to be heard. Thus Thomas Aquinas
says, "A man can merit for another--as being fittingly due
[to him who prays]--the first grace [toward leading a good life]."
The reason is that since a man who is in a state of grace is doing
the will of God, it is fitting that, by a certain proportion due to
friendship, God should fulfill that man's will when he prays for another's
salvation, though, Thomas is careful to add, "there may always
be some impediment on the part of him whose salvation we pray for."
Sacraments are outward signs to which is attached an inward grace
communicated by this means to our souls. They were instituted by Jesus
Christ as the ordinary channels by which he bestows sanctifying grace
upon us. These sacraments confer the grace of which they are the channels,
much as the pen and ink are the channels by which intelligible words
and sentences are communicated to paper. The reception of sacraments
is thus not merely an outward act on our part, by which we give external
signs of our good dispositions and are rewarded by the bestowal of
a degree of grace proportionate to those same dispositions, but, further,
those sacraments convey the particular grace to us for which they
were instituted--on condition that we are in good dispositions
at the time we receive them. Thus it is not the dispositions which
cause the inflow of grace, though these dispositions are a necessary
condition in order that the sacraments may be efficacious. How precious
and how powerful dispositions are may be seen from the doctrine touching
spiritual Communion, by which we mean the desire to receive our Blessed
Lord sacramentally when we are, as a matter of fact, prevented from
actually approaching the altar. According to the intensity of our
desire will be the degree of grace received, even though we do not
receive the author of grace himself, but only desire to do so. The
same doctrine holds good of every sacrament; they all act or produce
grace of themselves, but it is possible for us to render their action
void by the want of due dispositions with which we approach them.
The converse proposition will hold good, that when for adequate reasons
we are unable to receive the actual sacrament, the earnest wish to
do so will supply, to some extent, for what is wanting--i.e.,
the reception of the sacrament. We must not be understood as implying
that the actual sacraments are more or less immaterial; far from it.
They themselves are holy and contain the grace they bestow.
When we speak of the sacrament of sacraments, the Holy Eucharist,
we must remember that we are speaking of that toward which all the
other sacraments are directed, of that which contains not merely grace
but the author of grace. Hence there is a very great difference between
a spiritual Communion and an actual Communion. In the one we receive
grace and that more or less abundantly, according to our dispositions,
but in the other we receive not only grace but the author of grace,
and vast opportunities of spiritual benefit implied in his actual
presence. How earnestly the Church has always insisted on the above
doctrine may be gathered from her teaching regarding baptism. Our
Lord taught that unless a man were baptized in water and the Holy
Ghost, he could not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Yet the Church
has always insisted on the validity of baptism of desire, i.e., where
a man has no one to baptize him, but realizes its necessity and does
what in him lies to obtain it. When such a desire has been conceived
in those circumstances, sanctifying grace takes possession of the
soul. These points of doctrine are elementary and known to all. Yet,
if they are fully grasped, they seem to change the outlook of those
to whom we have addressed ourselves in these pages.
And now, if once more you will permit us to address ourselves to you
personally, we would put to you the following questions:
1. Before these troubles arose had you faith, that is to say, did
you believe in divine truths because they were taught by God? You
will, of course answer, and with truth, that you had solid faith.
2. Was the faith "Catholic "--i.e., did you believe
that God had revealed those truths because those whom you took to
be his accredited ministers told you he had so revealed them? Again
you will answer in the affirmative, and we are not disposed to quarrel
with your conviction. You believed in God's revelation on the authority,
as you thought, of God's Church.
But, since as a matter of fact you did neither the one nor the other,
it would be well to consider how the case really stands: (a) The ministers
who taught you that Catholic faith were not duly accredited ministers
of the Catholic Church, though they honestly believed that they were
so and you yourselves accepted them as such; (b) The truths of the
Catholic faith were not put before you in their entirety--the
teaching, for instance, which you received regarding the Church was
defective--though that, again, was unintentional both on your
part and on theirs; (c) Some of that teaching was absolutely erroneous,
e.g., the "branch" theory or any similar theory of the Church's
constitution. These are points which it would be wrong to gloss over.
But what you have to consider is not so much the deficiencies in your
faith, nor the very subtle and perplexing question as to how far such
unintentional deficiencies might derogate from the solid character
of your faith; it is not so much this that you have
to reflect upon, as the fact that all this was unintentional.
What you have to dwell upon--with a deep sense of thankfulness--is
the fact that you can honestly say that you were doing your best.
Now theologians--when treating of God's relations to the human
soul--lay it down as an axiom, that to him who honestly does what
in him lies, God will not refuse his grace. Hence, no matter what
uneasiness you may feel about your state up to the present time, you
can always say with Paul, "But I obtained the mercy of God because
I did it ignorantly" (1 Tim. 1:13).
Here we must draw your attention to a point which we only indicated
above. You will have noticed that we imagined you saying a few pages
back, "If their orders are invalid, it follows that all the sacraments
they have ever administered, except baptism, are invalid also."
Now, you were right to except baptism, because it is the doctrine
of the Church that anybody can validly baptize provided he employs
the rite appointed by the Church and intends to do what the Church
intends when she confers this sacrament.
Thus the rite of baptism is duly administered when the person who
baptizes pours the water over the head of the person to be baptized,
with due intention, at the same time pronouncing the words: "I
baptize thee in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the
Holy Ghost."
It is unfortunately true that baptism, especially in days past, was
often carelessly administered by non-Catholics. Hence, when there
is a reasonable doubt as to the validity of their previous baptism,
the Church insists that converts be baptized conditionally; i.e.,
the priest intends to baptize them only if the previous baptism was
invalidly administered. But if that baptism were valid, the repetition
of the rite has no effect, since the intention of the priest is absent.
Nowadays non-Catholic clergy have become far more careful in the administration
of this sacrament, and you yourselves have, probably, no reason to
doubt the reality of your baptism, in which case, of course, it would
not be right to repeat the sacrament.
But note how far-reaching are the consequences. If you were validly
baptized, you then received the infused gift of divine faith, and,
as you know well, a man cannot lose this infused virtue of faith except
by a deliberate mortal sin against faith--a sin which there is
very little reason for thinking that you have ever committed. But
further still, though a supernatural infused virtue does not give
us of itself any facility in the practice of virtuous acts--this
facility comes only with practice, i.e., from the acquired virtue
due to the repetition of such acts--yet these infused virtues
do give a particular inclination and attraction toward the true object
of virtue, and they do inspire the soul to strive to attain it, even
in spite of difficulties in the way.
This will explain to you the longing you have always experienced for
the possession of the true faith. It will explain, also, any uneasiness
of which you may have, from time to time, felt conscious. It will
explain, too, another fact which probably has often puzzled you in
the past--namely, that those who, after much anguish of soul,
have at last taken their courage in their hands and given in their
submission to the Church of Rome, seem to experience such profound
peace.
You have often been told, perhaps, that this is merely because they
were people who needed the help of authority and who could not stand
by themselves. There is some truth in this, for in the things of faith
no one is meant to stand alone. But the real explanation is that their
divinely infused faith has at last found its proper object, that,
namely, which, in practice, is the most fundamental of all dogmas,
viz., that the Roman, Catholic, apostolic Church is the true Church
of Christ, that she and she alone is "the pillar and ground of
the truth" (1 Tim. 3:15).
Here we must explain what we mean by being in "good faith."
Persons are said to be in "good faith" when they mean to
do right, but actually do wrong through ignorance; thus Jacob was
in "good faith " when he married Leah--he really thought
she was Rachel; hence though what he did was in itself sinful, it
was not so in the eyes of God, who, for his own inscrutable purposes,
allowed the mistake on Jacob's part. Similarly a person is "in
good faith" when he makes a false statement fully believing it
to be true; it is plain that, though he has said what was in itself
false, he is yet not guilty of a lie in the sight of God.
Take another instance, which is more to the point: Supposing that
through some mistake the Host at Benediction happened not to have
been consecrated, those who adored it would not be guilty of idolatry
in the eyes of God, though they were really worshiping what was after
all only bread. Their "good faith" and their good dispositions
would serve in his eyes to counteract the material error.
3. With regard to the reception of grace, you cannot doubt but that
you have had God's actual graces in abundance. By his "actual
graces" I mean those impulses to do good which are so frequent
and which are the immediate cause of all our good works. But have
you any reason to suppose that you have not also had habitual or sanctifying
grace in abundance? Certainly nothing in Catholic teaching can justify
such a supposition. For you have believed in God, you have loved God
and hoped in him, and when you have fallen into sin, you have repented,
not merely from fear of hell, but from love of God. But what is all
that but contrition?
The moment an act of contrition is made—an act
of sorrow for sin because by it you have offended God, the infinite
good, who has loved you so much--the moment such an act is made,
sanctifying grace flows into the soul and dwells there until it is
expelled by another mortal sin. Hence you have no reason to fear lest
you should all these years have been without the grace of God or in
a state of unforgiven sin.
4. What about your numerous confessions? You are perhaps afraid that
they have been so much wasted time and that they have done nothing
for your soul. Yet nothing could be further from the truth. What is
the Catholic doctrine? Simply this: If a man falls into mortal sin,
he must repent, and the moment he does so repent--conceive real
sorrow for what he has done to offend God--grace is restored to
his soul. But even though thus forgiven, he must go to confession;
he must declare his guilt and submit his sin to the power of the keys.
This is, perhaps, where your difficulty comes in. Your minister was
not rightly ordained and hence could not have the "power of the
keys"; he could not absolve you. This is perfectly true, but
you did your duty and proved your good faith, and no failure on the
part of the minister will destroy the value of the acts of contrition
which you had made; your forgiveness was due to them. "Have I
never had absolution then?" you will ask. You have never had
priestly absolution, but you have had absolution from the
great High Priest who knows the hearts of all men.
But then, perhaps, you will object again, "I am not at all sure
that I had real contrition; it may have been only attrition after
all. I know I have a dread of going to hell; it may have been only
fear I had and not love of God? And if that is true, then--according
to the Roman Catholic doctrine--my sins are not forgiven, for
attrition alone is insufficient and needs the supplementary sacrament
of penance."
That is a serious objection, but I think it will vanish if you examine
it carefully. Let us suppose that you have often fallen into mortal
sin and have, only through fear of hell, gone to confession, feeling
that though your love of God was not strong enough to inspire an act
of contrition, your attrition would be sufficient if only you could
get absolution. Now, if you did this and really got absolution from
a validly ordained priest you would be in a good state, for the effect
of absolution would be the infusion of sanctifying grace into your
soul, together with faith, hope, and charity--all additional helps
toward making an act of contrition.
But supposing that, as in your case, you could not--through no
fault of yours--get absolution, owing to the fact that you confessed
to someone who was not a priest; you would still have been acting
in good faith. Can you believe that God would leave you in that case
without sanctifying grace? Can you not trust that your repeated acts
of attrition--which you, through no fault of your own, thought
to be sufficient since you thought you had access to a genuine sacrament--would
win for you from God the grace to make an act of contrition and so
gain sanctifying grace? We should surely have very hard and unworthy
ideas of God's goodness were we to question this!
Here again the doctrine of the Church comes to your assistance. The
Church teaches that the sacrament of penance is necessary for the
remission of mortal sin committed after baptism, but she also teaches
that the sacrament of penance is thus necessary either as actually
received or as received in desire, i.e., when it itself cannot actually
be had. But you, when you approached what you mistakenly thought to
be the true sacrament of penance, had at least the desire though you
had not the actuality, and this, as we have so often said, through
no fault of your own.
Though it is true that for a perfectly efficacious desire of a sacrament
real contrition is necessary, yet, as we have said above, God undoubtedly
rewarded your good faith and your good will by perfecting your sorrow;
for imperfect love leads to perfect, and, as Thomas Aquinas expresses
it, "Hope leads to love, and so a man by hoping that he will
obtain some good thing from God is at length brought to love God for
his own sake."
5. What about your Communions? It is here, perhaps, that you feel
your trouble most acutely. If you ask me, "Have I ever received
the body of Christ?" I am bound to answer in the negative, for
the minister had not the power of consecrating. Yet he acted in perfectly
good faith, and so did you, for he thought he was properly ordained,
and you accepted his ministrations, thinking that he was a validly
ordained priest of the Catholic Church. But you have no right to conclude
that all those Communions have been valueless, for you came to what
you really believed to be a true sacrament in order to receive its
precise effect, the grace of union with Christ.
Since the sacrament was not there, you clearly did not receive the
grace of union with Christ through the medium of the sacrament. But
your desire of union with Christ was a supernatural one and therefore
from God. Can you believe that he gives desires only to frustrate
them? No, you thought you received the true body of Christ and you
wanted to receive that and that only: It was no fault of yours that
there was a fatal flaw. Can you believe that Christ denied you the
union you so earnestly desired? He must have united himself to you
in some very real, mystical manner, though not through the medium
of the sacrament, which was absent.
He came to you as he comes to those who make a spiritual Communion;
and we may surely venture to say that he came to you with all the
more love in that he knew that you were deceived accidentally. Your
whole life since you began to frequent those sacraments--or what
you took for such--has been one long proof of the truth of what
we are saying, for you profited by your Communions, and no power on
earth will make you believe that you did not do so.
Now perhaps you will ask me these pertinent questions: "Have
we been all these years in the wrong path?" And I shall answer
you: Most emphatically not! It would be more correct to say that you
have been just off the right path--and that through no fault of
your own. The path on which you have been traveling was precisely
that through which God intended ultimately to lead you "into
all truth." You have nothing to regret, rather a great deal to
be thankful for.
You may be inclined to say, "Then perhaps, after all, we may
as well stay where we are?" But this, too, must be answered in
the negative; for to stay where you are would be to forfeit all claim
to be considered in "good faith"; hitherto you have not
known all the truth; now your eyes are opened; remember what our Lord
said to the Pharisees: "If you were blind you would not have
sinned, but now you say, `We see,' your sin remaineth" (John
9:41).
Lastly, with a feeling perhaps akin to despair, you will say: "Then
have we got to begin all over again, after all these years?"
Once more we answer you in the negative, for you are well on the way,
you have little or nothing to unlearn. Catholic truths are familiar
to you, and you will find that you have little or nothing to change.
You are in a far better position than most of those who become Catholics.
They, as a rule, find themselves in a new world with everything to
learn; they literally do have to begin all over again. Not so you.
One last word ere we part. You know that where you are now, John Henry
Cardinal Newman, the greatest man of the nineteenth century, once
stood--at the parting of the ways. The story of his doubts and
fears is told in the familiar pages of his Apologia. Listen
to words from a letter he wrote in 1841:
"I think you will give me the credit of not undervaluing the
strength of the feelings which draw one [to Rome], and yet I am (I
trust) quite clear about my duty to remain where I am; indeed, much
clearer than I was some time since. If it is not presumptuous to say
so, I have . . . a much more definite view of the promised inward
presence of Christ with us in the sacraments now that the outward
notes of it are being removed. And I am content to be with Moses in
the desert, or with Elijah excommunicated from the Temple.
I say this, putting things at their strongest."
Do not these words echo your own sentiments? But now, listen to these
other words which he penned in 1843, also before his conversion:
"At present, I fear, as far as I can analyze my own convictions,
I consider the Roman Catholic Communion to be the Church of the apostles,
and that what grace is among us (which, through God's mercy, is not
little) is extraordinary, and from the overflowings of his dispensation."
Do you not see that Newman had then come to regard the graces which
he knew full well that he had received in the Anglican Church, just
in the same way as we have tried to set them before you?
And we feel assured that you can make your own the pathetic words
of the sermon on "Divine Calls" which Newman wrote soon
after reading in August, 1840, Wiseman's article in the Dublin
Review for that month on the "Anglican Claim"
"O that we could take that simple view of things, as to feel
that the one thing which lies before us, is to please God! What gain
is it to please the world, to please the great--nay, even to please
those whom we love, compared with this? What gain is it to be applauded,
admired, courted, followed, compared with this one aim, of `not being
disobedient to a heavenly vision'? What can this world offer comparable
with that insight into spiritual things, that keen faith, that heavenly
peace, that high sanctity, that everlasting righteousness, that hope
of glory which they have who in sincerity love and follow our Lord
Jesus Christ!
"Let us beg and pray him day by day to reveal himself to our
souls more fully, to quicken our senses, to give us sight and hearing,
taste and touch, of the world to come; so to work within us that we
may sincerely say, `Thou shalt guide me with Thy counsels, and after
that receive me with glory. Whom have I in heaven but Thee? And there
is none upon earth that I desire in comparison of Thee. My flesh and
my heart faileth, but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion
for ever.' ''
As we have spoken above about the meaning of "being in good faith,"
so now we must add a few words on "the state of doubt."
Doubt is uncertainty. It is that state of mind which consists in an
inability to decide upon one course of action rather than another,
because we are uncertain as to which is the correct one. We are not
called upon to solve every doubt which presents itself to us, doubts,
for instance, regarding certain purely theoretical questions of science.
But doubts concerning the practical conduct of life must be solved.
We cannot act rightly without knowing what is right.
The most practical question in our lives is, "Am I in the path
which can alone lead to heaven? As long as I am
in doubt on that point I am not at liberty to rest. I cannot acquiesce
in any spirit of compromise such as the world loves: `Delay not to
be converted to the Lord, and defer it not from day to day'"
(Sir. 5:7). We would never enter into a commercial transaction with
a practical doubt as to its soundness, yet here it is the very kingdom
of heaven which is at stake!
But how am I to settle my doubts? If it were a commercial speculation
about which you were anxious, what would you do? Would you go and
dispute about it with a number of people who were in the same state
of anxiety as yourself? Probably not, but you would go to the best-informed
man on the subject. So also in these doubts about your chances of
salvation.
After all, it is a question between your own soul and Almighty God.
It is to him you must go and not to a multitude of doubtful counselors:
"But above all things, pray to the Most High that he may direct
thy way in truth" (Sir. 37:15). Such humble prayer does not preclude
us from having recourse to those who we know can instruct us; indeed,
we pray that we may find wise counsel--thus the passage just quoted
from Sirach goes on to say, "In all thy works let the true word
go before thee, and steady counsel before every action."
To sum up: Doubts on such a vital question must be solved without
delay; useless controversy should be avoided; trustful prayer will
bring us light and will show us where to seek counsel and instruction.
"There is nothing better," says the wise man, "than
the fear of God . . . There is nothing sweeter than to have regard
to the commandments of the Lord. It is a great glory to follow the
Lord, for length of days shall be received from him" (Sir. 23:27-28).
We have had occasion to quote Cardinal Newman very often, hence there
is a certain fittingness in concluding these pages with the beautiful
words with which he himself in 1845 closed his great work, An
Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine:
"Such were the thoughts concerning the `Blessed Vision of Peace'
of one whose long-continued petition had been that the Most Merciful
would not despise the works of his own Hands, nor leave him to himself
while yet his eyes were dim and his breast laden, and he could but
employ Reason in the things of faith. And now, dear reader, time is
short, eternity is long. Put not from you what you have here found;
regard it not as mere matter of present controversy; set not out resolved
to refute it, and looking about for the best way of doing so; seduce
not yourself with the imagination that it comes of disappointment,
or disgust, or restlessness, or wounded feeling, or undue sensibility,
or other weakness.
"Wrap not yourself round in the associations of years past; nor
determine that to be truth which you wish to be so, nor make an idol
of cherished anticipations. Time is short, eternity is long."
Fr. Hugh Pope (d. 1946), a British Dominican, wrote
the masterful English Versions of the Bible and other works.
This essay was published in 1927.
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