|
C l a s s i c A p o l o g e t i c s
THE CATHOLIC EVIDENCE GUILD: PART II
By FRANK SHEED
|
This Rock
Volume 5, Number 5
 May 1994 
|
|
|
It always takes some time fully to realize
that the unit we meet is not the individual but the crowd, which is
a whole and must be handled as such. But a collection of individuals
is not a crowd, and the people who come to hear us are a thoroughly
mixed lot.
Anyone looking over the top of a platform at the hundreds of upturned
faces could enumerate a dozen reasons for their presence; some are
drawn by a kind of shuddering curiosity (the type who dream of the
pope and wake up in the night screaming "Rome"); some are
there to see that Rome does not have it all her own way; and these
have their jackals who come to back them up simply out of a natural
human love of a row.
Many are there because they find it cheaper than the pictures and
on the whole more entertaining. There is, too, an occasional pious
Christian of uncertain denomination who hopes to convert the lecturer
because he is young and has a good face; also a not so occasional
drunkard; a very frequent gentleman too of the cuckoo type, who, having
no chance of an audience of his own, comes to use ours; while here
and there a lapsed Catholic is watching the issue of the contest as
it seems to sway from one side to the other with a stirring of a feeling
dead and buried for many a year. The invariable background consists
of a great number of silent men and women--the people for whom
mainly we come--who say nothing (as though they had been there
when the meeting started and were too lazy to move away), who give
no sign of interest, whose presence might seem an odd accident--if
they did not return again and again.
To make a rabble of this kind into that very personal thing, a crowd,
which can be handled as such, some unifying force is needed. Truth,
unfortunately, is able, not only to bind, but to sunder, and truth
alone therefore is not the unifying force needed. We must find some
common interest--not an interest merely: the Mormons inspire that
--but some interest that we can persuade them to share with us.
Yet thinking over the elements that go to the composition of a crowd
we might be led to despair; for, as the crowd began with individuals,
so into individuals is it resolved; and though the crowd must be treated
as one, yet the effect is multiplex. The result of one speech may
be to send away a section raging, another thinking, still another
praying, and perhaps one man convinced. But this experience should
never lead to a promiscuous hurling round of pious remarks in the
hope that some of them may, on the law of averages, affect someone.
Every crowd has its own physiognomy due, not to any peculiarity of
its elements, but to their proportion and arrangement--and a study
of the crowd will always enable us to find just what kind of common
interest is needed to hold them and what kind of teaching may be expected
to have an effect.
Our attitude
Our attitude to the crowd should be
very clear to ourselves, because it will always be very clear to them,
for they sense character and they sense attitude. Whatever may be
thought of the possibility of effecting necessary repairs in our character,
at least we can see to it that our attitude is right.
In the first place it is above all things vital to like the crowd;
we can do no good to the soul of a person we hate, and if we are simply
indifferent, our offer of spiritual help will be a mere impertinence.
If we do not like them, we must try to, and, if we cannot manage that
with all our trying, we are in a bad way.
This liking is easy enough in theory and should be so in practice.
But it is difficult to feel like an apostle all the time; the work
of controversy has this peculiar danger--that we think of winning
the argument rather than of winning the arguer. We must beware too
of the resentment natural to the gift horse that has been looked in
the mouth--and anyhow, crowds are so very candid about oneself! [The
writer was once asked, "Has the Church in England come so low
that it needs fellows like you to defend it?"] But there are
two considerations that should help us to keep our balance:
1. We are not doing anything particularly virtuous in working for
the Guild, rather that, far from deserving any special treatment,
we should regard the unpleasantness as the price we pay for a great
privilege.
2. The crowd are under no real obligation to behave decently. Why
should they? They don't ask us to come; on the contrary we ask them.
Hence to complain if they, having accepted our very pressing invitation,
find us dull and nasty is against the reason of things. Since we ask
them to listen, they have a right to do so on their own terms; it
is for us to treat them as a host might treat an eccentric guest whom
he has not only invited once, but intends to invite again.
It is necessary to impress the crowd in our twofold capacity as individuals
and as representatives. They must, first of all, come to respect the
speaker personally, and, that accomplished, the more they regard him
as a typical Catholic, the better. In the due balancing of these capacities
lies a certain danger.
Since there is, in the beginning at least, a prejudice against the
Church, the speaker's personality must be strong enough and good enough
to win a hearing--but his personality must never be so far stressed
that the crowd lose sight of his representative quality. We are not
out to talk about our own souls--their goodness, or badness, or
history--but about Catholic doctrine; it is by the speaker's character
alone, without his own testimonial thereto, that he must make an impression.
The anonymity of the work is more than an accident; due to the obscurity
of us who do it, it is an essential factor; one may measure a man's
understanding of the work by his understanding of that principle.
It involves that not only all praise but also all blame shall go to
the Church, and while the absence of personal praise should induce
unselfishness, the possibility of harm to the Church should make us
the more determined to give of our best.
The paid heckler falls under a different set of rules: In the ordinary
course, at least, we cannot hope to convince him, and we have no right
to count on miracles. Ordinarily, we have to regard the determined
heckler (as opposed to the honest questioner) as an instrument ready
to our hand for the instruction of the audience; if we take his questions,
it is not for his own sake, but for their information. Yet we must
remember that a heckler has a soul, and if we cannot do him any good,
we should be immensely careful not to do him any harm. The law of
charity should govern our attitude always, but if at times it is necessary
to hit we should remember certain obvious rules:
1. Never be personal: We are for the most part extremely fortunate
in the appearance of our hecklers, as in their grammar and manners,
but we must under no circumstances mention it.
2. Make sure that the crowd see the justice of your action, otherwise
they will feel that they themselves have been assaulted.
3. If you hit, hit hard; don't merely scratch. But we should never
deal out justice of this sort when we are ourselves out of temper--in
this case charity begins at home. The golden rule in the treatment
of a heckler is to make the crowd see that it is not a personal matter
between him and us, but that he, a solitary individual armed with
his nine days' doctrine, is attacking the three hundred million whose
belief has stood the test of twenty centuries. Thus our attitude to
the crowd at large must be that of men who are very conscious of their
responsibility to the Church and to the crowd--anxious only that
their audience should see the Church as she is and absolutely honest
both as to the doctrines of the Church and as to their own knowledge
of them, so that they neither modify her teaching to make it easier
of acceptance, nor pretend to any knowledge that they do not possess.
Guiding principles
In a discussion of the teaching to be given from
our platforms, dogmatism of any sort might, at first sight, seem dangerous,
since crowds differ widely one from another, and speakers, if anything,
differ more widely. But Catholicism not only binds all her children;
she has a strange binding effect also on those outside. Everywhere
one finds the same line of opposing thought or feeling, with but slight
local modifications. Hence there are certain principles
which would seem to be of universal application and which can be dealt
with under two heads:
1. Manner--how to present our teaching.
2. Matter--the teaching itself.
Manner
Here there is only one entirely indispensable quality:
simplicity. The shining gifts of the orator must yield precedence
to the homely virtue of the teacher. The Bible tells us that at the
first "Evidence Guild" meeting (see Acts 2), the speakers
had a most mixed audience, yet every man understood them; and we,
with a much simpler assemblage, must aim at the same result.
By sheer force of personality it is possible to hold a vast crowd
for hours--yet give them nothing at all, and in the end send them
away with a pleasant thrill--and a quite empty mind. Unless they
understand, the time is wasted; that they may understand a degree
of simplicity and clearness is called for such as the non-Guildsman
can scarcely conceive.
This simplicity involves: (a) treating one point at a time, (b) arranging
the subject matter clearly, (c) keeping the lecture to 20 minutes
at most, (d) using very simple words. Such words as "finite,"
"creatures," "impeccability," and a thousand more
mean nothing to a crowd. Words of one syllable (if very common) are
desirable.
There is an old lady who frequents a certain pitch whose picture should
be in every Guild classroom. Having listened intently to one of our
speakers lucidly explaining the doctrine of infallibility, she shook
her head sadly and said, "It's no use, young man; you can talk
till you are black in the face, but you will never persuade me that
your pope is God." When speaking to a crowd, never forget that
old lady.
So long as it does not interfere with simplicity, eloquence is a valuable
but by no means indispensable asset. For the most part we are not
orators nor preachers, but teachers simply. Still at every meeting
a moment will come that calls for something more, and at such a moment
real eloquence may be of profoundest effect. But so surely as eloquence
takes the first place (and the sense of power it brings is very pleasant)
so surely have we fallen from grace as Guildsmen.
Given these two qualities in due proportion, there is no fear of obscurity,
but there is a grave danger of another sort: that by our manner we
may seem to be forcing our ideas on the crowd. There is nothing gained
by the smashing dogmatism of a speaker who tramples on heckler and
sincere questioner alike, who sneers at great difficulties as though
they were merely childish and who attempts to drive souls into the
Church by main force.
Such methods are amazingly easy, but either rouse the crowd to very
justifiable fury (so that he who takes the sword perishes by it) or
leave them silent indeed, but with a resentful feeling (as one victim
expressed it) of "having been kicked all over." We must
be careful to avoid any suggestion of forcible feeding as though we
were thrusting a privilege on them or insisting on their capitulation.
As men offering to men a free gift, we must strive to convey, as far
as we are able, the ineffable beauty of the birthright of the Children
of God so that they may feel how much they lack and may freely choose
the teaching which we, as members of the Catholic Church, come to
offer.
It is very easy to show a crowd without offending them why we believe
that the Church is the one true Church, and we may be as dogmatic
as we please so long as we seem to be leaving them some freedom of
choice. But we should not get into the way of so striking at every
red herring drawn across our trail that the whole thing becomes a
wrangle.
If six people in the crowd are attacking, it is for us to see that
the crowd does not get a confused impression of seven combatants,
but of two opposing forces of which the speaker is one, the six hecklers
the other. The speaker must try to bear the same relation to the audience
as the Church bears to all other churches--not one in a crowd,
but one and a crowd. This can never be accomplished by meeting violence
with violence. Catholicism versus Protestantism means universality
versus protest, and we must help the crowd to see it.
We would sum up then the ideal platform qualifications as simplicity
and clearness to the uttermost degree, eloquence on the leash, gentleness
without weakness, and an unswerving determination to maintain the
moral ascendancy which belongs to the Catholic Church.
Matter
All these delightful qualities will be of no great
use unless the possessor knows what he wants to teach. The first rule
is to avoid controversy, to be ready for it when it comes, but never
to introduce it. Universal truths require stating, but as they are
universal they do not require to be reinforced by argument; they can
make their appeal without any great assistance from us, and the only
obligation on us is to state them to the best of our power. It is
worth remembering that the communion of saints has its counterpart
in the communion of doctrines, and just as every member of the Church,
weak or strong in himself, gains strength from all, so every doctrine,
however strong by itself, is ten times more so in the great scheme
of Catholic faith.
A valuable example is confession which, considered as a mere pouring
out of confidence to a man, might by a determined antagonist be made
to look farcical; but, in its place as part of the Catholic moral
system, inevitably related to the two facts of sin
and the Redemption, it is overwhelming.
Our chief care then must be to exhibit a big picture of Catholic truth
so that the crowd may see the teaching of the Church--not as a
jumble of doctrines which are there because they happen to be there,
like goods in the window of a pawnshop, but as a great organic body
of truth covering the whole of man's natural and supernatural needs,
with every doctrine having its own place. They must be made to see
that to destroy one doctrine means breaking up the whole fabric, so
that the man who begins by denying, say, the infallibility of the
pope ends by doubting the existence of God--or if he does not,
his grandson does.
This power of making a picture for the crowd to see must be cultivated.
The ordinary man can see a picture much better than an argument. After
all, men judge the foundation, not from itself, but from the stability
of the building. One would have to be of an abnormally suspicious
cast of mind to have sudden doubts of the strength of a foundation
after the edifice had endured twenty centuries of storm, and it will
be found in practice that the amateur linguist who has been told that
Petros means "a rolling stone" is much more likely
to be affected by a description of the Church as she stands, i.e.,
the four marks, than by any amount of linguistic argumentation.
The moral of all this is that we should treat our subject massively.
Details of course must be explained, but always in relation to the
whole scheme of doctrine; no lecture on any detail is complete which
does not attempt to give some idea of the Church as a whole. Thus
the fact of the Incarnation issues naturally in the organized Church,
in devotion to our Lady, in the Blessed Eucharist and infallibility,
and none of these doctrines should be so treated as to leave the Incarnation
out of sight.
The second great point may be regarded as only another aspect of the
first: Having said "treat subjects massively," the second
rule, "be constructive," must of necessity follow. Our subject
is Catholicism, and we should never, of our own choice, discuss any
other religion. Otherwise we become simply Protestants against Protestantism.
Questions will, of course, be asked which will make it impossible
to ignore the teaching of others, and they cannot be answered without
the appearance of attack. But it must be very clear to the crowd that
the attack was not of our choosing. Give the teaching of the Church
simply and straightforwardly, and above all fully. Make sure that
the crowd see, not only the relation of your doctrine to the whole
scheme, as already suggested, but also all that it contains in itself,
not only the truths, but their effects in action. After all, we are
not aiming at a five-minute influence, but at something very much
more lasting, and so our teaching should aim at issuing in action.
The thing must never become academic. We are not out to give lectures
on the domestic habits of some strange tribe in which our audience
could at the best have a very impersonal interest, nor to state a
series of reasons for things done by ourselves. Our object is a presentation
of things for the crowd to do.
Those parts of theology whose connection with life they cannot see
do them no good and in any case move them little. Always we should
give them something to do, and one or two of them may do it. Thus
a lecture on our Lady should lead them to imitate her, a lecture on
images should lead them to use all their faculties in the worship
of God, and any lecture at all should lead them to pray, nor is it
waste of effort to teach the crowd some short "nonsectarian"
prayer.
But this constructiveness and determination to treat only of Catholicism
must never be interpreted as an ignoring of the non-Catholic standpoint.
We must know what our crowds are thinking, and this for two reasons:
that we can build on what they have and can supply what they have
not. This implies an intimate knowledge of the crowd which, as has
been shown, it is the object of Guild training to give.
The Nonconformist has a certain general physiognomy, yet a Methodist
is not a Baptist, and though both Methodist and Baptist and their
many-colored brothers in dissent have a great dislike, to put it mildly,
for the Church, they have a great deal of truth in them for which
they can seldom give, even to themselves, a reason. But truth choked
by ever so many falsehoods remains truth, and we must aid it to free
itself. One of the most real ways in which we can help the crowd is
by showing them a basis for such truths as they have; when we see
a Protestant stricken silent by the arguments of the atheist, we are
doing a real service by giving him the proofs of the existence of
God; and we may give to many a man guidance on moral issues on which
his own church is silent.
But our preoccupation with the truth of which our crowd is already
in possession extends beyond mere buttressing; once it is strengthened
it may be used as a foundation on which we may build. Let us show
our listener first of all how much we have in common, how every single
bit of truth that he values is in our Church also, but that we have
much more. His truth is incomplete, and we can make him realize this,
not by showing him how it is deficient (which is calculated to shake
his faith in it altogether), but by showing him the completion of
it in Catholic teaching. Make him see how the bits of truth he possesses
involve the great mass that he has not. Thus we
shall be building a bridge from the Church to the non-Catholic mind,
across which our crowd can pass to the Church. And this is not so
impossible as might at first appear.
Were the Protestant as engrossed with his religion as is the Catholic,
one might well despair. But the incompleteness of Protestantism is
a fact, and, though the Protestant does not easily admit it as such,
he does suffer from its effects in a certain restlessness and an attitude
of criticism. Because of it he is forced to rely on private judgment,
which means "a willingness to look farther," and that is
where we get our chance.
Let us then in discussing any doctrine begin with so much of our crowd's
belief as we may, and by simply showing the completed truth in all
its beauty (allowing for our limitations) we shall, in some cases,
win our hearers, and at least in the vast majority of cases create
an ever-growing desire. Time and again it happens that a man does
not realize his needs till he sees that which can satisfy them, but
once seen he can never be at rest till he possesses it.
Thus we have seen how a knowledge of our crowds will enable us to
confirm what they have and further to build on it. But that knowledge
shows us not only the scattered truth but the great mass of errors
under which it lies buried, and one of our most important functions
is to deal with those errors, not of necessity by direct attack, but
by laying special stress on those aspects of the truth which bring
the errors into clearer perspective. [Individual lies of the Pope
Joan sort may be slaughtered out of hand. But this section of the
work must not be too much loved. There is a dangerous exhilaration
in reading the burial services over Maria Monk, and destroying lies
is easier than teaching truth]. Just as we give out truth massively
we should deal with the errors massively. We should never be preoccupied
with the details of the attack. Our questioners are not really worrying
about them, though they think they are; but there is in their minds
a whole line of thought subconsciously involved, and it is by turning
that line that we are likely to be of service.
But however skillfully we may construct our lecture there will always
be questions at the end. I do not propose to discuss the relation
between lecture and questions, beyond saying that we should nearly
always try to give a lecture--and that most of the objections
should be answered in the course of it. To do this effectively we
must know the New Testament thoroughly and show in particular great
familiarity with all passages bearing on our subject. There are certain
texts (e.g. "God so loved the world, etc.," and "Worship
in spirit and in truth") which the Protestant heckler is convinced
will overwhelm us. It is far more effective to show our familiarity
with these and their bearing on Catholic doctrine in the lecture than
to wait for them to be raised as difficulties at the end. And on the
questions themselves a word should be said.
We should never allow the questioner to call the tune, otherwise we
shall be dragged hither and thither to the great confusion of the
crowd, and no definite impression will be given. Senior speakers as
well as juniors will teach the crowd best by keeping questions as
far as possible on the subject on which they have lectured. Never
let the question time become either an undignified wrangle or a dignified
debate. Questions always tend to become dialogue, and this should
be prevented by an occasional rather longer answer and a determination
to see that no one questioner shall be allowed to monopolize the meeting.
Above all we must refuse to treat any detail in isolation, but must
show its place in the whole scheme of things which the Church teaches.
Only thus can any solid good be done, and anything short of it will
serve only to confuse the hearers and to bring religion itself into
disrepute.
Spiritual life
There remains one side of Guild life which is very
difficult to treat, yet which is of such importance that without it
all the rest would be impossible: One might call it the work of sanctification--the
lifting of each one to the level of the task.
There are, on the spiritual side, certain obvious dangers; the variety
of motives which has already been mentioned as bringing recruits into
the Guild is likely to recur in all sorts of odd ways--rather
perhaps as a mixture of motives, good and not so good, than as anything
definitely wrong. It is impossible to be giving all the time, and
unless the speaker is getting help continually, then it is very certain
that he will suffer. Again controversy takes its toll--and the
tendency is in the heat of battle to forget the prime object of the
work.
To counteract this a great deal must be done by the individual. But
it is of the nature of our religion that each shall help each and
all draw strength from all--so in this work of sanctification
the Guild must play its part. Prayers and meditations bearing on the
work will be found in the handbook. An inter-Guild retreat for both
men and women is held yearly at Whitsuntide and lasts three days.
In separate Guilds a monthly half-day's retreat is given whenever
practicable and attended by most speakers, and also a First Friday
corporate Communion.
The ideal that the Guild as a whole should pray as much as it works
has been embodied in what is called the adoration scheme. Everyone
offering up half-an-hour's prayer spent at any time before the Blessed
Sacrament for the Guild puts a paper into a box recording the fact.
The figures are added monthly and thus represent what has actually
been--not promised--but done. Sometimes members are asked
to offer up their adoration for some special need, e.g., the increase
of speakers. [When the scheme was first started in Westminster it
was offered for this intention. At once the junior class began to
grow, and during the months of July and August the numbers were four
times what they had been in the spring]. From the beginning
the Guild has realized that the work and the workers depend on the
immense amount of prayer going up especially from the contemplative
orders, and to this great stream of prayer both active and associate
members strive to add their small share.
But more difficult to phrase than these practices, interwoven into
the very texture of Guild life, is the thing we call the Guild spirit--which
means the holding fast of the whole body to the ideal, so that when
momentarily it is dimmed in the individual, he may fall back on the
mass of his fellows for aid. That ideal is simple enough: that the
work must grow on a foundation of obscure lives well lived.
The lecturer's remote preparation for a meeting should be the whole
of his life. If a man is to speak for an hour in any day, it should
be his aim to pray at least as much. Most people pray tremendously
at the start--but it is a human tendency to fly to God in trouble
more readily than in prosperity, and a man feels more spiritual and
in less need of help after a good meeting than after a bad one. Further,
as has already been said, motive is a delicate matter, and here again
the Guild helps by holding up the only true motive--a sense of
responsibility to God and to the Church and to our fellows, a love
of God and--that more difficult thing--of our neighbor. All
this is part of the life that the Guild lives; it is a continuous
offering from the whole body to the sorely-pressed individual.
Summing up
A further word may be said of the needs of the outdoor
work. The Guild has a constitution, has a training method, has a regular
spiritual life. But all these are of importance to it as a society
only in their bearing on the platform. The Guild was not founded to
discover the best possible system of government embodied in a model
constitution, nor to teach theology, nor to make its members saints.
The constitution and the training system are both there, that the
platforms may be occupied, and the spiritual life is there that they
may be occupied by men worthy of their calling. Certainly neither
elegance of constitution, nor soundness of theology, nor personal
sanctity could excuse the Guild if it failed in its proper work--which
is the mass-production of competent outdoor exponents of Catholicism;
if it fails here, then it has no further excuse for existence. So
far, at any rate, it has not failed, in quality it has attained a
fair standard, but a word must be said of quantity.
The Guild depends for its existence on the willingness of both Catholics
and non-Catholics to take a part in the work--the willingness
of Catholics to teach and of non-Catholics to listen. And so far the
willingness of the non-Catholic is by far the greater; the world without
knows the Guild better and has a greater share in the work than our
own people. And this is a rare phenomenon in the history of the Church,
for which a reason must be found if we are not to admit that we Catholics
are failing in England.
The reason is probably twofold. In many cases there is a genuine misunderstanding
of the nature of the call. The Guild is too often spoken of as a vocation,
and many a man stays out because of the certainty that he has no vocation
for the Guild. But strictly speaking people no more have a vocation
to join the Guild than they have to pay their bills or refrain from
murder. The better word is duty, and the clearer understanding of
this may bring many to a decision.
The second reason for many is a feeling of unfitness, not physical
unfitness nor even moral unfitness, but the conviction that they are
not mentally equal to the work of teaching Catholicism on the outdoor
platform. The answer is the history of the Guild, which has already
shown an amazing power of assimilating all the resources of the Catholic
body--a power possessed to the same extent by no other Catholic
society.
But already there are signs that the Catholic body is coming to realize
the duty that lies on every Catholic, and, as has been said, on the
side of quality the work has attained a fair measure of success. For
this somewhat surprising fact, four reasons may be suggested:
1. The Guild has found the way to make everything common property,
by relying not on a few brilliant individuals, but on steady team
work. Here, if nowhere else, the weakest link is as strong as the
chain.
2. The Catholic position is so strong that, armed with it, quite ordinary
speakers are more than a match for much more able and better equipped
opponents.
3. The main strength of the Guild lies precisely in this, that the
speakers are all spare-time workers. That for the better part of the
day they are occupied in some other work is only superficially a disadvantage.
In fact it is the contact effected between men in the crowd living
ordinary lives in the world and men on the platform living ordinary
lives in the world that makes success possible. Anything that would
tend to withdraw Guildsmen from the world or to make them in any way
a specialized type would decrease their usefulness immensely. There
is no danger of the Guild becoming a religious community.
4. The crowds need Catholicism.
Results
It has already been said that we are building for
the future and have no expectation of immediate results. But sufficient
has happened to show that the Guild is on the right lines.
Converts are coming with ever growing frequency. Far more important
than this, lapsed Catholics are returning to the faith in great numbers
as a result of the work. For the moment we are aiming not at the conversion
of individuals but at the instruction of the whole mass of the people
of England.
And in this way there are results that no one of us can fail to see:
crowds waiting week after week, standing in the snow, bearing the
rain with equanimity, beginning with fierce hostility, coming slowly
to real friendliness; the conviction growing of the honesty, at least,
of the Catholic speakers; the old lies, which have a glorious carnival
when a new pitch is opened, dead in a month, for the Church is being
seen as she is.
Even if only one man learns that Catholics have to be sorry before
their sins can be forgiven, an evening is not wasted, for that bit
of truth does not lie buried, but lives and works and is communicated
to many whom we never see; and I think it is not too much to say that
one of our most important works is to make our crowd active members
of the Catholic Evidence Guild, in that they can spread among their
fellows, however reluctantly and with however many mistakes, the truths
that we are trying to teach, so that our audience consists, not only
of our visible crowd, but also of the mightier crowds among whom they
live and move.
Frank Sheed (1897-1982) was the top apologist in English-speaking countries. With his wife he founded the publishing company of Sheed and Ward and served as a chief instructor for the Catholic Evidence Guild.
|
