Editor’s note: No group ranks higher in twentieth-century Catholic apologetics than the Catholic Evidence Guild. Many fine apologists, including Frank Sheed and his wife, Maisie Ward, spoke in London’s Hyde Park and at Guild “pitches” throughout England, the U.S., and other English-speaking countries. They brought the truths of the faith to skeptical and often hostile audiences. Here we present three short commentaries, written fifty years ago, by two of the Guild’s top spokesmen.
The One True Church
All Catholics believe that there is only one true Church—namely their own. At first glance this view appears bigoted. In reality it is no more bigoted than the widespread view that there is only one God. If belief in one God is reasonable, why should belief in one Church be bigoted? But since all churches and religious institutions differ from one another, they can hardly all be equally true.
To Catholics it is evident that the confusion of belief among non-Catholics is due largely to a faulty use of the reasoning faculty—applying private judgment where it cannot successfully operate.
While the existence of God and the oneness of God can be attained by reason alone, the bulk of the Christian faith reaches men as a thing or things revealed: a thing we could have never known unless it were revealed; a thing we could never hold unless we received the gift of faith; a thing that could never be preserved in its entirety for any length of time unless the revelation were anchored to and protected by an institution markedly differing from all other institutions, inviting belief in its government and mission as divinely established and ratified. Such in fact Catholics believe their Church to be.
Non-Catholic Christians also believe that Christianity is revealed truth. In theory, the Bible constitutes the source of authority; in practice, this means Scripture as privately judged by themselves or others. This principle was the actuating motive behind a hundred founders of churches and sects, the emergence of which has created and increased confusion and doubt.
From all this the Catholic, where loyal to the Church, has been protected. Receiving his faith upon the authority of God’s revelation, he finds the anchorage for this faith in the Roman pontiff. For twenty centuries the popes with their authority and jurisdiction have held the Church in continuous worldwide unity.
The Catholic Church proclaims her distinctive character by four marks of unity, sanctity, universality, and continuity. Each of these marks separately and all collectively exhibit a prodigious or miraculous quality furnishing to the world outside the motives or grounds for belief.
For Catholics, the true line of advance is not the exercise of private judgment upon the Bible. This kind of approach only invites confusion, the emergence of innumerable sects. The history of Protestantism proves it.
To exercise private judgment to form an estimate of the significance of the four marks of the Catholic Church is well within the competence of private judgment. The marks are visible, tangible facts. Like all other facts of a prodigious or miraculous quality, they would seem to defy any natural or naturalistic explanation. Each mark in its own way is as marvelous as the Resurrection of Christ itself, with this difference: We were not alive to witness the Resurrection but are alive to witness the four marks. Either we must judge them to be fortuitous or see the finger of God in them. If their existence has been brought about by chance, it is equivalent to saying that a bagful of alphabetical letters poured out by haphazard would furnish in their disorder a formulated treatise.
The other alternative is to believe (with conviction) that God has preserved the Catholic Church in unity, sanctity, catholicity, and continuity for twenty centuries.
—J. Seymour Jonas
Persecution and Inquisition
The slaying of unbelievers by Catholics lies almost entirely in the four to five centuries beginning with the thirteenth, with two peak periods in the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries. From this one might infer that persecution arose not from any permanent quality in the nature of the Church but from elements peculiar to the period.
In fact there were two such special elements—the relation of Christian states to the faith and the peculiar nature of the Catharist heresy. We stress the special nature of the Catharists because, though the means of repression once set up were used against other heretics, like the Waldensians, it seems fairly certain that but for the Catharists they would never have been set up at all.
The first Catharists were burned in Europe by Robert of France in 1022. Pope Gregory IX associated the Church with the burning of heretics in 1230. In other words, there was a two-century lag between state action and Church action. What caused rulers to burn Catharists—the population also killed them, for there were lynchings—was the conviction that the heresy threatened the very foundations of society. It was not in the interests of the Church but of the state that Henry II and the two Fredericks moved against them.
The Catharists attacked two fundamentals in the social structure: (1) marriage and the family, for they taught that the act of procreation itself was sinful; (2) the taking of oaths, which in a feudal society was catastrophic. We cannot discuss them here in detail. But society felt itself threatened and, as societies will, reacted violently, perhaps over-violently. And after two hundred years, the Church assented that society was entitled to defend itself and collaborated in the defense.
Gregory IX established the Inquisition—a court of inquiry, staffed mainly by Dominicans but with Franciscans too. It examined men and women accused of heresy: If it found the accusation proved and the prisoner did not abandon his heresy, he was handed over to the state for the state’s penalty, for the Church itself has never claimed the right to put anyone to death. In 1252 Innocent IV introduced the use of torture—”but not to the point of mutilation or death.”
The Inquisition began badly with two friars who seem to have been homicidal maniacs: Robert, who was finally imprisoned by the pope and died insane, and Conrad of Marburg, who was assassinated. After that it seems on the whole to have acted reasonably enough, according to the judicial practices of the time, though these often seem barbarous to us: There was an effort to get at the truth, and there were heavy penalties for false accusation.
We must not forget that the medieval state saw its whole foundations as religious, saw itself threatened as never before, and had an undeniable right to defend itself. We may think the repression unnecessarily stringent, but the people of the time did not, and it was they who had to face it.
—Frank Sheed
Celibacy and Monasticism
That anybody should voluntarily tie himself or herself to perpetual celibacy by vow furnishes a puzzle to most people not members of the Catholic Church. The only answer is the true answer: The celibate in the cause of religion has entered upon a love affair greater and more enthralling than human courtship and marriage.
Far from despising marriage, the Catholic monk or nun venerates it, recognizing it for what it is: God’s appointed way for reproducing the race within the perfect social unit of the family. Incidentally, if there were no marriage and no families there would be no monks or nuns. Conversely, Fr. Vincent McNabb used to assert that if there were no monks or nuns there would be no sound family life, since the intercession and good works of monks and nuns bring down blessings innumerable upon society.
Staffed by the religious of both genders, the Catholic nursing and teaching orders are for the most part highly esteemed in the Western world, while few will be found to approve of the persecution now being inflicted on the religious communities by the governments behind the Iron Curtain.
What can be said for celibacy? Is it pleasing to God?
To answer this question satisfactorily, note the words of our Lord, uttered in part figuratively: “Some are born eunuchs, some have been made eunuchs by men, and some have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake.” The last type furnishes the ranks of the Catholic priesthood and of the Catholic religious orders.
As already agreed, while the world finds little objection to and often displays its appreciation of the teaching and nursing communities, its feelings are more mixed and often hostile towards the contemplative and enclosed orders. Let a boy or girl decide to enter such an order, and cries of reprobation and horror are heard on all sides: “How unnatural.” “Why bury yourself.” “How useless!”
All such exclamations leave God and his call entirely out of the reckoning. The monastic life is a definite call or vocation requiring celibacy and chastity for its perfect fulfillment. Being granted to a minority (as far as we can judge), it would be presumptuous in those not raised to it to attempt the contemplative life or renounce marriage without the necessary grace.
The renunciation of the world exacted by the monastic life is amply compensated by God, our Lord having promised that such should receive a hundredfold even in this life and life eternal hereafter. To renounce the creature at the invitation of the Creator is to love Creator and creature not less, but more.
Of the contemplative orders we should say that these, like Mary in the Gospel (cf. 10:39–42), have chosen the best part. Martha was busied about many things and called for her sister’s help. Courteously reproved, she was informed that one thing was necessary, e.g., the love of God solely for himself. Mary had chosen this best part. The call and raising to the contemplative life pure and simple is rarer and more precious than the vocation to more active states. Contemplatives are the cream of Catholic spirituality and while apparently producing little external effect furnish, as it were, the spiritual dynamos of the Church. Far more than most people realize, they have shaped the Christian civilization of the world.
—J. Seymour Jonas