Europe and the Faith | Page 4

That which challenged us, though it controlled
so much which should have aided us and was really our own, was
external to civilization and did not lose that character by the
momentary use of civilized Allies.
When we said that "the Slav" failed us, what did we mean? It was not a

statement of race. Poland is Slav, so is Serbia: they were two vastly
differing states and yet both with us. It meant that the Byzantine
influence was never sufficient to inform a true European state or to
teach Russia a national discipline; because the Byzantine Empire, the
tutor of Russia, was cut off from us, the Europeans, the Catholics, the
heirs, who are the conservators of the world.
The Catholic Conscience of Europe grasped this war--with apologies
where it was in the train of Prussia, with affirmation where it was free.
It saw what was toward. It weighed, judged, decided upon the
future--the two alternative futures which lie before the world.
All other judgments of the war made nonsense: You had, on the Allied
side, the most vulgar professional politicians and their rich paymasters
shouting for "Democracy;" pedants mumbling about "Race." On the
side of Prussia (the negation of nationality) you have the use of some
vague national mission of conquest divinely given to the very various
Germans and the least competent to govern. You would come at last (if
you listened to such varied cries) to see the Great War as a mere folly, a
thing without motive, such as the emptiest internationals conceive the
thing to have been.
So much for the example of the war. It is explicable as a challenge to
the tradition of Europe. It is inexplicable on any other ground. The
Catholic alone is in possession of the tradition of Europe: he alone can
see and judge in this matter.
From so recent and universal an example I turn to one local, distant,
precise, in which this same Catholic Conscience of European history
may be tested.
Consider the particular (and clerical) example of Thomas à Becket: the
story of St. Thomas of Canterbury. I defy any man to read the story of
Thomas a Becket in Stubbs, or in Green, or in Bright, or in any other of
our provincial Protestant handbooks, and to make head or tail of it.
Here is a well-defined and limited subject of study. It concerns only a
few years. A great deal is known about it, for there are many
contemporary accounts. Its comprehension is of vast interest to history.
The Catholic may well ask: "How it is I cannot understand the story as
told by these Protestant writers? Why does it not make sense?"
The story is briefly this: A certain prelate, the Primate of England at the
time, was asked to admit certain changes in the status of the clergy. The

chief of these changes was that men attached to the Church in any way
even by minor orders (not necessarily priests) should, if they
committed a crime amenable to temporal jurisdiction, be brought
before the ordinary courts of the country instead of left, as they had
been for centuries, to their own courts. The claim was, at the time, a
novel one. The Primate of England resisted that claim. In connection
with his resistance he was subjected to many indignities, many things
outrageous to custom were done against him; but the Pope doubted
whether his resistance was justified, and he was finally reconciled with
the civil authority. On returning to his See at Canterbury he became at
once the author of further action and the subject of further outrage, and
within a short time he was murdered by his exasperated enemies.
His death raised a vast public outcry. His monarch did penance for it.
But all the points on which he had resisted were in practice waived by
the Church at last. The civil state's original claim was in practice
recognized at last. Today it appears to be plain justice. The chief of St.
Thomas' contentions, for instance, that men in orders should be exempt
from the ordinary courts, seems as remote as chain armors.
So far, so good. The opponent of the Faith will say, and has said in a
hundred studies--that this resistance was nothing more than that always
offered by an old organization to a new development.
Of course it was! It is equally true to say of a man who objects to an
aëroplane smashing in the top of his studio that it is the resistance of an
old organization to a new development. But such a phrase in no way
explains the business; and when the Catholic begins to examine the
particular case of St. Thomas, he finds a great many things to wonder at
and to think about, upon