Paradoxes of Catholicism | Page 9

divorced from divine, so long to that world, that
country, that family, and that human heart will the supernatural religion
of Catholicism bring _not peace, but a sword_. And it will do so to the
end, up to the final world-shattering catastrophe of Armageddon itself.
"I come," cries the Rider on the White Horse, "to bring Peace indeed,
but a peace of which the world cannot even dream; a peace built upon
the eternal foundations of God Himself, not upon the shifting sands of

human agreement. And until that Vision dawns there must be war; until
God's Peace descends indeed and is accepted, till then My Garments
must be splashed in blood and from My Mouth comes forth _not peace,
but a two-edged sword_."

II
WEALTH AND POVERTY
Make to yourselves friends of the Mammon of iniquity.
You cannot serve God and Mammon.-LUKE XVI. 9, 13.
We have seen how the Church of the Prince of Peace must continually
be the centre of war. Let us go on to consider how, as a Human Society
dwelling in this world, she must continually have her eyes fixed upon
the next, and how, as a Divine Society, she must be open to the charge
of worldliness.
I. (i) The charge is a very common one: "Look at the extraordinary
wealth and splendour that this Church of the Poor Man of Nazareth
constantly gathers around her and ask yourself how she can dare to
claim to represent Him! Go through Holy Rome and see how the
richest and most elaborate buildings bear over their gateways the
heraldic emblems of Christ's Vicar! Go through any country which has
not risen in disgust and cast off the sham that calls herself 'Christ's
Church' and you will find that no worldly official is so splendid as
these heavenly delegates of Jesus Christ, no palaces more glorious than
those in which they dwell who pretend to preach Him who _had not
where to lay His head!_
"Above all, turn from that simple poverty-stricken figure that the
Gospels present to us, to the man who claims to be His Vicegerent on
earth. See him go, crowned three times over, on a throne borne on
men's shoulders, with the silver trumpets shrilling before him and the
ostrich fans coming on behind, and you will understand why the world
cannot take the Church seriously. Look at the court that is about him,

all purple and scarlet, and set by that the little band of weather-beaten
fishermen!
"No; if this Church were truly of Christ, she would imitate Him better.
It was His supreme mission to point to _things that are above;_ to lift
men's thoughts above dross and gold and jewels and worldly influence
and high places and power; to point to _a Heavenly Jerusalem, not
made with hands;_ to comfort the sorrowful with a vision of future
peace, not to dabble with temporal matters; to speak of grace and
heaven and things to come, and _to let the dead bury their dead!_ The
best we can do for her, then, is to disembarrass her of her riches; to turn
her temporal possessions to frankly temporal ends; to release her from
the slavery of her own ambition into the _liberty of the poor and the
children of God!"_
(ii) In a word, then, the Church is too worldly to be the Church of
Christ! You cannot serve God and Mammon. Yet in another mood our
critic will tell us that we are too otherworldly to be the Church of Christ.
"The chief charge I have against Catholicism," says such a man, "is that
the Church is too unpractical. If she were truly the Church of Jesus
Christ, she would surely imitate Him better in that which, after all, was
the mark of His highest Divinity--namely in His Humanity towards
men. Christ did not come into the world to preach metaphysics and talk
forever of a heaven that is to come; He came rather to attend to men's
simplest needs, _to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked_, to reform
society on better lines. It was not by His dogma that He won men's
hearts; it was by His simple, natural sympathy with their common
needs. He came, in a word, to make the best of this world, to use the
elements that lay ready to His hand, to sanctify all the plain things of
earth with which He came in contact.
"These otherworldly Catholics, then, are too much apart from common
life and common needs. Their dogmas and their aspirations and their
metaphysics are useless to a world which wants bread. Let them act
more and dream less! Let them show, for example, by the prosperity of
Catholic countries that Catholicism is practical and not a vision. Let
them preach less