UPON THIS ROCK
by G.K. Chesterton
To a Roman Catholic the Roman Catholic Church is simply the Christian religion; the gift of Christ to St. Peter and his successors of a right to answer at all times all questions about what it really is; a thing surrounded at the edge of its own wide domain by various severed fragments of its own substance; consisting of people who for different reasons deny that right to affirm what it really is, and who therefore differ among themselves, indefinitely and increasingly, about what it really is. It may be added that they differ not only about the nature of the ideal Christianity that ought to be substituted, but even about the nature of the Roman Catholicism that is to be defied. To some it is Antichrist; to some it is one branch of the Church of Christ, having authority in certain provinces but not in England or Russia; to some it is a corrupt perversion of Truth from which religion was rescued; to others a necessary historic phase through which religion had to pass; and so on. But it may be noted by the curious that though there is so much difference in the reasons given, there is something common to most of the emotions felt. The reactions to Rome are all reactions to something odd. It is a thousand things, but all things with a sort of thrill in them; a mystery, a bete noire, a strange survival, a public scandal, a private embarrassment, an open secret, a tactless topic, a sly joke, a last refuge or a leap in the dark: everything except anything that is like anything else.
To a Roman Catholic there is no particular difference between those parts of the religion which Protestants and others accept and those parts which they reject. The dogmas have, of course, their intrinsic theological proportions; but in his feeling they are all one thing. The Mass is as Christian as the Gospel. The Gospel is as Catholic as the Mass. This, I fancy, is the fact which the Protestant world has found it most difficult to understand and about which some of the most unfortunate forms of ill-feeling have appeared. Yet it arises quite naturally from the actual history of the Church, which has had to contend incessantly with quite other and quite opposite heresies. She has not only had to defeat these sects to defend these doctrines, but to defeat other sects to defend other doctrines including the doctrines which these sects rightly hold so dear. It was only the Roman Catholic Church that saved the Protestant truths. It may be right to rest on the Bible, but there would be no Bible if the Gnostics had proved that the Old Testament was written by the Devil, or had littered the world with Apocryphal Gospels. It may be right to say that Jesus alone saves from sin, but nobody would be saying it if a Pelagian movement had altered the whole notion of sin. Even the very selection of dogmas which the reformers decided to preserve had only been preserved for them by the authority which they denied.
It is natural, therefore, for Catholics not to be always thinking of the antithesis of Catholic and Protestant any more than of Catholic and Pelagian. Catholicism is used to proposals to cut down the creed to a few clauses; but different people have wanted quite different clauses left and quite different clauses cut out. Thus a Catholic does not feel the special reverence paid to the Mother of God as any more of a controversial question than the divine honours paid to the Son of God; for he knows the latter was as much controverted by the Arians as the former by the Puritans. He does not feel the throne of St. Peter to be any more specially in dispute than the theology of St. Paul, for he knows that both have been disputed. There have been anti-popes; there have been Apocryphal Gospels; there have been sects dethroning our Lady and sects dethroning our Lord. After nearly two thousand years of this sort of thing, Catholics have come to regard Catholicism as one thing, all the parts of which are in one sense equally assailed and in another sense equally unassailable.
Now it is unfortunately impossible for a Roman Catholic to state the principle without its sounding provocative and, what is much worse, superior; but unless he does state it, he does not state Roman Catholicism. Having stated it, however, in its dogmatic and defiant form, as it is his duty to do, he may afterwards suggest something of why the system seems, to those inside it, to be not so much a system as a home, and even a holiday. Thus it certainly does not mean being superior in the sense of supercilious; for in this system alone, only the saint is superior because he feels he is inferior. It does not say that all heretics are lost, for it does say that there is a common conscience by which they may be saved. But it does definitely say that he who knows the whole truth sins in accepting half the truth. Thus the Church is not a movement, like all those which have filled the world since the sixteenth century; that is, since the breakdown of the collective attempt of all Christendom to state the whole truth. It is not the movement of something trying to find its balance; it is the balance. But the point here is that even those heretics, who snatched at half-truths, seldom snatched at the same half. The original Protestants insisted on Hell without Purgatory. Their modern successors generally insist on Purgatory without Hell. Their future successors may quite possibly insist on Purgatory without Heaven. It may seem a natural sequence to the worship of Progress for its own sake, and the theory that “to travel hopefully is better than to arrive.” For the Catholic each of these things may be disputed in its turn, and all will remain.
Nevertheless, in making so short a summary in a world still Protestant by tradition, it will be convenient to assume that the reader is acquainted with the Christian scheme in those features which, until lately, were common to many or most Christian bodies: the Image of God, the Fall, the necessity of Redemption, the Last Judgment, and the rest; and to describe the Catholic faith (from which all these things really come) as that world sees it, by the chief features that appear distinctive because they are disputed. I will therefore say a word or two of what would still be commonly called the marks of Roman Catholicism. I shall say very little about the greatest of all, because it is admittedly a mystery and an object of faith. Catholics believe that in the Blessed Sacrament Christ is present, not merely as a thought is present in a mind, but as a person is present in a room, veiled only from the actual senses by the appearances of bread and wine. Of its historical aspect it will be enough to say that Roman Catholics are convinced that it is spoken of in this spirit at least as early as St. Ignatius, who was roughly of the next generation to that of the Gospel. The common sense of it, it seems to me, would be to say that if the words of Christ at the Last Supper were misunderstood, they were misunderstood by the twelve Apostles. But the doctrine is so tremendous and transcendental that we cannot complain if some misunderstand it as blasphemous and extravagant. Only they cannot have it both ways. They must not turn round and complain that we claim to possess Christ as a living God by a vital process, absent from the other communions that called the process impossible. They must not grumble at our talking of Christ coming back to a heretic land with the first procession bearing the Host. There must be a difference between Christ’s presence in their sense and in our sense, if they are actually shocked and staggered at our sense. A Return which they are driven to call impossible we may surely be allowed to call unique.
For practical purposes in Protestant civilization it is another fact that soars most clearly into sight, towering even over Transubstantiation. It is the Papacy that makes the Papist. For him, at least, it dates from the highly dramatic words about the Rock and the Gates of Hell; it certainly appears, to say the very least, as an admitted seat of superior authority in the debates of the first Fathers and Councils; but it was not logically and literally defined until the middle of the nineteenth century. In this sense it is true that the idea grew; but we can never make anything but nonsense out of the sort of evolution that imagines something growing out of nothing. But in so far as an eternal truth can grow, in the comprehension of men, it has grown continuously with the increase of the experience of men. The general case for a tribunal to define the truth has been touched upon already. I pointed out that long before Protestants rushed in to preserve their simple Christianity, even that simple Christianity would not have been there to preserve if there had not already been a Church tribunal to preserve it. The question then becomes one of the nature of the tribunal. Even if democracy were applicable to a revelation, there could not really be a democratic tribunal which should be deciding all the time and democratic all the time. It would not be the millions of poor and humble Catholics who would rule; it would be the officials if it were not the official. It would be a Holy Synod. Now every popular instinct Catholics possess seems to them to say that rather than have merely an official order, that is, an oligarchy, it is far more human to have a monarchy, that is, a man. It is indeed remarkable that those who broke with this purely moral monarchy generally set up a material and a rather immoral monarchy. The first great schism in the East was made by men who turned from the Popes to bow down to the Caesars and the Tsars. The last great schism in the West was made by men who attributed divine right to Henry VIII, not to mention Charles I. Those who thought the papacy too despotic did not even escape despotism.
It is needless to explain, I trust, that the only despotism of the Pope consists in the fact that all Catholics believe that God will guard him from teaching falsehood to the Church on those special and rather rare occasions when he is appealed to to end a controversy with a final statement of faith. His ordinary pronouncements, though naturally received with profound respect, are not infallible. His private character depends on his own free will, like anybody else’s. He can commit sins like anybody else; he must confess sins like anybody else; and his having been Pope is nothing to his salvation. But the question is, given our need for such final decisions to save Christianity at great crises, what organ of the Church decides? The longer historical experience accumulates, the more profoundly thankful most Catholics are that the organ is a human being; a mind and not a type, a will and not a tradition or tone of a class. The best bishops ruling as a class would become a club, as a parliament does. They would have all of its scattered responsibility, all its mutual flattery, all its diffused and dangerous pride. But the responsibility of a Pope is so solitary and so solemn that a man would need to be a maniac not to be humbled by it.
Probably the Protestant world would count as the next outstanding feature, after the power of the priests to perform Mass and of the Popes to define doctrine, that other power of the priesthood which is expressed in the sacrament of Penance. The sacramental system is everywhere based on the idea that certain material acts are mystical acts; are events in the spiritual world. This mystical materialism does divide us from all those forms of idealism that hold all good to be inward and invisible and matter to be unworthy to express it. It is needless to note how this applies to the water of baptism, the oil of unction, and so on. But I am deliberately taking the sacrament which our world has most misunderstood; and, strangely enough, it is that one which is least material and most spiritual, consisting of spoken words expressing the most secret thoughts. Of all the sacraments it is, in the modern jargon, the most psychological. And the proof of it is that even the people who abolished it a few centuries ago found that they had to invent a new imitation of it a few years ago. They told the people to go to a new priest, often without credentials, and make confession generally without absolution, and they called it psychoanalysis. Catholicism would say that the lack of the confessional had produced a modern congestion and stagnation of secrets so morbid as to be reaching the verge of madness.
Broadly, it may be said that Roman Catholicism has had the idea, hitherto at least highly unique, of working mankind from the inside. There have been and are any number of external ethical and political systems directing men how to do right in the mass; there is no other that thus gets to grips with why such a system goes wrong with the individual. Most moderns are content to get hold of the plan of Utopia. This is rather like getting hold of the diary of the Utopian and learning the real reason why he does not always behave in a Utopian manner. But, of course, it is quite useless unless he produces his own diary of his own free will. Unless he really wishes it, there can be no sacrament; and unless he really repents, there is no absolution. For the history of this institution, it follows in its rough outline the same course as the other cases of the Mass and the Papacy. That is, it is undoubtedly present as an idea in the very earliest times; there are disputes about the proportion of that presence, and there need be no dispute at all that it grew more elaborate, more systematic, and more subtle with the process of experience. What is called Development is the unfolding of all the consequences and applications of an idea; but of something that is there, not of something that is not there. In this sense the Catholic Church is the one Christian body that has always believed in Evolution.
There is barely space to touch on two more of these things which are counted Popish specialties chiefly because they are counted Popish scandals. The first is the idea of asceticism and especially of celibacy. The second is the cult of the Blessed Virgin. Of the former it will be enough to say here that to most ordinary Roman Catholics, who are not called upon to practise special austerities, those examples are valuable not only as examples of heroism, but as very vivid evidences of the reality of religious hopes. Granted that for us the divine light is valued as a daily light, brightening our daily and normal affairs, yet it would not brighten them at all if we did not believe that the light was really divine. If we only believed that religion was useful, it would be of no use. Now nothing could better prove the light divine than that some should live on it as on a food; nothing could more clearly show religion to be real than that for some people it can be a substitute for other realities. We have no difficulty in believing that such people deal more directly with divine things than we, as in the case of those who enjoy directly a divine love instead of indirectly through a human love in marriage. And when we are criticized for this, we remember with some amusement that it was we who said that marriage was a divine sacrament when our critics said it was not.
Of the most popular, the most poetical and the most practically inspiring of all the distinctively Catholic traditions of Christianity, I will say very little here; indeed, I will say only one thing. The honour given to Mary as the Mother of God is, among a thousand other things, a very perfect example of the truth to which I have recurred more than once: that even what we may call the Protestant truths were only saved by the Catholic authority. Among these is the very necessary truth of the subordination of Mary to Christ, as being after all the subordination of the creature to the Creator. Nothing amuses Catholics more than the suggestion, in so much of the old Protestant propaganda, that they are to be freed from the superstition called Mariolatry, like people freed from the burden of daylight. All the spontaneous spirituality, as distinct from the necessary doctrinal orthodoxy, is on the side of the extension and even excess of this cult. If Catholics had been left to their private judgment, to their personal religious experience, to their sense of the essential spirit of Christ and Christianity, to any of the liberal or latitudinarian tests of truth, they would long ago have exalted our Lady to a height of superhuman supremacy and splendour that might really have imperilled the pure monotheism in the core of the creed. Over whole tracts of popular opinion she might have been a goddess more universal than Isis. It is the authority of Rome that has prevented such Catholics from indulging in such Mariolatry; the strict definition that distinguished between a perfect woman and a divine Man. But if it were a place for expression of feeling, little doubt would be left about which way all our most direct and democratic feelings drive. I have throughout this statement ignored the meaningless affectation of impartiality. It is impossible for any man to state what he believes as if he did not believe it. But I have endeavoured to describe the most familiar features of this one religion in terms of logic not of rhetoric. And on this last matter of the doctrine touching the Virgin I will conclude without further speech. It is only reasonable that a creed presented by one who holds it should be stated with conviction; but anything I wrote on this last topic might be defaced with enthusiasm.
[From An Outline of Christianity (London, 1926). Reprinted in G.K. Chesterton, The Catholic Church and Conversion (1960).]
UPON THIS ROCK
by G.K. Chesterton
To a Roman Catholic the Roman Catholic Church is simply the Christian religion; the gift of Christ to St. Peter and his successors of a right to answer at all times all questions about what it really is; a thing surrounded at the edge of its own wide domain by various severed fragments of its own substance; consisting of people who for different reasons deny that right to affirm what it really is, and who therefore differ among themselves, indefinitely and increasingly, about what it really is. It may be added that they differ not only about the nature of the ideal Christianity that ought to be substituted, but even about the nature of the Roman Catholicism that is to be defied. To some it is Antichrist; to some it is one branch of the Church of Christ, having authority in certain provinces but not in England or Russia; to some it is a corrupt perversion of Truth from which religion was rescued; to others a necessary historic phase through which religion had to pass; and so on. But it may be noted by the curious that though there is so much difference in the reasons given, there is something common to most of the emotions felt. The reactions to Rome are all reactions to something odd. It is a thousand things, but all things with a sort of thrill in them; a mystery, a bete noire, a strange survival, a public scandal, a private embarrassment, an open secret, a tactless topic, a sly joke, a last refuge or a leap in the dark: everything except anything that is like anything else.
To a Roman Catholic there is no particular difference between those parts of the religion which Protestants and others accept and those parts which they reject. The dogmas have, of course, their intrinsic theological proportions; but in his feeling they are all one thing. The Mass is as Christian as the Gospel. The Gospel is as Catholic as the Mass. This, I fancy, is the fact which the Protestant world has found it most difficult to understand and about which some of the most unfortunate forms of ill-feeling have appeared. Yet it arises quite naturally from the actual history of the Church, which has had to contend incessantly with quite other and quite opposite heresies. She has not only had to defeat these sects to defend these doctrines, but to defeat other sects to defend other doctrines including the doctrines which these sects rightly hold so dear. It was only the Roman Catholic Church that saved the Protestant truths. It may be right to rest on the Bible, but there would be no Bible if the Gnostics had proved that the Old Testament was written by the Devil, or had littered the world with Apocryphal Gospels. It may be right to say that Jesus alone saves from sin, but nobody would be saying it if a Pelagian movement had altered the whole notion of sin. Even the very selection of dogmas which the reformers decided to preserve had only been preserved for them by the authority which they denied.
It is natural, therefore, for Catholics not to be always thinking of the antithesis of Catholic and Protestant any more than of Catholic and Pelagian. Catholicism is used to proposals to cut down the creed to a few clauses; but different people have wanted quite different clauses left and quite different clauses cut out. Thus a Catholic does not feel the special reverence paid to the Mother of God as any more of a controversial question than the divine honours paid to the Son of God; for he knows the latter was as much controverted by the Arians as the former by the Puritans. He does not feel the throne of St. Peter to be any more specially in dispute than the theology of St. Paul, for he knows that both have been disputed. There have been anti-popes; there have been Apocryphal Gospels; there have been sects dethroning our Lady and sects dethroning our Lord. After nearly two thousand years of this sort of thing, Catholics have come to regard Catholicism as one thing, all the parts of which are in one sense equally assailed and in another sense equally unassailable.
Now it is unfortunately impossible for a Roman Catholic to state the principle without its sounding provocative and, what is much worse, superior; but unless he does state it, he does not state Roman Catholicism. Having stated it, however, in its dogmatic and defiant form, as it is his duty to do, he may afterwards suggest something of why the system seems, to those inside it, to be not so much a system as a home, and even a holiday. Thus it certainly does not mean being superior in the sense of supercilious; for in this system alone, only the saint is superior because he feels he is inferior. It does not say that all heretics are lost, for it does say that there is a common conscience by which they may be saved. But it does definitely say that he who knows the whole truth sins in accepting half the truth. Thus the Church is not a movement, like all those which have filled the world since the sixteenth century; that is, since the breakdown of the collective attempt of all Christendom to state the whole truth. It is not the movement of something trying to find its balance; it is the balance. But the point here is that even those heretics, who snatched at half-truths, seldom snatched at the same half. The original Protestants insisted on Hell without Purgatory. Their modern successors generally insist on Purgatory without Hell. Their future successors may quite possibly insist on Purgatory without Heaven. It may seem a natural sequence to the worship of Progress for its own sake, and the theory that “to travel hopefully is better than to arrive.” For the Catholic each of these things may be disputed in its turn, and all will remain.
SU QUESTA PIETRA
di G.K. Chesterton
Per un cattolico romano la Chiesa cattolica romana è semplicemente la religione cristiana; il dono fatto da Cristo a san Pietro e ai suoi successori di un diritto a rispondere in ogni tempo a tutte le domande su ciò che essa realmente è; una cosa circondata, ai margini del suo stesso ampio dominio, da vari frammenti recisi della sua stessa sostanza; composta di persone che, per diverse ragioni, negano quel diritto di affermare ciò che essa realmente è, e che perciò differiscono tra loro, indefinitamente e sempre più, su ciò che essa realmente è. Si può aggiungere che differiscono non solo sulla natura del cristianesimo ideale che si dovrebbe sostituire, ma perfino sulla natura del cattolicesimo romano che va sfidato. Per alcuni è l’Anticristo; per alcuni è un ramo della Chiesa di Cristo, con autorità in certe province ma non in Inghilterra o in Russia; per alcuni è una corrotta perversione della Verità da cui la religione fu salvata; per altri una fase storica necessaria attraverso cui la religione doveva passare; e così via. Ma il curioso può notare che, benché vi sia tanta differenza nelle ragioni addotte, vi è qualcosa di comune nella maggior parte delle emozioni provate. Le reazioni a Roma sono tutte reazioni a qualcosa di strano. È mille cose, ma tutte cose con una sorta di brivido dentro; un mistero, una bête noire, una strana sopravvivenza, uno scandalo pubblico, un imbarazzo privato, un segreto di Pulcinella, un argomento indelicato, una battuta furtiva, un ultimo rifugio o un salto nel buio: tutto tranne qualcosa che assomigli a qualcos’altro.
Per un cattolico romano non vi è particolare differenza tra quelle parti della religione che i protestanti e gli altri accettano e quelle parti che rifiutano. I dogmi hanno, certo, le loro intrinseche proporzioni teologiche; ma nel suo sentire sono tutti una cosa sola. La Messa è cristiana quanto il Vangelo. Il Vangelo è cattolico quanto la Messa. Questo, mi pare, è il fatto che il mondo protestante ha trovato più difficile da comprendere e attorno al quale sono apparse alcune delle più sfortunate forme di risentimento. Eppure esso nasce del tutto naturalmente dalla storia reale della Chiesa, che ha dovuto contendere incessantemente con eresie tutt’altre e del tutto opposte. Non solo ha dovuto sconfiggere queste sette per difendere queste dottrine, ma sconfiggere altre sette per difendere altre dottrine, comprese le dottrine che queste stesse sette giustamente tengono tanto care. Fu soltanto la Chiesa cattolica romana a salvare le verità protestanti. Può essere giusto poggiare sulla Bibbia, ma non vi sarebbe alcuna Bibbia se gli gnostici avessero dimostrato che l’Antico Testamento fu scritto dal Diavolo, o avessero disseminato il mondo di Vangeli apocrifi. Può essere giusto dire che Gesù solo salva dal peccato, ma nessuno lo direbbe se un movimento pelagiano avesse mutato l’intera nozione di peccato. Perfino la stessa selezione di dogmi che i riformatori decisero di conservare era stata conservata per loro soltanto dall’autorità che essi negavano.
È naturale, dunque, per i cattolici non pensare sempre all’antitesi tra cattolico e protestante, non più che a quella tra cattolico e pelagiano. Il cattolicesimo è abituato alle proposte di ridurre il credo a poche clausole; ma persone diverse hanno voluto lasciare clausole assai diverse e togliere clausole assai diverse. Così un cattolico non sente la speciale venerazione tributata alla Madre di Dio come una questione più controversa degli onori divini tributati al Figlio di Dio; poiché sa che quest’ultimo fu contestato dagli ariani tanto quanto la prima dai puritani. Non sente il trono di san Pietro come più particolarmente in disputa della teologia di san Paolo, poiché sa che entrambi sono stati contestati. Vi sono stati antipapi; vi sono stati Vangeli apocrifi; vi sono state sette che detronizzavano la nostra Signora e sette che detronizzavano nostro Signore. Dopo quasi duemila anni di questo genere di cose, i cattolici sono giunti a considerare il cattolicesimo come una cosa sola, tutte le parti della quale sono in un senso egualmente assalite e in un altro senso egualmente inespugnabili.
Ora, è purtroppo impossibile per un cattolico romano enunciare il principio senza che suoni provocatorio e, cosa assai peggiore, altezzoso; ma se non lo enuncia, non enuncia il cattolicesimo romano. Avendolo tuttavia enunciato, nella sua forma dogmatica e sfidante, come è suo dovere fare, può in seguito suggerire qualcosa del perché il sistema sembri, a coloro che ne stanno dentro, non tanto un sistema quanto una casa, e persino una vacanza. Così esso non significa certo essere superiori nel senso di supponenti; poiché in questo sistema soltanto, solo il santo è superiore perché sente di essere inferiore. Non dice che tutti gli eretici siano perduti, poiché dice bensì che vi è una comune coscienza per cui essi possono essere salvati. Ma dice sì, decisamente, che chi conosce l’intera verità pecca accettando metà della verità. Così la Chiesa non è un movimento, come tutti quelli che hanno riempito il mondo dal sedicesimo secolo; cioè dal crollo del tentativo collettivo di tutta la cristianità di enunciare l’intera verità. Non è il movimento di qualcosa che cerca il proprio equilibrio; è l’equilibrio. Ma il punto qui è che perfino quegli eretici, che afferrarono avidamente mezze verità, di rado afferrarono la stessa metà. I protestanti originari insistevano sull’Inferno senza il Purgatorio. I loro successori moderni generalmente insistono sul Purgatorio senza l’Inferno. I loro futuri successori potrebbero benissimo insistere sul Purgatorio senza il Paradiso. Può sembrare una naturale conseguenza del culto del Progresso fine a se stesso, e della teoria che “viaggiare con speranza è meglio che arrivare.” Per il cattolico ciascuna di queste cose può essere contestata a sua volta, e tutte rimarranno.
Nevertheless, in making so short a summary in a world still Protestant by tradition, it will be convenient to assume that the reader is acquainted with the Christian scheme in those features which, until lately, were common to many or most Christian bodies: the Image of God, the Fall, the necessity of Redemption, the Last Judgment, and the rest; and to describe the Catholic faith (from which all these things really come) as that world sees it, by the chief features that appear distinctive because they are disputed. I will therefore say a word or two of what would still be commonly called the marks of Roman Catholicism. I shall say very little about the greatest of all, because it is admittedly a mystery and an object of faith. Catholics believe that in the Blessed Sacrament Christ is present, not merely as a thought is present in a mind, but as a person is present in a room, veiled only from the actual senses by the appearances of bread and wine. Of its historical aspect it will be enough to say that Roman Catholics are convinced that it is spoken of in this spirit at least as early as St. Ignatius, who was roughly of the next generation to that of the Gospel. The common sense of it, it seems to me, would be to say that if the words of Christ at the Last Supper were misunderstood, they were misunderstood by the twelve Apostles. But the doctrine is so tremendous and transcendental that we cannot complain if some misunderstand it as blasphemous and extravagant. Only they cannot have it both ways. They must not turn round and complain that we claim to possess Christ as a living God by a vital process, absent from the other communions that called the process impossible. They must not grumble at our talking of Christ coming back to a heretic land with the first procession bearing the Host. There must be a difference between Christ’s presence in their sense and in our sense, if they are actually shocked and staggered at our sense. A Return which they are driven to call impossible we may surely be allowed to call unique.
For practical purposes in Protestant civilization it is another fact that soars most clearly into sight, towering even over Transubstantiation. It is the Papacy that makes the Papist. For him, at least, it dates from the highly dramatic words about the Rock and the Gates of Hell; it certainly appears, to say the very least, as an admitted seat of superior authority in the debates of the first Fathers and Councils; but it was not logically and literally defined until the middle of the nineteenth century. In this sense it is true that the idea grew; but we can never make anything but nonsense out of the sort of evolution that imagines something growing out of nothing. But in so far as an eternal truth can grow, in the comprehension of men, it has grown continuously with the increase of the experience of men. The general case for a tribunal to define the truth has been touched upon already. I pointed out that long before Protestants rushed in to preserve their simple Christianity, even that simple Christianity would not have been there to preserve if there had not already been a Church tribunal to preserve it. The question then becomes one of the nature of the tribunal. Even if democracy were applicable to a revelation, there could not really be a democratic tribunal which should be deciding all the time and democratic all the time. It would not be the millions of poor and humble Catholics who would rule; it would be the officials if it were not the official. It would be a Holy Synod. Now every popular instinct Catholics possess seems to them to say that rather than have merely an official order, that is, an oligarchy, it is far more human to have a monarchy, that is, a man. It is indeed remarkable that those who broke with this purely moral monarchy generally set up a material and a rather immoral monarchy. The first great schism in the East was made by men who turned from the Popes to bow down to the Caesars and the Tsars. The last great schism in the West was made by men who attributed divine right to Henry VIII, not to mention Charles I. Those who thought the papacy too despotic did not even escape despotism.
It is needless to explain, I trust, that the only despotism of the Pope consists in the fact that all Catholics believe that God will guard him from teaching falsehood to the Church on those special and rather rare occasions when he is appealed to to end a controversy with a final statement of faith. His ordinary pronouncements, though naturally received with profound respect, are not infallible. His private character depends on his own free will, like anybody else’s. He can commit sins like anybody else; he must confess sins like anybody else; and his having been Pope is nothing to his salvation. But the question is, given our need for such final decisions to save Christianity at great crises, what organ of the Church decides? The longer historical experience accumulates, the more profoundly thankful most Catholics are that the organ is a human being; a mind and not a type, a will and not a tradition or tone of a class. The best bishops ruling as a class would become a club, as a parliament does. They would have all of its scattered responsibility, all its mutual flattery, all its diffused and dangerous pride. But the responsibility of a Pope is so solitary and so solemn that a man would need to be a maniac not to be humbled by it.
Nondimeno, nel fare un riassunto tanto breve in un mondo ancora protestante per tradizione, converrà supporre che il lettore abbia familiarità con lo schema cristiano in quei tratti che, fino a poco tempo fa, erano comuni a molti o alla maggior parte dei corpi cristiani: l’Immagine di Dio, la Caduta, la necessità della Redenzione, il Giudizio Universale, e il resto; e descrivere la fede cattolica (da cui tutte queste cose realmente provengono) come quel mondo la vede, mediante i tratti principali che appaiono distintivi perché sono contestati. Dirò dunque una parola o due su ciò che ancora comunemente si chiamerebbero i segni del cattolicesimo romano. Dirò pochissimo del più grande di tutti, perché è dichiaratamente un mistero e un oggetto di fede. I cattolici credono che nel Santissimo Sacramento Cristo sia presente, non semplicemente come un pensiero è presente in una mente, ma come una persona è presente in una stanza, velata ai sensi reali soltanto dalle apparenze del pane e del vino. Del suo aspetto storico basterà dire che i cattolici romani sono convinti che se ne parli in questo spirito almeno già a partire da sant’Ignazio, che appartenne all’incirca alla generazione successiva a quella del Vangelo. Il buon senso della cosa, mi sembra, sarebbe dire che, se le parole di Cristo durante l’Ultima Cena furono fraintese, furono fraintese dai dodici Apostoli. Ma la dottrina è tanto tremenda e trascendentale che non possiamo lamentarci se qualcuno la fraintende come blasfema e stravagante. Solo che non possono avere la botte piena e la moglie ubriaca. Non devono voltarsi e lamentarsi che noi pretendiamo di possedere Cristo come Dio vivente mediante un processo vitale, assente dalle altre comunioni che quel processo lo dicevano impossibile. Non devono brontolare del nostro parlare di Cristo che torna in una terra eretica con la prima processione che reca l’Ostia. Vi deve essere una differenza tra la presenza di Cristo nel loro senso e nel nostro senso, se essi sono davvero scandalizzati e sbigottiti dal nostro senso. Un Ritorno che essi sono costretti a chiamare impossibile ci sia pur concesso di chiamarlo unico.
Per scopi pratici nella civiltà protestante è un altro fatto quello che si innalza più chiaramente alla vista, torreggiando persino sopra la Transustanziazione. È il Papato che fa il Papista. Per lui, almeno, esso data dalle parole altamente drammatiche sulla Pietra e sulle Porte dell’Inferno; certamente appare, a dir poco, come una riconosciuta sede di autorità superiore nei dibattiti dei primi Padri e Concili; ma non fu logicamente e letteralmente definito fino alla metà del diciannovesimo secolo. In questo senso è vero che l’idea crebbe; ma non possiamo mai ricavare altro che assurdità da quella sorta di evoluzione che immagina qualcosa che cresce dal nulla. Ma nella misura in cui una verità eterna può crescere, nella comprensione degli uomini, essa è cresciuta di continuo con l’accrescersi dell’esperienza degli uomini. Il caso generale a favore di un tribunale che definisca la verità è già stato toccato. Ho fatto notare che, molto prima che i protestanti si precipitassero a preservare il loro semplice cristianesimo, persino quel semplice cristianesimo non sarebbe stato lì da preservare se non fosse già esistito un tribunale della Chiesa a preservarlo. La questione allora diventa quella della natura del tribunale. Anche se la democrazia fosse applicabile a una rivelazione, non potrebbe esservi realmente un tribunale democratico che stesse decidendo tutto il tempo ed essendo democratico tutto il tempo. Non sarebbero i milioni di cattolici poveri e umili a governare; sarebbero i funzionari se non il funzionario. Sarebbe un Santo Sinodo. Ora, ogni istinto popolare che i cattolici possiedono sembra loro dire che, piuttosto che avere un mero ordine ufficiale, cioè un’oligarchia, è assai più umano avere una monarchia, cioè un uomo. È davvero notevole che coloro i quali ruppero con questa monarchia puramente morale generalmente istituirono una monarchia materiale e piuttosto immorale. Il primo grande scisma in Oriente fu fatto da uomini che si volsero dai Papi per prostrarsi davanti ai Cesari e agli Zar. L’ultimo grande scisma in Occidente fu fatto da uomini che attribuirono diritto divino a Enrico VIII, per non parlare di Carlo I. Coloro che pensavano il papato troppo dispotico non sfuggirono nemmeno al dispotismo.
È superfluo spiegare, confido, che l’unico dispotismo del Papa consiste nel fatto che tutti i cattolici credono che Dio lo custodirà dall’insegnare falsità alla Chiesa in quelle speciali e piuttosto rare occasioni in cui a lui ci si appella per porre fine a una controversia con un’affermazione definitiva di fede. Le sue ordinarie pronunce, benché naturalmente accolte con profondo rispetto, non sono infallibili. Il suo carattere privato dipende dal suo libero arbitrio, come quello di chiunque altro. Può commettere peccati come chiunque altro; deve confessare i peccati come chiunque altro; e l’essere stato Papa nulla giova alla sua salvezza. Ma la questione è: dato il nostro bisogno di simili decisioni definitive per salvare il cristianesimo nelle grandi crisi, quale organo della Chiesa decide? Più a lungo si accumula l’esperienza storica, più profondamente la maggior parte dei cattolici è grata che l’organo sia un essere umano; una mente e non un tipo, una volontà e non una tradizione o il tono di una classe. I migliori vescovi che governassero come classe diverrebbero un club, come fa un parlamento. Avrebbero tutta la sua responsabilità dispersa, tutta la sua reciproca adulazione, tutto il suo diffuso e pericoloso orgoglio. Ma la responsabilità di un Papa è tanto solitaria e tanto solenne che un uomo dovrebbe essere un maniaco per non esserne umiliato.
Probably the Protestant world would count as the next outstanding feature, after the power of the priests to perform Mass and of the Popes to define doctrine, that other power of the priesthood which is expressed in the sacrament of Penance. The sacramental system is everywhere based on the idea that certain material acts are mystical acts; are events in the spiritual world. This mystical materialism does divide us from all those forms of idealism that hold all good to be inward and invisible and matter to be unworthy to express it. It is needless to note how this applies to the water of baptism, the oil of unction, and so on. But I am deliberately taking the sacrament which our world has most misunderstood; and, strangely enough, it is that one which is least material and most spiritual, consisting of spoken words expressing the most secret thoughts. Of all the sacraments it is, in the modern jargon, the most psychological. And the proof of it is that even the people who abolished it a few centuries ago found that they had to invent a new imitation of it a few years ago. They told the people to go to a new priest, often without credentials, and make confession generally without absolution, and they called it psychoanalysis. Catholicism would say that the lack of the confessional had produced a modern congestion and stagnation of secrets so morbid as to be reaching the verge of madness.
Broadly, it may be said that Roman Catholicism has had the idea, hitherto at least highly unique, of working mankind from the inside. There have been and are any number of external ethical and political systems directing men how to do right in the mass; there is no other that thus gets to grips with why such a system goes wrong with the individual. Most moderns are content to get hold of the plan of Utopia. This is rather like getting hold of the diary of the Utopian and learning the real reason why he does not always behave in a Utopian manner. But, of course, it is quite useless unless he produces his own diary of his own free will. Unless he really wishes it, there can be no sacrament; and unless he really repents, there is no absolution. For the history of this institution, it follows in its rough outline the same course as the other cases of the Mass and the Papacy. That is, it is undoubtedly present as an idea in the very earliest times; there are disputes about the proportion of that presence, and there need be no dispute at all that it grew more elaborate, more systematic, and more subtle with the process of experience. What is called Development is the unfolding of all the consequences and applications of an idea; but of something that is there, not of something that is not there. In this sense the Catholic Church is the one Christian body that has always believed in Evolution.
There is barely space to touch on two more of these things which are counted Popish specialties chiefly because they are counted Popish scandals. The first is the idea of asceticism and especially of celibacy. The second is the cult of the Blessed Virgin. Of the former it will be enough to say here that to most ordinary Roman Catholics, who are not called upon to practise special austerities, those examples are valuable not only as examples of heroism, but as very vivid evidences of the reality of religious hopes. Granted that for us the divine light is valued as a daily light, brightening our daily and normal affairs, yet it would not brighten them at all if we did not believe that the light was really divine. If we only believed that religion was useful, it would be of no use. Now nothing could better prove the light divine than that some should live on it as on a food; nothing could more clearly show religion to be real than that for some people it can be a substitute for other realities. We have no difficulty in believing that such people deal more directly with divine things than we, as in the case of those who enjoy directly a divine love instead of indirectly through a human love in marriage. And when we are criticized for this, we remember with some amusement that it was we who said that marriage was a divine sacrament when our critics said it was not.
Probabilmente il mondo protestante conterebbe come tratto saliente successivo, dopo il potere dei sacerdoti di celebrare la Messa e dei Papi di definire la dottrina, quell’altro potere del sacerdozio che si esprime nel sacramento della Penitenza. Il sistema sacramentale è ovunque fondato sull’idea che certi atti materiali siano atti mistici; siano eventi nel mondo spirituale. Questo materialismo mistico ci separa davvero da tutte quelle forme di idealismo che ritengono ogni bene interiore e invisibile e la materia indegna di esprimerlo. È superfluo notare come ciò si applichi all’acqua del battesimo, all’olio dell’unzione, e così via. Ma io prendo deliberatamente il sacramento che il nostro mondo ha più frainteso; e, cosa abbastanza strana, è quello che è meno materiale e più spirituale, consistendo di parole pronunciate che esprimono i pensieri più segreti. Di tutti i sacramenti è, nel gergo moderno, il più psicologico. E la prova di ciò è che perfino le persone che lo abolirono qualche secolo fa scoprirono di dover inventare una nuova imitazione di esso qualche anno fa. Dissero alla gente di andare da un nuovo sacerdote, spesso senza credenziali, e di fare la confessione generalmente senza assoluzione, e la chiamarono psicoanalisi. Il cattolicesimo direbbe che la mancanza del confessionale aveva prodotto una moderna congestione e stagnazione di segreti tanto morbosa da rasentare l’orlo della follia.
In termini ampi, si può dire che il cattolicesimo romano ha avuto l’idea, finora quantomeno assai singolare, di lavorare l’umanità dall’interno. Vi sono stati e vi sono un gran numero di sistemi etici e politici esterni che dirigono gli uomini su come far bene in massa; non ve n’è altro che venga così alle prese con il perché un tale sistema vada storto nell’individuo. La maggior parte dei moderni si accontenta di impadronirsi del progetto dell’Utopia. Questo è piuttosto come impadronirsi del diario dell’utopiano e apprendere la vera ragione per cui egli non si comporta sempre in maniera utopica. Ma, naturalmente, è del tutto inutile a meno che egli non produca il proprio diario di propria libera volontà. A meno che non lo desideri davvero, non vi può essere sacramento; e a meno che non si penta davvero, non vi è assoluzione. Quanto alla storia di questa istituzione, essa segue nelle sue rozze linee il medesimo corso degli altri casi della Messa e del Papato. Vale a dire, è indubbiamente presente come idea fin dai tempi più antichi; vi sono dispute sulla proporzione di quella presenza, e non vi può essere alcuna disputa sul fatto che essa divenne più elaborata, più sistematica e più sottile col procedere dell’esperienza. Ciò che si chiama Sviluppo è il dispiegarsi di tutte le conseguenze e applicazioni di un’idea; ma di qualcosa che c’è, non di qualcosa che non c’è. In questo senso la Chiesa cattolica è l’unico corpo cristiano che abbia sempre creduto nell’Evoluzione.
C’è appena spazio per accennare ad altre due di queste cose che sono annoverate tra le specialità papiste soprattutto perché sono annoverate tra gli scandali papisti. La prima è l’idea dell’ascetismo e specialmente del celibato. La seconda è il culto della Beata Vergine. Della prima basterà dire qui che, per la maggior parte dei comuni cattolici romani, che non sono chiamati a praticare speciali austerità, quegli esempi sono preziosi non solo come esempi di eroismo, ma come vividissime prove della realtà delle speranze religiose. Concesso che per noi la luce divina è apprezzata come luce quotidiana, che rischiara le nostre faccende quotidiane e normali, tuttavia essa non le rischiarerebbe affatto se non credessimo che la luce fosse realmente divina. Se credessimo soltanto che la religione è utile, essa non sarebbe di alcuna utilità. Ora, nulla potrebbe meglio provare che la luce è divina del fatto che alcuni vivano di essa come di un cibo; nulla potrebbe più chiaramente mostrare che la religione è reale del fatto che per alcune persone essa può essere un sostituto di altre realtà. Non abbiamo difficoltà a credere che tali persone trattino più direttamente con le cose divine di quanto facciamo noi, come nel caso di coloro che godono direttamente di un amore divino anziché indirettamente attraverso un amore umano nel matrimonio. E quando siamo criticati per questo, ricordiamo con un certo divertimento che fummo noi a dire che il matrimonio era un sacramento divino quando i nostri critici dicevano che non lo era.
Of the most popular, the most poetical and the most practically inspiring of all the distinctively Catholic traditions of Christianity, I will say very little here; indeed, I will say only one thing. The honour given to Mary as the Mother of God is, among a thousand other things, a very perfect example of the truth to which I have recurred more than once: that even what we may call the Protestant truths were only saved by the Catholic authority. Among these is the very necessary truth of the subordination of Mary to Christ, as being after all the subordination of the creature to the Creator. Nothing amuses Catholics more than the suggestion, in so much of the old Protestant propaganda, that they are to be freed from the superstition called Mariolatry, like people freed from the burden of daylight. All the spontaneous spirituality, as distinct from the necessary doctrinal orthodoxy, is on the side of the extension and even excess of this cult. If Catholics had been left to their private judgment, to their personal religious experience, to their sense of the essential spirit of Christ and Christianity, to any of the liberal or latitudinarian tests of truth, they would long ago have exalted our Lady to a height of superhuman supremacy and splendour that might really have imperilled the pure monotheism in the core of the creed. Over whole tracts of popular opinion she might have been a goddess more universal than Isis. It is the authority of Rome that has prevented such Catholics from indulging in such Mariolatry; the strict definition that distinguished between a perfect woman and a divine Man. But if it were a place for expression of feeling, little doubt would be left about which way all our most direct and democratic feelings drive. I have throughout this statement ignored the meaningless affectation of impartiality. It is impossible for any man to state what he believes as if he did not believe it. But I have endeavoured to describe the most familiar features of this one religion in terms of logic not of rhetoric. And on this last matter of the doctrine touching the Virgin I will conclude without further speech. It is only reasonable that a creed presented by one who holds it should be stated with conviction; but anything I wrote on this last topic might be defaced with enthusiasm.
[From An Outline of Christianity (London, 1926). Reprinted in G.K. Chesterton, The Catholic Church and Conversion (1960).]
Della più popolare, più poetica e praticamente più ispiratrice di tutte le tradizioni distintamente cattoliche del Cristianesimo, dirò qui pochissimo; anzi, dirò una cosa sola. L’onore reso a Maria come Madre di Dio è, tra mille altre cose, un esempio perfettissimo della verità cui sono più volte ritornato: che perfino quelle che possiamo chiamare le verità protestanti furono salvate soltanto dall’autorità cattolica. Tra queste vi è la necessarissima verità della subordinazione di Maria a Cristo, essendo in fondo la subordinazione della creatura al Creatore. Nulla diverte i cattolici più del suggerimento, così frequente nella vecchia propaganda protestante, che essi debbano essere liberati dalla superstizione detta mariolatria, come gente liberata dal peso della luce del giorno. Tutta la spiritualità spontanea, a differenza della necessaria ortodossia dottrinale, sta dalla parte dell’estensione e persino dell’eccesso di questo culto. Se i cattolici fossero stati lasciati al loro giudizio privato, alla loro personale esperienza religiosa, al loro senso dello spirito essenziale di Cristo e del Cristianesimo, a uno qualunque dei criteri liberali o latitudinari della verità, avrebbero da tempo innalzato la Madonna a un’altezza di supremazia e splendore sovrumani che avrebbe davvero potuto mettere a repentaglio il puro monoteismo nel cuore del credo. Su intere distese dell’opinione popolare ella sarebbe potuta essere una dea più universale di Iside. È l’autorità di Roma che ha impedito a tali cattolici di abbandonarsi a simile mariolatria; la rigorosa definizione che distingueva tra una donna perfetta e un Uomo divino. Ma se questo fosse luogo per l’espressione del sentimento, poco dubbio resterebbe su quale direzione prendano tutti i nostri più diretti e democratici sentimenti. Lungo tutta questa esposizione ho ignorato l’insensata affettazione dell’imparzialità. È impossibile per chiunque enunciare ciò in cui crede come se non ci credesse. Ma mi sono sforzato di descrivere i tratti più familiari di questa sola religione in termini di logica, non di retorica. E su quest’ultima questione della dottrina riguardante la Vergine concluderò senza altre parole. È solo ragionevole che un credo presentato da chi lo professa sia enunciato con convinzione; ma qualunque cosa scrivessi su quest’ultimo tema rischierebbe di essere deturpata dall’entusiasmo.
[Da An Outline of Christianity (Londra, 1926). Ristampato in G.K. Chesterton, The Catholic Church and Conversion (1960).]