These facts presented me with a quandary which appeared
insurmountable, and which remained insurmountable. I have often been asked,
since my conversion, how, in view of them, Anglican clergy can be sincere in
remaining where they are. My reply has been — they ARE sincere. There is a state
of mental blindness in which one is incapable of seeing the plain logic of
facts. I only know that it was over a year before I acted on those facts
myself. And I honestly believe I was sincere during that period. Only those who
have been Protestants can appreciate the thick veil of prejudice, fear, and
mistrust of "Rome"
which hampers every groping toward the truth. It was about this time that there
fell into my hands a book written by a Catholic priest, who himself had once
been an Anglican clergyman, who had been faced by the same difficulties, and
who had found the solution of them in the Catholic Church.
"But the Catholic Church CAN'T be the solution,"
I said. And there rose before my mind a vision of all I had been taught about
her from my boyhood upward — her false teaching, her corruptions of the
doctrines of Christ. The Catholic Church, though, was the church of the
overwhelming majority of Christians, and always had been. If what I had been
taught was true, then for nearly two thousand years the great mass of
Christians had been deluded and deceived by lies. Could Christ have allowed a
hoax, an imposture of that magnitude? In His name? The Catholic Church was
either an imposture or — Or what?
I began to buy Catholic books. To study Catholic doctrines.
To read history from the Catholic standpoint. The day came when I sat looking
into the fire asking myself: "Is what the world says of the Catholic
Church true? Or what the Catholic Church says of herself? Have I all these
years been shaking my fist at a phantom of my own imagining, fed on prejudice
and ignorance?" I compared her unity with the complete lack of it outside.
Her authority with the absence of anything approaching real authority in the
church of which I was a member and a minister. The unchangeable moral code she
proclaimed with the wavering, shilly-shallying moral expediency that
Protestantism allowed. She began to look so very much more like the church that
God would have made, just as the Established Church began to look so very much
more like the church that man would have made.
When I was passing Westminster Cathedral one day I went in
and knelt for half an hour before the Blessed Sacrament. I came out terribly
shaken — spiritually shaken. It is impossible to describe; but in that short
half hour what, until now, I had contemplated as a problem had suddenly assumed
an aspect of imperativeness. A problem that had to be solved, not played with.
For within those four walls there had loomed up before my spiritual vision an
immensity, a vast reality, before which everything else had shrunk away. The
church whose clergyman I was seemed to have slipped from under my feet. I
returned to the East End dazed. That night
amongst the hoppers I felt like a stranger moving about. I went about for weeks
in a state of uncertainty, undecided in my conscience as to whether I was
morally bound to face things out or not — wretched under the suspicion that
what "Rome" said might be true — that I was no priest; that my
"Mass" was no Mass at all; that I was genuflecting before . . . ?
That my "absolutions" were worthless. The more I prayed about it, the
more unreal my ministry appeared.
I decided to consult a certain very "extreme"
clergyman, whom I believed to be sincere beyond question (as he was), and a man
of deep spiritual piety. I had three or four talks with him in all, the general
result of which was to leave me more confused intellectually than ever, but
spiritually more at peace; though it took me months before I realized that this
peace was a false one, and that I had shelved the matter not from its
intellectual difficulties, but for worldly reasons. For those talks had opened
for me an unpleasant vista of what might happen if I went "over to Rome" — the loss of
my position, my salary, friends and all; not only the burning of all my boats
but the wounding of my mother and father cruelly. Even more, "Rome" might not
accept me for her priesthood; in any case it would be starting all over again,
possibly from baptism. (In this last, I was completely mistaken. Whatever else,
Anglicans, or Episcopalians as they are known in America, administer a valid
Baptism.) If she did not want me for a priest, I should have to . . . My whole
being revolted against the prospect. It was impossible — such a demand. I had been
carried away by my emotions. It was a snare of Satan. I should be a traitor to
the church of my baptism. God had placed me here in the Church of England. He
was blessing my work as its minister. He had given me endless graces. I buried
myself in that work again, and for a time succeeded in forgetting, or at least
stifling, the fears that had been my torment — until the haphazard remark of a
photographer (registering my features), an agnostic, I believe, opened my eyes
to my inability honestly to defend the Established Church’s position; it was to
the effect that if Christianity were true, obviously the Roman Catholic Church,
with her authority, was right. It was the testimony of a man who had no axe to
grind.
A Jewish dentist made the same remark in effect to me
shortly afterward. The man in the street testified the same with his: "If
I were religious, I'd be a Roman Catholic." Whether it was the
photographer or not, my fears were released once more from their repression,
abruptly and acutely, and this time I resolved that it should be a fight to the
finish, either way — that no worldly or material considerations should
interfere. The clergyman whom I had consulted had already made one thing clear
in my mind — that the issue between Rome and Canterbury, the crux of the whole problem, was the claim
of Rome to be the infallible teaching authority
appointed by God, and the denial by Canterbury
of that claim.
The whole question boiled down to the question of
infallibility, and on that everything else hung. I entered upon an intensive
study of the point. I read the history of the doctrine, the Fathers and the
Councils of the Church, and what they had to say; examined its rationality. At
the end of some months I came to this conclusion — that, as far as Holy Scripture,
history, and reason were concerned, the Catholic Church could prove her claim
to be God’s infallible teacher up to the hilt. It is difficult after all these
years to recapture the exact mode of its appeal to my reason; but it was the
appeal that the doctrine of the infallibility of the Church inevitably presents
to any man who is prepared to lay aside bias, prejudice, and preconceptions. I
will try to state it in the fewest words possible. Infallibility is the only
guarantee we have that the Christian religion is true. Actually, if I, at this
moment, did not believe in an infallible teacher appointed by God then nothing
on earth would induce me to believe in the Christian religion.
If, as outside the Catholic Church, Christian doctrines are
a matter of private judgment, and therefore the Christian religion a mere
matter of human opinion, then there is no obligation upon any living soul to
believe in it. Why should I stake my immortal soul upon human opinion? For that
is all you have if you refuse the infallible Church. In itself her claim may be
reduced to this: the Catholic Church, when she defines a doctrine of faith or
morals, when she tells us what to believe and what to do — in a word, what the
Christian religion is — then, and then only, she is prevented by God from
making a mistake, from teaching untruth. The Church is God’s mouthpiece — His
voice. Could God's voice speak untruth?
Protestantism, claiming the Holy Ghost and presenting a
jumble of contradictions, declares, in effect, that God DOES speak untruth. And
only blinded reason prevents its adherents from seeing and admitting that
unpalatable fact. Sanity alone should compel every thinking man to halt before
the Catholic Church’s very claim. It is commonly assumed that submission to an
infallible authority in religion involves slavery, that Catholics cannot think
for themselves, that their reason is stifled, that they commit intellectual
suicide. "No educated man could accept the medieval dogmas of the Catholic
Church." Examined in the light of horse sense and human reason, that
shibboleth of the modernist leaders is revealed in all its naked stupidity, as
an irrational and unscientific piece of snobbery for gulling the masses and
blinding them to the claims of the Catholic Church.
In intent, since the dogmas are the same today, it means:
"No educated man could submit to what the Catholic Church claims to be
infallibly true": or, more simply, "No educated man could submit to
infallibility in the matter of religion." For acceptance involves
submission to the one Church that claims it. The obvious reply is: "In the
name of all that is sane — why not?" When in every other department of
life he is submitting to infallible truth already? Is slavery involved; is
reason stifled; is it intellectual suicide to submit to the infallible truth of
the law of gravity; do men jump off cliffs on the chance of going up instead of
down? To submit, as every scientist does, to the fixed data of science,
believing them to be infallibly true; could he be a scientist at all, if he
refused to submit? To submit, as every educated man does, by eating, to the
infallible truth that the human body needs food? To submit, even if he was not
there and never saw it, to the infallible truth of the Great War? To submit, as
every mathematician does, to the multiplication table? To the axioms of Euclid? To submit, as
every honest businessman does, to the infallible principles of business
honesty? As all businessmen do to the infallible requirements to conduct a
business at all? Were a businessman to conduct his business as the modernists
conduct their religion, he would close down as the modernists have closed down
Christianity for themselves and their adherents.
Examples could be multiplied to show that in every
department of life every rational being is already submitting to infallible
truth. Is it rational or irrational to proclaim that no educated man could
submit in the hundredth case, that of religion, when he submits in the other
ninety-nine? On the face of it the rationality lies with those who submit in
the hundredth and most vital case of all. Is it a sign of education to submit
to human opinions in preference to the revealed truths of God, who Himself
declared that they were to be taught and accepted or refused under pain of
eternal damnation? To prefer the negations of modernism to the dogmas of the
Church that must teach infallibly if she teaches Christianity, i.e., the
revealed truths of God? Of the Church that must be infallible when she teaches
truth, since truth is an infallible thing? When, as far as reason was
concerned, I was satisfied as to the unique claim of Rome, upon which all else depended, I decided
to present my case for no longer remaining in the Church of England to one or
two prominent scholars among its clergy.
I did so. As far as I can recollect, the "refutation”
given me made no impression whatever. Though easily my superiors in
scholarship, I had sufficient knowledge and logic to perceive that the great
chain of scriptural and historical evidence for the Catholic claim remained
unbroken by excerpts from St.
Augustine, St. Cyprian, and others, conveniently
interpreted according to the will of the reader and not to the mind of the
author. It is little less than amazing to me now that scholars of repute should
endeavor to counter the vast weight of evidence against them with what they
themselves must in honesty admit is the less likely interpretation — to fit the
rock to the pebble rather than the pebble to the rock. To my case for leaving a
church which was so plainly devoid, in view of its contradictions, of any
divine teaching authority, I received no valid answer at all. Every conceivable
"argumentum ad hominem" was presented; sentiment, "Roman
fever," "intellectual suicide," treachery to the "church of
my baptism," "corruptions of Rome,"
the whole well-worn gamut of objections was paraded. I had read them all,
though, already and found them untrue. The great facts about the Catholic
Church were left standing — unassailable. And those facts demanded submission.
I have been asked again and again, since I became a Catholic, why I left the
Church of England, and often the implication behind the question, if not
actually expressed, has been that my motive for doing so could not have been
based on reason.
There is a prevalent idea that converts to Rome are in some mysterious manner "got
hold of" or "caught" by "Roman priests." I would like
to assure any non-Catholic who may happen to read this that converts are not
"got hold of" or "caught." In my own case I had rarely even
spoken to a "Roman priest," before, of my own free will and with my
reason already convinced, I went to consult one at the London Oratory. It is
true that in doing so I was still full of Protestant suspicion and imagined
that he would be extremely gratified to "get hold of" a real live
Anglican clergyman; I should make a splendid "catch." The priest in
question received me most calmly. He showed no sign of excitement; he did not
stand on his head or caper about. He did not even appear to regard me as a
particularly good "catch." He answered my questions and invited me to
come again, if I cared to, but no more. I left, feeling several sizes smaller.
I learned many things, however, from that interview. It was so entirely different
from the interviews with the Anglican scholars. For the priest there was no
difficult case to bolster up. Not a single question that I put to him presented
"difficulties." There were no awkward corners to get around. I
believe his candidness about the human side of the Catholic Church almost
startled me.
Never once was he on the defence. All that I had been
groping toward so painfully and laboriously was so obvious to him as to leave
me wondering how it could ever have not been obvious to myself. I realized, too,
from that interview that "going over to Rome" would be very much more than
stepping out of a small boat onto an Atlantic liner. It would be no less than
coming into the kingdom of God on earth — and the Catholic Church was that kingdom of God. I was not coming in on my own
terms, but on hers. I was not conferring a privilege upon her; she was
conferring an inestimable privilege upon me. I was not going to make myself a
Catholic, the Catholic Church was going to make me one. There would be a formal
course of instruction, a real testing of my faith, and finally, a real
submission to a living authority — the living authority of God on earth.
