Explanation of Catholic Morals Part 6

"Yes, all this is evident. I shall and do believe everything that G.o.d deigns to reveal, because He says it, whether or not I see or understand it. But the difficulty with me is how to know that G.o.d did speak, what He said, what He meant. My difficulty is practical, not theoretical."

And by the same token you have s.h.i.+fted the question from "Why we believe" to "Whence we believe;" you no longer seek the authority of your faith, but its genesis. You believe what G.o.d says, because He says it; you believe He did say it because--the Church says it. You are no longer dealing with the truth itself, but with the messenger that brings the truth to be believed. The message of the Church is: these are G.o.d's words. As for what these words stand for, you are not to trust her, but Him. The foundation of divine belief is one thing; the motives of credibility are another.

We should not confound these two things, if we would have a clear notion of what faith is, and discover the numerous counterfeits that are being palmed off nowadays on a world that desires a convenient, rather than a genuine article.

The received manner of belief is first to examine the truths proposed as coming from G.o.d, measure them with the rule of individual reason, of expediency, feeling, fancy, and thus to decide upon their merits. If this proposition suits, it is accepted. If that other is found wanting, it is forthwith rejected. And then it is in order to set out and prove them to be or not to be the word of G.o.d, according to their suitability or non-suitability.

One would naturally imagine, as reason and common sense certainly suggest, that one's first duty would be to convince oneself that G.o.d did communicate these truths; and if so, then to accept them without further dally or comment. There is nothing to be done, once G.o.d reveals, but to receive His revelation.

Outside the Church, this procedure is not always followed, because of the rationalistic tendencies of latter-day Protestantism. It is a glaring fact that many do not accept all that G.o.d says because He says, but because it meets the requirements of their condition, feelings or fancy. They lay down the principle that a truth, to be a truth, must be understood by the human intelligence. This is paramount to a.s.serting that G.o.d cannot know more than men--blasphemy on the face of it. Thus the divine rock-bed of faith is torn away, and a human basis subst.i.tuted. Faith itself is destroyed in the process.

It is, therefore, important, before examining whence comes our faith, to remember why we believe, and not to forget it. This much gained, and for all time, we can go farther; without it, all advance is impossible.

CHAPTER XIX.

WHENCE OUR BELIEF: REASON.

MY faith is the most reasonable thing in the world, and it must needs be such. The Almighty gave me intelligence to direct my life. When He speaks He reveals Himself to me as to an intelligent being: and He expects that I receive His word intelligently. Were I to abdicate my reason in the acceptance of His truths, I would do my Maker as great an injury as myself. All the rest of creation offers Him an homage of pure life, of instinct or feeling; man alone can, and must, offer a higher, n.o.bler and more acceptable homage--that of reason.

My faith is reasonable, and this is the account my reason gives of my faith: I can accept as true, without in the least comprehending, and far from dishonoring my reason, with a positive and becoming dignity,-- I can accept!--but I must accept--whatever is confided to me by an infallible authority, an authority that can neither deceive nor be deceived. There is nothing supernatural about this statement.

That which is perfect cannot be subject to error, for error is evil and perfection excludes evil. If G.o.d exists He is perfect. Allow one imperfection to enter into your notion of G.o.d, and you destroy that notion. When, therefore, G.o.d speaks He is an infallible authority. This is the philosophy of common sense.

Now I know that G.o.d has spoken. The existence of that historical personage known as Jesus of Nazareth is more firmly established than that of Alexander or Caesar. Four books relate a part of His sayings and doings; and I have infinitely less reason to question their authenticity than I have to doubt the authenticity of Virgil or Shakespeare. No book ever written has been subjected to such a searching, probing test of malevolent criticism, at all times but especially of late years in Germany and France. Great men, scholars, geniuses have devoted their lives to the impossible task of explaining the Gospels away, with the evident result that the position of the latter remains a thousandfold stronger. Unless I reject all human testimony, and reason forbids, I must accept them as genuine, at least in substance.

These four books relate how Jesus healed miraculously the sick, raised the dead to life, led the life of the purest, most honest and sagest of men, claimed to be G.o.d, and proved it by rising from the dead Himself.

That this man is divine, reason can admit without being unreasonable, and must admit to be reasonable; and revelation has nothing to do with the matter.

A glaring statement among all others, one that is reiterated and insisted upon, is that all men should share in the fruit of His life; ana for this purpose He founded a college of apostles which He called His Church, to teach all that He said and did, to all men, for all time. The success of His life and mission depends upon the continuance of His work.

Why did He act thus? I do not know. Are there reasons for this economy of salvation? There certainly are, else it would not have been established. But we are not seeking after reasons; we are gathering facts upon which to build an argument, and these facts we take from the authentic life of Christ.

Now we give the Almighty credit for wisdom in all His plans, the wisdom of providing His agencies with the means to reach the end they are destined to attain. To commission a church to teach all men without authority, is to condemn it to utter nothingness from the very beginning. To expect men to accept the truths He revealed, and such truths! without a guarantee against error in the infallibility of the teacher, is to be ignorant of human nature. And since at no time must it cease to teach, it must be indefectible. Being true, it must be one; the work of G.o.d, it must be holy; being provided for all creatures, it must be Catholic or universal; and being the same as Christ founded upon His Apostles, it must be apostolic. If it is not all these things together, it is not the teacher sent by G.o.d to Instruct and direct men.

No one who seeks with intelligence, single-mindedness and a pure heart, will fail to find these attributes and marks of the true Church of Christ. Whether, after finding them, one will make an act of faith, is another question. But that he can give his a.s.sent with the full approval of his reason is absolutely certain. Once he does so, he has no further use for his reason. He enters the Church, an edifice illumined by the superior light of revelation and faith. He can leave reason, like a lantern, at the door.

Therein he will learn many other truths that he never could have found out with reason alone, truths superior, but not contrary, to reason.

These truths he can never repudiate without sinning against reason, first, because reason brought him to this pa.s.s where he must believe without the immediate help of reason.

One of the first things we shall hear from the Church speaking on her own authority is that these writings, the four relations of Christ's life, are inspired. However a person could discover and prove this truth to himself is a mystery that will never be solved. We cannot a.s.sume it; it must be proven. Unless it be proven, the faith based on this a.s.sumption is not reasonable; and proven it can never be, unless we take it from an authority whose infallibility is proven. That is why we say that it is doubtful if non-Catholic faith is faith at all, because faith must be reasonable; and faith that is based on an a.s.sumption is to say the least doubtfully reasonable.

CHAPTER XX.

WHENCE OUR BELIEF: GRACE AND WILL.

TO believe is to a.s.sent to a truth on the authority of G.o.d's word. We must find that the truth proposed is really guaranteed by the authority of G.o.d. In this process of mental research, the mind must be satisfied, and the truth found to be in consonance with the dictates of right reason, or at least, not contrary thereto.

But the fact that we can securely give our a.s.sent to this truth does not make us believe. Something more than reason enters into an act of faith.

Faith is not something natural, purely human, beginning and ending in the brain, and a product thereof. This is human belief, not divine, and is consequently not faith.

We believe that faith is, of itself, as far beyond the native powers of a human being as the sense of feeling is beyond the power of a stone, or intelligence, the faculty of comprehension, is beyond the power of an animal. In other words, it is supernatural, above the natural forces, and requires the power of G.o.d to give it existence. "No man can come to me, unless the Father who has sent Me, draw him."

Some have faith, others have it not. Where did you get your faith? You were not born with it, as you were with the natural, though dormant faculties of speech, reason, and free will. You received it through Baptism. You are a product of nature; therefore nature should limit your existence. But faith aspires to, and obtains, an end that is not natural but supernatural. It consequently must itself be supernatural, and cannot be acquired without divine a.s.sistance.

Unless G.o.d revealed, you could not know the truths of religion. Unless He established a court of final appeal in His Church, you could not be sure what He did reveal or what He meant to say. Because of the peculiar character of these truths and the nature the cert.i.tude we possess, many would not believe all, if G.o.d's grace were not there to help them, even though one could and would believe, there no divine belief or faith proper until the soul lives the faculty from Him who alone can give it.

The reason why many do not believe is not because G.o.d's grace is wanting nor because their minds cannot be satisfied, not because they cannot, but because they will not.

Faith is a gift of G.o.d, but not that alone; it is a conviction, but not that alone. It is a firm a.s.sent of the will. We are free to believe or not to believe.

"As one may be convinced and not act according to his conviction, so may one be convinced and not believe according to his conviction. The arguments of religion do not compel anyone to believe, just as the arguments for good conduct do not compel anyone to obey. Obedience is the consequence of willing to obey, and faith is the consequence of willing to believe."

I am not obliged to receive as true any religious dogma, as I am forced to accept the proposition that two and two are four. I believe because I choose to believe. My faith is a submission of the will. The authority of G.o.d is not binding on me physically, for men have refused and still do refuse to submit to His authority and the authority He communicated to His Church. And I know that I, too, can refuse and perhaps more than once have been tempted to refuse, my a.s.sent to truths that interfered too painfully with my interests and pa.s.sions.

Besides, faith is meritorious, and in order to merit one must do something difficult and be free to act. The difficulty is to believe what we cannot understand, through pride of intelligence, and to bring that stiff domineering faculty to recognize a superior. The difficulty is to bend the will to the acceptance of truths, and consequent obligations that gall our self-love and the flesh'. The believer must have humility and self-denial. The grace of G.o.d follows these virtues into a soul, and then your act of faith is complete.

Herein we discover the great wisdom of G.o.d who sets the price of faith, and of salvation that depends on it, not on the mind, but on the will; not on the intelligence alone, but on the heart. To no man is grace denied. Every man has the will to grasp what is good. But though to all He gives a will, all have not the same degree of intelligence; He does not endow them equally in this respect. How then could He make intelligence the first principle of salvation and of faith? G.o.d searches the heart, not the mind. A modic.u.m of wit is guaranteed to all to know that they can safely believe. Be one ever so unlettered and ignorant, and dull, faith and heaven are to him as accessible as to the sage, savant and the genius. For all, the way is the same.

CHAPTER XXI.

HOW WE BELIEVE.

FAITH is the edifice of a Christian life. It is, of itself, a mere sh.e.l.l, so to speak, for unless good works sustain and adorn it, it will crumble, and the Almighty in His day will reduce it to ashes; faith without works is of no avail. The corner stone of this edifice is the authority of the word of G.o.d, while His gratuitous grace, our intelligence and will furnish the material for building. Now, there are three features of that spiritual construction that deserve a moment's consideration.

First, the edifice is solid; our faith must be firm. No hesitation, no wavering, no deliberate doubting, no suspicion, no take-and-leave. What we believe comes from G.o.d, and we have the infallible authority of the Church for it, and of that we must be certain. That certainly must not for a moment falter, and the moment it does falter, there is no telling but that the whole edifice so laboriously raised will tumble down upon the guilty shoulders of the imprudent doubter.

And of reasons for hesitating and disbelieving there is absolutely none, once we have made the venture of faith and believe sincerely and reasonably. No human power can in reason impugn revealed truths for they are impervious to human intelligence. One book may not at the same time be three books; but can one divine nature be at one and the same time three divine persons? Until we learn what divinity and personality are we can affirm nothing on the authority of pure reason. If we cannot a.s.sert, how can we deny? And if we know nothing about it, how can we do either? The question is not how is it, but if it is. While it stands thus, and thus ever it must stand, no objection or doubt born of human mind can influence our belief. Nothing but pride of mind and corruption of heart can disturb it.

If you have a difficulty, well, it is a difficulty, and nothing more. A difficulty does not destroy a thesis that is solidly founded. Once a truth is clearly established, not all the difficulties in the world can make it an untruth. A difficulty as to the truth revealed argues an imperfect intelligence; it is idle to complain that we are finite. A difficulty regarding the infallible Church should not make her less infallible in our mind, it simply demands a clearing away-Theological difficulties should not surprise a novice in theological matters; they are only misunderstandings that militate less against the Church than against the erroneous notions we have of her. To allow such difficulties to undermine faith is like overthrowing a solid wall with a soap-bubble. Common sense demands that nothing but clearly demonstrated falsity should make us change firm convictions, and such demonstration can never be made against our faith.

Not from difficulties, properly speaking, but from our incapacity for understanding what we accept as true, results a certain obscurity, which is another feature of faith. Believing is not seeing. Such strange things we do believe! Who can unravel the mysteries of religion? Moral cert.i.tude is sufficient to direct one's life, to make our acts human and moral and is all we can expect in this world where nothing is perfect. But because the consequences of faith are so far-reaching, we would believe nothing short of absolute, metaphysical cert.i.tude.

But this is impossible. Hence the mist, the vague dimness that surrounds faith, baffling every effort to penetrate it; and within, a sense of rarefied perception that disquiets and torments unless humility born of common sense be there to soothe and set us at rest.

Moral truths are not geometric theorems and multiplication tables, and it is not necessary that they should be.

Of course, if, as in science so in faith, reason were everything, our position would hardly be tenable, for then there should be no vagueness but clear vision. But the will enters for something in our act of faith. If everything we believe were as luminous as "two and two are four," a special act of the will would be utterly uncalled for. We must be able, free to dissent, and this is the reason of the obscurity of our faith.

It goes without saying that such belief is meritorious. Christ Himself said that to be saved it is necessary to believe, and no man is saved but through his own merit. Faith is, therefore, gratuitous on His part and meritorious on ours. It is in reality a good work that proceeds from the will, under the dictates of right reason, with the a.s.sistance of divine grace.

CHAPTER XXII.

FAITH AND ERROR.