22 the church and the modern age preview

THE CHURCH & THE MODERN AGE Christopher Hollis 1935

CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY

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PUBLISHERS TO THE HOLY SEE

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Christopher Hollis, son of an Anglican bishop, was a Conservative MP, Catholic convert, and friend of Evelyn Waugh.

CTS ONEFIFTIES First published 1935.

Published by The Incorporated Catholic Truth Society, 40-46 Harleyford Road, London SE11 5AY www.ctsbooks.org All rights reserved.

Copyright © 2017 The Incorporated Catholic Truth Society.

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ISBN 978 1 78469 548 4

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The open boast of the liberal world was that “Man is the master of things”. To that large challenge only a large answer was possible…

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THE CHURCH AND THE MODERN AGE Christopher Hollis

Mediæval society was organised on a religious basis.

It was not, it is true, normally theocratic. The bishop or priest did not as a rule himself directly exercise political power. The secular prince was sovereign, the possessor of his own rights, nor did he, save quite exceptionally and after a period of anarchy, owe his position to the direct appointment of Pope or bishop. Yet the obedience which his subjects owed to him was not an absolute but only a conditional obedience. He held his power sub Deo et lege. The conditions of it were expressed in the oath which he took at his coronation, and in all Christian countries the first of the obligations which he then accepted was that of defending the rights of the Church.

The Middle Ages were, as everybody knows, filled with very vigorous theological controversy. Yet as a general rule those controversies were carried on with the weapons of words and were confined to

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the theologians. The defining power of the Church was always present to prevent them from growing to such vigour as to endanger the stability of society, and they therefore caused but little inconvenience to the non-theologically minded, who were content enough to allow to theology her title of queen of the sciences, provided that their own minds were not troubled with the problems of her majesty.

With the sixteenth century, with the period of the Reformation, a quite new situation arose. It was still quite generally agreed, by Reformers as well as by Catholics, that the prime duty of the State was to be the supporter of religious truth. The modern notion of the members of a number of religious communions living together within one society and being tolerated by an almost neutral state was a notion entirely alien from the minds of the sixteenth century, more alien perhaps from that of Calvin even than from that of a Renaissance Pope. Had they ever conceived of such a society as possible they would certainly have rejected it as immoral.

There was no mind at that time which entertained the modern notion of the “churches.” Christ, it was universally agreed, had founded one Church, and it was the business of the State to act as the support of that Church. Controversy, of course, raged over the question where that true Church was to be found, the 6

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Catholics answering with the traditional answer, the Calvinists claiming that the command to preach the Gospel involved an obligation to establish Calvinistic truth throughout all the countries of Christendom.

The controversies differed from those of the Middle Ages in that there no longer existed a visible living authority, accepted by both sides and capable in the last resort of acting as umpire of the dispute.

Unable to settle it by appeal, the contestants had therefore no alternative but to attempt to settle it by the sword. Even in this way, it soon became evident, a settlement was not easily to be arrived at.

For the forces of the Reformers were neither strong enough to dominate Europe nor weak enough to be suppressed. In the countries south of the mountains, indeed—in Italy and Spain—Catholicism was able to re-establish itself. But in the countries north of the mountains, in Germany, the Netherlands, France, and Britain, it appeared that the demand for religious unity would condemn men to live for ever in conditions of anarchy and civil war.

It was not then unnatural that, as it became increasingly obvious in these countries that neither were the Catholics strong enough to suppress the Reformers nor the Reformers strong enough to expel the Catholics, those who were not deeply interested in theology began more and more to raise

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their voices in protest against this very demand for religious unity, which was, it seemed, the root cause of all their miseries. “Why,” they said, “should we be butchered to make either a Roman or a Genevan holiday? There are learned men on both sides, asserting with all passion that theirs is the truth. Is not the obvious conclusion the conclusion that no man knows nearly as much about these ultimate truths as either of these learned schools pretend?

Truth is doubtless very desirable, but how can we know her when we have her? Meanwhile, peace is also very desirable, and peace at any rate we can recognise. Let us then at least have peace. Let us abandon the attempt to make all men think alike; let us cease to look on the State as the defender of religious truth. The State shall be the preserver of peace, and within the State such religious professions as disturb the peace shall be forbidden, but such religious professions as do not disturb the peace shall be tolerated.”

No country suffered more from the devastations of religious difference than did France, and it was in France more strongly than elsewhere that this new school of thought grew up. The persons who argued thus called themselves the “politiques,” thus asserting, justly enough, that they were concerned with political things first, and distinguishing 8

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themselves from the Huguenot party on the one side and the Catholic party of the Guises on the other, whose first concern was with religious things.

De l’Hôpital, Catherine de’ Medici’s Chancellor, was their leader. Catherine’s own sympathies were with them, in so far as she had any sympathies with any other than her own personal ends, and it was the triumph of their creed when, in 1593, the Huguenot Henry IV was able to succeed to the throne at the price of acceptance of Catholicism.

The very circumstances of Henry’s conversion were themselves a proof that the opinion that peace rather than truth should be the aim of policy was an opinion by now widely held, and Henry accepted Catholicism as his own religion and that of the country, while granting to the Huguenots by the Edict of Nantes a toleration by far wider than was granted to any other religious dissidents at that date anywhere else in Europe. So doing, he pursued a policy that was eminently une politique des politiques.

History has many examples of victory in a controversy or war, going neither to the one nor to the other protagonist but to some third party. This was eminently true of the religious controversy of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, both in France and also in Germany and in England. The battle was between rival theological societies. The

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