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THE AMERICAN ECCLESIASTICAL REVIEW

Eating, that almost forgotten experience, was next. They
brought in buckets of soup—grass soup with a few turnips in it
and lots and lots of little worms. But the only complaint we had,
as one G-I remarked, was that the worms weren’t fat enough.
We guzzled it—and them—greedily.

{To be continued)
Francis Sampson

Des Moines, Iowa.

The Evidence of Roman Pbimacy

A power now exists in most active and manifold operation at the
very centre of the Church of Christ—a supreme, controlling, harmon­
ising, conservative, unitive, defining power, in that mighty empire of
thought which our Lord has set up. Who put it there ? It answers : Our
Lord Himself. And it points to a great number of proofs, bearing
witness to its existence, in the history of eighteen hundred years. Now
these proofs are of very various cogency. No one of them perhaps
defines, or could define, the whole range of the power ; but one
exhibits it in this particular, and another in that: for instance, one
ancient saint declares: “that it is necessary that every Church should
agree with the Roman, on account of its superiority of headship an­
other, that “unity begins from it a third, that “where Peter is, there
is the Church;” a fourth, that “the headship of the Apostolic Church
has always flourished in it” Now it is plain that these expressions want
a key. And such is supplied by the present existence of that power.
The fair and candid mind will see in them much more than they at
first sight convey: for it was not the purpose of the writers at the
moment to define the power to which they were alluding, any more
than those living under the supremacy of the British monarchy, in any
casual reference to it, would do otherwise than refer to it as an exist­
ing thing. If such attributes, then, of the Roman See, separately men­
tioned by different Fathers, all fit into, and are explained by an existing
power, and, when put together, here one and there another, exhibit,
more or less, such a power, it is fair so to interpret them, and to infer
that the power which we now see existed then.
—Thomas Wilfiam Allies, in Thé See of Peter (London, 1866), pp. 83 L

219825

ANTI-CLERICALISM AND CATHOLIC UNITY

Although the attitude commonly and correctly known as anticlericalism may seem to be neither powerful nor prevalent in our
country today, and although there is no definite indication that it
will become influential in the immediate future, there are ample
and important reasons why our priests and our people should
consider this subject carefully. Anti-clericalism is in itself an
utter and unmitigated evil. It works to lessen, or even to frus­
trate, that unity which Our Lord willed that His Church should
possess. Furthermore, it leads to evils even worse than itself.
The man who is deceived into adopting the attitude of anti­
clericalism is in grave danger of casting away his membership in
the Church of Christ. In the past, anti-clericalism has frequently
been a prelude to apostasy.
While the attitude itself shows no signs of becoming common
among Catholics in the United States in the near future (and
what is called anti-clericalism in the strict sense of the term can
only exist among Catholics or among those who pretend to be
members of the Church), there is a real danger that negligence in
bringing out the truth on this subject might result in a failure on
the part of some of our people to appreciate the inherent vicious­
ness of anti-clericalism. The occasional foreign book of anti­
clerical tinge brought into this country and the still more in­
frequent American article or book review sympathetic with anti­
clericalism could, if the truth on this subject were not explained
from time to time, bring some uninstructed Catholics to imagine
that anti-clericalism could be consistent with a full and loyal ex­
pression of the Catholic life. The people who would fall into this
delusion would, by that very fact, be blinded to Our Lord’s teach­
ing about the splendid and supernatural unity’ of His Mystical
Body.

Strangely enough, the subject of anti-clericalism has been
touched upon very little in English Catholic literature. The
best-known treatise on anti-clericalism in the English language is
to be found in a section of Mr. Hilaire Belloc’s admirable work,
Survivals and New Arrivals. This book of popular and historical
apologetics considered anti-clericalism as one of the three, move-,
meats or attitudes which, taken together, formed .-the-niait
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position to the Catholic Church in 1929, when Survivals and New
Arrivals first appeared.
What Mr. Belloc describes as anti-clericalism is, however, not
the attitude taken in itself, but rather one historical manifestation
of this attitude, the political mentality which went by the name
of anti-clericalism in the days of France’s Third Republic. He
spoke of what was supposed to be the origin of this particular
movement when he depicted anti-clericalism as “the spirit which
is goaded into activity by the invasion of the civil province by
clerical agency.”1 He was speaking of that same politico-religious
phenomenon when he wrote that the anti-clericalism with which
he was concerned came no longer "as a protest against extravagant clerical action, but from a conflict between two incompatible
theories of the State—the Catholic and the Neutral, or Lay.”*
The anti-clericalism Mr. Belloc set out to describe was the attitude of those Catholics who espoused the concept of 1 he Neutral
State in a predominantly Catholic country. Such persons found
themselves “inevitably allied with all forms of antagonism to the
Catholic Church: with opposing religions and corporations, with
all those to whom the faith is an offence.”3
As a historian, Mr. Belloc dealt, as he had every right to do,
with one historical aspect of anti-clericalism, with the supposed
origins and with the actual development of the highly dangerous
movement best known to the world two decades ago under that
sad label. Unfortunately, however, his historical writing has
sometimes been interpreted as an adequate and essential description of anti-clericalism. It is, of course, nothing of the kind,
Basically, anti-clericalism designates any disloyal and uncharitable opposition on the part of Catholics to their own spiritual
leaders. Although the individual politico-religious movement
best known as anti-clericalism in continental Europe during the
last part of the nineteenth century and the first part of this one
may have claimed to have been “goaded into activity by the
invasion of the civil province by clerical agency,” there is no
reason in the world io suppose that all opposition to the clergy
or to the hierarchy on the part of Catholics stems or even claims
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ANTI-CLERICALISM AND CATHOLIC UNITY

53

to stem from such a source. The movement or the attitude which
Mr. Belloc set out to describe was something indigenous to
countries of what he called the “Catholic tradition.” He asserted
that the thing with which he was dealing, this particular kind of
anti-clericalism, did not come into the daily lives of English and
American Catholics, although he contended that this same
movement might “in the near future indirectly affect the con­
dition of Catholics even where they are in a minority amid
Protestant surroundings.”4
THE NATURE OF ANTI-CLERICALISM

In itself, anti-clericalism is nothing more or less than antipathy
or opposition on the part of Catholics to the hierarchy or the
priesthood in general and to their own spiritual leaders in par­
ticular, for whatever reason such an attitude is adopted. It is
essentially a fault of Catholics, although the persons guilty of it
need not necessarily be laymen and certainly need not be citizens
of a country predominantly Catholic in population. Attacks by
outsiders against the Church, even when such attacks are directed
principally against the Church’s spiritual leaders, are not properly
designated as anti-clerical activity.
As a matter of fact, most of the assaults and persecutions which
enemies of the Church direct against it ultimately center on the
hierarchy. The men who have made it their business to attempt
to destroy God’s kingdom on earth are quite well aware of the fact
that their task would be not only possible but easy if they could
succeed in getting rid of those whom God has placed as the rulers
and teachers of the Church or in minimizing their influence. We
have an unmistakable example of the working of this tactic in the
conduct of the various Communistic dictators in eastern Europe
at the present time. These dictators have made it their policy to
kill or to exile the bishops and the outstanding sacerdotal leaders
in the territories they have seized, and they have.spared no effort
to turn the Catholic populace away from those who speak in the
name of Christ. Anti-clericalism represents, in the Catholic
ranks, a tendency towards that very division in the Church of
God which the enemies of the Church seek to bring about. It is
a movement within the membership of the Church objectively
* Ibid., p. 158.

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54

THE AMERICAN ECCLESIASTICAL REVIEW

hostile to the Church itself, whether the individual anti-clerical
realizes the import of this hostility or not. As such it differs
essentially from opposition to or persecution of the Catholic
clergy by those not of the Church.
The antipathy or opposition by a Catholic to his spiritual
leaders, that which constitutes the essence of anti-clericalism, is
a direct violation of that charity or “love of the brotherhood"
which a disciple of Christ is obligated and privileged to have for
his brothers in the house of God. Where charity demands a
cheerful and enthusiastic participation in the corporate work of
the Church under the direction of the men commissioned by
Our Lord to lead the faithful, anti-clericalism offers at best only
a grudging and mistrustful response to that leadership. In
grumbling against the position and the leadership of the hierarchy
and of the clergy in general, the anti-clerical foments discord and
disunion in Christ’s Mystical Body and hinders the activity of
the Church militant in working for God’s glory against the ever­
present opposition from the City of Man.
An open manifestation of anti-clericalism is to be found when­
ever and for whatever reason Catholics speak and write in such
a way as to derogate from the authority and the influence of those
responsible to God for the guidance of His Church in this worldUnder this heading we must classify complaints about and criti­
cisms of the clergy as a group and of particular spiritual leaders,
addressed by Catholics to their fellow members of the Church,
with the purpose of restraining these Catholics from the loyal and
whole-hearted support due to ecclesiastical authority. Any such
attitude or movement on the part of Catholics, at variance with
the demands of sincere charity for the leaders of the Church
militant, must be considered as a real expression of anti-clericalismism. ■ ,
Now, in treating of this subject, it is important to note that
the generous and loyal cooperation demanded by Christian
charity in the life of the Catholic Church under the direction
of the actually existent hierarchy does not necessarily involve a
belief on the part of the individual priest or layman that all the
details of the policy of the leaders of the Church militant are
theoretically the wisest that could possibly be adopted. Despite
the fact that a prominent advocate of a “healthy Catholic antidericalism,” the Englishman Edward Ingram Watkin, sees as

ANTI-CLERICALISM AND CATHOLIC UNITY

55

the alternative to his beloved system “a clericalism which dreads
scandal as the worst of evils and pretends to think that whatever
the action is taken by the hierarchy or even an individual prelate
must be the best and the wisest,”6 the truth of the matter is that
the charity of the house of God demands no such thing. Catholics
need not believe that, in the abstract, the particular policy adopt­
ed by the ecclesiastical leaders in one locality or with regard to
any individual problem is absolutely the best possible. We see
the application of this truth in the fact that, time and time
again during the course of the Church’s history, a man who has
worked sincerely and loyally under a spiritual leader for the
success of an individual program has changed the details of
ecclesiastical policy when he himself has been called to the leader­
ship. Not to look to far afield for an example, we have the case of
Bishop Vaughan, who gave loyal and genuine co-operation to the
leadership of Cardinal Manning in such affairs as the refusal to
sanction the presence of Catholic students at Oxford, and who,
as Cardinal Vaughan, the successor to Cardinal Manning,
adopted an entirely new policy in this regard.
But, even though an individual Catholic, priest or layman,
might be able to conceive of a more effective or brilliant mode of
procedure than that actually adopted by the hierarchy of his
own time and of his own country, he is bound in conscience to give
his loyal and whole-hearted co-operalion to the work of the
Church, as this work is actually being directed. The Church of
Christ in this world is the Church militant. The position of the
individual Catholic priest or layman is for this reason quite similar
to that of the individual soldier or officer in an army engaged in
battle. The individual soldier or officer might very well be con­
vinced (perhaps with no particularly forceful reason), that the
campaign in which he is fighting might have been planned more
effectively by those in charge of the army as a whole. Neverthe­
less, the loyalty of that soldier depends directly, here and now,
upon his entire willingness to do well the particular work which
has been assigned to him. In the same way, the center on a foot­
ball team might well imagine that the particular play called by
• The Catholic Centre (London: Sheed and Ward, 1943), p. 148. Mr. Watldn
seems to have forgotten that scandal is actually a sin against charity, and one
of the very worst of evils. ,

56

THE AMERICAN ECCLESIASTICAL REVIEW

his quarterback at this particular point in the game is abstractly ;
less desirable than some other manoeuvre. Yet his value to the
team depends upon his actual co-operation in the play which has
been called. Should he attempt to take the part which would
have been assigned to him in some other play, or should he
simply neglect to do his part in the particular team work which
as a matter of fact has been assigned, he can only succeed in
hurting his own cause.
In precisely the same way, the direction given to the Church
by the hierarchy through the Catholic priesthood constitutes the
only set of orders by which the living and visible Church of Jesus
Christ is to live and to act as a unit in the world, here and now.
The man who gives only a grudging and minimizing obedience to
these orders, or the person who tries to direct his activity in line
with a policy which he imagines to be abstractly more effective
than the one adopted by the hierarchy, is only hindering the
corporate activity of the Church militant in the world. Or, to
put the matter in another way, he succeeds only in helping the
cause of that leader who is perpetually in conflict with Our Lord
and with His Church, that leader whom Christ designated as
“the prince of this world.”
THE MOTIVES FOR ANTI-CLERICALISM

An alleged incursion by clerics into a purely civil domain, which
Mr. Belloc mentioned as the original inciting cause for anti­
clericalism, has had little connection with opposition to the
ecclesiastical leadership on the part of misguided Catholics in
countries like our own. Two causes in particular seem to have
motivated the greater portion of such disloyalties among the
members of the true Church. The first is an adverse judgment
on the conduct or the policies of individual ecclesiastics or groups
of ecclesiastics. The second is a rather manifest desire to be
accepted by the anti-Catholic world.
What is regarded as improper conduct on the part of individual
ecclesiastics or groups of ecclesiastics is objectively no sort of
excuse for the adoption of an anti-clerical attitude. If there is
one basic fact of which the Catholic is made very plainly aware,
through the various Parables of the Kingdom used in the Gospels
for different Sundays during the year, it is the truth that the

ANTI-CLERICALISM AND CATHOLIC UNITY

57

Church of God in this world is made up of both good and bad
members. If the individual person is disposed to obey the hier­
archy and to reverence the clergy only on the condition that the
members of these orders are all living lives of real perfection, then
that person is acting in accordance with a radically heretical
postulate. It is, we might say, the central point in the mystery of
the Church that the Mystical Body of Christ, the house and the
family of the living God, is, in this world, a visible and organized
society, within which, until the end of time, bad members will be
mingled with the good. It is this society, and only this society,
with its good and bad members, for which the sacerdotal prayer
of Our Lord Himself was offered. By its divine constitution it is
so visibly one in itself and with Him that men can see, from an
examination of the Church itself, the character of its members as
disciples of Christ and Christ’s own status as the authentic bearer
of the message from His Father. Within this society alone men
are to find the fellowship and the company of Christ in this world.
Thus it is the divinely appointed and sole recipient of our corpo­
rate social and supernatural loyalty to Christ. The fact that there
are imperfect members of Christ both among the laity and among
the clergy of the Catholic Church in no way cancels out the debt
of loyalty and charity which the disciples of Christ owe to that
society and to its leadership.
Furthermore, a belief on the part of an individual priest or
layman that the policy of the ecclesiastical leaders in their actual
direction of the Church might possibly be improved upon in no
way exempts that priest or layman from the fundamental Chris­
tian duty of entering whole-heartedly into the activity of the
Church according to the instructions being given here and now by
the hierarchy as leaders of the Church. The infallibility which
God has given to His Church in no wise guarantees that the
appointment of this particular pastor, the direction of this par­
ticular school system, or the making of this particular Concordat
is theoretically the best step for the well being of the Mystical
Body as a whole. Nevertheless the rule of the Ordinaries of the
Catholic Church here and now is the rule of Our Lord Himself.
He wills that His disciples should show their obedience and
loyalty to Him by living the life of grace within His Church, under
the actual direction and commands of the men who rule by His
authority. The misguided writer who tries to persuade his fellow

58

THE AMERICAN ECCLESIASTICAL REVIEW

Catholics to look upon their clergy and hierarchy as salt that has
lost its savor, or who implies that the teaching Church and the
accredited teachers who act as instruments of the teaching Church
have lost their competence to give instruction in the spiritual life,
works truly, though perhaps unwittingly, against the living
authority of Christ in His kingdom.
A great deal of what may be called modem anti-clerical writing
seems to stem from a more or less conscious urge on the part of
some lesser Catholic writers to win acclaim from the non-Catholic
literary world. The Catholic author who is truly master of his
craft (Chesterton might be taken as a shining example) seems
never even tempted in this direction. Yet, in the main at least,
conditions have not changed a great deal in the line of the reception an anti-clerical can expect from the non-Catholic or anti­
Catholic world since Cardinal Manning remarked on the anti­
clerical activity of Acton and his like, then busily engaged in
their task of trying to discredit Pope Pius IX and the great
majority of the Catholic hierarchy.
The anti-Catholic press has eagerly encouraged this school of
thought. If a Catholic can be found out of tune with authority by half a
note, he is at once extolled for unequalled learning and irrefragable
logic. The anti-Catholic journals are at his service, and he vents his
opposition to the common opinions of the Church by writing against
them anonymously. Sad as this is, it is not formidable.®

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Today, when learning and logic are held in somewhat lighter
account, the world opposed to Christ prefers to hail the anticlerical writer as "far-seeing,” or as “progressive.” It may even
give him its highest accolade and dub him “Liberal,” and give
him not inconsiderable temporal rewards. In any event, the
temptation to seek the approval of the non-Catholic world in
this comparatively easy way is real and dangerous to the individ­
ual writer. It is something against which Catholics of literary
bent should be forewarned.

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THE THEORETICAL BASIS FOR ANTI-CLERICALISM

A Catholic writer can slip into the attitude of anti-clericalism :
if he is misinformed or ill-instructed about the nature and the
• Tfcr Voliœn Decrees in their Bearing on Cioil Allegiance (New York, 18TS),
P- 27.

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ANTI-CLERICALISM AND CATHOLIC UNITY

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unity of the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church is a super­
natural society, the company of the disciples of Jesus Christ, held
together by His commanding presence in this society as its Head
and by the indwelling of the Blessed Trinity within it. In this
world it is fiercely opposed, not merely by human powers and
contrivings, but by all of the power and bitterness of the leader
of God’s enemies, the “prince of this world.” A Catholic who has
allowed himself to grow lax in the practices of his religion can
blind himself to these essential and paramount truths about his
Church, and can come to think about it as something merely on
a par with other organizations he meets in the course of his daily
life. He may bring himself to imagine that the Church of Christ
is a sort of glorified Republican party. He observes that an
enrolled Republican or Democrat (though, of course, not an en­
rolled Communist) may openly disagree with the policies of party
leaders, may criticize these leaders and refuse to co-operate in
certain tentatives of the party, and still be not a whit a worse
man or less a party man. If he has failed to realize the special
and supernatural unity of the Catholic Church, he may delude
himself into imagining that the Catholic Church has no greater
practical claim upon its members than has the Republican Party
upon its enrollees.
Actually, the anti-clerical attitude is completely incompatible
with that unity which God Himself has instituted and sustained
within the Catholic Church. As the Church of the promises, and
thus as the recipient of Our Lord’s promise of indefectibility, the
Catholic Church will never be destroyed and will never be es­
sentially damaged by anti-clericalism among its children. Yet,
although this attitude is not formidable to the Church, it is de­
structive of the spiritual life in the Catholic who is beguiled into
adopting it, and it can be a source of profound disedification and
even of ruin to others who fall under his influence. It is a dire
spiritual disease, and the doctrinal specific which can overcome
it can be found in an examination of true Catholic unity.
THE CAUSES OF CATHOLIC UNITY

The members of the Catholic Church, gathered together as
the disciples of Christ and in His company, are united with each
other by special ties. Scholastic ecclesiology has long since de-

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scribed and defined these bonds of Catholic unity, and classified 1
them within two general groups. The present Holy Father’s
masterly encyclical Mystici Corporis, utilizing as it does the <
ecclesiological teachings of St. Robert Bellarmine, has brought '
this scholastic classification into the official teaching of the ;
Catholic Church. As external, visible, corporeal, or juridical
bonds of union in the Church, the traditional scholastic ecclesiologists and the Mystici Corporis list three factors: the profession
of the same Christian faith, the communion of the same Chris­
tian sacraments, and subjection to legitimate ecclesiastical ,
pastors, particularly and ultimately the Roman Pontiff, Christ's s
Vicar on earth. As internal or spiritual bonds of union within the }
Catholic fellowship we find enumerated the three theological \
virtues of faith, hope, and charity.7 In other words, according to ;
God’s own revelation and His authority, the unity of Catholic
communion among the members of the Church and with Our <
Lord is one necessarily involving the profession before the world j
of baptismal faith, the admission to the sacraments, and eventual­
ly of course to the Eucharist, the banquet table of Christ in the ),
House of God which is the Church, and unified corporate activity $
under the direction of the men whom God has appointed and ·
commissioned to speak by the power and with the authority of j
His Son. This unity, to be complete, furthermore, demands the «■
actual possession of faith, hope, and charity on the part of those |
whom God has called into this glorious company.
;
The highly complex and supernatural oneness of Christ’s kingdom is actually brought about by causes which are themselves
in the order of the intrinsically supernatural. The first of these
causes is the indwelling of the Blessed Trinity within this visible
society which is the true Church of God. This is the indwelling
which is appropriated to the Holy Ghost, the Third Person of the
Blessed Trinity. It is the indwelling according to which the
Blessed Trinity is present in a special and supernatural fashion
in souls in the state of sanctifying grace. According to this indwelling, God exists in the souls of those men to whom He is
known supematurally, that is, as He is in Himself, rather than
merely as He is knowable as the First Cause of creatures. Present

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ANTI-CLERICALISM AND CATHOLIC UNITY

61

in this supernatural manner in the soul, God acts as the cause of
the life of grace, and as the object of sincere charity, according
to which He is loved because He is known supernaturally. Thus,
God is present in Catholics to bind them by love within His
society, and in non-Catholics to move them to enter the Church.
The life of divine grace and of charity is corporate and social as
well as individual in its implications. The love with which God
wills to be loved by the creatures whom He has raised to the super­
natural level is meant to be, not merely the act of an individual
person, but the act of a real and organized society. Thus, it is
perfectly true to say that God dwells in this supernatural way in
the one society which He has instituted as the vehicle of His
Son’s message and life. The corporate activity of this society is,
whatever the spiritual condition of any of its members or groups
of members may be, the social expression of the life of grace. The
man who is favored by God with membership in the Catholic
Church is, by that very fact, engaged in a company within which
God Himself dwells to hold the members together in their corpo­
rate work of charity, of prayer, and of sacrifice. Both the internal
and the external bonds of unity within the Catholic Church de­
pend directly upon the real and supernatural presence of God
within it. The Catholic who allows himself to be deluded into
adopting an anti-clerical attitude is frustrating in his own life
that movement towards unity with His fellow Catholics which
comes from the indwelling of the Blessed Trinity within the
Church.
Furthermore, the real union of the members of the Catholic
Church among themselves and with Christ is something due to
the actual presence of Our Lord within the Church as its Head, as
its Founder, its Sustainer, and its Saviour. Our people profess the
same faith and possess the other bonds of unity, not because of
any naturally explicable social cause, but solely because they
constitute the assembly of the disciples of Christ, the assembly of
men and women whom Our Lord has chosen and called to be with
Him. The power and the grace by which they are enabled to
overcome the adverse forces of the world, and to remain gathered
in the unity of Christ come from Him alone. By reason of His
presence, and by reason of the grace which He gives, His followers
constitute among themselves and with Him a true and perfect
society, a social unit to which respect and obedience are due, a

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THE AMERICAN ECCLESIASTICAL REVIEW

social unit more important and vital than any other assembly into
which men may be called. The man who is ungrateful enough to
attempt the discrediting of the visible agents of social unity within
the Catholic Church tries, in so far as he is able, to undo Our
Lord’s own work within His kingdom.

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THE EXTERNAL BONDS OF UNITY

The outward bonds of unity within the Church of God are the
profession of the same Christian faith, the communion of the
same sacraments, and subjection to legitimate ecclesiastical
authority. Theologically, these external ties of fellowship within
the Church differ sharply in their function from the inward or
spiritual bonds. A man becomes and remains a member of the
Church of Jesus Christ in this world essentially and solely through
the possession of these outward bonds of unity. The Catholic
Church in this world is actually the congregation of men and
women who possess these visible bonds of union with our God
and with each other. The inward bonds, faith, hope, and charity
exist and operate in the Church. They are the sources of that life
which finds its corporate expression in this world only in the
Catholic Church. Nevertheless, possession of these qualities is
not the factor which renders a man a member of the society of
Christ. It is true that no one in this world can possess charity
without either being a member of the Catholic Church or sincerely
intending to enter this society. Nevertheless, a man becomes and
remains a member of the Church only by the baptisimal pro­
fession of divine Christian faith never publicly recalled, by the
fact of his admission to the sacraments, and by his willing sub­
jection to legitimate ecclesiastical authority. Each one of these
bonds constitutes a force uniting the members of the Catholic
Church with Our Lord and with each other. The spirit of anti­
clericalism is, in the last analysis, a tentative running counter
to the direction of these forces.
Catholics are formed into one body and joined to one another
by reason of their profession of the same Christian faith. In this
world they are the group or the unity explicitly accepting as true
and as a real and supernatural communication from God the
truths which Our Lord Himself teaches in the world as divinely
revealed. There can be, of course, and there really are, persons

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not members of the Church and yet possessing true divine faith.
This class of persons would include catechumens or individuals
desiring to enter the Church, excommunicated persons and
schismatics who have not sinned against the faith. Yet the one
society which authentically and correctly professes this faith is
the Catholic Church, the company of Our Lord’s disciples within
which He lives and teaches. The teaching of Christ, the message
of the living God, comes to the members of the Church through
the voice of the Catholic Church’s hierarchy, the ecclesia docens.
The man who adopts or who encourages an attitude of opposition
to or mistrust of the hierarchy thus, in effect, works to separate
Our Lord’s disciples from His teaching. Furthermore, since the
profession of the true Christian faith is always and necessarily
something effected in this world only in the face of a highly
formidable opposition, the Catholic who sets out to oppose his
own spiritual leaders or who ençourages others to do so is defi­
nitely giving aid and comfort to the spiritual enemy of Christ.
The true and baptismal profession of the Christian faith is, by
its very nature, a force which should draw Catholics together in
the face of a world which opposes Our Lord’s doctrine. It tends
essentially and necessarily to attach Catholics to their clergy and
to their hierarchy by bonds of loyal reverence and affection.
The communication of the divine sacraments, the second of
those forces which are listed together as the external bonds of unity
within the Catholic Church has precisely the same effect. The
sacramental system centers around the Blessed Eucharist. The
members of the Catholic Church, enjoying the communication of
the sacraments, is one of the holy assembly, the royal priesthood,
united to Christ and with Him offering to God the eternal sacri­
fice of the New Testament. That sacrifice is the sign of Christian
prayer and devotion, the inward sacrifice to God. Prayer is the
expression of Christian faith and of Christian hope. It is meant
to be and it should be the manifestation of true Christian charity.
In the sacrificial Eucharistic act, the members of the Church
are bound together among themselves and with Our Lord in the
strongest possible ties. It is the highest social act of worship, the
act in which we manifest and increase our love for God and for
one another. Any tendency to separate the members of the
Catholic Church into mutually hostile divisions, and particu­
larly any attempt to engender antagonism in the Church towards

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the group whom Our Lord Himself has made the active ministers
of the great sacrifice is thus manifestly counter to the intention
of God Almighty. To attempt to turn Catholics against each other
along other lines, racial or local for instance, is evil enough.
But to use the distinction of the laity and the hierarchy, a dis­
tinction inherent in the Church by the very will of Christ, as an
instrument for antagonism in the society of the disciples con­
stitutes a perversion of what is in itself a means for unity and
sanctification.
Considering the Eucharist as a sacrament, the communion
which is essential to membership in the Church of Christ means
admission to the banquet table of the Lord in the house of God.
Those who are really members of the Church and disciples of
Christ are the men and women whom He described as His brothers
and His sisters. It is the express command of Christ that, within
the house of God, His members should love one another. To
violate the love of Christian charity with respect to the men from
whom the membership of the Church must receive the Eucharistic
banquet is thus, in a special way, to oppose the will of Christ.
By the fact that a man is a Catholic, he professes, and he is
obliged to give, a real and sincere subjection to legitimate ecclesi­
astical pastors. Anti-clericalism, as it actually exists, is based
upon a misunderstanding or a distortion of this essential element
of life in Christ’s Mystical Body. The Catholic hierarchy, the
Pope and the residential bishops, and all of the ecclesiastical
superiors who rule their flocks by legitimate ecclesiastical dele­
gation, can issue commands which their subjects must obey under
penalty of mortal sin. The Holy Father and the residential
bishops can and do make real laws. These laws and the precepts
and commands legitimate ecclesiastical superiors issue in virtue
of their office come to Catholics as orders from Our Lord Him­
self. They are the ordinances by which the Church of Jesus
Christ lives and acts as a visible society in this world, proclaiming
the faith of Christ and doing His work in the face of all the op­
position which can be brought to bear against Our Lord by the
prince of this world. Those who profess the divine faith and who
are privileged to dwell in the house of God as the brothers and
sisters of Jesus Christ are bound to give the orders of ecclesiastical
superiors enthusiastic and loyal obedience, the response which is
due to the orders of Our Lord Himself. The man who adopts an

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anti-clerical attitude, and who thus brings himself to offer only a
grudging and mistrustful subjection to competent ecclesiastical
authority, by that very fact cuts himself off from the fullness ol
his connection with Jesus Christ.
The anti-clerical attitude is based, to a great extent, on a mis­
understanding of the nature of ecclesiastical authority. The man
who is deluded into adopting that attitude is prone to admit the
function of the clergy and of the hierarchy in dispensing the sacra­
mental means of grace. He is also prepared to admit the teaching
power of the hierarchy. What he fails to appreciate, however, is
the basic and essential fact that the ecclesiastical hierarchy of
jurisdiction has received from Our Lord a real power of rule, so
that it can issue orders to the faithful by the power and with the
authority of Our Lord Himself. When, for instance, a residential
bishop forbids his subjects to read a certain paper, the effective­
ness of that order definitely does not depend upon the presence
within that paper of heretical views and teachings. Like any other
real superior, the ecclesiastical authority is not obliged to give
the reasons for his command in the command itself. The power
to issue a definite command is something quite different from a
mere competence to persuade. In many instances the anti-clerical
seems to imagine that the position of the ecclesiastical superior is
merely that of an older brother, who has the authority to reason
with a younger and to try to bring him to adopt a different mode
of activity, but who lacks the power to issue a definite command.
Undoubtedly there is a tendency on the part of the ill-instructed
Catholic to think of the Church in terms of the many social
organizations in our own time which have no power to bind their
members in conscience. To make such a mistake about the Church
is, however, to misunderstand the nature of Christ’s Mystical
Body in this world. To act on such a misunderstanding is to
frustrate the life of Christ in His disciple.

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THE INTERNAL BONDS OF UNITY

The internal bonds of unity within the Catholic Church, faith,
hope, and charity, likewise are such as to bring Catholics to give
their spiritual leaders ungrudging and loyal co-operation in the
work of Christ. But, where the external bonds of unity demand
such loyal union, the internal bonds actually bring it about. A

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man who has true Catholic faith is, by that very fact, unhesi­
tatingly by the side of the ecclesia docens. Christian hope, of
itself, brings a man to desire God as his own good, as the Reward
and the Happiness of the individual member of the Church and of
the Church as a whole. Christian charity is an act of love for God,
and for all men in God. By charity we love our fellow-Catholics
as our brothers in God’s house, and we manifest the sincerity of
our love for non-Catholics by our prayers and our other efforts
to bring them into the society of Christ.
Basically and essentially, anti-clericalism is a violation of this
Christian charity. It represents an attitude quite contrary to the
demands of charity on the part of Catholics towards religious
superiors. A Catholic does not manifest the true love of the
brotherhood unless he shows to his superiors and to the clergy
in general the sincere affection dictated by love.
CATHOLIC LOYALTY AND COMMUNIST UNANIMITY

Despite the somewhat bungling pronouncement of Mr.
Reinhold Niebuhr, the fullness of loyalty demanded by the
Catholic Church from its own children does not make Catholics
and Communists “rival absolutists”8 in the modem world. It is
perfectly true that the Communist Party demands and receives
from its own members an obedience within the bounds of abso­
lute servility. The Communist Party member is quite ready to
give his enthusiastic support to the Kremlin platform as it stands.
The fact that this platform, here and now, involves a complete
contradiction of what was asserted by the same authorities last
week or last month will never dampen the enthusiasm of the
Communist.
In the last analysis the unity of the Communist Party is that
of a giant conspiracy against the liberty of man and the rights of
God. The Party holds its members together with the closest ties
simply because it realizes the simple fact that no corporate action
can be effective in the world without the complete and whole­
hearted co-operation of the members of the group. The purpose of
Communism is entirely contrary to the purpose of the Church.
• Cf. Christianity and Power Politics (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons,
1940), p. 113.

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The ties of fear and cupidity which bind the individual Com­
munist to his party and to his fellow-Communists are utterly
different from the bonds which hold Catholics in the unity of
Christ’s kingdom. Yet the adherence of the Catholic to his
Church should be at least as visibly loyal and enthusiastic as is
the attachment of the Communist to his party. Our bonds of
union are different, but they are not weaker. The indwelling of the
Holy Ghost within the Catholic Church, together with the vari­
ous bonds of unity resultant from this indwelling, demand of their
very nature a social solidarity within the Catholic Church more
perfect and more powerful than the group unity within any lesser
organization. Thus there is no possibility of giving a sincere love
and loyalty to Our Lord, as He lives in and rules over the Church
militant, without, at the same time manifesting a genuine and
sovereign loyalty to the Church itself and to those Church leaders
through whom the teachings and the command of Christ come
to us.
The loyalty to the Church which God demands of Catholics
is certainly not of the type destructive of or harmful to perfect
freedom on the part of the individual Catholic. The society to
which Our Lord commands us to render the service of loyalty is
that which contains and preaches the divine truth through which
alone men are made free. It does not carry with it any obligation
to follow the leaders of the Church when they speak other than
as rulers in Christ’s kingdom. In questions merely civil or politi­
cal, when they speak as private citizens, they are to be heard and
respected with the charity that is their due, but they are not
necessarily to be followed. But, when they speak in the name of
Christ, to teach or to command the faithful of Christ, then, by
the will of God Himself, they are to be accorded the ungrudging
arid unhesitating obedience that results from the unity of the
Catholic Church. In that unity, through their endeavors to for­
ward the cause of Christ, Catholics are called by God to exercise
their freedom. If Catholics advert to the nature and the unity of
that society within which they dwell as the brothers of Jesus
Christ, they will certainly never be tempted into the disloyalty
of anti-clericalism.
Joseph Clifford Fenton
The Catholic University of America,
Washington, D. C.