THE SOURCES OF MODERN ATTACKS
AGAINST THE CHURCH

I

It

During the past couple of years the American press has re­
ported an unusually large number of attacks and charges against
the Catholic Church. Taken individually, a great many of these
charges are not serious enough to warrant any particular atten­
tion. Far too frequently they manifest themselves as mere bids
for publicity put forward by individuals who would apparently
find tremendous difficulty in doing any work more exigent intel­
lectually than that of shouting against the true Church of Jesus
Christ. Often too these contemporary accusations against the
Church turn out to be nothing more important than routine
handouts from the faceless men of Moscow.
Considered collectively, however, the various contemporary
charges against the Catholic Church are extremely important
They form the center of a mass of propaganda calculated to turn
people away from Our Lord and from His Church. Any man who
is aware of the fact that it is God’s will that all men should be
saved through Our Lord in the Church is bound by charity to do
whatever he can towards pointing out the fallacious character of
these onslaughts against the true Church. The obligation of
indicating the errors contained in contemporary charges against
the Catholic Church naturally enough rests primarily upon the
Catholic priest. Hence an understanding of the best way to deal
with such attacks against the Church forms an integral part of
what we may call the necessary professional knowledge of the
contemporary priest.
CATHOLICS AND GROUP-SOLIDARITY

f

Strange to say there can be found an occasional Catholic, and
sometimes even an occasional priest, who will disapprove of
efforts on the part of Catholics to answer and to challenge pub­
lished attacks upon the Church. For some reason or other such
procedure is supposed to indicate the presence of an undesirable
and intense group-consciousness among Catholics. It is extremely
difficult to see how any educated Catholic could bring himself to
imagine that a highly developed group-consciousness could be
other than absolutely requisite in the Church of Jesus Christ
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The love of His disciples, that is of the members of the Catholic
Church, for one another is supposed, according to Our Blessed
Lord Himself, to be clear and obvious enough to serve to identify
these disciples for what they are. It was to the disciples that Our
Lord spoke these words.
A new commandment I give unto you : That you love one another,
as I have loved you, that you also love one another.
By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you have
love one for another.1

Again the unity (or the group-solidarity) of the disciples was,
according to the prayer of Our Lord Himself, to be strong and
striking enough to serve as a motive of credibility for the world.
And not for them only do Γ pray, but for them also who through
their word shall believe in me.
That they all may be one, as thou, Father, in me, and I in thee;
that they also may be one in us : that the world may believe that thou
hast sent me.
And the glory which thou hast given me, I have given to them:
that they may be one, as we also are one.
I in them, and thou in me: that they may be made perfect in one:
and the world may know that thou hast sent me and hast loved them,
as thou also hast loved me.2

The most fatal mistake which Catholics can make in dealing
with the teachings and the commands of Christ is to take His
words as other than sincere and meaningful. Those who protest
(always to the delight of those outside the fold) against groupconsciousness and group-solidarity within the Church of God, and
who frown upon that love and enthusiasm for the Church which
result in answers to charges made against it, would seem to have
fallen into this error. They seem not to realize that the Catholic
Church is truly the house or the family of God, and that a special
affection for the society itself and for the members of the society is
incumbent upon every person who is privileged to dwell within
that house. If a man takes Our Lord’s teachings about the
Catholic Church seriously, it will be absolutely impossible for him
not to have a vigorous and manifest family loyalty to this society
and to its members.
1 John 13: 34-35.

’ John 17: 20-23.

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SINCERITY AND POLEMIC

The men who wring their hands over what they regard as the
aggressiveness of contemporary Catholic polemics seem to imply
that sincerity on the part of one of the Church’s opponents should
automatically forbid any response to that opponent which might
possibly hurt his feelings. Such an attitude stems from the wildest
sort of confusion. Ordinarily, at any rate, Catholic polemics is in
no way concerned with sincerity or the lack of it on the part of the
opponent of the Church. The enemy of the Church may be said
to be sincere in the event that he actually believes as true the
charges which he brings against the Catholic Church. The answer
to those erroneous charges, bringing enlightenment on the par­
ticular point on which he has deviated from truth, is just as
much a favor to the enemy of the Church as it is to anyone else.
Writing in 1520, James Latomus described his and his University s
attitude towards Martin Luther, and thus gave quite clearly
the ideal attitude of distinction between a man and his work in
the business of controversy. He is discussing the Louvain con­
demnation of Luther’s writings.
That he [Martin Luther] is said to he a good man is of no concern
to us at all. We have not said that he is an evil man. But, whatever
sort of man he may be, it is evident that he has written things which
are not good. We have not condemned him, but his errors. It was use­
less to warn him privately when his books, scattered over the world,
made it clear that he would pay no attention to a warning.3

4

It is always amusing to read a liberal Catholic’s protest against
what he regards as a too forceful presentation of the Catholic case
against the Church’s detractors in our own times. Generally such
protest carries with it an appeal to return to the “gentle” apolo­
getic of the New Testament and of the primitive Christian writers.
Patently such a notion would never occur to a man who was at
all familiar with the bitter denunciation of the scribes and of the
pharisees recorded in the Gospels or with the uncompromising
firmness of the Epistle to the Galatians and of the Apocalypse.
St. Justin Martyr, sometimes held up as an example for gentleness
in Catholic polemic, taught that Marcion's effectiveness as a
’The Eeirtrfa dedicatma to the work Contra articulos quosdam Martini
Ltdheri a TheologisLoaansensUmsdamnatos, in the Opera mania (Louvain 1579)
p. ir.

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propagandist was to be attributed to devils.4 In any event, if
there is one defect from which the Catholic Church does not suffer
today, it is an over-aggressive attitude on the part of its literary
defenders. A warning against such an attitude will most certainly
do no good to the Church, even though it has the effect of en­
dearing the man who makes it to the enemies of the Church.
If we are to deal at all effectively with the present-day crop of
attacks against the Church, it is imperative that we should know
and appreciate not only the actual charges and assertions made
by the Church’s enemies, but also the background or the source
behind the individual attack. When a man claims that the Church
or the hierarchy is seeking too much power, it is impossible to
offer a reasonable response to this claim until we see the particu­
lar error which has inspired this assertion. Important attacks in
this direction are made against the Church in our own time by
Communists, by Protestants, by Anglicans, by members of dissi­
dent oriental groups, by those called Jehovah’s Witnesses, and by
persons who claim no affiliation other than that of liberalism. In
every case, however, the motive for the charge is somewhat
different, and an effective answer to the allegation will demand a
knowledge of that motive.
THE COMMUNIST POSITION

The fact and the articulateness of the Communist attack
against the Catholic Church are too well known to require com­
ment. It is a rare week when the columns of the New York Times
do not recount some fresh denunciation of the Church on the part
of some Moscow journal or speaker. Furthermore the suppression
of the Church in Russia, as well as the persecution of Catholics in
those countries which have fallen under Bolshevist domination
since the war shows that Communist opposition to Catholicism is
not something merely academic in character. The reasons why
Communists are unalterably opposed to the true Church of
Jesus Christ are found in both the theory and the practice of
Communism.
In the Divini Redemptoris Pope Pius XI delivered, once and for
all, the devastating exposé of the communistic theory. He found
it a system of materialistic and hopeless tyranny, concealed under
the false messianic ideal of justice, of equality, and of fraternity
4 Cf. First Apology, cap. 26.

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in labor. He indicated the cynical promise of a classless society
which the communistic leaders held out to their dupes. Since the
very philosophy upon which the theory of Communism is con­
structed is itself based upon the denial of God, Pope Pius XI
showed how the communistic society is naturally and as it were
instinctively hostile to the Catholic Church, the one organization
on earth which is visibly, effectively, and enthusiastically devoted
to the worship of the one true God.
The actually existing Communist state, however, throws far
more light than any mere Marxian theory on the reason why the
Communists are so bitterly hostile to the Catholic Church.
Russia, the actual Communist Empire, is a nation of slaves,
dominated by a Communist Czar and held in check by a swarm
of spies. As far as the Communists are concerned, the only satis­
factory subject is a man who thinks like a slave. For that reason,
the Catholic Church, which possesses and which dispenses the
high freedom which comes from the truth of God, can never be
other than eminently unsatisfactory to the Communists.
For the achievement of its object, the Communist party relies
on vigorous persecution where it is able to do so, and upon a no
less vigorous rhetoric elsewhere. We would look in vain in com­
munistic literature for anything like a series of logical objections
to the Catholic position. The Communists know themselves,
their ideals, and their limitations far too well to attempt anything
of the sort. They set out to use words, not to bring knowledge,
but to establish attitudes. They parade their catch-phrases in
order, if possible, to weaken the loyalty of Catholics for their
Church and for the leaders of that Church, and to make the
Church appear unpleasant to those outside the fold.
To deal successfully with the objections made against the
Church from Communist sources, we must point out the real
meaning of the theory which underlies the Communist mentality.
Then, with all the resources at our command, we must bring men
to look and see what Communism has actually done. If those who
are troubled by charges against the Church emanating from Com­
munist circles can be brought to realize the truth that the Church
is bring attacked precisely because it stands in the way of a cam­
paign which actually tends towards the enslavement and the
degradation of mankind, then à good start will have been made
in the direction of answering Communist propaganda.

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Still, manifesting the evils of Communism is only one section
of our work for Catholic truth. The main part of this task con­
sists in bringing out the fact that the benefits which the Com­
munists, either gullibly or cynically, as the case may be, claim
that their system will give to the human race, are to be found in
reality, in an ineffably higher degree, in the message of God
preached infallibly by the Catholic Church. This, and this alone,
is the truth which makes men free.
THE PROTESTANT POSITION

The Communist attacks the Catholic Church because this
society definitely stands in the way of the sort of all-out obedience
to Mr. Stalin which the Communist properly regards as essential
to his purpose. The Protestant, on the other hand, is hostile to
the Church because it seems to go beyond what he considers
necessary for adherence to Our Lord. The statements of those
solemn gentlemen who spend so much of their time in parading
up the steps to the dwelling at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
in order to demand the recall of Mr. Myron Taylor from Vatican
City are, in a way, perfectly consistent with the essential Protes­
tant religious position. So are the somewhat hysterical articles
which so frequently adorn the pages of the Christian Century. The
absolute falsity of their demands and their statements can only
be appreciated in the light of their basic attitudes.
The specifically Protestant opposition to the true Church of
Jesus Christ stems from a mistaken notion about the nature of
Christianity. Like the Catholic, the Protestant wills to be a
follower, a disciple, of Our Lord. The very basis, however, of
Protestantism as such is to be found in its teaching about the way
in which this attachment to Our Lord is to be achieved. The one
common element in the teaching of the Lutherans and of the
Calvinists which has been accepted without question by all of
their various followers (and which, incidentally, has served to
confuse certain untheological Catholic writers as well) is the illu­
sion that a man becomes in the primary and proper sense of the
term a follower or a disciple of Christ, a Christian, through the
possession of some internal quality, an interest in or sympathy
with Our Lord. The original Protestant groups insisted that this
quality be either the possession of the state of grace or of what we
might call the charism of predestination. Their later followers
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seem, at any rate, to attach the name of Christian to any person
who wishes, in some way or another, to follow the example or to
accept the teaching of Christ.

In the theory of Protestantism membership in a religious society
is definitely and necessarily a secondary concern. Thus for the
Protestant, or for the man with a Protestant mentality, the word
"Christian” becomes a term something like “philatelist.” Aman
is classified as a stamp collector by the fact that he is interested in
this avocation and works at it. Membership in any one of the
numerous organizations devoted to the pursuance of philately is
in no wise requisite, even though it be desirable.

On the other hand, the Catholic truth on this matter is that
the word “Christian ’ ’ is one which primarily designates a member
of an organization. Thus “Christian” is a word analogous to
“soldier” rather than to “stamp collector.” A man is designated
as a soldier, not by the fact that he is interested in military ma­
neuvers, nor by reason of his sympathy with the objectives and
the methods of some particular army. He is a soldier only if he is
enrolled in a definite organization, a part of a definite army. In
exactly the same way the Acts of the Apostles and the other books
of the New Testament, as well as the constant tradition of au­
thentic and orthodox Christian writing, show us that a man is
properly a Christian only when he is enrolled as a member of that
organized society into which Our Lord formed His disciples.

In the time intervening between Our Lord’s ascension into
heaven and the first Christian Pentecost there were no disciples
or followers of Christ other than those who were gathered around
the apostles and placed under the command of St. Peter. When
the three thousand accepted St. Peter’s teaching on that Pente­
cost and wished to become followers of Christ, they had no re­
course other than to be baptized and enrolled as fellow members
with the original disciples in that society into which the original
disciples had already been organized. Only thus were they saved
from “this perverse generation” and brought into the company of
Christ.5 The members of this society and only these members
were designated as Christians in the city of Antioch.6 Only such
members have a proper right to that designation today.
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This is the point from which any effective answer to typically
Protestant charges against the Catholic Church must proceed.
When Protestant religious leaders attack the Church for seeking
too much power, they merely act on the mistaken supposition
that the true and visible Church of Jesus Christ should operate
according to the schedule drawn up for their type of religious
association. Their bigotry proceeds from ignorance, but from ig­
norance chiefly of the one essential point that association with
Christ is only to be achieved, according to His divine will, in the
organized society within which He dwells and over which He
presides.
THE LIBERAL APPROACH

The "Liberal” religious position with reference to the Catholic
Church is a development of the Protestant approach. Where the
Protestant imagines that association with Our Lord is to be
achieved primarily and essentially by means of some sympathy
with or interest in Him, and thus believes that all religious societies
nominally devoted to Christ are objectively entitled to be con­
sidered on the same footing, the “Liberal” theoretically accords
the same recognition to any kind of religious organization what­
soever. Where the Protestant wishes to be a follower of Christ,
the “Liberal” simply wants to be religious. Likewise, then, where
the Protestant is prone to object against the Catholic Church
because it claims to be the Christian religious society, the “Lib­
eral” is prepared to assail it because it professes to be the society
necessary for the salvation of men, teaching God's message in­
fallibly and authoritatively. It is the claim of truth itself, the
assertion of the fact that the.Church is the one necessary and
infallible religious society, which makes the Church anathema to
the “Liberal.”
The “Liberal” dislike of any claim that a religious organiza­
tion possesses unique divine authority is well conveyed in the now
famous words of Mr. Clyde Miller in his “Introduction” to The
Story of the Springfield Plan. He is speaking of the four “de­
lusions” which are to be eliminated by the Plan.

;

The first is the delusion that one’s own church, cult, sect, or group
alone expresses God’s will on earth, that it alone can reveal God's pur­
poses toward mankind. We have seen this delusion in the Shintoism

Ip
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of Japan, in Emperor worship. The Emperor is divine, and treason
against the nation is blasphemy against God. But this delusion has not
been confined to the Japanese.7

In a letter published in America Mr. Miller insisted that he did
not have the Catholic Church in mind when he was writing these
lines.8 He was thinking, he said, of the attitudes of some of his
non-Catholic co-religionists, and he saw in the "delusion" he had
described the basis of all bigotry.
To be true to this “Liberal” attitude, a man cannot even face
the possibility that there might be one society commissioned and
guided by God Himself to deliver His message to mankind. He
must not distinguish between the status of the Protestant, who,
in making the claim of a unique mission from God and of necessity
for his own religious society, is obviously going beyond the teach­
ing of his society itself, and the status of the Catholic who, in
asserting that his Church is the one authentic, infallible, and
necessary Church of God, is merely stating the dogma of his
Church and is stating a fact. Such a “Liberal” remains what he is
only through the vigorous exercise of keeping his eyes firmly
dosed against the evidence of truth.
The "Liberal” attitude towards the Catholic Church is no­
where better revealed than in a document issued previous to the
American entry into the recent war, and signed by seventeen of
the most authentic “Liberals.”
No apologetic is needed for the greatness of the Roman Church or
for the glory of its achievements in piloting Western man through the
Dark Ages. But its catholicity was severely curtailed by its constant
temptation to commit the basic error of identifying the Church as a
temporal kingdom with the “Kingdom of God” of Christian and pro­
phetic expectation. This error invests the sociologically relative archi­
tecture of the Church with an unwarranted aura of unqualified holiness.
An ecclesiastical institution buffeted by the vicissitudes of the centuries,
conditioned by the mutation of social and political forces, subject to
the corruptions which assail all institutions, claims an absoluteness of
7 The Story of the Springfield Plan, by Clarence I. Chatto and Alice L
Halligan (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1945), p. xv. The passage cited is
from Mr. Miller’s introduction. An excellent Catholic appreciation of this
passage and of the book as a whole will be found in Dr. Edmond DarvÜ
Renard’s "The’Meaning’ of the Springfield Plan,” in The American Ecclesi­
astical Remew, CXIV, 1 (Jan. 1946), pp. t-12.
• Cf. America, LXXV, 2 (Apr. 13, 1946), p. 39.

veneration which is incompatible with its relativity in history. The
historical usurps the sanctity of the eternal.®

Blithely oblivious of the fact that it was Our Lord Himself who
spoke in the same terms of His Church and of the Kingdom of
Heaven,10 and of the central mystery of the Church, which con­
sists in the fact that an historical and organized society in which
good and bad members will be mingled together until the end of
time really is the society in which alone man finds the fellowship
of Christ, the embattled signers proceed to more of the same.
The Church is warned that “its Syllabus of Errors (1864), the
start of a Second Counter-Reformation challenging the liberal
world that had risen from Reformation and Renaissance, played
into the hands of political and social obscurantism.”11 Finally, all
qualified Catholics are summoned to the sacred duties of laicism.
The Holy Father must not, according to The City of Man, speak
out and expect to be followed in any matter where politics are
concerned.
Freedom-loving, justice-loving Catholics—here as well as in the
Latin-American republics and wherever else they can reawaken to the
examples bequeathed by braver ages—will see to it some day that
humility in faith be no longer the lure to servility in politics and that
allegiance to the City of God be disentangled again from bondage to
Vatican City as a foreign potentate in feud or trade with other poten­
tates.12

The City of Man is particularly valuable for a study of the
“Liberal” attitude towards and hostility against the Catholic
Church because, unlike other documents emanating from similar
sources, it proceeds to the logical implications of the “Liberal”
position. Men like Messrs. Van Wyck Brooks, Hans Kohn, and
Reinhold Niebuhr (to mention only the best known among the
signers of The City of Man), are almost hysterically angry with
the Church for claiming “an absoluteness of veneration.” The
City of Man informs us that these “Liberals” have a kind of
religion for which they claim the same thing. This is “the religion
of the Spirit, to which all men are witnesses,”11 “the common
,Tke City of ifan. A Declaration on World Democracy (Hew York: The
Viking Press, 1941), pp. 40 f.
;tCf. Afca. 16: 18-19.
“IWd.,p.43.
11 Ike City of Man, p. 41.
a Ibid., p. 39.

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belief of man.”14 It would seem that “The latter [the common
belief of man] explains and annexes all dogmas as symbols; the
churches, in the fetters of literalism, anathematize as heresy and
error the symbolical meaning that is the dogma’s inmost truth.”14
It is "the common creed, which embraces and interprets every
lesser faith.”16
The new supreme Religion of the Seventeen is already existent
and ready to take over.
. This common creed already exists; toward its luminous center all
higher minds [those of the signers of course] already point, from what­
ever distant horizon they may set out The yoke of this creed is as
easy as it is inevitable; its doctrines are as plain as they are undebatable.
It teaches that a divine intention governs the universe—be it called
God or Deity or the Holy Ghost or the Absolute or Logos or even
Evolution.17

fl

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To sustain their attitudes towards the Church’s claims of
necessity and infallibility, “Liberals” have recourse to such bi­
zarre accounts of the origin of Christianity as that contained in
Lewis Browne’s This Believing World. That Our Lord had been
captured by the Jews while He was trying to escape from them,1*
that the disciples only imagined that He had risen from the dead,1’
that they "even declared that they had actually seen him in the
act of rising from the sepulcher,”10 that they had invented the
genealogies and "those extravagant legends concerning the con­
ception, birth, childhood, and ministry of Jesus,”21 that St. Paul
was the real founder of Christianity,22 all of these patent historical
absurdities are treated reverently and received as learning in order
that the. Church may be depicted in the guise in which the
“Liberals’! wish to see it.
The only really effective way to handle the charges which are
made against the Church by those of the “Liberal” camp is to
ΜΛϋ.,ρ. 45.
«ZW.
.. “ibid.,
° Ibid., pp. 46 f,
*>70" Π***

« Cf. ibid., p. 273. . . .
*> Ibid.
® Ibid., p. 276.
» Ci. ibid., p. 283, ‘

(New York: The Macmillan Company, 1941),

MODERN ATTACKS AGAINST THE CHURCH

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Λ
: .

insist upon an examination of the most fundamental religious
truths, those which are set forth in the science of Christian apolo­
getics. This course, it must be admitted, is not particularly easy.
The “Liberal” has a way of shying away from hard facts. He
may, for instance, speak about the study of religion as something
like an effort “To gain an understanding of the need for religion
in the life of ancient man and in succeeding groups as an attempt
to account for things which men could not understand, and as an
attempt to get harmonious living conditions.”23 In dealing with a
man who works on this assumption, it is the duty of the Catholic
teacher to bring out the fact that the Catholic religion is nothing
of the sort. It is most certainly not an attempt to account for
phenomena which men did not understand prior to modem re­
search in electricity and in medicine. Most certainly it is not a
mere attempt to gain better and more harmonious living con­
ditions. What it is, and what it claims to be, is the worship of
the one true God, according to the directions which He has given
to us through His divine Son. On that standard, and on that alone,
can the Catholic religion be intelligently discussed.
THE POSITION OF THE EASTERN DISSIDENTS AND OF THE ANGLICANS

In dealing with the objections and charges raised against the
true Church by members of the dissident oriental communions,
we must distinguish sharply between the theory of these groups
and their actual procedure. In theory their position towards the
Catholic Church is very much like that of the High Church
Anglicans. In practice, at the hands of men like the Patriarch
Alexei,their opposition is simplythat of the Communistparty line.
The unfortunates who chose to gather around the Sacred Emperor
rather than around the Vicar of Christ have found that the
Emperor is now no less a personage than Comrade Stalin.
The basic High Church Anglican (and incidentally the theo­
retical Eastern Orthodox) position with reference to the Church is
something quite different from that of any of those groups we
Eave mentioned previously. Like the Protestants and the Cath° This is the first of the “specific objectives” in the Springfield Plan’s study
ontfine for the eighth grade course, Democratic Procedures. The Contributions
Religions to Present Democratic Procedures. It is found on page 2 of the
®meographed outline. It is interesting to note that Browne’s This Believing
"arid is listed (p. 16) in the bibliography for teachers presenting this course.

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olios, the Anglicans profess themselves as desirous of being in the
fellowship of Christ. Like the Catholics, and unlike the Protes­
tants, the High Church Anglicans hold that this fellowship is to
be found within the visible society founded by Our Lord. The
authoritative Doctrine in the Church of England speaks of “The
life of the Church as visible and militant here in earth.”” The
brilliant Oxonian scholar, Professor Cuthbert Hamilton Turner,
wrote that “We stand, in the first place, on the idea of a Church,
a visible Church, a Catholic Church: and there is only one
Catholic Church conceivable, the Church which has been from
the beginning.”15 Dr. H. Bum-Murdoch of Cambridge teaches
that “The new Ekklesia of the Lord, thus rebuilt upon the old
Ekklesia of Israel, is to be a society recognizable in the world
both collectively and individually.”16
The Rev. W. Norman Pittenger of the General Theological
Seminary in New York has given a most explicit American state­
ment of the Anglican position.
“No Christian who is not also a member of the church . .
In that
brief phrase, the witness of the New Testament—and, in feet, the testi­
mony of early Christianity as a whole—may be summed up. With most
varying phrasing, and likewise with widely differing emphases, the
New Testament makes it clear that the way in which one became a
Christian believer, in primitive times, and hence a participant in the
Christian life, was by becoming a member of the Christian society.11

1

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The institution which can produce men who write so accurately
about the visible nature of the Church of Christ in this world
differs from the true Church basically by reason of its unwilling­
ness to acknowledge the Holy Father’s primacy of jurisdiction
within the Church of God and his doctrinal infallibility. The
objections of this group, unlike those of the “Liberals," are set
forth against a background of genuine and serious scholarship.
In their most perfect expression, these objections are presented in
Dr. Jalland’s famous book, The Church and the Papacy.
.** Doctrine in the Church of England. The Report of the Commission an Chris­
tian Doctrine appointed by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York in 1922
(London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge; New York: The Mac­
millan Co., 1938), p. 104.
6
Catholic and Apostolic (London and Oxford: A. R. Mowbray and Co.:
Milwaukee: Morehouse Puohshmg Co., 1931), p. 111.
” Church, Continuity and Unity (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1945),
p. 22.
U His Body the Church (New York: Morehouse-Gorham Co., 1945), p. 1.

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Dr. Jalland and the cause which he represents are not afraid of
the evidence. They bring out and examine the documents and the
pronouncements which are most pertinent to the theses on which
they differ from the Catholic Church. The service which we can
do for Our Lord in their regard is to master that evidence and to
indicate the theological elements which they have not considered
sufficiently in bringing in their decision.
They begin with the absolutely correct notion of a glorious
Church, a visible society of the disciples of Christ which is to act
and to live as His Body in the world. They acknowledge the
almost innumerable occasions upon which the Roman Pontiff has
de facto claimed and exercised supreme jurisdiction within the
Church and given de facto doctrinal decisions from which there
was no appeal. They acknowledge the supremacy of Peter among
the apostles, and know that the Bishop of Rome is his successor.
The objections which they offer will lose their force once they are
brought to understand that the Church cannot really be what
they claim it is unless the successor of Peter be actually endowed
with the full primacy of jurisdiction and with true doctrinal in­
fallibility.
A visible Church without a true visible ruler could not possibly
be the one Body of Christ. A doctrinal Church without an in­
fallible and visible head could not be infallible, and could not be
the society within which Our Lord resides.

a

THE ATTACKS FROM JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES

The attacks made against the Catholic Church by the members
of this particular organization make up in ardor what they lack
in coherence. Nevertheless, it is important to know what their
basic stand towards the Church really is.
The Witnesses, like the Catholics themselves, and like the
High Church Anglicans, are firm believers in a visible society of
Christians. They conceive themselves to be the true Church, and
they have appropriated from some source or other a certain
amount of genuine Christian doctrine to explain their stand.
They hold that the true Church, the Theocracy, is in opposition
to the world, presided over by the prince of this world, Satan.18
a A recent discussion of this phase of the Jehovah’s Witness doctrine will be
found in the article “The ‘World’ Concept among Jehovah's Witnesses," by
Theodore W. Sprague in The Harvard Theological Review, XXXIX, 2 (April,
1946), pp. 109 ff.

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218

THE AMERICAN ECCLESIASTICAL REVIEW

In this, of course, they are perfectly correct. Their mistake con­
sists in believing that their society is empowered to speak in the
name of God. The act of speaking without authorization in the
name of God is the crime of the false prophet. That offense is
doubled when the false prophet presumes to denounce what is the
true City of God. The priest who is called upon to deal with these
people can remind them that the status which they imagine
themselves to possess would actually be theirs in the genuine
City of God which is the Catholic Church.
•

CONCLUSION

The people who make these attacks against the Church and
those who are victimized by these attacks stand in terrible and
obvious need of that divine truth which only the Church cangive.
The outstanding apostolic work in our country and in our day
must inevitably be the effort on the part of our priests to present
that divine teaching with perfect accuracy, precisely as it is
conserved and taught in the infallible magisterium of the Catholic
Church, and yet clearly and effectively, in the language of our
own people, so that all may be in a position to recognize its truth,
its beauty, and its desirability.
This apostolic and theological work is necessarily a corporate
affair. No individual man, however brilliant, will manage it suc­
cessfully. The American priests must work together, generously
acknowledging and using each other's contributions in the direc­
tion of a. more effective presentation of Christian doctrine and
building upon these contributions. The recent formation of the
Catholic Theological Society of America has made it perfectly
dear that the need for such co-operation in the teaching of
Catholic truth is generally recognized. If we are to accomplish
the apostolic work God has given us to do, we must follow the
injunction St. Paul laid upon our predecessors, that we “stand
fast in one spirit, with one mind, laboring together for the faith
of the gospel.”49
Joseph Clifford Fenton

The Catholic University qf America,
Washington, D. C.
j,-27.

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Answers to Questions
THE “RELIGIOUS BOOK LIST” AGAIN
Question: A “religious book list” has recently been published by
the National Conference of Christians and Jews. What should be
the attitude of Catholics toward such a list, and what would be its
practical use as far as Catholics are concerned?

Answer: The subject of the “religious book list” issued by the
Conference of Christians and Jews was discussed at some length
in a previous issue of The American Ecclesiastical Review (CXIII,
5 [Nov, 1945], 385 ff.). Since that time a new list has appeared,
containing the names of some more recent publications. As was
stated before, the impression naturally given when three classes of
books—Protestant, Catholic and Jewish—are listed in a single
pamphlet is that it is quite commendable for the adherents of. each
of these three denominational groups to read the books which ex­
plain and defend the religious beliefs of the other two. Now, this
would be strictly forbidden to Catholics as far as a considerable
number of books on the Jewish and Protestant lists are concerned
(apart from special permission). Hence it is difficult to see what
advantage to Catholics there is in a catalogue of Jewish and
Protestant publications. On the contrary, such a list might be an
incentive to violate the rules which the Catholic Church, in her
capacity of defender of the Christian faith, has wisely laid down for
the spiritual protection of her children.
Worthy of note in this more recent list, among the so-called
“goodwill books,” is a work entitled Garibaldi, Knight of Liberty,
by Jean Burton. A note tells us that it is intended for children
between the ages of twelve and sixteen. The Foreword of the
pamphlet states that the “goodwill books” were chosen by a
Protestant, Catholic and Jewish Committee and are recommended
to all. Now, in the biography of Garibaldi we read the statement
that throughout Italy (including the Papal States) in the early
part of the nineteenth century there was not the “slightest trace
of freedom of speech, press, religion or assembly. ... Nine out of
ten of the people could neither read nor write. Food was scarce
and dear, and the rulers ground the last cent of taxes from the
starving people” (p. 6). The work also states that “Pope Gregory