The Faith and the Press

...That there is a consistent body of philosophy called the Faith wherein dogma is not isolated and meaningless but co6rdinated and rational he cannot imagine...

...Centuries ago the example of Mary established both the great communities of feminine teachers, and the standards to which they would keep in their task...

...I wrote a brief line at once to the paper (which the editor, to my surprise, pub- lished) asking the writer if he could give references to the particular passage in either of these documents which would support so enormous an assertion...

...The moral, social, temper- amental and educational losses of the present system are palpable...

...He provides state support for the mass of the population in illness and in old age...

...A little may be done by occasional query and occasional ridicule, but very little because those who are thus brought to book--and the great bulk of their readers--will not believe that the thing of which they know so little is what it is or has the importance it has...

...When, in the dusk of the Merovingian era, Queen Redegonde fled from a brutal husband to found a convent of her own in the blossomy south--a convent for the opening of which Fortunatus wrote his magnificent hymn--she carried with her a knowledge of those arts which, then, "it was meet a gentle damsel should know...

...The distor- tion of history produced by such ignorance may seem of small practical importance, but it is a weakening and a dangerous thing none the less...

...for such would either not be admitted, or ad...

...Is any remedy discoverable for so dangerous a dis-ease...

...The movement for segregation of the sexes during high school years will inevitably be extended to the under- graduate years in college...

...not by direct and sufficient state...

...that the writers apparently do not know that there is such a thing on earth as the Catholic Church nor have the least idea of its quality or power...

...Apart from the more important (that is, the reli- gious) results of so lop-sided a state of things, there is a political result which is most serious and the seri- ousness of which is increasing...

...In the present controversy on the origin of the human body, for instance, it is taken for granted that the Catholic mind exceeds the most benighted biblio- later in his literal interpretation of Genesis...

...To sum up...

...Now, as I have said, this gross provincialism on the part of those who surround us, this exceptional ignor- ance upon the chief power in the modern world is becoming a source of national weakness...

...Indeed not...

...It lies at the root of the absurdly ex-aggerated admiration of Prussia and of the Prussian organization of modern Germany...

...But most will be done, not by us here in England, but by the logic of facts in Europe...

...But no one will gainsay that the methods and objects of education have changed swiftly and radically in this age...

...and which animates and gives their general tone to the very much greater part of European communities (out- side Russia...

...Thus one of the most deservedly respected scholars of the Church of England, Dr...

...For that education, as conducted under reli- gious auspices, is by no means a novelty...

...mitted only in vulgar and degraded surroundings in some "yellow" paper as an occasional sensation...

...With the in- creased demand for improved equipment and more thoroughly prepared teaching--not to mention the craving for more fastidious housing and social regalia --the sisterhoods found themselves able to muster only very limited resources...

...The result is that he fights Socialism with the wrong weapons and, indeed, introduces the worst principles of Socialism in all his attempts to modify the evils produced by capitalism...

...that he had never read the documents himself, and that, on turning to them, as a result of my chal- lenge, he found that they were quite different from what he had expected...

...that he had swallowed the enormous state-ment...

...True, they had what is termed a "living endowment...

...and this for the simple reason that the English press will not admit the Catholic standpoint...

...but he has not only been taught to despise those communities, he is also ignorant of their nature, and the reason that he is ignorant of their nature is that he is ignorant of the force which made Europe...

...He registers, tickets, numbers and stamps the whole mass of the proletariat and, when you suggest that the restoration of a peasantry and a more equal distribution of wealth would be a far healthier way of arriving at the support of a population, he cannot believe that such things are possible...

...foreign communities...

...This ignorance of what the Catholic Church is lies at the root of misconceptions of the gravest kind in foreign politics...

...You get a very good example of this in the conflict between capitalism and Socialism...

...They talk of "the churches," using this phrase to connote the very large number of Protestant sects, but with no mention or knowledge of Catholicism...

...He knows and believes that they exist in...

...In eco-nomic debate it is taken for granted that the Catholic mind will naturally be in support of plutocracy...

...partly from dislike, but more from the fact that the Catholic judgment on anything from domestic morals to public policy seems to the average Englishman so absurd, eccentric, and perverse, as to be out of place in columns intended for general reading...

...It is something which, particularly in the case of higher education, is paid for by the public with solid cash...

...And no aspect of that college is more difficult to deal with than the circumstances and aims of feminine intellectual training...

...and since religious communities must provide for the long and arduous education of their selected members, must reckon with old age and sickness, and must bear the loss of those whom in, firmity Or other causes remove from the scene, they are likely to find that "living endowment" is largely a fallacy...

...And in practice many of the convent schools, for want of adequate endowments, have been driven to the expedient of raising fees to a height which makes...

...To that education, in our time, Benedetto Croce and many another man aloof from religious convictions, con-fides his daughters, knowing that they will be watched over by immaculate honor...

...The world's respect for convent education is based upon the world's experience...

...Nor would they print the Catholic truth, save as an occasional "stunt," and the "stunt" press is an evil which men who boast the high Catholic culture should avoid like a bad smell...

...It lies at the root of the misjudging and under-estimating, especially of the Poles and of the Italians...

...He imagines capitalism to have existed from all time, to be native to our blood, and therefore to be the only alternative to Socialism and the inevitable extreme of SocialismmCommunism...

...I am perpetually coming across sentences in which it is taken for granted that the Catholic lies as far as possible "to the right" in an extreme position of re-fusing inquiry, experiment, research, redress of error or injustice, speculation in philosophy, restoration or creation of a better commonwealth, criticism of docu- ments in history and of institutions in politics...

...which alone accounts for the nature of Euro- pean civilization, for it produced that civilization...

...It was as though a Frenchman had written that the rules of the House of Commons for- bade a man to wear boots...

...The average non-Catho- lic in England, the average man representing the vast majority of the community and forming its public opinion, knows nothing of an institution which is much the most powerful in the world and is growing in power...

...The college, as Mr...

...that I refused, and that I am glad I refused...

...The whole purpose of describing Catholi- cism is to interest non-Catholics--for Catholics such description is superfluous...

...The incident is of no great magnitude...

...October 28, x925 THE COMMONWEAL 609 THE FAITH AND THE PRESS By HILAIRE BELLOC WE CATHOLICS have all remarked what may be called the vicious circle" of our presentation of the Catholic Church to our fellow-subjects...

...Has co-education carried of[ a victory...

...Nor, it must be added, are the great bulk of those who own our popu- lar press today of sufficient education to understand the unique character of the Catholic Church, its chal- lenge to existing society, and the importance of know- ing what it is...

...The average active life of a person adequately trained for college instruction is probably twenty years...

...an extreme position of immobility, routine, and blindness ---whence there is supposed to start a gradual progress of thought less and less "conservative" until one reaches what may be called the "extreme left" of ma- terialism, or atheism, or communism, or the rest...

...Henson, of Durham, wrote on July 8 last in the Evening Standard, an article about the attitude of what he called "religion" (mean- ing presumably the various Protestant bodies) to-wards physical science, and said in parentheses that the Catholic Church had forbidden the study of science, notably in two documents, to wit: the Syllabus of Pius IX, and the Lamentabili of Plus X. I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw this as-tounding sentence...

...And if the woman's college wishes to re-main of service, it must cordially and squarely meet the new demands, knowing that older graces have given way to newer sciences...

...Wishing to prepare for one of the numerous pro-fessions now open to their sex, they have sought it where it is obtainable, on the same level and footing with men...

...Just as those old-fashioned Protestants, who disliked and feared the advance of physical science in our time have been compelled, however ignorant, to accept its results, so this provincial ignorance of what the Catho- lic Church is, of its increasing power, and of its politi- cal significance, may at least be impressed through the discovery that its culture is making certain great and unmistakable advance upon the continent of Europe, that its birth-rate is not in peril--that it out-breeds-- that it thinks more strongly and more clearly, and that its opponents in thought and in international action-- such as Prussia---have weakened, while its exemplars-THE WINNOWING By GEORGE such as Poland and Italy--have, in the process of time, grown stronger...

...First there was (and, of course, is) the matter of economic support...

...He transfers the responsibil- ity for the bringing up of children from the family to the state...

...Glenn Frank has re-minded the citizens of Wisconsin, is one of the great contemporary puzzles...

...In point of fact, as any one of us can testify, the one and only society of men in the world where there is real debate, no shirking of facts, and most vigorous and free action of the intelligence, is the Catholic...

...Observe, in the first place, the characteristic assump- tion that "religion" means a private opinion or mood...

...I know of none except the perpetual discussion and instruction by the living voice, and, in print, books between covers, and the tract and the pamphlet...

...When men do not know how it was they came to be what they are, their society resembles an individual who should have lost his memory...

...Nevertheless coeducation is the neces-sary result of certain stern demands which have been levied by our time...

...While it is correct to say that parochial education is operated very cheaply, we must bear in mind that the cost of preparing and equipping a grade---or even a high school---teacher is comparatively small...

...The other day a certain popular newspaper, not of the most dignified sort, the Daily Express, announced with a flourish of trumpets that it was going to publish a number of articles by a number of "best sellers," each of whom should tell the world what "his religion" was...

...The great majority of women who now go to school are not sprung from a gilded stratum in which there need be no thought of a career...

...The average English non-Catholic, being cut off from his Catholic past, does not know that there ever was a society in which wealth was well distributed...

...He refrained from giving any such reference, for the very simple reason that no such reference exists...

...ment...

...It is no breach of confidence to tell my readers that I was asked by the owners of the Daily Express to join their last "reli-gious" sensation...

...In political debate it is taken for granted that the Catholic mind will never admit popular rule, or even the action of public opinion upon government...

...Nothing is more common to the average educated Englishman than the conception that discussion, debate, the analysis of causes and the search for first principles is cut off from the Catholic through his ac-ceptation of authority...

...A thou- sand other names are testimonials, with Teresa and Hilda at their head...

...I suppose someone had told him that these two documents con-tained a papal injunction against the pursuit of physical science...

...It has always seemed to me a direct political duty to inform our fellow-citizens upon the nature of these institutions of which at present they know so little and to give them some working idea of what the Church is in order that they may understand Europe and their past, and, incidentally, attain a wholesome fear of the direction in which they are at present drifting...

...OF WOMANHOOD N. SHUSTER T HERE is a beautiful old Marian title--"stella feminarum"--that comes appropriately to the head of a paper which, like this, would have something to say about the higher education of women...

...When one of them says (as they all say) that he can no longer accept the "outworn dogmas" of the "churches," he means that he rejects such isolated fragments of Catholic dogma as until recently survived in a warped form among an older generation of English Protes- tants...

...It lies at the root of our distorted official history teaching...

...An enemy might bring against our age-long history that it was burdened with a vast mass of useless discussion and of futile debate, and that we were forever splitting straws and philosophizing about every mortal thing, but it is sheer ignorance of one's subject to think of the Catholic community as a portion of humanity railed off, within whose bounda- ries, inquiry, debate, and definition, and all that goes with the use of the human mind, are shut out...

...as it seems to me, nothing can be done through the press, save long-repeated challenge, letter, protest, and query...

...But is it not significant ? Here is a man in the very first rank of the national culture, who is not only ignorant on an ele-mentary point in contemporary history in a matter which covers the whole of our civilization, but does not think that his ignorance matters l We may note another very significant and socially important aspect of the thing in the completely wrong notion which nearly every writer and speaker seems to have of what the Catholic attitude is towards any one of the great questions of the present day in eco- nomics, in science, in history, in politics...

...All this, coming so suddenly, threw upon the shoulders of convent teachers a tremendous burden...

...Not only popular writers and best sellers, from whom after all one does not expect a particularly high standard of culture, but men of real eminence among our contemporaries show the same astonishing remote- ness from real and living European experience...

...the same amazing provincialism...

...but in many respects this term is a genuine delusion...

...It is in society outside the Catholic Church, that you find taboos forbidding criticism of "experts," "modern opinion"--or even the newly rich...

...Yet nearly all our apolo-getics in England must appear in Catholic organs which the non-Catholic never sees...

...It is exactly as if he were to say that he could not bear the smell of petrol "which is unavoidable in all forms of transport," showing by such a Sentence that 6io THE COMMONWEAL October 28, 1925 he had never heard of, or left out of account, every steamship and railway in the world...

...but next that all these vague relations of equally vague moods or opinions were devoid of culture or traditions, and were so provincial as to interest an educated man in one point only...

...Whatever people may say, educa- tion is not a freely dispensed gift...

...For the general agency of the press is not open to what would seem a mere extravagance...

...Much may be done through that very slow process of pamphlet, speech, and book by which in the course of a whole generation the theory of Socialism (for example) was gradually extended tO millions, where at first it appeared as the eccentricity of a very few...

...For my own part, I fancy the awakening will come through some great political change in the larger world October 28, 1925 THE COMMONWEAL 6IX of continental Europe, which will gradually impress opinion with the results of the growing Catholic strength...