Creating a Catholic Conscience

...that is, first, sure knowledge of Catholic, Christian principles of public as well as private life...

...Here is just one, but a vitally important point on which a central organization could illuminate the Catholic conscience...

...That is by far the most dangerous "international" just now...

...minor matters, through the press, and by post in response to private enquiry...

...it exisits now...

...460 THE COMMONWEAL March 3, 1926 CREATING A CATHOLIC CONSCIENCE By L. J. S. WOOD THE main value, from the strictly Catholic point of view, of the "confoederatio" of international Catholic cooperation, whose aims I outlined in The Commonweal for February 24, lies in the establishment of a centre—a definite, officially recognized centre of intercommunication for Catholics throughout the world...

...And its organization will be in a position to communicate that knowledge to the world...

...And as each one of us is in the nation, so is the nation in the world...

...It might have checked its progress but war came to hasten it...

...But there should be much more to it than that...

...There is a place through which the Catholic thought and action in any country can get in touch with those in all other countries...

...for the conduct of war, for instance—then quite an everyday affair...

...Is our present-day world running itself on Christian principle...

...Here arise the opportunity and the duty of the Catholic Church...

...It is said that in the old days when canon law ruled the world, which was Catholic, there was much more in it than is seen in the purely ecclesiastical code we have today...

...A "Catholic conscience," it was agreed, must be created in the different countries...

...Occasions have arisen often and will continue to arise when Catholics, individuals, or organizations in different parts of the world, are not certain about (because they themselves have not the means at hand for finding out) some fact of past or present history...

...The centre will provide that knowledge and guidance, not necessarily from itself, but indicating where the best of it is to be found, and on facts or problems where more knowledge and study are needed, it will set its affiliated experts to work...

...The thing will move at once along the road to good, crushing evil in its way, if everyone will give his aid, small or great, in the manner possible and convenient to him...

...No clear moral vision was possible in the stress of the years immediately following...

...Let them think, too, of the responsibility of every individual...

...That is a very big thing on which the Conf oederatio may first turn its experts, and then inform the world...

...And we are all responsible...

...for the conduct of nations and their rulers...

...and second, as an effect of the first, a public opinion, a mass of influence—exercised by all men of good will thus instructed—strong enough to turn the policy of those responsible in tjie direction indicated by those principles...

...But there are a thousand things, facts, and problems in the ordinary daily run of life and thought, on which expert knowledge and guidance would be invaluable to the ordinary man...

...As a simple medium for intercommunication alone between Catholics, such a centre should be worth establishing...

...But that study should extend to all big problems, to the end that if, and when, one or any may come up, the Catholic, Christian principles in the light of which they must be judged, may be known far and wide...

...Pius XI outlined it three years ago in that great encyclical, Ubi Arcano Dei, which is worth reading once again—and again after that...

...It can help both in outlook on problems of immediate moment, and in judgment, based on principle, of problems of all time...

...This object was put by one speaker in seven words, which, to a thoughtful mind, express more than might be written in as many pages: "To prevent the social death of Christ...

...We, each and everyone of us today, are the nation...

...A remarkable expression fell from the lips of one delegate at the Oxford meeting of Catholics last summer...

...At present, as has been noted, a part of it gives expert study to such problems as are under the consideration of the League of Nations...

...nor could it be restored later by the few humanitarian efforts, countered as these were by the rise and unscrupulous tyranny of a worse madness than before...

...about what is being done by Catholics in other lands with regard to some problem of the moment...

...or in Riga, Paris, London, Berlin, and Rome, which might be usefully noted by a disarmament conference sitting in Washington...

...It is groping for moral values...

...Now it may be said that the world is looking around and trying to pull itself together...

...It is said that these principles could be dug out of old codes, and would be found applicable to the affairs of today, though in outward appearance so much changed...

...We are all responsible...

...For, though to be thoroughly effective it will take some time, the possibilities really are immediate and infinite...

...If memory serves, there was an interesting publication on this subject not long ago...

...And there are other societies in hundreds which, though not called international, have international connection and expression...

...Let them think seriously of the possibilities for good for the whole world that may arise from this foundation laid, if all Catholics will help to raise the edifice and thus interest other men and women of good will...

...How many of them are, perhaps unwittingly, tending to bring about the social death of Christ— how many have established it as their deliberate aim...

...That there is the evil—that there is the possibility of killing it by effort for good, we all know...

...nor to put it in the category of one of many proposals which will probably end in nothing...

...For such a conference, we must remember, would be in its way working for the social reign of Christ...

...about the right line of reasoning and judgment on a given problem...

...Recently the writer was shown, and was amazed by, a collected and collated picture of the activities of a number of private societies, many of them seeming just crazy, some of them seeming to tend to immorality, all seeming quite unimportant, but from every one of them there ran a line, so thin and winding that it was difficult to trace, the starting point of which was Moscow...

...That is, in the upshot, all there is to the present problem...

...May one, then, ask Catholics to take note of what was done at Oxford last summer...

...not to skim the account of it as just an item in the current record of the day, and uninteresting at that, because unsensational...

...If that exposition had been available and had been studied, if every Catholic and every man of good will in the world had been even in some degree conversant with it before the League of Nations was created, then what good will there was might have had a foundation and a backing to enable it to draw up a better "covenant," which would have had a powerful if invisible sanction...

...This would be no matter of dogma, of infallible pronouncement of the Church by its head...

...It must not be thought, however, that this centre will be a sort of mouthpiece of the Holy See...

...Moreover, that great part of the public opinion of the world, which does not allow itself to be biased by prejudice, is becoming more and more willing— sometimes, indeed, anxious—to hear what it has to say...

...Could our rulers resist the public opinion of the Catholic conscience if all these knew what was right on Christian principles in any problem, from a coal strike to the law of nations, and stood up united to insist that right be done...

...A world that tries to run itself without Christian principle cannot live any life that is worth living...

...Study circles can be at work everywhere...

...It is reckoned that there are from three to four hundred "internationals" in the world...

...There are in it today 300,000,000 Catholics, and many more millions of Christian men and women of good will...

...A big question can be treated in an annual conference...

...As long as there remains religion, the Catholic religion in particular, Bolshevism is not safe...

...In the other direction, a working intercommunication centre might be the means of bringing to light the connection between certain contemporaneous activities, say in Morocco, Egypt, Teheran, or some point of South America...

...It is said that there were in it principles, instructions, and prohibitions for the everyday affairs of life, public and private...

...But the more thoughtfully we consider it, the clearer it becomes that whatever change time may be bringing to its economic theories and practice, one tenet that has not changed and shows no sign of change—one necessary condition for its very existence—is the social death of Christ...

...At a quiet, unofficial gathering in Rome not long ago, this was mentioned, and someone asked: "We barbarians"—not being a Roman, though a very learned man, that is what the seeker after knowledge termed himself—"we barbarians want to know if this is so, and if so, if authority can give us today the principles of guidance given to the nations centuries ago...

...But single initiative does not suffice...

...When things have to be said, it will always be the Pope who says them, ex cathedra, on the rare occasions when such a pronouncement of paramount importance has to be made in a matter of faith or morals, in encyclicals, by decrees of sacred congregations, in letters through, and sometimes to, the cardinal-secretary of state...

...That was necessary...

...But now there is to be a place, an organization, where such information may be found...

...It did not exist before officially or fully...

...Speaker after speaker, representative of society or nation, had shown why, in his view, the "confoederatio" of Catholics was needed...

...but to think of it...

...We do not want to judge Moscow—or anything—in any way other than thoughtfully, and as far as possible, impartially...

...But would it not be superlatively useful that members of the one and only permanent, preeminent, international body in the world should be able to follow and study carefully the activities, theories, and objects of all "internationals" and kindred societies...

...In the prevalent and growing materialism of the years before 1914, the world was sliding gently and, it seemed, happily down toward social, political, and moral paralysis...

...It would be matter of known Catholic, Christian principle throughout the ages which the expert canonist and theologian could expound...