Communications
January 6, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 243 COMMUNICATIONS NATIONALISM AS A RELIGION TO the Editor:—Carlton J. H. Hayes, in the first article or th* MriK, Nationalism ftS a Religion, makes the...
...I hope others have had more fortunate experience...
...J-T...
...Christianity was a syncretic religion, as had been GraecoRoman paganism before it...
...but verse would have to be divided into poetry, 244 THE COMMONWEAL January 6, 1926 metred blank verse, etc., and a perfect poem, as I contended, would have to have that attribute of rhyme that blank verse lacks...
...Le nationallsme, viola Pennemi...
...and, finally, to the dogmatic content of Judaism he added the notions of the Trinity, Incarnation, Redemption, Justification by faith and good works, etc...
...if they are, why call one prose and the other blank verse...
...I JJJ nO* mt2H tO 8&Y---Of tO imply—that Christianity Was not different from paganism...
...In borrowing rhyme from France, the English simply borrowed from those who had it...
...De Catechiz...
...The Roman Primacy has been allowed to appear as the total or sum of the constitution of the Church, whence arise disproportionate concepts in Christian minds which may well have astonished our separated brothers, and suggested to them conclusions deducible from appearances but not from the real facts...
...Its component elements existed at the time of the ApOStleS and no contact with Graeco-Roman civilization altered this original deposit of faith...
...Psalms, if I understand their character aright, WOUld more naturally fall under measured prose—only in rare cases under verse...
...If space and relevancy permitted, I could cite passages galore in the Catholic Encyclopedia and from many saints and doctors of the Church in support of my original statement that "Christianity was a syncretic religion...
...There is nothing like this in the authority of a bishop...
...To me, it Seems quite possible that the form of Catholic theology might have been different if there had teen no pagan Aristotle and that ChrfStmaS might have been celebrated on another day had there not been a Mithraic feast on December 25...
...SURSUM CORDA" New York, N.Y...
...Contact with pagan thought and heresy born of false philosophy was the providential occasion of clearer definitions of dogma, but long before heresies appeared, Scripture and early tradition point to an organized Church with a very definite creed and cult, poles apart from Graeco-Roman paganism...
...ROMAN PRIMACY Washington, D. C. TO the Editor:—Dom Lambert Beaudwin, O.S.B., in the course of a recent essay on the Vatican Council in its effects on Church Union, offers several interesting observations pertinent to current discussion in non-Catholic publications...
...a bishop is not an apostolic delegate nor a nuncio...
...William Franklin Sands...
...Their mothers know more, and their grandmothers infinitely more...
...The Adeste Fidelis stirs them just as much as it does their elders...
...I have taught Italians for a number of years—truly "Catechism"—for their knowledge is limited to God, the Trinity, heaven, hell, the sacraments and the Ten Commandments...
...Nor is Christian worship indebted to Mithraism...
...I suppose the priests teach them in Latin countries and the peasants grow up with the inheritance...
...While Shakespeare is admitted to be the greatest dramatist, Dante is the poet par excellence, and his terzina rhyme is more than notable...
...Interest in the liturgy is not encouraged, excepting in rare instances...
...As a Congregationalist of tender years, I was taught psalms and hymns as regularly as I was fed, on Sundays...
...If Saint Paul and Saint John cast their teaching in the mold of contemporary Greek language, it was because it was the best vehicle to reach the educated mind...
...TO the Editor:—I would like to add a heartfelt endorsement to the article in The Commonweal of December 30, entitled, The Liturgical Movement...
...Hymns might come under either of these species of verse...
...If it was, how explain the unrelenting opposition of Julian, the devotee of Mithra, and the fierce persecution of Christianity in Persia, the home of Mithraism...
...RHYTHM, REASON AND RHYME Garrison, N. Y. TO the Editor:—In your issue of December 23, Mr...
...This organized Church, "yesterday, today, the same forever," has "no other foundation than that which is laid, Christ Jesus...
...This is not saying that blank verse and prose may not have their perfections also, but simply that they are not poetry in the strict meaning of the term...
...they were to be defined at the Vatican Council in the same rank as the Roman Primacy...
...Gray crosses swords with me over my assertion that to a perfect poem rhythm, rhyme and reason are all essential, by asserting that this definition of poetry (if such it is) would exclude the Hymn of Creation, Paradise Lost, Evangeline, etc...
...Saint Augustine...
...Instead of the narrow, material kingdom expected by the Jews of Hifi day, ChriSt built a Universal commonwealth of souls...
...J. A. Morrow...
...Chaucer, Spenser and the later poets used rhyme...
...the schema is witness thereof...
...Its dogma, morals and worship differed radically and essentially from contemporary paganism in everything except what was left of primitive Revelation or borrowed from Judaism, or in the case of ethics, had been established on a rational basis by thinkers...
...The Apostle of the Gentiles anathematized any one who taught doctrines foreign to the mind of Christ and forbade participation in pagan worship...
...Then would have reappeared those harmonious proportions and that wise balance which a unilateral exposition has forced, temporarily, into eclipse...
...Its cult and theology were neither wnolly nor partially b(MT0Wed frOIIl paganism Under the influence of man's religious sense but were revealed by God...
...and simultaneously it borrowed for itS Clllt and theology many elements from pagan and Gentile religions...
...To dispel such misunderstandings, it would have been enough to allude to the schema of the theologians, or to resume the sessions of the Council...
...As an historian, however, I cannot accept the contention that Catholicism's "cult and theology were neither wholly nor partially borrowed from paganism...
...So threatening had the political situation become, in Europe, that the eventuality of suspension of the Council was forced into prominence...
...It is often appalling to think how much more people knew in the ages when they never knew how to read and write...
...I Certainly did not say that Christianity was merely a development from, or a synthesis of pagan and Jewish elements...
...he represents not the Pope, but Christ Himself...
...It wouldn't hurt them to know the great Collects, and some psalms...
...Otherwise, how explain the persecution of His disciples by the JeWS and the abandonment of Temple worship and Sabbath observance by the Christians...
...In the Old Testament, the New lies hidden, in the New Testament, the Old is made manifest...
...Thus, the definition, viewed as a dogmatic exposition of the constitution of the Church is fragmentary and incomplete: it presents to us only one essential element of ecclesiastical organization, and it says nothing at all on the other fundamental notions set forth in the program of the theologians...
...As a result of this discussion, my chief hope is that someone with the necessary breadth of vision and literary knowledge, who is able and willing to go outside the well-beaten paths, may give us a classification that really is one...
...Christianity was not partial to the cult and theology of paganism...
...And some of us would be glad of the chance to teach them more...
...This is much to know, of course, but the scant teaching that one is able to do, and which stops after their Confirmation at the latest, does not seem an equipment to make valiant defenders of the Faith...
...Catholicism, which is historical Christianity, is the complement of Judaism...
...As the author of the article in The Commonweal said—"Sursum Corda...
...And after all, those are only the beginnings...
...Unfortunately these documents are little known, . . . the text of the Vatican Council, stripped of its historical commentary and torn from its context, presented as a whole and complete, instead of as a single chapter in an exposition which should comprise twelve, may well offer ground for reproach, just the sort of reproach we do hear, as of a church wherein all authority is concentrated in the conscience of one person, as of a last rise of Roman imperialism, etc...
...That I know is not liturgy, but it is part of our priceless Catholic literature...
...This is a point which has not been brought out with sufficient clearness and emphasis by authors of manuals, nor by preachers and catechists...
...PROFESSOR HAYES REPLIES New York, N. Y. TO the Editor:—Let me assure C. E. Dougherty that he kas mismterprsted my thought...
...The whole question rests on the classification of literature...
...If C. E. Dougherty will kindly and patiently bear with me to the end of the series, he will find that I hold nationalism to be a religion, a religion wnieh hflfi boiTOWed frOIIl Christianity, but a false religion for all that, as false as paganism...
...It was different from paganism not SO milCh in itS COIIipQnent elements as in its combinations, emphases and effects...
...n r ^ C. E. Dougherty...
...January 6, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 243 COMMUNICATIONS NATIONALISM AS A RELIGION TO the Editor:—Carlton J. H. Hayes, in the first article or th* MriK, Nationalism ftS a Religion, makes the following statement— "Christianity JIJ nor f^fG8«lt 1 CltRn \Htil With the past J it prCSCrVed mUCh Of the antique doctrine and practice of Judaism...
...Chapter XI, which alone was concerned with the doctrine of Primacy of the Roman Pontiff, served as a basis for the definition...
...I had not the chance to know the glorious inspiration of the Collects (which today nephews and nieces in Episcopal schools are taught—but not Catholics) but I can still feel the catching of the breath when we recited— "They stand, those walls of Zion, conjubilant with song— And bright with many an angel and all the martyr throng...
...Many of us are too prone to think of a bishop as of a provincial governor in an empire—a grave error, for such civic worthies represent a central authority and exercise but delegated powers...
...To the Jewish convert, the words of Saint Paul could be aptly applied—"If then any be in Christ—a new creature, the old things are passed away...
...As a matter of fact, I think that Christianity was and is radically different from paganism...
...If, metaphorically, literature has genus and species, it will be easy to classify everything under the two main divisions of prose and verse...
...Let us hope for a better day...
...if he is, in a sense, under the Bishop of Rome, he is by no means his representative or delegate...
...It was decided to examine Chapter XI first, and when this labor terminated in the fourth session with the dogmatic definition on the Roman Prirnacy, the Franco-Prussian war was on, and the Council suspended...
...This is not to say that nationalism is to be identified with Christianity any more than that Christianity is one with Judaism or paganism...
...and they could sing the hymns for Benediction as well and better than some of their elders...
...Gray's statement that rhyme was unknown in England until 1325, when it was borrowed from the French, serves only to confirm the fact, well known, that England had little literature of its own until Chaucer became its father in 1400...
...They would be learning more and better had they stayed in Italy...
...For instance, I personally believe that Christianity (tkafc i§, Catholicism) iS a diVindy rCVCaled, and therefore true, religion, whilst I hold that paganism was a false development —a corruption, if you like—of natural religion...
...Poetry and blank verse are distinct species of verse...
...The difficulty in securing any interest, let alone acquiescence in the great subject, is appalling, and the difficulties raised by Catholics themselves are discouraging...
...The end of the Law was Christ," but when Christ founded His religion, accepting from Judaism only what was of permanent value, there Was in essentials a clean break with the past...
...Lo, all things are made new...
...I have heard the great hymns of the Church sung both during and following the Mass in little Italian hill-towns— and in France—but never here...
...These truths are essential to the constitution of the Church...
...The schema of the theologians on the constitution of the Church comprised twelve chapters covering successively the essential points of Catholic ecclesiology...
...Again, Catholicism is neither a development from nor a Synthesis of pagan and Jewish elements...
...What is common to them all—and this is the main thesis which my series of articles endeavors to set forth—is a response to the religious sense of man...
...for the external practices of the Pharisees, He substituted "the weightier things of the Law...
...In the one great universal Church each diocese is a church, a living cell of the whole body...
...It would be interesting to try and recreate the Age of Faith...
...It is my own opinion that just as Christianity borrowed certain forms from Judaism and paganism, so nationalism has borrowed from Christianity...
...his ordinary powers attach to a function of a divine, not of a human institution...
...We do not know the prayers, we do not know the Collects, "and in many instances we do not read the Gospels and the psalms...
...What if it does...
...I really did say that Christianity was different from paganism (not so much in one way as in another...
Vol. 3 • January 1926 • No. 9
