Union and Reality
UNION AND REALITY ABSOLUTE separation between church and state is impossible. This truth abides, regardless of whether it is defended by the Roman Pontiff or by a group of North Carolina...
...It follows, therefore, that whenever civil society denies the right of the Church to unify men for its own purposes, it is legislating against reality and one of the deepest urges of human nature...
...and one may well wonder if much Tory sentiment during the Revolutionary era did not originate in fondness for the Established Church...
...The Baron von Hiigel made this point so well, even if a bit cryptically, that his memory is honored every time the subject is mentioned...
...But in the Church which Christ founded upon the rock of a perfect and lucid faith, the organic energies have always been life and love...
...It is physical and chemical reality explained...
...Things were not always so well regulated...
...Some human functions are necessarily corporate, just as the healthy activities of an individual spring from balance between body and mind...
...The Christian must win over even his enemies with affection...
...But the Saxon remained none the less, gaining something from the fusion with a '.ew race but making an equally notable contribution of his own...
...UNION AND REALITY ABSOLUTE separation between church and state is impossible...
...American civilization has accepted it from the very beginning...
...The most we can do is to chart the processes through which government develops, to compare the achievement with the purposes, and to point out when and why a given state is inaccurate...
...To a considerable extent this depends upon a sense of universal solidarity...
...Now the state again is not a flag, a congress or even a people...
...We have a concrete and valuable illustration of the matter in the history of Great Britain...
...And the Church...
...Certainly such a union would have been productive of many good things...
...In almost every colony, sanguinary conflicts between the supporters of hostile creeds imperiled the social order...
...The annals of the race reveal few episodes the lesson of which is more instructive...
...Of course our Christianity is far from adequately unified...
...Union that transcends death and all other natural separations is to be found only in the Church, whose secret-grace-is the last which humanity will be able to divine...
...This has almost led us to overlook the fact that there had been an antecedent conquest...
...They were right, if science is defined as this or that mechanistic theory...
...What matters in both cases is to find the recipe for harmonious relationships, and that is often difficult...
...It is a tenable assumption that if there had been no deep-rooted religious differences, Ireland and England might likewise have joined hands...
...But though a mountain be hard to climb it is none the less a mountain...
...More recent manifestations of corporate generosity have their root in the same source...
...Opposition to the mandate of love which Christianity professes means, ultimately, a surrender of the only force in the world which can really bind men together...
...We know, for instance, that Jefferson pointed out very wisely that the individuals who erect or sustain a state never make a grant of all their rights to it...
...We hold that the Catholic doctrine, one faith in a nationally unified society, is the ideal solution...
...This truth abides, regardless of whether it is defended by the Roman Pontiff or by a group of North Carolina Protestants...
...Moreover, the fact that Americans have always felt that theirs was a Christian nation has time and time again enabled them to overcome other tendencies to disarray...
...People have, for instance, talked a good deal about the conflict between religion and science...
...But we believe that, in practice (divisions between creeds being what they are) the American doctrine is the practical solution...
...And the converse is equally true...
...Philosophers have never been in perfect agreement as to which rights are inalienable...
...The Catholic criticism of the American situation-the Catholic declaration that the ideal has not been reached-is based upon no denial of the right to freedom of conscience, but upon sensible understanding that Christianity would be more effective if it were cast into the one holy and apostolic mold...
...The history of the world is based upon it...
...Saxon and Norman might oppose each other in battle, but they worshiped at the same altar and believed in the same Revelation...
...If the amalgamation of immigrant citizens into the people of the United States has proceeded so steadily and well, the reason is primarily that a guarantee of religious liberty removed the most effective causes of dissensions...
...It is a horrible story, and it might have ended happily...
...Its worth is based entirely upon its significance as an interpretation of the truth...
...But science is properly something else entirely...
...It is civic and social reality constituted and active...
...Religious certitude is always a unifying force...
...And so one may say, with Saint Thomas, that a faith which contradicts what is positively known about any portion of reality is not a complete faith...
...The Hindu knew a great deal about the spirit, but his denial of that evident thing we call matter is enough to show that his doctrine was inadequate...
...The world of existence is, in short, a corporate thing, no part of which is independent or self-sufficient...
...The significant thing is that the state is never the whole domain of human welfare or human privilege...
...A physics which knows nothing, or denies something, of spiritual reality is an imperfect physics...
...Here also there is not a mere body of teaching, not a chance association of individuals, but something of reality having a corporate status...
...And yet, though this dissolves the barriers which sunder him from the rest of men, it also unites him most intimately with his comrades...
...Religion again is not this or that idealistic hypothesis...
...In the cruder world faiths, which are imperfect and clouded conceptions, the rallying cry is usually productive of some exclusiveness, ultimately of some hatred which must feed on conquest...
...And so the endeavor of Elizabeth to conquer became, in fact, persecution...
...But when the hour of history had struck, England was Protestant and nationalistic in religion, while Ireland remained Catholic...
...Its virtue is ultimately determined by the skill with which it defines social reality and by the integrity with which it acts according to that definition...
...Whether all of us agree with him that those which are surrendered are those which the single person is powerless to defend is of no great importance...
...A government which made it a penal offense to believe that the world is round would be absurd and tyrannical...
...Lincoln's appeal for a country which should swallow up civil strife in charity was a deeply Christian impulse...
...It would have remained forever impossible if there had not been, at the outset, a common faith...
...To explain how this comes to exist has been quite as difficult as to tell where electricity comes from...
...The greatness of England reposes upon this duality, just as the eminence of France is founded upon the unification in the royaume of Franks, Celts and meridional peoples...
...But there is something else involved, at least equally important...
...Its value depends not at all upon its brilliance as a set of theories, but upon its accuracy as a presentation of the actual...
...And likewise a government which exacts denial of a religious truth is, absurd and tyrannical...
...There may be flashes of verity in it, of course...
...Indeed they go hand in hand, even as aspiration and the actual are immemoriably joined...
...Yes, it is even true to say that the Norman has never really conquered the Saxon...
...Church and state cannot be separated, even if under given circumstances they may not always be effectively joined...
...He took over the government, established new goals of social and political action, and modified the language...
...The state must always be satisfied to occupy its exact corner in world reality...
...All the engines of terror were smashed upon the rock of loyalty to the Faith...
...During centuries a fierce endeavor to subdue Ireland has run like a crimson thread through the royal narrative...
...Indeed, one sometimes imagines that it is an ideal well-nigh beyond the attainment of man, whose attribute of rationality is frequently the merest flattery...
...There is no conflict between the two...
...It is moral and spiritual reality explained...
...It would have given to the civilization called Anglo-Saxon a Celtic richness, comparable to that which France so steadily draws from Brittany...
Vol. 11 • December 1929 • No. 6
