Who Shall Keep the Faith ?
WHO SHALL KEEP THE FAITH ? TT IS rarely, indeed, that we refer in these columns ¦*¦ to someone who has turned from other religious beliefs and entered the Catholic Church. To begin with, such...
...Delany has made an entirely logical decision...
...Hope that the Saviour's prayer may be fulfilled will not infrequently seem unjustified...
...It reveals the ultimate testimony of the mystic—that change of himself, in response to a summons, through which he does all he can to change the world...
...Nevertheless one feels that every form of Christian belief is essentially a protest against such inactive conceptions of the soul...
...Their bondage has a nobility more than that of powers and thrones...
...It applauds his "very real courage," and adds that "many other Anglo-Catholics would change their allegiance to that of Rome were it not for the personal affiliations involved, both in the present and in the future...
...But we do not hold that this vitality can attain to complete fruition outside the Catholic fold...
...The Catholic religion is a religion of authority," he said in an article written last year for The Commonweal...
...Ramsay MacDonald...
...But in noticing that the Reverend Selden P. Delany, formerly editor of the American Church Monthly and rector of the foremost Anglo-Catholic church in New York City, has decided to follow Rome and to prepare himself for the priesthood, one is merely adding a little to a discussion which has been fairly continuous and violent during recent weeks...
...The Churchman says editorially that "to great numbers of people in the Episcopal Church it will seem that Dr...
...The Hill of Zion is a fair place," and so long as it is sought after and yearned for the development of a soul is logical and must ultimately lead to a larger social logic...
...Delany's concern men not reared in ignorance of faith, or in sophisticated acceptance of the visible earth, but in old churches dissident from Rome but nevertheless, in a measure, affiliated with Rome...
...Delany is possible inside Protestantism is proof that the way toward the unification of Christendom is constantly open...
...Anonymity is at once the trial and the blessed privilege of Catholicism...
...Every term in this statement constitutes a problem baffling to those who do not accept the organic unity and Catholicism of the Christian faith...
...It seems indubitable both that Dr...
...That means not simply that the individual must be subject to the authority of the Church as expressed in her creeds and the pronouncements of her councils, but also obedient to fellow human beings vested with her authority and commissioned to speak in the name of God...
...That this comment is not wholly laudatory, however, follows from a public statement made by the Churchman's editor, Reverend Dr...
...However that may be, the course of conversion is as dramatic and appealing as ever...
...From our point of view, of course, the mere fact that such progress as that of Dr...
...Delany became an Episcopalian and rose to leadership of the Anglo-Catholic group in this Church...
...Then, too, the road is hard...
...Granted that the use of "Roman paraphernalia" without attachment to the things of Rome is relatively curious, it is at least equally strange that the church of Butler and Keble should find content in adopting something like the spiritual outlook of Mr...
...Necessarily this is fresh evidence concerning a state of affairs which is always perplexing to the Episcopal group...
...But if Anglicanism—or Episcopalianism in this country—is to surrender all its old charm as a via media, what will become not merely of its tradition but particularly of those forces which have given it so much vitality during the past seventy-five years...
...You make it no easier for a man, suffering from a wrench of old ties, if you surround his every act with a kind of representative significance...
...Alexander C. Cummins, who criticized Dr...
...We believe in the relative vitality of those churches...
...The choice between Dr...
...Do they not happen to be, most of them, victims of a desire which is beyond and greater than themselves, men who succumb understandably to a force the positivist cannot sense...
...This is an unusually interesting spiritual pilgrimage...
...Closely regarded, the majority of men appear too well contented with verities positivistically arrived at to bother greatly about the destiny of the race...
...Others are too deeply embedded in prejudices, inherited or acquired, to do any religious exploring beyond themselves...
...From the beginning he was a seeker after religious authority, as may be seen in his writings...
...Reared as a Presbyterian, Dr...
...Cadoux and Bishop Gore here expressed would seem to be of the most serious import...
...We are not sure that those who seek out and find the vitality of the faith are commendable for wisdom or courage...
...In all creeds a germ of inquietude, of hunger for truth beyond our natural horizons, is accepted as the original impetus toward a long quest for the Lord our God...
...But we are awed by their defeat as we could not be impressed by any victory...
...Cummins fears AngloCatholicism as he would the plague, and that the great body of Episcopalians stand with him...
...To us it is significant, indeed, that the large number of instances like Dr...
...Over these facts the sceptic can only shake his head in wonderment...
...To begin with, such spiritual adventures are the individual's own business, and suffer from being exposed to publicity and comment...
...Delany's use of "Roman practices, ornaments and paraphernalia," accused him of "an extended period of disloyalty to the teachings of his church," and concluded that "his action will greatly relieve the Protestant Episcopal Diocese of New York of a nuisance, anomaly and embarrassment...
...And precisely because he could find no other solution, Dr...
...Delany came ultimately to agree with Newman, who declared: "Either the Catholic religion is verily the coming of the unseen world into this, or there is nothing positive, nothing dogmatic, nothing real in any of our notions as to whence we come and whither we go...
...Here is the yeast which must transform the personality—the leaven which shall be kneaded with man's inner life and the objective world to make the noblest offering of the race...
Vol. 12 • July 1930 • No. 9
