Protestant Paradox
THE Protestant whose eyes have been opened to the significance of the Catholic faith finds that he has gained not so much a revelation of new truth as a new point of view from which to survey the whole of life. His surprise is insidious, and frequently quite paradoxical. In the first place, he is astonished at the familiarity of the substance of what his Puritan training had taught him to regard as being flagrantly alien. In the second place, acting on the unexpected recognition of long accepted truths and proceeding joyously to make himself at home among them, he is brought up short by a counter current of inexplicable strangeness. It is all very bewildering to him. A double back action of wonder completes the spell of humility which the whole experience has laid upon him; and he stands off and holds his breath, afraid of blundering.
Well may he hesitate. It almost seems that there is a greater difference between two points of view of the same thing than between two different things. The Protestant and Catholic tempers are worlds apart; and the Protestant, bringing his native disposition to bear on Catholic matters, runs a risk of creating deplorable havoc and confusion. Much as they desire him, the Catholics must tremble a little when they see the Protestant coming. Get out the chains and the handcuffs of love, prepare the straight jacket, open the cell. The first thing to do with this zealous friend is to lock him up.
Part of the trouble seems to lie in the fact that we Protestants do not always realize the nature of our own temperaments until we are startled into self-recognition. The even tenor of our denominational life leaves us largely unchallenged. We think that we are, of all people, the most reasonable; but the truth is that we are very impatient and undisciplined. As a class, we have never been able to stand the not giving free voice and action to our beliefs the minute they were born in us. That is why we became Protestants in the first place; the assertion is in our name and in our blood. Moreover, in spite of our frequent boast to the contrary, we are generally tolerant only in such degree as we are likewise indifferent; and those of us who are deeply in earnest are as eager as human nature would have us to share our convictions with all the world.
Luther was not very tolerant, or Calvin, or John Huss. Therefore it happens that, just as we would once have had everybody protest with us, so now, in these latter days, when we surprise ourselves by rediscovering the beauty of Catholicism, our rapid instinct is to run and show it to all the people we know, crying, ‘Look! look! It is not paste and tinsel, it is the real thing; it is the same thing we cherish, only richer and brighter because of the work of the countless generations, because of the noble old setting. Look, and love and worship.’
Whereupon, of course, our astonished friends turn away with as much distrust of us as of our incredible discovery; and we lose what chance we may have had of gradually disarming them.
This is very stupid in us; and, on the surface, it is surprising. Would one not think that, having been born and bred in the stronghold of Puritan prejudice, having slowly and painfully issued thence and groped our way to a new understanding, we should be sure to remember our position of two or three years ago and to sympathize with those who still maintain it? Not so. We are apt to be much less tender with our Protestant brethren than the most inexorable Jesuit priest. There must be some reason for this, some natural impulse which over-rides our intelligence. Perhaps (paradoxically) it has its root in that very tolerance which, however poorly we practice it, still remains the ideal of modern Protestantism. The idea of change is more familiar to the Protestant than to the Catholic; and, once having changed himself, the former sees no reason why his friends should not change too. Independence of thought is very exacting. It cannot win its conclusions without a sort of fierce personal glory in them; and it offers them to others on its own self-sufficient authority. ‘This is true; I have proved it.’ But the Catholic — oh! the Catholic thinks that change is a tremendous thing. He holds his own convictions with such a cosmic sort of profundity — or, rather, he is so held by them, interpenetrated — that he deeply respects the convictions of others and deals with them very gently if he deals with them at all. He has proved nothing himself, but the world has proved everything for him; and so he is impersonally sure and very patient. Worldtruth will come to its own by and by; there is no doubt or hurry. Meanwhile, the way to further its coming is not by rashness, but by consideration and delay.
Protestant tolerance will not stand the test of enthusiasm, but Catholic patience is one of the firmest and most magnificent developments of the human race. It is cosmic — that bottomless word has to be used again to describe it; it has caught the spirit of time and creation and eternity. Nothing ever dismays or shocks it — no raging of the heathen, no dissension or catastrophe, no injury or insult. It is not tolerant, for it holds that truth must be absolute, one truth for all humanity; but it is full of forbearance and pity, ready to make allowances, to wait, to turn back, to begin all over again. There is no coldness about it; instead, there is a passion. ‘The passion of patience’ —somewhere or other that phrase has lately crept into religious discussion, and it admirably describes the marvelous temper of the Catholic Church. Caring so mightily that he would die for his faith and would suffer anything to promote its cause, a good Catholic yet remains undisturbed in the face of calumny.
Of course this has not always been so. Patience is the slowest fruit of time; it is the great lesson which parents generally have to receive at the hands of their children. The Catholic Church was proud and impatient enough in her younger days. But her children humbled her — we Protestants — rebelling and breaking away from her, wounding her bitterly. She tried to punish us ere we fled; she was quite as cruel with us as we were with her. Perhaps it is no wonder that we hated her for a time. But she never hated us (shall mothers hate?), and when we had left her, she set herself to take her discipline, learn her lesson, revealing thereby a native grandeur of soul which ought to call forth the love of the world. She is patient now, very patient and wise. She yearns over us, but she understands us; she will wait for us.
We, meanwhile, do we understand? Not in the least. Instead of learning patience, we have been busy with quite other matters, lessons of dignity and self-respect which have accorded well with our independence. We are now very critical and confident. We have proved or disproved pretty much everything that concerns our spiritual life, and we have taken our stand on our conclusions. Our attitude is defensive rather than offensive, but it is very positive and suspicious of attack. We are quick to resent any interference and to repudiate, with indignation, anything that can affect our ‘ integrity.’ This militant quiescence makes us a touchy and difficult lot. Our Catholic friends may well have learned by experience to keep their hands off us.
We keep our hands off them too, supposing that our rampant loyalty is a universally human trait, and that a Catholic would be as deeply outraged as a Methodist by a criticism of his faith. There is a significant story about a Protestant woman who for years shielded her Catholic maid from the sound of religious discussion. Whenever, at luncheon or dinner-table, the conversation turned in the direction of the Catholic Church, the mistress was prompt in checking it and diverting it into what she thought safer channels. She took it for granted that the faithful heart of the silent waitress would be seared with burning, smouldering indignation at hearing her Church disparaged. Burning indignation, indeed! That is what the Protestant mistress felt when, after some time spent abroad under the slowly deepening spell of the Catholic Church, she returned home, filled with love for the long neglected Mother, and tried to explain to her fellow Puritans the nature of the revelation which she had had. Nobody would listen to her. Probably she was not very wise. The subject possessed her, and she had never learned the difficult lesson of holding her peace under possession. At any rate, she and all her friends had an unhappy time. The latter plied her with protests as fast as she plied them with entreaties; they showered her with pamphlets, ‘exposing’ the iniquities of the Scarlet Woman; they labored and pleaded with her. They said such severe things that, in true Protestant fashion, she vexed herself beyond measure. One morning she was spoiling her breakfast by outspoken lamentations over a letter which she had just received, when her maid paused and looked at her, hesitated, then shook her head and said slowly, —
‘Oh, Miss Jane, you’re not a very good Catholic yet. Don’t you know that nothing can hurt the Church?’
The rebuke was potent. The mistress received it with wide-open eyes and mouth slowly closing from an abandoned vituperation.
‘ Why, Betty,’ she replied very meekly,—a gasp caught in her throat,— ‘do you mean to say that you’re not angry when you hear the Church criticized? ’
‘Oh, no, Miss Jane!’ The girl smiled and once more shook her head. ‘The Church can stand it.’
A lesson like that is never forgotten. The mistress finished her breakfast in a mood of chastened sobriety and went about her daily tasks, revolving many thoughts.
The miracle of this Catholic patience grows the more stupendous, the more one comes to understand the natural strength of the temptation to dispense with it. The awakened Protestant learns the two lessons at once. With all our assurance of doctrine, we denominationalists have been brought up to regard all forms of proselytism as serious offenses. We are glad to see our sects grow, and we welcome all new recruits with a full conviction of their wisdom in casting in their lot with us. It would undoubtedly be well if all the world saw its way clear to follow their example. But ‘Hands off!’ is our motto. People must choose for themselves; no one must urge his particular manner of thinking upon anyone else. So strong is our feeling, that the very word ‘ proselytism ’ has come to connote all that we disparage in our conception of Catholicism.
But surely this is a strange sentiment — quite ungenerous and unhuman. As has been already suggested, it is not native to us; the instigators of our rebellion did their best to proselytize the world. Our unconcern for the creeds of our fellows has grown with the gradual growth of our tolerance; and that famous plant, as has also been hinted, has its roots in no other soil than indifference. We do not care enough — that is the bottom truth of the matter. We like our denominations, and we insist on being let alone in them; but our reasons for adhering to them are not inevitable. If they were—unless we were mountains of selfishness —we should want at least to suggest their significance to other people. Our sectarian promptings are partial, particular, peculiar only to ourselves and a few others; therefore of course they are unimportant, frankly to be taken or left according to the working of individual intelligence.
Quite otherwise is it with the soul that thinks that its faith has reached down below individual distinctions and has laid hold on a truth which is absolute in itself and therefore of utter importance to the universe. Granting it any generous impulse at all, such a soul cannot fail to burn to share this truth with every other soul it encounters. The desire is a possession, a passion, the most utterly selfless longing that a heart can know. It is to be reverenced, not criticized. The only real wonder about Catholics is, not that they ever proselytize, but that they ever contain themselves.
The Protestant’s mantle of tolerance drops from his shoulders the minute he catches the spirit of Catholicism; and in its place, next his heart, he discovers a flaming garment of enthusiasm. Clad in this, he is a conspicuous object; and no one with whom he comes in contact can long be in doubt as to the nature of his interest. He does not want to convert anybody — he is not converted himself; but he desperately wants to prick prejudice, to open blind eyes to rare beauty, to heal the rancor of misunderstanding. If, to these mild ends, he can hardly keep his hands off every person he meets, what must be the urging of the priest who does want to convert people, to whom it seems that every Protestant suffers a radical deprivation? Truly, they pay for their patience, these enduring ones.
With the collapse of his tolerance comes an abundant frankness of speech which greatly surprises the Protestant touched with Catholicism. The tradition of modern Protestantism is all in favor of reserve on spiritual subjects. To wear one’s religious heart on one’s sleeve is considered not only indecent, but even suggestive of insincerity. Religious convictions are not to be talked about, but are to be felt and acted upon. One does not profane the sanctuary of God in the soul by opening it to any mortal eye. All this seems profoundly true.
The Protestant, accustomed to the restrained services of his church and to the religious remoteness of all his acquaintances, accepts the situation as universally natural; and a different state of things never occurs to him as possible until, coming under new influence, he suddenly finds himself talking about God and eternity, life and death, to all the world. The discovery is a great shock to him — all the more so as it probably comes too late to enable him to recover any shreds of his old reserve. He has generally been talking an hour or two before he realizes what he is doing. Then he is arrested, startled, perhaps very much mortified. What an offense against dignity and good taste he has been committing! But he could not, cannot help himself. Convicted and pleading guilty, he is conscious only of a desire to begin talking again; even in a state of mortification, he must still go on talking. A bewildering conflict ensues.
Honestly troubled, the Protestant tries to take himself in hand, to restrain his amazing new proclivity for outspokenness. He does not like it. It seems to him to hurt everything that he has held sacred. He does not recognize his old reticent self in this eager talker, and he is ashamed. Time and again, before going out into the world, he sets a guard upon his lips, resolves earnestly not to speak one word on religious matters during the afternoon or evening. But he might as well try to restrain the breath that comes through his nostrils, the blood that flows through his veins. Better, he might as well set a guard upon the wind. At dinner tables, during the opera intermissions, in lecture-rooms, clubs, streets, drawing-rooms — anywhere, everywhere, he is sure to find himself seizing upon some turn in the conversation and using it as a point of departure for a disquisition on the significance of the Catholic faith. Before he knows it, he is talking fast, and everybody is looking at him with coldly astonished eyes. Then once more he recollects himself, stops short, and is vainly mortified. The experience, often repeated, comes at last to be accepted as humbly and as humorously as possible.
The reason for it, as well as for many Catholic peculiarities, is touched upon by the illustration of the wind in the last paragraph. Protestant religion comes from within; it is the relation between the particular soul and its God, and is individualistic. Therefore it can be controlled from within. Everybody can set a guard upon that which pertains to himself alone. But the Catholic faith is general. It proceeds from the Church, the Body of Christ, and informs each one of its members according to its own sweet will and their receptiveness. The Protestant builds up a lonely creed, painfully challenging every statement of the creeds of tradition, refusing to accept any of them until he has squared it with his own experience. The Catholic throws himself upon the creeds of the ages and the multitudes, feeling that what so many men have believed must have a larger measure of truth than any limited doctrine which he can fashion for himself; and, instead of fitting the creed to his experience, he fits the experience to the creed. Little by little, if he keeps his eyes faithfully on the pattern, he finds that his life unrolls an explanation of every intricacy. A Catholic creed is a puzzle, yes; but life is the key to it.
This expectant attitude gives the Catholic more real freedom than the Protestant. The latter is a slave to his doubts. He never dares take a step until he has first looked carefully all about him, sounded the ground, calculated the distance and all the consequences. But the former lets himself go, making endless experiments in faith, giving himself every possible chance to appropriate not only his own particular beliefs but also the beliefs of others. The result (which is also a cause) is a community of experience which squeezes the whole richness of life into each separate cup. Drink it, drink it, believer! It is compounded of visions and aspirations which, singly, thou art not great enough to discover, but which the saints of the Church have had for thee and now share with thee; it makes thee wise with the wisdom and love of all the ages.
The externality of the Catholic faith is a characteristic which we Protestants criticize severely. It seems to us that the love of God cannot be imposed from without, but must spring up from the individual soul. That is true in a sense; not even the Catholic Church can unite men with God against their will. But, granted a right disposition, how much more worth while, how necessarily fuller in truth is the God of a world-wide Church, comprising millions of people, than the God of one solitary, groping soul! God is not for the one but the many; and the more people utter the same prayer, the more fully comes the answer. Moreover, it is worth much to stand allied with a body which holds its members always, inexorably, in the right attitude. Individual souls are uncertain affairs, often incorrigible in their moods. Sometimes they will not and sometimes they will solicit Heaven. But the Church never wavers. Steadfast she stands, facing Jerusalem, and with firm hand she holds her children facing with her. She knows that practice often induces the spirit, that the prayer of the body sinks into the soul and waters it as rain an arid plant. She knows that the will of the many is stronger than the will of the one, and that it better reflects the great Will in which is our peace. She knows that humility has clearer, braver eyes than self-confidence. Therefore she commands; or, rather, Heaven commands through her.
It all comes to this: particles of the Eternal Being as we are, the sum of the truth of things is outside of and beyond us. No man can comprehend it alone. Only by submitting ourselves to one another, only by learning and sharing alike, can we know anything, can we escape from the burdensome ignorance of our individuality. The Church offers us the common cup into which to empty ourselves and from which to drink.
Why should there be such a paradox in the situation of the Protestant enamored of Catholicism? He finds himself at the same time prompted to unprecedented eloquence and warned into silence. He is kindled with eagerness and cooled with delay. Experience does not often involve an honestly questing heart in such difficulties. The reason seems to lie chiefly at our own Protestant doors. We have broken away not only from the mistakes of the past, but also from its grand, slow processes of growth; we have brought violence upon ourselves. Doubtless, we cleared the air, purged religion; the world could hardly have gotten along without our Reformation. But we also shattered a very precious unity, we rent the seamless robe. This unity must be recovered, this robe must be woven again. For unity is the goal of creation. We are restlessly eager for it now; we make all sorts of experiments in adjustment and compromise, hoping to regain it; we bring our best intelligence to bear on the matter. But Protestant methods are better adapted to disruption than to unity, and we do not seem to be able to lay our old habits aside. Obedience, patience, humility—these are the fruits, bearing the seed, of true unity. We shall have to learn to go slowly again, to defer to one another and to the august tradition of our common past; we shall have to get back in line with the ages, instead of trying to hold ourselves apart. Does this mean return? Not fully. There is no such thing as a real return in the universe. Christendom can never again be what it was before the Reformation. But it can be better than it was then, and better than it is now; it must be better. Lovers and followers of the same Lord must love one another, must go hand in hand, must see eye to eye.
Have not we Protestants had our fling now? We have reformed and changed and upset until the very walls of our creeds totter around us. Are we not rather tired at last? Both our fretfulness and our indifference would seem to indicate that we are. We cannot yield our conclusions — perhaps not. But can we not yield our methods a little? They have been excellent for surgery and purification; now for binding up and healing we might allow the Catholic spirit a chance. Patience, humility, love — those gentle virtues would go far toward gathering up the threads of the robe and reweaving them. We have gone our own ways and may perhaps never return to the home of our Mother, But she lingers there still, and at her knees waits a blessing for every wandering child who will stoop to receive it. There can be naught but good for us in loving her.