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Outspoken Essays by William Ralph Inge

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It is plain that we have here a one-sided emphasis on the dynamic aspect
of reality no less fatal to sound philosophy than the exclusively static
view which has been falsely attributed to the Greeks. A little clear
thinking ought to be enough to convince anyone that the two aspects of
reality which the Greeks called sthasist and khinesist are correlative
and necessary to each other. A God who is merely the principle of
movement and change is an absurdity. Time is always hurling its own
products into nothingness. Unless there is a being who can say, 'I am
the Lord, I change not,' the 'sons of Jacob' cannot flatter themselves
that they are 'not consumed.'[77] But Laberthonniere and his friends are
not much concerned with the ultimate problems of metaphysics; what they
desire is to shake themselves free from 'brute facts' in the past, to be
at liberty to deny them as facts, while retaining them as representative
ideas of faith. If reality is defined to consist only in life and
action, it is a meaningless abstraction to snip off a moment in the
process, and ask, 'Did it ever really take place?' This awkward question
may therefore be ignored as meaningless and irrelevant, except from the
'abstract' standpoint of physical science.

The crusade against 'intellectualism' serves the same end. M. Le Roy and
the other Christian pragmatists have returned to the Nominalism of Duns
Scotus. The following words of Frassen, one of Scotus' disciples, might
serve as a motto for the whole school:

'Theologia nostra non est scientia. Nullatenus speculativa
est, sed simpliciter practica. Theologiae obiectum non est
speculabile, sed operabile. Quidquid in Deo est practicum
est respectu nostri.'

M. Le Roy also seems to know only these two categories. Whatever is not
'practical'--having an immediate and obvious bearing on conduct--is
stigmatised as 'theoretical' or 'speculative.' But the whole field of
scientific study lies outside this classification, which pretends to be
exhaustive. Science has no 'practical' aim, in the narrow sense of that
which may serve as a guide to moral action; nor does it deal with
'theoretical' or 'speculative' ideas, except provisionally, until they
can be verified. The aim of science is to determine the laws which
prevail in the physical universe; and its motive is that purely
disinterested curiosity which is such an embarrassing phenomenon to
pragmatists. And since the faith which lies behind natural science is at
least as strong as any other faith now active in the world, it is
useless to frame categories in such a way as to exclude the question,
'Did this or that occurrence, which is presented as an event in the
physical order, actually happen, or not?' The question has a very
definite meaning for the man of science, as it has for the man in the
street. To call it 'theoretical' is ridiculous.

What M. Le Roy means by 'interpreting dogmas in the language of
practical action' may be gathered from his own illustrations. The dogma,
'God is our Father,' does not define a 'theoretical relation' between
Him and us. It signifies that we are to behave to Him as sons behave to
their father. 'God is personal' means that we are to behave to Him as if
He were a human person. 'Jesus is risen' means that we are to think of
Him as if He were our contemporary. The dogma of the Real Presence means
that we ought to have, in the presence of the consecrated Host, the same
feelings which we should have had in the presence of the visible Christ.
'Let the dogmas be interpreted in this way, and no one will dispute
them.'[78]

The same treatment of dogma is advocated in Mr. Tyrrell's very able book
'Lex Orandi.' The test of truth for a dogma is not its correspondence
with phenomenal fact, but its 'prayer-value.' This writer, at any rate
before his suspension by the Society of Jesus, to which he belonged, is
less subversive in his treatment of history than the French critics whom
we have quoted. Although in apologetics the criterion for the acceptance
of dogmas must, he thinks, be a moral and practical one, he sometimes
speaks as if the 'prayer-value' of an ostensibly historical proposition
carried with it the necessity of its truth as matter of fact.

'Between the inward and the outward, the world of reality
and the world of appearances, the relation is not merely one
of symbolic correspondence. The distinction that is demanded
by the dualism of our mind implies and presupposes a causal
and dynamic unity of the two. We should look upon the
outward world as being an effectual symbol of the inward, in
consequence of its natural and causal connection
therewith.'[79]

But Mr. Tyrrell does not seem to mean all that these sentences might
imply. He speaks repeatedly, in the 'Lex Orandi,' of the 'will-world' as
the only real world.

'The will (he says) cannot make that true which in itself is
not true. But it can make that a fact relatively to our mind
and action which is not a fact relative to our
understanding.... It rests with each of us by an act of will
to create the sort of world to which we shall accommodate
our thought and action. ....It does not follow that harmony
of faith with the truths of reason and facts of experience
is the best or essential condition of its credibility....
Abstractions (he refers to the world as known to science)
are simple only because they are barren forms created by the
mind itself. Faith and doubt have a common element in the
deep sense of the insufficiency of the human mind to grasp
ultimate truths.... The world given to our outward senses is
shadowy and dreamy, except so far as we ascribe to it some
of the characteristics of will and spirit.... The world of
appearance is simply subordinate to the real world of our
will and affections.'

Because the 'abstract' sciences cannot and do not attempt to reach
ultimate truth, it is assumed that they are altogether 'barren forms,'
This is the error of much Oriental mysticism, which denies all value to
what it regards as the lower categories. In his later writings Mr.
Tyrrell objects to being classed with the American and English
pragmatists--the school of Mr. William James. But the doctrine of these
passages is ultra-pragmatist. The will, which is illegitimately
stretched to include feeling,[80] is treated as the creator as well as
the discerner of reality. The 'world of appearance' is plastic in its
grasp. It is this metaphysical pragmatism which is really serviceable to
Modernism. If the categories of the understanding can be so disparaged
as to be allowed no independent truth, value, or importance, all
collisions between faith and fact may be avoided by discrediting in
advance any conclusions at which science may arrive. Assertions about
'brute fact' which are scientifically false may thus not be untrue when
taken out of the scientific plane, because outside that plane they are
harmless word-pictures, soap-bubbles blown off by the poetical
creativeness of faith Any assertion about fact which commends itself to
the will and affections and which is proved by experience to furnish
nutriment to the spiritual life, may be adhered to without scruple. It
is not only useful, but true, in the only sense in which truth can be
predicated of anything in the higher sphere.

The obvious criticism on this notion of religious truth as purely moral
and practical is that it is itself abstract and one-sided. The universe
as it appears to discursive thought, with its vast system of seemingly
uniform laws, which operate without much consideration for our wishes or
feelings, must be at least an image of the real universe. We cannot
accept the irreconcilable dualism between the will-world and the world
of phenomena which the philosophical Modernists assume. The dualism, or
rather the contradiction, is not in the nature of things, nor in the
constitution of our minds, but in the consciousness of the unhappy men
who are trying to combine two wholly incompatible theories. On the
critical side they are pure rationalists, much as they dislike the name.
They claim, as we have seen, to have advanced to philosophy through
criticism. But the Modernist critics start with very well-defined
presuppositions. They ridicule the notion that 'God is a personage in
history'; they assume that for the historian 'He cannot be found
anywhere'; that He is as though He did not exist. On the strength of
this presupposition, and for no other reason, they proceed to rule out,
without further investigation, all alleged instances of divine
intervention in history. Unhampered by any of the misgivings which
predispose the ordinary believer to conservatism, they follow the
rationalist argument to its logical conclusions with startling
ruthlessness. And then, when the whole edifice of historical religion
seems to have been overthrown to the very foundations, they turn round
suddenly and say that all their critical labours mean nothing for faith,
and that we may go on repeating the old formulas as if nothing had
happened. The Modernists pour scorn on the scholastic
'faculty-psychology,' which resolves human personality into a syndicate
of partially independent agents; but, in truth, their attempt to blow
hot and cold with the same mouth seems to have involved them in a more
disastrous self-disruption than has been witnessed in the history of
thought since the fall of the Nominalists. In a sceptical and
disillusioned age their disparagement of 'intellectualism' or rather of
discursive thought in all its operations, might find a response. But in
the twentieth century the science which, as critics, they follow so
unswervingly will not submit to be bowed out of the room as soon as
matters of faith come into question. Our contemporaries believe that
matters of fact are important, and they insist, with ever-increasing
emphasis, that they shall not be called upon to believe, as part of
their religious faith, anything which as a matter of fact, is not true.
The Modernist critic, when pressed on this side, says that it is natural
for faith to represent its ideas in the form of historical facts, and
that it is this inevitable tendency which causes the difficulties
between religion and science. A sane criticism will allow that this is
very largely true, but will not, we are convinced, be constrained to
believe with M. Loisy that the historical original of the Christian
Redeemer was the poor deluded enthusiast whom he portrays in 'Les
Evangiles Synoptiques.'

However this may be--and it must remain a matter of opinion--the very
serious question arises, whether it is really natural for faith to
represent its ideas in the form of historical facts when it knows that
these facts have no historical basis. The writers with whom we are
dealing evidently think it is natural and inevitable, and we must assume
that they speak from their own spiritual experience. But this state of
mind does not seem to be a very common one. Those who believe in the
divinity of Christ, but not in His supernatural birth and bodily
resurrection, do not, as a rule, make those miracles the subject of
their meditations, but find their spiritual sustenance in communion with
the 'Christ who is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. Those who
regard Jesus only as a prophet sent by God to reveal the Father,
generally pray only to the God whom He revealed, and cherish the memory
of Jesus with no other feelings than supreme gratitude and veneration.
Those, lastly, who worship in God only the Great Unknown who makes for
righteousness, find myths and anthropomorphic symbols merely disturbing
in such devotions as they are still able to practise. In dealing with
convinced Voluntarists it is perhaps not disrespectful to suggest that
the difficult position in which they find themselves has produced a
peculiar activity of the will, such as is seldom found under normal
conditions.

We pass to the position of the Modernists in the Roman Catholic Church.
It is well known that the advisers of Pius X have committed the Papacy
to a wholesale condemnation of the new movement. The reasons for this
condemnation are thus summed up by a distinguished ecclesiastic of that
Church[81]:

'Why has the Pope condemned the Modernists? (1) Because the
Modernists have denied that the divine facts related in the
Gospel are historically true. (2) Because they have denied
that Christ for most of His life knew that He was God, and
that He ever knew that He was the Saviour of the world. (3)
Because they have denied the divine sanction and the
perpetuity of the great dogmas which enter into the
Christian creed. (4) Because they have denied that Christ
Himself personally ever founded the Church or instituted the
Sacraments. (5) Because they deny and subvert the divine
constitution of the Church, by teaching that the Pope and
the bishops derive their powers, not directly from Christ
and His Apostles, but from the Christian people.'


The official condemnation is contained in two documents--the decree of
the Holy Inquisition, 'Lamentabili sane exitu,' July 3, 1907, and the
Encyclical, 'Pascendi dominici gregis,' September 8, 1907. These
pronouncements are intended for Catholics; and their tone is that of
authoritative denunciation rather than of argument. In the main, the
summary which they give of Modernist doctrines is as fair as could be
expected from a judge who is passing sentence; but the papal theologians
have not always resisted the temptation to arouse prejudice by
misrepresenting the views which they condemn. We have not space to
analyse these documents, nor is it necessary to do so. It will be more
to the purpose to consider whether, in spite of their official
condemnation, the Modernists are likely in the future to make good their
footing in the Roman Church.

Even before the Encyclical the Modernists had used very bold language
about the authority of the Church.

'The visible Church (writes Mr. Tyrrell in his "Much-abused
Letter") is but a means, a way, a creature, to be used where
it helps, to be left where it hinders.... Who have taught us
that the consensus of theologians cannot err, but the
theologians themselves? Mortal, fallible, ignorant men like
ourselves! ... Their present domination is but a passing
episode in the Church's history.... May not history repeat
itself? [as in the transition from Judaism to Christianity].
Is God's arm shortened that He should not again out of the
very stones raise up seed to Abraham? May not Catholicism,
like Judaism, have to die in order that it may live again in
a greater and grander form? Has not every organism got its
limits of development, after which it must decay and be
content to survive in its progeny? Wine-skins stretch, but
only within measure; for there comes at last a
bursting-point when new ones must be provided.'

In a note he explains: 'The Church of the Catacombs became the Church of
the Vatican; who can tell what the Church of the Vatican may not turn
into?'

It is thus on a very elastic theory of development that the Modernists
rely. 'The differences between the larval and final stages of many an
insect are often far greater than those which separate kind from kind.'
And so this Proteus of a Church, which has changed its form so
completely since the Gospel was first preached in the subterranean
galleries of Rome, may undergo another equally startling metamorphosis
and come to believe in a God who never intervenes in history. We may
here remind our readers of Newman's tests of true development, and mark
the enormous difference.

Mr. Tyrrell's 'Much-abused Letter' reaches, perhaps, the high-water mark
of Modernist claims. Not all the writers whom we have quoted would view
with complacency the prospect of the Catholic Church dying to live
again, or being content to live only in its progeny. The proverb about
the new wine-skins is one of sinister augury in such a connection. If
the Catholic Church is really in such an advanced stage of decay that it
must die before it can live, why do those who grasp the situation wish
to keep it alive? Are they not precisely pouring their new wine into old
bottles? Mr. Tyrrell himself draws the parallel with Judaism in the
first century. Paul, he says, 'did not feel that he had broken with
Judaism,' But the Synagogue did feel that he had done so, and history
proved that the Synagogue was right.

Development, however great the changes which it exhibits, can only
follow certain laws; and the development of the Church of Rome has
steadily followed a direction opposite to that which the Modernists
demand that it shall take. Newman might plausibly claim that the
doctrines of purgatory and of the papal supremacy are logically involved
in the early claims of the Roman Church. The claim is true at least in
this sense, that, given a political Church organised as an autocracy,
these useful doctrines were sure, in the interests of the government, to
be promulgated sooner or later. But there is not the slightest reason
to suppose that the next development will be in the direction of that
peculiar kind of Liberalism favoured by the Modernists. It is difficult
to see how the Vatican could even meet the reformers half-way without
making ruinous concessions.' This supernatural mechanism,' M. Loisy says
in his last book, 'Modernism tends to ruin completely,' Just so; but the
Roman Church lives entirely on the faith in supernatural mechanism. Her
sacramental and sacerdotal system is based on supernatural mechanism--on
divine interventions in the physical world conditioned by human agency;
her theology and books of devotion are full of supernatural mechanism;
the lives of her saints, her relics and holy places, the whole
literature of Catholic mysticism, the living piety and devotion of the
faithful, wherever it is still to be found, are based entirely on that
very theory of supernaturalistic dualism which the Modernist, when he
acts as critic, begins by ruling out as devoid of any historical or
scientific actuality. The attractiveness of Catholicism as a cult
depends almost wholly on its frank admission of the miraculous as a
matter of daily occurrence. To rationalise even contemporary history as
M. Loisy has rationalised the Gospels would be suicide for Catholicism.

It is tempting to give a concrete instance by way of illustrating the
impassable chasm which divides Catholicism as a working system from the
academic scheme of transformation which we have been considering.

'The French Catholics (writes the _Times_ correspondent in
Paris on June 25, 1908) are awaiting with concern the report
of a special commission on a mysterious affair known as the
Miraculous Hailstones of Remiremont. On Sunday, May 26,
1907, during a violent storm that swept over that region of
the Vosges, among the great quantity of hailstones that fell
at the time a certain number were found split in two. On the
inner face of each of the halves, according to the local
papers that appeared the next day, was the image of the
Madonna venerated at Remiremont and known as Notre Dame du
Tresor. The local Catholics regarded it as a reply to the
municipal council's veto of the procession in honour of the
Virgin. So many people testified to having seen the
miraculous hailstones that the bishop of Saint-Die
instituted an inquiry; 107 men, women, and children were
heard by the parish priest, and certain well-known men of
science [names given] were consulted. The report has just
been published in the _Semaine Religieuse_, and concludes in
favour of the absolute authenticity of the fact under
inquiry. ....The last word rests with the bishop, who will
decide according to the conclusions of the report of the
special commission.'

This is Catholicism in practice. Those who think to reform it by their
contention that supernatural interventions can never be matters of fact,
are liable to the reproach which they most dislike--that of scholastic
intellectualism, and neglect of concrete experience.

This denial of the supernatural as a factor in the physical world seems
to us alone sufficient to make the position of the Modernists in the
Roman Church untenable. That form of Christianity stands or falls with
belief in miracles. It has always sought to bring the divine into human
life by intercalating acts of God among facts of nature. Its whole
sacred literature, as we have said, is penetrated through and through by
the belief that God continually intervenes to change the course of
events. What would become of the cult of Mary and the saints if it were
recognised that God does not so interfere, and that the saints, if
criticism allows that they ever existed, can do nothing by their
intercessions to avert calamity or bring blessing? The Modernist priest,
it appears, can still say 'Ora pro nobis' to a Mary whose biography he
believes to be purely mythical. At any rate, he can tell his consultants
with a good conscience that if they pray to Mary for grace they will
receive it. But what is the good of this make-believe? And, if it is
part of a transaction in which the worshipper pays money for assistance
which he believes to be miraculous and only obtainable through the good
offices of the Church, is it even morally honest? The worshipper may be
helped by his subjective conviction that his cheque on the treasury of
merit has been honoured; but if, apart from the natural effects of
suggestion, nothing has been given him but a mere _placebo_, is the
sacerdotal office one which an honourable man would wish to fill?

We have no wish whatever to make any imputation against the motives of
the brave men who have withstood the thunders of the Vatican, and who in
some cases have been professionally ruined by their courageous avowal of
their opinions. Perhaps none but a Catholic priest can understand how
great the sacrifice is when one in his position breaks away from the
authority of those who speak in the name of the Church, and deliberately
incurs the charge, still so terrible in Catholic ears, of being a
heretic and a teacher of heresy. Not one man in twenty would dare to
face the storm of obloquy, hatred, and calumny which is always ready to
fall on the head of a heretical priest. The Encyclical indicates the
measures which are to be taken officially against Modernists. Pius X
ordains that all the young professors suspected of Modernism are to be
driven from their chairs in the seminaries; that infected books are to
be condemned indiscriminately, even though they may have received an
_imprimatur_; that a committee of censors is to be established in every
diocese for the revision of books; that meetings of liberal priests or
laymen are to be forbidden; that every diocese is to have a vigilance
committee to discover and inform against Modernists; and that young
clerical Modernists are to be put 'in the lowest places,' and held up to
the contempt of their more orthodox or obsequious comrades. But this
persecution is as nothing compared with the crushing condemnation with
which the religious world, which is his only world, visits this kind of
contumacy; the loss of friendships, the grief and shame of loved
relatives, and the haunting dread that an authority so august as that
which has condemned him cannot have spoken in vain. Assuredly all lovers
of truth must do homage to the courage and self-sacrifice of these men.
The doubt which may be reasonably felt and expressed as to the
consistency of their attitude reflects no discredit on them personally.
Nevertheless, the alternative must be faced, that a 'modernised'
Catholicism must either descend to deliberate quackery, or proclaim that
the bank from which the main part of her revenues is derived has stopped
payment.

What will be the end of the struggle, and in what condition will it
leave the greatest Church in Christendom? There are some who think that
the Church will grow tired of the attitude of Canute, and will retreat
to the chair which Modernism proffers, well above high-water mark. But
the policy of Rome has never been concession, but repression, even at
the cost of alienating large bodies of her supporters; and we believe
that in the present instance, as on former occasions, the Vatican will
continue to proscribe Modernism until the movement within her body is
crushed. She can hardly do otherwise, for the alternative offered is not
a gradual reform of her dogmas, but a sweeping revolution. This we have
made abundantly clear by quotations from the Modernists themselves. If
the Vatican once proclaimed that such views about supernaturalism as
those which we have quoted are permissible, a deadly wound would be
inflicted on the faith of simple Catholics all over the world. The Vicar
of Christ would seem to them to have apostatised. The whole machinery of
piety, as practised in Catholic countries, would be thrown out of gear.
Nor is there any strong body of educated laymen, such as exists in the
Protestant Churches, who could influence the Papacy in the direction of
Liberalism. Not only are the laity taught that their province is to
obey, and never to call in question the decisions of ecclesiastics, but
the large majority of thoughtful laymen have already severed their
connection with the Church, and take no interest in projects for its
reform. Everything points to a complete victory for the Jesuits and the
orthodox party; and, much as we may regret the stifling of free
discussion, and the expulsion of earnest and conscientious thinkers from
the Church which they love, it is difficult to see how any other policy
could be adopted.

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Anyone who knows Plath's poetry will see the connection between Three Women and Plath's subsequent poems, particularly in the way she talks about the agony of childbirth, the rush of love for this tiny alien being, and both the wonder and wounded rawness of motherhood. It is a beautiful piece, full of startling imagery that draws you in through the sheer intensity of its femaleness, and because it so precisely articulates the emotions that are often thought but seldom voiced by women - certainly not in the early 1960s - about men, motherhood and our relationship to our bodies.

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