distribution is a valuable auxiliary. In this the Catholic Truth. Society generously co-operates by a free grant from its stock of excellent leaflets. The tracts are given out in small quantities to "Red Cross" Ransomers-the working members-and are distributed at the park gates after a lecture, or outside an anti-Catholic demonstration, or in other places where they are likely to do good. The Guild has evidence that cases of conversion have been due, under God, to the public lectures, while the amount of popular prejudice that can be met by this means is incalculable.

The foregoing particulars do not by any means exhaust the sum of the Guild's activities; it is, indeed, a body which takes occasion by the hand in any way calculated to further the end in view. Reunions of the members are held from time to time, to review the situation and stimulate enthusiasm for yet further work. The Ransomers have a monthly magazine of their own, The Second Spring, a title that fittingly perpetuates Cardinal Newman's reference to the Catholic renaissance in England. Subsidiary labors, largely under Father Fletcher's personal direction, include work among boys who have left school, an "Intercession Book" for the registration of intentions, a "Deo. Gratias Book" for recording conversions or the return of lapsed Catholics, and much else in the way of quiet effort. And in all this it is the Guild's boast that it has not one salaried worker in its ranks.

What is the secret of the Ransomers' success? I am disposed to find it in the fact that the Guild has inculcated in its members a spirit towards their faith that has made them proud of it, willing and anxious to manifest it, glorying in the public evidence of it, ready to embrace every opportunity of holding up the spectacle of their loyalty to it as the badge of Catholic selfrespect. It is the half-hearted, lukewarm, timorous Catholic who draws down upon himself and his Church the scorn of the indifferent and the ignorant. But a new light leaps into their eyes, a quickened intelligence animates their minds, an altogether different attitude towards the Church of God is theirs when they come face to face with public demonstrations of Catholic fervor, bold, determined, and sustained. To foster this spirit by the methods indicated, and so by degrees to draw the people of England nearer to the Church, has been for twenty years, and is still, the special work of the Ransomers.

THE ENCYCLICAL ON MODERNISM.

WE regret to announce that, through the illness of the Rev. William O'Brien Pardow, S.J., we are unable to publish in this number of THE CATHOLIC WORLD, as announced, his contribution on the subject of Modernism. We hope to be able to publish his paper in an early number of THE CATHOLIC WORLD. In place of Father Pardow's sermon, we publish this month the following paper by Very Rev. George M. Searle, C.S.P. [EDITOR C. W.]

MR. CHARLES JOHNSTON ON MODERNISM.

BY GEORGE M. SEARLE, C.S.P.

T is somewhat surprising to find in the North American Review an article indicating such an entire misconception of the whole matter of which it treats as that in the December number on "The Catholic Reformation and the Authority of the Vatican." Its subject is the Modernist heresy; and the author, Mr. Charles Johnston, seems to imagine that the Church can accommodate itself to this, and actually derive new life and strength from it, whereas in fact it is simply and absolutely destructive of the very idea of the Church as the guardian and preserver of a definite divine revelation. Of course, from his point of view, it is not inconceivable that the Pope, the Cardinals, the Bishops, and the whole teaching authority in the Church should abandon their claim to teach, and become merely "seekers" after truth, instead of believing that they possess it; but Mr. Johnston does not seem to realize that this is simply to drop the fundamental idea of the Catholic Church. They would, by such a course, become Protestants, agnostics, or infidels at once.

It is, no doubt, rather hard for non- Catholic Europeans or Americans to realize what the position of the Catholic Church is with regard to the matter of religion; though it is really very much the same as that of the scientific world in the matter

of physical science. Accustomed as they are to regard religion. as merely a matter of speculation, in which no definite and certain results can ever be obtained, they seem to fail even to conceive the position of those who maintain and really and thoroughly believe that certain facts in the domain of religion are known with absolute certainty, though many of them are entirely unattainable by abstract reason, and in no way verifiable by experiment or observation.

Of course the method by which these facts have been ascertained is different from that employed in scientific research, as has just been implied; but we regard them as having even a higher degree of certainty than that possessed by any of those of experimental science. We believe them to have been revealed by God himself, and committed by him to the custody of an organization which he has founded for the purpose, and to which he has promised his continual and infallible assistance. The system-if it may be so called-of Modernism is in itself. entirely irreconcilable with this fundamental Catholic position. It does not need to have the Church condemn it; it condemns itself in the minds of all who really hold Catholic principles. But when the Church does formally condemn it, the impossibility of a Catholic holding it becomes even more manifest. The idea that it is going to spread and gain ground and put a new face on the Catholic Church as a body, is obviously absurd. If Modernistic theories ever could affect the Church as a body, the Church would simply cease to exist; it would have no definite faith, and would be resolved into a number of individuals holding different views on every religious question, and in no way distinguishable from others who had never been Catholics at all.

The fact is that Modernism, from the true Catholic standpoint, is, to a large extent, mere nonsense. We may take, for instance, the paragraph from the Rinnovamento which Mr. Johnston says "is finely said, and in the true spirit of liberty." We will substitute in it for "Christianity," "religion," "faith," etc., "science"; for these things are science to a Catholic, and science of the highest and most certain kind. Suppose we say, then, as a paraphrase:

"Science is Life; it is unquenchable aspiration, it is hope, it is the striving of the whole being toward that which in life partakes of the material (we substitute this for the 'eternal' in

the original); it is the progressive elevation of our hearts and minds in a passionate search after truth."

(Without, of course, any expectation of ever finding it.)

"It is in vain that we try to enclose science in intellectual system and definitive expressions of its development. It is by its very nature a continuous becoming; .. as if a divine (or, we will say, human) artificer were seeking to express in pliant clay, ceaselessly and ever unsatisfied, his ineffable ideal."

What arrant nonsense this would be, applied to physical science! And to the Catholic, it is just as nonsensical applied to religion. Religion is a matter of fact, just as physical science is. The Resurrection of Christ is one of its primary facts. "If Christ be not risen again," says St. Paul-that is, if his Resurrection be not an actual historical fact-"your faith is vain." If we were to have, in astronomy, a perpetual "striving of the whole being" to find out whether the earth is round or flat, or whether it is larger than the sun or smaller, what an absurd thing astronomy would be! And yet this is the sort of thing that the Modernists would have us do in religion. One of the propositions condemned in the Syllabus runs as follows:

"The Resurrection of the Savior is not properly a fact of the historical order, but a fact of merely supernatural order; neither demonstrated nor demonstrable."

That is to say, it is simply an imagination, and as utterly useless as would be a speculation as to the appearance of the other side of the moon.

The human artificers of natural science are, of course, far from completing their task; but they are not unsatisfied, in the sense that they feel their work to be a failure, which seems to be the idea as to the Divine Artificer in the above Modernist passage. Their work is good, comprehensible, and practical, as far as it goes. The Divine Artificer of the true religion cannot, of course, make us completely understand all that he himself does, any more than we understand all of physical science, of which he also is the author; but it does not follow that we understand nothing clearly and practically, in either one or the other. If we did not, it would be better to abandon both studies, as a waste of time. There is no "true spirit of liberty "in "ever learning and never attaining," as St. Paul says, "to the knowledge of the truth"; "you shall know the truth," says our

Lord, "and the truth shall make you free." That is to say, the actual knowledge of it shall make us free, not a perpetual and fruitless hunting after it.

Mr. Johnston proceeds to inveigh against the Vatican for setting itself against this "true spirit of liberty." We cannot better illustrate the absurdity of his complaint than by continuing the parallel which we have instituted between religion and natural science. Suppose that in one of our universities a professor was found to be teaching the flatness of the earth, or maintaining that the circumference of a circle was exactly three times its diameter, or any other scientific heresy, and to be obstinate in his views; would not the authorities get rid of him, if possible? And if his heresies were numerous and struck at the very basis of all scientific teaching, would they not be still more intolerant, would they allow him to teach or lecture, or have any text-books he might have written used as such in their institution? Would they not "stem the tide of " his "intellectual life," as far as it could affect their students? Would they not see that the "brand of heresy" was "stamped on them," and have them "held up to the reprobation of the (scientific) faithful"?

Mr. Johnston, however, seems to have a strange idea that the Holy Father wishes or intends to institute some sort of violent proceedings; to drive heretical teachers out at the point of the bayonet. He even makes the absurd mistake, apparently, of supposing that the Pope, in calling on the Cardinals to combat error and defend the truth "even to the shedding of blood," means that they are to shed other people's blood. It seems hardly necessary to say that this means that they have undertaken and promised to suffer martyrdom, if necessary, for the truth. This ridiculous blunder is perpetrated again, later in the article.

He also strangely misunderstands a condemnation of the Syllabus. The proposition condemned is as follows:

"Since in the deposit of the faith only revealed truths are contained, under no respect does it appertain to the Church to pass judgment concerning the assertions of human sciences."

This condemnation he seems to understand as meaning that under all respects it does appertain to the Church to pass such judgment. He does not realize that when a proposition is condemned, it is simply its logical contradictory that is asserted.

VOL. LXXXVI.—41