If we ask what is the meaning and substance of the pastoral authority in the Church, we find that the Church, being a visible community, established for the glory of God and the salvation of souls, possesses a right to control her own internal discipline, and, therefore, she must not only watch over the doctrines of faith, but also regulate the supernatural and religious life, and she does this by means of the commandments of the Church. Here we at once encounter objections raised by the Protestant and the modern idea of liberty. We are told that by thus fixing religious duties, by exacting attendance at church and the observance of certain festivals, and by insisting upon fasting and the reception of the sacraments, the Church is outraging Christian liberty and falling back into a system resembling the Jewish law.
We have already seen that, according to a really moral view and to the teaching of the New Testament, Christian liberty consists not in the denial and abolition of all obligation, but in an internal comprehension of it and a full, lively, and generous performance of its demands.{1}
If the Christian law of liberty, namely, inward enlightenment and love, had complete dominion over us, it would not be necessary, at least for our personal life and progress, to define and impress upon us any positive duties. For this reason there are no Church commandments in the Church Triumphant. But in this life there is invariably another law opposed to the law of love with its exalted and eternal tendency. The spirit of the pagan world, with its attachment to the things of this world, still drags us down, and the fickleness and superficiality that characterized the Jews, likewise distract us and fix our thoughts on what is external. We are not yet thorough Christians, but are only striving to attain "the age of the fulness of Christ"; each of us still has within him a good deal of paganism and Judaism. Hence a training, according to plain, definite rules, is beneficial for every Christian, and so we ought not to fear the reproach of being immature and subject to pre-Christian bondage so long as we have not the courage to proclaim ourselves mature and perfect in all things.
It is true that in moments of enthusiasm we all fancy ourselves able to dispense with every support, and to soar to the height of our goal, carried aloft by the impetus of our ardent desires. But how soon is the fire of our enthusiasm quenched, how suddenly do the dispositions of our heart change, and how often do the dreariness of daily life, our passions, our love of comfort, and even our forgetfulness put an end to our good resolutions, if they be only resolutions and nothing more! No one, who does not wilfully deceive himself, can deny that human nature is so fickle as to require an external support, such as is supplied by the duties and customs of the Church; and this support is just as beneficial to those who are earnestly striving to make progress as to the moral weaklings.{2}
I do not imply that, assuming this to be true, the will obeys the external law only, instead of entering into the spirit of the action with love. But very often the plain stimulus of the law helps us to overcome an incipient dislike and repugnance, so that afterwards, when the nobler part of our disposition is set at liberty and becomes active, we perform the action with interest and pleasure. A man who is always so thoroughly inclined to do what is good that he does not need any encouragement to help him over the stagnant points of waiting and delaying, may at once, freely and naturally, assume the practice of virtue imposed upon him; but even he will be thankful to the law for giving to him an opportunity of uniting with the practice of piety the merit of obedience.
It is not difficult for a Christian to enter into the spirit of the commandments of the Church, for what they contain is the product of the innermost essence of Christianity. The Jewish law had to fall, because in its whole character it was only a preparation for, a shadow of, the future law. It was the husk containing the seed, and the husk must split if the seed is to grow. The immediate object of the laws of the Church is the external formation and the regulation of religion, but in addition to that they have a permanent value of their own, for they are the expression of eternal Christian ideas, the embodiment and seeurity of the Christian life; they are, as it were, the bark of the tree that has grown from the seed sown before the coming of Christ. The Church demands of all Christians that they shall sanctify their lives by observing certain days as holy, by assisting at the Holy Sacrifice, by receiving the sacraments, and by practising certain mortifications; but these things are only a minimum of what lively faith and true charity would impel men to do; they are a mere remnant of the tradition created by our fervent forefathers out of the free impulse of their hearts. "If," said Lavater on one occasion, "I could believe in Christ's real presence in the sacrament, I should never again rise from my knees in adoration." Now every Catholic believes in this real presence, and in the mystery of the sacrifice on our altars; how then can the obligation to hear Holy Mass on Sunday seem to him to be a burden? According to the Reformers, fasting is salutary, and keeping the Sunday holy is a truly Christian custom, but both practices are left to the "discretion of the individual," and to the libera observatio of the faithful. One feels inclined to ask, what has become of this "free observance" of fasting, and what attention would have been paid to Sunday if stringent regulations had not been made by the Church (in spite of these principles), or if the State had not passed laws compelling its observance?
True liberty grows best on the soil of obedience, and generous spontaneity of action on that of duty. Those Catholics who conscientiously obey the commandments of the Church are also those who fast voluntarily, go to Church on week days, and say their prayers in their silent chamber. But those who rebel against all obligations imposed by the Church, in order to live in a free spiritual intercourse with God, are seldom fruitful in works that would bear witness to the depth of their spiritual life. The Catholic Church, with her "domineering tendencies" and her "compulsory regulations," has already been infinitely rich in voluntary manifestations of piety, in generous works of charity, and in touching instances of self-devotion; Protestantism, on the other hand, by depriving the religious feeling of the support afforded by ecclesiastical laws, has gradually weakened it, and brought about a wide-spread worldliness in men's lives.{3}
Rules of discipline, however, are chiefly laid down for the sake of the Christian community life. If it were true that people of education could personally dispense with the commandments of the Church in their daily life, if they understood the commandment of love, they would still have to say with the apostle: "We that are stronger ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves."{4} As members of the same body, each Christian ought to feel the needs of every other member as if they were his own. This old truth, proclaimed long ago by Menenius Agrippa to the Plebeians, deserves, now as then, to be impressed with just as much force upon the Patricians. The Gospel was intended, above all, to bring good tidings to the poor; it therefore requires all to be poor in spirit and to have the simplicity of children. The Church considers the welfare of all her children, and not the least that of the lame and the weak; hence she demands the strong to take thought for them. If for a moment we leave out of sight the supernatural duties of authority, we shall see that there is a certain amount of truth in the saying: La mediocrité fonda l'autorité, -- the backward and uneducated most of all need discipline and training -- but for the sake of mankind in general, all individuals, even men of the strongest personality, are subject to authority. Although the privileges of the aristocrats everywhere tend to weaken the force of legislation, such privileges would be singularly disastrous if every one were able to confer upon himself such a title on the score of being strong and capable. History teaches that the destruction of ecclesiastical discipline effectually puts an end to "conformity to a Jewish law," but at the same time it takes away the Christian character of society and throws men back into pagan lawlessness.{5}
Just as charity and the social sense facilitate and ennoble obedience to the Church, so, conversely, the very closeness of men's connection with the Church awakens their sense of social union. Wherever public worship flourishes, the harshness of class distinctions is unwittingly diminished. Princes and beggars meet under one roof in God's house, and all derive, from the same sources of Christian truth and art, food for heart and soul; high and low kneel at the same altar, and in the tribunal of penance all alike receive encouragement in their troubles and reproof for their sins. "The most burning social question at the present time," says Thalhofer, "would easily be settled, or rather would not exist at all, if all the faithful, according to the rule and spirit of the Church, assisted at public worship, and especially at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. In the early centuries of Christianity true Christian socialism prevailed amongst the faithful, having its origin and further support in the common worship of God."{6}
The Church is a well-ordered kingdom, a city set on a hill, whither the people go up to receive the law of the Lord;{7} and thus she fulfils the great aim of Christianity, to exalt the name of God amongst the nations. Christianity is designed to be a visible force, a universal glorification of God; it is not intended merely to leaven the hearts of men. Hence Christian piety and charity must be displayed openly in the common action of mankind; definite rules are required to ensure uniformity and diguity to the work of instructing the whole human race, and to bring into prominence its social and brotherly spirit. The sanctification of the customs of the people, and all the glorious productions of Christian civilization (cathedrals, shrines, monasteries, altars, bells, pictures of saints), are connected with the need of a great, uniform, orderly cultus, and they could not conceivably exist in the splendour and magnitude with which we are familiar if they were the expression only of a religion of the inner man and not of the mass of mankind, since such a religion would reject all outward regulations as contrary to genuine piety.
With her striving for uniformity the Church combines a generous spirit of accommodation to the requirements of time and people. The history of the discipline of penance, and of the commandment regarding fasting, etc., show her consideration for justifiable desires and for altered circumstances. Of course the conservative character of the Church prevents her from at once making every new need and every local grievance a ground for legislative changes. Cases may occur in which zeal for ecclesiastical discipline and a reaction against false mysticism and vagueness cause men to lay too much stress upon externals; but as I have already said, there is no mechanical, hard, and fast conformity to law in the spirit of the Church. Where obedience does harm rather than good, where higher aims are incompatible with the letter of the law, and above all, where charity, the chief of all virtues, forbids, we see that the most loyal servants of the Church have always and willingly sacrificed the letter to the spirit of the law. St. Thomas distinguishes two ways in which men fulfil their duty towards Church and State, -- iustitia legalis, giving heed to the letter of the law, and aequitas, disregarding the letter and adhering to its spirit and purpose. He calls the latter the higher and more noble virtue.{8}
If the vast number of laws imposed by the State, and the mechanical and harsh manner in which they are carried into execution, be compared with the demands made by the Church upon her members, we cannot help feeling astonished that by the use of foolish catch words men should be able to convince the public that Catholics are languishing under a burden of regulations unworthy of men of the present day. Attendance at Mass is required on Sundays and certain festivals, Confession and Communion are obligatory at Easter, and there is the law of fasting and abstinence, the severity of which is now much mitigated; besides these there are very few rules of general obligation imposed by the Church. When anything diflicult, extraordinary, or even heroic is required in the confessional, in matters connected with marriage, etc., it is due not to the laws of the Church, but to the natural and divine law, which the Church has to expound and maintain. On priests, and in a still higher degree on religious, she has imposed duties the compliance with which demands great moral force and self-sacrifice; but here again it is not, strictly speaking, the law of the Church that imposes the burden -- the free will of the individual assumes it when he voluntarily elects to become a priest or religious. In comparison, how hampering and unavoidable are the intricate obligations laid by a modern State upon its subjects! Our whole life is spent under the control of laws, ordinances, and police regulations. In levying taxes the State interferes with our property; in the interests of public welfare it attempts to check free and arbitrary action, to make claims based on expediency into laws, etc.
An ordinary man does not look upon all this "compulsion" as an "insult." On the contrary, he is told that the progress of civilization demands this increasing limitation of personal freedom; that the process of gradually raising a savage to the level of a modern citizen has been all along a continued restriction and suppression of his natural love of liberty. For this reason the citizen of to-day, with his higher education and social perception, ought to look upon the restrictions of the law as a benefit conducing to his happiness. If all this be taken into account, the feeling of a Catholic towards the Church, and his public spirit, must have sunk to the freezing point if he complains that the demands made upon him by the commandments of the Church are an unjustifiable interference with his moral and religious liberty.
These considerations gain additional weight if, in conclusion, we glance at the results of freedom from all restraint in matters of religion such as in course of time has inevitably developed in Protestantism. Luther's ideas of faith as the free outcome of individual experience, and of the Church as a purely spiritual association of brethren, underwent modification from the very beginning. The teaching authority of the Church was replaced by that of Luther, who in a domineering manner claimed that his word was the word of Christ, and exalted his theories above the decisions of Popes and councils, and also above the opinions of his Protestant opponents. Instead of the Pope and bishops, secular princes and magistrates assumed control over the Church, and issued regulations concerning the practice of religion, attendance at public worship, etc., which savoured far more of outward violence than do the commandments of the old Church. For a time the stately liturgy of the Catholic Church was outwardly retained in order that the people, who were attached to it, might more easily be won over to the new doctrines; but when its kernel, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, was abolished, and its profound and morally elevating influence ceased to be felt, the house of God and public worship in general lost their attraction more and more and the whole life of the Church lost its binding, vivifying, and moral force.{9}
In the name of Protestant freedom many fruits of Christian piety, many venerable monuments and customs, were destroyed; and then, wherever Calvinism predominated, there soon appeared in the exercise of religion a system of tutelage as in Old Testament times, and a construction of the law according to the letter that in severity far exceeded the discipline of the Middle Ages. Among the Puritans of North America this discipline went so far as to place every detail of private life under police regulations; any one who stayed away from public worship was punished with flogging and with the pillory, and mothers were forbidden even to kiss their babies on the Sabbath.{10} With the rise of Rationalism in the Protestant Church, the outward practice of religion decayed more and more, and the sense of spiritual union and of the universal priesthood completely lost its religious and social significance.
At the present time there is great diversity of opinion amongst Protestants on the subject of the Church and the meaning of ecclesiastical authority. Kaftan and other positive theologians wish to have a free Church as a counterpart to the community of the State, such a Church to have a constitution, government, and discipline of her own. Others think that the only way to put an end to the present ambiguous state of affairs is to make the Church a mere department of the State, and to abolish every trace of independence in her organization. Extreme radicals interpret liberty of thought and conscience in such a way as to exclude all supervision of doctrine and all interference with preachers. Liberals consider some such measures indispensable, in order to banish destructive and erroneous doctrines from the teaching chair and the pulpit. Others, again, wish to subject preachers, but not professors of theology, to this sort of control. The cases of men like Jatho, Traub, etc., show, on the one hand, with appalling clearness, how urgent there is need for Protestant Christianity to be protected against unbridled freedom in teaching; but on the other hand, they enable us to see plainly that it is impossible to start from Protestant principles and organize an orderly system of doctrine and worship, and that every attempt to guard a religious community from disintegration by means of legislative and judicial measures, deserves to be described as "a piece of human legislation" with far more justice than do the Catholic rules governing faith and life.
{1} Cf. supra, p. 177, seq.
{2} Shakespeare says in Hamlet III, 2: "Purpose is but the slave to memory, of violent birth, but poor validity. . . . Most necessary 'tis, that we forget to pay ourselves what to ourselves is debt."
{3} Paulsen, Ethik, 6th ed., 134: "Melanchthon in his panegyric on Luther commends him for having delivered us from the paedagogia puerilis of the ancient Church. It is, however, not yet certain that religion can dispense with a paedagogia puerilia, which reminds us of it daily by means of little religioum exercises."
{4} Rom. xv. 1.
{5} Jentsch (Christentum und Kirche, p. 675) misunderstands the nature of men and the solidarity of society when he represents the commandment of the Church as binding only "upon such persons as, owing to their age or degree of culture, still require training." With regard to those who are "of age," he remarks that they must be left free to decide whether they will or will not comply with the commandments of the Church, which are for them, at the most, only expressions of her wishes.
{6} Thalhofer, Handbuch der Kath. Liturgik, Freiburg, 1883, I, 245.
{7} Is. II, 2, 3.
{8} S. theol., II, II, q. 120, a. 2
{9} According to Gallwitz (Christl. Welt, 1902, p. 201, etc.) the low value set upon attendance at divine worship gave rise to "habitual neglect of the same, which rests like a curse upon our parishes and has a deadening effect upon the naturally dull, indolent spirit of our rural population." Sell displays a strange obtuseness when he says that the Protestant Church was intended to be an institution for educating the people, and that with this intention the faith was offered to each individual for his free acceptance, but for membership of the Church it was enough for a man not publicly to renounce all connection with her (p. 228).
{10} Cf. A. Baumgartner, Stimmen aus Maria Laach, XIII, 42, etc.