He feels
himself full of love--except for the pope--of mysticism, and of a sort
of archaeological piety. He is learned and eloquent and wistful. Why
should he not remain in the church? Why should he not bring all its
cold and recalcitrant members up to his own level of insight?
The modernist, like the Protestants before him, is certainly justified
in contrasting a certain essence or true life of religion with the
formulas and practices, not all equally well-chosen, which have
crystallised round it. In the routine of Catholic teaching and worship
there is notoriously a deal of mummery: phrases and ceremonies abound
that have lost their meaning, and that people run through without even
that general devout attitude and unction which, after all, is all that
can be asked for in the presence of mysteries. Not only is all sense
of the historical or moral basis of dogma wanting, but the dogma
itself is hardly conceived explicitly; all is despatched with a stock
phrase, or a quotation from some theological compendium.
Ecclesiastical authority acts as if it felt that more profundity would
be confusing and that more play of mind might be dangerous. This is
that "Scholasticism" and "Mediaevalism" against which the modernists
inveigh or under which they groan; and to this intellectual barrenness
may be added the offences against taste, verisimilitude, and justice
which their more critical minds may discern in many an act and
pronouncement of their official superiors.
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