Chapter XV: Catholicism and Anglo-catholicism

BEFORE Jesus Christ came on earth religion was a national institution. The religion of the Egyptians, Persians, Babylonians, Greeks, and Romans was national; they all worshipped the national gods in the national way. Even the Jewish religion was national, but, according to many a glowing passage of the Old Testament, a great change was to take place in this respect when the Messias came. He would establish a universal kingdom, he would rule from sea to sea and from the river unto the ends of the earth; all kings would adore him, and all the nations of the earth would serve him. Jesus Christ himself foretold that his Gospel was to be preached in the whole world, that they would come from the east and the west and from the north and the south and sit down in the kingdom of God, and that penance and remission of sins would be preached to all nations. In his final charge to his Apostles he commanded them to teach all nations, to make disciples of all nations, to preach the Gospel to every creature. All that believed and were baptized would be saved. The Apostles were to be witnesses unto him even to the uttermost part of the earth. And so the middle wall of partition was broken down; the religion of Jesus Christ was not a national religion: it was a religion for all mankind; it was a universal, a Catholic religion.

Catholicity, then, was always a distinguishing mark of the Church founded by Jesus Christ. Christians were taught from the beginning to profess their faith in the Catholic Church. When heresies and schisms arose they were easily distinguished from the Church founded by Jesus Christ. They were particular, sectional: she was universal, Catholic. Schisms and sects were given the name of their founder; they were Donatist, Arian; or they took their name from some doctrine which they preached, like the Monophysites; or from the country where they lived, like the Cataphrygians: the Church founded by Jesus Christ was simply the universal, the Catholic Church. All through history it has been the same. In the sixteenth century Lutherans, Calvinists, Protestants separated from the Church, which always remained simply Catholic. Sometimes a sect would give itself the name of Catholic and Apostolic, but the world insisted on calling it Irvingite. When the Eastern Church went into schism it maintained that it was the whole Catholic Church, but still it called itself and was called by others the Orthodox Church. When Henry VIII and Elizabeth set up a new form of religion in England, it became known as the Church of England. An active section of the Church of England calls itself Catholic, and it would give much if it could induce others to do the same, but the most that the world will concede to them is to call them Anglo-Catholics. The simple name of Catholic is reserved for the old, historic, universal Church founded by Jesus Christ.

In the past, Anglo-Catholics have frequently protested against “the exclusive and arrogant usurpation of the name Catholic by the Church of Rome.” The last to do so was Bishop Gore, who devoted to this theme a course of sermons delivered in the Grosvenor Chapel, Mayfair, London. Father F. Woodlock, S.J., answered him in a course preached at Farm Street. This course has been published by Longmans with the title Constantinople, Canterbury, and Rome. Father Woodlock has no difficulty in showing that the Bishop is neither Catholic nor consistent. The Catholic doctrine about the Church is quite clear and precise, and it is founded on the teaching of our Lord himself. The Church is the pillar and ground of truth. As the Apostles and their successors were commanded to teach all the truths contained in the Gospel, so all who heard them were commanded, under pain of damnation, to believe all that the Apostles and their successors taught. He would guarantee their teaching; he would be with them in their teaching to the end of time; the powers of evil and of falsehood should never prevail against his Church. Those who heard their preaching heard him; those who despised them despised him and the Father who sent him. If anyone refused to hear the Church and preferred his own private judgement, he was to be treated as a heathen and a publican.

This is very different from Dr. Gore’s teaching. According to him there is no security that the Church of the New Covenant may not go wrong as the Church of the Old Covenant went wrong. Again and again the evidence shows that it has done so, he says. Throughout life it has been a principle with him that “to accept ecclesiastical authority in the face of the best judgement of his own reason would be an impossible treason against light.” That is not Catholic doctrine; it is not even orthodox Protestantism: it is flat rationalism. Bishop Gore claims the right to follow his own private judgement against the judgement of the Church, but if any of his hearers ventures to follow his own private judgement against that of some Anglo-Catholic leaders, he threatens them with the judgement of Christ !

One of the plainest things in the New Testament is that Jesus Christ taught with authority and required in his hearers absolute faith in and submission to his teaching. If any teacher was ever authoritative and dogmatic, Jesus Christ was. And yet Dr. Gore, who claims to be a Christian Bishop, and who undoubtedly is an able man, tells us that Christ “plainly desired that every man should think for himself’; that he “was strangely adverse to the dogmatic method,’ and that according to Christ “mere submission to dogmatic authority ” was a spirit to be discouraged. Truth to say, Catholicism and Anglo-Catholicism are poles apart even on first principles.