AN ILLUSION OF LIBERAL CATHOLICS

Now, true force, real power in the physical as in the moral order, consists in intensity rather than in extension. A greater volume of matter equally intense evidently produces a greater effect, not by reason of the increased volume, but by virtue of the augmented intensities contained in it. It is therefore a rule of sound mechanics to seek to increase the extension and number of forces, but always on the condition that the final result be a real augmentation of their intensities. To be content with an increase without consideration of the value of the increment is not only to accumulate fictitious force, but to expose the powers, with one does possess, to be paralyzed by the congestion of an unwieldy mass. The millions of Xeroxes constituted force of tremendous extension, but they were of no avail against the vigorous intensity of the Greek three hundred at Thermopylae.

Faith possesses a power of its own which it communicates to its friends and defenders. It is not they who give the truth power, but truth which charges them with its own vigor. This on the condition that they use that power in its defense.

If the defender, under the pretext of better defending the truth, begins to mutilate it, minimize it, to attenuate it, then he is no longer defending the truth. He is simply defending his own invention, a mere human creation more or less beautiful in appearance, but having no relation to truth, the daughter of Heaven.

Such is the delusion of which many of our brethren are the unconscious victims through a detestable contact with Liberalism.

They imagine, with blinded good faith, that they are defending and propagating Catholicity. But by dint of accommodating it to their own narrow views and feeble courage, in order to make it, they say, more acceptable to the enemy, whom they wish to overcome, they do not perceive that they are no longer defending Catholicity but a thing of their own manufacture which they naively call Catholicity, but which (161) they ought to call by another name. Poor victims of selfdeception, who at the beginning of the battle, in order to win over the enemy wet their own powder and blunt the edge and the point of their swords! They do not stop to reflect that an edgeless and pointless sword is no longer a weapon but a useless piece of old iron, and that wet powder cannot be fired.

Their journals, their books, their discourses, veneered with Catholicity but bereft of its spirit and its life, have no more value in the cause of the faith than the toy swords and pistols of the nursery.

To an army of this kind, be it ten times as numerous as the multitudinous hosts of Xeroxes, a single platoon of wellarmed soldiers, knowing what they are defending, against whom they are contending, and with what arms they fight, in order to defend the truth, is preferable a thousand times over. This is the kind of soldiers we need. This is the kind who have always and will yet do something more for the glory of His Name. They go into the deadly, imminent breach and never flinch. No compromising, no minimizing with them. They plant their banner on the topmost height and form a solid, invincible phalanx around it, that not all the legions of earth and hell combined can budge a (162) single inch. They make no alliance, no compromise with a foe, whose single aim, disguised or open, is the destruction of the truth. They know the enemy is by nature implacable, and his flag of truce but a cunning device of treachery.

Of this we will become more and more convinced, if we consider that an alliance of this kind with a false auxiliary is not only useless to the good Christian in the midst of the combat, but moreover it is most of the time an actual embarrassment to him and favorable to the enemy. Catholic associations hampered in their onward march by such an alliance, will find themselves so impeded that free action becomes impossible. They will end by having all their energies crushed under a deadly inertia. To bring an enemy into the camp is to betray the citadel. It was not until the Trojans admitted the fatal wooden horse within the city walls that Illium fell. This combination of the bad with the good cannot but end in evil results. It brings disorder, confusion, suspicion, uncertainty to distract and divide Catholics, and all this to the benefit of the enemy and our disaster.

Against such a course la Civilta Cattolica, in some remarkable articles, has emphatically declared. Without the proper (163) precaution, it says, "associations of this kind (Catholic) run the certain danger, not only of becoming a camp of scandalous discord, but also of wandering away from their true principles to their own ruin and the great injury of religion." And this same review, whose authority is of the greatest possible weight, in regard to the same subject says: "With a prudent understanding, Catholic associations ought chiefly to take care to exclude from amongst themselves, not only those who openly profess the principles of Liberalism, but also those who have deceived themselves into believing that a conciliation between Liberalism and Catholicism is possible, and who are known as Liberal Catholics."

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