Rahner, Free speech in the church.pdf

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Today the Individual stands in greatdanger of having his dignity, freedomand integrity violated by organizationswhich forget that they exist for him, nothe for them. To help defend him theChurch must emphasize increasinglythe rights which are bound up with theduties of her own subjects. One of themost important is that of discussion andcriticism, indispensable in any maturesociety. In this book the function, scopeand limitations of public opinion in theChurch are discussed with honesty, skilland an originality which is profoundlytraditional. Against the Church's ging freedom from the dubious socialprivileges of the past, Father Rahnersets the picture of the truly contempo-rary Catholic, who has a grown strongerthan ever in loyalty through the de-velopment of a truly adult capacityfor comment, discussion and personalinitiative. And it is with reference to thislively conception of the individualCatholic that he boldly discusses in thesecond section of this book the pros-pects of Christianity today a prospectin which Father Rahner, with his pene-trating analysis, finds hope and en-couragement, not despite the obstacleswhich confront the Church, but pre-cisely because of the challenges pre-sented by the modern world.


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KANSAS CITY, MO. PUBLIC LIBRARY

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282 Rl48f 65-05258RahnerFree speech in the Church

282 Rl48f 65-05238Rahner $2,75Free speech in the Church

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FREE SPEECHIN" THECHURCH

SE__ .,..1965


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FREESPEECHINTHECHURCH

Karl Rahnerj S.J.

SHEED & WARD - T^ew York


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SHEED AND WARD, LTD., 1959

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER 60-7313

NIHIL OBSTAT: ADRIANUS VAN VLIET,S.T.D. CENSOR DEHJTATUS

IMPRIMATUR: E. MORROGH BERNARDVic. GEN.

WESTMONASTERII, DIE 26A OCTOBRIS, 1959

The N/M Obstat and Imprimatur are adeclaration that a book or pamphlet isconsidered to be free from doctrinal ormoral error. It is not implied that thosewho have granted the Nthil Obstat andImprimatur agree with the contents,

opinions or statements expressed.

This book is a translation of Das jrete Won m der Kirche,published by Johannes-Verlag, Einsiedeln.

MANUFACTURED4 IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA


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CONTENTSFREE SPEECH IN THE CHURCH 9THE PROSPECT FOR CHRISTIANITY 53

KWSAS CITY (MO.) PUBLIC LIBRARY


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FREE SPEECHIN THECHURCH


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THIS SUBJECT is simply a subdivision of a far widergeneral topic the question of the position and func-tion of the laity within the Church, both in the generalcontext of Catholic Action, and in the light of theindividual Christian's responsibility for the Church'smission today and the way he co-operates in it. Now,any serious consideration of a matter of one's rightsmust turn inevitably into a discussion of the dutiesthat lie behind the rights, When the subject under dis-cussion is the individual layman's right to express hisown opinion within the Church, then this resolvesitself ultimately into a demand that the individuallayman shall become aware, not so much of any privi-lege he may have in this matter, as of his duty to feela personal responsibility for the Church's officialactivity.

I should like to approach my subject by way of aslight detour, beginning with the question as to


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FREE SPEECH IN THE CHURCHwhether there is, might be, or ought to be any suchthing within the Church as a "public opinion" aphrase used, incidentally, by the late Pope Pius XII.Even in the secular domain of state, society and

the community of nations, public opinion is a highlyproblematical thing. It is not easy to define; it isfrequently guided, and distorted, by powers that arevery far from "public" in fact is often "made" bythe State Itself. It is subject to all the shortsightednessand the blind passions of the masses and the "spirit ofthe age". Nor is it clear at first sight why the opinionsof a large number of people, of "the public", shouldbe sounder or better for the people and the Stateas a whole than the opinions of a few; unless one isprepared to cherish the optimistic view that there aremore wise men than fools in the world, and that thecelebrated "man in the street" is a model of wisdomand probity. Nevertheless, clearly such a thing aspublic opinion exists in the lives of states and peoples;it has its particular function to play in them, and itmust be taken into account by a government when itmakes its decisions.

Is there anything corresponding to this in the life ofthe Church and, furthermore, should there be? Cer-tainly not, as far as the actual phrase "public opinion"

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FREE SPEECH IN THE CHURCHis concerned. This phrase has never been known beforein the history of the Church not even in the dayswhen the reality was playing a part in the lives ofstates and cities. But a thing can be there, even whenit has no name: a new concept can be tacked on to anold reality. Now, there is no reason why the new con-cept should bring into disrepute the old reality towhich it has attached itself; and furthermore, the newword may make the old reality clearer, and bring outits significance both theoretically and practically. Butat the same time it is obvious that an idea like thepresent one, which has been taken from the secularside of life indeed, is typically modern in its deriva-tion must be used carefully and in a merely anal-ogous sense when it is applied in the quite differentsphere of the sacred. However, if it is true that thereare ultimately no concepts in the sphere of religionwhich do not finally derive from this earth; if theChurch herself is "visible", possessing an aspect com-prehensible in human terms, indeed, even a law akinto a secular code, although this fact in no way mili-tates against her heavenly origin; if Catholic theologyhas always held firmly to the principle that the visibleaspect of the Church can and must be described"analogously" in terms of the human law; then the

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FREE SPEECH IN THE CHURCHmere secular origin of the concept of public opinioncannot be a reason for us not to enquire into the possi-bility of ''public opinion3 ' within the Church.At first sight it might seem that such a thing as

public opinion would be utterly impossible in theCatholic Church. Not that anyone with the least ac-quaintance with Church history, in both its holy andits unholy aspects, could deny the actual fact of itsexistence and activity within the Church. It goeswithout saying that the decisions of the Church aremade by the men in the Church, even though theirhuman activities are held in the grasp of the divineSpirit. Clearly, too, these men, notwithstanding theleading and prompting of the Holy Spirit, will behave

for both good and ill as children of their age. Norcan it be gainsaid that to be a child of one's age is tobe influenced, consciously or unconsciously, by thepublic opinion of one's age. This remains true, evenwhen a churchman imagines himself to be defendingthe rights and teachings of God and the Church bybraving public opinion and acting in diametricalopposition to it. In such a case a man can in fact bein a state of dependence sometimes fatal dependenceupon public opinion: God and the truth can often

remain remarkably remote from parties formed in12


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FREE SPEECH IN THE CHURCHsuch a way. In short: The mere fact of the existenceof a public opinion within the Church will be ques-tioned by no one. But not everything that existswithin the Church has a right to exist, when judgedby the Church's true nature and purpose; so that it isstill quite possible for anyone to question the right ofthis public opinion to exist, even though it does in factexist.We might say, for instance, "Public opinion isone of the ways in which the people's will expressesitself in secular society. In a democratic state thepeople's will governs the decisions made by the Gov-ernment, and for this reason public opinion has a rightto exist and to be respected there. But is this so withinthe Church? The Church's authority comes from thegrace of God, not from the people. It derives ulti-mately from a divine ordinance, not from a popularelection. The laws governing her behaviour aregrounded in an unchanging, everlasting constitutiongranted her by our Lord himself. Essentially, for allher historical development, and though involved in somany ways with the external forces which determinesecular history, she is not a product of the changingforces of this secular history but something foundedonce and for all by God himself, to last until the end

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FREE SPEECH IN THE CHURCHof time. The ultimate, decisive forces behind heractivity, in the varying conditions of history in whichshe lives, derive not from men but from the Spiritwho has been promised her as the everlasting vitalprinciple of all she does. What place is there, then, forpublic opinion in such a society?"And yet there can and should be such a thing aspublic opinion within the Church. I shall try to showwhy this must be so later. For the moment it will besufficient to support this assertion by a reference tothe Church's teaching authority. In an address to thosetaking part in an International Catholic Press Congress(reported in the Qsservatore Romano of 18 February,1950) , the late Pope Pius XII said:

Public opinion plays a part in every normal societyof human beings . . .wherever there is no expressionof public opinion, above all, where it has been ascer-tained that no public opinion exists, then one isobliged to say that there is a fault, a weakness, a sick-ness, in the social life of that area. . . . Finally, Ishould like to add a word about public opinionwithin the fold of the Church about things that canbe left open to discussion, of course. Only people whoknow little or nothing about the Catholic Churchwill be surprised to hear this. For she too is a living

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FREE SPEECH IN THE CHURCHbody, and there would be something missing from herlife if there were no public opinion within her, a de-fect for which pastors as well as the faithful would beresponsible. . . .

First, a few reflections by way of commentary onthese words spoken by the Church's supreme teacher.The words themselves come from a speech made notabout the subject of this essay, but about the nature ofpublic opinion and the need for it in the secular sphereof states and societies, and it is only in the closingsection of the address that the subject of this essayis briefly mentioned. But there is no mistaking itsassertion of the need for a public opinion within theChurch, and its justification of the existence of suchpublic opinion. Any denial of such an activity withinthe Church is said to be based on an insufficiency, oreven a complete absence, of knowledge about theChurch. The existence of a public opinion is justifiedby the fact that the Church is a society of humanbeings and that human societies essentially involvepublic opinion. Any attempt to stifle it would be amistake, for which both clergy and laity would beheld responsible. We must not, of course, overstatethe binding power of these words of the Pope's, madein a speech to a congress which was not even pub-


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FREE SPEECH IN THE CHURCHlished in the Church's official organ, the Ada Apos-tolicae Sedis. We should not ascribe to them a doctrinalauthority to which they have no claim. In addresseslike this the Pope does not normally intend to settlecontroversial questions, but rather, in his capacityof ordinary teacher of the Church, to re-emphasizetruths which seem to him self-evident and beyondargument.But it is precisely because of this that the Pope'swords are of so much interest. Looking at the thingfrom the historical point of view, it would indeed befair to say that fifty years ago, at about the time ofPius X's Syllabus, such a statement i.e. the unhesi-tating admission, as something self-evident, of theexistence (and the fully justified existence) of apublic opinion within the Church would haveseemed far less indisputable. In fact, one would hardlyhave expected it then from the lips of a pope. Notthat Christian truth changes with changes in itsenemies; but inevitably, the front on which theChurch has to defend that truth must change as newaspects of this unchanging truth, whose plenitudeshe always possesses, emerge more fully into her ownconsciousness. Thus, in an age of liberalism and scien-tific "freedom" and so on, the emphasis had to be laid

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FREE SPEECH IN THE CHURCHon the God-given nature of the Church's teachingauthority. In an age of totalitarian states, when indi-viduality is suppressed and "ideology" supplied, theChurch has to delimit her position more clearly, toprevent her own character and nature from beingconfused with those of a totalitarian state. She willnow have to come down more firmly on the side ofthe individual's responsibility and freedom both inhis secular and his religious life. She will have to say,for example as she has not said in so many wordsbefore that there is and should be such a thing aspublic opinion within the Church, thereby making itclear that the Church is not a totalitarian religiousstate, no matter what so many people outside theChurch may think and say to the contrary.What sort of a thing is public opinion, as it existswithin the Church? In its secular sense "publicopinion" includes all the manifestations of the mindand will of the people composing a given society, inso far as these opinions and wishes are, on the onehand, shared by the majority of the people i.e., arenot entirely individual and, on the other, do notfind direct expression through legally constitutedchannels such as Parliament and so on. One mighttherefore be tempted to speak of a public opinion

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FREE SPEECH IN THE CHURCHas existing within the Church whenever the viewsand aspirations of her members develop and find ex-pression, not under the leadership and authority ofthe Hierarchy but, in the first place at least, side byside with the functions of these "official" powers ofthe Hierarchy. But this would still be too wide a con-ception of the matter. For there are in fact in theCatholic idea of the Church certain elements whoseembodiment is in the "Church taught" but whichnevertheless cannot be included under the heading of"public opinion" within the Church, even thoughthey are common knowledge to all the Catholiclaity.The Church's life is sustained not only by the ini-

tiative, orders or instructions of ecclesiastical author-ity, but also, though it is still under the directionof the Hierarchy, by the charisms of the Holy Spirit,who can 'breathe upon whomsoever he will in theChurch even the poor, the children, those who are"least in the Kingdom of God" and infuse his ownimpulses into the Church in ways that no one canforetell. The "Church taught" has its own under-standing of the Faith, its own kind of "infallibility"in the sense that not only the teaching Church butthe "Church taught", as a whole, will always remain

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FREE SPEECH IN THE CHURCHwithin the orbit of divine truth, safe under the powerof the Holy Spirit. All those manifestations of strictlysupernatural powers and gifts and inspirations, whichthe Holy Spirit, soul of the Church, is always infusinginto God's holy people, are better kept out of whatmust always be in certain respects the secular idea of''public opinion5'; they belong to a higher level ofexistence than anything this idea usually implies. Nor,for this reason, shall I make any reference in whatfollows to that freedom of speech which speciallycharacterizes those mystics and others who havea special mission from the Holy Spirit or in any wayare endowed with a special charism. A subject so im-portant would need separate treatment.But when all this has been excluded, there is still

place in the Church for what can truly be called pub-lic opinion. Divine though the Church may be inorigin in her constitution and doctrine, her sacra-ments and her law she has an earthly existence too:she has her own jus humanum, forms of spirituality,liturgy, care of souls, moral behaviour, administra-tion, societies, organizations, etc., which to some ex-tent, though not exclusively, express the fluctuating,predominantly natural conditions of the day. TheChurch has always to be adapting her actual existence

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FREE SPEECH IN THE CHURCHto contemporary conditions, and these, often far re-moved from her direct influence, are simply so many"facts", which she must take into account. But it isnot always an easy matter to know what in fact arethese conditions which form the life and work of theChurch. They are very often not simply "facts", butare things made up of the desires, feelings, emotions,worries, and so on, of human beings of human beingswho could no doubt be different from what they are,but who are in fact what they are now. What theyare now is in many cases the result of free choice bymen who "theoretically" (but only "theoretically")could have come to different decisions; but theseother decisions could not in all cases be dictated tothem.

Moreover, all these "preconditions" are extraor-dinarily varied and many-sided; they change with thepeople concerned, with time and place; the changesmay take place very quickly, frequently seeming tocontradict each other; in fact, they often do so. Inshort, knowledge of these preconditions to which thelife of the Church has to adapt itself is no easy matter,but something to be struggled for and won over andover again. It is here that public opinion within theChurch has its true field of activity. From this point

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FREE SPEECH IN THE CHURCHof view it is simply the manifestation of the actualsituation, which the Church leaders have to befamiliar with and take into account and they canonly do this through the people who are living in thesituation, who have to live their lives in it as Christiansand members of the Church, and thus work out theirsalvation. Public opinion within the Church, one maytherefore say, exists to make plain what people in theChurch are really feeling, so that the Church leaderscan take account of this in their own action. As hasbeen said above, the "situation" includes a great dealthat is the result of voluntary activity and voluntarydecisions. A particular Church ordinance or customcan be felt in this way or that. But it is important toknow how it is actually felt. For instance, it is theo-retically possible for the liturgy for Holy Saturday tobe celebrated with the utmost piety in the morning,the worshippers overlooking the fact that it is actuallystill Saturday morning and not the Easter vigil. Butthe kind of thing the clergy need to know is whetherpeople do in fact feel this way about it, or whetherthey simply will not do so, even with good (thoughwithout absolutely compelling) grounds for suchaction. And in matters of free choice men's thoughtsand feelings should not be prescribed for them. The

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FREE SPEECH IN THE CHURCHway people actually feel about such things must betaken into account as the ''situation" in which the offi-cial Church must take her appropriate action. Thismay seem a fairly obvious thing to say, but like manyother obvious things it is often overlooked in practice.Public opinion is thus one of the means whereby theChurch's official leaders, who need human aid as well asdivine, get to know something about the actual situa-tion within which, and taking due account of which*they are to lead and guide the people. They need toknow how people are thinking and feeling, what theyhave set their hearts and wishes on, what their problemsare, what they find difficult, in what respects their feel-ings have changed, where they find the traditional an-swers or rulings insufficient, what they would like to seechanged (even if the change is not strictly necessary) ,and so on. The greater the number of people involved,the more complex their relationships, the more diversetheir mentalities, the more difficult it is to obtain thisknowledge of the situation, and, therefore, the greaterthe need for a public opinion.

In a sense there has always been a kind of publicopinion within the Church. All the "movements" thathave taken place in the course of the Church's historyare in the last resort so many precursors of the de~

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FREE SPEECH IN THE CHURCHvelopment and final emergence of this kind of publicopinion, even though they were of course more thanthat. Nevertheless the phrase "public opinion" should,in the strict sense, perhaps only be applied to thosecases where individuals, believing themselves to be themouthpieces of a hitherto unexpressed point of view,come out in public and address the masses as publicists,by way of books, newspapers and public speeches, andso give expression to public opinion and at the sametime help to create it. This situation is only possibleand necessary at any rate in the secular spherewhere, as recently, there is a large mass of people in-volved, making the analysis of the situation difficult.Only in such conditions does it become necessary forindividual opinions, for what seem at first sight nomore than individual wishes and aspirations, to bemade known to the general public, that their reactionmay determine whether it is simply a case of the in-significant views of an individual or whether some-thing more is involved. In general, therefore, we canonly speak of a "public opinion" when we can observethe public's reaction to the views and attitudes of anindividual. But if the situation can only be satisfac-torily known in this way, then it will be necessary, orat least useful, to give public opinion a chance to de-

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FREE SPEECH IN THE CHURCHvelop, by allowing the individual to address the gen-eral public.The fact that this holds true in Church mattersalso means that, to a certain extent, the individualwithin the Church must be allowed to address theChurch community in general as a publicist notonly to make direct representations to the Hierarchy.The authorization or right to do this is not in the lastanalysis the same as the "democratic" right to expressany wish or idea of no matter what kind; from thepoint of view of the Hierarchy it is simply a useful,and in certain circumstances a necessary, way of get-ting to know the actual situation. To put it ratherfrivolously, it allows the individual to talk his head offoccasionally, so that one can judge from the wayothers react whether he is really saying anything ofany general concern. Thus, in so far as this is the onlyway in which the official Church leaders can obtainadequate knowledge of the situation and today thisis very largely the case to that extent they mustallow and indeed encourage the kind of "publicity"that leads to the growth and expression of publicopinion. This expression and formation of publicopinion cannot in all or even the majority of cases bethe effect of guidance and inspiration by the Holy


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FREE SPEECH IN THE CHURCHSpirit, or any intelligence superior to the individual's,as is often too optimistically supposed in the secularsphere. Its justification is simply that this is the solemeans of discovering what is really going on. If thereis any real desire to know the current situationspiritual, psychological, social, etc. then Catholicsmust be allowed (within the limits already laid down)to talk their heads off. Anyone who thinks today hereally knows what is going on, without the aid of thismeans of information, will very often find himself tobe most lamentably mistaken. From this point ofview, public opinion is the means a useful and, inthese days, to some extent an indispensable meanswhereby the Church authorities can get an all-roundview of the actual situation.

It is well for us to bear in mind the fact that, inthe sphere in which this public opinion has a partto play, Church authorities have no gift of infal-libility, however much they may be helped and sup-ported by the Holy Spirit. It is always possible to makemistakes, to shilly-shally, to lag far behind the con-temporary historical situation all these things arepossible. The clergy possessing official jurisdictionwithin the Church often have, it is true, a wider viewof the real condition of the world and of men's


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FREE SPEECH IN THE CHURCHspiritual and intellectual life as a result of their inde-pendent position, their remoteness from the pressuresof secular activity, their deeper roots in Church tradi-tion. Yet it is also true that they are not infrequentlyin danger, for the same reasons, of knowing onlya limited, merely "clerical" and traditionally shelteredsegment of real life and the real position. If theydo not allow the people to speak their minds, donot, in more dignified language, encourage or eventolerate, with courage and forbearance and even a cer-tain optimism free from anxiety, the growth of a pub-lic opinion within the Church, they run the risk ofdirecting her from a soundproof ivory tower, insteadof straining their ears to catch the voice of God, whichcan also be audible within the clamour of the times.The above should not only have made clear the

meaning of, and the need for, a public opinion withinthe Church, but also the real subject of this essay theindividual's, and above all the layman's, right to freespeech within the Church, which we have already beendiscussing. This freedom is an essential part of anypublic opinion, and thus shows up its fundamentaldifference from the kind of opinion allowed in totali-tarian states. This means that the freedom of the indi-vidual must by no means be regarded as being re-

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FREE SPEECH IN THE CHURCHstricted to a merely private sphere, with no bearingon the community life of the Church: on the con-trary, it has a real place in her public life.Now that this has been established, we can go onto the more difficult question of the limitations thatare to be set to this public opinion, and also the con-crete forms it can take in actual practice. It is clear,to begin with, that there can be no discussion of any-thing that comes into conflict with the Church'sdogma and her divinely willed constitution, jurisdivini. Even democracies give no place or recognitionto aspirations that deny their own essential nature. Theonly proper objects of public opinion within theChurch are Church matters. An ever-watchful eye iskept on these by priests and theologians, who havelong since developed the proper organs for exertingtheir authority censorship, the supervision of teach-ing activities within the Church, official Church pro-nouncements and so on but it must be rememberedin this connection that there is always a strong tend-ency to narrow down far too closely the range of whatparts of the Faith can legitimately be discussed. Anysuch narrowing-down does not in fact help to keepthe Faith strong and secure; instead, discussion aboutthe questions concerned drifts far beyond the general


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FREE SPEECH IN THE CHURCHCatholic public into regions much harder to keep aneye on, and "cryptogam" heresies

1 arise. Thus a certaindegree of freedom of public opinion is necessary evenin questions of theology, and the Church has in factalways insisted that she wishes to preserve this free-dom and a free exchange of views between the variousschools. It would likewise be a mistake to recognize theright of this freedom to exist only in those cases whereit has already to a certain extent been expressly ac-knowledged by the Church's teaching office, i.e., whenold scholastic problems are being treated for the nthtime and freedom to discuss them has been expresslygiven to the parties concerned. The same freedommust also be allowed when questions are being raisedand views expressed for which there is no previousguarantee that such and such a comment may bemade, or even such and such a subject discussed. Inthese cases, of course, i.e., when a real theological issueis at stake which has not been decided once and for allby the Church's teaching authority, and when theviews put forward cannot be accepted in advance asbeing at least "safe" (tuta)^ the Church's teaching

1 Cf. "Ein Gestaltwandel der Haresie", in K. Rattner, Gefabrenzm heutigen Katholizismus, Johannes Verlag, Einsiedeln, 1950,series Christ Heute.

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FREE SPEECH IN THE CHURCHauthority can naturally and quite justifiably makeclear to the Catholic public generally that some par-ticular opinion has gone beyond the bounds of what ispermissible.

But even in such cases as these it should be as-sumed unless there is proof to the contrary thatthe theologian concerned has acted in good faith inmaking use of his right to present his views to the gen-eral Catholic public. Such a theologian has in the lastanalysis only performed the function of public opin-ion as outlined above. He has given the Church officialsthe opportunity of acquainting themselves with thespiritual currents of their time (which would still bethere, even if the offending expressions of them hadnever been made) and of clarifying their own attitudeto them. It is very seldom that the Church's teachingauthority is simply called upon to repeat platitudes,which any theologian might be expected to know allabout anyway. In any case, theologians who have ex-pressed their views in a clear and honest fashion tendto be afected far more deeply by such negative reac-tions than do those who put forward the same views,or far "worse" ones, "cryptogamically", and theformer should therefore be treated with all thecourtesy that befits an honourable opponent in a

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FREE SPEECH IN THE CHURCHspiritual battle, even when he is the "loser". And oncethe spiritual authority has spoken, the persons not af-fected should refrain from pointing the finger ofscorn at those under censure, as if they themselvesalways knew better. The class of persons that alwaysknow better seldom contribute anything towards asolution of the problems which have brought theothers to grief.The limits which are to be set, in actual concretecases, to the free expression of opinion within theChurch will always be to a certain extent a matter ofjudgement, and the last word in such cases must liewith the Church authorities. Anyone who has spentany time studying Church history will readily agreethat again and again and this is quite consonantwith the infallibility of Church doctrine and thesupport given to the pastoral office by the Holy Ghost

these limits have been set a little too narrowly.There is no need for any examples of this to be men-tioned here. Thus public opinion can also perform theuseful function of allowing a frank and sincere dis-cussion of the actual limits of public opinion. There isanother point worth noting about these theologicalquestions: the more the theological debates are of aprofessional scientific kind, pursued for the benefit

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FREE SPEECH IN THE CHURCHof a narrow specialized public, the more remote thedanger becomes of any undesirable influence affectingthe vast mass of the laity through this kind of freediscussion: the more "academic", in fact, the discus-sion becomes, the less cause for suspicion and alarmis there in the growth of a limited expression of generalopinion. It is true that today, when people find it soeasy to hear about every type of question, and likediscussing everything under the sun, it is more difficultthan it used to be to separate this academic "forum"from the open market of public opinion. Nevertheless,even today it can still be useful to ask whether or notthe right moment has in fact arrived for saying orwriting something which at another time would berightly regarded as out of place and rightly call fortha justified reaction from the Church authorities.

In other questions which do not affect, or do notdirectly affect, the Church's unchanging deposit offaith and her divinely ordained constitution, but areconcerned with the jus humanum in the Church, hervarying practices in the matter of the liturgy, thecare of souls, politics, etc., public opinion has a stillmore vital function to perform within the Church,and hence a still greater right to freedom. At this levelany form of "top secret" government would be a

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FREE SPEECH IN THE CHURCHreally great danger. It is true, of course, that In thesematters too the authority of the Church has the lastword, and when something is made binding or is for-bidden it is simply part of the layman's duty to obeythese ordinances and prohibitions. It is also his dutyto see that not only the form but also the content ofthese ordinances and prohibitions (i.e., what is "meri-torious" in them) is not discussed publicly in such away that their observance is vitiated. But it seemsnecessary to add here that it by no means foUows thatall discussion of the appropriateness and opportune-ness of existing ordinances, practices and so on in theChurch should be for this reason ruled out, or carriedon, so far as the general public is concerned, behindclosed doors.

In our own day, for instance, there can be opendiscussion as to whether there would be some point ina reform of the Breviary, or even whether there shouldbe a modification of the Mass itself. Can there be anyquestion that this could have taken place decades ago,even though permission for such a discussion if onlyunofficial permission had not expressly encouragedpeople to embark on it? Would it have been such abad thing if a few words could have been found oc-casionally in Catholic newspapers on the subject of the

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FREE SPEECH IN THE CHURCHawful complexity of the rules about fasting beforeHoly Communion, which have not always seemed topreserve the real spirit of this ordinance of theChurch? Could not the housing and dress and cus-toms of the various orders be discussed more franklyand openly (in the appropriate journals which doesnot by any means mean all of them) than has beenthe case for a long time now, despite the fact thateveryone realizes that a good deal of discussion andreform is needed in this matter? Are there not largegroups of people amongst what is on the whole a fairlyloyal body of laymen who privately deplore many ofthe educational methods in use in Catholic institutesand monastic establishments and yet never say a wordabout it in public and never will, wrongly imaginingthat they never may? The fact is that reforms of thiskind naturally often need the pressure of publicopinion if they are not to be stifled by tradition. Evenin the higher reaches of the Church, people can believethat all is well because no complaints and no wishes forany sort of change have been heard, or because if theyhave they seem to be simply isolated views with noweight of public opinion behind them. The examplesmentioned above, it should be added, are of a purelyarbitrary kind; nevertheless they may suffice to illus-


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FREE SPEECH IN THE CHURCHtrate what is meant by saying that in this sphere publicopinion within the Church should have a wide and nottoo narrowly circumscribed field of activity.

Views about the limits to be set to the expressionsof this public opinion and the forms it should take willnaturally vary considerably when it comes to actualpractice. This is bound to happen, because the actualfeelings of the various peoples and groups within theChurch differ enormously. Some will take some par-ticular expression of opinion as a matter of course,while others will regard it as a tactless criticism, utterlylacking in respect, of Church ordinances and customs.Some will feel frustrated, fearing that pronounce-ments and explanations always get put off until it isalmost too late for them to be of any use. They willfeel that a thing is only allowed when in fact it canno longer be stopped, when even the official repre-sentatives of the Church have become such childrenof their own age (but already almost out of date)that the thing they finally sanction and approve is afait accompli, whereas if it had been allowed earlierit would have been the sign of a really liberating andredeeming attitude. Others will regard exactly thesame thing as a destructive attack upon sanctifiedtraditions which have established themselves through

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FREE SPEECH IN THE CHURCHthe wisdom of centuries and proved themselves bylong practice to be sound and rich in blessings. Exactlythe same sort of criticism may be in one case benefi-cial, or at least harmless, and in another have all theunfortunate consequences expected of it, encouragingan attitude of blasphemy and private rebellion.The position here is like that in different families:in one the children are allowed to criticize thingsopenly and to express their own desires and com-plaints, and yet at the same time are most devotedand obedient children, whereas in another this free-dom might undermine the parents' authority abso-lutely and in practice be a real threat to theirultimate right of decision. Obviously this depends onthe way the children have been brought up. Whenthey have been encouraged from their earliest days tovoice their own desires and wishes quite frankly andyet at the same time have been brought up in a properspirit of obedience, a frank exchange of views betweenthem and their parents can do nothing but good andwill never be regarded by either side as being imperti-nence or destructive criticism. But if they have beenbrought up to listen and obey, on the assumption thattheir parents' word is law; if, even when they aregrown-up, they have to behave as though they could

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FREE SPEECH IN THE CHURCHnever have any views of their own; then any suddenpermission to criticize will in fact undermine theauthority of their parents. From this simple analogy -and it is no more, of course it can be said, so far asour own problem here is concerned, that the peoplein the Church (young men in Holy Orders, the laityand so on) must be brought up in a responsible spiritof obedience and be able to make proper use of theirright to express their opinions. They must learnthat this right to express their own views and to crit-icize others does not mean licence to indulge in savageattacks and arrogant presumption. They must bebrought up in a proper critical spirit towards Churchmatters, not finding it necessary to rave about any-thing that happens to be in favour in the Church atthe moment as though it were the ultimate end ofwisdom, and yet able to unite this frame of mind witha humble and at the same time dignified habit ofobedience. They must learn to unite the inevitabledetachment of a critical public attitude with a gen-uine and inspired love of the Church and a gen-uine subordination and submission to the actual officialrepresentatives of the Church. They must learn thateven in the Church there can be a body something likeHer Majesty's Opposition, which in the course of


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FREE SPEECH IN THE CHURCHChurch history has always had its own kind of saintsin its ranks the ranks of a genuine, divinely-willedopposition to all that is merely human in the Churchand her official representatives.They must learn and this is not just a matter of

course, but means a serious effort of education thatthere are circumstances in which people can have areal duty to speak their minds within the permittedlimits and in a proper spirit of respect, even thoughthis will not bring them praise and gratitude "fromabove" (how many examples there are of this in thehistory of the saints!). They must also learn that itcan be God's will for them to live for a time, as New-man said, "under a cloud", because they represent aspirit out of the ordinary which comes from the HolySpirit. They must learn to unite all this with a frank,simple, natural and utterly unlegalistic spirit of obed-ience and a ready good-will towards the Church'sofficial representatives. Ultimately no formal rule canbe laid down as to how to achieve a concrete synthesisof what are apparently such opposing virtues. It willcome about only when people truly seek, not theirown will and opinions and self-justification, but thewill of God and the Church ultimately, in fact,when people are saints.

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FREE SPEECH IN THE CHURCHWe are living during a period of transition, which

means, so far as our present question Is concerned,at a time when certain outward forms which haveso far been useful or at least have existed for a longtime are now proving themselves less useful and ef-fective in promoting Church authority. Thereforea somewhat greater range of expression of publicopinion is allowable, assuming that the spiritual atti-tude of Catholics is such that it can bear this greaterfreedom without detriment to their spirit of obedi-ence. Apart from anything else, the Church todayshould be more careful than ever before not to giveeven the slightest impression that she is of the sameorder as those totalitarian states for whom outwardpower and sterile, silent obedience are everything andlove and freedom nothing, and that her methods ofgovernment are those of the totalitarian systems inwhich public opinion has become a Ministry of Propa-ganda. But we both those of us who are in authorityand those who are under authority are perhaps stillaccustomed here and there to certain patriarchalforms of leadership and obedience which have noessential or lasting connection with the real stuff ofChurch authority and obedience. When this is so,Church authorities may see even a justifiable expres-sion of frank opinion about Church matters as camou-

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FREE SPEECH IN THE CHURCHflaged rebellion, or resentment against the ChurchHierarchy. Even those not in authority may dislikesuch free expression, because they are accustomed tothe old traditional ways.

In such transitional periods there are many ques-tions of a practical kind which will need a long timefor their solution, and the really contemporary waysin which public opinion is to manifest itself withinthe Church are still to be found. Patience is necessaryon both sides. The Church authorities must be patient,not regarding every frank expression of opinion orcriticism as an attack upon themselves or on essentialChurch principles and institutions, or as an attemptto outvote them and their decisions. Those undertheir authority must be patient, not giving the im-pression that they regard every admonition fromabove as an out-and-out attack upon free expressionwithin the Church or as an absolute denial of theright of public opinion to exist within the Church.What conclusions may now be drawn from whathas been said, with particular regard to the matter of

the layman's actual behaviour within the Church?In the first place, the layman still has in this respect

a duty an old duty, but always needing to be re-emphasized to educate himself in religious and theo-logical matters up to a decent level, corresponding

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FREE SPEECH IN THE CHURCHto his intellectual level in other fields. He has his ownkind of responsibility for the Church as a whole andfor her concrete activity in the world of time. He iscalled upon to play his part and live up to his re-sponsibilities in helping to create a state of publicopinion within the Church. He is not just there tobe given orders and to act as a silent, obedient servant.He can do his full duty as a member of the Church,thinking and working hand in hand with all theothers and so sharing in the Church's public life, onlyif he really knows something. He must know what hisChurch teaches. He must have a deep-rooted knowl-edge of where the fixed boundaries of his faith lie. Hemust not be left open to the sort of ideas and aspira-tions that would never have entered his head had hehad a better religious education and a deeper knowl-edge of the Church's teaching. He must know some-thing about Church history, so that he is not alwaysready to accept the latest thing, his own period'sdernier cri, as the end of all wisdom. He must, withincertain limits, know a very great deal. To begin with,he must have a really clear understanding of theChurch's official teaching about all those matterswhich, because of his position in life and his personalrelationships with others, concern him most inti-

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FREE SPEECH IN THE CHURCHmately. Lacking this, he will be in danger of imaginingthat he can further his own interests and his ownpersonal convictions only by adopting unreflec-tively, and therefore all the more potently and danger-ously a kind of "double-think", acting towardsheresies "cryptogamically", whilst at the same timekeeping in line officially with the Church and theoreti-cally acknowledging all her teaching. When a persondoes not know precisely what the Church teaches anddoes not teach, or to what degree any given item of herteaching is binding, then, even though he may want tobe a true member of the Church for thoroughlyworthy and indeed objectively valid reasons, he willbe in danger of taking any actual or probable decisionby the Church and "adopting it and turning it into alegal enactment", instead of understanding it fromwithin and making it part and parcel of his very being.He will, moreover, run another risk: instead of beingthe spokesman of a genuine public opinion and a gen-eral attitude within the Church, he may find himselfinvolved in a type of opinion and attitude that is farfrom public; that has in fact a subterranean elementof heresy, including a camouflaged resentment againstthe "Roman system" as people with that kind ofmentality like to call the true Church.


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FREE SPEECH IN THE CHURCHCatholics who want to take a real share in the de-

velopment of a public opinionwithin the Church

must live like true Christians and make the Church'scardinal mysteries the basis of their personal life. Therewill naturally be room for differences of opinion on allthe questions open to general discussion within theChurch. If there is, as there should be, a real publicopinion within the Church, not merely an unthinkingreflection of the Church's official views, a certain ten-sion is likely to exist around all those matters that aresubject to change and hence to free discussion. Unlesswe incorporate the Church's central truths and mys-teries into our own living and see that the Church ismost genuinely herself when she is proclaiming theGospel's good tidings about the grace of God and ad-ministering the Christian sacraments, we shall tend,when we see signs of this tension, to overestimate itssignificance. The Church as a historical phenomenonwill set our teeth on edge and this will be entirelyour own fault: and we shall partly, if not wholly, loseour inward joy in the Church and in the true lifewithin her. Yet our Lord is alive in the Church;through her we can receive his body and hear wordsof true forgiveness these and many other facts of alike kind are a thousand times more important thanfor instance the question as to whether the liturgy


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FREE SPEECH IN THE CHURCHof Holy Saturday should be celebrated in the morningor the evening, whether the Church shows herselfprogressive enough in word and deed over some minorsocial question, whether the latest pastoral letter strikesone as being sound and modern or antiquated andcreaking at the joints. It is only possible to combinethis right sense of proportion about Church matterswith the ability to share, calmly and constructively,in the development of a public opinion within theChurch and this without any resentment or bitter-ness or any indulgence in backbiting if one is reallyin touch with the vital sources at the heart of theChurch's supernatural activity.

Assuming that he fulfils these conditions, the lay-man must do all he can to make his own personalcontribution to the development of a public opinionwithin the Church, and its dissemination outside her.Anyone who fails to do this is laying himself open,and rightly, to criticism. One cannot limit one's sharein the life of the Church to going to Mass and receiv-ing the sacraments and then go on to criticize every-thing the Church says and does, especially aboutordinary social life. The layman should know hisparish priest. He should also know (and this does notmean he must become a "joiner") that there are cer-tain types of Church organization to which he is quite

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FREE SPEECH IN THE CHURCHrightly expected to belong. There is such a thing asthe Catholic Press, for instance. Now it seems doubt-ful whether this is always as good as it might be, butit will certainly never be any better than it is as longas people, educated Catholics in particular, simplyassume that it is beneath their dignity to read it andsupport it. If people have any complaints about theCatholic Press, they should make them known tothe people who can do something about it. And whenthe educated Catholic buys Catholic books, andbuys the right kind of Catholic books, he is partakingto some extent in a sort of general vote about them,helping in the organization and management of theCatholic book trade and at the same time promotingthe right kinds of books and getting rid of pious trash.

Writing to newspapers, magazines and book pub-lishers is perhaps not a Continental habit, but this doesnot necessarily mean that it is a foolish one or just akind of game. Assuming that the people who do itare sensible and that it is not simply a method of killingtime, writing to papers can be quite a good way ofgetting some sort of public opinion going. Again, howmany educated Catholics have ever written theirbishop a letter about a question that is worrying them?Probably very few. Is this because they have no con-

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FREE SPEECH IN THE CHURCHfidence in their bishop, or do they regard the Hier-archy as a sort of heavenly body from which the mostthat can be expected is an occasional pastoral letterto which it would be presumptuous to answer a wordof thanks or concern or objection? Such a responsewould assuredly be most gratefully received. The partplayed by the laity in parish life, in the parish's eco-nomic affairs, Church schools and such like, is fargreater in the Anglo-Saxon countries than it is insome parts of the Continent. Must this always be so?

There was a time when Catholic congresses andother customs of a like kind, whereby the Churchspoke in public, outside the range of the pulpit, wereorganized by Catholic laypeople with far more spon-taneous enthusiasm for the Kingdom of God thanthey are today. Couldn't this state of affairs berestored? Must these undertakings always give us theimpression of being simply an unavoidable drearyroutine? Some time ago a prominent layman com-plained in an Austrian magazine that the laity hadnot been consulted about the arrangements for theyearly mission. Whether this was so or not is not thepoint. If the laity could only make their views known(and they would, when asked) , it would undoubtedlybe very useful before such large-scale ventures took

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FREE SPEECH IN THE CHURCHplace. And why shouldn't the clergy make this a wayof finding out the kind of question

the laity regardas particularly urgent and want to hear discussedfrom the pulpit? Are there any Church organizations,or at any rate societies with some sort of Catholicbasis, that dare, or even think, to pass on their worriesand wishes and their queries about the part the Churchis playing in public life by way of suggestions tothe powers-that-be in the Church? One hopes thatthere are, but does this kind of thing happen often?

In the secular sphere there are bodies that go in formarket inquiries, Gallup polls and so on, and thoughit is true that salvation is not a matter of statistics,certainly not so far as the Catholic Church is con-cerned, nevertheless similar investigations in the reli-gious field might easily be very useful. But if ques-tionnaires of a rather more subtle kind, involvingmore than merely a count of heads in different parishes,are to lead to anything, ordinary Catholics, Catho-lics who know what life is and what the real conditionsof life are today, will have to learn to say what theythink. Recently an Austrian religious magazine madean inquiry of this kind into the question how manypeople were making use of what is known nowadays as"marriage guidance". Such results could be quite use-ful for priests. How many Catholics write to Catholic

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FREE SPEECH IN THE CHURCHpapers? The number is still far too small. Not thatordinary Catholics can be expected to know theirtheology better than priests; nor are priests quite sohidebound as many Catholics seem to think; further-more, ordinary Catholics should only speak aboutthese fundamental things when they have reallystudied the question and have something to say.Nevertheless the fact remains that questions of faith,questions in which the Church and religion are in-volved, are not esoteric matters in the face of whichlaymen must be seen and not heard. They shouldbe expected to join in too. But precisely for this reasonthey must do it properly, off their own bat. These arejust a few of the ways of helping to foster the growthof a public opinion within the Church, and otherscan easily be imagined: they will all provide an oppor-tunity for the ordinary Catholic to fulfil a personalduty, the duty of taking his own part in the Church'slife and missionary work.

There is one other point that may be mentioned, tobring these reflections to an end. In the course of theChurch's history there have, at different times, been anumber of different ways in which public opinion hasbeen able to make itself felt within the Church. Itexerted some sort of influence on the conduct of thehierarchy through such things as the share taken by

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FREE SPEECH IN THE CHURCHthe laity in the election of bishops and in nominatingthe rest of the clergy, in admitting people to baptismand reconciling repentant sinners; the right of patron-age; the rights of medieval and modern govern-ments with regard to the filling of bishoprics; andso on. But compared with the present-day expressionsof public opinion these old forms had one outstandingfeature: they were properly drawn up from the legalpoint of view and formed part of the layman's rightswithin the Church. They were of their time, of course,and were often bound up with irregularities: no onewould wish them back again exactly as they were;nevertheless, it is true to say that there is by com-parison very little, if any, recognized way in whichpublic opinion can make itself felt within the Churchtoday, according to modern canon law. This does notmean that there is no such thing as a public opinionwithin the Church. It would be quite wrong to saythat. But it would not be wrong to say that there arehardly any ways with the force of law behind themwhereby public opinion can operate within theChurch. Whether this is a pity or not is another ques-tion, which need not necessarily be answered in theaffirmative here. But at least the problem can be stated.

Today, we know, is the day of Catholic Action,48


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FREE SPEECH IN THE CHURCHwhen ordinary Catholics are meant to be sharing, tosome extent, the Church's duties and responsibilitieswith the official Hierarchy. Now, if this is not to re-main simply a matter of theory, an "ideal," but to be-come the fullest possible reality, it would seem torequire as also in the long run it would effect thegrowth of new, legally recognized ways, which todayhardly exist, if they exist at all, in which the laity couldco-operate with the clergy. The fact that these rightsdo not at present exist within the Church, either byjus divinmn or as a jus humanum, is no reason whythey should not do so again in the future. They mustalways of course remain within and dependent uponthe jus divinum of the Hierarchy and what is to a cer-tain extent the Hierarchy's exclusive power of leader-ship, granted it by our Lord himself; neverthelessthere are still such things as layman's rights. Thegranting of such rights may be a benefit all round, infact at certain times and in certain conditions it maybe an obligation on the Church. How these rights,whether of a general or a particular kind, would lookin practice, is a subject that naturally cannot be goneinto here. The question here is simply whether the in-fluence of public opinion within the Church, as some-thing which exists and should exist, might not in

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FREE SPEECH IN THE CHURCHcertain respects, in some form or other, be given somesort of legal backing so as to become effective, andeffective in the right way.

Ultimately it all boils down to the fact that everyindividual Christian is responsible in his own day andway for the Church and the life of the Church. Ifthe reader has become a little more aware of hisresponsibility

in this respect as a result of what hasbeen said, then I have achieved what I set out to do.St. Cyprian, writing in the middle of the third cen-tury, began a treatise on patience by observing that hehad to assume in his reader the existence of the thinghe was about to recommend. This present essay mayend on a similar note. Many things that have beensaid in the course of it are probably highly debatableand in need of more profound treatment than theyhave been accorded here. To expect them to be readand pondered with a good will was to assume the ex-istence of that which in fact they are concerned with,namely, the belief that there is and should be some-thing in the nature of free speech within the Churchas there is outside it, and that consequently evenpeople who have nothing more to offer than theirown private and personal opinions have a right toexpress these and to be given a favourable hearingwhen they do so.


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THE PROSPECTFORCHRISTIANITY


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THE CHRISTIAN must "profess" his faith. This faithof his includes, amongst other things, the knowledgethat it is "glad tidings" from God to every succeed-ing age of men, suited to every condition, easily recog-nizable as being of divine origin. He must know thatthe gates of hell will never prevail against the Church;that Christianity provides the solution to every prob-lem. But the Christian of today, anxious to live hisfaith and to bear his own personal witness to it, oftenfinds it hard to see his faith as suited to his own age,to remember that it is indeed glad tidings from God,safe from the onslaughts of any hostile power. What ishe to do: give up his belief in the triumphant powerof Christianity as a faith for the future, or put him-self in blinkers and try to ignore the sober realities ofthe age he lives in? Usually he does neither: he is aChristian, but a half-hearted one; he is half-hearted,

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FREE SPEECH IN THE CHURCHbut won't admit It, because as a Christian he is afraidto. This is all the more dangerous in that every Chris-tian is not only the object of the Church's spiritualcare as someone destined for salvation but at the sametime a member of the Church and as such partlyresponsible for her continued existence and the fulfil-ment of her mission in the world. Every Christian hasto some extent or other, according to his condition inlife, the duties and responsibilities of a missionary andan apostle, and it is therefore a matter of some im-portance whether he acquits himself of these cheer-fully or in a state of fear. And it must be said thatwhen in fact, shedding our illusions, we come to in-quire about the "mood" of the average Christiantoday, we find it difficult to reach any particularlycheering conclusions in the matter, either about theclergy or about the laity.Frank confession harms no one. If there is anything

humiliating in it, it is not the actual confessing butthe thing we have to confess, which Is still with useven if we do not admit it, but go around in a dejectedhalf-hearted frame of mind trying to keep the dread-ful truth from others and ourselves. Let us admit quitefrankly what the position is. We are the people whofeel out of place in the world. We are the frustrated

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THE PROSPECT FOR CHRISTIANITYones, preferring to bear witness to our faith (in fearand trembling, but before the world, not before God)where it suits us, rather than where it might not godown so well. We do not feel highly optimistic aboutthings. We often have the feeling naturally withoutadmitting it to ourselves that we are talking intothe empty air. When we speak about our Christianity,the most precious thing we possess, we are receivedor so it seems anyway by deaf ears and hearts closedagainst us, rather than with the eager attention ofminds thoroughly alert. We often feel as though wecannot hope to speak to most people in any way thatthey could understand. We have, too, an unpleasantsense, whenever we hear the sound of our own voice,that it is not particularly surprising that nobodylistens to us. Doesn't a great deal of what we saysound strange in our own ears outmoded, utterly outof date? It is still lodged in our heads, as a hangoverfrom the days when we learned our catechism, but itno longer comes from our hearts: so it is hardly tobe wondered at that it no longer gets into the headsof other people.

If anyone begins to protest at this point that hehimself is a thoroughly convinced Christian, he hadbetter be careful. For he might get asked the question

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FREE SPEECH IN THE CHURCHwhether his own actual words and behaviour are asattractive and compelling to others as they should be,if his claim to be full of courageous orthodoxy is toring true. If he lays the blame on the evil times he livesin, and the hard, guilty hearts of the people he hasfailed to win over to his own faith, then he must beprepared to answer the further question as to whether,and how, he can be so sure that his fellow men whomas a Christian he is supposed not to judge are aswickedly hard-hearted as he says they are and whetherit wouldn't be more Christian because more humble

to blame himself instead of them? He must answerthe question as to whether the times really are as evilas he makes them out to be, or whether it may not bethat we ourselves have not grown up sufficiently tocope with our own day as well as earlier generationsof Christians did with theirs, when in fact things wereno worse, but only different.We are often quite intimidated, quite sullen andbitter almost embittered and frustrated, quite con-tent if the rest of the world is merely prepared totolerate us. Of course we are furious if anyone actuallysays this to our face. We don't want to be like thisand that is quite right of us. We don't want to betaken for the kind of people who have tamely suc-cumbed to circumstance. We are not cowards or


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THE PROSPECT FOR CHRISTIANITYdeserters; if we were, how could we be servants ofJesus Christ? The will of our faith, our spirit, speaksout clearly: we will to be other than in fact we are,human beings whose many-levelled nature has not, ornot yet, or not completely, been mastered by the graceof Christ. But that is what we are. And any improve-ment can only come from a frank confession of thisa confession that has nothing to do with compromise.But this is not all. We must go on to confess that

not only are we half-hearted, but that we believeunconsciously that we have every reason to be half-hearted, to be in the apostolic dumps. Let us leaveaside for the moment the fact of our own mediocrity,the fact that our minds, our characters, our lives withall their anxieties, seem to put the light of the Gospelin the shade and sometimes almost under a bushel.Apart from all this, we seem to ourselves to haveenough objective grounds outside ourselves to accountfor our own private spirit of defeatism; and becausethese grounds seem to be facts, firm hard facts whichin our short, circumscribed lives there seems no possi-bility of changing, we feel we have no hope of everdamming up the sources of our creeping dejection,which threatens, like some illness, to go with us to thegrave.

Let us take a good look round. After the two57


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FREE SPEECH IN THE CHURCHthousand years of its history Catholic Christianity isstill confined to a small fraction of the human race,and, despite all successes in the mission field, thisminority is growing steadily smaller, because numeri-cally the human race is increasing more rapidly thanthe number of conversions.

In vast areas of the world Christianity is a perse-cuted religion, slowly but surely being throttled outof existence by all the means available to modern states,with their police forces and their systems of thoughtcontrol now beginning to penetrate into the ultimaterecesses of the human heart and brain. And even if wetake the most optimistic view we can of the under-ground movements and modern catacomb Churchesin these areas of the world and in fact accept all thatis said about them in Church papers and missionarymagazines, this can do nothing to lessen our alarm. Ifthings go on in the same way for a few more decades

and where is any change likely to come from?Christianity (and that means primarily CatholicChristianity) will be reduced in our half of the worldto something like what the Hussites once were, or theWaldensians, or the Dutch Jansenists in the nineteenthcentury: it may continue to exist, but so far as theworld and world history generally are concerned it

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THE PROSPECT FOR CHRISTIANITYwon't count though the Church is supposed to standout as a "sign lifted up among the nations". From thehuman and purely secular point of view it will haveno future whatsoever.And what about the position on the other side of

the Iron Curtain, where some of us live, still live?A civilization, or rather a lack of civilization, charac-terized by the mass-man and technology, by noise andpleasure, worry and anxiety, the atrophy of the relig-ious sense, by utter sexual licence and the disintegra-tion of the instincts: by manufacture rather thancreation, the artificial instead of the God-given; by theflight from self, the profane and the profaned; a worldfrom which God is utterly absent. The Christian reli-gion and its adherents seem to be still there only be-cause the old order is taking so long to vanishcompletely. And a horrible dilemma rears its head; forwhen Christianity tries to adapt modern methodsyesterday's methods, tomorrow's methods to its ownpurposes, it seems to become just as artificial, just asmanufactured, just as fiercely organized, as everythingelse; and if it ignores the new methods it seems to laghopelessly behind the times.

If we look a little nearer home, we seem to be facedwith the same depressing state of affairs. Germany is

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FREE SPEECH IN THE CHURCHonce more a missionary land, or it should be, i.e., itneeds to be brought back to the Church. Anyone whodoes not adopt the tactics of the ostrich, or who doesnot simply concentrate on the fact that he is one ofthe few Christians left, can feel it every day, We livein a pagan country with a Christian past. We liveamong the remains of Christianity. But it can nolonger be said that from the point of view of thisworld alone, the dominant tendency of our time, themajor impulse behind present-day events, is takingour history towards Christianity. We Christians areon the defensive. All that we do seems at best only todelay a process set firmly against us, never to reverseits direction. Every attempt we make to take up theoffensive seems to come to an end before it has reallygot going. In fact we often defend historical fagades,the laws and customs of what was once socially, poli-tically and intellectually a Christian community, withthe secret feeling that we have no right to be doingso because the surface of our community is really moreChristian than the reality behind it, and because we,as citizens, seem at the moment to possess more in theway of social and political rights than the number ofreally convinced Christians amongst us warrants.Moreover, so long as the private individual is allowed

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THE PROSPECT FOR CHRISTIANITYto go on living the new paganism in his own way thisoften seems to be to a surprising extent far more tol-erant towards the Christian externals of public lifethan were the furious secularists and anti-clericals ofthe nineteenth century* Have people become kinderand more tolerant towards us in these pagan times be-cause they are not so afraid of us as they used to be,because fundamentally they feel that they no longerneed take us seriously? However that may be, on thisparticular point we must not be in too much of ahurry to take comfort from the kindnesses, little orgreat, that the great world of unbelievers is preparedto show towards Christianity today, to the Churchand the Pope and our bishops, as though the positionwere quite different from what it was for instance inthe last century. The spring-times of Catholic andChristian awakening that followed the two worldwars have gone for ever and entirely. To change themetaphor, that period looks now, in retrospect, likethe advance of a deep river flowing irresistibly along,which seems for a moment to turn back on itself be-cause something or other has blocked its path. We havebecome strangers to the world; the world itself seemsto be calling the tune, and to regard Christianity assomething left over from the boasted past of the West,

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FREE SPEECH IN THE CHURCHsomething fit only to be embalmed in some museum orto serve the dreams of childish romantics and the im-provement schemes of political restorationists.And this Church of ours in tired old Europe, thisChurch that is us, seems to be tired herself. The Faithnow seems in many respects to be just marking timetheoretically and to be no longer lived existentially,just as so many people go on saying what a wonderfulmusician Bach is and yet listen to nothing but jazzon the wireless. Where can you hear a sermon on hellthese days? How many people, when they see someonefaced with everlasting damnation, cry out in a loudvoice, with conviction, in anguish, "Save your soul!"?How many still have, deep in their hearts, the Chris-tian fear of death and the Last Judgment? How manyare capable of feeling desperately worried I mean inthe quiet of their own minds, not as an official gesturewhen some Catholic acquaintance of theirs dies

without the last sacraments? How many, as shame-lessly thick-skinned as the saints, dare to whisper inthe ear of those who don't want to listen that theymust be converted and have pity on themselves? Howmany priests are there who go off and face the Areo-pagites of the secular world as St. Paul did? How manypeople have these priests converted, not by seeing them

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THE PROSPECT FOR CHRISTIANITYby appointment but by going out to find them likemissionaries and by going a long way, even if onlyover the seas and abysses of the mind that exist today?It is strange: when the modern priest makes a mis-sionary onslaught on anybody, he usually does it byreminding the person concerned that he is really aChristian already (i.e., baptized and brought up as aCatholic). Why doesn't he do it instead with thethought that this man is a pagan who must become aChristian? Today we treat even pagans as though theybelonged to some Christian denomination, as doProtestants.And what about Christian doctrine itself, as it is

to be found in the inner sanctums of the Church? Isn'tChristian theology a tame thing today, so far as weCatholics are concerned, anyway? An awful lot of itis being produced, but it is alarmingly little comparedwith all the other books being produced about the in-tellectual and unintellectual life of the times.Theological "modernism" was, on the whole, rightlycensured and condemned to silence; but at the sametime the safe and trusty theologians hardly give theimpression that they have the power to preach the oldfaith to a new age in a new, fresh way. And isn't theresomething rather strange and disturbing about the


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FREE SPEECH IN THE CHURCHway the emphasis seems to shift about, from one Chris-tian truth to another? A Christian social movementis highly thought of, but is that the most importantthing, in the light of the Gospels?

Furthermore, are there not what might be called"cryptogam" heresies, which cannot be detected be-cause they are not theoretically formulated, but onlypractically lived, heresies which never make any actualprotest but simply let the Church have her say andthen do the opposite and whisper it in private conver-sation heresies in behaviour, in attitude to life, inactual living, which can go hand in hand quite in-genuously, or ingeniously, with Church membership?And then there is the matter of the holiness of ourown lives. Leaving aside all the scandals and there

have been quite a few we have only to make a fewinquiries into the general spiritual and ascetic level ofthe lives of average people like ourselves, into thefigures for the priesthood and the monastic orders; wehave only to look round about us for examples of the1"inspired folly" of the saints why, we don't evenknow today, as former generations did, what suchfolly would look like! and the answer is quite plain.

In short, we have, it seems, every objective reason tobe resigned and defeatist in our attitude. Does not all

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THE PROSPECT FOR CHRISTIANITYthis suggest, or rather demand, that we should adopta sober realism and see things as they actually are?What is one to say in answer to this?

Let me try now to put all that has been said aboveinto a nutshell, into a brief and somewhat more precisetheological formula, at the risk of oversimplifying thematter and of dodging a few answers to individualquestions. We Christians, then, against our own deep-est will, are often fainthearted in our approach to ourapostolic duties because, when we look out upon thepresent state of Christianity and the Church in ourown country and the world, we seem to see no prospectthat our struggle to get official Catholic Christianityrecognized and accepted in the tangible reality of theworld and our own history (even to the extent alreadyreached in the West) will end in anything but failure.Look closely at what I have said. I do not say that weare afraid that Christianity will disappear off the faceof the earth. That, from the religious point of view,would be a heresy and the end of all faith if it werepresented as being in any sense a justification for sucha fear. The fear itself would be a sign of cowardice,which, as believers, we should have to fight hardagainst and disavow. Moreover, even on a purelysecular view of history, on an estimation of the posi-

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FREE SPEECH IN THE CHURCHtion based wholly on this world, it would be child-ishly short-sighted. No world-wide phenomenon asvast, both materially and spiritually, as Christianity,as deep, as strongly-rooted in every sphere of life andculture, could, even on the most pessimistic estimates,be in danger of disappearing off the face of the earthin any foreseeable future. This is certain, quite apartfrom God's grace and power, and his everlastingpromises. Such a danger does not exist, even in thecase of the other great world religions like Mohamme-danism and Buddhism. It is still more inconceivable inthe case of Christianity. For Christianity and thiscan never be undone has been, historically, the re-ligion behind the one civilization whose intellectual,cultural, political and religious activity and expansionhas created world history as we now know it, theinterpenetration of the histories of all the differentraces into one, for the first time since the dispersal ofthe nations related in Genesis. Such a religion wouldnot disappear entirely from the face of the earth inany foreseeable future even if it were not a thing-created and preserved by the living God, the Lord ofthe Ages.The question that really tempts us to be defeatist

(and it needs to be frankly stated) is, rather, simply66


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THE PROSPECT FOR CHRISTIANITYthis: now that human history has become one, willChristianity go on being a force in the internationalfield, to at least the same degree as it has been so farin Western civilization and the European society ofnations? This is not simply a question of fact whichwe can leave to the future, as having no religious ortheological importance. For we cannot simply say thatas long as Christianity goes on existing to the end oftime, in the persons of a few representatives left overas a sort of atavistic remnant from the past, thenGod's promise that the gates of hell shall not prevailagainst it has been fulfilled. Nor can we simply saythat the Church came into being through a few (froma purely worldly point of view) hopelessly misguidedpeople who believed in the bodily resurrection of anidealist who had been hanged on the gallows, and yetthat she was, even at that stage, actually the Church,with all her essential concomitants, and that thereforeshe can again be reduced to the same embryonic stagewithout there being any reason for disquiet on re-ligious or theological grounds. For this is precisely thequestion. Can such a retrogression take place in thecase of something that has, from the historical pointof view, set out on an essentially one-way track, with-out this being a sign that the thing in question is in

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FREE SPEECH IN THE CHURCHimminent danger of collapse? Will it not seem toeveryone to be destined for extinction, even thoughhistorical remnants of it still go on existing for whatseems for ever? And will not those watching thisretrogression feel compelled to say that this Churchwas not founded by God with the promise that itwould triumph over death? Again, vice versai fromthe theological point of view the Church is not alwaysequally herself, irrespective of whether she is a scaredlittle group or a great society covering the wholeworld. The fact that she began as a tiny flock doesnothing to controvert this. A human being, too, beginsin a very embryonic and helpless way, and yet herealizes his full being as planned and intended onlywhen he is fully grown. The Church is not merely alarge or a small number of people, as chance may seefit to decide; she is a "sign lifted up amongst thenations", and she must bear the sign of her divinefoundation plainly for all men of goodwill to see. Hervitality, her holiness, her inexhaustible fecundity,must be plain to all eyes in the open forum of thewide world and in the history and civilization of theworld; thus she herself will be a motive of faith. Couldshe be such the question is at least worth asking ifher real position in the history of the peoples of the


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THE PROSPECT FOR CHRISTIANITYworld were gradually to decline? This question, evenin the restricted form in which we have phrased it, isnot easy to answer at first sight.When we try to explain what has been said aboveand to go beyond the merely factual element in itour half-heartedness and the obvious reasons for suchan attitude and try to discover how we can put anend to it, we find ourselves faced with two problems.We have to ask ourselves, firstly, whether the actualfact of Christianity's being on the defensive (assum-ing we simply accept this "factual condition" as afact) is a good and sufficient reason for our unac-knowledged half-heartedness. Then we have to turnto the actual fact itself and ask ourselves how we mustunderstand it. The first question, therefore, is con-cerned with our anxiety, the second with the reasonfor our anxiety. And the first question comes first be-cause (however strange this may seem at first sight)ultimately, from the theological point of view, theanswer to it is quite independent of the answer tothe second question, which is predominantly takenfrom the philosophy of history.


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LET us assume to begin with that all the grounds men-tioned above for our apostolical defeatism are goodand sufficient ones. Has our defeatism, then, a right toexist, just because we know that there is a real causebehind it? The answer is even on this (problemati-cal) assumption no. Why not?From the point of view of the Catholic faith adefeatist attitude towards Christianity is not in anyway justifiable on the above "grounds". For faith con-sists precisely in hoping against hope, in holding firmlyto something beyond human reason as the ground ofall existence. Faith means walking on water, standingup straight when there is every reason to fall down.Faith means including God in one's scheme of things,though God himself remains outside all human powerand beyond any possible scheme which human beingsmay fabricate; it means building on grace, which is

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THE PROSPECT FOR CHRISTIANITYalways and only grace, i.e., an event undeserved, alwayspurely actual, depending entirely on God's graciouswill. If we are Christians we are called upon to putall our trust in God, in God alone, without workingout in advance whether our faith has any chance ornot. "Has Christianity still got a chance?" is a ques-tion that as Christians assuming we are such to beginwith we cannot ask. The moment we do so in earnest,then, to that extent, we have already left the groundof faith. We are demanding, not God or the grace ofGod, but some guarantee which we can hold in ourhands, something sufficient and effective in itself,before we are prepared to believe and trust him. Weare prepared to fight only if victory is in fact assuredfrom the outset. We are prepared to say Yes to God,if we have first been allowed to say Yes to ourselvesand our own situation. We are prepared to appearbefore God only as people already justified, insteadof surrendering ourselves to him as people needingjustification.Our characteristic modern attitude to faith simplytakes concrete shape in the question that faces us;it is not especially strange. For faith, without God'selevating and healing grace, is always the Impossible.It is of course true that there exist grounds for faith

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FREE SPEECH IN THE CHURCHwhich are in themselves objective and demonstrable,which the believer can see for himself and explainto others; true, too, that the grace of faith is offeredto everyone, so that there is always a real possibilityof discussion about the Faith, even with people whodo not as yet share it. Nevertheless, in actual con-crete fact, faith only comes through the grace ofGod, and this alone can provide the concrete indi-vidual human being wounded in mind and will ashe is through original sin with the assistance heneeds if he is to go beyond all those other "grounds"that seem to him to justify his unbelief. But if thegrace of God is necessary, and yet at the same timequite different from the rational, objectively verifiablemotives for faith springing purely from this world,then, if one leaves the grace of faith out of account,it must always seem in actual concrete fact as thoughit were more sensible and prudent not to believe thanto believe, as though there were always grounds thatseemed to justify the wisdom of the world.But whatever is valid for all time is (along with

other things) especially relevant to our own questionhere: the fact is that we only really begin to believewhen we do not start by asking whether Christian-ity has any chance today. If the specifying inner

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THE PROSPECT FOR CHRISTIANITYmotive of our faith is judged wholly by this world'sstandards which means, in the present case, theempirically ascertainable prospects of success, againjudged by standards of the world, for the Church andChristianity then our faith is a human achievement,brittle, destined to be surpassed and renounced likeall human things, and not an act of God

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Rahner, Free speech in the church.pdf

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