Freedom and democracy : a study of their enemies


FREEDOM

m
DEMOCRACY

A Study of their Enemies

by

Fulton J. Sheen





FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY
A Study of their Enemies

by

The Right Reverend Monsignor Fulton J. Sheen, Ph. D.,
LL. D., Agrege en Philosophic, University of Louvain,

Belgium; the Catholic University of America.

Six addresses delivered in the Catholic Hour, produced

by the National Council of Catholic Men, through the

courtesy of the National Broadcasting Company
and associated stations.

(On Sundays from January 3 to February 7, 1937)

Page
January 3 The Church and the State 5

January 10 Freedom 13

January 17 The Spirit and Unity 21

January 24 Opportunity 28

January 31 Responsibility ... 35

February 7 Spirituality 43

National Council of Catholic Men
Producer of the Catholic Hour
1312 Massachusetts Avenue,

Washington, D. C.

Printed and distributed by Our Sunday Visitor
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IMPRIMATUR:

JOHN FRANCIS NOLL, D. D.,

Bishop of Fort Waynt

Deaddified



TO

MARY IMMACULATE
MOTHER OF MERCY

AND
REFUGE OF SINNERS WHO CRUCIFY





THE CHURCH AND THE STATE
Address delivered on January 3, 1937.

Greetings and blessings to you all. I hope your

New Year will be prosperous, so that being released
from material wants, your soul may be free to pur-
sue those spiritual needs which only God can supply.
It is hard to pray on an empty stomach, but it is
harder to be happy on an empty heart. In order that
both may be easy, may God grant you a Prosperous
and Happy New Year.

We are beginning this year a radio course en-
titled Our Wounded World, which will be concerned
principally with a new philosophy of life which robs
man of his freedom because it robs him of God.
Today we are concerned principally with two
points: (1) how that philosophy arose, with partic-
ular reference to the State; and (2) howT it affects
the Church.

How did the new philosophy arise? It arose as a
reaction against what might be called Individualism,
or the theory that man is independent of social or-
der, and therefore devoid of social obligations. Dur-
ing the last few centuries since the break-up of
Christian unity, individualism has expressed itself

in many forms, each of which insisted on the private
interpretation of something. Religious individual-

ism emphasized the private interpretation of Sacred

Scripture, which ended in as many different relig-
ions as there are heads. Economic individualism
insisted on private interpretation of business. Busi-

ness said to the new religion : “If you do not want a
Church interpreting your Bible, neither do we want
a Bible interpreting our business.’’ The result was
Liberalism, which asserted that economic and politi-
cal order is independent of morality and religion.



6 FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY

There was also Artistic individualism, which assert-
ed the private interpretation of artistic feeling,

with the result that paintings were so very individu-

al that judges awarded prizes even to some which
were hanging upside down. Finally, there was Phil-
osophical individualism which insisted on the pri-

vate interpretation of truth and ended by identify-

ing truth with whatever is useful to the individual.

In all these forms of individualism, the individual

was presumed to be free to decide what was right
and wrong without any concern for his duty to
society.

The effect of Individualism was the isolation of
man from society

;
that is, it set up the individual as

supreme, and denied that any organic society,
whether it be the Church or the State, had any right
to suggest how a man should conduct either his life
or his business. As a matter of fact, any suggestion
of State reform was looked upon as an interference
with individual rights. The net result of this isola-
tion from society was a kind of competitive individ-
ualism in which each man became a wolf to his
neighbor. The State born of such “rugged individu-
alism” was like a policeman, having no other func-
tion than to keep others from muddling in your eco-

nomic affairs, without any regard for social control

or the good of the commonwealth, or much less, the
glory of God.

Such Individualism was selfishness; selfishness

naturally led to economic and political chaos, con-

centration of wealth in the hands of the few, and

the gradual impoverishment of the masses. The

world then reacted against Individualism, but in-

stead of resting in the golden mean, it swung to the

opposite extreme error of Collectivism.



THE CHURCH AND THE STATE 7

The word Collectivism is here used to cover those

new political movements which emphasize the mass,
the collectivity, and the State, and includes all To-

talitarian States. By this term we wish to dissipate
the fallacy which Communism is attempting to
spread, namely, that Communism and Fascism are
opposed as life is opposed to death, and that the

world today must choose between Communism and
Fascism. This is not true. Communism loosely ap-
plies the term Fascism to anything which is anti-

Communistic. It states its major Fascist enemy is
Germany. But it forgets that Communism and
Nazism agree in holding the error that the individ-
ual exists for the State which is controlled by a Dic-

tator, that both agree in the error that the individual

enjoys only those rights which the State grants, and

that both agree in the same intolerance of political
opposition, the same hatred of minorities, the same
denial of freedom of the press and the radio, and
the same insistence on monopolizing the formation
of the minds of the youth. The Fascism of Italy
however differs from the Nazism of Germany in
that it is not inimical to religion or races, and both
differ from Communism in permitting a man to
own property.

The choice then before the world is not between
Communism and Fascism. The choice is rather be-
tween a philosophy of life which respects human
dignity, and a philosophy of life which destroys it.
In political language it is a struggle between Democ-
racy standing for freedom and Communism stand-
ing for dictatorship. From a human point of view,
however, some are more dangerous than others, and
of ail three the one which robs man of every vestige
of liberty is Communism. Nazism and Fascism may



8 FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY

mutilate or maim liberty, but Communism kills it.
For that reason the Holy Father in his recent
Christmas broadcast characterized Communism as
“the enemy which is attempting to bring about the
ruin of the most fundamental principles of human
society, of the family, and of the individual.”

Note that the Holy Father opposes Communism
not just because it is anti-religious, but because it is

anti-human. And true it is, for Communism has
taken over not only property but souls. Communism
possesses man from the cradle to the grave, by
denying that he has any other purpose than the ser-
vice of the State. It admits of no conscience but

State-conscience, and of no morality but State-
morality. Worship of the true God in Russia, Mex-
ico, and those parts of Spain where Communism is
in power, is therefore nothing short of treason.

Looking back over modern history then, we have
this queer picture: Man who once was free to do
anything he pleased under Individualism, is now un-
der Communism free to do nothing; man who once
could follow any religion he wished, must now follow
the religion of the State

;
and the world which broke

away from the Church because it found it “too dog-
matic”, now finds that under Communism it is sub-
ject not to God’s truths which make us free, but to
State-dogmas which make us slaves.

In summary, the modern world during the last
four hundred years has witnessed two extreme solu-
tions of the social problem. First, Individualism

which isolated man from society, made him like
an arm amputated from the body, and resulted in a
State in which each man was a wolf to his neighbor.
Then came the other extreme of Collectivism, which



THE CHURCH AND THE STATE 9

absorbs a man in society like a drop of water is ab-
sorbed in a glass of wine, which resulted in Commu-
nism in which all are equal because all are equally

slaves of the State.

Permit us here to suggest that the position

of the Church is a golden mean between these two
extremes. She contends that the State is neither

a collection of individuals isolated from organic re-
lations one with another, which is Individualism,

nor a machine for the production of wealth, which

is Communism. The Church says that the State is
a moral organism in which each person and class
has functions to fulfill, and individual rights and
duties in relationship to the whole. Against Indi-

vidualism the Church asserts that a man is a mem-
ber of society in an organic way, as the eye and the
ear, and the hand and the foot, are all members of
the body. A man therefore can no more live apart
from society normally than an eye can live apart
from the head. On the other hand, against Collectiv-
ism, she asserts that human personality has certain
rights of which no State can deprive it. Just as
the heart, for example, by its very nature has a
certain inalienable function in the human body,
which cannot be taken over by any other organ, not
even by the head, so too a man has certain inalien-
able rights of which no State can deprive him. The
proper concept of the State resides in the golden

mean between Individualism, which denies social
control, and Communism, which denies personal
liberty. The State is neither a policeman as In-
dividualism would have it, nor a nurse as Collect-
ivism would have it. Against Individualism, the
Church asserts that man has a duty to work for the
common good of the State, and no one, says the



10 FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY

Church, is allowed to pursue those individual in-

terests which endanger the harmony of the whole
and the well-being of others. On the other hand,
against Communism, the Church says that the well-
being of the whole is the well-being of free person-

alities, each with his own destiny and with certain
inalienable rights which no State can take away, be-
cause the State is not the source of rights, but God.

This brings us to our final point: namely, how
Collectivism, which absorbs man into the State,
treats the Church. The new Collectivist State is not
always respectful of the true nature of man. And
here mention must be made particularly of Mexico,
Spain, Germany, and Russia, where the chalice of
Gethsemane has been generously dipped to faithful
souls. In these countries, the State is organized on a

purely secular basis, and has set itself up as a
counter-Church, crushing religion by the sheer force

of State-power. It is not indifferent to religion as

was the Liberal State; it is not merely hostile to it
as was the pagan State

;
but it is hostile and posses-

sive. It not only crushes the Church but it takes over
its functions, reduces the spiritual to the political,

and gives the kingdom of anti-Christ a definite poli-
tical form and social substance. This means that the
conflict of the future, if we are to judge from
present facts, is not between Communism and Fas-
cism, for the two are not mutually exclusive, but be-

tween a society which recognizes God and a society
which calls itself God.

The Church has always come into conflict with
the Collectivist State in these countries. She says to

the State: “I will render to Caesar the things that

are Caesar’s, but I insist on being allowed to render

to God the things that are God’s.” The State an-



THE CHURCH AND THE STATE 11

swers to the Church: “We insist that you render
unto Caesar even the things that are God’s.”

The issue is very much like that which brought
Our Lord before Pilate. The charges made
against Him were three : “We have found this man
perverting our nation and refusing to give tribute

to Caesar and saying that He is Christ the King.”
Every word was a lie. He did not pervert the nation.
Rather did He spiritualize it by lifting up weary
souls to the blessedness of the Kingdom of God. He
did not refuse to give tribute to Caesar, for He com-
manded that men render unto Caesar that which
was Caesar’s. He did not call Himself a Political
King, but said that His Kingdom was not of this
world.

These three charges sent Our Lord to His Cross.
The Cross bore an inscription in three languages,
Hebrew, Latin, and Greek, symbolic of the three

civilizations of Jerusalem, Rome, and Athens. And
the false charge in all three was the same. He had
called Himself a King. He was anti-State.

And these same charges, which are urged against
the Church today in Russia, Germany, Mexico, and
Spain, are the direct heirs of the lies urged in the

courtroom of Pilate. The Church is unjustly
accused of perverting the nation, because she asserts

that there is no power in a nation except from
above; she is accused of refusing to give tribute to

the State, because she refuses to worship the State

as a god; she is accused of calling herself a King,

because she asserts that Christ is the King of Souls.
To the cross she is sentenced on the same false
charges. Already four nations have crucified her. It
is not the civilization of Rome, Athens, and Jeru-
salem, but the civilizations of Mexico, Russia, Spain,



12 FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY

and Germany, which nail her to her modern cross.
How much longer it will continue, only God knows.
But when time ends, what will be the Church’s final
battle? Who will erect her last cross? The
Creed gives the answer. Why, among the four
judges, has the Creed retained only the

name of Pilate? Annas is not mentioned; neither is
Caiphas, nor Herod, nor Judas whose sin was
greater than Pilate’s. Why is Pilate’s alone men-
tioned? Because Pilate is the symbol of the omnipo-

tent State. His name is not only the record of an his-
torical fact; it may also be a prophecy that in the
last and final battle at the end of the world, the
Church will go to her crucifixion in exactly the same
way that Christ went to His—suffering under Pon-
tius Pilate.



FREEDOM 13

FREEDOM
Address delivered on January 10, 1937.

Last Sunday it was suggested that modern States
possessed of dictatorial powers have set themselves

up as counter-religions or counter-churches and have

persecuted the Church which dares assert that God
is above Caesar. In the course of the broadcast we
asked you not to be blinded by Communistic propa-
ganda to the effect that the world must choose be-
tween Communism and Fascism. If Fascism means,
as Communism says it does, the denial of democratic
rights; if it means, as Communism says it does, the
suppression of minorities; if it means, as Commu-
nism says it does, dictatorship and the submerging
of the individual into the State, then Communism is
Fascism gone mad. It is just such Soviet Fascism
or Communism which is threatening the liberties of
the world, and it is that point we would prove today,
namely, that any State which asserts the primacy
of the Divine is a free state, and any state which is
anti-spiritual is necessarily a slave state. In order

to prove this truth, let us begin with a very simple
proposition : the material is the basis of slavery

; the

spiritual is the basis of freedom.

Matter is always a slave, because by its very
nature it is determined to act only one way and not
another. Fire, for example, is a slave to heat; ice is
a slave to cold. Hence we never praise fire for being
hot, nor ice for being cold. They must be so

;
there is

no ought in their nature.

Now, consider the other principle, the spiritual
is the basis of freedom : Take, for example, the idea
of beautiful. That idea is spiritual; it occupies no



14 FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY

space or time, it has no latitude or longitude,

weight or color, and yet is applicable to all the beau-
tiful things in the world. But no one has ever seen
the “beautiful”, though he may have seen a beau-
tiful flower, or a beautiful child, or a beautiful sun-

set, or a beautiful face, or a beautiful landscape, or

a beautiful anything. Because none of these things

completely corresponds to and exhausts the spiritual
idea of “beautiful”, it follows that the artist is not

bound to paint any one of them. He is free in his
art because the inspiration of his art is the spiritual

idea of the “beautiful” which is infinite and univer-
sal, while all the concrete realizations are finite, and
the finite cannot force the infinite, any more than a
ten pound pull can force a ten ton pedestal from its
base. The spiritual is therefore the basis of freedom.

Now we can answer the quesction: Why is man
free? Fundamentally because man has not only a
body which is material, but also a soul which is spiri-

tual. The spiritual is the basis of freedom; that is
why God Who is Pure Spirit is also Perfect Free-
dom.

Let us apply this principle to the social order:

The State which acknowledges God and the spiritual
element in man is a Free State, while the State
which is anti-God, and asserts the primacy of the
economic over the spiritual in man, is necessarily a
slave State. Why do we say that the State which
acknowledges God is necessarily a free State? Be-
cause in acknowledging God, the State admits that

the power it exercises over its citizens does not be-
long to it exclusively, but has come, as Our Lord told
Pilate, from God. That means that a State which
accepts the Primacy of the Divine admits that there
are certain rights which man holds not from the



FREEDOM 15

State, but from God; and that therefore the State

can never take them away. Hence man is free and
independent of the State in his right to call (a) his

soul his own and (b) his property his own. Inci-
dentally both of these are guaranteed by our Consti-

tution as God given liberties, or “inalienable rights”.
Let us consider them singly.

A man can call his soul his own in a State which
acknowledges God, because the soul does not belong

to the State but to God Who made it, and to Whom it
is destined to return to give an account of its

stewardship. Man is therefore free to adore God
according to the dictates of his conscience, and no
power on earth has a right to invade or violate that
spiritual sanctuary. To Caesar he will render the
things that are Caesar’s, but to God also the things
that are God’s.

A man can also call his property his own in a
State which acknowledges God, because the right to
own private property is not given to man by the
State but by God. Therefore, the State can not abso-
lutely take it away. As the soul is the spiritual
guarantee of human liberty, so private property is
the economic guarantee of human liberty. Man has
not only a soul, but a body as well. That body must
have a physical expression of its freedom and pri-
vate property is such an expression for a man with
property has responsibility and control which are
the attributes of freedom. Is it not a confirmation of

our thesis that property and freedom go together, to
recall that history knows of no instance of a well-
distributed-property-country ever having suffered
from despotism?

In such a State which acknowledges that man
has God-given rights, man is like a mountain whose



16 FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY

peak rises above the clouds and storms of the eco-
nomic and material, where he is free to bathe in the
sunshine of God’s glorious liberty. The realm of the
spiritual thus becomes a place of freedom and soul-
relaxation like a home after working hours—an
escape from the materialities of an economic world.
In brief, just as a man’s soul has certain powers
transcendent to his body, such as the power of think-
ing and Willing, so man has certain inalienable rights
and privileges beyond the State, and these are the
fountain head of the greatest liberty of all—the free-
dom to become a saint.

Now consider the other half of the proposition,
that is, that matter is the basis of slavery. Apply
that principle to a State which acknowledges no God
and no soul. Such a State as Mexico or Russia or
Spain where Communism is in power, asserts the
primacy of the economic and the material. It is
therefore a State in which a man cannot call his soul
his own or his property his own.

A man cannot call his soul his own in such a
state, because the soul belongs to the State and there
is nothing above the State. On this theory, the
rights a man possesses are State given; hence the
State can take them away. Such is the law of
Mexico as stated in its constitution of 1917. “Every
person in the United States of Mexico shall enjoy

those rights which are granted to him by the con-
stitution.” That means that the right to educate
one’s family, and the right to adore God according to
the dictates of one’s conscience are not from God
but from the State, hence the State can disposses

man of these rights. That is why in Mexico and
Russia and to some extent in Germany, any attempt



FREEDOM 17

on the part of the citizens to adore and serve God is

branded as “counter-revolutionary”. If the soul be-

longs to the State, then it is treason to the State to

dare offer it to God. That is why Communism per-
secutes religion. An atheistic State knows full well
that it cannot completely possess man as the tool of
the State, unless it unmakes religion which says that

man is also the child of God ; and that it cannot en-
slave man until it enslaves the Church which says
that man is free. The persecution of the Church in
Russia, Mexico, Germany, and Spain is for this

reason the strongest proof that the Church is the

last bulwark of human liberty left in the world, and
this because She is the last and everlasting defender

of the Spirit, which makes us free.
Not only does an atheistic State make it impos-

sible for a man to call his soul his own, but also to
call his property his own. Since private property is

the economic guarantee of human liberty, the athe-
istic State would even dispossess man of that last
remnant, as Communism actually does, for it abol-
ishes all productive private property. The Commu-
nists justify their violence and revolutionary dispos-
session of this human right on the grounds that prop-
erty has been abused and amassed in the hands of
the Capitalists. This is true, to some extent, but cer-
tainly the remedy for concentration of wealth is not
in the confiscation of private property, for what is
that but shifting its control from a few capitalists to
a few Red Leaders? What is this but to make the
State Capitalistic, transform individual selfishness
into collective selfishness, and substitute for the ex-
ploiting and the exploited classes the equally bad
classes of the powerful and the powerless, or the
Red leaders and the led. And there is no better



18 FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY

proof of this than the fact that in Russia only one

and one-half percent of the population are members
of the Communist Party, and yet that one and a half
percent control by fear, terror, and propaganda,

ninety-eight and a half percent of the people.

To return to the point—Grant that there is con-
centration of wealth; grant that it needs an imme-
diate remedy, the solution is to be found not in dis-

possession but in distribution, not in revolution but

in legislation, not in Communism but in Democracy.
Because there are rats in the barn, the Communists
believe in burning the barn. We believe in burning
the rats.

Stripping private property from man is some-
thing like stealing his clothes. It is the deprivation of

the symbol of his personality, for private property

is the extension of personality. And it is none the
less stealing because the State does it for “Thou
shalt not steal” applies not only to Big Business but
also to a Big State. But what interests us at this
moment is the fact that the denial of the spiritual
and the exaltation of the economic eventually ends
in the denial of private property. It is indeed an in-

teresting proof of this thesis that the anti-spiritual

governments of the world are these which have

most denied man the right to call his property his
own. Mexico, for example, has denied Catholics the

right to own property dedicated to the highest of all
purposes; Germany has made retention of prop-
erty difficult among certain classes, and impossible
for the Jews; Spain has asserted its right to destroy

Church property
;
and Russia whose first principle is

anti-God, has as its second principle anti-private

property. At least under Capitalism, with all its de-
fects, a few owned productive private property;



FREEDOM 19

under Communism no one owns it but the selfish
State.

There is only one force to prevent the growth of

this system and that is the power of Him Who came
to this earth of ours to teach us the Truth which, as

He said, alone can make us free. Nowhere did He
better proclaim the Gospel of freedom than on the

day He permitted His body to be unfurled on the
flagpole of the cross as the Banner of the Glorious

liberty of the sons of God.

His enemies asked Him to come down, but He
refused, because, if He came down, He would have
shown His Physical Power; He would have forced
us to do His will; He would have used the same
power Mexico and Russia are using today ; and that

would have been the end of Freedom. But by hang-

ing on the Cross in an attitude of powerlessness

where no nailed hand could force obedience, and no
pierced foot could pursue the slave, and with only
the look of an eye to bid souls reach His side, He
Who is Almighty taught that man must be free to
love—even God. Above all gifts He craved the free
gift of love, not the obsequious rapture of slaves. By
refusing to come down and show His Power He
maintained, even in His Death, that neither His

Soul, nor His only private property, which was His
Body, belonged to the State nor to Pontius Pilate;

that no one could take these rights away, not even

by death. His soul was His own, and hence He could
give it to His Father

;
His Body was His own, hence

He could give it to us as our Life. He died free,
and from that death we derive our liberty. Against
the background of Calvary, the Church today asserts
against the world that no man is satisfied unless he
is free, that no man is free until he can love, and



20 FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY

that no man is free to love until he can love the One
for Whom he was made—namely the Christ Who
loved us enough to die for us that we might be free

!



THE SPIRIT AND UNITY 21

THE SPIRIT AND UNITY
Address delivered on January 17. 1937.

Last Sunday the burden of our broadcast was
that only a State which recognizes the spiritual is a

free State, and those States which deny the spiritual

and assert the primacy of the economic are States in

which a man cannot call his soul his own or his
body his own.

Today it is our purpose to show that men
cannot be grouped into the unity of brotherhood or

even comradeship except on the basis of the spiri-

tual.

The modern world, despite its tyrannies and its
dictatorships and its cruel wars, is recognizing the

need of unity and authority. It sees very well that

no nation can endure if everyone is allowed to pur-

sue his own selfish interests, to the utter forgetful-
ness of the common good; it sees, too, that some
authority is needed in order to exercise social control

over avaricious individuals. The ravages of selfish-
ness which allowed every man to seek his own, with-
out any regard for the common good, ended in a
great amassing of wealth on the one hand, and great
poverty on the other. That selfishness had to be cor-
rected. Citizens had to be made to realize that they
were parts of a social order, with mutual obliga-
tions to one another. In order to supply that need

for unity and authority, some nations had recourse
to dictatorships. Their ideal was right, in the sense
that they saw the need of unity and authority, but
their solution was wrong, because they purchased
unity at the expense of liberty. It is one thing to

recognize a need, and it is another thing to know
how to supply it.



22 FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY

What the world forgot was that there are two
ways of attaining unity and asserting authority : one
from the outside, the other from the inside; one by
force, the other by love; one by Nazism, Fascism,
and Communism, the other by religion. The dogs
that bark at the sheep and drive them into the sheep
fold produce the unity of the sheep fold, but it is a

forced unity. The Saviour who draws us to His
banquet table to nourish us of His substance pro-

duces the unity of Christians, but it is a unity based

on love. Deny this spiritual unity which the charity
of religion brings, and how unite men except by
fear, force, and propaganda, to which all the dicta-
tors of Europe make appeal in varying degrees,
depending on the allowance they make for unity by
religion.

That is why in Russia under Communism there
is no real unity except unity by force. As their offi-
cial organ states: “The sole possibility with Com-
munism is that one party is in power, and all the
others are in jail” (November 13, 1927). Even their
new Constitution forbids the existence of any party
other than the Communist. Such a unity is purely
artificial

;
it makes citizens one by squeezing human-

ity out of them, as one might squeeze juice out of
lemons. It cannot do otherwise; and why? Because
the spirit alone can produce unity. Just suppose
civilization denied God and the spiritual destiny of
man, and set up the economic as the unique goal of
human existence, what consequences would follow
in the economic and the political order?

Consider first the economic order. If there be no
God, if religion be only the opium of the people; if
this world be all, and eternity be only an illusion

;
if

life be only the dream of the moment and an orgy



THE SPIRIT AND UNITY 23

between two voids; then why should anyone accept
his economic lot? Then why should not the poor
man who watches the vain parade of diamonds and
lace, turn into a robber and a thief? Why should
not the rich man seek to exploit the poor man, and
throw his wasted years on the ash heap of unem-
ployment? Then why should not churches be pil-
laged and why should not men incite others to vio-
lence, riots, and even insurrection in the army and
navy, as the Secretary of the Communist Party does
on page 165 of his book. Then why should not Rus-
sia organize unions to develop the Socialist system

as Article 126 of the new Constitution states, rather
than the right of a man to a living wage, of which no
mention is made in the Constitution.

If there be no God, and if men have no souls, no
destiny other than the economic, why should not non-
Aryans be deported? Why should not non-Fascists
be punished? Why should not Catholics be murder-
ed ? Why should not maids steal, lawyers bleed their
clients, bootblacks short-change, the banker em-
bezzle, and the baker rob? What answer can we
give?

If you deny the spiritual and the God Who
searches hearts, there is only one answer why these
injustices and disorders should not be allowed;
namely servants must obey masters, workers must
obey Red leaders, and citizens must obey the dicta-
tors.

But suppose to this the thieves, the doctors, the
lawyers, the employers, the bootblacks, the soldiers

answer: “It is my duty to obey only because you
are stronger than I, and I can do nothing against
you. But suppose I join with millions of other
thieves, ditch-diggers, unemployed, and we become



24 FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY

stronger than you ! Then the role changes ! Then it
is your duty to obey.” And this is precisely what
we are witnessing in the economic order today:
The law of animality in which the strong devour the

weak; not the law of spirituality, where the strong

descend to the weak to lift them up unto God. It is
by force and display of power rather than by jus-
tice and virtue that we settle our disputes.

Once abolish the future life with its spiritual

destiny and its influence upon our daily actions, and

there is nothing to stand in the way of complete and
total equalitarianism. If the only reward is in this

world, it immediately follows that all classes, all dis-

tinctions in rank and condition, all differences in

position and office are open to attack.

Take God out of the souls of men, and there is
only one way to achieve unity in the economic sphere
and that is by force. Take God out of the souls of
men and the more they demands and the less they
thank. Take God out of the souls of men, and the
more avaricious become the rich and the more en-
vious become the poor. Take God out of their souls
and the more both stretch out itchy palms to receive,
the more you remove all restraint upon illegitimate
desires and all curbs from passions, the more you
unchain all concupiscences and unleash all the furies
of selfishness. Then no one is satisfied; for if this
life is all why should we not have all, even if we
have to get it by force ?

Now consider the consequences in the political
order. Deny God and the spiritual, and it follows
that the authority of the State is not derived, but

absolute. It sets itself up as God, and determines
what is right and wrong by force. Our Lord said the
Gentiles lord it over them, but His authority was



THE SPIRIT AND UNITY 25

based on His meekness and humility of heart and

His love of His Heavenly Father. Modern political
authorities who repudiate religion, base their author-
ity on armies, on soldiers, on guns. That is why it is
doubtful if there is in any of these countries such a
thing as real leadership. Would you call a robber
with a gun who backed ten unarmed men against a
wall, their leader? By what right then can we call
certain dictators leaders?

Take a gun away from Hitler, take tanks away
from Stalin, and let these men stand on their own
moral responsibility with no other power to com-
mand than their honesty, their love of truth, and
their purity of heart, and see how long they could
command. Our Lord has commanded obedience from
the world for 20 centuries with no other weapon
than a defenseless cross, and the Holy Father has
awakened the spiritual obedience of 320,000,000
Catholics scattered throughout the world with no

other arms than his spiritual office. But take terror
away from Red leaders and they could not command
men for four seconds. That is why the new political
unity of Communism is not unity; it is compactness
through fear, mobilization through arms, nationali-

zation through propaganda, but it is not unity. Re-

move that fear, those armies, or that propaganda,
and these nations would break up into thousands of
discordant and warring elements. Only the spiritual
is the basis of unity. Take away the religious in-
spiration and we no longer hear of man helping his
fellowman in need, because he sees in him a brother
in Christ. With the religious inspiration gone, we
hear the need of helping the unemployed only to pre-
vent a revolution. What a sorry commentary on hu-
man fellowship. When Christ reigned in hearts we



26 FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY

helped the poor to save our soul
;
without religion we

help them only to save our hide.
Society cannot long endure under such an in-

spiration. “Unless the Lord build the house, they
labor in vain that build it”. Unity of mankind is lost
because men have lost their God. As a matter of
fact, belief in Christ is the only catholic thing left

in the world, the only bond uniting men in a spiri-
tual fraternity of love. A Christian in France may
differ politically from a Christian in Germany, and
a Christian in America may differ politically and
economically from a fellow-Christian, but they melt
all difference in the recognition that God is our end,
His Divine Son Our Lord is Our Redeemer, and His
Holy Spirit is our Sanctifier. Outside of this, unity
is ephemeral, superficial, and temporary—a unity
based on a common mechanical technique, on a
common desire to increase exports and decrease im-
ports. In some countries, like Mexico, Russia, Ger-
many, and Spain, the unity is even less; it is based
upon a common hatred of the Church of Christ. Like
Pilate and Herod these nations are one only in their
hatred of a crowned and bleeding Christ.

Thus we come back again to our starting point:
Matter divides; Spirit unites. The Economic as the
end of man is the basis of enmities

;
the Spiritual as

the end of man is the basis of His peace.
The world must choose between two symbols,

one the symbol of the Spiritual, the other the symbol

of the Material; one the symbol of Christianity, the

other the symbol of Communism. The symbol of
spiritual unity is the Eucharist from which Our
Lord extends to all men His invitation to eat and
drink, that they may be one in Him as He and the
Father are one. The other, the symbol of Commun-



THE SPIRIT AND UNITY 27

ism, is the soulless body. When a soul leaves a body,
the body begins to disintegrate into a thousand and
one conflicting elements which can never be brought
to unity again by any process known to man or sci-
ence. When society loses its soul which is God, it
breaks up into millions of conflicting elements which
can never be brought into real unity even by force
and propaganda any more than dust can be revivi-
fied into a living man. That is why I think Com-
munism preserves at the very center of its national
life, as the very symbol of its materialism, and as
the rallying point of its revolutionary armies—

a

corpse—the lifeless, soulless, cadaver of Lenin—

a

perfect symbol indeed of that to which Communism
would lead us all—to Dust, to Dissolution, and to
Death.



28 FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY

OPPORTUNITY
Address delivered on January 24, 1937.

The radio series up to this point has been a des-
cription of the woes of our wounded world and in
particular of the slavery and class-struggle conse-

quent upon godlessness and the denial of the spirit.

There is always a temptation to rest one’s case there,

and to lay the flattering unction to our souls that we
have done our Christian duty when we have poured
our vials of righteous wrath upon the godless, and
denounced Communism as the monstrous red enemy
of men. Such an attitude makes us other Pharisees,
who feel justified in throwing stones because we
have found the adulteress.

The point we wish to make today is that this
view is wrong and unbecoming a Christian. It is
wrong because we have been sent into this world not
to condemn the wrong, but to make the wrong right

;

not to cry “unclean” but to wash clean
;
not to damn

but to save. As followers of Our Lord, we must
never forget that “they that are in health need not a

physician, but they that are ill”, and that He came
into the world “not to call the just but sinners”.
This means very definitely that it is not simply our
business to prove they are wrong, however satisfy-
ing that might be; it is not even our business to
prove we are right, as if the truth were our making
and not God’s. It is our business to preach Christ
and Him Crucified, and let that Truth conquer by its
own right. When a man is starving you need not go
to him and say : “You must not eat poisons. Poisons
will kill you!” You need not even say: “You must
eat bread. Science has proved that there are vita-



OPPORTUNITY 29

mins in bread.” You need only go to him and say:
“You are hungry—here is bread”; and the laws of
nature will do the rest. And so it is with starving
souls. We need not reprove their error, or show we
are right, but present the Truth of God; and with

the help of His grace it will nourish them unto life

everlasting.

Taking this point of view, how should we
approach atheists and bigots? How should we deal
with Communists who are spreading doctrines so
disruptive of family life, property, culture, and

peace? How did Our Lord and St. Paul deal with
those who practiced Communistic principles in their
day, even though they were not called Communists?
They converted souls by finding a common denomi-
nator between them and the Truth they preached.

Take the case of the woman at the well. Our
Lord, weary from His journey on a hot summer day
said to her: “Give me to drink.” She immediately
reminded Him that the well was deep and He had
nothing wherein to draw. Our Lord said to her. “If
thou didst know the gift of God, and who he is that
saith to thee, Give me to drink, thou perhaps
wouldst have asked of him, and he would have given
thee living water.” And that poor woman who daily
trudged out from Samaria in the boiling sun with
the water pot upon her .head, was most anxious to
find a source of living water which would dispense
her from future journeys. But Our Lord seeing she
did not understand His spiritual message changed
the subject. “Go call thy husband.” The woman
answered “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her:
“Thou hast said well, I have no husband: for thou
hast five husbands

;
and he whom thou now hast, is

not thy husband.”



30 FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY

Now what possible basis of apostleship could
there be between Our Lord Who is Purity itself and
this adulterous woman with five husbands? What
common bond could there be between virtue and
vice? There was only one common denominator and
that was a common love of a drink of cold water.
From that common starting point, Our Lord drew
the sinner on to an understanding of grace and the
supernatural life

;
and such an understanding it was

that she and her fellow townspeople of the despised
city were the first in history to address Him as “the
Saviour of the world.”

The tactics of St. Paul in Athens were like those
of His Master at Jacob’s well. St. Paul’s spirit was
stirred at “seeing the city wholly given to idolatry.”

He knew they had their gods on the Olympic
heights; he knew that they had a god for every
household; he knew they had the gods that Aeneas
brought from Troy

;
but he sought a common denom-

inator, and he found it in a word—the word “Un-
known.” “Standing in the midst of the Areopagus,

he said: Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all
things you are too superstitious. For passing by,
and seeing your idols, I found an altar also on which

was written : To the unknown God. What therefore
you worship without knowing it, that I preach to
you; God, who made the world. . From that
common denominator of the word “unknown”—we
might also say from a pun—St. Paul led them on to
the knowledge of the true God in Whom we live and
move and have our being. As Our Lord in conversa-
tion with the woman did not spend all His time de-
nouncing adultery, much as He detested it, so
neither did St. Paul before the Areopagus spend all

his time denouncing idolatry, much as he abhorred



OPPORTUNITY 31

it. Both cast about for some trivial thing which
Christianity had in common with sin and idolatry,
and through that common denominator led souls on
to the fullness of the light.

And so it is with us ! We are not to spend all our
energies denouncing Communism; we are to lead
Communists into the camp of the Communionists
by finding some common denominator with them,
even though it be as simple as a common love of
water, or a common search for the great unknown.

In that search for a common denominator one
spirit above all other must prevail, and that is the
spirit of Christ-like Charity. We must be intolerant
of Communism and atheism, but tolerant of Com-
munists and atheists. If we had the same education
they had, if we had been fed upon the same Marxian
lies and half-truths about religion as they have, and
had been stuffed full of propaganda, we would prob-
ably hate the Church ten times more than they do.
They do not really hate the Church; they only hate
what they have been taught about the Church, and
they are right in that hate. We would burn Churches
too if we had been falsely trained to believe that the
Church stood for the very social injustices they
rightly condemn. Our Lord found an excuse for
them on Calvary; can we do less than by echoing in
our lives, “Father, forgive them for they know not
what they do.”

The saints of the Church have always been fond
of repeating that we could catch more flies with a
drop of honey than with a barrel of vinegar. St.
Vincent de Paul in particular has cautioned us : “A
man is not believed because he is clever, but because
he is liked and known to be good. The devil is very
clever, and we don’t believe a word he says, because



32 FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY

we don’t like him. Nobody will believe us unless we
are loving and forebearing with them.” As it has
been repeated many times: “In necessary things
there must be agreement and unity; in doubtful or
indifferent things there must be charity—giving no
offense to any man that our ministry be not blamed.”
And this lesson of charity the Holy Father has set
for us when he asked that prayers after Low Mass
be said for the persecuted Russians, 99% of whom
are non-Catholics.

Grant that Communists and atheists and bigots
do hate Christ and His Church? They do not hate
Plato or an Oriental sun-cult. Is this not because
only an infinite object can be infinitely hated and in-
finitely loved? Their hatred of Divinity is the

strongest proof of the reality of Divinity. Men do
not hate figments of the imagination. If religion

were only that, the Communists would ignore it.
Their hatred then is but their vain attempt to des-

pise. But all that hate does not dispense us from
praying for them as Our Lord prayed for His exe-
cutioners, and as Stephen interceded for those who
stoned him, and as Our Holy Father prayed and
begged for prayers for the Communists of Spain. It
is well to remember that hateful souls can be trans-
formed in the fire of God’s grace into loving souls.

Our Lord chose His greatest apostles from the weak
and the hateful and the sinful! Peter from weak-
ness; Paul from hate, and Magdalene, who has oft
been called the thirteenth apostle, from voluptuous-
ness, Paul from hate, and Magdalene, who has oft
hence we must see in them not men to be hated, but
potential captives of the Man on the Cross Who died
out of love even for Stalin.

Russia is the home of godlessness, but Russia



OPPORTUNITY 33

could just as well have the mission to Christianize

modern Europe as to give it anti-Christ. Its history

has been full of a Messianic consciousness that it

was destined to give something to the world, and its

present pains could just as well be the pangs of birth

as the groan of death. God in His Mercy often raises

up individuals from great sins, such as Augustine,

that they might declare forth the power of His Love,

for those who have been at death’s door can best re-
veal the glories of health. Why could not God then
not only raise up individuals but even nations from
the darkness of hate to the light of love, so that

there might be as examples of His Mercy, Apostles

of His Truth to them that sit in the superstition of
the Gentiles? Why could there not be social Mag-
dalenes and social Pauls, as well as individual Mag-
dalenes and individual Pauls. No nation is too far
gone as yet to consider it beyond redemption. As the
Holy Father has told us : “Beneath the embers there
still are to be found sparks that can be fanned into
flame.” England, for example, seemed hopeless to
the Faith in the days of Queen Elizabeth, when she
murdered one hundred and thirty-eight secular
priests, six Jesuits, one Benedictine and one Francis-
can; it seemed even hopeless in 1834 with four
bishops and 400,000 faithful. And yet today it has
twenty-seven bishops and three million faithful.
What is true of England in the past can be true of
Communistic Russia and anti-clerical Mexico. They
are not beyond redemption, for they are only
wounded, not slain. This is not a black, dark, dread-
ful, and hateful world bound for the precipice of
destruction; it is a world of infinite possibilities, a
vast quarry from which can still be cut and fash-
ioned living stones into the Temple of God. It is not



34 FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY

a lost world ! It can still be saved, but saved only by
the Charity of God living in souls who are ready if
need be to come out of other catacombs to save it

!



RESPONSIBILITY 35

RESPONSIBILITY
Address delivered on January 31, 1937.

It shall be our aim today to indicate our respon-
sibility to the social order. Too long has the world

lived on the assumption that religion is a private

affair. Now it has learned that by regarding it as
such, irreligion has preempted the entire social field.

It will no longer do for individuals to preach about

the necessity of personal piety alone, for our lives

are inextricably entangled with all the problems of

civilization. There is not one kind of spirituality for

man, and another for society; there is only one for
both, for the power that builds the soul is the power
that builds the world. The Kingdom of God, it is
true; is not of this world, but as long as time endures

it is for this world. We therefore have not only a
vocation to sanctify and save our souls but also to
expand and diffuse that sanctification to save so-
ciety. The very prayers we say suggest that we
are related to a great social pattern as the cells of a

body are related one to another. We say “Our
Father”, not “My Father”

; we ask : “Forgive us our
trespasses”, not “Forgive me my trespasses”. Re-
ligion then is not an individual affair

;
religion is so-

cial. We do not save ourselves alone, but only in
conjunction with others.

Quite apart from this Divine injunction there is
still another reason for our responsibility toward the
modern world and its chaos, and that is that that
chaos is partly of our own making. If we are honest
with ourselves we cannot deny that the advance of
secularism, the increase of godlessness, is to a small

extent at least a result of our own unfulfilled Chris-



36 FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY

tian duty, a failure to live out in our social and eco-

nomic and political existences, the fullest implica-
tions of the cross that was signed on our backs the
day of our Baptism, and on our foreheads the hour

of our Confirmation. The very fact that the world
is a thousand times more scandalized at a bad Cath-
olic in public life than a bad anything else, is only a

proof that the world expects much more of him. To
just that extent that we have colored our Christian
outlook on life with the veneer of worldliness, or

have tried to make the best of two worlds, or have
used our faith only as a consolation and the world as
our luxury, or failed to radiate the light of God's

Truth to those who were groping in darkness, the
guilt of the world’s sin is on our hands and its
responsibility on our souls. Human perversity,
diabolical propaganda, vicious lies, unchained con-

cupiscences, passion, envy, and love of power—all
these have done much to upset the world, but there
is no doubt that it would be less upset if we had risen
to the full consciousness of what it means to be a
Christian. We make the world by living our faith;
we unmake it by falling short of it. We save the
world by loving the Cross ; we lose it by fleeing even
from its shadows.

If, then, the chaos of civilization is partly the

result of our compromise with the Cross, it follows
that we have an obligation to make reparation for it,
and this can be done only by a renewed sense of
responsibility and apostleship to the world in gen-
eral and to two groups in particular: marginal
Christians and the masses.

By marginal Christians is meant those on the
fringe of religion who are descendants of Christian-
living parents but who now are Christians only in



RESPONSIBILITY 37

name, retaining a few of its ideals out of indolence
and force of habit. What is going to happen to this
group when the challenge is hurled and the crisis
arrives? Within a very short time they must take
sides; they must either gather with Christ or they
must scatter; they must either be with Him or
against Him; they must either be on the cross as
other Christs, or under it as other executioners..

There was a middle course a few years ago, but
there is one no longer. Communism has done with
all the half-way houses: it has brought the world

face to face with fundamentals; it has cleared the

issues by reminding the world there are only two
philosophies of life: Communism which mobilizes
souls for secular ends and dust, and Christianity
which sanctifies them for eternal ends and God.
Which way then will these marginal Christians
tend? Will they trun right, which in Christian lan-
guage is upward to the God of Love for Whom they
were made, or will they turn left, which is down-
ward to class-struggle and the destiny of animals?
The answer depends upon those who have the faith.
Like the multitudes who followed Our Lord into the
desert, they are as sheep without a Shepherd. They
are waiting to be shepherded either with the sheep
or goats. Only, this much is certain: Being human
and having hearts, they want more than class-
struggle and economics; they want Life, they want
Truth, and they want Love. In a word, they want
peace. That is why the advantage is on our side, for
it is ours to give them Christ. If they receive Him
not, it will be only because we have failed.

We have responsibility not only toward mar-
ginal Christians but also toward the masses—what
Communists call the proletariat, the Capitalists call



38 FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY

labor, governments call the unemployed, and social
agencies call the maladjusted, and what we must
call potential children of the Kingdom of God. These
people have so long been the victims of social injus-
tices that they feel any force which will ameliorate
their economic lot is necessarily their saviour.

Communism, knowing that souls can be bought for
thirty pieces of silver, immediately presents itself

as their champion and the great enemy of social in-
justice. And the significance of Communism and
the power of its appeal can not be minimized. Com-
munism is right in its protests: the masses do have
too many wants and too few rights. But it is wrong
in its reforms. It falsely leads the masses to believe

they have only stomachs, as Capitalism falsely led

them to believe they had only hands. Who will get
to the masses first? Will it be Communism mobiliz-
ing them into a revolutionary force, or Christianity
uniting them into a moral force? The answer de-
pends on how seriously we take our faith. It is here
that our responsibility begins, namely not only to
feed their stomachs and busy their hands, but also

to teach them they have souls as well as bodies, that
the happiness of a man consists not in what he has
but in what he is, not in the quantity of his posses-
sions but in how he uses them. It is our solemn duty
to go down to them and build up just as strong, just
as vigorous a Christian proletariat as others would

build up a Communistic proletariat. It is our duty

not alone because they are unemployed, not alone

because they are victims of social injustice, but be-

cause they are poor, and the poor in spirit re the

stuff from which the future civilization will be built.

The influences making for the new era will come
not from above but from below, not from individ-



RESPONSIBILITY 39

uals with wealth but from groups with holy pur-

poses, not from the well-to-do but from the will-to-

reform. The Church itself even more than civiliza-

tion will draw its strength from them, as Our Lord

drew His apostles from them. By their very nature
they possess a power of cohesion which the rich

often lack, for wealth without religion breeds false

distinctions and snobbery. They therefore possess a
natural solidarity which can easily be woven into the
supernatural unity of the Mystical Body of Christ.
In Spain, in Russia, in Mexico, they have, in fren-

zies of indignation, burned churches; but this is

because they were told the Church was against
them. The Church that was born of the Poor Man of
Galilee cannot tolerate this lie ! It is not enough for

us to shout it down. The shouts cannot be heard
amidst burning embers and falling steeples. It must
be lived down

,
and it can be lived down only by

Catholics taking seriously the Beatitude: “Blessed

are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of
heaven.”

Our responsibility then ultimately resolves itself
down to this : we are not sent into the world to
preach Social Revolution but to be the Revolution;

we are not to envisage ourselves always as cruci-
fied, but sometimes, through our neglect, as the cru-

cifiers. We must realize that it is our duty to be
supermen, apostles of God the consuming fire whose
business it is to enkindle fires in the souls of men
and to give them not only the means of existence but,
what is vastly more important, the purpose of exist-
ence. We must realize furthermore that pacts and
planning are no substitute for moral force, and that
we are not living only to preserve the status quo of
a social order which is already crumbling, but to



40 FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY

supply the moral convictions without which social
order becomes disorder and chaos. In a word, the
best way to reform the world is to begin by reform-
ing ourselves. The world is in such a state of con-
fusion and panic that it knows not which road to
take. It therefore will do no good for us to shout:

“Take the road that leads to religion. Go to the
Cross. Go to Christ!” The world is so bewildered
that it will not go. But it will follow. That means
we must go first. And that is the way Our Lord led
us. “Come—Follow Me !”

This implies that our responsibility is of a re-

demptive character. An analogy of our redemptive
duty to the world may be -found in the triple vows
of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Why is there a
vow of poverty in the Church? Because wealth is
bad? Wealth is not necessarily an evil, for a rich
man can exchange his wealth for the kingdom of
God. Why then the vow of poverty? Because there
are some souls in the world who seek wealth as the
be-all and the end-all here, and there must needs be
some who will “bend back” in the other direction,
and establish an equilibrium by atoning for those

who have wealth and know not how to use it.
Why the vow of chastity? Because flesh is

wrong? No, the flesh is not wrong; it may be ele-
vated to the dignity of the Sacrament. Why then the
vow of chastity? In order that through reparation
and abstinence from even the legitimate pleasures
of flesh, atonement might be made for those who in-
dulge in its excesses.

Why the vow of obedience? Because freedom is
wrong? There is nothing wrong about liberty. In
fact our will is the only thing that is really our own,

and is therefore the most perfect gift that we can



RESPONSIBILITY 41

give to God. Why then the vow of obedience? Be-
cause there are men and women in the world who
use their will to sin, and they must be redeemed by

those who are willing to surrender it, to purchase
for sinners the glorious liberty of the children of

God.

What these vows are to the Church in particular,
that we are to the world in general—its redeemers,
its leaven, and its salvation by and through the sac-

rifice of Christ on the Cross. We are our brothers’
keepers; willing therefore we must be to suffer for
the sake of the community of souls of which we are
members, and to bear others’ burdens as Christ has

borne ours. Naturally such a spirit of sacrifice and

responsibility toward the marginal Christians and

the masses which make us willing to pray and sacri-
fice for them, requires the spirit of sacrificial forti-

tude—a fortitude which transfigures us into re-
deemers with a small “r” as Christ was a Redeemer
with a capital “R”

;
and which inspires us to bring

our lives as wheat and grapes to be ground and
crushed as bread and wine on the great altar of Cal-
vary.

Such a sacrificial fortitude will not convert the
world

;
it will not abolish all evil

;
it will not entirely

deplete our bread lines
;
it will not do away with all

wars and all injustices; it will not blot off the face of
the earth the blood of the race of Cain; it will not

stop every aching body and console every broken
heart

;
it will not make everyone rich. But it will do

one thing—it will save the world for this generation
—and that is our duty at this moment. The reaping
of the harvest we shall leave to those who come
after us.

The choice is clear: either the world will have a



42 FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY

Revolution of Violence or a Revolution of Love. The
Revolution of Love cannot just be preached, it must
be lived by souls enkindled by the burning heart of
Christ. Those of us who believe and live the Revolu-
tion of Love have only one objection to the Revolu-
tion of Violence, which means we have only one
basic objection to Communism—it is not revolution-
ary enough. It leaves hate in the soul of man

!



SPIRITUALITY 43

SPIRITUALITY
Address delivered on February 7, 1937.

In today's broadcast, the subject -of which is

Spirituality, it is hoped to prove that the world

crisis can be healed only by forces not directly in-

volved in the crisis itself. A sick man, for example,
must rely on medicine for his cure

;
a ship must an-

chor outside itself; an eagle can fly only by the aid

of something non-eagle, namely, the air. In like

manner, modern civilization cannot lift itself out of
the chaos by the boot straps of the economic and the
political, but only by a power other than the political
and the economic and therefore something not
directly involved in its ruin. Important as the polit-

ical and the economic are, it is still more important
to hearken back to Our Lord’s plan of social recon-
struction through spiritual regeneration. His

method was to make economic and social justice
the by-product of Christian living. He reminds us
that a purely secular civilization cannot save itself,

because natural man has not sufficient moral
strength to sacrifice himself for the common good.
That is why He saved the world by dying for it—to
teach us that without Him and His Spirit of Sacri-
fice we could do nothing. That too is why He gather-
ed around Himself a group of men whom He imbued
with totally different ideals than the world and radi-
cally different means to attain those ideals. “I have
chosen you out of the world”, He said

;
and He liter-

ally lifted them physically out of the world by put-
ting them in a desert place apart, and spiritually out
of the world by imbuing them with a new spirit and
the primacy of things Divine. “Seek ye therefore



44 FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY

first the kingdom of God, and his justice, and all
these things shall be added unto you.” When He
had regenerated them and made them new with
the fires of His Spirit, He sent them back again into
the world—but they were no longer the same men.
They were different men.

That is why He said: “If the world hate you,
know ye that it hath hated me before you. If you
had been of the world, the world would love its own

:

but. because you are not of the world, therefore the
world hateth you.” More than this, He told them
they were to risk everything on His way of living,
to be prepared to be hated by brother and sister,
father and mother, to be dragged before magis-
trates and kings, and even to be led to death. There
was to be no turning back, for no man putting his
hand to the plow and looking back was fit for the
Kingdom of God. The dead were to bury their dead,
but they were to follow Him by taking up their cross
daily, that is, by being prepared to lead an absolute-
ly selfless life for the glory of God and the salvation
of souls.

This whole-hearted surrender to Christ is the

only spirit which will conquer the world today, for
the world is through accepting half-baked philoso-

phies of life and milk-and-water religions. We are
living in days of fire and blood when men want
something that makes demands on them, and pos-
sesses both their bodies and their souls. Only enthu-
siastic apostles and zealous disciples who are will-
ing to sacrifice and even to die will be heard in this
day. That is why Communism is making an appeal

;

despite its enslaving materialism the men who
preach it believe in it. They have taken the word
“Leaven” used by Our Lord and changed it to



SPIRITUALITY 45

“•Cell” ; they have taken the word “Mass” and
changed it to “Front”. Burning with zeal for their

cause, they ask for only a few men filled with the
spirit of Marx and willing to sacrifice everything for
that spirit, and with this “cell” they threaten to fer-

ment and foment the whole “front”. They say:
“Give us three or four good Communists inspired
with a hatred of Capitalism, with the doctrine of

class struggle and the spirit of revolution, and let

us put them into a labor union and we will commu-
nize the whole union. Give us three or four univer-

sity professors who are on fire for the dialectics of
materialism, and even though their students do not

understand it, we will communize the whole uni-
versity.” Such zeal can be met only with zeal, such
courage only with courage, and such sacrifice only

with sacrifice. No Liberal was ever willing to in-
commode himself for Liberalism, but Communists
are very willing to sacrifice themselves for Com-
munism. In this day of intense loyalties the sleek
repose of Christians who will not sacrifice them-
selves for the things of God cannot meet the new
challenge. It will take a great faith in Christ to put

down faith in anti-Christ; it will take nothing less
than the sacrifice of the Cross to conquer the sacri-

fice of those who crucify.
May it not be that God is, by the mysterious

ways of His Providence, already shifting the wheat
of apostolic souls from the chaff of the indifferent.
As a matter of fact the purging has already gone on
in some countries. God is, as it were, choosing dis-
ciples from the multitude, and apostles from the dis-
ciples, and Peters and James and Johns from among
the apostles. The persecution of the Church in Mex-
ico, in Russia, in Spain, and in Germany has meant



46 FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY

an increase and a decrease—an increase in the qual-
ity of the Church, and a decrease in quantity. Num-
bers mean little to the Church, but spirituality means
everything. It may very well be then that God is
preparing the Church for the future battle or future
peace by a spiritual purification in which only the
strong will walk with Him. What was true in the
days of Gideon is true in our own day. Gideon, it
will be recalled, battled the Madianites whose army
numbered 135,000 men. Gideon asked if God would
be with him and received the sign through the sign
of the fleece. Sounding the trumpet, Gideon gather-
ed an army of 32,000 men. God told him his army
was too large ; the children of Israel might think
they conquered because of the force of their arms,

rather than the power of God. Gideon then asked all
fearful and timorous men to leave, and 22,000
cowards left the ranks. But even that army was too
large, God told Gideon, and He bade him take his
army to the waters. All who lapped the water in the
hands after the fashion of men of action were to be
placed on one side of the river

;
those who lay prone

on the ground to drink at their ease were to be put
on the other side of the river. And of the 10,000
men only 300 lapped the water with their hands.
With that trivial army of only 300 men Gideon went
out and put to flight the army of 135,000 and Israel
had peace for forty years. The moral is that 300
zealous souls who rely on God can do more than 32,-
000 in different ones who trust in their arms; and
also, that no enemy is too great if God is with us.

It is difficult to convince our contemporaries of

this truth, that our ills are not only political and
financial but fundamentally moral and religious.

They almost identify the moral aspect of the prob-



SPIRITUALITY 47

lem with the impractical. Perhaps this analogy will

help to impress upon minds the primacy of the

spiritual in matters economic and political. Suppose

America were conquered by a foreign power, whom,
for the sake of avoiding odious references we shall
call the Lenites. Suppose a Lenite tetrarch was set
up in Washington; suppose our religion was called
a “barbaric superstition” ; suppose Lenite soldiers

walked through our streets, collected our taxes, and

now and then induced some American to work for
them and collect taxes from their fellowmen; sup-
pose the capital of the United States was transfer-
red to Lenopolis

;
suppose we no longer had the right

to coin our money; suppose the judges of our courts
had no power of life and death over our citizens, but
only a Lenite court could impose death, and did so
freely; suppose the Lenitians regarded us as men-
tally and socially inferior, despite the fact that we
loved our independence and were fond of our glor-
ious history.

Now, suppose furthermore, the Incarnation had
not yet taken place, and Our Lord was born in some
insignificant Bethlehem in America; and about the
time we are speaking would have reached the middle
of His Public Life. Now let me ask the question : In
the midst of such financial, political, and economic

. woes what do you think would be the first question
Americans would ask Our Lord?

It wTould be without doubt: “Do you think it is
lawful to pay tribute to Lenites?” Or in other
words, “What do you think of the Lenitian ques-
tion?” The economic and the political and not the
need of purging ourselves would be uppermost in
nur minds. And how would Our Lord have answered
the question? Fortunately we need not speculate.



48 FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY

We definitely know the answer, for the conditions I
described to you are identically the same as Our
Lord met in Israel. Israel was conquered by the
Romans in the year 63 B. C. Their capital became
Rome

;
their religion was called by Cicero in his ora-

tion against Flaccus “an abominable superstition”;

Roman soldiers policed their streets and induced
some Jews to gather taxes for them; these Jews
called ‘‘publicans”, of which Matthew was one, were
intensely hated by their fellow men. The Jews had
not the power of coining money. It is recorded of
one Rabbi that he so detested the payment of his
tribute that during his whole lifetime he never

looked upon the image of the emperor. The Jewish
judges had no power of life and death—that is why
only Pilate and not Annas or Caiphas could condemn
Christ to death. Finally, the Jews loved their great
national history, but the Romans such as Tacitus
spoke of them as an “abominable tribe”.

Into such conditions Our Lord was born. And
what was the first question of importance to them:
It was the political question

;
the financial question

;

the social question: the “What do you think of the
Romans” question. “Is it lawful to give tribute to
Caesar?”

And how did Our Lord answer it? “Bring me a
penny that I may see it.” The coin is handed to
Him. “Whose is this image and inscription?”
“Caesar’s,” they answer. Then He strikes. “Render
therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s

;
and

to God, the things that are God’s.” In other words,

the important problem is not the Roman problem or
the Lenite problem, but the spiritual problem : “Seek

ye therefore first the kingdom of God, and his jus-
tice, and all these things will be added unto you.”



SPIRITUALITY 49

And so He left Caesar on his throne, Pilate on his
judgment seat, Herod in his court, and sent out His

Apostles full of the spirit of God and conquered a
world

!

The social order we build will depend upon how
we answer the question: What is the purpose of
living? If life has no other goal than the dust, then

we will build an order either of individual selfish-
ness, which is Liberalism, or of collective selfish-

ness, which is Communism; for if this Hfe is all,
why should we not have all? But if life is moral,
and the way we live in charity, justice, peace, and
sacrificing, determines our existence in the next

world, then what doth it profit if we gain the whole
world and lose our immortal souls? These two
philosophies of life are the Communistic and the
Christian; one material, the other spiritual. Com-
munists have only one word in their vocabulary and
that is the word “Down”—“Down with Capitalism!
Down with the Rich! Down with the Bourgeoisie!
Down with the Wealthy ! Down with Governments

!

Down with Classes! Down with Religion! Down
with God!”

Heavens above ! Is there not another word in our
vocabulary upon which we can build a true social
order? Can one build anything down? Must not
everything that is built be built upwards ? Let there
be another order constructed upon the word “Up!”
“Up from Class-struggle ! Up from Hate ! Up from
Revolution! Up from the material! Up from the
dust! Up beyond the earth, beyond the stars, up to
the ‘hid battlements of eternity’—Up—Up to God!”



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(Extract from his address at the inaugural program in the
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