Dawn of All, Robert Hugh Benson [ebook reader with highlighter txt] 📗

absolutely therefore that these decrees, as emanating from an ecumenical council, are infallibly true. But I repudiate entirely--since I am forced to do so by scientific fact (or, we will say, by what I am persuaded is scientific fact)--the usual theological interpretation of the wording of the decrees. Well, my judges take the other view. They tell me that I am wrong in my second point, and therefore wrong also in my first. They tell me that the decrees do categorically cover the class of cure I have dealt with; that such cures have been pronounced by the Church therefore to be evidently supernatural; and that therefore I am heretical in both my points. On my side, I refuse to submit, maintaining that I am differing, not from the Catholic Church as she really is, (which would be heretical), but from the Catholic Church as interpreted by these theologians. I know it's rash of me to set myself against a practically universal and received interpretation; but I feel myself bound in conscience to do so. Very well; that is the point we have now reached. I could not dream of separating myself from Catholic Unity, and therefore that way of escape is barred. There was nothing for it, then, but for my judges to pronounce sentence; and that they did, ten minutes before you came in. (I saw you come in, Monsignor.) I am sentenced, that is to say, as an obstinate heretic--as refusing to submit to the plain meaning of an ecumenical decree. There remains Rome. The whole trial must go there verbatim. Three things may happen. Either I am summoned to explain any statements that may seem obscure. (That certainly will not happen. I have been absolutely open and clear.) Or the sentence may be quashed or modified. And that I do not think will happen, since I have, as I know, all the theologians against me."

There was a pause.

The prelate heard the words, and indeed followed their sense with his intellect; but it appeared to him as if this concise analysis had no more vital connection with the real facts than a doctor's diagnosis with the misery of a mourner. He did not want analysis; he wanted reassurance. Then he braced himself up to meet the unfinished sentence. "Or----" he murmured.

"Or the sentence will be ratified," said the monk quietly. And again there was silence. It was the monk again who broke it. "Where Father Abbot seems to think you can help me perhaps, Monsignor, is in persuading the Cardinal to write to Rome. I do not quite know what he can do for me; but I suppose the idea is that he may succeed in urging that the point is a disputed one, and that the case had better wait for further scientific as well as theological investigation."

Monsignor flung out his hands suddenly. The strain had reached breaking-point.

"What's the good!" he cried. "It's the system--the whole system that's so hateful . . . hateful and impossible."

"What?"

"It's the system," he cried again. "From beginning to end it's the system that's wrong. I hate it more every day. It's brutal, utterly brutal and unchristian." He stared miserably at the young monk, astonished at the cold look in his eyes.

The monk looked at him questioningly--without a touch of answering sympathy, it seemed--merely with an academic interest.

"I don't understand, Monsignor. What is it that you----"

"You don't understand! You tell me you don't understand! You who are suffering under it! Why----"

"You think I'm being unjustly treated? Is that it? Of course I too don't think that----"

"No, no, no," cried the elder man. "It's not you in particular. I don't know about that--I don't understand. But it's that any living being can live under such tyranny--such oppression of free thought and judgment! What becomes of science and discovery under a system like this? What becomes of freedom--of the right to think for oneself? Why----"

The young monk leaned a little over the table.

"Monsignor, you don't know what you are saying. Tell me quietly what it is that's troubling you. Quietly, if you please. I can't bear much more strain."

The man who had lost his memory mastered himself with an effort. His horror had surged up just now and overwhelmed him altogether, but the extraordinary quiet of the other man and his apparently frank inability to understand what was the matter brought him down again to reality. Subconsciously, too, he perceived that it would be a relief to himself to put his developing feeling into words to another.

"You wish me to say? Very well---"

He hesitated again for words.

"You are sure you'd better? I know you've been ill. I don't want to---"

Monsignor waved it away with a little gesture.

"That's all right," he said. "I'm not ill now. I wish to God I were!"

"Quietly, please," said the young man.

He swallowed in his throat and rearranged himself in his chair. He felt himself alone and abandoned, even where he had been certain of an emotional sympathy.

"I know I'm clean against public opinion in what I think. I've learnt that at last. I thought at first that it was the other way, as . . . as I think it must have been a hundred years ago. But I see now that all the world is against me--all except perhaps the people who are called infidels."

"You mean the Socialists?"

"Yes, I suppose so. Well, it seems to me that the Church is . . ." (he hesitated, to pick his words) "is assuming an impossible attitude. Take your own case; though that's only one: it's the same everywhere. There are the sumptuary and domestic laws; there's the 'repression,' as they call it, of the Socialists. But take your own case. You are perfectly satisfied that your conclusions are scientific, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"You're a Christian and a Catholic. And yet, because these conclusions of yours are condemned--not answered, mind you, or refuted by other scientists--but just condemned--condemned by ecclesiastics as contrary to what they assume to be true--you . . . you care----"

He broke off, struggling again with fierce emotion. He felt a hand on his arm.

"Monsignor, you're too excited. May I ask you some questions instead?"

Monsignor nodded.

"Well, don't take my case only. Take the system, as you said just now. I really want to know.... You think that the Socialists ought not to be repressed--that every man ought to be free to utter his opinions, whatever they may be. Is that it?"

"Yes."

"However revolutionary they may be?"

Monsignor hesitated. He had considered this point before. He felt his answer was not wholly satisfactory. But the monk went on.

"Suppose these opinions were subversive of all law and order. Suppose there were men who preached murder and adultery--doctrines that meant the destruction of society. Would you allow these, too, to publish their opinions broadcast?"

"Of course, you must draw the line somewhere," began Monsignor. "Of course----"

"Where?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"You said that we must draw the line somewhere. I ask you where?"

"Well, that, of course, must be a matter of degree."

"Surely it must be one of principle. . . . Can't you give me any principle you would allow?"

The passion of just now seemed wholly gone. Monsignor had an uncomfortable sense that he had behaved like a child and that this young monk was on firmer ground than himself. But again he hesitated.

"Well, would you accept this principle?" asked Dom Adrian. "Would you say that every society has a right to suppress opinions which are directly subversive of the actual foundations on which itself stands? Let me give an instance. Suppose you had a country that was a republic, but that allowed that other forms of government might be equally good. (Suppose, for instance, that while all acquiesced more or less in the republic, yet that many of the citizens personally preferred a monarchy.) Well, I suppose you would say it was tyranny for the republic to punish the monarchists with death?"

"Certainly."

"So should I. But if a few of the citizens repudiated all forms of government and preached Anarchy, well, I suppose you would allow that the government would have a perfect right to silence them?"

"I suppose so."

"Of course," said Dom Adrian quietly. "It was what you allowed just now. Society may, and must, protect itself."

"What's that got to do with it? These Socialists are not Anarchists. You're not an atheist. And even if you were, what right would the Church have to put you to death?"

"Oh! that's what you're thinking, is it, Monsignor? But really, you know, Society must protect itself. The Church can't interfere there. For it isn't for a moment the Church that punishes with death. On the contrary, the Catholic authorities are practically unanimous against it."

Monsignor made an impatient movement.

"I don't understand in the least," he said. "It seems to me----"

"Well, shall I give you my answer?"

Monsignor nodded.

The monk drew a breath and leaned back once more.

To the elder man the situation seemed even more unreal and impossible than at the beginning. He had come, full of fierce and emotional sympathy, to tell a condemned man how wholly his heart was on his side, to repudiate with all his power the abominable system that had made such things possible. And now, in five minutes, the scene had become one of almost scholastic disputation; and the heretic, it seemed--the condemned heretic--was defending the system that condemned him to a man who represented it as an official! He waited, almost resentfully.

"Monsignor," said the young man, "forgive me for saying so; but it seems to me you haven't thought this thing out--that you're simply carried away by feeling. No doubt it's your illness. . . . Well, let me put it as well as I can. . . ."

He paused again, compressing his lips. He was pale, and evidently holding himself hard in hand; but his eyes were bright and intelligent. Then he abruptly began again.

"What's wrong with you, Monsignor," he said, "is that you don't realize--again, no doubt, owing to your loss of memory--that you don't realize that the only foundation of society at the present day is Catholicism. You see we know now that Catholicism is true. It has reasserted itself finally. Every other scheme has been tried and has failed; and Catholicism, though it has never died, has once more been universally accepted. Even heathen countries accept it de facto as the scheme on which the life of the human race is built. Very well, then, the man who strikes at Catholicism strikes at society. If he had his way society would crumble down again. Then what can Catholic society do except defend itself, even by the death penalty? Remember, the Church does not kill. It never has; it never will. It is society that puts to death. And it is certainly true to say that theologians, as a whole, would undoubtedly abolish the death penalty to-morrow if they could. It's an open secret that the Holy Father would do away with it to-morrow if he could."

"Then why doesn't he? Isn't he supreme?" snapped the other bitterly.

"Indeed not. Countries rule themselves. He only has a veto if an actually unchristian law is passed. And this is not actually unchristian. It's based on universal principles."

"But----"

"Wait an instant. . . . Yes, the Church sanctions it in one sense. So