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PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM

BY ROBERT HUGH BENSON


_These sermons (which the following pages contain in a much abbreviated
form) were delivered, partly in England in various places and at various
times, partly in New York in the Lent of 1912, and finally, as a
complete course, in the church of S. Silvestro-in-Capite, in Rome, in
the Lent of 1913. Some of the ideas presented in this book have already
been set out in a former volume entitled "Christ in the Church" and a
few in the meditations upon the Seven Words, in another volume, but in
altogether other connexions. The author thought it better, therefore, to
risk repetition rather than incoherency in the present set of
considerations. It is hoped that the repetitions are comparatively few.

Italics have been used for all quotations, whether verbal or
substantial, from Holy Scripture and other literature_.

ROBERT HUGH BENSON
HARE STREET HOUSE, BUNTINGFORD
EASTER, 1913




CONTENTS


INTRODUCTORY
  (i) JESUS CHRIST, GOD AND MAN
  (ii) THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, DIVINE AND HUMAN

I PEACE AND WAR

II WEALTH AND POVERTY

III SANCTITY AND SIN

IV JOY AND SORROW

V LOVE OF GOD AND LOVE OF MAN

VI FAITH AND REASON

VII AUTHORITY AND LIBERTY

VIII CORPORATENESS AND INDIVIDUALISM

IX MEEKNESS AND VIOLENCE

X THE SEVEN WORDS

XI LIFE AND DEATH




PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM




INTRODUCTORY

(i) JESUS CHRIST, GOD AND MAN


_I and My Father are one_.--JOHN X. 30.

_My Father is greater than I_.--JOHN XIV. 20.


The mysteries of the Church, a materialistic scientist once announced to
an astonished world, are child's play compared with the mysteries of
nature.[1] He was completely wrong, of course, yet there was every
excuse for his mistake. For, as he himself tells us in effect, he found
everywhere in that created nature which he knew so well, anomaly piled
on anomaly and paradox on paradox, and he knew no more of theology than
its simpler and more explicit statements.

[Footnote 1: Professor Huxley.]

We can be certain therefore--we who understand that the mysteries of
nature are, after all, within the limited circle of created life, while
the mysteries of grace run up into the supreme Mystery of the eternal
and uncreated Life of God--we can be certain that, if nature is
mysterious and paradoxical, grace will be incalculably more mysterious.
For every paradox in the world of matter, in whose environment our
bodies are confined, we shall find a hundred in that atmosphere of
spirit in which our spirits breathe and move--those spirits of ours
which, themselves, paradoxically enough, are forced to energize under
material limitations.

We need look no further, then, to find these mysteries than to that tiny
mirror of the Supernatural which we call our self, to that little thread
of experience which we name the "spiritual life." How is it, for
example, that while in one mood our religion is the lamp of our shadowy
existence, in another it is the single dark spot upon a world of
pleasure--in one mood the single thing that makes life worth living at
all, and in another the one obstacle to our contentment? What are those
sorrowful and joyful mysteries of human life, mutually contradictory yet
together resultant (as in the Rosary itself) in others that are
glorious? Turn to that master passion that underlies these
mysteries--the passion that is called love--and see if there be anything
more inexplicable than such an explanation. What is this passion, then,
that turns joy to sorrow and sorrow to joy--this motive that drives a
man to lose his life that he may save it, that turns bitter to sweet and
makes the cross but a light yoke after all, that causes him to find his
centre outside his own circle, and to please himself best by depriving
himself of pleasure? What is that power that so often fills us with
delights before we have begun to labour, and rewards our labour with
the darkness of dereliction?

I. If our interior life, then, is full of paradox and apparent
contradiction--and there is no soul that has made any progress that does
not find it so--we