In the year 1924 the Society of Friends, which cherishes an ancient ‘testimony’ against the celebration of special days, waived its scruples to celebrate the birth of George Fox, who, if not exactly the founder, was the coherer of those wandering souls who became known as Quakers.

About the time the Quakers [I must be forgiven if from time to time I call them Friends] are, if not celebrating, at least turning their minds to the tercentenary of their existence as a religious body. I believe also that other religious bodies, especially Christian bodies, will according to their capacity give thanks to God for the Quakers. Even that Christian body to which I have been given the grace to belong, that body without which there could not be in any sense a Christian body, very properly and without retracting in the slightest degree from her witness to herself as Christ’s one and undivided Church outside which there is no salvation, may rejoice.

Strictly and narrowly the thing called Quakerism is a heresy and as such it must be condemned and detested. As a Catholic I abjure with all my heart and mind the heresy of Quakerism. Yet very few Quakers are heretics. They are not because very few have received the sacrament of baptism. Those who have received it are those who have joined the Society of Friends from some Christian group which gives valid baptism. Looking at the Society of Friends still in this narrow way, we may doubt whether it is, in fact, a Christian body at all.

It is true that the Christmas message of Pope Pius XII was directed to international affairs but much that he had to say has a direct application to lower forms of government.

Division, insincerity, discord and mistrust are not faults that are confined to those politicians who parade on the international field but are to be found, perhaps to an even greater extent, among minor politicians. One may hope that the better men rise to the top and that among Members of Parliament there is a greater moral sense than is to be found in the general public.

In this country there must be nearly 64,000 councillors serving a wide range of authorities from the Parish Council to the glorious heights of the County Council.

A democracy depends on such people. They can be a defence against the abuse of power on the part of the central government. Governments do tend, as Pius XII points out, ‘once they have won power and feel the reins securely in their hands . . . (to) . . . gradually drop the veil and pass by successive stages from oppression of the dignity and liberty of man to the abolition of all authentic and independent religious life.’ This exaggerates the dangers present in our country, but no one, irrespective of his politics, who thinks about fundamentals, can deny that there are dangers. It can be argued that the present generation of political leaders will not abuse their power. Yet the power is there and can be abused, if not today then in a few years’ time.

In her admirable biography, Gilbert, Keith Chesterton, Maisie Ward dwelt at some length on a notable controversy in which her hero was engaged at the beginning of the present century. ‘He was still’, she says, ‘writing every Saturday in the Daily News. Publishers were disputing for each of his books. Yet he rushed into every religious controversy that was going on, because thereby he could clarify and develop his ideas. The most important of all these was the controversy with Blatchford, Editor of The Clarion, who had written a rationalist Credo, entitled God and My Neighbour. In 1903-4, he had the generosity and the wisdom to throw open The Clarion to the freest possible discussion of his views. The Christian attack was made by a group of which Chesterton was the outstanding figure, and was afterwards gathered into a paper volume called The Doubts of Democracy’.

The writer of the present article read these sections of Miss Ward’s book with special interest, for he remembers vividly the controversy to which they refer, and thinks it may be useful to describe it in some detail, as it has lessons for our own times. He has also another reason for recalling it.

At the end of the nineteenth and during the early years of the present century (in fact, up to the outbreak of the 1914-18 war), debates on religion held a high place in the attention of the reading part of our people.

Any attempt to dissipate the confusion that reigns in Catholic circles on the subject of private property must be welcomed. Fr Drostan’s paper is to be welcomed also as a very notable clarification of the question and as an attractive preface to the major work which he may be persuaded to produce.

Not the least disturbing feature of the situation is that it appears so simple to many. Remaining wholly on the plane of reason, we can show Communism to be false, first because it is atheistic—and the quinque viae can quickly be pressed into service to show the folly of atheism—and secondly because it rejects private property—which natural law alone upholds as a fundamental right. But the Communist is not convinced, and to quite faithful Christians it does not seem as if there were much respect for God or the basic human rights in the stronghold of liberty and capitalism. And when American bankers turn to the crucifix before accommodating their clients—at the usual rates—militant atheism, if not more sincere, seems to have a better understanding of the meaning of religion.

Fr Drostan rejects this unholy simplicity and exposes the limitations of a largely hypothetical natural law. At the very opening of his paper he places the problem in its proper setting—where it is all too rarely placed: ‘private property is essentially and basically a theological question’.