The world in which we live and the social order which regulates its movements has for some time been passing through a crisis, a period of transition. We cannot see into the future, and we know not what it may bring. But we are aware that every change implies a passing-away and a coming-to-be, a re birth following on death which is its price. Only the divine Nature is exempt from the invariable law of change or destruction leading either to the building up of a new life or the falling away into decay by disintegration. Yet God in His goodness has as it were placed limits on His omnipotence and will by not suffering His creatures to be annihilated. Every variation is therefore based on a permanent structure which is itself eternal and unchangeable.

In human nature, whatever modifications a man may undergo, the spiritual element of necessity dominates the material, since in his composite being the soul is created to rule the body. Similarly when the spirit is elevated to the supernatural plane it will by divine ordination and of necessity supersede the purely natural and temporal. The supreme application of this principle, and indeed a reflection in time of the eternal mind of God, is found in the God-man. Here in this most wonderful of mysteries a human nature was made to be the instrument at hand of the Divine Person of the Son.

That which God the Father realized in the Person of His Son He intended in like manner to be accomplished in every Christian. For in being incorporated by baptism into the Mystical Body, the Church, of which the head is the living Christ, each is become a partaker of the divine nature and life. That which is accomplished in each living member must similarly be effected in the body politic, which is the Christian commonwealth.

St. Thomas in affirming that the Birth of Christ took place at the time which was most fitting—convenientissimo tempore—supports one of his arguments with the fact that the governance of a single ruler, the Emperor Augustus, had given the world that most mighty peace—maxima pax fuit in mundo—in which Christ, Himself chose to be born. That temporal peace was instinct with tranquil expectancy. Men who looked to Jerusalem and to Rome as their Mother Cities were filled with hope: for the Jew, now under the Pax Romana, the lines of prophecy and portent were swiftly converging upon Bethlehem. Rome herself, so lately racked with civil strife, was ready to turn from bloodshed and proscriptions as ‘from a horrible nightmare, and to apply all her energies to reconstruction, and even to hail, in the Pax Augusta, the dawn of the new Golden Age.’

Ultima Cumaei venit jam carminis aetas;
magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo,
jam redit et virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna,
jam nova progenies caelo demittitur alto.

Now hath the last age come, foretold by the Sibyl of Cumae;
Mightily now upriseth a new millenial epoch.
Justice the Maid comes back, and the ancient glory of Saturn;
New is the seed of man sent down from heavenly places.

Her power was at its zenith, her most brilliant writers expressed for her the standards of human virtue and justice which were fitting her for iter true destiny.

If it is by inspiration that idea takes bodily form, the word is made flesh, it follows that, given a common material, the greater the inspiration the greater will be the completed reality. Moreover, the greatest imaginable inspiration (that is, God Himself in entire perfection, rather than in isolated attributes) would demand and receive an infallible response. We have, therefore, in seeking for a religion that is unconscious art, to seek for a religion that claims direct, certain, and complete infallibility from God. There are many such religions, including the Catholic Church.

But the Catholic Church differs from the rest, not only in the actual authority for its infallibility (a matter beyond the province of metaphysics and aesthetics), but in the fact that it alone claims to be the Body of Christ, the Word made Flesh. Thus Catholicism, since it is a continuation and extension of the Incarnation, becomes not only a work of art, but the abstract type or pattern of all works of art. For, just as Christianity claims Christ to be the incarnation, the world of God in the world of flesh, so does Catholicism claim the Church as the incarnation of Christ in the world of history and institutions, though with this difference, that whereas Christ, being God, was perfect as man, there can be no such guarantee for the private lives of the personnel of institutions (however divine). In Christ God associated Himself only with man’s imperfections, but in the Church Christ associates Himself with man’s sins. Those who reject, ‘on spiritual grounds,’ the possibility of the incarnation of Christ in a ‘corporation,’ should be led to reject also the possibility of the incarnation of God in a human body and soul. Both these doctrines comprise the realization and justification of the supreme experience of the aesthetic world—that of the Word being made Flesh.

The Catholic concept of religion is radically different from most others because it is born of the realization that the true function of religion is the unique fulfilment of a need rooted in the very essence of human nature. This difference is shown in practice by the willingness of the Catholic to submit to the guidance of the Church, primarily of course in matters supernatural, whether of Faith or Morals, but also in matters which do not appear to have any direct connection with ‘religion.’ He is ready to recognize the wise authority of the Church in every department of human life whenever the Church sees fit to offer judgment or advice, even though he is aware that such pronouncements are not infallible expressions of revealed truth nor coercive of his assent.

Then we are priest-ridden after all? No, decisively no, it is not that. The truth is that the Catholic recognizes the true function of the Church and its true relation to human life. He looks upon the Church not as representing only a section of his life that is rigidly separated from his daily affairs. He looks upon it not merely as a place where he spends a perfunctory half hour or so on a Sunday, not as a sort of sedative and balance to the rush and clamour of secular affairs. He knows full well that it provides the means of fulfilling an urgent need of his very nature. Far from being extrinsic to his ordinary daily life, he knows that it is the only thing that can save human life from becoming in reality the futile meaningless thing it so often appears to be. He knows that without the Church a man is like one blind, groping about aimlessly unaware of the pitfalls on every side, who knows that he is in a desperate plight and without hope.

To most of us leprosy as a disease is something at once so remote and so repulsive that we put it wholly out of our minds and at best connect it only with R. L. Stevenson’s generous defence of Father Damien, or—more romantically—with the fatal kiss that Violaine, out of sheer pity, bestowed on Pierre de Craon in L’Annonce faite a Marie. Yet, prosaically considered, leprosy is one of the health problems of the Empire, for though practically nonexistent in Europe, it remains a real scourge in several of our tropical Colonies and not least in our Protectorate of Uganda. Here, unhappily, thousands of lepers, calculated indeed as high as four per cent, of the native population, are living to-day, largely untended and uncontrolled, spreading their terrible disease among children and neighbours, the means of coping with the situation being still sadly inadequate.

From a useful little booklet issued by the Uganda Government for the instruction of all concerned, one gathers that leprosy is emphatically a poor man’s disease, the outcome of dirt, drink, ill-ventilated huts, over-crowding, under-nourishment, in brief of a total disregard of the laws of hygiene and sanitation which extreme poverty entails in all countries. Leprosy is not an infectious disease as was universally believed throughout earlier centuries— hence the terrible sentence of isolation imposed on the victims—but it is acutely contagious, especially to children, under conditions of close intercourse in over-crowded dwellings, by a common use of bedding, drinking-cups, etc. If due precautions are taken, such as entering infected huts as little as possible and careful washing of hands immediately after touching infected objects, there need be no special risk for healthy persons in tending leper patients, although the heroic nature of such a vocation remains without question.

Father Conrad Pepler has done well to emphasize the sacrifice involved in a return to the land upon which more than one of the older hands at Catholic land propaganda has found it necessary to insist, as against the ‘Arcadian Shepherd’ school on the one hand and the ‘Sound Economic Proposition’ enthusiasts on the other.

In the Catholic Truth Society pamphlet on The Catholic Land Movement, the first attempt at systematic public exposition of our aims and motives, the present writer expressed a point of view which he ventures to quote:

‘Now while we believe that, whether in the meanwhile we work for or against it, this [the basing of our social system “on the land whence all our subsistence comes and on the labour of our hands which God has ordained as the means thereto”] is the only possible ultimate development, the continued existence of the vast commercio-industrial organization, with its specious offers of wealth, luxury and “convenience,” its false philosophy of ease, “leisure” and mechanical distractions as the ends of human life, and of work as mere irksome toil to be curtailed as much as possible, must remain as a stumbling block and an irresistible temptation to those not supported by true principles in facing the undoubted physical hardships and inconveniences involved in the return to a peasant life. It has been said that no people has ever voluntarily gone out from the city into the wilderness, save under the influence of a religious ideal. Mere economic considerations are not enough.

Growing side by side with the world-wide movement of Catholic Action there is the ever-spreading liturgical revival. They are but two aspects of the one fact—the mutual co-operation of the faithful among themselves and with their pastors; and they differ in that Catholic Action, of its very nature, includes the liturgical movement. Catholic Action includes corporate activity both ad intra and ad extra: the sanctification of individuals and the defence and advance of Christianity in a semi-pagan world.

To push on the external manifestation of Catholic Action without paying due attention to the preliminary of personal sanctity is to make bricks without straw: Nisi Dominus aedificaverit domum, in vanum laboraverunt qui aedificant earn. Furthermore, the interior life must be looked to, to provide inspiration and strength as the cause progresses. There is one outstanding practice of the faithful which gives them a perennial ‘unity without uniformity,’ namely the fundamental act of public external worship of God, as expressed in the sacrifice of the Mass. For, as Fr. Pepler puts it: ‘when we speak of the liturgy, we mean primarily the Mass; and the Mass becomes the essential link of Christian unity.’ ‘Attendance at this ceremony has been imposed as an obligation of membership, so that theoretically the whole Catholic world is present at least once a week. This is the main symbol of the catholicity of the Church.’

The Pope has urged time and again that Catholic Action is an apostolate. It procures not only the personal sanctification of him who participates in it (although this is the foundation), but that also of others.