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One often hears it said, and it is even more often accepted, that it is right to despise the masses. The majority of mankind, it is argued, are subject to a basic shortness of vision and a fundamental inertia which make it necessary for someone else—a dictator, a power elite, a superior—to administer their affairs. On this view the passivity of the mass of people has to be offset, if man is to advance, by being manipulated by the competent, talented few. Progress in history and the growth of civilisation are the work of an oligarchy, while the people constitute merely the raw material out of which history is made.
On the other side a number of thinkers have espoused the cause of the polloi. History is the vicissitudes of common folk, and nothing nobler can be contemplated than the numberless multitudes who shape the world’s destiny.
It would seem difficult for a Christian to adopt either of these views for his understanding of the Church. If, on the one hand, the Church is thought to consist primarily in the clerical elite, it is hard to see why Christ took such pains to identify himself with the unspectacular masses. If, on the other hand, the Church’s history is seen as the development of the sensus omnium fidelium, it is not easy to explain the cult of exceptional members who are thought to have advanced the spread of Christianity more significantly than any others, and it is even less easy to explain the emphasis placed on the role of the hierarchy in the preservation of God’s truth.
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- Copyright © 1974 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 Cf. these quotations given in the Bentley‐Esar Treasury of Humorous Quotations (Dent, London 1951, 1971)Google Scholar:
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1. As god people's very scarce, what I says is, make the best of 'em (Dickens).
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2. The people are to be taken in very small doses (Emerson).
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3. The people are that part of the state which does not know what it want (Hegel).
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4. The more I see of the representatives of the people, the more I admire my dogs (Lamartine).
To these amy be added the sentiments expressed in Dryden's ‘Of Dramatic Poesy’ (Select Dramatic Critism, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1970, 70–71): ‘If by the people you understand teh multitude, the oi polloi, ‘tis no matter what they think; they are sometimes in the right, sometimes in the wrong; their judgement is a mere lottery’.
2 Sympahty with the down‐trodden masses is often the driving force of revolutionaries, who identify themselves with the people. Cf. also Barber, B. R., Superman and Common Men, Praeger, New York 1971Google Scholar, Penguin, Harmonds‐worth 1972;Carrel, A, Man the Unknown, Hamish Hamilton, London 1935Google Scholar, Burns Oates, London 1961, 187–215. Even so patriarchal a figure as Confucius considers an element of culture to be the willingness to learn from one's inferiors (Sayings of Confucius, trans. Ware, J. R., Mentor, New York 1955Google Scholar, Bk. 5, no. 15, p. 41).
3 Jossua, Daniélou‐J, Cristianisme de masse ou d'élite, BBeauchesne (Verse et Controverse 4). Paris 1968, 12Google Scholar.
4 Inquiries into human faculty and its development, Macmillan, London 1883Google Scholar, Dent, London 1907, 1911, 47–56.
5 For example, Bobbio, N., The Philosophy of Decadentism, Blackwell, Oxford 1948, 32–39Google Scholar, Lotz, J. B., Sein and Existenz in der Existenz‐philosophie und in der Scholostik, Gregorianum 40 (1959), 401–466Google Scholar.
6 The Revolt of the Masses, Unwin, London 1930, 1969, 12Google Scholar.
7 Essais, Gallimard, Paris 1963, 936–946Google Scholar.
8 It would be useful although space does not permit us, to develop this. Some ideas may be found in J. Ratzinger, Schopfungsblaube und Evolutionstheorie, in Wer ist das eigentlich‐Gott? ed. Schultz. Kosel‐Verlag, Munich 1969, 232–245; Id., Beyond death. Intern. Cath. Rev. 1 (1972), 157–165; H. Rotter, Geistbeseelung des Menschen. ZKTh 93 (1971). 168–181.
8 Frend, W. H. C., The Early Church, London, 1965. p. 107Google Scholar.
9 Hom.100. De defectione lunae, PL 57, 483–486.
10 De gubernatione Dei lib.5, PL 100–108. The eighteenth‐century French theologian Claude Régnier (1718–1790) wrote a treatise on the Church (edited by Migne and included in his Theologiae Cursus Completus, Paris 1839–1840, Vol. 4, 9–1140) in which he argues that only bishops, with the Pope of course, have authority to decide matters of faith and morals. He considers five objections to his, thesis, all of them intending to prove that presbyters too have a deciding voice: it seems that not even opponents of Régnier's thesis contemplated the possibility of the people's having a say.
For centuries in the Church there has becn an effort to keep the laity down. A few examples will illustrate this. ‘No lay person may set himself up as a teacher in matiers of religion’ (Council in Trullo, 692. canon 64, McC 11,972); the laity are forbidden to interfere in the affairs of the Church (Council of Rheims 1148. MaC 21.715); no layman may dispute about the faith, in public or private (Synod of Tarragon 1234. MaC 23,329): the laity are forbidden to have in their possesion books of theology written in the vernacular, with the exception of prayer‐books (Synod of Tarragon 1317, canon 2, MaC 25,628); lay people are not to be near the altar during divine services (Synod of Paris 1429, canon 35, MaC 28,1113). ‘The Church of God consists in its priests’ (Isidore, Ep. Spur. c. 7, 8, quoted by Y. Congar, L';ecclésiologie du haut moyen âge. Paris, 1968. p. 240.
11 De veritate q.14. a.lO, corpore (Marietti 137). Cf. In Boeth. de Trin. lib.1. q.1, a.1, resp. (Marietti p. 342); II–II 2, 4. Pope Nicholas I, on the other hand, admits that the laity are as interested in matters of faith as the clergy: Epist. 186 to the Emperor Michael. PL 110. 943–944 (also in Mac 15, 200–201).
12 For example P. Fransen Confirmaion, in Intelligent Theology, II, DLT, London 1968, 7–66; p. T. Camelot, TOward a theology of confirmation, TD 7 (1959), 67–71; Id., II battesimo e la cresima nell teologia contemporanea, in Probleni e orientamenti di teologia dommatica, Marzorati, Milan 1957, II, 795–829; B. Botte, A propos de la confirmation: NRT 88 (1966), 848–852; the entire issue of Lumiére et Vie 51 (1961); Nordhues, P., Ueberkegungen zum Sakrament der Firmung, Theiol. u. Glaube 58 (1968), 281–297Google Scholar; Wall, J., Confirmation, The Furrow 21 (1970), 42–47Google Scholar; Delcuve, G., Is confirmation the sacrament of the apostolate? Lumen Vitae 17 (1962), 467–506Google Scholar.
13 De sacramentis 3, 2, quoted by Neunheuser, B., Baptism and Confirmation (Herder History of Dogma, Herder, Friburg‐Burns Oates, London 1964, 233Google Scholar.
14 Sent. 4, 7, quoted Neunheuser 243.
15 Breviloquium 6, 8. quoted Neunheuser 247.
16 In Symbolum apostolorum expos. a. 10 (Marietti, Opusc. Theol. II, 990).
17 ON consulting the faithful in matters of doctrine, ed. Coulson, J., Chapman, London 1961Google Scholar.
18 If the Church of Rome should ever be wrecked, it may come from her weakness in high places, where all churches are at their weakest, or it may be because with what is very narrow she tries to explain that which is very broad, but assuredly it will never be through the fault of her rank and file, for never upon earth have men and women spent themselves more lavishly and splendidly than in her service’ (The Refugees, John Murray, London 1947, 297). Elizabeth Goudge professes similar sentiments of the Jews: ‘Their High Priests up in Jerusalem had compounded with the conqueror, and so, for the sake of ease and gain had many of their men of wealth, but not the people, not the working people who were the bone and marrow of the nation’ (The Reward of Faith. Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1971, 102–103Google Scholar).
19 La difficulté d'étre chétien, ed. 'Colett, J., Ed. du Cerf, Paris 1964, 246Google Scholar.
20 O.U.P. London 1962, 2–3. But cf. Cor 3, 2; Heb 5, 11–14.
21 More, Thomas, Utopia Bk. 2, Dent, London 1910, 1951, 103Google Scholar. The translation is that of Ralph Robinson, 1551, slightly modernised.
22 Democracy I take to mean self‐government by the people. A fuller discussion of the Church as a democracy would take us regrettably too far out of our way.
23 It could be argued that maturity means the responsible acceptance of order from those in command. I find this view hather odd, given that even in a secular democracy. the presumed maturity of the citiiens entails at least a measure of self‐determination in the form of suffrage.
24 Harvey Cox begins his God's revolution and man's responsibility (SCM Press, London 1969, 13) by saying that ‘it is time we Christians move our focus from the renewal of church to the renewal of world’. I could not agree more. Nevertheless, for the Church to be effective in changing God's world, it must be of such a texture as will allow it to have an impact. It is my fear that unless the Church lives up more to God's brief to every Christian. it will in the very near future prove altogether redundant.