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Show BREAKING UP Of DOGMACTIC RELIGION Conditions Obtaining Outside the Church Among the Notable Phenomena of . the Times. (By Rev. Charles Alfred Martin in the Catheli.' .Mirror.) . The breaking up of doyniatie religion outside the church is one of (lie noticeable phenomena of the time.-. I' i- hit! rc-tiiiir hi' it- hi-to;-y. i ,-o-lutioii from certain eau-e- and principle-, i:- nha-, -and effect-; but to n- a- mi-r-ionan,'-. hjis" h lit,!' ii is of absorbing in?en-t a- a condi i-:i : ''.' dav ' with which if i- out- lot to deal, and v. hh h w n u t find means, to turn in the verv ,e comhi , of r,r aposrolate. ('urio-iiy. al first -ihi. and happilv enough. tho intellectual and lvliL-ieu- unit si o:' w-. . 4 ' -. time -of trao-itioti. while di-a-troii- to oih-t churches, is favorable to our own. -iuce it emphasizes em-phasizes our spiritual wants for which we havo Iho remedy. ' Students of the times have long been telling ih ;. that tho religion of tho future will be naturalism or agnost ioim when it i- not c;:tholici-ni. The religious controversy of the day i- t nod, .mental. docs nor got. beyond h'r.-t pYineipIos; and it i- Reason Rea-son vs. Revelation The religious uncertainty amomr mu-' 'at indies which tends to filter down through the pre-s and other agencies to the common people, was no h.uhr ' bound of an authoritative teaching church. . Shoohan traces its connect ion with the traio-eev.-dental movement of tho past century (Iri.-h Ki'ee-iastical Ki'ee-iastical Ilovicw. .January. l'.Hllj. That philosophy, : the charaetortisties of which wore vagueness and " 1 , abstraction, the fancy that its intuitive knowledge transccnda! all experience and was independent of reason ami mo senses, no nun- running iiirouii rno writings of Rousoau: then broadened and devol oped in the groat (Ionium systems; caughr up and I crystallized in the half-prophetic. half-delirious " I ravings of Carlyle in England ; finally brought across tho Atlantic and popularized hero by Emerson- and the Now England school. For the time it. was received with honnless enthusia-m; it inspired ' poetry, and permeated literature, and interpreted history, and became a religious creed. ' I But nebulous hypothesis about '"over souls." and j "immensities." and eternal silences" could not .-at- . isfy the native logic of the mind, which do mands J prinplos and proofs, and says: "Xo dogma, no ethics." As the very notion of truth became lost in ( this subjectivism, people got to quoting such vague j sayings as, "Things depend very much on how you i-look i-look at them," religion without creed came into fash- .; j ion. It was counted vulgar to formulate or even to j know just what one believed; and so men failed to see why they should go to a church'with no higher claim than tho self-imposed task of presenting per- sonal opinion in tho form of chiselled essays, and took to reading their Sunday paper at homo with f indifference, or turned to science or socialism for the meaning and nde of life. i Another cause of the loss of faith: of tho relig- ' ion groping of many to whom the name and person- , ality of Christ is dear and venerated, but who are f at a loss to say "who the Son of Man is," and dare , , not cast the die; who arc dazed, not irreverent, and . whose neglect is rather a bewilderment than an apostasy, is tho dethronement from its position of authority of the Bile. ' In the matter of Biblical criticism, as well a j of Philosophy, the conclusions of the thinkers and . students gravitate to the masses through books and' ' f magazines and lyceum lectures; and with them .1 comes the startling exploitation of whatever in I thorn Is sensational r,r destructive Kv men :lir ' may be publishers without being students or think- ers, and who may bo preachers in pulpits without - j being teachers of Christian truth or conservators -' . of Christian faith. That difficult questions are involved is in the na-J ture of the matter and is suggested by the historyJT - , f of Rev. Abbe Loisy and the writings of our learned, f Pere Legrange. and perhaps quite as significantly- , I by the silence of others, or again by the creation of'.' I the papal Biblical commission. The reader of the-j I Sunday paper, even, is made familiar with the de- ' - . structive part of the work of higher critics. The ) said reader may not be very learned, nor able t- t ' grasp the whole subject ; but he need not be learner! at all to have its discussion brought to him and ' ' thrust upon him, and to be impressed by it. At any 1 rate the reading, thinking Protestant knows that tho ; ' f Bible, to whose infallibility he had pinned his faith. . has been questioned ; and that not by infidels but by j the leaders of his own party; and has been dis- " ' j credited by them. Henceforth it can never be to , j him quite what it was to his father and mother, ! . and Christianity grows dim and confused before , his blurred eyes. 1 I However it came about, there is undoubtedly a - whispered tendency to drift away from Christianity ' i I as a supernaturally revealed truth, and to retain at , most only its exposition of the natural moral law. J We may observe the conscious expression of the , f "new Christianity" in the liberal churches. Oc- casionally its heralds are of the strenuous sort, who ' i are already ringing the knoll of old-time orthodoxy ; ? ; f who deny the doctrines and mysteries which wore the faith of their fathers and grow impatient at j, their very names j . Oftener the new teachers are more tolerant. They repeat the old names even while they strip them 1 'of all meaning; perhaps because they fool they can ;' afford, with the patience of culture, to soothe the I ' , worn out creed to its death with the narcotics of f , ' condescension and pity; perhaps because. they are not quite sure hut behind the venerable terms there j ,; is some mysterious reality after all. Familiar in- i . '. stances of this might be multiplied. Among tho ' latest examples in HarnackV saying, that the res- ' urrection is a great truth, if taken in its higher f spiritual sense: or "that the world is saved by the sufferiings of Christ and his dying for all, just a ' Luther inwardly bleeding and striving, or any hero of self-sacrificing deeds, redeems tho race. In its positive side, which is the one most frequently fre-quently presented for our admiration, we find tho ' Continued on Pago " 1 i ' ' i -i BREAKING IP Of DOGMATIC RELIGION. (Continued from Page 1.) new' Christianity or rather the relic of f Christianity to consist of natural religion . I in the adornment of Christian terms an-l ! . -,- Religion is' eternal life in tin- n.i.j.- ' of time; God and the soul are its elfmen:-. ; ;; . kingdom of God within you its end; the :irin-!-!i.,.,.j of God and the infinite value of the soul ; teachings ft he higher righteousness and i ii.-mundments ii.-mundments of love are its ;w. - This we are told is all of Christ's iiio.ti;. .; s kernel and essence, and at once simple cu..,iu':. :,, oinmand the reverenco ot the greaiM, ;uii !.: ,. y enough for Jew and infidel, for Catholic ;m.! .. i tostant to he the religion of the world. An-i .... f tainl.v the best expression of it- positive te.e ,, I have jot it down is simple and sublime, uml ; as far h. ii goes. Hut it is not all of 'liri-i i u.:- ; it is only the Christian statement of the c..n,.:;i, . religious idei that underlies jdl religion-. which they all are an instinctive endeavor ;, interpret. in-terpret. You will recall how Leo XIII enip1 :,- , the word naturalism in his encyclical on ill. 1 . . Masons. Harnaek. whom a rector of the fin-ni-;. theology in that home of learning, the I'nivcr-i'v . Berlin we naturally quote as the chief roj,i,. and reflector of advanced Protestant though-, u . find to be but a IJohert El-emere. Years ago Ernest Kenan expressed the n--: thai he was not a German professor i ii-ti ; i ..' , Frenchman, that he might be a Chri-tian a? same time that he was an infidel. Todav in- ml-; be both in American as well as Germany. The effect of this eclipse of the light of faii'a a widespread desertion of the pews. Only :;u.ooo.oi o of Americans are affiliated with anv church. Mm of the great unchurched are merely indiffen ir morally at fault, perhaps, and intelligently uninformed unin-formed about religion, but yet the unconscious cA-pression cA-pression of the loss of Christian unity ami an accredited ac-credited custodian and teacher of Christian faith. Others attempt to find in socialism or ot!. -isms of the day the solution of the problem- of li ' which it belongs to true religion to provide ; ti,. questions of the soul which will not down. tli. whence and whither of destiny: the how and tin-why tin-why of morals. Among the better classic are gn a: numbers, I believe, who arc in a condition ;' "waiting," a composite of unattached Unitarian and reverent Agnostic, whose picture of Christ i a dimmed heirloom retained by sentiment, and I whose religion is a natural hope more than a Chri-- J tian-faith. If this class gave themselves over to religious introspection they might, as Dr. Slu-chan says, be typified by Herbert Spencer in his la -t days, sitting on the sands at Hrighton, and peering out, silent and dull of eye. over the unfathomable sea. But as they happen to be busy and prosperous and not sad, while they "wait." their truer tvpe might be the crowd around the Marconi wires in the saloon of the transatlantic steamer enjoying the applications of science and eager to catch the gossip of two continents. So. much then, for the non-Catholic who i . left a Christian still, by the breaking up of dog- J matic religion! Dr. Sheehan in reviewing the Question Iox expresses ex-presses surprise that the questions are so largely the old-fashioned and oft-reputed objections and misunderstandings which arse at the very time, of tho reformation and have been classics for gen-i gen-i orations, and that the non-Catholic public seems little affected by the advanced thought of liberal .Protestantism. Happily the affection is not so widespread as one now living among the scholars might expect; but f think it is much more general than the contents con-tents of the Question Box would indicate. That vastly many reading and educated non-Catholics non-Catholics are undoubtedly influenced by advanced . , ', and rationalistic thought is obvious from the fact that their demands are supplied by the most cut- , tured and generously paid pulpits; by the fact that, so largo a portion of our better classes are affiliated affil-iated with no church at all, or go confessedly for the mental stimulation of listening to another j man's views of a question, or for the sentimental j nourishing of the hungry religious instinct. Only yesterday the bright young reporter sent, out here to write up our meeting, told me, not flippantly, that he feared he was a pagan. Another reporter, this morning, told me. and without my asking him, that he believed in God. but did not understand or believe in the divinity of Christ, and belonged to no church. His father had been a Methodist, his grandparents were Catholic. What an endless procession of bright young men, students and business and professional men. whom we meet on the trains and everywhere, are such reverent agnostics? They admit that there is a more satis- V fying inspiration in a church steeple than in a ' sky-scraper, but their religious education, failing to keep pace with their secular development, w:i left behind, and the "theology" of the boy of ten is found inadequate to sustain the man of thirty. It has been said that we can safely neglect the half-dozen unbelievers in the audience to give our attention to the stray Christians whose conversions are more probable and easy. Alternate scries of lectures for the two different classes might be a safer solution of the problem, especially in cities where there are many of each. JVfcn whose faith must be built up from the P bottom are likely to let slip a series of lectures whose subjects seem to assume the very things thc-want thc-want proved. A lecture on "Saint Worship." or "The Blessed Virgin," or "Prayers for the Dead." or "The Sacramental System." will hardly anpea! to the man whose questions are: "Who was Christ that we must believe Him?" "Can" wc trust tho Bible?" "Is Science and Religion in Conflict?" "What is Christianity?" ;-What the need of organized organ-ized Religion ?" "Is there a Revelation of God's will except through reason and nature?" or yet "Is there ? a further Life for the Individual?" "Is there a Personal God apart from the Universal Life and Law?" A popular and convincing response to these fundamental questions, at the proper place and time, might bring us into touch also with the children chil-dren of God whom the breaking up of dogmatic religion has left without the light of faith. i |