The orthodox Catholic faith believes in a supernatural revelation, and is firmly convinced that man is inherently vile and corrupt, born in sin from which he cannot be redeemed, save by the mystical operations of divine grace, working only through the holy sacraments and clergy of the one true Church, to whom all power was given, according to its view, by the historic Jesus. Its methods are conservative, its discipline rigid and based on tradition and authority. Its system of salvation is excessively individualistic. It holds firmly to this pessimistic view of human nature, based on the doctrine of original sin, thus maintaining a creed which, in the hands of a devoted clergy, who are free from domestic ties, works as a powerful moral force upon the individual believer. His freedom of thought is restricted; he can neither read nor think what he likes, and the Church, having made the thirteenth-century doctrines of Aquinas its official philosophy, hurls anathema at ideas scientific, political, philosophical or theological which have appeared since. No half-measures are allowed: either one is a loyal Catholic or one is not a Catholic at all. In this relentlessly uncompromising attitude lies the main strength of Catholicism; herein also is contained its weakness, or at least that element which makes it manufacture its own greatest adversaries. While claiming to be the one Church of Jesus Christ, it does not by any means put him in the foreground of its religion. Its hierarchy of saints is rather a survival of polytheism; its worship of the Virgin and cult of the _Sacré Cœur_ issue often in a religious sentimentality and sensuality promoted by the denial of a more healthy outlet for instincts which are an essential part of human nature. Tribute, however, must be paid—high tribute—to the devotion of individuals, particularly to the work done by the religious orders of women, whose devotion the Church having won by its intense appeal to women keeps, consecrates and organises in a manner which no other Church has succeeded in doing. This is largely the secret of the vigorous life of the Church, for as a power of charity the Roman Church is remarkable and deserves respect. Her educational efforts, her missions, hospitals, her humbler clergy, and her orders which offer opportunity of service or of sanctuary to all types of human nature—these constitute Roman Catholicism in a truer manner than the diplomacy of the Jesuits or the councils of the Vatican. It is this pulsing human heart of hers which keeps her alive, not the rigid intellectual dogmatism and antiquated theology which she expounds, nor her loyalty to the established political order, which, siding with the rich and powerful, frequently gives to this professedly spiritual power a debasing taint of materialism.