"There were of course countless other lines of advance, in
practically every science, and they all pointed in the same
direction, and met, so to speak, from every quarter of the
compass the end of the tunnel which the Church had been boring
through all the heaped-up stupidities and ignorances of man.
Psychology tunnelled, and presently heard the voices of the
exorcists and the echoes of Lourdes through the darkness. Human
religions tunnelled--Hinduism with its idea of a Divine
Incarnation, Buddhism with its coarse apprehension of the Eternal
Peace of a Beatific Vision, North American Religion with its
guesses at Sacramentalism, Savage Religion with its caricature of
a Bloody Sacrifice; all from various points; and presently heard
through the tumult the historical dogma of the Incarnation of
Christ, the dogma of Eternal Life, the Sacramental System and the
Sacrifice of the Cross--all proclaimed in one coherent and
perfectly philosophical Creed. Ideals of Social Reform met with
the same experiences. The Socialist with his dream of a Divine
Society, the Anarchist with his passionate nightmare of complete
individual liberty, both ran up together, in the heart of the
black darkness, against the vast outline of a Divine Family that
was a fact and not a far-off ambition--a Family that fell in Eden
and became a competitive State; a Holy Family that redeemed
Nazareth and all the world; a Catholic Family in whom was neither
Jew nor Greek, nor masters against men--in whom the doctrine of
Vocation secured the rights and the dignities of the Society on
one side and the Individual on the other. Finally Art, wandering
hither and thither in the mazes of Realism, saw light ahead, and
found in Catholic Art and Symbolism the secret of her life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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