CARDINAL FAULHABER, the Archbishop of Munich, has issued an outspoken pastoral in which he fearlessly reiterates and emphasizes the truths set forth in the recent papal encyclical,
Summi Pontificatus. “When the natural law is denied and rejected,” he declares, “darkness descends on the earth.”
The same interpretation of present events is the theme of the recent small volume by my colleague, A. R. Vidler, God’s Judgment on Europe. Western man, dazzled by his new powers, has forgotten his dependence on God and believed that he could make a satisfying world guided by his own values and relying on his own resources. Europe has preferred material to spiritual ends. It has refused to acknowledge any binding spiritual authority, and is thus left without an overarching principle to hold the nations together. Having lost the unifying power of a moral and spiritual faith, Western civilization is dissolving in the clash of irreconcilable national egoisms.
The situation has been brought about by the pursuit of false values for many generations. We are all entangled in the web of a common life, and the individual is powerless to effect any immediate remedy. There is no easy and quick way of escape, much as we long for it. I was present a short time ago at a small meeting of influential laymen, at which an opinion was expressed that nothing would solve our difficulties but the emergence of a prophet like John Wesley. We do indeed need the voice of prophecy, but we must beware of looking to it as a miraculous release from our problems. We are tempted to look for something that will save us from the painful process of allowing our third-rate selves to be changed into something radically different. But there is no escaping this necessity. If our values are false, things will never be right till we set ourselves to seek the true ends of life. Seen in this light our trials are a manifestation not only of God’s judgment but of His mercy. Through suffering He is calling us back to the true meaning of life.
Two Possibilities
In the light of the wide sweep of history and of what has happened to other civilizations, we can see that there are two possibilities. We may be enabled by God’s grace to make an adequate response to the challenge. Repentance may be sufficiently deep and wide to make it possible to build civilization on true foundations. For this we must strive as long as any hope remains. But history teaches also that the challenge may be refused. Or those who accept it may be too small a minority to influence the course of events; if so, they must recognize that fact. This need not be a policy of defeatism but a wise strategy based on an understanding and trustful acceptance of God’s working in history. The writers of the two papers in Christendom, on which I commented in Christian News-Letter
No. 24, have written to me denying that a policy of temporary retreat for the purpose of recovering the true values of life is necessarily a surrender of the sphere of public life to satanic forces. It may mean only that of the alternative practical policies which command public support none deal radically enough with what in the Christian view are the real evils. If there is no fundamental change of heart, then the best intentioned efforts, such as the attempt to create a democracy based on the needs of the common man, or Mr. H. G. Wells’ World-State, or plans for Federal Union, will only postpone the final judgment on our refusal to seek the true ends of man’s nature. In that case all that is left for Christians to do is to offer their strongest resistance to the spread of a standardized mass-mentality. The policy may be compared to that of the inhabitants of an invaded country who are compelled to retire to the hills and carry on guerilla warfare until the wheel of fortune turns and an inner weakening of the dominant power opens the way to a renaissance.
But even if things should become worse before they can become better, there is no reason to lose heart. We can still share in the purpose which God is working out in judgment and in mercy. Our lives and acts, offered to Him, can still contribute to the realization of that purpose.
What Can We Do?
This brings us back to the question which more than any other crops up in our correspondence – what can we do? It is pressed on me with great earnestness in a letter received last week from one of our members who is a friend of many years. It is never absent from my mind. The only contribution which I wish to make now is one that may help us to distinguish two answers at different levels.
If the life of every individual, as well as every period of history, is immediately open to God, there is no situation in which we cannot do His will. Every morning when we wake there are duties to be done. We can always do the next thing as an offering to God. All around us there are people in need of help. Life brings us daily opportunities of being brave, patient, kind; of resisting the pressure of standardization and of living adventurously; of bringing about the marriage of some ideal with some fidelity, courage and endurance, - in which, as William James said, the solid meaning of life consists.
But while that is eternally true and can be our stay when all else fails, the passionate inquiry, "What can we do?" points to more than this. What those who ask it want to know is what we can do in order to save society from disaster. They have no wish to be saved alone, leaving the rest to their fate. What they are seeking is to share in some collective action which offers hope of changing society.
It is just to this question that what has been said in earlier paragraphs relates. It is possible that there is no immediate
way of changing the situation fundamentally. To say, “There must
be some way out because the situation is desperate” is a demand that the universal should conform to our wishes. But the starting-point of religion is not striving but acceptance. We cannot force God’s hand. If certain processes have to work themselves out to the end we must patiently bide His time. Premature attempts to compel events into a pattern of our own making are doomed to frustration and disappointment.
But we have also to be ready. “In an hour that ye think not, the Son of Man cometh.” At any moment God’s redemptive purpose may be disclosed in ways that it is beyond our power to foresee.
I am in touch with some of those who are thinking hard about the ways in which we can move forward together. Just as quickly as light comes and ideas take shape, we shall put them before you.
~J. H. Oldham, Christian News-Letter
28 (May 8, 1940)
