Editor’s note: When the story of Catholic apologetics in the twentieth century is written, no group will rank higher in influence than the Catholic Evidence Guild. Many outstanding apologists, including longtime Guild leaders Frank Sheed and his wife, Maisie Ward, honed their art at Speakers’ Corner in London’s Hyde Park and a Guild “pitches” throughout England, the U.S., and other English-speaking countries. They brought the truths of the faith to skeptical and often hostile audiences.
Here are three short commentaries, written in the middle of the last century, by two of the Guild’s top spokesmen.
Salvation and Non-Catholics
Though the Catholic Church in its unique life has reached wonderfully far in time and space, it cannot be said that it has taught all men in all ages. Yet the principle “Outside the Church there is no salvation” is fully accepted by Catholics. What becomes of those millions of people separated from it by the period or place in which they live or by lack of knowledge or by any other circumstance beyond their control?
To become sons of God by grace and to know him intimately in heaven, men need baptism, for it is the rebirth into his family. Baptism is simple and remarkably universal. Anyone having the right intention and a little water can perform it, and anyone can receive it. This means of course that vast numbers of people outside the visible unity of the Church receive the life of grace through her first sacrament. Should they keep it securely through life, they will quite certainly see God in heaven.
Yet even this wide embrace leaves untouched great numbers of men and women who have never heard of Christian baptism or who have missed its significance.
In considering their position we must remind ourselves that Christ is the true light enlightening every man coming into the world. We know little of the subtle way in which he works upon the minds of those who do not know him. But it is certain that the man who welcomes his approach and admits him, even implicitly, would certainly seek baptism if he realized that it was divinely intended for him. And where the obstacle is lack of knowledge or anything else beyond his powers to remedy, Catholics believe that Christ brings the happy effects of baptism to him, and he receives what is known as the baptism of desire. Here we have a door which is closed to no man.
What of later falls from grace? The Catholic relies upon the sacrament of confession to deal with his failures after baptism. But many have missed, through no fault of their own, the enormous consolation of hearing a human voice declare, with Christ-given authority, that their sins are forgiven. Even this loss does not mean that no mercy can reach them. It is a fact that sincere sorrow for sin, into which the love of God enters, really does restore the sinner. Where the sin is of a mortal nature, this sorrow needs to be based upon the pure love of God in himself. It is certain that God is utterly aware of the half-lights and shadows of the pagan mind. Infinite mercy, dealing with it, can make the fullest allowances and give and nurture all the fundamental faith and quality of contrition necessary to effect a perfect union with himself.
In the light of all this, how can it be maintained that outside the Church there is no salvation? The reply is twofold: (1) Where Christ acts, the Church moves in him, for he is its head. (2) His action upon the individual soul tends to draw it to the Church as to its sheepfold. A man is saved insofar as he is a Catholic, according to the truth and the grace that is in him, not in spite of the Church but to the extent of his living relationship with her
—Walter Jewell
Relics
The Catholic religion is not merely a body of revealed truth, a formulation of moral laws, or a system of organized worship. At the center of it is devotion to a personal God, made known to us by the God-Man Jesus Christ, exemplified in the lives of saints, many of whom testified to their devotion by the sacrifice of life itself.
The yearly cycle of the Church’s liturgy recites their fame: our Lord, the Blessed Virgin, Peter and Paul, Augustine and Ambrose, Francis and Dominic, Teresa of Avila, Thèrése of Lisieux, and a host of others. They stimulate us by their teaching and example. Indeed, they are our friends. With familiar recourse to them we invoke their help because of their nearness to God and our common membership in the Body of Christ.
It is not therefore matter for surprise that we value anything connected with our Lord and his friends, particularly the places where they lived and died and were buried, the clothes they wore, and, above all, their bodily remains, once the temples of the Holy Ghost. Our Lord’s glorified body is in heaven and so, we believe, is that of his blessed Mother, but many relics of the saints are preserved by Catholic devotion.
To the Jew a dead body was the source of contamination. To the Christian the body of a saint is a precious reminder of the working in the world of the Word made flesh. Even to the Jew there were occasions when the legal prohibition of contact with a dead body was overruled by the sanctity of the soul that had inhabited it.
In 2 Kings it is related that, in the year of the death of the prophet Elisha, the country was being ravaged by freebooters from Moab. Some of these appeared suddenly, as a dead man was being carried to his funeral; the bearers took fright and threw the corpse into the first grave they could find. It was the grave of Elisha. No sooner had the dead man touched the prophet’s bones than the dead man came to life again. The power of God, so often exercised through the living prophet, was there operating by means of his relics.
When the apostles burst upon the world with the staggering news of the God made man, miracles confirmed their message. The people brought the sick into the streets and laid them on beds and couches, that when Peter came his shadow at least might fall upon some of them that they might be delivered from their infirmities (Acts 5:15). God wrought by the hand of Paul more than common miracles, so that even handkerchiefs and aprons were brought from his body to the sick; diseases parted from them, and the unclean spirits went out of them (Acts 19:12).
It will be seen that this Catholic practice needs no defense on scriptural grounds. It is a truly human instinct sanctified by Christian teaching and usage from the beginning. Augustine of Hippo in his book The City of God (22:8) gives firsthand evidence of miracles worked through the use of relics. There is no doubt that the cultus of relics is a genuine manifestation of Christian devotion. The cross on which the Savior of the world hung for three hours has been an object of veneration from the earliest times, and fragments of the true cross are spread throughout the Catholic world. . . .
Finally, it must be made clear that our veneration of the relics of our Lord and of the saints is directed to the persons with whom the material things were connected and all for the glory of God and the increase of devotion. That is its final justification.
—R. G. Flaxman
“Image Worship”
Scripture heartily condemns idolatry in all its forms. First, the setting up of the worship of high imaginary beings in the place of God, together with their images and altars, as with Baal, god of the sun; Ashtaroth, mistress of the moon; and Moloch, lord of fire. Second, the adoration of effigies as having in themselves power—”He made a god and adored it; he made a graven thing and bowed down before it” (Is. 44:15). Third, the worship of an image as somehow representing God himself. When Aaron built an altar before the golden calf he declared a “solemnity of the Lord.”
Many Christians have assumed that all making and use of images in connection with religious worship ought to be avoided. Scripture itself is against this view. Representations of flowers, palm trees, and cherubim appeared in the Temple by command of God. The Ark of the Covenant too was surmounted by kneeling cherubim whose extended wings formed the mercy-seat from which God spoke.
Reason would add to this that the use of the natural gifts of the artist and the sculptor in the worship of God could hardly be displeasing to the Author of nature, provided only that it encouraged devotion and cast no shadow of idolatry.
With all this in view, let us look inside a Catholic Church. There is probably a catechism in the bookrack in which we can find the definite statement, “We do not pray to relics or images, for they can neither see, nor hear, nor help us.” Yet all around are pictures and statues of our Lord, the Virgin Mary, and the saints. We might add that this is no innovation, for frescoes of them appeared in the ancient catacombs in the first few centuries of the Christian era.
Are these pictures and statues idolatrous? Clearly they are not images of false gods, for that which they represent are known and reverenced by Christians generally. Neither do Catholics imagine that there is any magical quality in them or that their eyes can see us or their hands help us. The images of the saints are the likenesses of our friends—our very powerful friends, for in a very particular and intense manner they are the companions of God. Finally, Catholics know that the supreme creative Spirit cannot be portrayed in wood or stone. Symbols of the Holy Trinity are symbols only and not intended as portraiture. The crucifix and figures of our Lord generally call for special remark.
God in his essence cannot be depicted. But when God became man he entered the world of art and sculpture. A human form can be modeled with skill, even if it is intended to represent the form of God made man. The old condition of affairs, in which God was infinitely removed from the finest work of brush and chisel, is now startlingly changed. As regards his divine nature, the position is unaltered, but he has embraced our nature and has entered the field of man’s artistic skill. He has now made himself available to us, and his artists must speak for him.
—Walter Jewell