[Editor’s note: In this issue and the next we reprint the text of a seminal booklet written by the young Frank Sheed. Published only seven years after the establishment of the Catholic Evidence Guild, the booklet gave instructions that were fleshed out in Catholic Evidence Training Outlines, written by Sheed and his wife, Maisie Ward. (Catholic Evidence Training Outlines is available through the catalogue at the end of this issue.) The back cover of the booklet was “A Caution to Catholics” written by Fr. Hugh Pope, a widely-published Dominican: “Those who frequent the ‘pitches’ where C.E.G. lectures are given must have noticed a feature which they cannot fail to deplore. We refer to the way in which well-meaning but ill-equipped Catholics endeavor to ‘heckle’ non-Catholic lecturers. It is bad enough when Catholics in our crowd of listeners keep on growling at people who question us, though the lecturer himself can, as a rule, keep them in order. But when these same people wander off to a neighboring ‘pitch’ and proceed to put ill-digested questions to a man who is attacking Catholic doctrine, they do a great deal of harm. In the first place they are providing him with a crowd–which is precisely what he wants. In the second place the crowd generally does not hear the question but only the answer. The non-Catholic speaker is clever enough not to repeat the question for the benefit of the crowd, and in consequence they only hear his answer; the speaker is not worth much if he cannot ‘score’–at least in appearance. Further, it is a regrettable fact that Catholic ‘worriers’–we will not call them ‘questioners’–are not equipped for their task and are easily routed; Catholic teaching is thus brought into disrepute. To give an example: The other day a Catholic speaker had a fair crowd, but the Protestant Alliance man had a far greater, for the simple reason that a foolish Catholic went and tackled him–it was on infallibility–as neither the speaker nor his questioner really knew the doctrine, the result can be imagined! The only feasible way of putting a stop to this seems to be for the laity to show such Catholics that they will not tolerate it–or for such would-be ‘helpers’ to come and get trained in the C.E.G. and become speakers instead of hecklers.”]
The Catholic Evidence Guild was founded in the Diocese of Westminster toward the end of 1918. For the first couple of years its hold on life was of the most precarious kind. Gradually, however, it took firm root in its birthplace and began to spread to other parts of England. In Westminster there are at present [1925] 120 speakers [In 1921, the canonical status of catechists was conferred on the speakers by Cardinal Bourne.] (80 men and 40 women) holding 40 meetings a week, delivering altogether about 450 speeches.
In Hyde Park meetings are held every night except Tuesday, and on Sunday the meeting lasts for eleven hours, during which time the crowd averages about 500. In the rest of England there are between 20 and 30 Guilds, some very strong, some just emerging from that two years heartbreak without which no Guild can be founded, some not yet emerged from it. No member of any Guild receives any payment for the work.
It is to be noted that there is no central governing body for the whole of the movement in England. As the Church is constituted, the control of the teaching of Catholicism in any diocese is vested absolutely in the bishop and cannot therefore be exercised by any outside body. Thus the Guilds are a series of independent groups, each free to choose its own methods (subject, of course, to the bishop, whose control is absolute) without reference to any other.
But for all this apparent diversity, the Guilds are one in fact. All realize that if the title Catholic Evidence Guild is to have any meaning, the platforms must have a common aim. The tendency, born of isolation and preoccupation with one’s own troubles, to develop in one direction or another and thus lose identity, is countered in a multitude of ways–notably by an annual conference, interchange of speakers, and an annual retreat. Thus there are certain common principles whose infraction is a moral impossibility, and, although there is no one who can speak with authority for the whole Guild movement, yet the writer is confident that, while in details Guilds may differ, he states no principle that is not common to all.
The Object of the Paper
To the chance spectator, the Catholic Evidence Guild means a number of speakers explaining Catholic doctrine–more or less efficiently–to a number of crowds; just that and nothing more. But platforms do not grow of themselves just where crowds are gathered; speakers do not drop from the skies with a thorough knowledge of Catholic doctrine and perfect skill in handling a crowd.
Men and women must be found and trained, mentally and spiritually; pitches must be selected and allocated; and the resultant activities cover a very wide field–propaganda, training properly graded, systematic testing and licensing, squads of speakers, an elaborate constitution apportioning work and responsibility, a financial system of a sort, a social life becoming ever more strongly marked, and a regular corporate spiritual life. The Guild in action includes all these lines, and this paper might, as a consequence, very easily be drowned under a mass of detail. [For a detailed description of the Guild, reference should be made to the Westminster C.E.G. handbook, to which this paper is merely an introduction.]
Highly involved as it seems, the whole organization works smoothly (and can be explained simply) by reason of the great unifying principle–the relation of every part to the central fact–the man on the platform. There is nothing done by the Guild that is not aimed at the more efficient attainment of the Guild’s objective. It follows, therefore, that nothing is superfluous, the whole thing exists that more speakers may speak better on more platforms. With this as the key, it is possible to obtain a sufficiently comprehensive view of the Guild under three main heads:
1. Getting speakers.
2. Their preparation for the platform.
3. Their work on the platform.
Getting Speakers
Fortunately there is a great reservoir on which the Guild may draw, for experience has shown that there is no one who cannot hope to reach the platform. On most other platforms the speakers run to type; whether it is the type that loves revivalism and the recital of a past that grows more lurid with every recital or the type that drops its H’s and attacks the Church for ignorance and hates Catholics because Christians should love one another or the earnest religionarian with no sense of humor. But it cannot be said that there is a Guild type, save in the sense that every Catholic is the Guild type. And the lesson which, after six years of surprises, the Guild has learnt is that no one may safely be dismissed in advance as hopeless; every week the miracle of the dumb speaking is re-enacted.
Every Catholic then must try his vocation–secure in the knowledge that if he is fit, he will be thoroughly equipped before being sent into action; if he is unfit the Guild will very definitely tell him so; since the Guild is more determined even than the speaker that he shall not make a fool of himself on its platforms.
The way of recruiting is probably more difficult and obscure than any other part of the Guild’s work. Much is done by direct appeals at meetings convened for the purpose. Many a man who has thrilled to read of the work done at the boundaries of the world by the Church’s missionaries is brought to realize that the Guild points the way to a missionary work as real, if not as picturesque–and none the less necessary for being carried out in surroundings where danger and discomfort scarcely exist.
But the Guild is an outdoor organization, and the greater part of the recruiting is done–as is fitting–at the pitches themselves. Catholics in the crowd are variously affected, and, while some feel that they are serving the Church by boxing Protestant ears, and regard the Guild as a very milk-and-watery organization of somewhat poor-spirited Catholics, others are inevitably drawn Guildwards.
One feels that the speaker on the platform is doing the work so badly that he himself must join the Guild to put things right; another feels with shame that men less equipped than he are manfully striving to pay their debt to the Church; more, probably, realize for the first time the splendid quality of those outside the Church and their desperate need. There are, too, other motives more dubious–a mere passion for controversy or that very human failing, the love of one’s own voice!
But whatever the motive, and whatever the channel, they come–some with the fire of a vocation but newly realized, others to whom the public platform is utterly repellent, who, with no feeling of vocation, yet see a pressing duty and force themselves to do it. That the recruits form a fantastic mixture goes without saying–male and female, learned and unlearned, and the vast mass who are neither, of all professions and none, at all stages of doctrinal vagueness and oratorical awkwardness. And if the Guild is not yet as Catholic as the Church, it is undoubtedly as various as Noah’s ark.
This then is the jumble of people that the Guild has collected and is trying to make into a weapon fit for the hand of Truth. A superficial critic could see only the inadequacy of the means to the end proposed, but the story of our faith is the story of the strong things of the earth confounded by the weak. If the Guild way is not the ideal way of teaching Catholicism to England, at least it is the only way, [Protestants will not come to us; we must go to them. Priests are already too busy to do much of the work; the laity must do it.] and hope is never so much a virtue as when it is a forlorn hope.
Training
We are sometimes warned that, in talking so freely of our training system, we are foolishly making a complete exposure of Guild strategy to the enemy. But we cannot regard the non-Catholic as an enemy, and the Guild is not trying anything in the nature of strategy in its lower sense. This is no case of a conjurer explaining his tricks, for the Guild has no tricks to explain. There are no short cuts, no clever ideas for getting the better of an antagonist, no suggestion of the conversions-made-easy method. The only “trick” is the thorough knowledge, only to be acquired by honest industry, of the whole Catholic position and of how to explain that position to the man in the street.
There is always a tendency for any discussion of training methods to become little more than a mass of principles surrounded by fog. Yet it is difficult to do more than lay down the principles. Their detailed application cannot be stated so absolutely. Every Guild is faced with the hard necessity of adapting actually existing resources to actually existing conditions–this indeed being the great Guild tragedy. It seems then most practical to discuss principles only in the body of this paper and indicate in footnotes the application of them made in the Guild that the writer happens to know best–Westminster.
To some extent the Guild must take a great deal for granted in its members. It cannot set out laboriously to instruct them as though they were non-Catholics. It assumes ordinary Catholic knowledge, and–since that may be assuming too much–it provides a library and suggests courses of reading, while new speakers can always count on individual guidance from seniors. But the object of the Guild training system is not nearly so much to impart this new knowledge as to ensure that the knowledge already there (or at any rate within reach and easily obtainable) shall be so fully realized that it may be given to a crowd with the greatest effect. [This applies especially to the training of new members. In the training of seniors, more stress is laid on the actual imparting of knowledge, though, here again, the main object is to enable speakers to pass on the newly acquired knowledge as efficiently as possible.]
It is impossible for a speaker to have too much book work, provided that the street corner audience is his companion at every page, but mere book work is fatal, and the speaker trained on book work only is speaking in the air and will soon find himself speaking to the air. It is only when the Guildsman, knowing the Catholic teaching on any doctrine, knows also what the crowd think the Church teaches, and what they have in its place, and why they prefer their own substitute, and how best they may be shown the superiority of the Church’s teaching to their own substitute, that he may be said to understand the doctrine for Guild purposes.
To bring a speaker to this stage, three main factors play a part:
1. The general current of Guild life.
2. The classes.
3. The platform.
The great fact in Guild life–without which this knowledge of the crowd could not easily be imparted–is the pooling of ideas. There is no such thing as copyright. Here, if nowhere else, plagiarism is a virtue, and the common ownership of goods in the early Church was not more real than the common ownership of ideas in the Guild. [A striking instance is this paper. Quotations from other Guildsmen are nowhere acknowledged.] No man tries to keep his ideas to himself, and no one can appreciate as can a Guildsman the fate of Ananias and his lady. The newcomer finds himself in a world where crowds and their habits are the sole topic of conversation, and without effort he gains a practical knowledge which is absolutely invaluable.
The classes are in a sense only an attempt to organize this “pooling,” and the whole training system is an instrument powerfully designed to make available to all the resources of each. If we are to bring the Church to the street corner, we must begin by bringing the street corner to the classroom. Whatever may be local variations, there can be no progress if that cardinal maxim is ignored. The class must be the common ground where church and street corner meet, so that its members may bring every item of knowledge, old and new, into relation with what the crowd is thinking and saying.
The Guild mind is always on the crowd, studying the problems it presents. A Guildsman must try first one line and then another, until a solution can be reached which can be put at the disposal of the other speakers. It is found that only those can do the training who are in constant touch with the crowd, and even a short absence is sufficient to put a man out of touch. For the crowd is always alive, always changing, absorbing influences of all sorts, including ourselves. Above all the crowd mentality is so different from anything inside the church, that it is impossible to keep it in mind if it is long out of sight.
The classes, [The system adopted in Westminster is based on two classes per week. In one class a course of lectures is gone through on the lines above indicated. The class hears a short lecture, is then heckled mercilessly (from the non-Catholic point of view) by the speaker, heckles him equally without mercy, and finally each member gives a two-minute speech on the subject. In the other class speakers deliver a lecture they have prepared on some simple point to the rest of the class who behave exactly like a street corner crowd, interjecting and heckling. The speaker is criticized by the senior in charge of the class and tries again next week–and so on, week after week, until he is considered fit for his test on that subject. In the junior course the training is mainly done by lay speakers. This might at first sight seem rather dangerous, but the safeguard is that every speaker must be tested by priests. The training of seniors is somewhat different and includes a course of lectures on advanced subjects given by priests. On all this section, the handbook should be read carefully.] then, are given by people who are doing the outdoor work and the instruction they give is of two kinds: (a) doctrinal–though, as has been indicated, the instruction is not so much on the subject as on how to lecture on the subject at the street corner; (b) technical–how to prepare lectures, deliver them, handle crowds, etc.
In all this section of Guild activity, the dominant note is the thoroughness–amounting in some cases to ferocity–of the criticism given not only by teachers to taught but by all speakers to one another.
Testing
But there is no way of learning a crowd quite so effective as meeting it, and it is only by outdoor speaking that one can become an outdoor speaker. It is a definite part of the training scheme to get people onto the platform as soon as possible, since experience has shown, not only that otherwise they lose interest and drop out of the Guild, but also that the study is rendered far more efficient by actual contact with the crowd.
In this matter the Guild has two interests to consider–the training of the speaker and the good of the crowd, and, though ultimately these are one and the same, there is a stage at which they appear to be in conflict. The speaker must have outdoor work if he is to improve, yet the crowd do not learn so well from the newcomer as they would from a more experienced lecturer. The difficulty had to be faced frankly, and a solution was found by which the new speaker gets his practice and the crowd take no harm.
Before outlining this solution we may add one word more and that as to the need of taking long views. England has been Protestant now for 400 years, and the work of 400 years cannot be undone in four weeks. For the moment the principal activity in every Guild is training; even the outdoor platform is part of the training scheme. The Guild’s objective is not so much the crowd of today as the crowd of five or ten years hence, so that the crowd of today is training us to be more efficient instructors of the crowds that are to come.
Thus if it is felt that many of the newer speakers, though safe enough on their subject, are inadequate, the Guild can only reassert that there is no other way of making them adequate. But this must not be taken to imply that anybody can be flung onto a platform entirely unprepared; no one must be sent out who is likely to utter heresy, or who is not prepared for the crowd questions, or who cannot put two sentences together. The Guild makes certain conditions:
1. The new speaker shall choose one subject, know it thoroughly, practice it before the class, and be tested [In Westminster the examining board consists of two priests and a senior layman. The latter is known as the devil’s advocate and represents especially the outdoor crowd.] on it by priests. The test is a real test, and there is an unsparing rejection of those who cannot be made fit, that they may not waste their time in the Guild but be set free to work on one of the many other roads to Rome.
2. He shall speak and answer questions only on the subject on which he has been tested, until such time as he may qualify in another.
3. He shall start on easy subjects. Many a man can make an admirable speech on the use of images who will never be able to begin explaining the doctrine of the immortality of the soul.
4. He shall start with easy crowds.
5. He shall be under the charge of a senior speaker [In Westminster senior speakers are of two sorts: holders of a chairman’s license, who may lecture only on subjects in which they have been tested, but may take general questions, and holders of a general license, who may both lecture and answer questions without restriction. Both licenses are awarded, after examination, to speakers of considerable outdoor experience.] who is chairman of the meeting and can take questions on which the junior has not been tested. It is the chairman’s duty to see that a novice comes to no harm and does no harm to the crowd.
It must not be imagined that all this is a determined attempt to force all speakers into the one mold. As the people who come to the Guild are varied, so are those whom the Guild sends out to speak in public. Men vary enormously in their choice of subject; no two men will handle the one subject alike. In whatever style, there is an indispensable minimum of equipment; but, given this, there must be a natural development of the whole man. All that the technical training attempts is the freeing of each speaker’s personality by the removal of the ignorance and the awkwardness which are bars to its natural development. The Guild needs complete men and women, and its method is reasonable guidance, not a chopping and chiseling and squeezing and stretching to make each speaker like every other–and like no other being in the world.
The Outdoor Work
In any discussion of the outdoor work of the Guild, the temptation is to describe incidents or perhaps to attempt to reproduce an actual meeting. Here again detail must be avoided and certain broad principles stated, although this may appear difficult, since superficially the Guild in action would seem to be a very heterogeneous Guild. One speaker will be found to pound his crowd for their greater good, another is given to a certain humility of address; one lets the crowd do all the talking, and another does it all himself; one prefers simple explanation, and another moral appeal–and so on endlessly. But though all this looks chaotic enough, there is a great unifying principle involved in the Guild’s conception of its mission.
The immediate aim of the outdoor work is not conversions–or at least these are not the measure of our success. We long for, and work for, the conversion of England, like any other Catholic society, but we have no secret of wholesale conversions. We have simply faced a big task and decided on a common-sense method.
We have proposed to ourselves a long job: to spread a knowledge of the truth and to kill lies–a steady humdrum sort of job that has to be done, whether as a vocation or a duty. Big results will come in time, but we sow with no expectation of seeing the harvest. A ready analogy is to be found in the great cathedrals which took centuries to build, and yet each man did his part of the work nonetheless earnestly and lovingly. The Guild is no place for those who cannot keep on without the stimulus of great results, and the cheaper sort of optimist will find the work wearying. As we are not unduly elated by conversions, so we are not unduly depressed by the lack of them.
To put it in one word, we are teachers. This is emphasized in our official title “diocesan catechists.” The teaching itself is conditioned by the needs of the crowd, and therefore some attempt must be made to analyze the religious condition of the people among whom we are working. Protestantism in England, contrary to widespread belief, is not dead.
Protestantism as an organization is dead, but then from the beginning the organization was an anomaly in a religion of private judgment. It lasted because old habits die hard, and it did not simply break up in one catastrophe, but proceeded by the way of more and more (and therefore smaller and smaller) groups toward the natural unit of Protestantism–the individual. [There are of course still groups in existence, but they appear to have no real function; no member of a group holds himself bound to obey the group, and in fact members of sects are as liable as those who belong to none to declare that one religion is as good as another.] The essential thing in it as a religion has always been private judgment; that principle has reached its ultimate stage of development and is at last completely triumphant in England.
It must be stressed that the Protestant really believes that he is doing the will of God, but in practice private judgment means that he interprets the will of God by his own will and that his rule of faith is to do what he thinks right–that is to say, he uses his own judgment to decide what God’s judgment will be and then follows the result as God’s judgment. Thus while he thinks he is agreeing with God, he is really making God agree with him. [It is not simply that every man is his own pope, but that every man is his own God, for the pope’s authority is limited by God who gives it, but the individual’s authority, being wrong ab initio, is limited in no way.] Gradually he comes (usually unconsciously) to leave out this middle step and no longer thinks of God in each individual case, but only as a kind of general approver of his actions. Then rejecting alike atheism and deism, he has reached the practical position of believing in God’s existence and God’s will for us, but of acting exactly as though there were no God but his own will.
Thus it would seem that our crowds have a belief in God and in the next life–atheists in the crowd are usually isolated and can count on no support–and therefore little time need be devoted to proving these things. [This is fortunate, having regard to the limitations of the majority of the speakers. Most Guilds have mirthful memories of attempts made by ambitious speakers to handle philosophical subjects on the platform.] But they have scarcely a notion of the supernatural [This is one (though not the sole) explanation of the exclusion of social and political subjects. The crowd hear sufficient of these things elsewhere and need desperately to learn of the supernatural. That they are, dimly at any rate, conscious of their need is shown by the striking fact that the Guild, rigidly as it excludes the topics that are supposed to be man’s first concern, can usually count on a larger crowd than political platforms in the same locality.] or of institutional religion; hence these must form the staple of our teaching; so we must teach about Christ, his twin gifts of truth and life, and the Church he founded to guard these gifts.
All the time we must hammer home what religion is not–as many of them view it–a symposium of our own opinions and feelings, leading us to be pleased at good things and dislike bad things–or a general preference for heaven rather than hell–or even a kind of decent gratitude to God (if there be any God) for having made us and to Christ for having died for us (if indeed he did die for us). We must show them that real religion includes a great mass of belief and rules of conduct given to us by God (so that our approval or otherwise is not particularly relevant). We must be disciples, not critics. There is one true religion given by God, and every one must search for it.
Always we must insist that Christianity is not merely a philosophy of life, though it has its philosophy, nor a code of laws, though the laws are there. It is a life, and if our Christianity is real, then every single thing in our life is part of it. Of that life the guiding principle is the will of God, and that will is not simply to be found in our own feelings. In short we must bring home to the crowd that while they are creatures, that is “created,” God is not merely a superior creature, but the source of all created things; a Being who demands our service and whose religion means believing (even if we do not see the necessity) and doing (even things we do not like).
After this somewhat lengthy introduction, some detailed treatment of the outdoor work may be attempted, under the heads:
1. The crowd.
2. Our attitude to the crowd.
3. Certain guiding principles in our teaching.