It always takes some time fully to realize that the unit we meet is not the individual but the crowd, which is a whole and must be handled as such. But a collection of individuals is not a crowd, and the people who come to hear us are a thoroughly mixed lot.
Anyone looking over the top of a platform at the hundreds of upturned faces could enumerate a dozen reasons for their presence; some are drawn by a kind of shuddering curiosity (the type who dream of the pope and wake up in the night screaming “Rome”); some are there to see that Rome does not have it all her own way; and these have their jackals who come to back them up simply out of a natural human love of a row.
Many are there because they find it cheaper than the pictures and on the whole more entertaining. There is, too, an occasional pious Christian of uncertain denomination who hopes to convert the lecturer because he is young and has a good face; also a not so occasional drunkard; a very frequent gentleman too of the cuckoo type, who, having no chance of an audience of his own, comes to use ours; while here and there a lapsed Catholic is watching the issue of the contest as it seems to sway from one side to the other with a stirring of a feeling dead and buried for many a year. The invariable background consists of a great number of silent men and women–the people for whom mainly we come–who say nothing (as though they had been there when the meeting started and were too lazy to move away), who give no sign of interest, whose presence might seem an odd accident–if they did not return again and again.
To make a rabble of this kind into that very personal thing, a crowd, which can be handled as such, some unifying force is needed. Truth, unfortunately, is able, not only to bind, but to sunder, and truth alone therefore is not the unifying force needed. We must find some common interest–not an interest merely: the Mormons inspire that –but some interest that we can persuade them to share with us.
Yet thinking over the elements that go to the composition of a crowd we might be led to despair; for, as the crowd began with individuals, so into individuals is it resolved; and though the crowd must be treated as one, yet the effect is multiplex. The result of one speech may be to send away a section raging, another thinking, still another praying, and perhaps one man convinced. But this experience should never lead to a promiscuous hurling round of pious remarks in the hope that some of them may, on the law of averages, affect someone.
Every crowd has its own physiognomy due, not to any peculiarity of its elements, but to their proportion and arrangement–and a study of the crowd will always enable us to find just what kind of common interest is needed to hold them and what kind of teaching may be expected to have an effect.
Our Attitude
Our attitude to the crowd should be very clear to ourselves, because it will always be very clear to them, for they sense character and they sense attitude. Whatever may be thought of the possibility of effecting necessary repairs in our character, at least we can see to it that our attitude is right.
In the first place it is above all things vital to like the crowd; we can do no good to the soul of a person we hate, and if we are simply indifferent, our offer of spiritual help will be a mere impertinence. If we do not like them, we must try to, and, if we cannot manage that with all our trying, we are in a bad way.
This liking is easy enough in theory and should be so in practice. But it is difficult to feel like an apostle all the time; the work of controversy has this peculiar danger–that we think of winning the argument rather than of winning the arguer. We must beware too of the resentment natural to the gift horse that has been looked in the mouth–and anyhow, crowds are so very candid about oneself! [The writer was once asked, “Has the Church in England come so low that it needs fellows like you to defend it?”] But there are two considerations that should help us to keep our balance:
1. We are not doing anything particularly virtuous in working for the Guild, rather that, far from deserving any special treatment, we should regard the unpleasantness as the price we pay for a great privilege.
2. The crowd are under no real obligation to behave decently. Why should they? They don’t ask us to come; on the contrary we ask them. Hence to complain if they, having accepted our very pressing invitation, find us dull and nasty is against the reason of things. Since we ask them to listen, they have a right to do so on their own terms; it is for us to treat them as a host might treat an eccentric guest whom he has not only invited once, but intends to invite again.
It is necessary to impress the crowd in our twofold capacity as individuals and as representatives. They must, first of all, come to respect the speaker personally, and, that accomplished, the more they regard him as a typical Catholic, the better. In the due balancing of these capacities lies a certain danger.
Since there is, in the beginning at least, a prejudice against the Church, the speaker’s personality must be strong enough and good enough to win a hearing–but his personality must never be so far stressed that the crowd lose sight of his representative quality. We are not out to talk about our own souls–their goodness, or badness, or history–but about Catholic doctrine; it is by the speaker’s character alone, without his own testimonial thereto, that he must make an impression.
The anonymity of the work is more than an accident; due to the obscurity of us who do it, it is an essential factor; one may measure a man’s understanding of the work by his understanding of that principle. It involves that not only all praise but also all blame shall go to the Church, and while the absence of personal praise should induce unselfishness, the possibility of harm to the Church should make us the more determined to give of our best.
The paid heckler falls under a different set of rules: In the ordinary course, at least, we cannot hope to convince him, and we have no right to count on miracles. Ordinarily, we have to regard the determined heckler (as opposed to the honest questioner) as an instrument ready to our hand for the instruction of the audience; if we take his questions, it is not for his own sake, but for their information. Yet we must remember that a heckler has a soul, and if we cannot do him any good, we should be immensely careful not to do him any harm. The law of charity should govern our attitude always, but if at times it is necessary to hit we should remember certain obvious rules:
1. Never be personal: We are for the most part extremely fortunate in the appearance of our hecklers, as in their grammar and manners, but we must under no circumstances mention it.
2. Make sure that the crowd see the justice of your action, otherwise they will feel that they themselves have been assaulted.
3. If you hit, hit hard; don’t merely scratch. But we should never deal out justice of this sort when we are ourselves out of temper–in this case charity begins at home. The golden rule in the treatment of a heckler is to make the crowd see that it is not a personal matter between him and us, but that he, a solitary individual armed with his nine days’ doctrine, is attacking the three hundred million whose belief has stood the test of twenty centuries. Thus our attitude to the crowd at large must be that of men who are very conscious of their responsibility to the Church and to the crowd–anxious only that their audience should see the Church as she is and absolutely honest both as to the doctrines of the Church and as to their own knowledge of them, so that they neither modify her teaching to make it easier of acceptance, nor pretend to any knowledge that they do not possess.
Guiding Principles
In a discussion of the teaching to be given from our platforms, dogmatism of any sort might, at first sight, seem dangerous, since crowds differ widely one from another, and speakers, if anything, differ more widely. But Catholicism not only binds all her children; she has a strange binding effect also on those outside. Everywhere one finds the same line of opposing thought or feeling, with but slight local modifications. Hence there are certain principles which would seem to be of universal application and which can be dealt with under two heads:
1. Manner–how to present our teaching.
2. Matter–the teaching itself.
Manner
Here there is only one entirely indispensable quality: simplicity. The shining gifts of the orator must yield precedence to the homely virtue of the teacher. The Bible tells us that at the first “Evidence Guild” meeting (see Acts 2), the speakers had a most mixed audience, yet every man understood them; and we, with a much simpler assemblage, must aim at the same result.
By sheer force of personality it is possible to hold a vast crowd for hours–yet give them nothing at all, and in the end send them away with a pleasant thrill–and a quite empty mind. Unless they understand, the time is wasted; that they may understand a degree of simplicity and clearness is called for such as the non-Guildsman can scarcely conceive.
This simplicity involves: (a) treating one point at a time, (b) arranging the subject matter clearly, (c) keeping the lecture to 20 minutes at most, (d) using very simple words. Such words as “finite,” “creatures,” “impeccability,” and a thousand more mean nothing to a crowd. Words of one syllable (if very common) are desirable.
There is an old lady who frequents a certain pitch whose picture should be in every Guild classroom. Having listened intently to one of our speakers lucidly explaining the doctrine of infallibility, she shook her head sadly and said, “It’s no use, young man; you can talk till you are black in the face, but you will never persuade me that your pope is God.” When speaking to a crowd, never forget that old lady.
So long as it does not interfere with simplicity, eloquence is a valuable but by no means indispensable asset. For the most part we are not orators nor preachers, but teachers simply. Still at every meeting a moment will come that calls for something more, and at such a moment real eloquence may be of profoundest effect. But so surely as eloquence takes the first place (and the sense of power it brings is very pleasant) so surely have we fallen from grace as Guildsmen.
Given these two qualities in due proportion, there is no fear of obscurity, but there is a grave danger of another sort: that by our manner we may seem to be forcing our ideas on the crowd. There is nothing gained by the smashing dogmatism of a speaker who tramples on heckler and sincere questioner alike, who sneers at great difficulties as though they were merely childish and who attempts to drive souls into the Church by main force.
Such methods are amazingly easy, but either rouse the crowd to very justifiable fury (so that he who takes the sword perishes by it) or leave them silent indeed, but with a resentful feeling (as one victim expressed it) of “having been kicked all over.” We must be careful to avoid any suggestion of forcible feeding as though we were thrusting a privilege on them or insisting on their capitulation.
As men offering to men a free gift, we must strive to convey, as far as we are able, the ineffable beauty of the birthright of the Children of God so that they may feel how much they lack and may freely choose the teaching which we, as members of the Catholic Church, come to offer.
It is very easy to show a crowd without offending them why we believe that the Church is the one true Church, and we may be as dogmatic as we please so long as we seem to be leaving them some freedom of choice. But we should not get into the way of so striking at every red herring drawn across our trail that the whole thing becomes a wrangle.
If six people in the crowd are attacking, it is for us to see that the crowd does not get a confused impression of seven combatants, but of two opposing forces of which the speaker is one, the six hecklers the other. The speaker must try to bear the same relation to the audience as the Church bears to all other churches–not one in a crowd, but one and a crowd. This can never be accomplished by meeting violence with violence. Catholicism versus Protestantism means universality versus protest, and we must help the crowd to see it.
We would sum up then the ideal platform qualifications as simplicity and clearness to the uttermost degree, eloquence on the leash, gentleness without weakness, and an unswerving determination to maintain the moral ascendancy which belongs to the Catholic Church.
Matter
All these delightful qualities will be of no great use unless the possessor knows what he wants to teach. The first rule is to avoid controversy, to be ready for it when it comes, but never to introduce it. Universal truths require stating, but as they are universal they do not require to be reinforced by argument; they can make their appeal without any great assistance from us, and the only obligation on us is to state them to the best of our power. It is worth remembering that the communion of saints has its counterpart in the communion of doctrines, and just as every member of the Church, weak or strong in himself, gains strength from all, so every doctrine, however strong by itself, is ten times more so in the great scheme of Catholic faith.
A valuable example is confession which, considered as a mere pouring out of confidence to a man, might by a determined antagonist be made to look farcical; but, in its place as part of the Catholic moral system, inevitably related to the two facts of sin and the Redemption, it is overwhelming.
Our chief care then must be to exhibit a big picture of Catholic truth so that the crowd may see the teaching of the Church–not as a jumble of doctrines which are there because they happen to be there, like goods in the window of a pawnshop, but as a great organic body of truth covering the whole of man’s natural and supernatural needs, with every doctrine having its own place. They must be made to see that to destroy one doctrine means breaking up the whole fabric, so that the man who begins by denying, say, the infallibility of the pope ends by doubting the existence of God–or if he does not, his grandson does.
This power of making a picture for the crowd to see must be cultivated. The ordinary man can see a picture much better than an argument. After all, men judge the foundation, not from itself, but from the stability of the building. One would have to be of an abnormally suspicious cast of mind to have sudden doubts of the strength of a foundation after the edifice had endured twenty centuries of storm, and it will be found in practice that the amateur linguist who has been told that Petros means “a rolling stone” is much more likely to be affected by a description of the Church as she stands, i.e., the four marks, than by any amount of linguistic argumentation.
The moral of all this is that we should treat our subject massively. Details of course must be explained, but always in relation to the whole scheme of doctrine; no lecture on any detail is complete which does not attempt to give some idea of the Church as a whole. Thus the fact of the Incarnation issues naturally in the organized Church, in devotion to our Lady, in the Blessed Eucharist and infallibility, and none of these doctrines should be so treated as to leave the Incarnation out of sight.
The second great point may be regarded as only another.aspect of the first: Having said “treat subjects massively,” the second rule, “be constructive,” must of necessity follow. Our subject is Catholicism, and we should never, of our own choice, discuss any other religion. Otherwise we become simply Protestants against Protestantism.
Questions will, of course, be asked which will make it impossible to ignore the teaching of others, and they cannot be answered without the appearance of attack. But it must be very clear to the crowd that the attack was not of our choosing. Give the teaching of the Church simply and straightforwardly, and above all fully. Make sure that the crowd see, not only the relation of your doctrine to the whole scheme, as already suggested, but also all that it contains in itself, not only the truths, but their effects in action. After all, we are not aiming at a five-minute influence, but at something very much more lasting, and so our teaching should aim at issuing in action.
The thing must never become academic. We are not out to give lectures on the domestic habits of some strange tribe in which our audience could at the best have a very impersonal interest, nor to state a series of reasons for things done by ourselves. Our object is a presentation of things for the crowd to do.
Those parts of theology whose connection with life they cannot see do them no good and in any case move them little. Always we should give them something to do, and one or two of them may do it. Thus a lecture on our Lady should lead them to imitate her, a lecture on images should lead them to use all their faculties in the worship of God, and any lecture at all should lead them to pray, nor is it waste of effort to teach the crowd some short “nonsectarian” prayer.
But this constructiveness and determination to treat only of Catholicism must never be interpreted as an ignoring of the non-Catholic standpoint. We must know what our crowds are thinking, and this for two reasons: that we can build on what they have and can supply what they have not. This implies an intimate knowledge of the crowd which, as has been shown, it is the object of Guild training to give.
The Nonconformist has a certain general physiognomy, yet a Methodist is not a Baptist, and though both Methodist and Baptist and their many-colored brothers in dissent have a great dislike, to put it mildly, for the Church, they have a great deal of truth in them for which they can seldom give, even to themselves, a reason. But truth choked by ever so many falsehoods remains truth, and we must aid it to free itself. One of the most real ways in which we can help the crowd is by showing them a basis for such truths as they have; when we see a Protestant stricken silent by the arguments of the atheist, we are doing a real service by giving him the proofs of the existence of God; and we may give to many a man guidance on moral issues on which his own church is silent.
But our preoccupation with the truth of which our crowd is already in possession extends beyond mere buttressing; once it is strengthened it may be used as a foundation on which we may build. Let us show our listener first of all how much we have in common, how every single bit of truth that he values is in our Church also, but that we have much more. His truth is incomplete, and we can make him realize this, not by showing him how it is deficient (which is calculated to shake his faith in it altogether), but by showing him the completion of it in Catholic teaching. Make him see how the bits of truth he possesses involve the great mass that he has not. Thus we shall be building a bridge from the Church to the non-Catholic mind, across which our crowd can pass to the Church. And this is not so impossible as might at first appear.
Were the Protestant as engrossed with his religion as is the Catholic, one might well despair. But the incompleteness of Protestantism is a fact, and, though the Protestant does not easily admit it as such, he does suffer from its effects in a certain restlessness and an attitude of criticism. Because of it he is forced to rely on private judgment, which means “a willingness to look farther,” and that is where we get our chance.
Let us then in discussing any doctrine begin with so much of our crowd’s belief as we may, and by simply showing the completed truth in all its beauty (allowing for our limitations) we shall, in some cases, win our hearers, and at least in the vast majority of cases create an ever-growing desire. Time and again it happens that a man does not realize his needs till he sees that which can satisfy them, but once seen he can never be at rest till he possesses it.
Thus we have seen how a knowledge of our crowds will enable us to confirm what they have and further to build on it. But that knowledge shows us not only the scattered truth but the great mass of errors under which it lies buried, and one of our most important functions is to deal with those errors, not of necessity by direct attack, but by laying special stress on those.aspects of the truth which bring the errors into clearer perspective. [Individual lies of the Pope Joan sort may be slaughtered out of hand. But this section of the work must not be too much loved. There is a dangerous exhilaration in reading the burial services over Maria Monk, and destroying lies is easier than teaching truth]. Just as we give out truth massively we should deal with the errors massively. We should never be preoccupied with the details of the attack. Our questioners are not really worrying about them, though they think they are; but there is in their minds a whole line of thought subconsciously involved, and it is by turning that line that we are likely to be of service.
But however skillfully we may construct our lecture there will always be questions at the end. I do not propose to discuss the relation between lecture and questions, beyond saying that we should nearly always try to give a lecture–and that most of the objections should be answered in the course of it. To do this effectively we must know the New Testament thoroughly and show in particular great familiarity with all passages bearing on our subject. There are certain texts (e.g. “God so loved the world, etc.,” and “Worship in spirit and in truth”) which the Protestant heckler is convinced will overwhelm us. It is far more effective to show our familiarity with these and their bearing on Catholic doctrine in the lecture than to wait for them to be raised as difficulties at the end. And on the questions themselves a word should be said.
We should never allow the questioner to call the tune, otherwise we shall be dragged hither and thither to the great confusion of the crowd, and no definite impression will be given. Senior speakers as well as juniors will teach the crowd best by keeping questions as far as possible on the subject on which they have lectured. Never let the question time become either an undignified wrangle or a dignified debate. Questions always tend to become dialogue, and this should be prevented by an occasional rather longer answer and a determination to see that no one questioner shall be allowed to monopolize the meeting. Above all we must refuse to treat any detail in isolation, but must show its place in the whole scheme of things which the Church teaches. Only thus can any solid good be done, and anything short of it will serve only to confuse the hearers and to bring religion itself into disrepute.
Spiritual Life
There remains one side of Guild life which is very difficult to treat, yet which is of such importance that without it all the rest would be impossible: One might call it the work of sanctification–the lifting of each one to the level of the task.
There are, on the spiritual side, certain obvious dangers; the variety of motives which has already been mentioned as bringing recruits into the Guild is likely to recur in all sorts of odd ways–rather perhaps as a mixture of motives, good and not so good, than as anything definitely wrong. It is impossible to be giving all the time, and unless the speaker is getting help continually, then it is very certain that he will suffer. Again controversy takes its toll–and the tendency is in the heat of battle to forget the prime object of the work.
To counteract this a great deal must be done by the individual. But it is of the nature of our religion that each shall help each and all draw strength from all–so in this work of sanctification the Guild must play its part. Prayers and meditations bearing on the work will be found in the handbook. An inter-Guild retreat for both men and women is held yearly at Whitsuntide and lasts three days. In separate Guilds a monthly half-day’s retreat is given whenever practicable and attended by most speakers, and also a First Friday corporate Communion.
The ideal that the Guild as a whole should pray as much as it works has been embodied in what is called the adoration scheme. Everyone offering up half-an-hour’s prayer spent at any time before the Blessed Sacrament for the Guild puts a paper into a box recording the fact. The figures are added monthly and thus represent what has actually been–not promised–but done. Sometimes members are asked to offer up their adoration for some special need, e.g., the increase of speakers. [When the scheme was first started in Westminster it was offered for this intention. At once the junior class began to grow, and during the months of July and August the numbers were four times what they had been in the spring]. From the beginning the Guild has realized that the work and the workers depend on the immense amount of prayer going up especially from the contemplative orders, and to this great stream of prayer both active and associate members strive to add their small share.
But more difficult to phrase than these practices, interwoven into the very texture of Guild life, is the thing we call the Guild spirit–which means the holding fast of the whole body to the ideal, so that when momentarily it is dimmed in the individual, he may fall back on the mass of his fellows for aid. That ideal is simple enough: that the work must grow on a foundation of obscure lives well lived.
The lecturer’s remote preparation for a meeting should be the whole of his life. If a man is to speak for an hour in any day, it should be his aim to pray at least as much. Most people pray tremendously at the start–but it is a human tendency to fly to God in trouble more readily than in prosperity, and a man feels more spiritual and in less need of help after a good meeting than after a bad one. Further, as has already been said, motive is a delicate matter, and here again the Guild helps by holding up the only true motive–a sense of responsibility to God and to the Church and to our fellows, a love of God and–that more difficult thing–of our neighbor. All this is part of the life that the Guild lives; it is a continuous offering from the whole body to the sorely-pressed individual.
Summing Up
A further word may be said of the needs of the outdoor work. The Guild has a constitution, has a training method, has a regular spiritual life. But all these are of importance to it as a society only in their bearing on the platform. The Guild was not founded to discover the best possible system of government embodied in a model constitution, nor to teach theology, nor to make its members saints.
The constitution and the training system are both there, that the platforms may be occupied, and the spiritual life is there that they may be occupied by men worthy of their calling. Certainly neither elegance of constitution, nor soundness of theology, nor personal sanctity could excuse the Guild if it failed in its proper work–which is the mass-production of competent outdoor exponents of Catholicism; if it fails here, then it has no further excuse for existence. So far, at any rate, it has not failed, in quality it has attained a fair standard, but a word must be said of quantity.
The Guild depends for its existence on the willingness of both Catholics and non-Catholics to take a part in the work–the willingness of Catholics to teach and of non-Catholics to listen. And so far the willingness of the non-Catholic is by far the greater; the world without knows the Guild better and has a greater share in the work than our own people. And this is a rare phenomenon in the history of the Church, for which a reason must be found if we are not to admit that we Catholics are failing in England.
The reason is probably twofold. In many cases there is a genuine misunderstanding of the nature of the call. The Guild is too often spoken of as a vocation, and many a man stays out because of the certainty that he has no vocation for the Guild. But strictly speaking people no more have a vocation to join the Guild than they have to pay their bills or refrain from murder. The better word is duty, and the clearer understanding of this may bring many to a decision.
The second reason for many is a feeling of unfitness, not physical unfitness nor even moral unfitness, but the conviction that they are not mentally equal to the work of teaching Catholicism on the outdoor platform. The answer is the history of the Guild, which has already shown an amazing power of assimilating all the resources of the Catholic body–a power possessed to the same extent by no other Catholic society.
But already there are signs that the Catholic body is coming to realize the duty that lies on every Catholic, and, as has been said, on the side of quality the work has attained a fair measure of success. For this somewhat surprising fact, four reasons may be suggested:
1. The Guild has found the way to make everything common property, by relying not on a few brilliant individuals, but on steady team work. Here, if nowhere else, the weakest link is as strong as the chain.
2. The Catholic position is so strong that, armed with it, quite ordinary speakers are more than a match for much more able and better equipped opponents.
3. The main strength of the Guild lies precisely in this, that the speakers are all spare-time workers. That for the better part of the day they are occupied in some other work is only superficially a disadvantage. In fact it is the contact effected between men in the crowd living ordinary lives in the world and men on the platform living ordinary lives in the world that makes success possible. Anything that would tend to withdraw Guildsmen from the world or to make them in any way a specialized type would decrease their usefulness immensely. There is no danger of the Guild becoming a religious community.
4. The crowds need Catholicism.
Results
It has already been said that we are building for the future and have no expectation of immediate results. But sufficient has happened to show that the Guild is on the right lines. Converts are coming with ever growing frequency. Far more important than this, lapsed Catholics are returning to the faith in great numbers as a result of the work. For the moment we are aiming not at the conversion of individuals but at the instruction of the whole mass of the people of England.
And in this way there are results that no one of us can fail to see: crowds waiting week after week, standing in the snow, bearing the rain with equanimity, beginning with fierce hostility, coming slowly to real friendliness; the conviction growing of the honesty, at least, of the Catholic speakers; the old lies, which have a glorious carnival when a new pitch is opened, dead in a month, for the Church is being seen as she is.
Even if only one man learns that Catholics have to be sorry before their sins can be forgiven, an evening is not wasted, for that bit of truth does not lie buried, but lives and works and is communicated to many whom we never see; and I think it is not too much to say that one of our most important works is to make our crowd active members of the Catholic Evidence Guild, in that they can spread among their fellows, however reluctantly and with however many mistakes, the truths that we are trying to teach, so that our audience consists, not only of our visible crowd, but also of the mightier crowds among whom they live and move.