1927

This prayer book controversy in the Church of England ought to give us liberals who make so much of tolerance a pause. What are the limits of tolerance? Does not tolerance of a theological position which one knows or believes to be untrue become a betrayal of the truth? How can one be tolerant of medievalism without playing traitor to the best in the modern day?

Here is the Episcopal church which many of us have counted blessed because it was the one bridge over the chasm which separates Catholicism and Protestantism. But the chasm is now revealed as too wide for any bridge. Cooperation with the Catholic demands connivance with religious practices which reduce religion to magic. No wonder the Protestant laymen in Parliament threw the revised prayer book out. How can anyone in the year of our Lord 1927 be seriously exercised over the problem of the “real presence” in the Eucharist? Think of the spiritual leaders of a torn and bleeding world debating learnedly on whether and how God can be magically localized and salvation be confined in a capsule. To read the arguments of the sacerdotalists is enough to drive one into the arms of the unrepentent rationalists who regard all religion as dangerous.

The weaknesses of Catholicism ought not prompt one to disregard all the finer spiritual and moral values which still live in this ancient church. But there can be no final unity between an institution which reduces religion to magic and a fellowship of the spirit which tries to subdue the chaos of life under the ideal of faith.

Magic is an enemy of all morality. It offers a short cut to all prizes of the spirit which can be won only by heroic effort.