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THE EUCHARISTIC SACRIFICE.

CHAPTER I.

SOME DANGERS AND DIFFICULTIES OF OUR TIMES.

ΤΗ

Human thought tends

to exaggerated reaction. Examples, the age of the Councils, naissance, or Reformation.

HE tendency of the pendulum of human thought Introductory: is always to swing to extremes, and in no department is this more evident than in theology. We see it in the age of the Councils swinging from Arianism to Apollinarianism, from Nestorianism to Eutychianism. But the epoch in which we are able to trace this tendency in its most exaggerated manifestation is, of course, that extraordinary period which followed the revival of classical learning, which we call, in literature and art, the Renaissance; in religion, the Reformation.

and the Re

I. This tendency seen in

theology in

century XVI. ;

Everywhere the desire is manifested to abandon the old paths and to enter new ones, to leave the old doctrines and to seek their opposite poles; and this not only in dogma, but in morals and polity. Indeed, there seems to be no division of theology in which this strange revulsion was not exhibited. In church pol- in polity, ity the change was from a theory of ecclesiastical despotism to one of downright Erastianism; in morals, morals, from a standard of saintly asceticism to a positive repudiation of good works, which opened the door to the

worship,

and dogma.

The revulsion greatest in priesthood and related questions.

On both sides a distortion of truth revealed

grossest licentiousness; in worship, from excessive formalism to absolute irreverence; from an overestimate of objective religion to the entire substitution of a subjective faith.

When, however, we come to dogma, we find the most violent revulsion taking place in those doctrines which are more or less connected with the idea of priesthood: the doctrines of sacrifice and the Sacraments of merit and grace. From an almost mechanical theory of the operation of the Sacraments, we pass to their virtual reduction to mere symbols; from a somewhat arithmetical doctrine of merit to a theory of indefectible and irresistible grace; from an exaggerated sacerdotalism to a practical rejection of all priesthood; from giving an excessive prominence to a distorted view of the Sacrifice of the Mass to a denial of any sacrifice except that of the Cross. Indeed, with the Reformers the Atonement became the one saving doctrine of Christianity, to the practical obscuration of the Incarnation and its extension and consequences in the Sacramental system of the Church.

In all these antitheses we have on either side an exaggeration which practically amounts to a distortion by comparison of the truth. This becomes evident by comparing dis

with funda

mental truths.

The import-
ance of the
"reductio ad
absurdum"
method in
theology.

puted doctrines with fundamental truths of the Catholic Faith. For since one truth cannot contradict or be inconsistent with another truth, where this contradiction or inconsistency is discovered we may fairly assume that there has been some overstatement or exaggeration of the doctrine in question. The importance of this method of testing and correcting theological opinions can scarcely be overestimated. It is of course the application to theology of the reductio ad absurdum or ad impossibile method in logic.

The likeness which exists between the Reformation The likeness of century

period and our own is most striking. Both were pre-
pared for by an age of degeneracy and decay. The four-
teenth and the first half of the fifteenth centuries were
sterile and unproductive, and the same may be said of
the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth cent-
uries. In the sixteenth and nineteenth, forces which
had long lain dormant began to manifest themselves,
with very much the same results. In each period we
recognize the same restless intellect, the same super-
ficial reading, the same hasty, ill-considered judgments,
the same desire for novelty, the same disregard of
authority; and, on the other hand, the same forward
leap in invention and artistic development.
was much of good, much of evil, in both.

There

XVI. to our own age.

therefore avoid the mistakes of

tion period.

To-day we should surely strive to learn from the we should mistakes of an age so like our own, and especially to be on our guard in theological controversy, against the Reformathat tendency to the exaggeration of one aspect of a doctrine to the neglect of its complementary truth, of which we have such abundant example in the Reformation period. To this tendency may be traced the religious evils, the narrowness and prejudice from which our fathers so long suffered, and which we ourselves have not yet entirely shaken off.

exaggeration not compro

mise, but the

"via media"

of Aristotle.

But what is the remedy or safeguard for this? Cer- II. Remedy for tainly not compromise, which is absolutely fatal to truth, but that true Aristotelian via media which strives to avoid excess or defect, and in theology accomplishes this by comparing doctrinal statements with accepted truths, and examining whether they err in excess or defect, and so contradict, or are inconsistent with, the truths with which they are compared.

We need to keep ever before us the fact that the