"Whosoever Thou Art..."

"The acrimonious relations between Catholics and Protestants in this country are scandalous." So writes Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, one of Protestantism's top intellectual spokesmen, in the current issue of his fortnightly journal, Christianity and Crisis. Many a Christian will agree that: "If two forms of the Christian faith, though they recognize a common Lord, cannot achieve a little more charity in their relations to each other, they have no right to speak to the world or claim to have any balm for the world's hatreds and mistrusts." Even partisans of each faith will admit some justice in the stern, three-point scolding Niebuhr administers to both sides. Excerpts:

The Christian Error. "We should like to present three propositions, the first of which applies to both Protestants and Catholics, the second to Catholics, and the third to Protestants. The first proposition is that there is an unfortunate inclination in the human heart, which Christians should, but have not, mastered, to be more concerned with the sins of others than with our own sins. ... A good deal of Protestantism is little more than anti-Catholicism; and Catholicism is very fond of historical theories which ascribe all the ills of our generation to the destruction of a Catholic civilization by the force of the Protestant Reformation and modern secularism.

"This inclination to find the root of all evil in the sins of the other and not in those of the self is as wrong as it is natural. There ought, however, to be some resource in the Christian church to counteract it; for the Christian faith insists that the primary encounter in human life is not between good and evil men, nations or institutions, but between all men and God. 'Whosoever thou art that judges,' declares St. Paul, 'thou thyself doest the same thing.' . . . The root of all Christian charity lies in the contrite recognition of the common need of all men for the divine mercy."

The Catholic Error. ". . . Catholic bishops have the practice of rushing to the public and to print, every time Protestants call attention to some form of official Catholic intolerance, with the assertion that it is Christ Himself who is under attack, and that only disloyalty to Christ could have prompted the criticism. There is a curious pathos in this performance; for the bishops could hardly understand that from the Protestant standpoint it is precisely this unqualified identification of Christ with the historic church which is the root of all Catholic heresies and the cause of Catholic intolerance. . . .

"In the same way Protestants are inclined to be unyielding on problems of the public school because they suspect the hierarchy, at least, of being inimical to the whole idea of a public school system, which Protestants, as well as our secular democrats, regard as one of the foundation stones of our democracy. Protestants are furthermore not at all certain that the Catholic hierarchy really accepts the fundamental separation of church and state, to which American democracy is committed. . . .

"We have been told again and again that Catholicism must insist on the obligation of the state not only to teach religion but to teach the 'true religion.' . . . We Protestants oppose this, not only because the condition of religious pluralism in America makes it quite unfeasible, but also because we believe that monopoly in anything, including monopoly in religion, is a source of corruption. It is a particular source of corruption in religion. . . ."

The Protestant Error. ". . . We [Protestants] have lacked charity as much as have Catholics, partly because we fail to appreciate the genuine grace of personal religion within this system of official intolerance. Furthermore, we fail to appreciate the real concern for religious values which underlies the Catholic insistence on religious instruction. . . .

"Our constitutional fathers quite obviously and quite rightly wanted to prevent the establishment of religious monopoly. ... It is not at all clear that they sought to prevent the state's support of religion absolutely, provided such support could be given equitably to all religious groups. . . . [The] principle of 'separation of church and state' . . . goes no further than the prohibition of the establishment of one religion and the suppression of others. . . . The [effort] to make the separation . . . absolute ... is a reflection ... of the Protestant fear of Catholicism.

"This fear may seem in one sense justified. But in another sense it is an effort to cover up, by political action, the weakness of Protestantism in the field of religion itself. The anarchy of Protestantism, its lack of spiritual discipline, its ridiculous tensions between . . . versions of Protestantism ... its half-secular sentimentalities, all these weaknesses are more responsible for its sense of insecurity than anything that Catholicism may do politically."

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