NEW FAILURE OF NERVE
19
This doctrine testifies not to a failure of nerve but just to
plain nerve-brazen and provocative. To match it we must go to
the literature of the Communist Party which, demanding un–
abridged civil rights for itself under existing society, tells us that
under the proletarian dictatorship, "all the capitalist parties–
Republican, Democratic, Progressive, Socialist, etc.-will be liqui–
dated, the Communist Party functioning alone as the Party of
the toiling masses."**
As the self-constituted shepherd of all men's souls, the Catho–
lic Church demands as great a control over social and political
life as any totalitarian party; for as Pope Leo XIII made abund–
antly clear, it alone can determine what is subject to the power
and judgment of the Church as affecting the salvation of the
human soul. Consequent_ly, when the Catholic Bishops who con–
stitute the Administrative Board of the National Catholic Welfare
Conference list the chief evils that imperil supernatural religion
in this country as "false doctrine, immorality, disbelief, arid re–
born paganism," it is not hard to see what they refer to. False
doctrine is Protestantism, or any religious faith except the true
one; immorality is civil marriage, divorce, birth control, any
civil freedom that violates a sacrament; disbelief is modem phil–
osophy, any heresy that contradicts the heresies canonized as
philosophia perennis;
reborn paganism is any morality which is
not grounded on revelation and any political theory that advocates
the separation of church and state. There is a sting of death to
the free spirit in every measure the Church proposes to take to
safeguard its dogmas.
Partly as a result of Catholic agitation and partly as an ex–
pression of spiritual despair, many influential Protestant groups
have echoed the call for a society organized on Christian founda–
tions. It is questionable whether all who employ the phrase know
what they mean by a Christian society. But whatever it means, it
must refer either to Christian organization or Christian dogma.
Would a Christian society based on Protestant dogmas, assuming
the Protestant sects could agree on any, lead to a state similar in
anti-democratic outline to Catholic clericalism? This is not so
clear but the evidence of history and the logic of the position make
it likely. At most, it would tolerate different religious beliefs but
..William Z. Foster,
Toward Soviet America,
p.
275 (1932) .
