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The great poet getting all Anglican in his booklet, The Prolific And The Devourer: “As […]

David Zahl / 12.6.10

The great poet getting all Anglican in his booklet, The Prolific And The Devourer:

“As a coarse generalisation one might say that Catholicism betrays the reason, Protestantism the heart. The former injures those who are capable of reasoning about the nature of the world, because it denies equality in intellectual inquiry and insists on authority. I have never met a Catholic intellectual — I exclude artists because artists never believe anything — who did not make me feel he was betraying his conscience.

“But in admitting equality in worship, it allows the poor and uneducated, who take their beliefs for granted, the right to live by faith.

“Protestantism, on the other hand, by admitting equality in reason, allows the intellectual to live by faith and be sceptical about belief, but denying equality in feeling, for it makes worship private and uncommunicable, it forces the uneducated to live by crude uncivilised beliefs and moralities. The intellectual worships in private, the masses, rich or poor, are left with communal worship which is either dull or disgusting.”