'Coulton-Lunn Debate Examined by an Anglican Critic

by Montgomery Belgion
TO THE CATHOLIC HERALD be
longs the credit of having instigated the duel by letter made public in this book, to read which is like watching U bullfight with the bull wav
ing the red rags and sticking the banderillas and yet with the nsatador triumphant at the end. It was in a letter published here in November, 1943, that the Reverend John Heenan suggested that Bull Coulton and Matador Lunn should set to. Coulton, the Cambridee scholar, was a twin fount of inexhaustible information about the Middle Ages and of rabid hostility to what he imagined to be the tortuous ways of Romanism. Books and booklets bearing such titles as Rotnanism and Truth, Papal Infallibility. The Roman Catholic Church and the Bible. and Sectarian History, had already gushed from his pen. Mr. Lunn. the convert, had
already defended Catholicism, as he says. against Professor load and
Professor J B. S. Haldane. Although the book anpears only now. the letters composing it were all written in 1945, and Coulton passed the proofs before he died.
The Matador's Slips I may remark first that. in spite Lii previous prowesa, Matador Lunn does not seem to me to conduct him
self impeccably. Or perhaps his Ntitrubling now and then is deliberate. When Anatole France sought election to the French Academy, he had, in conformity with custom, to write to a number of academicians
a letter soliciting their vote. The story is told that this letter he first submitted in draft to a friend, and that the friend said: " Put in one or two mistakes of French, or they will feel you write too well, and it may turn them against you." Anatole France followed the advice and was elected.
Perhaps our matador has likewise slipped on occasion so as to make the contest more breath-taking. Be that as it may, he fails on page 230 to mention the strenuous efforts of the medieval popes to render the holy Roman emperors subordinate to the Holy See.
It is a pity that on page 139 he should invoke anything so paltry as Mr. P. Wiener's From Luther to Niemiiller in order to defame Luther. Catholic apologists can do better than that. It is news to me that Cujus regio, ents religio, was Luther's motto.
A nd
rather than that the majority of Anglicans protest against being described as Protestants," I suggest it would have been more accurate to say that the majority of Anglicans are content to call themselves Plain "Church of England," leaving it to a relatively small body at either extreme to handy the words "Protestant" and "Catholic." Further, I should not have imagined. in view of the public for whom presumably the book is intended, that he would confine himself to supplying the English of his short Latin quotations and not translate the longer as well.
The Bull Bites the Dust
What is certain is that no reader should allow himself to be deceived at any moment by one of these trifling slips. There is never the slightest doubt really that the bull
is going to bite the dust. Indeed, to begin with, I feared that the bull's red rags and malicious darts were going wide, or possibly that he had been doped. But presently I saw that Coulton was displaying for an old bull of ninety a vigorous agility and an astonishingly alert eye for detail.
His besetting weakness is to charge spots which the matador has never occupied, or, if you like, an utter inability to write to his brief. The only support he attempts of the accusation that the Catholic Church is " anti-social " consists of saying, (1) that the Church long countenanced slavery, and (2) that the Church has long exacted celibacy of its priests. His tattered red rags of papal infallibility and Roman claims of Catholicity never make Matador Lunn brandish his sword in ungovernable anger, and many of the banderillas are pathetic, taking as they do the form of interminable accounts of correspondence with Fr. Thurston. Fr. Martindale, Fr. Leslie Walker, The Tablet, and so on---fat and choleric registered letters on his side, curt postcards or silence on theirs.
It only remains for the matador to repel an attack which never takes place. This he does without difficulty by recalling on pages 210 to 212 what should be commonplaces. In the Middle Ages the Church not only had charge of ail education, was 111c sole succour of the poor and the sole nurse of the sick: it also taught agriculture, supervised building, preserved learning, and spread the unwritten laws of natural respect, good breeding and politeness, that are the very mainstay of decent social life. All these activities the Church. moreover. still carries onso far as it is allowed to do so. In short, the allegation that the Church is. or ever has been, " anti-social," Proclaims itself preposterous, and Matador Lunn has the advantage of lighting for a foregone conclusion.
An Inevitable Result
That was inevitable. Otherwise
the book could hardly appear under the imprint of a firm of publishers to the Holy See." Mr. Lunn will pardon me, I hope. if I confess to finding him rather ingenuous. He seems surprised that a previous collaboration of his, issued by Shced and Ward. Catholic publishers. was not put on sale on the bookstalls of the Rationalist Press Association. He must know that at the same time as anti-Christian bodies are not interested in pro-Catholic books it would be unseemly of Catholic publishers and " publishers to the Holy See " to propagate anti-Catholic ones. In obedience to a similar reason I would not have accepted the Editor's invitation to review the present book in these columns had doubted for a moment that the question asked in the title admits of only one cotrect answer. It is not for a non-Catholic to notice in THE CATHOLIC HERALD successful attacks on Catholicism, suriposing such attacks were conceivable. But that the duel or bullfight bad to cnd as it does need not imply that the book serves no useful purpose. It is evidently a serious atternnt to show Catholics the kind of allegations that are levelled aeainst their Church and to give approoriate answers. On this account it deserves a wide public.
Is the Catholic Church AntiSocial? A Debate between G. G. COtaliOn and Arnold DOM. (Burns Oates and Washbourne, 12. 6d.).
As our title indicates, the reviewer, Mr. Montgomery Belgion, is a member of the Church of England.