MEETING THE WORLD

The Spiritual Approach
sER,-A sense of deep gratitude for all the kindness received during a recent visit to New York and New England urges me to ask for a closer linking of our efforts to transcend mere good paganism and affirm the supernatural.
I found there as I find in England a great inarticulate longing for a break from the emphasis on moralising which though mingled with much piety still blocks the triumphant affirmation of the solid satisfying realities of the world of Faith. The words of the American philosopher, Thoreau " Most men live lives of quiet desperation" were never so true as they are to
day of thoughtful people. As a consequence Catholics are more ready than ever to rise above the cruelly comfortable gospel of security and to welcome the stark fact of Calvary when it is seen as culminating in the equally clear fact of the Resurrection of Our Crucified Lord on Easter Sunday. We have to die daily but by living our Faith it is even more true than we can rise daily even here on earth.
But we are so afraid of being different that we take refuge in the plea that we must accommodate our message to the wider audience of all men of goodwill. Yet this means that we descend to their level often to our own hurt without a compensating advantage to them. It would help us to fight this spirit if we reminded ourselves more forcibly that most people around us have abandoned reason as well as the Christian code of morals. Consequently we can only hope to influence them by the living tangible example of a life of articulate joyful Faith.
This would have the additional effect of helping our weaker brethren to make true acts of contrition instead of merely despairing as they do at present. The older one grows the less one in inclined to lay down the law. But I do claim emphatically that this point of view is worth discussing as a way out of the present drab impasse. Methods of instruction too about which you have had such an interesting debate recently in these columns would have much light thrown on them if my contentions were thrashed out.
Gerald Flanagan (Rev.).
The Presbytery, Iver Heath, Bucks.