Papalism Ancient and Modern (III)

Abstract

I should like now to sum up the discussion so far, trying to show that what I have been saying does not depend only on what to many will seem a queer and barbarous jargon. To put it in other words: the triumphalist, because he lacks the insight social studies give, does not realize that not only do other minds exist but other kinds of authority, other patterns of government and social living which he does not know. Every one of them has a right to participate in the Church. No one has the right to say that what exists now is the only pattern and must be accepted as a condition of entry. What is the triumphalist pattern? Their pope is a Lord Chief Justice dispensing authoritative justice in a court of law. A man who must be guarded by strict rules of laesae majestatis lest the law be brought into disrepute. The sort of man who reproached Peter Damian when he criticized the late pope, St Leo IX, for recruiting a gang of ruffians to fight the Normans for him under all the trappings of a Holy War. He received the unanswerable reply, We don’t call David a saint for his relations with Bathsheba. But it takes more than commonsense to silence a triumphalist. In the case of a secular judge, one can see that rules of laesae majestatis are essential.