xv INFALLIBILITY AND TOLERATION 269 



of mankind would be to break up all ecclesiastical 

 institutions, why should Roman ways of enforcing discipline 

 be denounced with indignation ? Why should not those 

 who do not relish them be left to make their choice 

 between submission and departure ? They have been 

 surreptitiously trying to combine the advantages of an 

 ancient and highly picturesque community with those of 

 an unrestricted freedom of individual thought ; they have 

 been detected and sharply called to order. Why then 

 should they be pitied and paradoxically helped from 

 outside to stay inside by people who would gladly welcome 

 them if they would come out ? 



In other quarters the Pope s procedure meets with 

 strong approval, and rationalist philosophers may be 

 heard condemning Modernism as fervently as Pragmatism. 

 The perplexities of the controversy, moreover, are only 

 deepened when one observes how curiously vague and 

 general are the Modernist s replies to the Papal accusa 

 tions. It is all very well to denounce the obscurantism 

 of the Vatican and to prophesy the disastrous failure of 

 the Papal policy ; but it would have been more to the 

 purpose to show how any other course would have been 

 consistent with Papal authority. 



Thus the whole situation forcibly suggests a suspicion 

 that the facts have not been fully put before the public. 

 Modernism is clearly suspected of being something far 

 more dangerous and subversive than the Pope s examples 

 prove ; and both its allies and its enemies appear to think 

 that there is more at issue than merely the domestic 

 question of what latitude of thought the Roman Church 

 can tolerate. 



A belief that this is truly so, that this suspicion is 

 amply justified, that the issue is really one of vital im 

 portance to the whole human race, and that this can be, 

 and ought to be, made clear, is the raison d etre of this 

 essay. 



What is really at stake and what really arouses so 

 much interest is the old conflict between the claim to 

 infallibility and the right to persecute on the one side, 



