Agonu of the Church - ECCLESIA TRIUMPHANS

ECCLESIA TRIUMPHANS

How can the church get her past strength again and triumph over the evil inside and outside her walls?

If she were united she could get it by waiting for the ruin of Europe--i.e. of a house which is divided in itself--which is not very far off. But she the Church--is divided too. She is fighting with and for the European parties, and against herself. Consequently, in waiting for the ruin of Europe she is waiting for her own ruin. Therefore she must make up her mind lest it is too late. Horribile dictu--she must start a dramatic movement in order to get her soul back.

First of all she must become again a heresy towards Europe and European secular, antidivine civilisation, just as she was a heresy towards the theocratic Israel and semi-theocratic Greece and Rome. Theoretically,

she must stick to Theocracy, historically, to Christocracy, and practically to Sanctocracy. She must loose herself from all the chains binding her either to the chariot of any dynasty or of any oligarch or president, or whatever political denomination it may be, and insist upon the Holy Wisdom to lead humanity. It ought to be absolutely indifferent to the Church what political denomination, or social creed, or institutional shape a human society shall have as long as this is founded upon any other ideal but saintliness. The Church ought to know only two denominations--politics and social life, inter-human as well as international and inter racial-racial relations in trade and business, in education and family life--i.e. saintliness and unsaintliness. If you ask what saintliness ought to mean, Christianity has not to argue but to show you the saintliness in the flesh. Christ the saintly Lord, St Paul and St John, Polycarp and Leo, Patrick and Francis, Sergius and Zosim, St Theresa and hundreds of other saints. And if somebody thinks still that a few thousands of Christian saints are not a sufficient argument to show that saintliness is practicable, then the Church has still not to give her ideal up and to take as her ideal thousands of great and small Napoleons and Bismarcks, and Goethes and Spencers, or Medics and Cromwells or Kaisers and Kings--no, in the latter case it would be much nicer for the Church to point out the saintly men outside of Christian walls, like St Hermes and St Pythagoras, or St Krishna and St Buddha, or St Lao-Tse and St Confucius, or St Zoroaster and St Abu-Bekr. Better even is unbaptised saintliness than baptised earthliness.

Saintliness includes goodness and sacrifice, and excludes all the earthly impure spirits of selfishness, pride, quarrels and conquests. Therefore, when the Church returns to her fundamental ideal, she will return to her elementary simplicity in which she was so powerful as to move mountains and empires and hearts at the beginning of her history. That is what the world needs now just as much as it needs air and light, i.e. an elementary spiritual power by which it could be moved, cleared up, purified and brought out of its chaos to a solid and beautiful construction.