I can speak freely, because I happen to hold two of the dogmas which most people quarrel about—­the virgin birth and the physical resurrection.  There are other heresies floating about!  One of our deans is inclined to assert the finitude of God, and another to deny anything in the nature of personality to God or to man’s spirit!  Rather confusing!  Philosophic questions of this kind, however, do not greatly concern mankind.  To believe in God the Father is essential to the Christian religion.  Other doctrines may not be so essential, but they must not be regarded as unimportant.  Personally I wish the Church to hold her dogmas, because I would do nothing to widen the gulf which separates us from the other great Churches, the Roman and the Eastern.  The greatest political aim of humanity, in my opinion, is a super-state, and that can only come through a Church universal.  How we all longed for it during the war!—­one voice above the conflict, the voice of the Church, the voice of Christ!  If the Pope had only spoken out, with no reference to the feelings of the Austrian Emperor!—­what a gain that would have been for religion.  But the great authentic voice never sounded.  Instead of the successor of St. Peter we had to content ourselves with the American Press—­excellent, no doubt, but hardly satisfying.

Let me tell you a rather striking remark by an Italian friend of mine, an editor of an Italian review, and not a Roman Catholic.  He was saying that every Church that persisted for any time possessed something essential to the religion of Christ.  I asked him what he saw in the Roman Church that was essential.  He replied at once, “The Papacy.”  I was surprised for the moment, but I saw presently what he meant.  The desire of the world is for universal peace, universal harmony.  Can that ever be achieved by a disunited Christendom?  The nations are rivals.  Their rivalry persisted at the Peace Conference, disappointing all the hopes of idealists.  Must it not always persist, must not horrible carnage, awful desolation, ruinous destruction, and, at any rate, dangerous and provocative rivalries, always dog the steps of humanity until Christendom is one?

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Personally, I think reunion with Rome is so far off that it need not trouble us just now; there are other things to do; but I would certainly refrain from anything which made ultimate reunion more difficult.  And so I hold fast to my Catholic doctrines.  But I tell you where I find a great difficulty.  A man comes to me for adult baptism.  I have to ask him, point by point, if he verily believes the various doctrines of the Church, doctrines which a man baptised as an infant may not definitely accept and yet remain a faithful member of Christ’s Church.  What am I to say to one who has the passion of Christian morality in his heart, but asks me whether these verbal statements of belief are essential?