All should try to learn the truth who can; but we do not condemn others who cannot 286

Even amongst Catholics generally no recondite theological knowledge is required 287

The facts of the Catholic religion are simple.  Theology is the complex scientific explanation of them 288

Catholicism is misunderstood because the outside world confuses with its religion—­1st.  The complex explanations of it 289

2nd.  Matters of discipline, and practical rules 290

3rd.  The pious opinions, or the scientific errors of private persons, or particular epochs 291

None of which really are any integral part of the Church 293

Neither are the peculiar exaggerations of moral feeling that have been prevalent at different times 293

The Church theoretically is a living, growing, self-adapting organism 295

She is, in fact, the growing, moral sense of mankind organised and developed under a supernatural tutelage 295

CHAPTER XII.

UNIVERSAL HISTORY AND THE CLAIMS OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.

We must now consider the Church in relation to history and external historical criticism 297

1st.  The history of Christianity; 2nd.  The history of other religions 298

Criticism has robbed the Bible of nearly all the supposed internal evidences of its supernatural character 298

It has traced the chief Christian dogmas to non-Christian sources 300

It has shown that the histories of other religions are strangely analogous to the history of Christianity 300

And to Protestantism these discoveries are fatal 302

But they are not fatal to Catholicism, whose attitude to history is made utterly different by the doctrine of the perpetual infallibility of the Church 305

The Catholic Church teaches us to believe the Bible for her sake, not her for the Bible’s 305

And even though her dogmas may have existed in some form elsewhere, they become new revelations to us, by her supernatural selection of them 306

The Church is a living organism, for ever selecting and assimilating fresh nutriment 307