It goes without saying that such belief is meritorious.  Christ Himself said that to be saved it is necessary to believe, and no man is saved but through his own merit.  Faith is, therefore, gratuitous on His part and meritorious on ours.  It is in reality a good work that proceeds from the will, under the dictates of right reason, with the assistance of divine grace.

CHAPTER XXII.  FAITH AND ERROR.

Intolerance is a harsh term.  It is stern, rigid, brutal, almost.  It makes no compromise, combats a outrance and exacts blind and absolute obedience.  Among individuals tolerance should prevail, man, should be liberal with man, the Law of Charity demands it.  In regard to principles, there must and shall eternally be antagonism between truth and error, justice demands it.  It is a case of self-preservation; one destroys the other.  Political truth can never tolerate treason preached or practised; neither can religious truth tolerate unbelief and heresy preached or practised.

Now our faith is based on truth, the Church is the custodian of faith, and the Church, on the platform of religious truth, is absolutely uncompromising and intolerant, just as the State is in regard to treason.  She cannot admit error, she cannot approve error; to do so would be suicidal.  She cannot lend the approval of her presence, nay even of her silence, to error.  She stands aloof from heresy, must always see in it an enemy, condemns it and cannot help condemning it, for she stands for truth, pure and unalloyed truth, which error pollutes and outrages.

Call this what you will, but it is the attitude of honesty first, and of necessity afterwards.  “He who is liberal with what belongs to him is generous, he who undertakes to be generous with what does not belong to him is dishonest.”  Our faith is not founded on an act or agreement of men, but on the revelation of God.  No human agency can change or modify it.  Neither Church nor Pope can be liberal with the faith of which they are the custodians.  Their sole duty is to guard and protect it as a precious deposit for the salvation of men.

This is the stand all governments take when there is question of political truth.  And whatever lack of generosity or broadmindedness there be, however contrary to the spirit of this free age it may seem, it is nevertheless the attitude of God Himself who hates error, for it is evil, who pursues it with His wrath through time and through eternity.  How can a custodian of divine truth act otherwise?  Even in human affairs, can one admit that two and three are seven?

We sometimes hear it said that this intolerance takes from Catholics the right to think.  This is true in the same sense that penitentiaries, or the dread of them, deprive citizens of the right to act.  Everybody, outside of sleeping hours and with his thinking machine in good order, thinks.  Perhaps if there were a little more of it, there would be more solid convictions and more practical faith.  Holy Writ has it somewhere that the whole world is given over to vice and sin because there is no one who thinks.