Article views: 4
HAT precisely do the terms "re- wherever it became divorced from busiligion" and "economics" mean? ness and public life, discontent and misery
Economics or business is, I would say, ensued, and multitudes hungered while
the system or systems by which rational millionaires multiplied. This divorce of
animals procure, modify and interchange religion from economics begat the condithe products of the earth for their sus- tion of 5 per cent jobless and 20 per cent
tenance and development, physical and breadless in the richest country of the
spiritual. Religion is the acceptance of world, a problem for which you are here
all truths and the performance of all to find a remedy. Religion alone can
duties that bind men to God; and man is remedy these conditions. It has removed
bound to God by reason and will, char- immeasurably worse conditions before,
acterizing faculties of the spiritual soul, and to show how this was accomplished
which differentiates him from other ani- is my contribution to a present solution.
mals. Hence, every act of reason and
I mean by religion not an indefinite
will, every act done knowingly and freely, something of vague common denominabinds man to God, whether that free act tors, but a definite code of principles and
be done in private or public, in church or practices as essentially static as man's nahall, in hearth or mart, in prayer or poli- ture, binding or claiming to bind all men
tics or pleasure; and for every such free to God under definite authority in all the
human act, man is responsible to God, to pursuits or business of life. Speaking for
the Divine Intelligence and Will from the Catholic church, which I am invited
Whom his reason and his will derive. here to represent, I find that at this seaTherefore, whenever reason and will come son nineteen centuries ago, the risen
into play, man must follow the law God Christ, issuing command as possessor of
has implanted in his nature, and therefore all power in heaven and on earth, comreligion binds man to God no less in busi- missioned some Judeans to go forth into
ness promotion than in ascetic devotion.
the world and, with that power, to teach
The command to love one's neighbor as all the things He had told them to all
oneself, written on the tablets of the heart people for all time. These teachings emas of the law revealed, includes the neigh- braced not only the worship of the Divine
bor in all his activities, civil, social and Spirit, the one true God,' and the truthcommercial; and the least of its obliga- fulness and peacef ulness and honesty and
tions is not to steal from him. Obliga- chastity of the Mosaic law, but the hightion is to God, or there is none, except to est expansion of these virtues in the allthe brute force and cunning of the jungle. inclusive charity and purity and sacrificial
God, the Creator, Sustainer, Lawgiver love of the Sermon on the Mount. These
and Judge, is everything or He is nothing. precepts and counsels entered into every
History reveals that wherever religion so possible relation and activity of life; and
denned actuated human activities, peace the few Judeans, or rather cruder Galiand happiness followed in its train; and leans, set out to preach them, as the one
396
397
398
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
the recipient with "the freedom of the children of God" and co-heirship with Christ
to His Kingdom. Given equally to all, to
woman as to man, to slave as to free,
baptism emancipated the woman and the
slave; for once freedom of soul and mind
and will was vindicated; physical freedom
had to follow. It emancipated all; for
freedom of soul in the individual was
bound to have its sequel in civic freedom
of the mass. Baptism was an object
lesson in universal personality and equality of human rights. Other sacraments
sustained and enforced it. Penance, the
tribunal to which all violators of the law
should go for restoration of status, adjudged pardon and penalty to each, master and slave alike, solely on their merits.
This personal quality was further exemplified when slave and master, woman
and man, knelt side by side to receive, as
they believed, their Eucharistic God, and
when, as often happened, the ministering
priest or pontiff had been a slave. But
perhaps the most effective lesson in the
equality of life and living was the sacrament of marriage, which, rendering the
union of one man with one woman,
whether slave or free, sacred and indissoluble, established the chaste and healthy
family as the fruitful unit of society,
lifted woman to man's level or raised her
to a pedestal of reverence. "We Christians," cried Tertullian, "have everything
in common except our womanhood."
They had community of justice because
they had community of charity. Their
Master's saying that whatever they did to
relieve "the least of these my brethren"
was done unto Him, charged them to regard Caesar's chattels as God's freemen;
and when their plan of a voluntary community of goods for this purpose proved
unworkable, they organized for the relief
of the needy companies of men and women from the laity, which in the stress
of persecution grew into a network of
organized social service through the empire and for three centuries provided for
the millions that were left orphaned,
399
400
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
401
402
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
403
404
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION