Christianity and Catholicism or Churchism
by Louis Claude de Saint Martin
The principal reproach I have to bring against them is, that, at every step, they confound Christianity with the Church (Catholicisme).
Now, true Christianity is anterior, not only to Catholicism, but even to the name Christianity itself; the name of Christian is not once found in the Gospels; but the spirit of that name is very clearly expressed, and it consists, according to John (i. 12), in the power of becoming the sons of God; and the spirit of the Children of God, or of the Apostles of Christ, who believed on Him, is shown, according to Mark (xvi. 20), by the Lord working in them, and confirming the word with signs following.
In this point of view, to be truly in Christianity, would be to be united with the Spirit of the Lord, and to have perfected or consummated our alliance with Him.
Now, in this respect, the true genius of Christianity would be less in being a religion, than as being the term and place of rest of all religions, and of all those laborious ways through which men's faith, and their need of being purged from their stains, oblige them to walk daily.
And it is very remarkable that, in the whole of the four Gospels, which are founded on the Spirit of true Christianity, the word religion is not to be met with once; and in the writings of the Apostles, which complete the New Testament, only four times.
Once in Acts (xxvi. 5 – [in Eng. version ; also, Gal. i. 13, 14]) – where the writer speaks of the Jewish religion.
The second, in Colossians (ii. 18) where the Apostle incidentally condemns the religion [Eng. vers. Worship] of angels.
And the third and fourth, in St. James (i. 26, 27) where he merely says: “If any man bridle not his tongue, but deceive his own heart, this man's religion is vain”; and, “Pure religion, and undefiled before God, the Father, is to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world”; examples in which Christianity seems to tend more towards its divine sublimity, or place of rest, than to clothing itself in the dress we are accustomed to call religion.
Here, then, is a table of differences between Christianity and Catholicism Christianity is nothing but the spirit of Jesus Christ in its fulness, after this Divine Physician had ascended all the steps of his mission, which be commenced at man's fall, when he promised that the woman's seed should crush the serpent's head. Christianity is the complement of the priesthood of Melchisedek; it is the soul of the Gospel; and it causes the living waters which nations thirst' for, to circulate in that Gospel.
Catholicism [the Church], to which the title of religion properly belongs, is a way of trial and traveil to arrive at Christianity.
Christianity is the region of emancipation and liberty: Catholicism is only the seminary of Christianity; the region of rules and discipline for the neophyte.
Christianity fills all the earth alike with the Spirit of God. Catholicism fills only a portion of the globe, notwithstanding its title of universal.
Christianity carries our faith up to the luminous region of the Eternal Divine Word; Catholicism limits this faith to the written word, or tradition.
Christianity shows us God openly, in the heart of our being, without the help of forma and formulas. Catholicism leaves us at war with ourselves, to find God hid under ceremonies.
Christianity has no mysteries; the very name is repugnant to it; for, essentially, Christianity is evidence itself, and universal clearness, Catholicism is full of mysteries, and its foundation is veiled. The sphinx may be placed at the outrance of temples built by men's hands; it cannot be seated in the heart, which is the real entrance to Christianity.
Christianity is the fruit of the true: Catholicism can only be the dressing. Christianity makes neither monasteries nor anchorites, because it can no more isolate itself than can the light of the sun; and because, like the sun, it seeks to shine everywhere. Catholicism peopled the deserts with solitaries, and the towns with religious communities; the former, to devote themselves more easily to their own salvation, the latter to present to the corrupt world some images of virtue and piety, to rouse it in its lethargy.
Christianity has no sect, since it embraces unity, and unity being alone, cannot be divided in itself. Catholicism has seen a multitude of schisms and sects spring from its bosom, which have promoted the reign of division, rather than that of concord; and Catholicism, even when it supposes itself in the highest degree of purity, can find hardly two of its members who believe alike.
Christianity would never have made the Crusades the invisible cross it carries in its bosom has no object but the relief and happiness of all creatures. It was a false imitation of Christianity, to say the least, which invented the Crusades; Catholicism adopted them afterwards: but, fanaticism commanded them; Jacobinism composed them; anarchy directed them; and brigandism executed them.
Christianity has declared war only against sin; Catholicism, against men.
Christianity marches only by sure and continuous experience; Catholicism marches only by authority and institutions; Christianity is the law of faith; Catholicism is the faith of the law.
Christianity is the complete installation of man's soul into the rank of minister or workman of the Lord; Catholicism limits man to the care of his own spiritual health.
Christianity continually unites man with God, as being by their nature two inseparable beings; Catholicism, while it uses the same language, yet so feeds man with mere forms, that it makes him lose sight of its real object, and contract many habits which do not always turn to his profit or real advancement.
Christianity rests immediately on the unwritten Word; Catholicism rests on the written Word, or Gospel, in general; and on the mass, in particular.
Christianity is an active and perpetual, spiritual and divine sacrifice, either of the soul of Jesus Christ, or of our own; Catholicism, which rests particularly on the mass, presents only an ostensible sacrifice of the body and blood of the Redeemer.
Christianity can be composed of the holy race of primitive man alone, the true sacerdotal race. Catholicism, resting particularly on the mass, was, as Christ's last Passover, at the merely initiatory degrees of this priesthood; for, when he said to his disciples, Do this in remembrance of me, they had already received power to cast out devils, to cure sicknesses, and raise the dead; but they had not yet received what was most important for the fulness of the priesthood; since the consecration of a priest consists in the transmission of time Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit was not yet given, because the Redeemer was not yet glorified (John vii. 39).
Christianity becomes a continual increase of light, from the moment the soul of man is admitted into it Catholicism, which has made the holy supper its highest and most sublime degree of worship, has allowed a veil to be thrown over this ceremony, even inserting, as I have observed before, in the canon of the mass, the words mysterium fidei, which are not in the Gospel, and are contrary to the universal light of Christianity.
Christianity belongs to eternity; Catholicism to time.
Christianity is the term; Catholicism, with all the imposing majesty of its solemnities, and the sacred grandeur of its prayers, is only the means.
Finally, it is possible that there may be many Catholics, who, yet, are unable to judge what Christianity is; but it is impossible for a true Christian not to be able to judge what Catholicism is, and what it ought to be.
* Pages 199 - 202 from "Man: His True Nature & Ministry", L.-C. de Saint-Martin trans. Edward B. Penny
“It did not appear as if he concerned himself in the least, that I did not belong to the Romish Church. He only exhorted me to love the Saviour, to be faithful to Him, and to pray even for him” - “Theosophic Correspondence”.
Comments