Baron von Hugel

Extract

Sir,—Baron von Hugel was not a professional theologian. He was devoted to the philosophy of religion and to theology because he was a Christian and a Catholic, but he was profoundly more than a theologian because he was an integral Catholic.

To ask whether he was centrally Catholic and to examine his theological credentials alone is not enough. A religious personality can be psychologically heterodox under a number of aspects, of which the two more important are the theological and spiritual. A man can be theologically immaculate and spiritually lop-sided, in which case he is not centrally, i.e., integrally, Christian. I do not intend to add the slick correlative that a man may be spiritually impregnable and theologically nebulous, because both speculation and history prove that this is not true. But a mind which is mistaken on single propositions in a time of crisis may most emphatically possess spiritual grandeur of an outstanding kind. Moreover, even the greatest Saints are not normally without sin and moral wavering until after the biographers have plastered up the chinks, and some of the noblest religious personalities in history have value for us precisely because of their bearing in face of their own moral contractions and mistakes. Baron von Hugel is for some the greatest example of this that our age has known, and his spiritual message would carry infinitely less meaning for us were there none of these contractions and subsequent gigantic renunciations of his life. Von Hugel’s soul is first and foremost a synthesis of opposed moral forces: a neurotic, violent, easily jarred character constantly transformed and driven into massive unity by divine love.