Code Religion

Extract

If there is one section of the community which seems to remain impervious to Catholic influence, it is that body of educated Englishmen whose religion is little more than an ethical code. There have been, of late years, numbers of conversions from among the Anglo-Catholics, Congregationalists, and others of more or less definite belief; very few from among those supporters of institutional religion whose creed—if it can so be called—is limited to a certain standard of external conduct. Leaders of men, imbued with the best public school traditions, the section is a large and important one; we will typify it by the representatives we should find in a regimental Mess, or in the Ward Room of one of His Majesty’s ships.

Such men have little opportunity of meeting with Catholic life: a mixed marriage here and there: a few Catholic friends in their own profession: a visit to a Catholic country, where they will continue to live very much their own life—a race apart; these are the sum total of their contacts. These separated brethren are worthy of more consideration and attention than they are accustomed to receive. Moreover, there is a defensive standpoint, and those Catholics who are drawn into the same state of life, and often, by force of circumstances, deprived of many of the helps of their religion, have to be on their guard lest they too become “code-religionists.”