Democracy and the Parish in Ireland

Extract

There are people with a bent for sacramental philosophy and theology who are always awestruck by the amount of earth that mixes with heaven in the Church of God. Heaven has truly folded all its gifts in tissues of earth, and we naturally marvel that heaven should have used the earth so much. There are even those who are scandalised into heresy by this, and begin to talk of God and the soul and the great alone. Yet, one could marvel just as much to see how earth has used heaven or how much the children of this generation have learned from the children of light.

The Church of God has been a great organisation since it emerged from the underground of pre-Constantine days. Genius such as that of Gregory the Great, Hildebrand, or the Tridentine popes, has contributed to the perfection of this organisation. Yet, remembering the lesser geniuses, one cannot but see that the hand of God was in it all—that wisdom of the most high that sweetly but strongly orders everything, the same wisdom which came to teach us the way of prudence. The very organisation of the Catholic Church has taught us a certain prudence. I do not speak of ordinary prudence, but of regnative prudence. How much of our international law was formed by a consideration of the prudence of that government which by force of its mission must be international and supernational.

The perfection of the parish-system, as we have it now, is due to the reforms of the Council of Trent.