The Equinox (Volume I, Number IX)

THE KEY OF THE MYSTERIES The incarnation is hope. The redemption is charity. The trinity is the hierarchy. Incarnation is the divine authority of the Church. Redemption is the unique, infallible, unfailing and Catholic priesthood. The Catholic Church alone possesses an invariable dogma, and by its very constitution is incapable of corrupting morality; she does not make innovations, she explains. Thus, for example, the dogma of the immaculate conception is not new; it was contained in the theotokon of the Council of Ephesus, and the theotokon is a rigorous consequence of the Catholic dogma of the incarnation. In the same way the Catholic Church makes no excommu- nications, she declares them ; and she alone can declare them, because she alone is guardian of unity. Outside the vessel of Peter, there is nothing but the abyss. Protestants are like people who have thrawn themselves into the water in order to escape sea-sickness. It is of Catholicity, such as it is constituted in the Roman Church, that one must say what Voltaire so boldly said of God: “If it did not exist, it would be necessary to invent it.” But if a man had been capable of inventing the spirit of charity, he also would have invented God. Charity does not invent itself, it reveals itself by its works, and it is then that one can cry with the Saviour of the world: “ Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God!” To understand the spirit of charity is to understand all mysteries. G 81