of the Prince of Peace,
and therefore the effect of His Church, in spite of their claims to be
the friends of peace, should be _not peace, but the sword?_

III. Now (1) the Catholic Church is a Human Society. She is constituted,
that is to say, of human beings; she depends, humanly speaking, upon
human circumstances; she can be assaulted, weakened, and disarmed by
human enemies. She dwells in the midst of human society, and it is with
human society that she has to deal.

Now if she were not human--if she were merely a Divine Society, a
far-off city in the heavens, a future distant ideal to which human
society is approximating, there would be no conflict at all. She would
never meet in a face-to-face shock the passions and antagonisms of men;
she could suppress, now and again, her Counsels of Perfection, her calls
to a higher life, if it were not that these are vital and present
principles which she is bound to propagate among men.

And again, if she were merely human, there would be no conflict. If she
were merely ascended from below, merely the result of the finest
religious thought of the world, the high-water mark of spiritual
attainment, again she could compromise, could suppress, could be silent.

But she is both human and divine, and therefore her warfare is certain
and inevitable. For she dwells in the midst of the kingdoms of this
world, and these are constituted, at any rate at the present day, on
wholly human bases. Statesmen and kings, at the present day, do not
found their policies upon supernatural considerations; their object is
to govern their subjects, to promote the peace and union of their
subjects, to make war, if need be, on behalf of the peace of their
subjects, wholly on natural grounds. Commerce, finance, agriculture,
education in the things of this world, science, art, exploration--human
activities generally--these, in their purely natural aspect, are the
objects of nearly all modern statesmanship. Our rulers are professedly,
in their public capacity, neither for religion nor against it; religion
is a private matter for the individual, and governments stand aside--or
at any rate profess to do so.

And it is in this kind of world, in this fashion of human society, that
the Catholic Church, in virtue of her humanity, is bound to dwell. She
too is a kingdom, though not of this world, yet in it.

(2) For she is also Divine. Her message contains, that is to say, a
number of supernatural principl