blind and absolute
obedience. Among individuals tolerance should prevail, man, should be
liberal with man, the Law of Charity demands it. In regard to
principles, there must and shall eternally be antagonism between truth
and error, justice demands it. It is a case of self-preservation; one
destroys the other. Political truth can never tolerate treason preached
or practised; neither can religious truth tolerate unbelief and heresy
preached or practised.

Now our faith is based on truth, the Church is the custodian of faith,
and the Church, on the platform of religious truth, is absolutely
uncompromising and intolerant, just as the State is in regard to
treason. She cannot admit error, she cannot approve error; to do so
would be suicidal. She cannot lend the approval of her presence, nay
even of her silence, to error. She stands aloof from heresy, must
always see in it an enemy, condemns it and cannot help condemning it,
for she stands for truth, pure and unalloyed truth, which error
pollutes and outrages.

Call this what you will, but it is the attitude of honesty first, and
of necessity afterwards. "He who is liberal with what belongs to him is
generous, he who undertakes to be generous with what does not belong to
him is dishonest." Our faith is not founded on an act or agreement of
men, but on the revelation of God. No human agency can change or modify
it. Neither Church nor Pope can be liberal with the faith of which they
are the custodians. Their sole duty is to guard and protect it as a
precious deposit for the salvation of men.

This is the stand all governments take when there is question of
political truth. And whatever lack of generosity or broadmindedness
there be, however contrary to the spirit of this free age it may seem,
it is nevertheless the attitude of God Himself who hates error, for it
is evil, who pursues it with His wrath through time and through
eternity. How can a custodian of divine truth act otherwise? Even in
human affairs, can one admit that two and three are seven?

We sometimes hear it said that this intolerance takes from Catholics
the right to think. This is true in the same sense that penitentiaries,
or the dread of them, deprive citizens of the right to act. Everybody,
outside of sleeping hours and with his thinking machine in good order,
thinks. Perhaps if there were a little more of it, there would be more
solid convictions and more practical faith. Holy Writ has it somewhere
th