at the whole world is given over to vice and sin because there is no
one who thinks.

But you have not and never had the right to think as you please, inside
or outside the Church. This means the right to form false judgments, to
draw conclusions contrary to fact. This is not a right, it is a defect,
a disease. Thus to act is not the normal function of the brain. It is
no more the nature of the mind to generate falsehoods than it is the
nature of a sewing machine to cut hair. Both were made for different
things. He therefore who disobeys the law that governs his mind
prostitutes that faculty to error.

But suppose, being a Catholic, I cannot see things in that true light,
what then? In such a case, either you persist, in the matter of your
faith, in being guided by the smoky lamp of your reason alone, or you
will be guided by the authority of God's appointed Church. In the first
alternative, your place is not in the Church, for you exclude yourself
by not living up to the conditions of her membership. You cannot deny
but that she has the right to determine those conditions.

If you choose the latter, then correct yourself. It is human to err,
but it is stupidity to persist in error and refuse to be enlightened.
If you cannot see for yourself, common sense demands that you get
another to see for you. You are not supposed to know the alpha and
omega of theological science, but you are bound to possess a
satisfactory knowledge in order that your faith be reasonable.

Has no one a right to differ from the Church? Yes, those who err
unconsciously, who can do so conscientiously, that is, those who have
no suspicion of their being in error. These the heavenly Father will
look after and bring safe to Himself, for their error is material and
not formal. He loves them but He hates their errors. So does the Church
abominate the false doctrines that prevail in the world outside her
fold, yet at the same time she has naught but compassion and pity and
prayers for those deluded ones who spread and receive those errors. To
her the individual is sacred, but the heresy is damnable.

Thus we may mingle with our fellow citizens in business and in
pleasure, socially and politically, but religiously--never. Our charity
we can offer in its fullest measure, but charity that lends itself to
error, loses its sacred character and becomes the handmaid of evil, for
error is evil.

CHAPTER XXIII.
THE CONSISTENT BELIEVER.

THE intoleran