ticle a thing packed with mere repartees.
But I do hope you will understand how warm a sympathy I have with
very much of what you say and with all the motives with which you say
it. Needless to say, I agree with every word you say against
Capitalism; but I particularly want to congratulate you on what you
say about parasitic Parliamentary Labour. I thought that chapter was
quite triumphant.

As for the rest, it is true that it has not shaken me in my
conviction that the Catholic Church is larger than you or me, than
your moods or mine; and the heroic but destructive mood in which you
write is a very good example. You say that Christ set the example of
a self-annihilation which seems to me almost nihihist; but I will
never deny that Catholics have saluted that mood as the Imitation of
Christ. Lately a friend of mine, young, virile, handsome, happily
circumstanced, walked straight off and buried himself in a monastery;
never, so to speak, to reappear on earth. Why did he do it?
Psychologically, I cannot imagine. Not, certainly, from fear of hell
or wish to be "rewarded" by heaven. As an instructed Catholic, he
knew as well as I do that he could save his soul by normal living. I
can only suppose that there is something in what you say; that Christ
and others do accept a violent reversal of all normal things. But why
do you say that Christ did it and has left no Christians who do it?
Our Church has stood in the derision of four hundred years, because
there were still Christians who did it. And they did it to
themselves, as Christ did; you will not misunderstand me if I say
that this is different from throwing out a violent theory for other
people to follow.

Now for the application. Some of these monks, less cloistered, are
to my knowledge, helping the English people to get back to the
ownership of their own land; renewing agriculture as they did in the
Dark Ages. Why do you say there is no chance for this normal property
and liberty? You can only mean to say of our scheme exactly what you
yourself admit about the Communist scheme. That it requires awful and
almost inhuman sacrifices; that we must turn the mind upside-down;
that we must alter the whole psychology of modern Englishmen. We must
do that to make them Communists. Why is it an answer to say we must
do that to make them Distributists? I could point out many