While claiming to be the one Church of Jesus Christ, it does not by any means put him in the foreground of its religion. Its hierarchy of saints is rather a survival of polytheism; its worship of the Virgin and cult of the _Sacré Cœur_ issue often in a religious sentimentality and sensuality promoted by the denial of a more healthy outlet for instincts which are an essential part of human nature. Tribute, however, must be paid—high tribute—to the devotion of individuals, particularly to the work done by the religious orders of women, whose devotion the Church having won by its intense appeal to women keeps, consecrates and organises in a manner which no other Church has succeeded in doing. This is largely the secret of the vigorous life of the Church, for as a power of charity the Roman Church is remarkable and deserves respect. Her educational efforts, her missions, hospitals, her humbler clergy, and her orders which offer opportunity of service or of sanctuary to all types of human nature—these constitute Roman Catholicism in a truer manner than the diplomacy of the Jesuits or the councils of the Vatican. It is this pulsing human heart of hers which keeps her alive, not the rigid intellectual dogmatism and antiquated theology which she expounds, nor her loyalty to the established political order, which, siding with the rich and powerful, frequently gives to this professedly spiritual power a debasing taint of materialism.
Against all this, and in vital opposition to this, we have the humanitarians who, rejecting the doctrine of corruption, believe that human instincts and human reason themselves make for goodness and for God. While Catholicism looks to the past, humanitarianism looks forward, believes in freedom and in progress, and regards the immanent Christ-spirit as working in mankind. Its gospel is one of love and brotherhood, a romantic doctrine issuing in love and pity for the oppressed and the sinful. In the collective consciousness of mankind it sees the incarnation, the growth of the immanent God. Therefore it claims that in democracy, socialism and world brotherhood lies the true Christianity. This, the humanitarians claim, is the true religious idealism—that which was preached by the Founder himself and which his Church has betrayed. The humanitarians make service to mankind the essence of religion, and regard themselves as more truly Christian than the Church.