- 33 - If we compare these two men as instruments of God, we cannot fail to notice a very important point. • We have before us two men of radically different creeds: On the one hand a Catholic priest, who venerates saints and relics, who attributes all cures to Saint Philomena, who celebrates mass and regards confession as a sacrament essential to the forgiveness of sins, who believes in transubstantiation and holds fast to all other teachings of his church – and on the other hand, the Protestant clergyman Blumhardt, whose creed is diametrically opposed to Vianey’s, who categorically repudiates the adoration of saints and relics, the Catholic mass and sacrament at the altar, the Catholic form of confession and absolution, popery and everything connected therewith as not ordained by God, but deriving from human errors. And yet, under the hand of God, both rate equally as instruments for delivering mankind from sin and from Satan, and for guiding it back to the home of the Father. Both, in spite of the differences in the tenets of their respective creeds, receive the highest gifts Christ promised to those who believed in him. In one respect they are alike: in their profound faith in God and in their consequent unshakable trust in God, as well as in their great love of God and of mankind. • Before God, therefore, the religious denomination to which a man belongs is of no weight. He regards it only as an outer garment hung on people’s shoulders that has no influence upon their spiritual personality, if this is imbued with faith in God and with a love of God. He allows people to retain this garment, this patchwork of human errors, as long as it does not obstruct the task that He has assigned to them. If one should ask why the good spirit world did not enlighten these men as to the errors in their religious views and inform them of the truth, the answer is not difficult. In the first place, such enlightenment was not necessary, because the doctrinal errors in no way obstructed the work that God had assigned to both. They were called upon to persuade the people of their immediate neighbourhood and those somewhat farther afield to search their hearts and to return to God, something which neither the Catholic nor the Protestant creed stood in the way of. Above all, however, the spirit world could not enlighten either Blumhardt or Vianey as to the errors of his religious doctrines without making the fulfillment of their duties impossible. Had the Protestant clergyman Blumhardt received any new insights into the truth, he would have to have altered his teaching accordingly. He would thereby have placed himself outside of the Protestant Church and thus lost his position as well as his sphere of activity. The same thing is true to an even greater extent of the Catholic priest Vianey, for had he departed in only a single point from the doctrines of his church, he would have been done for in no time. Among Catholics the task of saving souls could be performed only by one who wore the robes of the Catholic faith, just as Blumhardt could hope for success among his co-religionists only as a representative of the Protestant creed. Even as it was, the efforts of both were attacked beyond measure by their own colleagues, although each of them was devoted to his church. How much more, then, would they have been opposed, if they had departed in one point or another from the doctrines of their respective churches? In Vianey’s case especially, there were no bounds to the attacks by his colleagues. As already mentioned, he was persecuted, criticized, reviled, made the object of suspicion and slandered by them for 10 years, and he was even threatened with extreme violence.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjI1MzY3