" We do not need a religion that is right even when we are right. What we need is a religion that is right when we are wrong. "(The Catholic Church, where all truths come together, Ed Lindau, February 2010, p. 87)
In fact, floorboards are today, as perhaps in every age, the fact that people do nothing but take , what Chesterton calls "the mood modern and very pleasant and that of anarchist and just boring and banal, then claiming that all beliefs be resized to fit the mood. But the mood would exist even without the belief. Say they want a social religion, but instead would be social without any religion. Say they want a practical religion, and would be practical without religion. (...) They say they want a religion like this because they are already so. They say he wants to, but they mean that they can help it. "(p. 87).
In a word, we would say, people do not want to be disturbed but confirmed in their views or their vices. After all, this is what Pope Benedict XVI defined as the "dictatorship of relativism." Everything is relative to not having to engage in a serious confrontation with what is outside us and in a way more serious and deeper with ourselves.
Religion the real one instead, "actually conceived as binding, binds men to their morality even when it coincides with their state of mind." (ibid.). "Morality" here's the tricky word in our time where it is reduced to a state of mind or opinion. Here
Chesterton rightly observed that " The Church does not crush the human conscience. He is the man who crushes his conscience and then, when he had almost forgotten it, he discovered that it was right. "(p. 90)
Chesterton for his own personal experience of conversion to the Catholic Church states:" In fact, I can justify the whole Catholic theology provided that I be allowed to begin the sanctity and the supreme value of two things: reason and freedom. The fact that most people feel these are the two things forbidden to Catholics, it is illuminating comment on the current anti-Catholic propaganda. "(p. 99, bold is mine). We live now in an era that could be called "Enlightenment Bar" where the acrimony and lies to the Catholic Church are really surprising because of the entirely without historical basis.
Chesterton concludes: " I could stop believing in God, but I could not stop thinking that a God who created free men and angels, better than forcing them to comfort. I could stop believing in any future life, but I could not stop thinking that a doctrine for which we choose and build our future life is better than what we already offer the facilities like a hotel - where we are led to edge of a celestial omnibus, which is compulsory as a Black Maria [The Black Maria were mobile police vans used to transport British prisoners]. I know that Catholicism is too big for me, and I have not yet explored its beautiful and terrible truth. But I also know that universalism is close to me, and I could not crawl back to safety in that dull, after contemplating the vision vertiginous freedom. "(p. 100).
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