“We see the ship of the Church today sailing merrily over very rough water. How often has she seemed to suffer shipwreck! Yet there she is, safe and sound. To investigate her past history is a most interesting, a most edifying study. The worse the scandals in the past, the greater the wonder of God’s help that has made the Church survive. The Catholic historian can look difficulties in the face. He is not bound to any theory of the past. He has the New Testament at the one end of the history and the Church of today at the other, both manifestly divine, and with an admittedly unbroken sequence binding the one to the other. How the development has taken place is a matter for critical examination, not for theorizing.”
Abbot John Chapman, O.S.B. (1865-1933)
Abbot John Chapman, O.S.B. (1865-1933)