The second characteristic quality of Catholicism, arising out of the Church’s proclamation of the next world and forcible emphasis on man’s supernatural end, is its ascetical trend. The Catholic attitude towards the supernatural, with its conviction that earthly things have only a limited value, leads to that “tantum quantum” principle which has received its exact and classical expression in the Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola. According to this principle, earthly things are to be used only so far as they are serviceable for the attainment of the supreme and ultimate end; and they are to be renounced in so far as they withdraw one from God and become ends in themselves. When any earthly good threatens to become an end in itself, then our Lord’s words hold: “If thy eye scandalize thee, pluck it out!” “He that doth not take up his cross and follow me, is not worthy of me.” In this way renunciation and patient endurance become part of the life of the Catholic. Yet they are not to be regarded as other than ministering forces, subservient to the love of God and our neighbor; for love must be our supreme directive force. The new life of Christianity is founded on the precept “Love God with thy whole heart and thy neighbor as thyself.” The purpose of renunciation and asceticism— which is the methodical practice of renunciation—is to set the soul free for the exercise of this love. They are not meant to destroy man’s sensitive impulses and passions, but to control them, so that they may be directed convergently towards the one great goal, the formation of the new man of a whole-hearted and unselfish love, and may not, like untamed natural forces, break their banks and produce ruin and destruction. The purpose of asceticism is love and love alone. When it is treated as an end in itself, when men renounce for renunciation’s sake, when they fast, take the discipline, and practice celibacy for the sake of these things, when the spirit of rivalry and competition enters in, then their asceticism is no longer Catholic, but Gnostic and pagan in character. The practice of asceticism, the deliberate methodical exercise of self-control, makes our souls free and strong, so that, as St. Paul requires of them, they exercise and practice “charity from a pure heart, and a good conscience, and an unfeigned faith” (1 Tim. i, 5). For us men, bound as we are to the body and burdened from our birth with the effects of original sin and of the passions of our ancestors, asceticism is an indispensable necessity, so that we may not only hear the Word of God but do it. It is a fundamental element in our Lord’s teaching and must therefore occupy a principal place in the Church’s educative effort. All the ordinances of the Church, and in particular the law of fasting, have for their end the training of the faithful in self-control. The Church’s priests endeavor systematically in sermons and instructions, but especially in confession, to remove all weeds and evil growths from the souls of her children, so that they may grow more and more like to Christ. And to these normal pastoral methods the Church adds such extraordinary ones as retreats and public missions. Who can estimate the blessings and the beneficial effect of the countless public missions held by Franciscans and Capuchins, Jesuits and Redemptorists, in town and village and for every stratum of society. Such missions are a rich source of well-being, not only for the religious and moral life of our people, but for their national life also. And a retreat, for which a man goes to some retreat-house and there in retirement and under the guidance of an experienced director orders his interior life and makes God supreme in it: such a retreat is a school of the soul. It is a means whereby a man may refresh and recreate his soul, become spiritually sound and strong, and re- discover himself in God. Karl Ludwig Schleich, late Professor of Surgery in Berlin, has some remarkable words about the “Spiritual Exercises” of St. Ignatius of Loyola. “I am profoundly convinced,” he writes, “and can therefore say it quite confidently, that with these exercises and these rules in his hand a man might reform all our asylums, and prevent at least two-thirds of their inmates from ever entering them.”[2]