That there is no perfect equation between the ideal and the real, that actual Catholicism lags considerably behind its idea, that it has never yet appeared in history as a complete and perfect thing, but always as a thing in process of development and laborious growth: such is the testimony of ecclesiastical and social history, and it is unnecessary to establish these points in detail. The primitive Church was never at any time a Church “without spot or wrinkle” as St. Paul puts it. One need only read his epistles and the epistles of St. James and St. John, and for a later period to consult Hemmas, Irenaeus and Tertullian, to find that the early Church for all its brilliant light had grievously dark shadows also. And the same is true in general of the Church throughout the centuries. As long as Catholicism lasts, it will feel the need for reform, for a more perfect assimilation of its actuality to the ideal which illumines its path. Bishop Keppler declared that “the trend to reform is native to the being of the Church. It is sufficient to recall the magnificent reforming work of her numerous founders of religious orders and of so many popes. And the same trend to reform is still active.”[1] But the existence of such a trend implies a need for reform, and implies the belief that the ideal has not yet achieved realization. Consequently there is no need to waste words in showing that ideal Catholicism is not yet realized and has never so far been realized in history. Our business today is rather to explain why it is that the ideal cannot be realized in this world. We wish in the first place to trace the causes of the great tragedy of this continual conflict between the ideal and the real, and secondly to expound the Catholic solution of these tragic conflicts.

The first and most obvious cause of these conflicts lies in the very nature of revelation, just because divine truth and grace are therein conveyed to us in earthly vessels (cf. 2 Cor. iv, 7). God’s revelation makes use of human instruments, the infinite of the finite, the ineffable and transcendent is clothed in visible forms and signs. Two distinct factors here impinge on each other, factors which of their nature cannot be simply assimilated the one to the other, but can only achieve a relation of similarity, a relation of analogy.