I’ve been reading an essay by Sigrid Undset called “Catholic Propaganda,” which seems to be her attempt to sum up the case for the Catholic faith vs. both Protestantism and unbelief. Although obscure in places, and sometimes directed toward specific positions of the state Lutheran Church at the time she was writing (the 1920s, I think), it’s full of jewels, of which I’ll be quoting more. Here’s how she begins, with a nice expression of something essential about Catholicism:
Well-known cases show that the normal and expected result of evangelical “conversion” is the feeling of safety. Catholic “conversion” consists in a feeling of repentance…. The Protestant feels himself saved. He is assured of a condition of safety and trust…. With a Catholic, on the other hand, the most powerful feeling is one of sorrow and hope, the warp and woof of repentance. Completely aside from dogmas, he is unable truthfully to answer the question “Are you saved?” affirmatively, because his sins are ever before his eyes.
“Sorrow and hope” pretty well sums it up, I think. In a truly Catholic way of thinking there is no room for illusions about oneself or the world, and yet there is a light-heartedness at the bottom of it, born of hope.
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