Strange Catholic Worlds of Speculative Fiction, 2:
“Dawn of All,”
A Catholic Utopia?

It was curious, too, he reflected, that those who insist most upon the claims of Divinity insist also upon the claims of humanity. It seemed suggestive that it was the Catholics who were most aware of the competitive passions of men and reckoned with them, while the Socialists ignored them and failed.  Robert Hugh Benson, “The Dawn of All” (all other quotations, unless otherwise noted are from this work, Kindle Edition.)

INTRODUCTION

Wouldn’t it be wonderful (in all senses of that word) if governments forbade abortion and euthanasia, cultivated family friendly policies, allowed for individual enterprise, banned pornography, etc, and did this all under an umbrella of Catholic teaching? Suppose these policies required an authoritarian government (monarchy) with limited franchise, establishment of the Catholic Church as the official state religion, censorship of public media, capital punishment (by the state) for heresy, etc.  Would the limits of freedom be worth the gain in societal stability?  These are the issues Robert Hugh Benson presents in “The Dawn of All.”

ROBERT HUGH BENSON, HIS LIFE AND WORK

Before I examine Benson’s ideas about the good Catholic society, I’d like to give a mini-biography, to place his work in an appropriate context.   The Archbishop of Canterbury (the head of the Anglican Church), Benson’s father, ordained him as an Anglican priest.  After his father’s death, Benson converted to Catholicism and became a Catholic priest.  In his relatively short life (he died at 43 in 1914), he wrote many novels with a religious theme.

Probably his most famous work is “Lord of the World.”  This dystopian piece predicted much of the evil we see in the world today, more than a 100 years later.  And there is (pardon the spoiler) Armageddon at the end.  If “Lord of the World” is dystopian, then a faithful Catholic might regard “The Dawn of All” as utopian.  But not all would do so, as I’ll argue below.

I won’t say much about the plot—it’s only a vehicle to convey Benson’s ideas about the ideal Catholic society.  Let’s focus on those ideas and whether all faithful Catholics would agree to them.  Benson presents these ideas in his account of visits by a priest, high in the hierarchy of the English Catholic Church, to Versailles, Rome, Lourdes, Ireland, Boston (MA), and Berlin.   I’ll discuss them as Benson has presented them and then add my own (possibly heterodox) comments.

…and to sketch—again in parable—the kind of developments, about sixty years hence  which, I think, may reasonably be expected should the opposite process begin, and ancient thought (which has stood the test of centuries, and is, in a very remarkable manner, being “rediscovered” by persons even more modern than modernists) be prolonged instead.  preface

BENSON’S 20TH CENTURY CATHOLIC WORLD: MONARCHY=STATE AUTHORITY

Why, we treat our kings like kings,” smiled the other. “And, at the same time, we encourage our butchers to be really butchers and to glory in it. Law and liberty, you see. Absolute discipline and the cultivation of individualism. No republican stew-pot, you see, in which everything tastes alike.  p. 55

Imagine France with the pomp and ceremony of 18th century Versailles.   Tradesmen wear dress that identifies their work—butcher, goldsmith, teacher— and their status in the guild of that trade.   Royalty and aristocracy have their special dress, which they display in ceremonial parades with gilded coaches.  By divine right the French king is an absolute ruler. (As is the case in the rest of Europe.)   Are the people are happy in that state of affairs?  Yes!  If the queen were to say “let them eat cake,” there would be more than enough cake for all.   Moreover, in that anti-clerical country, the Church reigns supreme and not just because the Pope is French.

BENSON’S 20TH CENTURY CATHOLIC WORLD: THE CHURCH REIGNS SUPREME

Indeed, this French Pope is the head of  a Catholic Church that exercises more temporal and political power than did the Medieval Church.  Most of the world is Catholic (including Russia and most of Asia).  The Pope governs all of Italy, not just a small part of Rome.   As in earlier times, he settles conflicts between states and his word is supreme in such arbitration.

The very thesis amazed the man, for the absolute necessity of an authoritative supra-national Church, with supernatural sanctions, seemed assumed as an axiom of thought, not merely by these Catholics, but by the entire world, Christian and un-Christian alike.  p. 61

In countries with an established Catholic Church, doctrine is enforced by civil law.  Since Catholic belief maintains stability in these countries, if follows that the state has an obligation to promote that belief.   How?— by laws that enforce Church teaching (e.g. laws on marriage, abortion, etc) and by laws and practices that suppress opposition to that teaching.    With respect to the latter, censorship is the mildest practice;  more severe measures are the deportation of vocal atheists and execution of heretics. Even though the Pope and the hierarchy oppose a death penalty for heresy, they allow the state to fulfill its obligation as the agent of the Church.  And the state justifies such executions as necessary to maintain the societal stability founded on Catholic doctrine.

BENSON’S 20TH CENTURY CATHOLIC WORLD: SCIENCE AND THE CHURCH ARE PARTNERS

“Up to that period, so-called Physical Science had so far tyrannized over men’s minds as to persuade them to accept her claim that evidence that could not be reduced to her terms was not, properly speaking, evidence at all. Men demanded that purely spiritual matters should be, as they said, ‘proved,’ by which they meant should be reduced to physical terms. Little by little, however, the preposterous nature of this claim was understood….to demand physical proof for every article of belief was as fantastic as to demand, let us say, a chemical proof of the beauty of a picture, or evidence in terms of light or sound for the moral character of a friend, or mathematical proof for the love of a mother for her child. p.26

In Benson’s Catholic world, psychology has displaced physics as the king of science.  Psychologists collaborate with priests at Lourdes to help them distinguish between true miracles and cures due to the innate mental powers.

The collaboration between  psychology and Catholic practice is not limited to the investigation of miracles.  Ireland has become estates of hospitals for the mentally disturbed.   In fact these hospitals are not hospitals as we know them but monasteries for cloistered orders.  Since most of the Irish have emigrated to Australia and America, the religious communities own most of the land and are protected by papal edict.  The monks and nuns who administer treatments adapt them to the particular type and degree of mental illness with a high degree of success.

BENSON’S 20TH CENTURY CATHOLIC WORLD:  THE CHURCH FIGHTS AND BEATS SOCIALISM

..all the ideals of Socialism (apart from its methods and its dogmas) had been the ideals of Christianity; and that the Church had, in her promulgation of the Law of Love, anticipated the Socialist’s discovery by about two thousand years. Further, that in the Religious Orders these ideals had been actually incarnate; and that by the doctrine of Vocation—that is by the freedom of the individual to submit himself to a superior—the rights of the individual were respected and the rights of the Society simultaneously vindicated. p.26

Although I did not want to discuss the plot of  “The Dawn of All,”  I should add that an essential element of the story is the battle of the Church against socialism.  I won’t say more, other than that the Church wins this battle after several sacrifices.  Benson describes the opposing beliefs of socialism and Catholic teaching in the quotes above and below.

The Socialist saw plainly the rights of the Society; the Anarchist saw the rights of the Individual. How therefore were these to be reconciled? The Church stepped in at that crucial point and answered, By the Family—whether domestic or Religious. For in the Family you have both claims recognized: there is authority and yet there is liberty. For the union of the Family lies in Love; and Love is the only reconciliation of authority and liberty. p.27

“THE DAWN OF ALL,” THE REVIEW

So that is Benson’s utopia.  But I haven’t  told you how Benson wraps these ideas in an engaging story, a book I found hard to put down.   In my opinion it’s a better novel, both as a story and as an advocate for the faith, than “The Lord of the World.”  But let me add some criticisms.   I myself would find it difficult to live in Benson’s utopia.  As did the priest who was executed for heresy (and went willingly to his death), I would find it difficult to abandon a belief attained after much rational effort because a council  had declared in the 19th Century a belief to be Catholic doctrine that was contrary to mine (since mine was achieved after much rational struggle).   Moreover, there is an implicit assumption in the hierarchy Benson describes:  these are all saints; nowhere are found those clerics and bishops who, alas, are Catholic in name only.   The Medieval Church had its saints, but it also had its sinners.   And I wonder if in a state that is powerful and a Church that is even more powerful, whether Lord Acton’s aphorism might not hold:

Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.  Lord Acton

I believe that  if the Catholic faith is to survive, it must do so in an open society where (to quote an unlike source) the state lets “a 100 flowers bloom.”

NOTE

This article has also been published on “The American Catholic.”