FROM the Catholic life and the Catholic vision, it is something
of a shock to come to the Catholic. We are so appallingly
commonplace. Illumined by such truths, fed by such food, we
yet look so horribly like everyone else. Living within one split
second of the judgment seat of God, we are so intent upon other
matters. At Mass we are taking part in an action of inconceivable
wonder, and our problem is to keep our minds upon it at all.
These things, and a score of other manifestations of the same
trouble, puzzle the unbeliever. There is no doubt at all that the
principal argument against the Church is the Catholic. Not the
bad Catholic: any man of intelligence can see that members of
the Church who do not listen to her teaching or receive her
sacraments or obey her laws constitute no case at all against the
Church. It is the Catholics who do in a general way listen to the
teachings and receive the sacraments, who stand more than any
other single factor between the unbeliever and belief. He hears
of the immensities that we believe, and he feels that if he be-
lieved such things his life would be utterly revolutionized, he
would be made new. But we do not look new, or anything else in
particular. He meets us, for instance, after we have received
Communion, and he finds the Real Presence of Christ in the
communicant rather harder to believe than the Real Presence of
Christ in the bread. Before Communion the bread does not look
as if Christ were really present in it, after Communion the
Catholic does not look as if Christ were really present in him.
The unbeliever feels certain that he could not believe such things

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