Robert Hugh Benson - The Religion of the Plain Man

A MONG the most important of Samuel Johnsons many insights was the recognition that people need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed. Two hundred and fifty years later, for those who wish to lead others to the truth of the Catholic faith, Dr. Johnsons insight is more important than ever. Instructionattempting to guide someone to a greater insight through rational argument or logical deductionrequires first that the person receiving instruction be grounded in reality. There is no convincing rational argument that can be made about, say, the immorality of abortion or the absurdity of marriage between two people of the same sex to a person who has forgotten what he knew intuitively as a childthat the kicking creature in his mothers belly was his younger brother or sister and that, together with his father, they all formed a family. Once he has been relieved of that intuitive knowledge by years of indoctrination masked as education or even entertainment, he must be reminded of it once againby, say, falling in love with a woman and having a child of his ownbefore he will be open to instruction concerning the deeper human and theological meaning of marriage and child-rearing.

The problem is undoubtedly more acute today than it was in Dr. Johnsons time or in 1906, when Fr. Robert Hugh Benson published The Religion of the Plain Man. But Benson was keenly aware of it even then, as his apology, in his Preface, for appealing to the imagination (and even emotion), rather than reason, shows. This book, he writes, is intended for the man in the street, who, after all, has a certain claim on our consideration, since Jesus Christ came to save his soul. And for the man in the street, the greatest obstacle to accepting the truth of the Catholic faith lies not in an intellectual inability to understand the arguments of the most sophisticated of theologians, butas G. K. Chesterton argued in Orthodoxythe loss of the imaginative ability to view the world with childlike wonder.

Bensons short booka pamphlet, reallywas aimed at those adherents to the Church of England who were disquieted by the increasingly obvious cracks in the foundation of that church. So he returns to the foundations of the Church Universalmost importantly, to the need for unity and for a shepherd to both symbolize and ensure that unity. That symbol and reality, he reminds his readers, is found in Peter and his successors as the Bishop of Rome.

A young lady once sought my guidance as she wrestled with questions of the truth of the Catholic faith. I lent her my copy of Fr. John A. Hardon, SJs Catholic Catechismto my mind still the most exhaustive and yet concise modern exposition of the full range of Catholic doctrine. Shortly thereafter, she decided that she had to become a Catholic. She told me that she still was not fully convinced of (among other things) the Churchs Marian doctrine or the existence of (much less the necessity for) Purgatory; but, like Father Bensons John, the plain man of this books title, she had been reminded that she needed to be united to the successor of Peter. All the rest would follow in due time.

Reminding the reader of that reality is the genius of this book. Were I approached by a similar young lady today, I would hold back Father Hardons catechism for future instruction, and give her a copy of The Religion of the Plain Man.

Scott Richert