From ‘The Pope and the War’, The Spectator, 17 April 1915:
The result of the war may prove that motives which we had supposed to be secured by Christianity are after all to be of little account in directing human actions. That is the situation stated without exaggeration. And in the world in which this gigantic crisis is about to be decided there is a spiritual Power which claims infallibility in any judgment it may choose to deliver ex cathedra on matters of faith or morals. We say nothing about faith, but surely if ever there were a plain occasion for moral direction and moral judgment this war provides one. If a visitor from another planet suddenly appeared in our midst and were told that such was the crisis which occupied the thoughts of all men, and such the power of infallible guidance claimed by the spiritual bead of a great Church, he would say that there must necessarily be some relation and some contact between these two signal facts. The Pope, he would say, could not conceivably let the crisis pass without pointing out that one side or the other was fighting for an evil cause and trying to realize immoral ambitions to the detriment of Christendom.
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