The Holy Catholic Church and Christian Culture-Part 2
In order to understand this very great thing which captured and transformed the old pagan world, we must grasp its nature. We must be able to answer the question, “what was it that spread so rapidly and so triumphantly throughout the Graeco-Roman world?’ Secondly, we must appreciate the “method’ by which this revolution was accomplished; lastly in order to understand both the nature and the method of the ‘thing’ we must discover why it met with so ‘intense a resistance’, for that resistance explains both its character and its ways of propagation and it was victory over that resistance which established the Catholic Faith and practice so firmly over our race for so many centuries and generations. First then, as to the nature of the conquest. The great change did not come because ‘it met a need’; it did indeed meet needs that were universal. It filled up that aching void in the soul which was the prime malady of the dying ancient society; also it relieved and dissipated despair