Some Concerns

One concern I have regarding Mr. Bailie's explication of the Church's message of hope and freedom versus the world's pale parody is found in his understanding of the sacraments. His understanding seems to take a cerebral approach rather than that of ex opere operato. Like St. Augustine's neo-Platonism, it skirts very narrowly a sort of Gnosticism. One sees in Mr. Bailie a speaker gifted with a powerful intellect one who leads from his strength.

When he says a solution to the worldly, "progressive" approach to a dereliction of Christian hope is found in the "sacramental", one would do well to ask: Are you talking about the normal, Mass-attending Christian who receives the Blessed Sacrament frequently, or are you talking about one who has a depth of reading, a florilegia of quotations of spiritual and anthropological writers, and perhaps contributes to a great non-profit?

One should compare Mr. Bailie's understanding of the "sacramental" to that of the great Chesterton:

A MYSTICAL MATERIALISM marked Christianity from its birth; the very soul of it was a body. Among the stoical philosophies and oriental negations that were its first foes it fought fiercely and particularly for a supernatural freedom to cure concrete maladies by concrete substances. Hence the scattering of relics was everywhere like the scattering of seed. All who took their mission from the divine tragedy bore tangible fragments which became the germs of churches and cities.