WE HAVE read Dr. Inge’s essay in the volume called ‘‘Science, Religion, and Reality” [Comment, 24 October], and we are frankly astonished, not at what it contains, but at the attempt of purveyors of sensational news to boom it in the daily Press. The Dean of St. Paul’s cannot resist a startling paradox — the common snare of brilliant minds. But solitary phrases taken out of their context do not always fairly represent a writer’s intentions. True that he said: “Religion is a powerful antiseptic, which preserves mummified customs that have long outlasted their usefulness, and otiose dogmas that have long outlasted their usefulness.” But the significance of that assertion depends on what are the customs and dogmas to which it is applied. True also that he declared that “the future of Christianity as an institution — the fate of the Churches — is, from the point of view of these essays, not a matter of supreme importance.” But that is what the Dean has said dozens of times before. It only shows his apparently invincible repugnance to the Catholic conception of the Church and to the institutional form in which historic Christianity has been preserved. He added, indeed, that “it is even possible to speculate (though I should not go so far myself) whether the religion of Christ might not be a greater power in the world if its professional custodians were removed.” But the deliberate dissociation of himself from this interesting speculation deprives it of its sting.
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