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THERE is nothing that I enjoy so much, in the ordinary way, as taking a ticket and a train and a boat and going to Dublin. There is much in Dublin of what has always been said about Paris. It is an indescribable liveliness and lucidity; as if it were morally what it is certainly not materially; the ville lumiere; the legendary place in the sun. But there is something else to understand, about the extraordinary experience of the thing called a Eucharistic Congress. It was not merely this; perhaps it was not mainly this. It was something altogether different and astonishing; though it doubtless included this. I did not merely take a ticket for Holyhead, or a boat for the port of Dublin. I did truly take a ticket for Christendom. I took a train and a boat that brought me to the ancient, and perhaps long-undiscovered, island that was once called Christendom. For it did truly appear, as in a dream, that the island had grown large; and that I had landed on something larger than a continent. For Christendom is much larger than Europe. Even in the Middle Ages it was much larger than Europe. I am not arguing here about the claims of various sorts of Christians to inherit the full tradition of Christendom. I only say that to see even so much of Christendom in one place was like seeing a vision; like being taken to the top of a mountain and seeing all the kingdoms of the earth. If any bright wit from Portadown or Belfast retorts that the Devil, in the person of the Papal Legate, would naturally take me there, I am content to bow and smile.

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9781519192844

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