Catholic during the Great Apostasy

PILATE
There is a certain type of character for which, it seems to me, we all have a great deal of sympathy. I have in mind a type that cannot be placed in any category of faith, yet, despite many hesitations, has a genuine sympathy for religion. It is religious formally, but not essentially, I would say, or as it might define itself: religious essentially, but not formally.
For example, a person of this type often calls themselves an agnostic. “I would very much like to believe,” they say, “as you do, but I cannot. It must be an immense happiness: not to doubt, but to have a steady faith, to have sacraments in which one believes, to trust that one possesses an unquestionable faith, a Divine Master who cannot err! But I cannot imagine myself in such a position. It is too simple to be true. I do not know what Truth is, but in any case, it must be greater than your little Church, than any system whatsoever. Whatever Truth may be, that source of life, it certainly is not so simple; it resides either very deep or very high, but it cannot be so simple as to fit within your rules. No person in the world can have the right to say of themselves: ‘Come to me, all of you, and drink.’ It all sounds very lofty and wise—does it not?

Sometimes it happens a little differently; an agnostic, for instance, becomes a gnostic or a theosophist, yet the spirit does not change. They always maintain that Truth cannot be simple, but must be distant and complicated, accessible only to the chosen few.
For such a person, Truth is something mysterious, dwelling behind veils in an atmosphere filled with the scent of incense and the sound of flutes, adorned in rich garments and jewels. It exists only within. External religions are good for the masses, for children, for those needing teachings suited to their intelligence; a true disciple must be initiated into extraordinary knowledge. Truth is not simple, yet despite this, they have found it.

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For such people, Catholicism cannot be the Truth; they do not argue against it, they do not wish to crucify it—they simply do not believe. It is too simple, too common. If they are an agnostic, they find it too positive and overly systematized; if they are a gnostic, they consider it insufficiently self-contained. How could Truth, even with the greatest ‘T,’ be accessible to a child or a simple peasant?
Yet, when reading the Gospel, we see that such was the spirit of Pilate. Without a doubt, Pilate had a certain religious sense; there are few judges whose wives would send them a description of a dream during a trial, and she certainly would not have done so if she did not know he had at least some inclination toward the occult. Moreover, his behavior, his uncertainty, his repeated questioning of Christ—all indicate that he possessed a religious instinct.
It is also quite evident that he had no hostility toward Christ, no desire to crucify Him; on the contrary, it is clear he wanted to set Him free. He had some vague impression, but surely it never crossed his mind for a moment that this figure could be the Incarnate Truth. Truth, undoubtedly, is something entirely different.
What a moving scene: here sits a man visibly preoccupied with Truth—otherwise he would not have asked the rhetorical question, so characteristic of agnostics of all times that it has become proverbial—and before him stands the One who, as Catholics believe, was the answer to that question. “What is Truth?” (John 18:38) asks Pilate. “I am the Truth,” replies Jesus.
This scene has often repeated itself throughout the centuries, but never as frequently as in our own time. The modern person says:
“How good it would be if Catholicism were true. But that is impossible. How good it would be to believe like that preacher, or this neighbor of mine, that the Divine Master is truly present on earth, an infallible Master whose every word is true, whose teaching cannot err. But it is too simple, and Truth cannot be so simple. It cannot reside in this Person standing so patiently before the judgment of Humanity. Who flocks to it? A few children, some weary women, a handful of laborers, a few artists—people who would believe anyone who gave them hope. Truth is greater and deeper than that. I do not know what it is, I do not know its name or its face, but it cannot be here.”
And now let us hear the gnostic:
“Oh! If only these Catholics knew how naive they are! This simplicity is truly touching. If they knew the real mystery of Truth, if they could see what lies behind the veil as I do, if they understood that Truth is hidden and must remain so from children and simpletons, revealing itself only to the wise and initiated. But they will not listen. As long as they believe that Truth resides in the open square, in the sunlight, amidst a shouting crowd with a few quietly weeping friends, it is not even worth speaking. For their Truth has its hands bound behind its back, is drenched in blood and tormented. Who has ever heard of Truth looking like that! Truth is a splendid queen, dwelling in a hidden palace, not this caricature of a queen, exposed to mockery, with a reed scepter in hand and a crown of thorns. This is a parody of Truth, not Truth itself. I do not wish to argue with this poor thing; I would set it free if I could. How sad it is!”
In a word, Pilate rejects Christ because He is too simple.
And once again the question arises: what should one expect from Divine Truth? If God is Truth and if He is Love, is it not necessary that this Divine Love would make Divine Truth accessible to the simplest? Truth is at least as necessary to a simple person as to a wise one. Human opinion must naturally vary as much as the minds that form it differ; a sage will have a different notion of the sacred than a simpleton, insofar as each forms it independently. But if they do not think independently (and how could they, when God is Love?), then Truth must be the same for all, because Truth is what God reveals to them. Divine Truth, therefore, must be like Christ before Pilate—bound by human hands, stained with the blood of struggle, yet standing in the sunlight, visible to all, because it is sent to all.
Oh! These lofty people who ask: what is Truth? They mistake obscurity for spirituality, as if the spirit were not incomparably more concrete than, say, tables and chairs. These are people forever asking what Truth is, yet never answering their own question—people who think that seeking is nobler than finding, and that the best thing after knocking on a door is to flee, lest it open and reveal something extraordinary.

These are people so extraordinarily subtle that they never see what is plain, and they are like doors so grand that small people cannot pass through them.
They know that God is infinitely mysterious, that God is spirit, but they do not know that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us”; they think that correlation is contradiction, that what is spiritual cannot be incarnate, and they do not know that the only reason the body exists is so the spirit can manifest through it.
They endlessly repeat the words: “Truly, You are a hidden God,” yet never respond with the proper answer: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory” (John 1:14). They know that God is mysterious, but they do not know that He must also be perfectly simple. They think that “the living Bread,” being divine, cannot be given to children.
These people always speak much of modern thought and progress, always discoursing on the religious currents of the time; everything is new and epochal to them, and deep in their souls, they ponder what position they might achieve in this record of religious thought. They need not strive so hard, for they have already secured a certain and immensely lofty place in the history of the world’s religion. They, of all people except Mary, are explicitly named in the Christian Creed, so significant is their role: “Crucified under Pontius Pilate.”
And how remarkably unaware they are of this claim to distinction! They worry about their significance in the contemporary religious movement, yet they have no idea how great a factor they are in the fulfillment of divine purposes.
Anatole France somewhere describes Pilate’s old age. He depicts a gray-haired old man in a quiet villa recounting his experiences in Judea to a guest. “Did you not have some trouble there,” asks the friend, “with a man called Christ? I don’t recall the details, but it seems this man claimed to be one of the gods. It seems to me you had him crucified?” Pilate pondered for a moment over his glass of wine. “No,” he said at last. “Or perhaps it was so. I do not remember.”

“Christ in the Life of the Church” – A Key to Understanding the Catholic Faith. Part X. Caiaphas
R. H. Benson – Christ in the Life of the Church, Published by St. Wojciech Bookstore, 1921