There are a great
number of such born Nonconformists in England, and when either the
grace of Catholic education or of conversion has been granted to them,
it is interesting to watch the efforts to subdue and attune themselves
to submission and to faith. Sometimes the Nonconformist temperament is
the greatest of safeguards, where a Catholic child is obliged to stand
alone amongst uncongenial surroundings, then it defends itself
doggedly, splendidly, and comes out after years in a Protestant school
quite untouched in its faith and much strengthened in militant
Christianity. These are cheerful instances of its development, and its
advantages; they would suggest that some external opposition or
friction is necessary for such temperaments that their fighting
instinct may be directed against the common enemy, and not tend to
arouse controversies and discussions in its own ranks or within
itself. In less happy cases the instinct of opposition is a cause of
endless trouble, friction in family life, difficulty in working with
others, "alarums, excursions" on all sides, and worse, the get
attitude of distrust towards authority, which undermines the
foundations of faith and prepares the mind to break away from control,
to pass from instinctive opposition to antagonism, from antagonism to
contempt, from contempt to rebellion and revolt.
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