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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: venerable ecclesiasticism. The latter offers a so much richer
pasturage and shade to the fancy, has so many cells with so many
different kinds of honey, is so indulgent in its multiform
appeals to human nature, that Protestantism will always show to
Catholic eyes the almshouse physiognomy. The bitter negativity
of it is to the Catholic mind incomprehensible. To intellectual
Catholics many of the antiquated beliefs and practices to which
the Church gives countenance are, if taken literally, as childish
as they are to Protestants. But they are childish in the
pleasing sense of "childlike"--innocent and amiable, and worthy
to be smiled on in consideration of the undeveloped condition of
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