This dogma had to be
rigid, immutable, and almost meaningless. Again, the historic and pagan
principle of Catholicism was maintained; a unique event in the history
of the world was immortalised and systematised and all new religious
conceptions were excluded. Catholicism invariably places all really
important events in the past, even in a quite definite period of the
past, a period unassailable by historical criticism. But with the
commencement of individual intellectual life the uniform, ecclesiastical
image of the Madonna gradually gained life and individuality. Just as
according to Protestant teaching every soul must establish its
individual relationship with God (which is subject to change because
individuality is not excluded as it is in Catholicism), so the
imaginative emotionalist created his own Queen of Heaven. Frequently he
was still under the impression--this was especially the case with
monks--that he was worshipping the ecclesiastical deity, when he had
long been praying to a metaphysical conception of his own.
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