History Of The Conflict Between Religion And Science Part 22

THE CHURCH A POLITICAL POWER. The Jesuit party was extending and strengthening an organization all over Germany, based on the principle that state legislation in ecclesiastical matters is not binding. Here was an act of open insurrection. Could the government allow itself to be intimidated? The Bishop of Ermeland declared that he would not obey the laws of the state if they touched the Church. The government stopped the payment of his salary; and, perceiving that there could be no peace so long as the Jesuits were permitted to remain in the country, their expulsion was resolved on, and carried into effect. At the close of 1872 his Holiness delivered an allocution, in which he touched on the "persecution of the Church in the German Empire," and a.s.serted that the Church alone has a right to fix the limits between its domain and that of the state--a dangerous and inadmissible principle, since under the term morals the Church comprises all the relations of men to each other, and a.s.serts that whatever does not a.s.sist her oppresses her. Hereupon, a few days subsequently (January 9, 1873), four laws were brought forward by the government: 1. Regulating the means by which a person might sever his connection with the Church; 2. Restricting the Church in the exercise of ecclesiastical punishments; 3. Regulating the ecclesiastical power of discipline, forbidding bodily chastis.e.m.e.nt, regulating fines and banishments granting the privilege of an appeal to the Royal Court of Justice for Ecclesiastical Affairs, the decision of which is final; 4. Ordaining the preliminary education and appointment of priests. They must have had a satisfactory education, pa.s.sed a public examination conducted by the state, and have a knowledge of philosophy, history, and German literature. Inst.i.tutions refusing to be superintended by the state are to be closed.

These laws demonstrate that Germany is resolved that she will no longer be dictated to nor embarra.s.sed by a few Italian n.o.ble families; that she will be master of her own house. She sees in the conflict, not an affair of religion or of conscience, but a struggle between the sovereignty of state legislation and the sovereignty of the Church. She treats the papacy not in the aspect of a religious, but of a political power, and is resolved that the declaration of the Prussian Const.i.tution shall be maintained, that "the exercise of religious freedom must not interfere with the duties of a citizen toward the community and the state."

DUAL GOVERNMENT IN EUROPE. With truth it is affirmed that the papacy is administered not oec.u.menically, not as a universal Church, for all the nations, but for the benefit of some Italian families. Look at its composition! It consists of pope, cardinal bishops, cardinal deacons, who at the present moment are all Italians; cardinal priests, nearly all Italians; ministers and secretaries of the Sacred Congregation in Rome, all Italians. France has not given a pope since the middle ages. It is the same with Austria, Portugal, Spain. In spite of all attempts to change this system of exclusion, to open the dignities of the Church to all Catholicism, no foreigner can reach the holy chair. It is recognized that the Church is a domain given by G.o.d to the princely Italian families. Of fifty-five members of the present College of Cardinals, forty are Italians--that is, thirty-two beyond their proper share.

The stumbling-block to the progress of Europe has been its dual system of government. So long as every nation had two sovereigns, a temporal one at home and a spiritual one in a foreign land--there being different temporal masters in different nations, but only one foreign master for all, the pontiff at Rome--how was it possible that history should present us with any thing more than a narrative of the strifes of these rival powers? Whoever will reflect on this state of things will see how it is that those nations which have shaken off the dual form of government are those which have made the greatest advance. He will discern what is the cause of the paralysis which has befallen France. On one hand she wishes to be the leader of Europe, on the other she clings to a dead past. For the sake of propitiating her ignorant cla.s.ses, she enters upon lines of policy which her intelligence must condemn. So evenly balanced are the two sovereignties under which she lives, that sometimes one, sometimes the other, prevails; and not unfrequently the one uses the other as an engine for the accomplishment of its ends.

INTENTIONS OF THE POPE. But this dual system approaches its close. To the northern nations, less imaginative and less superst.i.tious, it had long ago become intolerable; they rejected it summarily at the epoch of the Reformation, notwithstanding the protestations and pretensions of Rome, Russia, happier than the rest, has never acknowledged the influence of any foreign spiritual power. She gloried in her attachment to the ancient Greek rite, and saw in the papacy nothing more than a troublesome dissenter from the primitive faith. In America the temporal and the spiritual have been absolutely divorced--the latter is not permitted to have any thing to do with affairs of state, though in all other respects liberty is conceded to it. The condition of the New World also satisfies us that both forms of Christianity, Catholic and Protestant, have lost their expansive power; neither can pa.s.s beyond its long-established boundary-line--the Catholic republics remain Catholic, the Protestant Protestant. And among the latter the disposition to sectarian isolation is disappearing; persons of different denominations consort without hesitation together. They gather their current opinions from newspapers, not from the Church.

Pius IX., in the movements we have been considering, has had two objects in view: 1. The more thorough centralization of the papacy, with a spiritual autocrat a.s.suming the prerogatives of G.o.d at its head; 2.

Control over the intellectual development of the nations professing Christianity.

The logical consequence of the former of these is political intervention. He insists that in all cases the temporal must subordinate itself to the spiritual power; all laws inconsistent with the interests of the Church must be repealed. They are not binding on the faithful.

In the preceding pages I have briefly related some of the complications that have already occurred in the attempt to maintain this policy.

THE SYLLABUS. I now come to the consideration of the manner in which the papacy proposes to establish its intellectual control; how it defines its relation to its antagonist, Science, and, seeking a restoration of the mediaeval condition, opposes modern civilization, and denounces modern society.

The Encyclical and Syllabus present the principles which it was the object of the Vatican Council to carry into practical effect. The Syllabus stigmatizes pantheism, naturalism, and absolute rationalism, denouncing such opinions as that G.o.d is the world; that there is no G.o.d other than Nature; that theological matters must be treated in the same manner as philosophical ones, that the methods and principles by which the old scholastic doctors cultivated theology are no longer suitable to the demands of the age and the progress of science; that every man is free to embrace and profess the religion he may believe to be true, guided by the light of his reason; that it appertains to the civil power to define what are the rights and limits in which the Church may exercise authority; that the Church has not the right of availing herself of force or any direct or indirect temporal power; that the Church ought to be separated from the state and the state from the Church; that it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion shall be held as the only religion of the state, to the exclusion of all other modes of worship; that persons coming to reside in Catholic countries have a right to the public exercise of their own worship; that the Roman pontiff can and ought to reconcile himself to, and agree with, the progress of modern civilization. The Syllabus claims the right of the Church to control public schools, and denies the right of the state in that respect; it claims the control over marriage and divorce.

Such of these principles as the Council found expedient at present to formularize, were set forth by it in "The Dogmatic Const.i.tution of the Catholic Faith." The essential points of this const.i.tution, more especially as regards the relations of religion to science, we have now to examine. It will be understood that the following does not present the entire doc.u.ment, but only an abstract of what appear to be its more important parts.

CONSt.i.tUTION OF CATHOLIC FAITH. This definition opens with a severe review of the principles and consequences of the Protestant Reformation:

"The rejection of the divine authority of the Church to teach, and the subjection of all things belonging to religion to the judgment of each individual, have led to the production of many sects, and, as these differed and disputed with each other, all belief in Christ was overthrown in the minds of not a few, and the Holy Scriptures began to be counted as myths and fables. Christianity has been rejected, and the reign of mere Reason as they call it, or Nature, subst.i.tuted; many falling into the abyss of pantheism, materialism, and atheism, and, repudiating the reasoning nature of man, and every rule of right and wrong, they are laboring to overthrow the very foundations of human society. As this impious heresy is spreading everywhere, not a few Catholics have been inveigled by it. They have confounded human science and divine faith.

"But the Church, the Mother and Mistress of nations, is ever ready to strengthen the weak, to take to her bosom those that return, and carry them on to better things. And, now the bishops of the whole world being gathered together in this Oec.u.menical Council, and the Holy Ghost sitting therein, and judging with us, we have determined to declare from this chair of St. Peter the saving doctrine of Christ, and proscribe and condemn the opposing errors.

"OF G.o.d, THE CREATOR OF ALL THINGS.--The Holy Catholic Apostolic Roman Church believes that there is one true and living G.o.d, Creator and Lord of Heaven and Earth, Almighty, Eternal, Immense, Incomprehensible, Infinite in understanding and will, and in all perfection. He is distinct from the world. Of his own most free counsel he made alike out of nothing two created creatures, a spiritual and a temporal, angelic and earthly. Afterward he made the human nature, composed of both.

Moreover, G.o.d by his providence protects and governs all things, reaching from end to end mightily, and ordering all things harmoniously.

Every thing is open to his eyes, even things that come to pa.s.s by the free action of his creatures."

"OF REVELATION.--The Holy Mother Church holds that G.o.d can be known with certainty by the natural light of human reason, but that it has also pleased him to reveal himself and the eternal decrees of his will in a supernatural way. This supernatural revelation, as declared by the Holy Council of Trent, is contained in the books of the Old and New Testament, as enumerated in the decrees of that Council, and as are to be had in the old Vulgate Latin edition. These are sacred because they were written under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. They have G.o.d for their author, and as such have been delivered to the Church.

"And, in order to restrain restless spirits, who may give erroneous explanations, it is decreed--renewing the decision of the Council of Trent--that no one may interpret the sacred Scriptures contrary to the sense in which they are interpreted by Holy Mother Church, to whom such interpretation belongs."

"OF FAITH.--Inasmuch as man depends on G.o.d as his Lord, and created reason is wholly subject to uncreated truth, he is bound when G.o.d makes a revelation to obey it by faith. This faith is a supernatural virtue, and the beginning of man's salvation who believes revealed things to be true, not for their intrinsic truth as seen by the natural light of reason, but for the authority of G.o.d in revealing them. But, nevertheless that faith might be agreeable to reason, G.o.d willed to join miracles and prophecies, which, showing forth his omnipotence and knowledge, are proofs suited to the understanding of all. Such we have in Moses and the prophets, and above all in Christ. Now, all those things are to be believed which are written in the word of G.o.d, or handed down by tradition, which the Church by her teaching has proposed for belief.

"No one can be justified without this faith, nor shall any one, unless he persevere therein to the end, attain everlasting life. Hence G.o.d, through his only-begotten Son, has established the Church as the guardian and teacher of his revealed word. For only to the Catholic Church do all those signs belong which make evident the credibility of the Christian faith. Nay, more, the very Church herself, in view of her wonderful propagation, her eminent holiness, her exhaustless fruitfulness in all that is good, her Catholic unity, her unshaken stability, offers a great and evident claim to belief, and an undeniable proof of her divine mission. Thus the Church shows to her children that the faith they hold rests on a most solid foundation. Wherefore, totally unlike is the condition of those who, by the heavenly gift of faith, have embraced the Catholic truth, and of those who, led by human opinions, are following, a false religion."

"OF FAITH AND REASON.--Moreover, the Catholic Church has ever held and now holds that there exists a twofold order of knowledge, each of which is distinct from the other, both as to its principle and its object. As to its principle, because in the one we know by natural reason, in the other by divine faith; as to the object, because, besides those things which our natural reason can attain, there are proposed to our belief mysteries hidden in G.o.d, which, unless by him revealed, cannot come to our knowledge.

"Reason, indeed, enlightened by faith, and seeking, with diligence and G.o.dly sobriety, may, by G.o.d's gift, come to some understanding, limited in degree, but most wholesome in its effects, of mysteries, both from the a.n.a.logy of things which are naturally known and from the connection of the mysteries themselves with one another and with man's last end.

But never can reason be rendered capable of thoroughly understanding mysteries as it does those truths which form its proper object. For G.o.d's mysteries, in their very nature, so far surpa.s.s the reach of created intellect, that, even when taught by revelation and received by faith, they remain covered by faith itself, as by a veil, and shrouded, as it were, in darkness as long as in this mortal life.

"But, although faith be above reason, there never can be a real disagreement between them, since the same G.o.d who reveals mysteries and infuses faith has given man's soul the light of reason, and G.o.d cannot deny himself, nor can one truth ever contradict another. Wherefore the empty shadow of such contradiction arises chiefly from this, that either the doctrines of faith are not understood and set forth as the Church really holds them, or that the vain devices and opinions of men are mistaken for the dictates of reason. We therefore p.r.o.nounce false every a.s.sertion which is contrary to the enlightened truth of faith. Moreover, the Church, which, together with her apostolic office of teaching, is charged also with the guardianship of the deposits of faith, holds likewise from G.o.d the right and the duty to condemn 'knowledge, falsely so called,' 'lest any man be cheated by philosophy and vain deceit.'

Hence all the Christian faithful are not only forbidden to defend, as legitimate conclusions of science, those opinions which are known to be contrary to the doctrine of faith, especially when condemned by the Church, but are rather absolutely bound to hold them for errors wearing the deceitful appearance of truth."

THE VATICAN ANATHEMAS. "Not only is it impossible for faith and reason ever to contradict each other, but they rather afford each other mutual a.s.sistance. For right reason establishes the foundation of faith, and, by the aid of its light, cultivates the science of divine things; and faith, on the other hand, frees and preserves reason from errors, and enriches it with knowledge of many kinds. So far, then, is the Church from opposing the culture of human arts and sciences, that she rather aids and promotes it in many ways. For she is not ignorant of nor does she despise the advantages which flow from them to the life of man; on the contrary, she acknowledges that, as they sprang from G.o.d, the Lord of knowledge, so, if they be rightly pursued, they will, through the aid of his grace, lead to G.o.d. Nor does she forbid any of those sciences the use of its own principles and its own method within its own proper sphere; but, recognizing this reasonable freedom, she takes care that they may not, by contradicting G.o.d's teaching, fall into errors, or, overstepping the due limits, invade or throw into confusion the domain of faith.

"For the doctrine of faith revealed by G.o.d has not been proposed, like some philosophical discovery, to be made perfect by human ingenuity, but it has been delivered to the spouse of Christ as a divine deposit, to be faithfully guarded and unerringly set forth. Hence, all tenets of holy faith are to be explained always according to the sense and meaning of the Church; nor is it ever lawful to depart therefrom under pretense or color of a more enlightened explanation. Therefore, as generations and centuries roll on, let the understanding, knowledge, and wisdom of each and every one, of individuals and of the whole Church, grow apace and increase exceedingly, yet only in its kind; that is to say retaining pure and inviolate the sense and meaning and belief of the same doctrine."

Among other canons the following were promulgated.

"Let him be anathema--

"Who denies the one true G.o.d, Creator and Lord of all things, visible and invisible.

"Who unblushingly affirms that, besides matter, nothing else exists.

"Who says that the substance or essence of G.o.d, and of all things, is one and the same.

"Who says that finite things, both corporeal and spiritual, or at least spiritual things, are emanations of the divine substance; or that the divine essence, by manifestation or development of itself, becomes all things.

"Who does not acknowledge that the world and all things which it contains were produced by G.o.d out of nothing.

"Who shall say that man can and ought to, of his own efforts, by means of, constant progress, arrive, at last, at the possession of all truth and goodness.

"Who shall refuse to receive, for sacred and canonical, the books of Holy Scripture in their integrity, with all their parts, according as they were enumerated by the holy Council of Trent, or shall deny that they are Inspired by G.o.d.

"Who shall say that human reason is in such wise independent, that faith cannot be demanded of it by G.o.d.

"Who shall say that divine revelation cannot be rendered credible by external evidences.

"Who shall say that no miracles can be wrought, or that they can never be known with certainty, and that the divine origin of Christianity cannot be proved by them.

"Who shall say that divine revelation includes no mysteries, but that all the dogmas of faith may be understood and demonstrated by reason duly cultivated.

"Who shall say that human sciences ought to be pursued in such a spirit of freedom that one may be allowed to hold as true their a.s.sertions, even when opposed to revealed doctrine.

"Who shall say that it may at any time come to pa.s.s, in the progress of science, that the doctrines set forth by the Church must be taken in another sense than that in which the Church has ever received and yet receives them."

THE EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE. The extraordinary and, indeed, it may be said, arrogant a.s.sumptions contained in these decisions were far from being received with satisfaction by educated Catholics. On the part of the German universities there was resistance; and, when, at the close of the year, the decrees of the Vatican Council were generally acquiesced in, it was not through conviction of their truth, but through a disciplinary sense of obedience.

By many of the most pious Catholics the entire movement and the results to which it had led were looked upon with the sincerest sorrow. Pere Hyacinthe, in a letter to the superior of his order, says: "I protest against the divorce, as impious as it is insensate, sought to be effected between the Church, which is our eternal mother, and the society of the nineteenth century, of which we are the temporal children, and toward which we have also duties and regards. It is my most profound conviction that, if France in particular, and the Latin race in general, are given up to social, moral, and religious anarchy, the princ.i.p.al cause undoubtedly is not Catholicism itself, but the manner in which Catholicism has for a long time been understood and practised."

Notwithstanding his infallibility, which implies omniscience, his Holiness did not foresee the issue of the Franco-Prussian War. Had the prophetical talent been vouchsafed to him, he would have detected the inopportuneness of the acts of his Council. His request to the King of Prussia for military aid to support his temporal power was denied. The excommunicated King of Italy, as we have seen, took possession of Rome.

A bitter papal encyclical, strangely contrasting with the courteous politeness of modern state-papers, was issued, November 1, 1870, denouncing the acts of the Piedmontese court, "which had followed the counsel of the sects of perdition." In this his Holiness declares that he is in captivity, and that he will have no agreement with Belial. He p.r.o.nounces the greater excommunication, with censures and penalties, against his antagonists, and prays for "the intercession of the immaculate Virgin Mary, mother of G.o.d, and that of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul."

Of the various Protestant denominations, several had a.s.sociated themselves, for the purposes of consultation, under the designation of the Evangelical Alliance. Their last meeting was held in New York, in the autumn of 1873. Though, in this meeting, were gathered together many pious representatives of the Reformed Churches, European and American, it had not the prestige nor the authority of the Great Council that had just previously closed its sessions in St. Peters, at Rome. It could not appeal to an unbroken ancestry of far more than a thousand years; it could not speak with the authority of an equal and, indeed, of a superior to emperors and kings. While profound intelligence and a statesmanlike, worldly wisdom gleamed in every thing that the Vatican Council had done, the Evangelical Alliance met without a clear and precise view of its objects, without any definitely-marked intentions.

Its wish was to draw into closer union the various Protestant Churches, but it had no well-grounded hope of accomplishing that desirable result.

It ill.u.s.trated the necessary working, of the principle on which those Churches originated. They were founded on dissent and exist by separation.

Yet in the action of the Evangelical Alliance may be discerned certain very impressive facts. It averted its eyes from its ancient antagonist--that antagonist which had so recently loaded the Reformation with contumely and denunciation--it fastened them, as the Vatican Council had done, on Science. Under that dreaded name there stood before it what seemed to be a spectre of uncertain form, of hourly-dilating proportions, of threatening aspect. Sometimes the Alliance addressed this stupendous apparition in words of courtesy, sometimes in tones of denunciation.

THE VATICAN CONSt.i.tUTION CRITICISED. The Alliance failed to perceive that modern Science is the legitimate sister--indeed, it is the twin-sister--of the Reformation. They were begotten together and were born together. It failed to perceive that, though there is an impossibility of bringing into coalition the many conflicting sects, they may all find in science a point of connection; and that, not a distrustful att.i.tude toward it, but a cordial union with it, is their true policy.

It remains now to offer some reflections on this "Const.i.tution of the Catholic Faith," as defined by the Vatican Council.