A False Progress.
Hence history cannot subscribe to the accusation that the Church is the enemy of progress. How then does it happen that this accusation is made so frequently? The idea suggests itself that there may be here a different meaning given to the word “progress,” that the Church opposes a certain kind of progress which her enemies call “the” progress. And this is the actual fact. If we examine the proofs which are to show the hostile attitude of the Church, we meet at every step Galileo, the Copernican system, the Syllabus, and Index. But this appears only on the surface, which hides beneath it something that is easily overlooked by the cursory glance. And this is the precise definition of scientific and civilized progress. Progress has ever been an ideal of powerful attraction. The noblest and best of men have ever displayed the most earnest endeavour onward and upward. In our times, however, this ideal comes forward differently garbed, in the name of the new view of the world, and resolutely censures as reactionary everything that will oppose it. What is this definition?
Since the theory of evolution of Lamarck and Darwin entered biology, it has also more and more invaded other branches of science. The principle is now that everywhere, in the organic or inorganic world and in the whole province of human life there is a gradual growth and change—nothing permanent, nothing definite and absolute. Uninterrupted evolution hitherto; hereafter restless development; especially in the greatest good belonging to human life, thought, philosophy, and chiefly religion. Here, too, there are no forms nor dogmas which evolution in its continual development does not evolve and elevate. This idea of evolution is supplemented by subjectivism with its relativism of truth: all views, especially philosophical and religious “Truths,” are no longer the reproduction of objectively existing things, but a creation of the [pg 158] subject, of his inner experience and feeling; hence each age must proceed to new thought of its own.
“The methods of scientific research,” we are told, “are determined by the idea of evolution, and this applies not only to natural sciences but also to the so-called intellectual sciences,—history, philology, philosophy, and theology. The idea of evolution influences and dominates all our thoughts; without it progress in the field of scientific knowledge is quite impossible.” We read, for instance, in the modern history of philosophy: “The rise and fall of a system is a necessary part of universal history; it is conditioned by the character of its time, the system being the understanding of that time, while this understanding of the time is conditioned by the fact that the time has changed.” At Roscellin's time the nominalists were intellectually inferior; but where there is question of undermining the militant Church of the Middle Ages the nominalists will be considered to have been the greater philosophers. In this the realists “by the futility of their struggle proved that the time for nominalism had arrived, hence that whoever favours it understands the time better; that is, more philosophically. After the beginning of the Renaissance we notice an attempt at philosophizing in such a way as to ignore the existence of divine wisdom taught by Christianity. The pre-Christian sages had done so: to philosophize in their spirit was therefore the task of the time, and those who had a better understanding of the time philosophized that way better than by the scholastic method; though their method may appear reactionary to unphilosophical minds” (J. E. Erdmann, Grundriss der Gesch. der Philosophie, 3d ed., I (1878), 4, 262, 434, 502). This is a frank denial of any truth in philosophy: the more neological and modern a thing is, the more truth there is in it! Realism was right in Roscellin's time, but a later period had to sweep it away. The Christian religion was right for the Middle Ages, but when the Greek authors began to be read again it was no longer modern.
Apostasy from the faith is considered a mark of progress. “Italian natural philosophy,” we are told, “reached its pinnacle with Brunoand Campanella, of whom the former, though the older, appears to be more progressive on account of his freer attitude towards the Church” (R. Falkenburg, Gesch. der neueren Philosophie, 5th ed. (1905), page 30, seq.). Hence evidently further development of Christianity, too, is demanded. According to subjectivistic views it was hitherto only an historical product of the human intellect: hence “onward to new and higher forms corresponding to modern thought and feeling, onward to a new Christianity without dogmas and authority!” “Break up those old tablets,” spoke Zarathustra.
Such is progress in thought and science, for which the way must be opened. That the immutable dogmas of Christianity, that the task of the Catholic Church to preserve revelation intact, are incompatible with it, that the Church appears reactionary, [pg 159] and as an obstacle to this progress, is now self-evident. Here we have the deeper contrast between progress, in the anti-Christian sense, and the essence of Christianity in general, and, especially, of the Catholic Church.
“It is frankly admitted that the issue is the struggle between the two views of the world—between the Christian, conservative dogmatism and the anti-dogmatic evolutionary philosophy” (Neue Freie Presse, Jun. 7, 1908). Faith according to its very essence is immutable and stationary, science is essentially progressive: they had therefore to part in a manner which could not be kept a secret. “A divine revelation must necessarily be intolerant of contradiction, it must repudiate all improvement in itself” (J. Draper, History of the Conflict between Religion and Science, VI). “The great opposition between the rigid dogmatism of the Roman Catholic Church and the ever progressing modern science cannot be removed” (Academicus, l. c. 362). So say the opponents of the Church.
There is no error, says St. Augustine, which does not contain some truth, especially when it is able to rule the thought of many. Hence its capacity to deceive. The same is true in the present case.
There is evolution and progress in everything, or at least there should be. The individual gradually develops from the embryo into a perfect form, though it becomes nothing else than what it had formerly been in its embryonic state. Mankind advances rapidly in civilization; we no longer ride in the rumbling stage-coach but in a comfortable express train, and the tallow candle has been replaced by the electric light. Thus we demand progress also in knowledge and science, and even in religion. Many things that were obscure to older generations have become clear to us; we have corrected many an error, made many discoveries which were unknown to our ancestors. Many doctrines of faith, also, appear to our eyes in sharper outlines than before; of many we have a deeper understanding, discovered new relations, meanings, and deductions. Thus there is progress and development everywhere.
But it would be erroneous to conclude from all this that there cannot be any stable truths and dogmas, that progress to new and different views and doctrines is necessary. By the same right we might conclude that the main principles of the Copernican system cannot be immutable, because they would [pg 160] hinder the progress of science. Progress certainly does not consist in throwing away all certainty acquired, in order to begin anew. Or does it really belong to progress in astronomy to again give up Copernicus, to go back to Ptolemy and let the sun and all the stars revolve again around the earth? Does not progress rather consist in our studying these astronomical results more closely, in building up the details, and, first of all, in trying to solve new problems?
The champion of the faith will reply: Just as established results do not hinder the progress of science, just so do the doctrines of faith not form an obstacle to progress and evolution. The fixed doctrines of the faith themselves, in themselves and in their application to the conditions of life, offer rich material for the growth of religious knowledge. And there is the immense field for progress in the profane sciences. If any one should say that the believing scientist, who is bound by his dogmas, can do nothing further but reiterate his old truths, one might in turn argue: Then the astronomer bound by the fundamental rules of the Copernican system could have only the monotonous task of drawing over and over again the outlines of his system, while the mathematician who holds the multiplication table to be an unalienable possession would not be allowed to do aught but to repeat the multiplication table.
Or the argument may be put thus: We have made great progress in the material province of civilization, in science and art; “can an old religion suffice under these new and improved conditions, a religion which originated at an age when these conditions did not exist? This contradiction is shocking.... Progress in culture demands progress in religion.... We want a more perfect religion, a higher religion” (Masaryk, Im Kampf um die Religion, 1904, 29). Note the logic of this demonstration. We no longer light our rooms by the dim light of a small oil lamp, we walk no longer at night through dark narrow lanes, but through brightly illuminated avenues, does it follow from this that it can no longer be true that Christ is the Son of God, nor that He has worked miracles, or founded a Church, and a new religion is therefore necessary? We have made progress in our knowledge of history; we know a good [pg 161] deal of Rome and Carthage, of the civilization of ancient Egypt and of Greece, and of their mutual relations; we have other fashions of life than our fathers had, we build and paint differently—our political life, too, has grown more complicated; does it follow from all this, that it cannot be true that we are created by God, that we must believe a divine revelation, hence a new religion is necessary? Progress and evolution to consist in ever abandoning the old and advancing to new and different views—this is absurd. Absurd, in the first place, because it is no progress at all, but a retrogression, a hopeless alternation of forwards and backwards. There can be no progress if I am always withdrawing from my old position; progress is possible only by retaining the basis established and then advancing therefrom. And evolution is not a continuous remodelling and shaping anew, but a continuance in growth. Evolution means that the embryo unfolds, and by retaining and perfecting the old matter gradually becomes a plant; evolution is in the progress from bud to blossom; but not in the changing mass of clouds, swept away to-day by the current wind and replaced to-morrow by other clouds. An absurdity, also, for the reason that it violates all laws of reason, that once there was a revelation of God to be believed, but that this is no longer true.
Furthermore, the demand to follow always “the ideas of the period” suggests the question: Who is to represent the period? Who represented Greece, the sophists or Plato? Who was representative of the first days of Christianity, the Roman emperors or the martyrs? Will not the passage in Goethe's Faust apply in most cases: “What they call the spirit of the times is but their own mind wherein the times are reflected”? True, if progress is taken to be the overstepping by human reason of the eternal standards of immutable truth and the barriers of faith, if it is to be the attempt at emancipation from God and religion, then there is no more resolute foe of progress than the Christian religion, than the Catholic Church. But this is not progress but loss of the truth, not higher religion but apostasy, not development of what is best in man, but retrogression to mental disintegration by scepticism.
The Syllabus.
In the eyes of many it is especially the Syllabus of Pius IX. by which the Catholic Church has erected a lasting monument to its enmity to civilization. It is the Syllabus, we are told, in which Pius IX. has “ex cathedra condemned the freedom of science” (W. Kahl, Bekenntnissgebundenheit und Lehrfreiheit, 1897, 10); “in which modern culture and science is being cursed” (Th. Fuchs, Neue Freie Presse, Nov. 25, 1907); in which “the most general foundations of our political order, the freedom of conscience, are rejected” (G. Kaufmann, Die Lehrfreiheit an den deutschen Universitaeten, 1898, 34); “in which it has simply anathematized the achievements of the modern concept of right” (F. Jodl, Gedanken über Reformkatholizismus, 1902, 5); the Syllabus “strikes blows against the autonomy of human development of culture, it is a non possumus, I cannot make peace, I cannot compromise with what is termed progress, liberalism, and civilization.” The Syllabus is a favorite stock argument of professional free-thinkers and agitators, and the one with which they like to open the discussion. For this reason we must say a few words about it.
When a Syllabus is spoken of without any distinction, the Syllabus of Pius IX. is meant. It is a list of eighty condemned propositions which this Pope sent on December 8, 1864, to all the Bishops of the world, together with the encyclical letter “Quanta Cura.” Pius IX. had, prior to this, and on various occasions, denounced these propositions as false and to be repudiated. They were now gathered together in the Syllabus. They represent the program of modern liberalism in the province of religion and in politics in relation to religion. They are repudiated in the following order: Pantheism; liberal freedom of thought and of conscience as a repudiation of the duty to believe; religious freedom as a demand of emancipation from faith and Church; religious indifferentism; the denial of the Church and of her independence of the state; the omnipotence of state power, especially in the province of thought. The single propositions are not all designated as heretical, hence the contrary is not always pronounced to be dogma; they are rejected [pg 163] in general as “errors.” It is not necessary to discuss here the question whether and to what extent the Syllabus is an infallible decision. Suffice it to say it is binding for believing Catholics.
Has the Catholic any reason to be ashamed of the Syllabus?
It was a resolute deed. A deed of that intrepidity and firm consistency which has ever characterized the Catholic Church. With her fearless love of truth the Church has in the Syllabus solemnly condemned the errors of the modern rebellion against the supernatural order, of the naturalization and declaration of independence of the human life. For this reason the Syllabus is called an attack upon modern culture, science, and education, upon the foundations of the state. Is this true?
It is, and it is not. All that is good and Christian in modern culture is not touched by the Syllabus; it strikes only at what is anti-Christian in our times and in the leading ideas of our times. It does not condemn freedom of science, but only the liberal freedom which throws off the yoke of faith; it does not repudiate freedom of religion and conscience, but the liberal freedom which will not acknowledge a divine revelation nor take the Church as a guide. Not the foundations of modern states are attacked, but only the liberal ideas of emancipation from religion, and of opposition to the Church. The Church proclaims to the world only what has been known to all Christian centuries, that, just as the single individual is bound to have the Christian belief and must lead a Christian life, so are nations and organized states; that the human creature is subject to the law of Christ in all its relations. Nor does she contend against genuine progress in science, education and in the material domain, but merely against liberal progress towards the irreligious materialization of life.
This emancipation from the Christian faith poses mostly under the attractive and deceptive name of “modern progress.” Indeed, it has ever been the pretension of liberalism to look upon itself as the sole harbinger of civilization, to claim the guidance of intellectual life for its aim, and to stigmatize as a foe of culture any one that opposes the dissemination of its anti-Christian humanism. It is also an expert in giving [pg 164] to words a charm and an ambiguous meaning that deceive. Emancipation from religion is “progress” and “enlightenment.” Everything else is reactionary. Its infidelity is freedom of conscience and thought. Everything else is “bondage.” Only its secular schools, its civil marriage, its separation of Church and State are “modern.” Everything else is obsolete, hence no longer warranted. For the Church to defend her rights is arrogance; when the Church uses her God-given authority for the good of the faith, she practises intellectual oppression; the Catholic who lets himself be guided by his Church is called unpatriotic, bereft of his civil spirit.
What striking contrast to the honesty in which the Church presents her doctrines frankly before the whole world, without disguise or artifice. The reason is that she has sufficient interior strength and truth to render it unnecessary for her to take refuge in disguise or present the truth in ambiguity.
The clearest evidence of the Church's hostility to culture is the condemnation of the 80th thesis of the Syllabus, so it is said. It is the thesis that the Pope can and must reconcile himself to, and compromise with, progress, liberalism, and modern civilization. This is a condemned proposition, hence the contrary is true: the Pope of Rome cannot, and must not, reconcile himself, nor compromise with, liberalism and modern civilization. Here we have the frankly admitted hostility against progress, education, and science—it is the watchword of the Papacy.
This conclusion can be arrived at only by pushing aside all rules of scientific interpretation. What progress is this, with what civilization can the Papacy not be reconciled? The progress of modern liberalism. The heading of the paragraph containing this proposition states expressly that “errors of modern liberalism” are to be condemned. This becomes clear by the Allocution “Jamdudum cernimus”of March 18, 1861, from which this condemnation is taken. There it is stated: “It is asked that the Pope of Rome reconcile himself with progress, to liberalism as they call it, to the new civilization, and compromise with them.... But now we ask of those inviting us to be reconciled with modern civilization, whether the facts be such as to tempt the Vicar of Christ on earth ... to connect himself with the civilization of to-day without the greatest injury to this conscience ... a civilization that has caused the dissemination of numerous despicable opinions, errors, and principles in conflict with the Catholic religion and its doctrines.” Of course a civilization cut off from any true Christianity by education and science, by family life and political life, a progress, trying to stop the activity of the Church in every sphere and attacking her in their speech, in newspapers, and in schools, [pg 165]cannot demand of the Papacy to join hands with them. No Christian, whether Catholic or Protestant, can profess this “progress.” We have here at the same time a specimen of how they proceed in interpreting the propositions of the Syllabus in order to discover in them all possible absurdities. Many propositions are short sentences taken from the work of an author, or from previous Papal declarations. Hence they must be understood in the sense of those sources. Furthermore, attention must be paid to what is specially emphasized. Then, again, we must remember that by repudiating a proposition only the contradictory is asserted, but not the contrary; to conclude this would be to conclude too much. For instance, the seventy-seventh condemned proposition reads: “In our times it is no longer to any purpose that the Catholic religion should be the sole religion of the state to the exclusion of all other confessions.” According to some, e.g., Frins, the contradictory is thus formulated: “In our times also it is still to the purpose....” According to others, however, e.g., Hoensbroeeh and Goetz: “In our times also it is beneficial....” Thus while Hoensbroechand Goetz make the ecclesiastical doctrine appear to read that it would be beneficial to hold fast to the Catholic as the sole religion of the state under all circumstances even to-day, the actual opposite is the doctrine, that this may be yet to the purpose under certain circumstances. While no reasonable man could object to the latter, the former is eagerly exploited against the Church (Heiner, Der Syllabus, 1905, p. 31, seq.; cf. Frins, Kirchenlex, 2d ed., XI, 1031; Hoensbroech, l. c. 25; Goetz, Der Ultramontanismus, 1905, 148).
Of course it may be taken for granted that the Syllabus is distasteful to modern liberalism, which is branded there as one of the errors of the day. Yet the Church cannot be censured for not becoming unfaithful to her vocation of preserving the patrimony of Christianity to mankind, or for acting as the invincible defender of the Christian religion in the universal struggle between truth and error, even though the latter pose with great assurance.
The Condemnation of Modernism.
The great excitement caused in intellectual circles by the Syllabus of Pius IX. was aroused again, though not with the same intensity, when some years ago the news of another Syllabus was circulated through the world, and the excitement increased when the rumour was followed by the publication of the encyclical “Pascendi Dominici gregis.” Indeed, the new event was not very unlike the former: in the 60's Rome's sentence was [pg 166] directed against the Modernism of that period, which called itself liberalism. The excitement caused by its condemnation was more intense, because it struck directly at the principles governing the liberal politics against the Church, which principles were claimed to be the foundation of the modern state. Now the Modernism repudiated by the Church's voice was nothing more than the old humanistic, fundamental, errors of liberalism, but put in the form of a religious and philosophical view of the world, and in Catholic garb: it meant man detached from everything supernatural, and dependent alone on himself in his intellectual life, more especially in his religious life.
Now, as then, similar charges were raised: The Church is the irreconcilable foe of modern achievements and the opponent of them; “the encyclical aims at modern intellectual life in all its phases and forms” (XX. Jahrh., 1908, 568). Now, as then, we have the same ambiguity of the terms “modern” and “progress.”
What was condemned by the Church? The document “Lamentabili sane exitu,” issued by the teaching authority of the Church on July 3, 1907, is entitled “A Decree of the Holy Congregation of the Roman and General Inquisition or the Holy Office,” which has to watch over the unadulterated preservation of the faith. The decree soon was christened the “New Syllabus,” because of its similarity with the Syllabus of Pius IX. In a similar way it condemns sixty-five propositions against the inspiration and the historical character of Holy Scripture, against the divine origin of revelation and of faith, against the divinity of Christ, His Resurrection and His atoning death, against the Sacraments, and against the Church. These are component parts of the philosophical religious system of thought which soon after was set forth and condemned by the encyclical “Pascendi,” of September 8, 1907.
Modernism is essentially philosophy, combining modern agnostic-autonomous subjectivism with evolutionism, and applied to the Christian religion, which thereby becomes disfigured beyond recognition. Its chain of thought, excellently stated by the encyclical, starts with the proposition that the supernatural is beyond the knowledge of man, and hence man [pg 167] cannot know anything of God. The faith which unites us to God is nothing but a feeling, born of a blind impulse, which may be considered a divine revelation. If this religious feeling is expressed in forms, the result is “doctrines of faith”; for Christian “dogmas” are this and nothing more, images and symbols of the noble and divine, hence they are of human origin and are changeable according to the disposition and the degree of learning of the individual, as well as of the times. There is no dogmatic Christianity, in the sense of an immutable religious doctrine, nor is there any absolutely true religion, for religion is but a variable feeling, that has nothing to do with cognition and knowledge. For this reason they never can come in conflict. The Christian religion originally was nothing else but the religious experience of Christ, who was not God but a man; in the course of time it has undergone changes which are reflected in the shaping of Christian dogma. Holy Scripture is, similarly, the expression of the religious experience of its human authors; the Sacraments are symbols, arousing religious sentiments; the Church is not founded by God, and only has the task of regulating the development of Christianity, and of sanctioning at any time whatever religious experiences the changeable spirit of progressive civilization may produce.
This is Modernism, as represented chiefly in France, Italy, and to an extent also in England; in Germany it did not appear as a system, but even there its spirit became quite apparent. Thus, Modernism is nothing else but the systematic arrangement of those ideas which we have hitherto met, in various places, as the fundamental principles of modern religious thought opposed to Christianity. It is subjectivism with its autonomy of the human subject, its agnosticism, its relativism of truth, sailing under the name of “historical method of thought” and “progress,” and, finally, with its freedom of thought and conscience which rejects all authority. It is Kant in the robe of a Catholic theologian. Ultimately it is nothing else but the shocking negation of everything supernatural, hence complete apostasy. “The salient point is recognized,” says Troeltsch, “the enemy is the modern historical method of thought, the [pg 168] concept of evolution, the theory of inner experience and relativism as applied to religion, the negation of supernaturalism as taught by the old Church” (l. c. 22). Hence, was it not manifest that the Church had to take measures against this positive denial of Christianity as a whole, the more so as the uneducated could be easily deceived by it? Every organism will throw off excrescences, the more energetically the stronger it is. Any religion lacking this strength is doomed. That the Papal declaration aroused such opposition must not be wondered at; it hit once more the central idea of the anti-Christian view of the world. The judgment was not passed against modern intellectual life, but only against the grave errors inherent in it; the Church did not condemn progress, nor the increase and deepening of knowledge of the truth; not the enrichment of the life of the mind, of feeling, and the will, but only pretended progress; she did not condemn the historical method nor the idea of evolution, but their false application, which dissolved anything and everything in growth, purely natural growth at that, without acknowledging a revelation of absolute truths.
Orthodox Protestants have openly praised this bold deed of the Pope as highly meritorious for the preservation of the Christian faith. Thus the South African Church Quarterly Review (Episcopal) of January, 1908, said: “The Syllabus and Encyclical of Pius X. against Modernism are deserving of the respectful consideration of all Christians.... At the present stage of history the opposing factors are driving with great speed towards a fierce and resolute struggle between Christ and anti-Christ. All who sincerely love Christ, our Lord, must rally under one flag.... Narrow-minded hostility towards the Pope must give way to the desire to be united with the great community which is fighting so valiantly for the old faith of our fathers.... One must be blind, to misjudge the tremendous influence exerted by the last deed of the Pope in favour of the faith.”
Even the Evangelical “Kirchenzeitung” admitted that the encyclical is “directed chiefly against the more or less unchristian modern views of the world ... which we must combat.... Undoubtedly it is not only the Pope's right to lay bare the unchristian tendency of these ideas and their incompatibility with the Christian faith, but it is also his duty and his merit” (November 29, 1908, n. 48).
Puny men, entangled in the ideas of their time and surroundings, are easily led to take for their standard the thoughts and actions of their age. They often imagine that [pg 169] they possess not a little strength and independence, when they are intellectually entirely dependent and unable to rise above their time. “It is the fashion, others think that way, therefore I must think so, too”; these are often the principles of their wisdom, and they ask the Church to do likewise. The Church, however, looks back upon a long history, and numerous ideas and opinions she has seen arise and vanish. And whoever can look back upon a great experience, and moreover carries in himself the call to lead the times, feels no restless impulse to be carried away by changing doctrines.