Books: History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science

J >> John William Draper >> History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science

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DUAL GOVERNMENT IN EUROPE. With truth it is affirmed that the
papacy is administered not oecumenically, 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 God 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 classes, 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
superstitious, 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 pass 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 assuming the prerogatives of
God 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 God is the world;
that there is no God 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
Constitution of the Catholic Faith." The essential points of this
constitution, 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
document, but only an abstract of what appear to be its more
important parts.

CONSTITUTION 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, substituted; 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 Oecumenical
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 GOD, THE CREATOR OF ALL THINGS.--The Holy Catholic Apostolic
Roman Church believes that there is one true and living God,
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 be made
the human nature, composed of both. Moreover, God 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 pass by the free
action of his creatures."

"OF REVELATION.--The Holy Mother Church holds that God 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
God 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 God as his Lord, and
created reason is wholly subject to uncreated truth, he is bound
when God 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 God in revealing them. But, nevertheless that faith
might be agreeable to reason, God 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 God,
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 God, 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 God, which, unless by him revealed, cannot come to our
knowledge.

"Reason, indeed, enlightened by faith, and seeking, with
diligence and godly sobriety, may, by God's gift, come to some
understanding, limited in degree, but most wholesome in its
effects, of mysteries, both from the analogy 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 God's mysteries, in their very nature, so far surpass 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 God who reveals
mysteries and infuses faith has given man's soul the light of
reason, and God 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 pronounce false
every assertion 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 God 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 assistance. 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 God, the
Lord of knowledge, so, if they be rightly pursued, they will,
through the aid of his grace, lead to God. 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 God'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 God 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 God, 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 God, 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 God 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 God.

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

"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
assertions, even when opposed to revealed doctrine.

"Who shall say that it may at any time come to pass, 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 assumptions 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 principal 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
pronounces the greater excommunication, with censures and
penalties, against his antagonists, and prays for "the
intercession of the immaculate Virgin Mary, mother of God, and
that of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul."

Of the various Protestant denominations, several had associated
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
illustrated 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 CONSTITUTION 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 attitude toward it, but a
cordial union with it, is their true policy.

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

For objects to present themselves under identical relations to
different persons, they must be seen from the same point of view.
In the instance we are now considering, the religious man has his
own especial station; the scientific man another, a very
different one. It is not for either to demand that his
co-observer shall admit that the panorama of facts spread before
them is actually such as it appears to him to be.

The Dogmatic Constitution insists on the admission of this
postulate, that the Roman Church acts under a divine commission,
specially and exclusively delivered to it. In virtue of that
great authority, it requires of all men the surrender of their
intellectual convictions, and of all nations the subordination of
their civil power.

But a claim so imposing must be substantiated by the most
decisive and unimpeachable credentials; proofs, not only of an
implied and indirect kind, but clear, emphatic, and to the point;
proofs that it would be impossible to call in question.

The Church, however, declares, that she will not submit her claim
to the arbitrament of human reason; she demands that it shall be
at once conceded as an article of faith.

If this be admitted, all bar requirements must necessarily be
assented to, no matter how exorbitant they may be.

With strange inconsistency the Dogmatic Constitution deprecates
reason, affirming that it cannot determine the points under
consideration, and yet submits to it arguments for adjudication.
In truth, it might be said that the whole composition is a
passionate plea to Reason to stultify itself in favor of Roman
Christianity.

With points of view so widely asunder, it is impossible that
Religion and Science should accord in their representation of
things. Nor can any conclusion in common be reached, except by an
appeal to Reason as a supreme and final judge.

There are many religions in the world, some of them of more
venerable antiquity, some having far more numerous adherents,
than the Roman. How can a selection be made among them, except by
such an appeal to Reason? Religion and Science must both submit
their claims and their dissensions to its arbitrament.

Against this the Vatican Council protests. It exalts faith to a
superiority over reason; it says that they constitute two
separate orders of knowledge, having respectively for their
objects mysteries and facts. Faith deals with mysteries, reason
with facts. Asserting the dominating superiority of faith, it
tries to satisfy the reluctant mind with miracles and prophecies.

On the other hand, Science turns away from the incomprehensible,
and rests herself on the maxim of Wiclif: "God forceth not a man
to believe that which he cannot understand." In the absence of an
exhibition of satisfactory credentials on the part of her
opponent, she considers whether there be in the history of the
papacy, and in the biography of the popes, any thing that can
adequately sustain a divine commission, any thing that can
justify pontifical infallibility, or extort that unhesitating
obedience which is due to the vice-God.

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