The notorious anarchist Vaillant said: “I have demonstrated to the physicians at Hotel-Dieu that my deed is the inexorable consequence of my philosophy, and of the philosophy of Buechner, Darwin, and Herbert Spencer.”
The youthful criminal Emil Herny read at his trial a memorandum wherein he said among other things: “I am an anarchist since 1891. Up to this time I was wont to esteem and even to idolize my country, the family, the state, and property.... Socialism is not able to change the present order. It upholds the principle of authority which, all affirmations of so-called free-thinkers notwithstanding, is an obsolete remnant of the belief in a higher power. I however was a materialist, atheist. My scientific researches taught me gradually the work of natural forces. I conceived that science had done away with the hypothesis of ‘God,’ which it needs no longer, hence that also the religious-authoritative doctrine of morals, built upon it, as upon a false foundation, had to disappear.”
What political wisdom would it be to honor as science any doctrine that becomes a social danger the moment it is taken seriously; what logic to denounce those as dangerous who are putting into practice a science that is hailed as the bearer of civilization!
One may object: How is the state to determine whether scientific doctrines are warranted or not warranted? The state [pg 351] has the conviction that in its political offices it has no organs for the cognition of scientific truth, for this reason it leaves science to self-regulation. Only the scientist, it is said, is able to revise the scientist.
Nothing but scholarly conceit can engender such ideas. Then any one would have the right to pin upon himself the badge of the scientist and become thereby completely immune. Thus, the bearers of practical political wisdom are declared incompetent to recognize the chief foundation of their state-structure; to realize, what daily experience and the experience of centuries teaches, that disbelief in God, even if sailing under false colors, undermines authority, that communism and upheaval of moral conceptions are tantamount to social danger. They are directed to depend for their information in such matters upon the latest ideas of impractical scientists. The fact is, the matters at issue have, with hardly an exception, long been decided. And where the Christian faith is concerned, the Church and the Christian centuries tell us clearly enough, what has hitherto been understood by Christianity. If the objection here advanced were true, then the state would not have a right to decide in the matter of exhibiting immoral pictures in show windows, without having argued the matter previously with representatives of art. The state would not be allowed to pronounce a death sentence because some scientists denounce capital punishment: the state would have to expunge “guilt,” “expiation,” and “liberty” from its penal code, because many recent scientists, by rejecting the freedom of choice, have removed the dividing line between crime and insanity, between punishment and correction.
Protection for Christianity.
Hitherto we have, in respect to religion, considered chiefly the rational truths, which are the foundations of every religion and also common to non-Christian creeds; the existence of a supermundane God and of a life after death are the most important of them. The revealed Christian religion contains, beside these truths, some others, which supplement them and surround them like a living garland, viz., original sin, redemption, [pg 352] resurrection, the divinity of Christ, grace and the Sacraments, the existence of a Church with its God-given rights, indissolubility of matrimony, etc. Should state-power protect the Christian and Catholic religion by warding off attacks against it, though such attacks are made in scientific form? This, too, in a state in which perhaps other confessions are enjoying the freedom of worship?
It would seem superfluous to propose this question specifically. If, according to the gist of our argument, religion is to be protected, what other religion can be meant than the Christian religion? That is the religion of our nations; none other is. While the stated distinction may have more of an academic than a practical interest, the discussion of this question will not be idle, if only for the reason that it will shed even more light upon our previous statements. Besides, there are manifest efforts to dislodge Christianity from the life of our people, and with it all true religion, under the pretext of opposing church-doctrines and dogmatism. The war against Christianity has not since the days of a Celsus been waged as it is to-day.
We premise a principle of a general nature. Of conflicting religions and views of the world, only one can be true; this is clear to every one who still believes in truth. It is equally clear that this one truth only can have the right to come forward and to enlist support in public life as a spiritual power; error has no right to prevail against truth. Hence it will not do to say simply: There are also the convictions of minorities in the state; some claim that none of the existing religions is the right one, others have dropped all belief in God; in our times we wish to concede to any conviction the right to enter into competition with others, provided mockery and abuse are barred. These remarks are quite true, in the sense that neither the individual nor the state may directly interfere with conscience or prescribe opinions: leaving entirely aside the question whether any one really could have a serious conviction of atheism. The foregoing is true also in the sense that public avowal of opinion must not be hindered by individuals. To interpret this to mean that the state must grant freedom to any expression of doctrine would be a grave misconception of the social influence which false ideas are liable to exercise. Does the state grant this freedom to any kind of medical practice, [pg 353] whether exercised skilfully or awkwardly, conscientiously or unscrupulously?
Moral-religious error may in public life expect only tolerance—just as many other evils must be tolerated, because their prevention would cause greater evils to arise. This is the reason why the state may, and often must, grant freedom of worship even to false creeds, because its denial would give rise to greater harm to the public weal (St. Thomas, 2, 2 q. 10, 11). Freedom of teaching, likewise, must not be granted in the sense of acknowledging that false doctrines and truth have equal rights; this would amount to an assassination of truth. Freedom can be conceded to error for the one reason only, that by not granting it there would be engendered greater evils. Consequently, if a state-power, or the organs of its legislative part, are convinced that the Christian religion is the only true one, they cannot possibly concede to contrary doctrines the right to pose as the truth and thus deceive minds; they may be granted the same freedom in teaching only because restrictive laws can either not be enforced at all, or not without creating a disorder that would give rise to greater evils. Hence the lesser evil must be carefully ascertained.