It is true, adhering to a religious authority implies restraint. But it is only the restraint of truth. Truth does not lose its claim upon the mind because it is offered to the latter by a supernatural authority; much less does the Creator lose the right to the tribute of homage of his rational creature; and this tribute is rendered by voluntary submission to the revealed [pg 106] truth. Upon the Church, however, has been laid the task of preserving unadulterated the legacy of her Founder from generation to generation. She is responsible before God and history for the faithful presentation of the most sacred inheritance of mankind. Therefore the Church must raise her voice when the puny thoughts of men, called science and progress, rise against the saving truth to disparage, to falsify, to annihilate it. It is not science the Church opposes, but error; not truth, but the emancipation of the human mind from God's authority, an emancipation that is trying to hide its real self under the guise of scientific truth.
“The Church,” says the Vatican Council (Sess. III, ch. 4), “having received with her apostolic office to teach, the obligation of preserving the legacy of the faith, has also the God-given right and duty to condemn what is falsely called science, 'lest any one be cheated by philosophy and vain deceit.'” That the denial of the faith is flippantly called science does not alter the case. What determines the attitude of the Church is not eagerness to rule, not a propensity to apply force to the mind, but loyalty to her vocation. If it is disagreeable for any superior to have to correct those under him, then it requires an heroic strength and courage to cry out time and again to the whole world and its leading minds, Errastis, you have erred! It requires heroism to reject, to oppose and condemn, time and again, propositions sailing under the flag of progress, light and enlightenment, in spite of the protest of those concerned, who denounce whatever opposes them as darkness and retrogression. How much easier it would be to fawn upon the pet ideas of the age, Neo-protestantism and Modernism, and thus to gain their approval, than to hear repeatedly the distressing words, “We will not have her to rule over us—crucifige, crucifige!”
But why not let science correct itself? Why these violent condemnations and indictments? Science, by virtue of its instinct for the truth will by itself find the way back, when it has gone on the wrong track; only be patient. Science has in itself the cure for all its defects. Has it not already all by itself overcome numerous errors in the course of the centuries? Indeed, were there nothing at stake but scientific theories they [pg 107] might be readily left to themselves: the loss to mankind would not be great. But here there are more important issues at stake. The protection of the faith, of truths of the vastest importance for Christian life and the souls of men. And it is the duty of the Church to protect her charges from going astray, from dangers to salvation. How many thousands of them would suffer harm before it would please science to correct its heresies! It often takes a long time to pull down the idols placed upon pedestals, and then it may be only to erect another idol. How long will it take modern philosophy to agree that the will of man is free, that there is a substantial immortal soul, that a Creator of the world dwells above the heavens? Is the Church to wait till the men of science make up their minds to desist from denying the existence of a personal God, and to bow before the Creator of heaven and earth? Should she meanwhile look on calmly how such ruinous doctrines are pervading and penetrating society deeper and deeper? Souls cannot wait thus to suffer shipwreck. Finally, the duty to believe remains the same for all, for the scientist, too—he is not free to delay his assent until he has exhausted all his antagonistic scientific experiments.
To be sure, the scientist is restricted in so far as he is not allowed to pursue any and every hypothesis, regardless of the immutable truth; he may no longer follow every scientific fashion. But is this a real detriment to the human intellect and science? Has not every science to bear restraint from other sciences at all times? The adherent of Darwin's theory of natural selection needs a billion years for his slow evolution; but the geologist tells him that neither the formation of the earth's surface nor the strata or sub-strata have taken so long in formation—he corrects him. When the philosopher, drawing the logical deductions from his materialistic views of the world, assumes that the first living being sprang from lifeless matter, the naturalist informs him that this is contradicted by facts—there never has been a case of spontaneous generation. The naturalist is corrected by the better experiment of men of his profession, the scientific author is corrected by his critic. Hence if a man submits to the guidance of other men of his profession, if one science accepts direction from another science, [pg 108] without any one seeing any injury to freedom therein, why, then, should it be mental oppression for God's infallible wisdom to call out through His Church to the fallible human mind: this is error, I declare it so? When the guide-post points out to the traveller that he is on the wrong way, will the wanderer indignantly resent the correction as an interference with his freedom of action? Is the railing along the steep precipice, to guard against falling down, an interference with liberty? Is the lighthouse, warning the sailor of cliffs and shoals, any interference with his freedom?
Generally those who oppose the Christian and Catholic duty to believe use the following argument: Where there is restraint and dependence there is no freedom; the Christian, and especially the Catholic, is restrained and dependent; hence he is not free: consequently he has no true science, because there can be no true science without freedom. In the same way it may be argued: The civilized nation is restrained in various ways by the civil order, therefore it is not free. The careful writer of scientific works is tied down on all sides by the rules of logic, by the dictates of good style, by scientific usages: hence he is not free.
Let us not lose sight of the question. It cannot be denied that the man who does not bother about faith has a greater outer freedom than the man who does. We speak purposely of outer freedom. It is quite another question, where real internal freedom exists, i.e., freedom from the fetters of one's own inclinations and prejudices,—in the religiously disciplined mind, or in the other. Here we speak of inner freedom. Obviously it is greater in the former. The deer in the forest is freer in his movements than the cautious mountain-climber, who keeps to marked roads and paths, so as to journey safely, yet the latter is not without freedom. Nor will any one deny that the Australian bushman enjoys a greater outer freedom than the civilized white, restrained by laws, by rules and regulations, by standards of decency. And the busy writer of many things and everything, who in his writing never pays any attention to logic, to scientific form, to style and tact, has more freedom than one who strictly conforms to all these.
Every civilization, culture, and education implies restriction of freedom, and the more the rejection of dependence and laws increases the nearer we approach the state of uncultured and barbarous nations. The same applies to intellectual culture. The higher it is, the more learning and mental culture a man has, the greater the number of truths, principles, and intellectual standards he carries within him. By these he is bound if he wants to advance into the higher spheres of intellectuality. And the more the intellect rejects laws and standards the more unregulated and dull its intellectual life will become. The more one knows the more strictly is he bound to truth in every respect; the less one knows the freer he is to commit errors. This is no advantage, it is the privilege of the ignorant and untrained mind. The believer is bound by religious truth in the same way as one who knows the truth is bound by it, while one who is ignorant of it is not.
It is certainly not impossible for the obedience of faith to create intellectual conflict. There may be cases when scientific views look probable to the scientist, while they contradict a doctrine of faith or an ecclesiastical decision. The roads may even cross more radically. It may happen that his views and books are condemned, forbidden by the Church.
If the conflicting doctrine should be an infallible one, the decision of the believing scientist is soon reached. He knows now what to think of his hypothesis, that it is not true progress but aberration, and consistency with his own conviction moves him to desist. Thus the philosophical errors of modern times are opposed almost throughout to infallible dogmas, for the most part fundamental doctrines of the Christian religion. This is also the legal right under which revelation and the Church approach the scientist with the demand not to permit his views to go contrary to faith, because there can never be a contradiction between faith and reason. “There can never be a contradiction between faith and reason,” the Vatican Council teaches; “the apparent conflict is due either to the doctrine not being understood and interpreted in the sense of the Church, or to erroneous opinions that are mistaken for conclusions of reason” (Conc. Vat. sess. III, cp. 4). If the Catholic [pg 110] finds his position opposed to non-infallible decisions, then he will re-examine his views in unselfish impartiality before God. If he must calmly tell himself that his arguments are not so weighty as to be able to stand up before so high an authority, guided by the Holy Ghost, then he will forego the gratification of holding fast to his own opinions, and will remind himself that true wisdom knows the fallibility of the human mind, and is ever ready to take advice from a divinely guided authority. Perhaps he will recall the words of the great St. Augustine: “Better bow before an incomprehensible but saving symbol than entangle one's neck in the meshes of error” (De doctr. Christ. III, 13). This Christian self-denial surpasses in beauty even science itself, and sheds upon it a greater splendour.
The great Fénelon, proceeding to his pulpit in the cathedral of Cambrai, on Annunciation day in 1699, was handed by his brother the Roman brief condemning twenty-three propositions of Fénelon's “Maximes des Saints.” The Bishop took the writing, calmly ascended the pulpit and announced it forthwith, and preached a sermon on the submission due to ecclesiastical superiors, at which the whole congregation was greatly moved. A few days later he announced in an episcopal letter to his diocese his submission, “simple, absolute, and without a shadow of reservation.”By this deed, an heroic act of obedience, Fénelon is placed higher in history than by his brilliant works, than by the honour of having been the illustrious tutor of the Dauphin of France.