Chapter IV. Accusations And Objections.
Among the notable facts in history one stands out prominently, it is more remarkable than any other, and evokes serious thought. It is the fact that the Christian religion, especially its foremost representative, the Catholic Church, concerning which every unbiassed critic is bound to admit that none has made more nations moral, happy and great than this Church; that nowhere else has virtue and holiness flourished more than in her; that no one else has laboured more for truth and purity of morals; that nevertheless there is not, and never was, an institution which has more enemies, which has been more persecuted, than the Catholic Church. This fact will suggest to every serious-minded critic the question, whether we have not here focussed that tremendous struggle, which truth and justice have ever waged in the bosom of mankind against error and passions—an image of the struggle raging in every human breast. The Church recognizes in this fact the fulfilment of the prophecy of her Founder: “And ye shall be hated by all men for my name's sake” (Luke xxi. 17). And the Church may add, that in her alone this prophecy is being fulfilled.
The Enemy of Progress.
In her journey through the centuries the Church has had to listen to many accusations because she, the keeper of the truth entrusted to her care, has refused to respond to the demand to accept unconditionally the ideals devised by existing fashions. Cantavimus vobis et non saltastis (we have piped to you and you have not danced). Therefore the Church has been called reactionary; the heretics of the first centuries of Christianity denounced her as the enemy of the higher gnosis; a later period [pg 143] denounced her as an enemy of the genuine humanism, in the eighteenth century she was denounced as the enemy of enlightenment, to-day she is denounced as the enemy of progress. Again the Church is accused before the judicial bar of the children of the age. They desire to eat plentifully from the tree of knowledge, but the Church, they say, prevents them. They wish to climb the heights of human perfection, to ascend higher than any preceding generation, but the Church holds them back. She will keep them in the fetters of her guardianship. And with a keen, searching eye the smart children of our age have looked the old Church over, taking notice of everything, anxious to put her in the wrong.
Their charges do not fail to make an impression, even on the Church herself. She wishes to justify herself before the plaintiffs, and still more before her own children who trust in her. Thus she has not hesitated in declaring loudly on most solemn occasions that she is not an enemy of noble science and of human progress, and with great earnest she takes exception to this charge.
No wonder, one might say, that the Church makes such assurances. It is time for her to realize that unless she can clear herself from it this accusation will be her moral ruin at a time when the banner of progress is held aloft, and when even the Catholic world shares in that progress. True, but let us not forget this: if there is anything characteristic of the Catholic Church it is her frankness and honesty. She is not afraid to proclaim her doctrines and judgments before the whole world; she leaves her Index and Syllabus open for inspection, openly avowing that she is the irreconcilable enemy of that emancipated freedom proclaimed by modern liberalism as the ideal of the age. It is the honesty which she inherited from her Founder, who told the truth to friend and enemy, to His disciples and to the Scribes, to Nicodemus, that lonely night, and to Caiaphas. With the same straightforwardness the Church declares that she feels not enmity but sympathy toward civilization. A fair-minded critic will admit here again that the Church is in earnest. “Far from opposing the fostering of human arts and sciences, the Church is supporting and promoting them in [pg 144] various ways,” declares the Vatican Council. “The Church does not underrate nor despise their advantages for human life: on the contrary, it avows that they, coming as they do from God, the Master of the sciences, also lead to God by aid of His grace, when properly used” (Sess. III, c. 4). The Church has put this accusation on the list of errors of the age condemned by Pius X. (Sent. 57). She feels the charge as an injury.
The Testimony of History.
Nevertheless, in anti-ecclesiastical circles it is taken very often for an established fact that the Roman Church has ever tried her best to hamper the progress of science, or has suppressed it, or at least scowled at it. How could it be otherwise? they say. How could she favour the progress made in enlightening reason or in advancing human knowledge? Must she not fear for its intellectual sway over men whom she keeps under the yoke of faith? Must she not fear that they might awaken from the slumber in which they were held prisoners by the suggestive force of her authority, held to be transcendental; that they might awaken to find out the truth for themselves? And what is the use of science? He that believes will be saved: hence faith suffices. If we wish to hear the accusation in the language of militant science, here it is: “Outside the monastic institutions no attempt at intellectual advancement was made (in the Middle Ages), indeed, so far as the laity were concerned, the influence of the Church was directed to an opposite result, for the maxim universally received was, that ‘ignorance is the mother of devotion’ ” (J. W. Draper, History of the Conflict between Religion and Science).