The Freedom of Science

by Josef Donat

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.