Rationalism, or the Rejection of the Principle of Authority, the Heresy of Modern Times.
"No poison", wrote Leo XIII, "is more fatal to divine faith," than "the subtle and insidious spread of rationalism."[1]
And why so? Because rationalism flatters the natural pride of men, whose unaided reason it makes the ultimate criterion of truth and falsehood, of right and wrong.[2] It repeats to them without ceasing the words of Satan, "You shall be like gods, knowing good and evil,"[3] until it has infected the mind's eye and blinded it to the perception of the supernatural. To accomplish its object the better, it assumes a variety of forms, suited to the changing views and tastes of the world. In our days, however, it usually presents itself, and promulgates its principles, under the guise and in the name of Liberalism.
Liberalism! How gladly one would avoid a word, so apt to be misunderstood, so apt to give offence, where none is meant! But that is impossible; because it is constantly employed by the Church herself, in her struggles with the modern world, to denote a system of doctrine and conduct, diametrically opposed to her own.
According to the derivation of the word, liberalism is a system favorable to liberty. But there is a liberty for evil, as well as a liberty for good; and the Liberalism with which we are at present concerned, demands the former, as a right of conscience. It is the logical outcome of the principle of private judgment, laid down by the Protestant Reformers of the sixteenth century. Every man, they contended, is his own judge in religious matters, amenable to no authority, and quite competent to pass upon the law of God, to interpret and expound it, to admit or reject portions of it, as his reason shall dictate. The leaders, it is true, confined this principle to revelation. But more logical minds soon extended it to other matters. If Luther, they argued, might discard the Book of Machabees and the Epistle of St. Jude, why might not his disciples discard other portions of the writings generally considered inspired? Why might they not, with equal reason, reject all revelation and inspiration, if they saw fit? Why not extend this convenient doctrine to the natural law, and explain or set aside its precepts, as they felt inclined? Who would fix the limits? The father had laid down the principle: "Our lips are our own; who is lord over us?"[4] And his sons pushed it to its legitimate conclusions.
Men who admit all those conclusions, are liberals in the fullest sense of the word, because they claim the liberty to think and do as they like. "They recognize no moral obligation, no law which can bind the conscience. They proclaim aloud the rights of man, while they pass over in silence, if they do not deny, the rights of God. They declare themselves independent of his authority or indifferent to his commands. Religion which subjects man to God, is for them the symbol of despotism; the Catholic Church which stands for authority, is the enemy of human reason. Therefore they wage a ruthless war against it, seize ecclesiastical property, harass the clergy, banish the religious orders, close the Catholic schools, and corrupt the morals of the people—all for the sake of liberty and progress. Yes, the liberty and progress of evil, the enslavement and extermination of good!
As a rule, however, liberals shrink from such extremes. Some freely admit the dependence of the individual man upon the Almighty; but they maintain that the State or civil society should be independent of Him.[5] As though civil society were not composed of individuals, or as though the individual, on entering into civil society, lost or changed his nature! As though one might be a Christian in church, and an infidel on the judge's bench or in the council chambers of the nation! The majority have no very fixed views of their own. They depend upon environment, self-interest, human respect, and a thousand subtle influences of which they themselves are scarcely aware. And so it comes to pass that there are many varieties of liberals, widely differing from one another, yet all opposed to the Church. Some reject more, others fewer, of the truths of faith; but all reject, at least in practice, the principle of authority, which is at the foundation of faith.[6] Liberalism, therefore, under every form, is heresy; because it is "an error against the truths of faith proposed by the Church."[7] Nay, it is worse than simple heresy; for, by rejecting the principle of authority, it strikes at the very foundation of faith, and consequently it comprehends under it all possible heresies. It is, therefore, radical and universal heresy. It is, in fine, the most popular, not to say the only, heresy of the modern world.[8]
But, while liberalism repudiates Christian dogmas, it is itself extremely dogmatic and intolerant of contradiction. It does its utmost to impose its tenets upon the world. It teaches them to the young at school; it preaches them from a thousand Protestant pulpits; it disseminates them by means of the secular press; it acts them out in private and public life; and if any one, invoking its boasted principle of liberty of conscience, contests its right to dictate to him, it forthwith denounces him to the high inquisitor of vulgar prejudice, and tortures him to death on the rack of a perverted public opinion.
And what is the consequence? That "we are cowed all the year round by the dominance of heresy," answers a distinguished convert. "It tarnishes our faith. It chills our love. It checks us, and galls us, and unmans us, at almost every turn of our spiritual life. No one comes quite unscathed out of the trial; least of all, those who think they do, and have no fear."[9] Thus we must account for what Pius IX styles "the pernicious maxims which go under the name of liberal Catholicism";[10] and what Leo XIII describes as "that body of fallacious opinions, commonly designated as liberal Catholicism," whose "actual and threatening mischief is but too well known."[11]
Some of these opinions were at one time used in. the defence of truth by Catholics, not at all tainted with Liberalism. They had to deal with opponents, who denied or ignored the rights of God and magnified the rights of man. They argued from the enemy's standpoint, without however approving it, and claimed for themselves and their fellow-Catholics what was freely conceded to others. They, too, were men, they said, and they demanded nothing but the rights of men! Would their adversaries refuse them those rights?—By this means they secured, if not a full measure of justice, at least some immunity from persecution, some degree of liberty to worship God, according to the dictates of their consciences. Like young David who seized the Philistine's sword to cut off his head, they seized the enemy's weapon to despatch him. It was the only weapon at hand, and it served their purpose fairly well.[12]
Even at present, the same opinions are not unfrequently expressed by staunch and well-meaning Catholics, who would reject them with horror, if they understood their full bearing. We must not, then, judge men too quickly by their words, but apply, in all doubtful cases, the wise and charitable rule, prefixed by St. Ignatius to his Spiritual Exercises: "Every good Christian ought to be more inclined to put a favorable construction upon another's opinion or proposition than to condemn it. If he can in no way defend it, let him ask the speaker how he understands it, and, in case the latter think amiss, correct him kindly. If even this do not suffice, let him try all suitable means to make him think aright and to save him from error."[13]
But, while we are considerate to the erring, we must be careful not to sympathize with their error, especially if it is of a crafty and insidious kind. Such, according to the oft-repeated declaration of the Sovereign Pontiffs, is liberal Catholicism, which "strives to conciliate light with darkness and truth with falsehood."[14] It is essentially a system of disguises. It changes front as rapidly as the chameleon changes color. It is progress; it is patriotism; it is philanthropy; it is anything, except genuine, outspoken Catholicism. It has no rules of conduct, but compromise, concession and surrender. It always follows the tendency of the age and floats along upon the tide of public opinion. It does not scruple to sacrifice even the most sacred interests of religion for a temporal consideration. It is a traitor within the camp, ready, whenever the occasion presents itself, to parley with the enemy and sign terms of capitulation, and then to claim the credit of having established peace between the Church and the world.
In short, liberal Catholicism sides with the world, because it is of the world, worldly. It generally has its "origin", wrote Leo XIII, "in an excessive spirit of worldliness."[15] It is, in fact, nothing but the prevailing liberalism of the world, so far as its erroneous principles have been adopted, to a greater or less extent, by nominal Catholics. Hence there are many kinds of liberal Catholics, widely different from one another, but all desirous, like other Liberals, to be "liberated" or freed from the restraints of authority. But what can Catholics "honestly desire to be freed from?" asks one who had himself been for a time the victim of error. "Not from the creeds or the general spirit of the Ecclesia Docens (that is, the teaching authority of the Church); for to desire, or even dream of such a freedom, would be at once a lesion of conscience and a beginning of treason against God.— Not from government in religious matters by the hierarchy; for it is a part of their religious belief, that the hierarchy derives its jurisdiction by continuous transmission from the Apostles, and that the Apostles received it from Christ.—Not from the ritual, and all the beauty and glory which that word implies; for they have but to look around them and note the miserable failures of all who, in this or any former age, have endeavored to imitate or supplant it."[16]
Quite true! Yet it is precisely from these things that some men, claiming to be Catholics, desire to be freed. "Being wanting in filial docility and reverence"—so wrote the Bishops of England to their flocks—"they freely dispose of doctrine, practice and discipline, upon their own responsibility and without the least reference to the mind of the Church or to her ministers."
In the first place, they dispose of doctrine and creeds.—Some go so far as to assert, "that they may retain the name of Catholic and receive the Sacraments, while disbelieving one or more of the truths of faith;. . . .that the dogmas of Catholic faith are not immutable, but tentative efforts after truth, to be reformed under the inspiration of modern science; . ... that certain truths of revelation may become obsolete and die out; that, having served their time, higher truths will supplant them, in accordance with some real or fancied progress of natural science." Others "imagine, that they can save their orthodoxy, by holding the creeds and definitions of faith, not according to the Church's constant understanding of them, but according to their own; .. .. that the Church's teaching may receive new light to illuminate it, so that the traditional sense given by [her] to her formularies, shall give way to other meanings, partially or wholly different."[17] Others again contend, "that the Church's teaching should be limited to the articles or definitions of Catholic faith;[18] that it is permissible to reject her other decisions, to set aside her censures, . . . . to belittle her authority and especially that of the Roman Congregations," and "to distrust her ability in dealing with intellectual and scientific objections."[19]
In the second place, they dispose of ecclesiastical discipline and government.—They insist, "that the constitution, as well as the teaching of the Church, ought to be brought into harmony with what is styled modern thought and the progress of the world; that the government of the Church should be largely shared by the laity, as a right; .... that the growth of popular interest in ecclesiastical affairs and the spread of education render it right and expedient, to appeal from ecclesiastical authority to public opinion; and that it is permissible to the faithful, to correct abuses and scandals by recourse to the people and to the powers of the world, rather than to the authorities of the Church."
Finally, they dispose of the practice and ritual of the Church.—They feel no attraction for the splendor of religious worship, unless it chances somehow to appeal to their aesthetic sense; and then they assist at it very much in the same spirit in which they would assist at a theatrical performance. Excepting perhaps "the great acts of religion and the sacraments", they make light of "the rites, customs and devotions practised in the Church." Indeed, they look with a certain distrust upon the popular manifestations of Catholic piety, upon "pilgrimages to shrines, indulgences, jubilees, relics, images, medals and scapulars, chants, hymns, vocal prayers, processions and many other practices of. devotion and of penance, blessed and approved, and some of them instituted, by the Church." They do not. appreciate "the perfect and permanent consecration of mind, will, life and person to God's love and service,"[20] by means of the evangelical counsels. They consider the religious orders, solemnly approved by the Church, as a sort of excrescence on the mystical body of Christ. They pretend that "the multiplication and diversity of the orders naturally cause disturbance and confusion"; ..... "that the state of regulars or monks is incompatible with the care of souls and pastoral duties; and, in particular, that none of the functions of the hierarchy can. be discharged by them, without going counter to the very principles of the monastic life."
These and many other opinions, held and proclaimed by self-styled liberal Catholics, are echoes of errors, long since condemned by the Church. Some of them are manifestly heretical; so that, in spite of all professions to the contrary, any one who assents to them knowingly and pertinaciously, by that very fact ceases to be a Catholic. Others are designated by the Church as false, scandalous, calumnious, offensive to Catholic sentiment, injurious to the Holy See, at variance with the spirit and practice of the Church.[21]
At variance with the spirit and practice of the Church! Behold here the distinctive mark of the Liberal Catholic! If he is not openly rebellious against his Church, he is at least out of sympathy with her. He thinks that she is much in need of reform, and that he is specially called to carry it out. What shall we say of his ideas and aims? "Is a reform of the Church, of Catholicism, possible?" asks a learned and zealous Bishop. And he answers: "Certainly; but not, of course, in the divine element of the Church, in her dogmas, her moral laws, her means of sanctification and organization; only in the human element. . . . . Is a Catholic reform necessary at the present time? We behold at present so many wounds, so many symptoms of disease, so many plague-spots, so many running sores on the body of Catholicism, that our answer must be: Yes, a reform is necessary. .... How shall the reform be carried out?" This is "the main question, the burning question";[22] and to this the spokesmen of Liberal Catholicism give answers which are sadly disappointing.
Many, disregarding the first rule of correct reasoning, as well as of good writing, express themselves in language which may mean anything or nothing. They reject or misapply Catholic terminology, and wrap up their ideas in new or ambiguous phrases; so that even the keenest theologian can only guess at their real meaning. But their blind admirers fancy that they discover, in this abuse of words and this general obscurity of style, the superior wisdom of bold and original thinkers, before whose mighty intellects every one else must bow his humbled head. They intersperse their writings so freely with the usual cant and catchwords of the day, that the sober critic naturally grows suspicious of the cause which they have undertaken to support. But "the populace", which "is wholly and absolutely governed by words and names",[23] takes up the chorus and drowns the voice of protest with cries of progress! science! culture![24]
"The intellectual progress of mankind", say these Reformers, "involves a wider grasp of truth," by which the Church should be quick to profit. "It would be calamitous, indeed, if she should ever continue to be imbued with, and to give forth, the spirit of an age which is forever dead and gone." She should adapt herself to her new environment and "keep in touch with what is best and highest in every succeeding lustrum."[25] She should, in brief, renew her youth like the eagle and be thoroughly modernized. She should be freed from the overgrowth of the past, "stript of what is unessential", and made to present to the world "a pure and primitive Christianity", upon which the new civilization may be engrafted, to produce a fresh and plentiful crop of fruit.
To those who speak thus we may apply the words of the eloquent prelate quoted above: "They would fain force the Church back to the point of development which she had reached five hundred or fifteen hundred years ago, and bind her to it forever. . ... They shall not be permitted to do so. . . . What they would lop off or remove, is in truth the loveliest bloom and the sweetest fragrance of Catholicism.. .... Nothing could be more illogical, unscientific and unhistorical, than to disregard all the past development of the Church, in order to construct a primitive Church, and to represent this as the purest form of Christianity." Nothing could be more injudicious, than to advise "the Church to make concessions and compromises, in order to purchase from. the modern world the right to live and dwell in it." They who give such advice, "labor against their own interests", as well as hers. For, "however much they concede and surrender, so long as they do not renounce their allegiance to the Church, they will not escape the hatred and persecution of the world."[26]
But science! The claims of science! "Can it be expected," ask some liberal Catholics, "that men will ever endure with patience, on the part of ecclesiastics, an attitude of opposition to that science to which all, even those ecclesiastics themselves, are so deeply indebted?" And they answer, that they at least will not endure such an attitude. They "declare themselves to be devoted to the discovery, the promulgation and the establishment of truth in every field of knowledge, historical, critical and scientific, especially in what bears upon religion."[27] The fact is, they have a superstitious veneration for everything that parades under the name of science, no matter how extravagant and worthless it may be. Instead of avoiding, they favor, what the Apostle denounces as "the profane novelties of words and oppositions of knowledge falsely so called."[28]—"Theories, criticisms and assertions, advanced in the name of science, seem to exercise an almost irresistible control over the mind, "wrote the English Bishops. "Not so much, that the liberal Catholic has formed independently for himself a scientific opinion, as that he has practically surrendered his independence, by taking for granted, and as venerable and true, the halting and disputable judgments of some men of letters or of science, which may represent no more than the wave of some popular feeling or the views of some fashionable or dogmatizing school. The bold assertions of men of science are received with awe and bated breath, the criticisms of an intellectual group of savants are quoted as though they were rules for a good life, while the mind of the Church and her guidance are barely spoken of with ordinary patience. The Liberal Catholic appears to be nervously apprehensive, lest the Church should in some way commit herself and err. He doubts her wisdom, her patience, her ability in dealing with mankind. And he flatters himself, that his own opinions are the outcome of a strong-minded, impartial and philosophical spirit."[29]
But, if liberal Catholics champion the cause of science, they are especially eloquent, when they plead in favor of general culture. "The reform which they have in view, is a cultured reform, a cultured Catholicism. .... The demand upon the cultured to believe and to live, just as the ordinary Catholic believes and lives, seems to them too harsh. They would sweeten the bitter pill of faith with the syrup of culture. .... A short-sighted, silly policy, indeed!" For, "once the educated and half-educated have thrown themselves into the current of infidel culture and science, they can hardly be won over to the faith, no matter how it is presented to them. . . . Gentleness is out of place..... An operation must be performed—an operation on the eye. The cataract must be removed from the eyes of those blind, culture-proud men. It must be brought home to them," that they above all have need of faith—"just such a faith as the common people possess, a simple, honest, healthy faith."
"The history of hundreds of conversions proves very clearly, that at all times the noblest conquests have been due . . . . . to a single-hearted, straightforward, attractive consistency of principle, to the life-giving dogma and unbending authority of the Church." And, on the other hand, the experience of zealous priests proves no less clearly, that in our own days the conversion of many an earnest soul has been retarded, if not prevented, by a tendency to attenuate the doctrines and to minimize the endowments of the Church. What is worse, the faith of ill-instructed, self-sufficient Catholics has been weakened, and the way paved to the open apostasy of men who seemed intent on leading all the world into the fold of Christ.
There is, then, an urgent necessity for a Catholic reform. "Shallow rationalism in the Catholic camp must come to an end. .. .. The worship of false science and false culture must no longer enfeeble the Catholic character." True science must be fostered: a science which does not dogmatize, as though it were infallible, but cautiously steers its course by the beacon-light of faith, and bravely takes up the defence of Catholic truth against the popular errors of the age. True culture must be encouraged: a culture which looks less to the increase of secular knowledge than to the education of the conscience, which is not modelled on pagan but on Christian ideals, which does not inflate the intellect with pride, but elevates and ennobles the heart by simplicity and purity of thought and sentiment. Catholics must be made to realize, that their faith is more than science, their religion better than culture.
In the last analysis, therefore, the question of Catholic reform resolves itself into the question: Are Catholics as Catholic as they ought to be?[30]
ENDNOTES
1 Letter to the Card. Archbishop and the Bishops of England, approving their Joint Pastoral Letter on "Liberal Catholicism".
2 Syllab. prop. 3.
3 Genes. III, 5.
4 Psalm XI, 5.
5 "Le liberalisme", wrote one of its representatives, "est la libre pensee, ou il n'est rien."—-Journal de Gand. See Syll. of Pius IX, especially props. 3, 4.
6 This absurd doctrine is condemned in the Encyclical "Quanta Cura", prop. 1.
7 There are theoretical and practical Liberals. The former teach the principles of Liberalism; the latter often know little or nothing of its principles. The former are the leaders; the latter the blind followers of those leaders. The former are comparatively few; the latter very numerous.
8 This is heresy, according to the definition of theology. It may be formal or only material. The former (which is heresy properly so called) is found in those who knowingly and pertinaciously assent to error; the latter, in those who assent unknowingly to it. The former implies grievous sin; the latter may be quite inculpable. Vid. Sabetti, Comp. Theol. Moral., no. 160.
9 Such is the Liberalism condemned in several propositions of the Syllabus; and, by name, in its 80th proposition. It is called religious Liberalism, to distinguish it from political Liberalism, which favors political liberty, in opposition to despotism, arbitrary government, civil inequality, restriction, trammelling of personal activity, etc. With this latter kind of Liberalism, so long as it does not trench upon the religious field, the Church has no fault to find. On the continent of Europe, however, the name of Liberalism is always associated, in the minds of Catholics, with a party that persecutes the Church. Hence it is held in abhorrence by them.
10 Faber, "The Blessed Sacrament", Prologue, p. 40.
11 To a deputation of French Catholics, June 18th, 1871.
12 Letter to the Card. Archbishop etc., as above. The English Bishops themselves trace Liberal Catholicism to the same source in their Letter, subsequently endorsed on a most solemn occasion by the Scotch hierarchy.
13 In other words, they used what philosophers call an argumentum ad hominem.
14 See "Spiritual Exercises". The Saint bad suffered much from misinterpretation and misrepresentation of his teachings, as the Church and Christ Himself have suffered.
15 Pius IX, Brief to the Belgian journal "Croix", 24th of May, 1874.
16 Letter to the Card. Archbishop etc., as above.
17 Then he adds: "Of course, cases sometimes occur in which authority is overstrained or misused, and ritual is overlaid by ceremony; and in these cases laymen, as long as Christian humility is observed, may lawfully work for a change; but anything that could deserve the name of religious Liberalism, must always be alien to the Catholic mind."— (Passages in a Wandering Life by Thomas Arnold, M. A. etc., etc., page 180 and foll.)
18 These doctrines are condemned as heretical by the Vatican Council, Constit. de Fide Cath., "De Fide et Ratione", cap. IV et can. 3.
19 Condemned by the Vatican Council, as above, cap. IV et mon. post canon.
20 Condemned by Pius IX, Apost. Letter Dec. 2nd, 1862, and by Leo XIII, Jan. 10th, 1890, "Sap. Christ.".
21 These words and others, quoted in the three preceding paragraphs, are taken from the "Joint Pastoral Letter on Liberal Catholicism", by the Card, Archbishop and Bishops of England.
22 See e.g. propp. 64, 65, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84 of the schismatical Council of Pistoia, condemned by Pius VI.
23 Bishop Von Keppler—Address on "Reform, true and false", which won the special approval of the Holy See.
24 Coleridge.
25 Liberal Catholicism is a curious mixture of intellectual pride, ignorance of Catholic principles and base subserviency to the prevailing fashions of the hour.
26 Words of a noted champion of "Liberal Catholicism".
27 Bishop Von Keppler, as above.
28 These words are taken from the writings of one of the professed leaders of "liberal Catholicism", whom the English Bishops seem to have had especially in view.
29 I Tim. VI, 20.
30 "Joint Pastoral Letter of the Card. Archbishop" etc., as above.
31 Bishop Von Keppler, as above. See also the Encyclical of Pope Pius X on the thirteen hundredth anniversary of St. Gregory, March 12th, 1904. — The preceding Lesson was already in the hands of the printer, when the new Syllabus of Pius X appeared, condemning the teachings of the latest form of Liberalism, which the author had especially in mind in writing.
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