The Freedom of Science

In a similar sense the Bavarian minister of education, Dr. V. Wehner, said, on Feb. 11, 1908, in the course of a speech in the Bavarian Diet: “Thus the Catholic professor of theology is bound to the standards of creed and morals as established by the Church. The decision as to whether a Catholic professor of theology teaches the right doctrine of the Church is not for the state to give, but for the Church alone.” “The business of the professors at theological faculties is to transmit the teachings of the Church to future candidates for the priesthood, and this is what they are employed for by the state. That the Church does not tolerate a doctrine to differ from her own is to me quite self-evident.” Hence we may conclude, “The attacks directed here and there in recent times against the continuance of Catholic theological faculties need not worry us in any way. Nor are they likely to meet with response at the places where the decision rests. Times have changed. Even non-Catholic governments are no longer blind to the conviction that an educated clergy must be reckoned among the most eminent factors for conserving the state” (Freiherr von Hertling). Even during the heated debates on the anti-modernist oath in the Prussian Diet and upper house, the importance of the theological faculties was acknowledged by the speakers, none of whom demanded the removal of these faculties, though outspoken in their criticism of the oath. Prime minister Bethmann-Hollweg declared on March 7: “Catholic students will get their training at the Catholic faculties the same as hitherto, even after the anti-modernist oath is introduced. The state never will claim for itself the authority to determine in any way which, and in what, forms doctrines of faith shall be taught to Catholic students. This is no affair of the state. If, and this is my wish, the Catholic faculties will retain that value to teachers, students, and the total organism of the universities, which is the natural condition of their existence, then they will continue to exist for the profit of both, the Catholic population and the state. Should they lose this value, however, an event I do not wish to see, then they will die by themselves. But I do not see that it is demanded by the interest of the state to abolish without awaiting further development these faculties with one stroke, thereby harming our Catholic population, whose wants and needs deserve as much consideration as those of any other part of the population.”

There is no warrant for the view that theology is subject to a foreign power, and therefore it cannot claim a place in a state institution. In its external relations the theological faculty is subject also to the state, serving the public interests so much the better the more continually the priest by his activity influences the life of the people. By the way, why this urgent demand for state control in the pursuit of a science by a party that otherwise is striving zealously to put the university beyond the influence of the state? To be a state institution or not can only be an extrinsic matter to the university itself. Or has the science of medicine not enough intellectual substance and consistency to thrive at a free university? Is science as such a matter of state? Therefore, why find fault with theology because it will not be entirely subordinated to the state? Nor is it proper to call the Church a “foreign” power. It is certainly not a foreign power to theology; neither to the Christian state, that has developed in closest relation to the Church, which owes its civilization and culture to the Church, shares with her its subjects, and is based even to-day upon the doctrines and customs of the Church.

Against Christ there arose the Jewish scribes and denounced His wisdom as error; the scribes have passed away, we know them no longer. To the Neoplatonics Christianity was ignorance, even barbarity; Manicheans and Gnostics praised as the higher wisdom Oriental and Greek philosophy adorned with Christian ideas. They belong to history. When the people of Israel came in touch with the brilliant civilization of Egypt, Assyria, and Greece, they often became ashamed of the religion of their forefathers, and embraced false gods; to-day we look upon their fancy of inferiority as foolishness, and we rank their religion high above the religious notions of the pagan Orient.

Thus has truth pursued its way through the centuries of human history, often unrecognized by the children of men, scolded for being obsolete, nay, more, driven from its home and forced to make room for delusion and error. Delusion fled, and error sank into its grave – but truth remained. Thus the Church has endured, and thus the Church will live on, with her doctrines and science misunderstood and repulsed by the children of a world unable to grasp them; they will pass away and so will their thoughts, yet the Church will remain, and so will her science. “She was great and respected” – this is the familiar quotation from a Protestant historian – “before the Saxon had set foot on Britain, before the Frank had passed the Rhine, when Grecian eloquence still nourished in Antioch, when idols were still worshipped in the temple of Mecca. And she may still exist in undiminished vigor when some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's” (Lord Macaulay).

Then, perhaps, another observer, leaning against the pillars of history, and looking back upon the culture of this age, will realize that only one power of truth may rightly say: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away” – Christ and His Church.

Law and Freedom. An Epilogue

The great Renovator of mankind, in whom the pious Christian sees his God, and in whom the greater part of the modern world, though turned from faith, still sees the ideal of a perfect human being, hence also of true freedom, once spoke the significant words: “Et veritas liberabit vos, and the truth shall make you free” (John viii. 32). As all the words that fell from His lips are the truth for all centuries to come, so are these words pre-eminently true.

There is in our times a strong tension felt between freedom on the one hand, and law and authority on the other; true freedom and true worth it sees too exclusively in the independent assertion of the self-will, and in the unrestrained manifestation of one's strength and energy, while law and authority are looked upon as onerous fetters. Our times do not understand that freedom and human dignity are not opposed to law and obedience, that no other freedom can be intended for man than the voluntary compliance with the law and the standards of order.

All creatures, from the smallest to the largest, are bound by law; none is destined for the eminent isolation of independence. The same law of gravitation that causes the stone to fall, also governs the giants of the skies, and they obey its rule; the same laws that rule the candle-flame, that are at work in the drop of water, also rule the fires of the sun and guide the fates of the ocean. The heart, like all other organs of the human body, is ruled by laws, and medical science, with its institutes and methods, is kept busy to cure the consequences of the disturbance of these laws. Every being has its laws: it must follow them to attain perfection; deviation leads to degeneration.

Thus the decision of the worth and dignity of man does not rest with an unrestrained display of strength, but with order; not with unchecked activity, but with control of his acts and with truth. The floods that break through the dam have force and energy, but being without order they create destruction; the avalanche crashing down the mountain side has force and power, but, free from the law of order, it carries devastation; glowing metal when led into the mould becomes a magnificent bell, while flowing lava brings ruin. Only one dignity and freedom can be destined for man, it consists in voluntarily adhering to warranted laws and authorities.

For him who with conviction and free decision has made the law of thought, faith, and action his own principle, the law has ceased to be a yoke and a burden; it has become his own standard of life, which he loves; it has become the fruit of his conviction, truth has made him free. Ask the virtuoso who obeys the rules of his art whether he considers them fetters; indeed he does not, he has made them his principles. Let us ask of the civilized citizen whether he feels the laws of civilization to be a yoke; he does not, he obeys them of his own free will, they are his own order of life. Unfree, slaves and serfs, will be those only who carry with resentment the burden of the laws they must obey. Unfree feels the savage people fighting against the laws of civilization; unfree the wicked boy to whom discipline is repugnant. It is not the law that makes man unfree, it is his own lawlessness and rebellion.

Nor does submission to the God-given law of the Christian belief make man low or unfree; to those to whom their belief is conviction and life, the suggestion that they are oppressed will sound strange. On the contrary, they feel that this belief fits in harmoniously with the nobler impulses of their thought and will, like the pearl in the shell, like the gem in its setting. Man experiences this when his belief lifts him above the lowlands of his sensual life to mental independence, and frees him from the bondage of his own unruly impulses, that so often seek to control him.

Freiheit sei der Zweck des ZwangesWie man eine Rebe bindet,Dass sie, statt im Staub zu kriechen,Frei sich in die Lüfte windet.

(Freedom be the aim of restraint, just as the vine is tied to the trellis that it may freely rise in the air, instead of crawling in the dust.) This is the freedom of mind, knowing but one yoke, the truth; the freedom that does not bow to error, nor to high sounding phrases, nor to public opinion, nor to the bondage of political life; neither is true freedom shackled by the fetters of one's own lawless impulses. Et veritas liberabit vos.

1

Whenever we use here the word “modern,” we do not take it in the sense of “present,” – the Christian view of the world is also a present one, and is still of the utmost importance, – but in the sense of “new” in contrast to the time-honoured and inherited.

2

The difference between the Protestant and the Catholic manner of reasoning is stated by the convert, Prof. A. von Ruville, as follows:

“My mind had harboured up to now the characteristically Protestant thought that I, from my superior mental standpoint, was going to probe the Catholic Church, that I was going to pass an infallible judgment on her truth or untruth, and this in spite of my being ready to acknowledge the truth in her. But now I became more and more conscious of the fact that it was the Church who had a right to pass judgment on me, that I had to bow to her opinion, that she immeasurably surpassed me in wisdom. Many details, which I was inclined to criticize, demonstrated this to me, for in every instance I recognized that it was my understanding that was at fault, and that what appeared to me as an imperfection was rooted in the deepest truth. In this way I was gradually brought to the real Catholic standpoint, to accept the doctrines immediately as Truth, because they proceeded from the Church, and then to endeavour to understand them thoroughly, and to reap from them the fullest possible harvest of Truth. Formerly, with regard to Protestant doctrines, I always retained my independence and the sovereignty of my judgment. Why should I not have had my own opinion, when every denomination and every theologian had an individual opinion? How different with the Catholic Church. Before her sublime, never varying wisdom, as it is proclaimed by every simple priest, I bowed my knees in humility. Compared to her experience of two thousand years my ephemeral knowledge was a mere nothing” (Back to Holy Church, by Dr. Albert von Ruville, pp. 30, 31).

3

Infallible teachings are often also called dogmas. But they are not always dogmas in the strict sense. In the strict sense dogmas are such truths as are contained in divine revelation, and are proclaimed by the infallible teaching authority of the Church to be believed as such by the faithful. In a broader sense those tenets are often called dogmas which are presented by revelation or by the Church as infallible truths. In this sense all teachings of faith clearly found in Holy Scripture are dogmas, even if not declared by the Church. In this sense Protestants, too, believe in revealed dogmas.

4

“They that have received the faith through the ministry of the Church can never have just cause for changing their faith or calling it into doubt” (Sess. III, ch. 3). The Vatican Council did not thereby mean to say that an exceptional case could not happen where some one, without fault of his own, might fall away from his faith, either on account of insufficient religious instruction, or of natural dullness or exceptional misfortunes in the circumstances of life in which he may be placed. The theologians who worded the decision also say that the Council did not intend to condemn the opinion expressed by many older theologians, that under certain conditions an uneducated Catholic might be led in such way into error as to join another faith without committing a sin. (cf. Granderath, Const. Dog. ss. oec. Concl. Vat. 69).

5

At a certain Austrian university, where the custom obtains that a member of a faculty of the university, in the regular order of the faculties, publishes during the year a book on some study in its particular branch, the turn came to the theological faculty. One of its members then issued a work on moral theology, of course with the ecclesiastical Imprimatur. Upon this being discovered the senate resolved not to acknowledge the book as a university publication, nor to issue it as such, as is usually the custom. They believed they saw in the Imprimatur a degradation of science and a violation of its freedom – a procedure entirely in accord with the traditional narrow-mindedness and intolerance of liberalism.

6

A clear understanding of the case of Galileo has been made possible only since the year 1877, when the papers of the trial were published by two men of opposite religious views, – the Catholic-minded historian, de l'Epinois, and the liberal author, K. Gebler, who in 1876 had already published a work on “Galileo Galilei and the Roman Curia,” in the spirit of the anti-clerical tendency of the times. Yet, in spite of his attitude, he was given free permission to copy the papers – a magnanimity by which the Holy See has earned the gratitude and admiration of every fair-minded lover of history. In more recent times, A. Favaro published, in 1890-1907, a work of twenty volumes containing all the papers relating to the trial of Galileo, “Opere di Galileo Galilei, Edizione Nazionale.” He, too, had access to the ecclesiastical archives, which he acknowledges with thanks. It may be said now that the Galileo case has been settled by documentary evidence.

7

After visiting Thomson at Kreuznach, Helmholtz wrote: “He surpasses all great scientists I have personally met, in acumen, clearness and activity of spirit, so that I felt somewhat dull beside him.” Helmholtz himself (died 1894) has never expressed himself about religion. Absorbed by his scientific work, he seemed to have been indifferent to religion, but according to his biographer his father was a decided theist, and his philosophical views were held in great esteem, and partly subscribed to, by the son. According to Dennert, Helmholtz attended church now and then, and even partook of holy communion. Of decided religious bent of mind was Helmholtz's fellow-countryman, and co-discoverer of the law of energy, Robert Mayer. At the Congress of scientists at Innsbruck, in 1869, Mayer ended his address with the significant words: “Let me in conclusion declare from the bottom of my heart that true philosophy cannot and must not be anything else but propædeutics of the Christian religion.” His letters breathe piety. For a time he had the intention of joining the Catholic Church.

8

Others take refuge in the fantastic theory of an “All-Animation.” According to it all organisms, including trees, shrubs, grasses, are possessed of a soulful sensation and feeling for the purposes they serve, and for the elaborate actions they undertake: this is the reason for their efficacy, not because a wise Creator had arranged them thus. R. H. Francé exclaims triumphantly: “When the powers that be should ask in their dissatisfaction: ‘Where has God a place in your system?’ we can answer calmly: ‘We do not need the hypothesis of a personal God.’ ” God is superfluous – this is the precious gain which this unscientific explanation is to yield.

9

Compare Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum XI (1883, vii.).

10

L. M. Hartmann, Theodor Mommsen (1908), 81. The author of the biography is a Jew. There is a much-circulated story, alleged to come from F. X. Kraus. Mommsen is said to have told Kraus, inasmuch as neither the origin, nor nature, nor the spread of Christianity can be explained by natural causes, and since he, in his capacity of historian, could never acknowledge anything supernatural, therefore the fourth volume will remain unwritten.

11

Nietzsche, “Thus spoke Zarathustra.”

12

“Veritati ut possetis acquiescere, humilitate opus erat, quae civitati, vestrae difficillime persuaderi potest” (De civit. Dei, X, 29).

13

Plato, Phil. 6 c. Similarly Pythagoras, Aristotle, and Cicero.

14

Dial. c. Tryph. 2.

15

“But for the retention of names and terms Harnack leaves nothing of the specific nature of Christianity,” admits the Protestant Professor of Theology, W. Walther, in his book, “Harnack's Wesen des Christentums” (1901).

16

Uhlich, founder of a community of free-thinkers, who died in 1873, thus describes his evolution from rationalism to atheism: “At the beginning I could say: We hold fast to Jesus, to Him who stood too high to be called a mere man. Ten years later I could say: God, virtue, immortality – these three are the eternal foundation of religion. And after ten more years I could issue a declaration wherein God was mentioned no more.” Similar progress in spiritual disintegration has been shown by Liberalism in recent years: first it partially abandoned Christian dogma, without however quite breaking loose from it; in the eighteenth century rationalistic enlightenment tore loose from all revelation, adhering only to natural religion: to-day even this is lost.

17

Dr. Spencer Jones, an Episcopal clergyman, says in his book, “England and the Holy See”: “For the Episcopal Church the junction with Rome, with its sharply defined dogmas, its supreme ministry, and its firm leadership, is a question of life. More and more the supernatural belief is replaced by individual opinions, a condition which in itself causes faith to disappear. A condition like the present, making it possible that in one and the same congregation the most pronounced contrariety of opinions in respect to most essential tenets, as well as a general confusion of minds, is not only tolerated, but directly welcomed, such a condition cannot endure in the long run.”

18

A French author, G. Goyau, states with truth: “What makes the (Catholic) Church lovable in the eyes of thinking minds outside of the Church, is just her uncompromising attitude. They see a Church steadfast, permanent, imperturbable. The stumbling block of yore has become for them an isle of safety. They are thankful to Rome for holding before their eyes the Christianity, instead of giving them the choice of several kinds of Christianity, including kinds still unknown, which they undoubtedly themselves may discover, if so inclined. They welcome the Roman Church as the ‘Teacher of Faith’ and ‘Conqueror of Errors,’ and, to quote more of the forcible language of the Protestant de Pressensé: ‘they are disgusted with a Christianity for the lowest bidder, but are impressed by the rigid inflexibility of Catholicism…’ ” (Autour du Catholicisme social. I. 1896).

19

“The Independent” (New York) of Feb. 2, 1914, reports under the head freedom of teaching the dismissal of a professor from the Presbyterian University at Easton, Pa. After quoting from the charter article VIII, which provides “that persons of every religious denomination shall be capable of being elected Trustees, nor shall any person, either as principal, professor, tutor or pupil be refused admittance into said college, or denied any of the privileges, immunities or advantages thereof, for or on account of his sentiments in matters of religion,” the report goes on to say: “it appears however, from the investigations of the committee, that President Warfield insists that the instruction in philosophy and psychology has to be such, as, in his opinion, accords with the most conservative form of Presbyterian theology.”

20

Prof. Chr. von Ehrenfels, Sexualethik. Similar passages might be quoted from numerous other books by college-professors.