ENCYCLICAL LETTER Of our Most Holy Father Pius X

New Zealand Tablet, 22 July 1909, Page 1130

ENCYCLICAL LETTER Of our Most Holy Father Pius X

BY DIVINE PROVIDENCE POPE (Concluded from last week.) Union the -Great Bulwark of the Church. Certainly it is a wonderful thing that the union of the Bishops and the faithful with the Roman Pontiff has drawn ever more and more close amid the hurtling of the storms that have been let loose on Christianity through the ages, and in our own times it has become so unanimous and so warm that its divine character is more apparent than eyer before. It is indeed Our greatest consolation, as it is the glory and the invincible bulwark of the Church. But its very force makes it all the more an object of envy to the demon and of hatred to the world, which knows nothing similar to it in earthly societies, and finds no explanation of it in political and human reasonings, seeing that it is the fulfilment of Christ's sublime prayer at the Last Supper. But, Venerable Brothers, it behoves us to strive by all means to preserve this divine union and render it ever more intimate and cordial, fixing our gaze not on human considerations, but on those that are divine, in order that we may be all one thing alone in Christ. By developing this noble effort we shall fulfil ever better our sublime mission, which is that of continuing and propagating the work of Christ, and of His Kingdom on earth. This, indeed, is why the Church throughout the ages continues to repeat the loving prayer, which is also the warmest aspiration of Our heart : ' Holy Father, keep them in Thy name, whom Thou hast given me, that they may be one, as wo also are.' This effort is necessary not only to oppose the assaults from without of those who fight openly against the liberty and the rights of the Church, but also in order to meet the,i dangers from within, arising from that second kind of war which We deplored above when We made mention of those misguided persons who are trying by their cunning systems to overthrow from the foundations the very constitution

and essence of the Church, to stain the purity of her doctrine, and destroy her entire discipline. For even still there continues to circulate that poison which has been inoculated into many even among the clergy, and especially the young clergy, who have, as We have said, become infected by the pestilential atmosphere, in their unbridled craving for novelty, which is drawing them to the abyss and drowning them. The Conflict Between False Science and Faith. Then again, by a deplorable aberration, the very progress, good in itself, of positive science and material prosperity gives occasion and pretext for a display of intolerable arrogance towards divinely revealed truth on the part of many weak and intemperate minds. But these should rather remember the many mistakes and the frequent contradictions made by the followers of rash novelties in those questions of a speculative and practical order most vital for man ; and realise that human pride is punished by never being able to be coherent with itself and by suffering shipwreck without ever sighting the port of truth. They are not able to profit by their own experience to humble themselves and 'to destroy the counsels and every height that exalteth itself against the knowledge .of God, and brings into captivity every understanding even unco the obedience of Christ.' Nay, their very arrogance has led them into the othei extreme, and their philosophy throwing doubt on everything in darkness has involved them ; hence the present profession of agnosticism with other absurd doctrines springing from an infinite series of systems in discord with one another and with, right reason ; so that ' they have become vain in their thoughts — for professing themselves be wise they became fools.' But unfortunately tlieir grandiloquent phrases and their promises of a new wisdom, fallen as it were from heaven, and of new methods of thought, have found favor with many young men, as those of the Manicheans found favor with Augustine, and have retiirned these aside, more or less unconsciously, from the right road. But concerning such pernicious masters of an insane knowledge, of their aims, their illusions, their erroneous and disastrous systems, We have spoken at great length in Our Encyclical Letter of September 8, 1907, Pascendi dominici gregis. The False Systems of Anselm's Time." Here it is well to note that if the dangers We have mentioned are more serious and more imminent in our own days, they are not altogether different from those that threatened the doctrine of the Church in the time < f St. Anselm, and that we may find in his labors as Doctor almost the same help and comfort for the safeguarding of the truth as we found in his apostolic firmness for the defence of the liberty and rights of the Church. Without entering here in detail into the intellectual state of the clergy and people in that distant age, the A -e was a notable danger in a "two-fold excess to which the intellects of the time were prone. There was at the time a class of light-minded an 3 vain men, fed on a superficial erudition, who became incredibly puffed up with their undigested culture, and allowed themselves to be led away by a simulacrum of philosophy and dialectics. In their inane fallacy which they called by the name of science, '-they despised the sacred authority, dared with impious temerity to dispute one or other of the dogmas professed by Catholic faith... and in their foolish pride considered anything they could net understand as impossible, instead of confessing with humble wisdom that there might be many things beyond th« 3 reach of their comprehension... For there are some who immediately they have begun to grow the . horns of an overweening knowledge — not knowing that when a person thinks he knows something he does not yet know in what manner he should know it — before they have grown spiritual wings through firmness in the faith, are wont to rise presumptuously to the highest questions of the faith. Thus it happens that while... against all right rules they endeavor to rise prematurely by their intelligence, their lack of intelligence brings them down to manifold errors.' And of such as these we have many painful examples under our eyes! Others again there were 1 of a more timid nature, who in their terror at the many cases of those who had made shipwreck of the faith, and fearing the danger bf the science that puffeth up, went so far as to exclude altogether the xise of philosophy, if not of, all rational discussion of the sacred doctrines. The Via Media Between Presumption and Negligence. Midway between these two excesses stands the Catholic practice, which, while it abhors the presumption of the first-class who ' puffed up like bladders with the wind of vanity ' (according to the phrase of Gregory XIV. in the succeeding age) ' went beyond the true limits in their efforts

to establish the faith by natural reason, adulterating the word of God with the figments of the philosopher,' so too it condemns the negligence of the second class in their excessive neglect of true investigation and the absence rf all desire in them f to draw profit from the faith for their intelligence,' especially when their office requires of them to defend the Catholic faith against the errors that arise on all sides-. Auselm as the Precursor of Thomas and Bonaventure. For this defence, it may well be said that Ahselm was raised up by God to point out by his example, his words, and his writings, the safe road, to unseal for the common good the' springs of Christian wisdom and to be the guide, and rule of those Catholic teachers who after him taught ' the sacred letters by the method of the school,' and who thus came rightly to be esteemed and celebrated as their precursor. Not, indeed, that the Doctor of Aosta reached all at once the heights of theological and philosophical speculation, or the reputation of the two supreme masters, Thomas and Bonaventure. The later fruits of the wisdom of these last did not ripen but with time and the collaboration of many doctors. Anselm himself, with that great modesty so characteristic of the truly wise, and with all his learning and- perspicacity, never published any writings except such as were called forth by circumstances, or when compelled thereto by some authority, and in those he did publish he protests that ' if ther^ is anything that calls for correction he does not refuse the correction ;' nay, when the question is a debated one, and not connected with the faith, he tells his disciple : ' You must not so cling to what we have said as to abide by it obstinately, when others with more weighty, arguments succeed in overthrowing ours and establishing opinions against them; should that happen you will, not deny at least that what we have said has been of profit for exercise in controversy.' Yet Anselm accomplished far more than he ever expected or than others expected of him. He secured a position in which his merits were not dimmed by the glory of those that came after him, not even of the great Thomas,' even when the latter declined to accept all his conclusions and treated more clearly and accurately questions already treated by him. To Anselm belongs the distinction of having opened the road to speculation, of removing the doubts of the timid, the dangers of the incautious, and the* injuries done by the quarrelsome and the sophistical, ' the heretical dialecticians ' of his time as he rightly calls them, in whom reason was the slave of the imagination and of vanity. Against these latter he observes that ' while all are to be warned to enter with the utmost circumspection upon questions affecting the Sacred Scriptures, these dialecticians of our time are to be completely debarred from the discussion of spiritual questions.' And the reason he assigns for this is especially applicable now to those who imitate them under our eyes, repeating their old errors : ' For in their souls, reason, which should be the king and the guide of all that is in man, is so mixed up with corporal imaginations that it is impossible to disentangle it from these, nor is itself able to distinguish from them the things that it alone and pure should contemplate.' Appropriate, too, for our own times are those words of his in which he ridicules those false philosophers, ' wlio because they are not able to understand what they believe dispute the truth of the faith itself, confirmed by the Holy Fathers, just as if bats and owls who see the heaven only by night were to dispute concerning the rays of the sun at noon, against eagles who gaze at the sun unblinkingly.' The Domains of Philosophy and of Theology. Hence too he condemns, here or elsewhere, the perverse opinion of those who conceded too much to philosophy by attributing to it the right to invade the domain of theology. In refuting this foolish' theory he defines well ■ the confines proper to each, and hints sufficiently clearly at the functions of reason in the things of divinely revealed doctrine : ' Our faith,' he says, ' must be defended by reason against the impious.' But how and how far? The question is answered in the words that follow : 'It must be shown to them reasonably how unreasonable is their contempt of us.' The chief office, therefore, of philosophy is to show us the reasonableness of out faith and the consequent obligation of believing the divine authority proposing to us the profoundest mysteries, which with all signs of credibility that testify, to them are supremely worthy of being believed. Far different is the proper function of Christian theology, which is based on the fact of divine revelation and renders more solid in the faith those who already profess to enjoy the honor of the name of Christian. ' Hence it is altogether clear that no Christian should dispute as to how that is not which the Catholic Church believes with the heart and confesses with the moubh, but even holding beyond all doubt the same faith, loving and living according to it, must seek as far as reason is

able, how it is. If he is able to understand, let him return ''thanks, let him not prepare his horns for attack, but bow his head in reverence.' When, therefore, theologians search and the faithful ask for reasons concerning our faith, it is not for the purpose of founding on them their faith, which has for its foundation the authority of God revealing; yet, as Anselm puts it, ' as right order requires that we believe the profundities of the faith before we presume to discuss them with our reason, so it seems to me to be negligence if after we have been confirmed in the faith we do not strive to understand what we believe.' And here Anselm means that intelligence of which the Vatican Council speaks. Fot, as he shows elsewhere, ' although since the time of the Apostles many of our holy Fathers and Doctors say so many and such great things of the reason of our faith... yet they were not able to say all they might have said had they lived longer; and the reason of the truth is so ample and so deep that it can never be exhausted by mortals; and the Lord does not cease to impart the gifts of grace in his Church, with whom He promises to be until the consummation of tho world. And to say nothing of the other texts in which the Sacred Scripture invites us to investigate reason, in the one in which it says that if you do not believe you will not understand, it plainly admonishes us to extend the intention to the intellect, while it teaches us how we are to advance towards it [aperte nos monet intentionem ad intellectum extendere, cum docet qualiter ad ilium debeamus proficere].' Nor is the last reason he alleges to be neglected : 'In the midst between faith and vision ;s the intellectual knowledge which is within our reach in this life, and the more one can advance in this the nearer he approaches to the vision, for which we all yearn.' The Scholastic Method With these and the like principles Anselm laid tho foundations of the true principles of philosophical and theological studies which were by other most learned men, the princes of scholasticism, and chief among them tha Doctor of Aquinas, followed, developed, illustrated and perfected to the great honor and protection of the Church. If We have insisted so willingly on this distinction of Anselm, it is in order to have a new and much-desired occasion, Venerable Brothers, to inculcate upon you 10 see to it that you bring back youth, especially among the clergy, to the most wholesome springs of Christian wisdom, first opened by the Doctor of Aosta and abundantly enriched by Aquinas. On this head remember always the instructions of Our Predecessor Leo XIII. of happy memeory and those We have Ourself given more than once, and again in the above-mentioned Encyclical ' Pascendi donainici gregis.' Bitter experience only too clearly proves every day the loss and the ruin ensuing from the neglect of these studies, or from the pursuit of them without a clear and sure method; while many, before being fitted or prepared, presumed to discuss the deepest questions of the faith. Deploring this evil with Anselm, We repeat the strong recommendations made by him : ' Let no one rashly plunge into the intricate questions of • divine things -until he has first acquired, with firmness in the faith, gravity of conduct and of wisdom, lest while discussing with uncautious levity amid the manifold twistings of sophistry he fall into the toils of some tenacious error.' A.nd this same incautious levity, when heated, as so often is the case, at the fire of the passions proves the total ruin of serious studies and of the integrity of doctrine. Because, puffed up with that foolish pride, lamented by Anselm in the heretical dialecticians of his time, they despise the sacred authorities of the Holy Sciptures, and of the Fathers and Doctors, concerning which a more modest genius would be glad to give us instead the respectful words of Anselm : ' Neither in our own time nor in the future do we ever hope to seek their like in the contemplation of the truth.' Nor do they hold in greater account the authority of the Church and of the Supreme Pontiff whenever efforts are made to bring them to a better sense, although at times as far as words go they are lavish of promises of submission as long as they can hope to hide themselves behind these and gain credit and protections. This contempt almost bars the way to all well-founded hope of the conversion of the erring; while, they refuse obedience to him 'to -whom Divine Providence as to the Lord and Father of the whole Church in its pilgrimage on earth... has entrusted the custody of Christian life and faith and the government of His Church; wherefore when anything arises in the Church against the Catholic faith to no other authority but his is to be rightly referred for correction and to no other with such certainty as to him has it been shown what answer is to be made to error in order that it -may be examined by his prudence.' And would to God that these poor wanderers on whose lips one so often bears the fair words of sincerity, conscience, religious

experience, the faith that is felt and lived, and so on, learned their lesson from Anselm, understood his holy teachings, imitated his glorious example, and above all took deeply to heart those words of his : ' First the heart is to be purified by faith, and first the eyes are to be illuminated by the observance of the precepts of the Lord... and first with humble obedience to the testimonies of God we must become small to learn wisdom... and not only when faith and obedience to the commandments are removed is the mind hindered from ascending to the intelligence of higher truths, but often enough the intelligence that has been given is taken away and faith is overthrown, when right conscience is neglected.' But if the erring continue obstinately to scatter the seeds of dissension and error, to waste the patrimony of the sacred doctrine of the Church, to attack discipline, to heap contempt on venerated customs, 'to destroy which is a species of heresy ' in the phrase of St. Anselm, and to destroy the constitution of the Church in its very foundations, then all the more strictly must we watch, Venerable Brothers, and keep away from Our flock, and. especially from youth, which is the most tender part of it, so deadly a pest. Thiis grace We implore of God with incessant prayers, interposing the most powerful patronage of the August Mother of God and the intercession of the blessed citizens of the Church triumphant, St. Anselm especially, shining light of Christian wisdom, incorrupt guardian and valiant defender of all the sacred rights of the Church, to whom We would here, in conclusion, address the same words that Our Holy Predecessor Gregory VII. wrote to him during his lifetime : ' Since the sweet odor of your good works has reached Us, We return due thanks for "them to God, and We embrace you heartily in the love of Christ, holding it for certain that by your example the Church of God has been greatly benefited, and that by your prayers and those of men like you she may even be liberated from the dangers that hang over her, with the mercy of Christ to succor us.' Hence We beg your fraternity to implore God assiduously to relieve the Church and Us who govern it, albeit unworthily, from the pressing assaults of the heretics and lead these from their errors to the way of truth.' Supported by this great protection, and trusting h\ your co-operation, We bestow the Apostolic Benediction with all affection in the Lord, as a pledge of heavenly grace and in testimony of Our good will, on all of you, Venerable Brothers, and on the clergy and people entrusted to each' ofyou. i Given at Rome at St. Peter's on the Feast of St. Anselm, April 21, 1909, in the eighth year of Our Pontificate. PIUS X., POPE.