Michael Davies

Humanism And Its Consequences

UNTIL THE RENAISSANCE Christian civilization had been essentially God-centered. The great heresies were concerned with God, with His dignity, with His nature. Arius considered it a blasphemy to affirm that Jesus Christ was the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, equal to the Father in all respects. St. Athanasius considered it a blasphemy to deny that this was the case. Catholics and Arians believed the matter to be so important that they were, if necessary, prepared to kill or be killed for their beliefs. The same was true where other heresies were concerned—Nestorianism or Monophysitism. God was also the focus of art and of scholarship. Music and literature, architecture, painting, drama, philosophy, cosmology, and above all, theology, the queen of the sciences, were centered upon the Creator. The Creator-creature relationship was axiomatic to every aspect of human thought. God is our Creator and as His creatures, we are inferior to Him, dependent upon Him, we are bound to obey His laws and, while He is perfect, we are less than perfect.

The word "renaissance" is French, and means "rebirth." The rebirth in question was that of interest in classical studies which began in the fourteenth century. The great treasures of Greek and Roman literature were considered "human" rather than "divine" studies. They were human and not divine in being outside the scope of Hebrew and Christian literature about God, the sacred writings, and their commentaries. The scholars engaged in these "human" studies became known as "humanists." They examined the writings of such authors as Cicero, Virgil, Horace, Seneca, Plutarch, and Pliny, locating manuscripts, comparing them for authenticity, establishing the most reliable version, studying their language and style. Humanism became a full-scale science, that of philology, comparative linguistics, literature, analysis of dates and other disciplines. Initially, there was no conflict between humanism and religion; many of the leading humanists were ecclesiastics.

By the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century there had been a change of emphasis. The critical attitude to classical texts was also applied to Christian texts and Christian beliefs. Humanism had come to be associated with an independent stance towards Christian doctrine. The University of Padua exerted an important influence in this respect as it was a center for Averroism. Averroes was a twelfth-century Muslim philosopher who originated what became known as the doctrine of double truth. Faith is true in its own domain, and reason in its own. Only what is scientifically demonstrable is of interest to reason, and what could only be known by faith was isolated from rational discourse and left in a compartment of its own. While many of the later humanists were devout Christians, others, to all intents and purposes, were atheists. But in both cases the focus of their attention was man, and what he could achieve through the rational sciences, which was nothing less than Utopia, a paradise on earth. The Creator-creature relationship was not formally denied—most humanists were sincere Christians or at least paid lip-service to Christianity—but for practical purposes, man was seen as the focus of truth in a world of which he is the master, a world which he had the ability to subdue and perfect. Thus, to all intents and purposes, humanists saw man as an autonomous being. Without formally repudiating the notion of God, they behaved as if man had no need of Him. In practical terms, this led to the divinization of man. The more God was diminished, the more man exalted himself, the more he made himself his own god. In his book Christian Humanism, Professor Thomas Molnar provides us with the following definition: "Humanism was a doctrine, or network of doctrines, putting man in place of God, and endowing him with virtues he was inevitably to abuse."

Rationalism

This brief examination of renaissance humanism has, of necessity, been oversimplified. The true import of the movement was implicit rather than explicit. The full implications of renaissance humanism were eventually made explicit by its true heirs, the nineteenth-century rationalists. Rationalism was the inevitable conclusion of humanism. A rationalist (ratio=reason) is a man who makes his own reason the arbiter of what he will or will not believe, of how he will or will not behave. He will not submit to beliefs and standards imposed from anything beyond himself, and so there is no room for God, no place for a Creator-creature relationship in his scheme of things. Protestantism provides a direct link between renaissance humanism and nineteenth-century rationalism. The sixteenth-century Protestants and their successors today are, in the final analysis, rationalists. They would deny this on the basis that they do submit themselves to an external authority, the Bible. But if pressed, they would have to admit that what they mean by this is the Bible interpreted by their own reason. For a Catholic, the Church is Mater et Magistra, Mother and Teacher. The teaching authority of the Church, the Magisterium, is able to provide an authoritative answer to any disputed point of doctrine, an infallible answer where necessary. A Catholic, if he wishes to remain a Catholic, will submit to the Magisterium. Luther substituted his personal interpretation of the Bible for that of the Magisterium, but he was furious when other Protestants had the temerity to differ from his own theories. He saw nothing incongruous in expecting others to treat his opinions as infallible when he had repudiated the infallible authority of the Church. The history of Protestantism has been one of fragmentation from its very inception. Within decades, the leaders of the constantly dividing sects felt more animosity towards each other than they did towards the Pope. Every Protestant is the ultimate arbiter for himself of what the Bible does or does not mean. In other words, like it or not, every Protestant is his own pope.

The Catholic Church teaches that when Our Lord said, "This is My Body," He meant precisely that. The Catholic Church teaches that when the Bible states that Our Lord was born of a virgin without the intervention of a human father, it means precisely that. The sixteenth-century Reformers rejected the first dogma but accepted the latter, and what was the criterion they used? Their own reason, of course! The first dogma they found irrational and so they rejected it; the second they found reasonable and accepted it. They would, in fact, have been scandalized at the very idea of any Christian refusing to accept the virgin birth in its literal sense, but the nineteenth-century rationalists did, and what was the criterion they used? Their own reason, of course! There is no logical justification for the sixteenth-century reformers to deny to the nineteenth-century rationalists, their true descendants, the right to accept or reject doctrine using the same criteria that they had used.

Modernism

Catholics living in a pluralistic society cannot remain uninfluenced by the predominating trends of thought within that society. The problem for the Christian since the day of Pentecost has been to live in the world but not to be of the world. We are merely sojourners, wayfarers, upon this earth; heaven is our true home. But even the greatest saint finds it hard to pass through this world unscathed, and for the majority of us who are not saints, the question at issue is not whether we are influenced by the world, but the extent to which it influences us. This is particularly true for Catholic academics. They were regarded as second-class scholars by their Protestant colleagues in nineteenth-century Germany, and the same could be said of most Western countries until the Second Vatican Council. If, as a result of his researches, a Protestant scholar decided that the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection were symbolic rather than historic events, he was able to publish his conclusions with little or no fear of sanctions being taken against him. A Catholic scholar has no such freedom. The Virgin Birth and Resurrection are defined dogmas which no one who wishes to remain a Catholic can deny. Many Catholic scholars resented this; they envied Protestant theologians their total academic freedom. What they failed to realize was that submission to the Church's Magisterium is a liberating act. A theologian who submits to it will be free from the fear of falling into error and leading others after him. But, alas, the approval of the world seems sweet. At the end of the nineteenth century, some Catholic scholars repudiated the guidance of the Magisterium. They believed, and initially they were probably sincere, that they were the men who would save the Church from the consequences of her folly in not accepting the conclusions of what had become known as the "higher criticism." If the Church was to have a future, if she was to appear credible to twentieth-century man, then she must drop her obscurantist attitudes, come out of the ghetto, and come to terms with the findings of science and modern civilization in general. These men were the Modernists, described by Pope St. Pius X as the most pernicious enemies of the Church, putting into operation their plans for her undoing, not from without, but from within the Church.

A Saint Intervenes

St. Pius X realized that his first duty as Pope was to guard the Deposit of Faith, no matter what the consequences. He dealt with the Modernists first by attempting persuasion, then placing their books on the Index, then by condemning their errors in his Syllabus Lamentabili and the Encyclical Pascendi, both published in 1907. Those Modernists who would not submit were excommunicated, and to keep those who had not made their opinions public from teaching in Catholic institutions, he instituted the Anti-Modernist Oath in 1910. This brought the fury of so-called modern civilization down upon him but he had succeeded in purging the Church from the public expression of Modernism for three decades. It had re-surfaced again by the nineteen fifties and prompted Pope Pius XII to publish his Encyclical Humani Generis.

Democracy and Divine Authority

Another great evil condemned by the Popes, and a logical consequence of rationalism, is that of democracy. Frequent papal condemnations of democracy have caused no little bewilderment to contemporary Catholics. We all tend to take it for granted that democracy is a good thing, and that in their condemnations, the popes were simply the children of their age, sharing the attitudes of their age. This is because we confuse democracy with universal suffrage; we believe that democracy means the right of every adult to have a choice in choosing the government of his country. But democracy in the sense condemned by the popes is not concerned with how a government is chosen but in whose name it governs. Catholic teaching is that those who govern, whether an absolute monarch or the party which wins an honestly conducted general election, derive their authority from God. God, the popes, teach us, is the Source of all authority. No rulers have the right to make laws which conflict with His eternal law. Thus rulers who legalize divorce, abortion, contraception, unnatural vice, or any form of discrimination based on race or class among citizens of their country, are abusing their authority. The Declaration of the Rights of Man, enacted by the victorious revolutionaries in France, constitutes a calculated repudiation of the Catholic position. It ignores the rights of God. Some of its articles would be acceptable to Catholics, but others would not. The French Revolution made what was implicit in renaissance humanism explicit. God was cast down from His throne and replaced by man. Authority was located in the people; whatever the majority among the people approved was to be considered acceptable. There would be no other criterion of right and wrong. There were no moral absolutes. The ultimate logic of this blasphemous concept of democracy is apparent everywhere in the moral decadence of the Western democracies today.

Marxism

Marxism is another explicit manifestation of what was implicit in renaissance humanism. It is, in fact, the ultimate stage in man's self-glorification. Renaissance humanists had theorized about constructing a Utopia, a paradise on earth. Marxists have undertaken the task as a practical proposition. Universal happiness will be brought about by creating an economic system which caters to every possible material need of every citizen, and when this has happened religion will wither away. Under previous economic systems, the Marxists argue, the mass of the people had no hope of happiness on earth and so they projected their needs and desires into an illusory life to come. Religion was an opium fed to the people by those who wished to keep them in a state of subservience and deprivation. The fundamental axiom of Marxism's theory of dialectical materialism is that nothing exists beyond matter. Marxism is based on atheism, the repudiation of God.

Occult Forces

An unknown factor in the gradual undermining of Christianity which has followed the Renaissance is the influence of occult forces conspiring directly to destroy the Church. Some Catholics see the hand of Freemasonry in every adverse event and trend, others scoff at the idea that an organized conspiracy exists. It is known from Masonic documents that they intended to infiltrate the Church and destroy her from within; it is also known that they intended to use moral corruption as a means of undermining Christian society. But because Masonry is an occult organization, a secret society, it is impossible to decide or to prove the extent to which present events are a direct result of its machinations. What cannot be denied is that what Masons said would happen is happening, but conclusive proof that it has happened as a direct result of the masonic conspiracy is hard to come by. Masons played a key role in the French—and most other—revolutions.

It should be added that, as the popes have always taken pains to point out, not all Masons are engaged in a conspiracy against the Church. In English-speaking countries, in particular, most Masons, especially those in the lower degrees, are members for business and social reasons; they think of Masonry as being no more than a philanthropic mutual benefit society. Such men are frequently practicing Protestants, including many clerics, and they insist on the essentially religious nature of Masonry. But Masonry is syncretic; it will not postulate one faith as having greater validity than another, which is equivalent to a denial of truth in any religion. Its Great Architect is no more than a symbol for the common consciousness of mankind working inexorably towards a condition of universal brotherhood under masonic control.

Pope Leo XIII Speaks Out

Pope Leo XIII condemned Masonry in his Encyclical Humanum Genus. Such is the influence of Masonry in Britain that the English hierarchy did not publish an English edition, and has never done so. Pope Leo condemned Masonry as naturalism, a term which can be taken as broadly equivalent to rationalism in the sense condemned by Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors. Condemned proposition number three reads as follows:

The naturalism which Pope Leo XIII condemned in Humanum Genus was implicit in renaissance humanism, in Protestantism, and in the theories of the Catholic Modernists. It was made explicit in the declarations of the French Revolution, and even more so in Marxism. It is, in its essence, a denial that the Son of God became incarnate and founded a visible Church into which He wishes all men to be incorporated so that they can be happy with Him forever in the life to come; and a denial above all that He entrusted the care of this Church to a living Magisterium which would guide men in the truth and must be believed and obeyed in virtue of its authority, an authority derived directly from Christ: "He who hears you hears Me."

The naturalists, the liberals, the Marxists, the Protestants, and the Modernists, all reply to Our Lord's injunction by saying, "No!" Their response is not a new one. It is not original. It is the response of Lucifer whose pride would not allow him to submit to the authority of God: "Non serviam!—I will not serve!" If we wish to find a common factor uniting all the individuals, sects, movements, parties, and occult societies which have been engaged since the Renaissance, consciously or unconsciously, in the process of dethroning God in favor of man, then that unifying factor is Satan, the adversary of God and our adversary, who goes about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. His principal weapon is the exploitation of the weakness in us which caused his own downfall, that of pride. Referring to the Catholic Modernists, St. Pius X wrote:

In Humanum Genus, Pope Leo XIII condemned Masonic naturalism in terms which bring together all the facets of the rationalism set in motion by renaissance humanism:

The key phrase in this passage is that "they deny the existence of any teacher who ought to be believed by reason of the authority of his office." This anti-authoritarian attitude received considerable impetus in Western Europe as a result of the Second World War and the expansion of totalitarian communism. The very concept of authority came to be looked upon with disfavor, which is not really surprising in view of the repellent nature of the fascist and communist dictatorships. There has been a marked aversion for authority among young people in many countries from the fifties onwards, an attitude which is a reflection of the same trend among the liberal thinkers who exercise such influence in the media. The Second World War has also led, again not surprisingly, to a widespread desire for unity and brotherhood—particularly among the European countries which had suffered so much during the war and which were to be so influential during the Second Vatican Council, notably France, Holland, and Germany. Anything which caused division was regarded with disfavor, ecumenism was the order of the day. Doctrines which divided Christians should be minimized or discarded; it was what united the different communions that mattered.

It was stated earlier that Catholics living in a pluralistic society cannot remain uninfluenced by the predominating trends of thought within that society. Among the most influential attitudes within the Western democracies, attitudes which most Catholics had come to accept, consciously or unconsciously, were the following:

If we examine these attitudes it becomes clear at once that they are concerned almost exclusively with this world, with man; they are unconcerned for the world to come, with God. The Creator-creature relationship is not acceptable to "man come of age." It was inevitable that bishops living in countries where some or all of these attitudes were taken for granted by most citizens would be influenced by them to a certain degree. It was equally inevitable that the Second Vatican Council would also be unable to escape their influence.