Given from the Catholic Broadcasting Station 2SM Sydney Australia
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Catholic theology has always classed superstition as sinful, andhas labored to stamp it out. That ignorant people are apt to minglesuperstition with religion is quite true. But superstition is notnecessarily associated with religion. It is a strange tendency inhuman beings, due to the limitations of the human mind, which isapt to break out at any time. The man who advertises lucky charmstoday is as sure of a harvest as ever. As regards your estimate ofthe "dark ages," it is necessary to make a distinction.Intellectually, the thirteenth and fourteenth and fifteenthcenturies do not constitute the "dark ages." The real"dark ages" are to be found between the sixth and theeleventh centuries. From the moral point of view I am willing toadmit that the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries could rightly bethus called. Side by side with the revival of art and literaturedue to intense study of the classics there was a revival also ofpagan morality in place of Christian virtue. Intellectual interestin a sensual philosophy very easily ends in a greater interest in sensuality. Men, interested in the beautiful style ofthe pagan classics, absorbed the immoral poison of what theycontained and they fell into vices quite at variance with Christianstandards. Men began to write filth beautifully only to rendertheir beautiful souls filthy. The Renaissance had very ill effectsupon the religious lives of both clergy and laity, and rendered thetimes very dark indeed from a moral point of view.
That is a travesty of Scholasticism. Scholasticism, or thephilosophy of the Schoolmen of the Middle Ages, can be divided intofour periods. It arose between the ninth and the eleventhcenturies; developed rapidly during the twelfth century; attainedperfection during the thirteenth century with the great St. Thomasof Aquin; and then fell into decline in the fourteenth andfifteenth centuries. In this last period the best traditions ofScholasticism were forgotten, and would-be philosophers were nolonger creative thinkers, but rather fought amongst themselves forthe honor of the systems they had adopted rather than for thetruth. This led to a lot of hair-splitting debates, and when theRenaissance came, men judged Scholasticism by the type they foundprevailing, making no distinction between the later and the earlierSchoolmen. It was a superficial judgment; and superficial writerstoday still repeat the foolish statement that the Schoolmen wastedtime debating about the number of angels who could sit on the pointof a needle. That is simply a caricature. Men who really knowsomething of history have realized that the Scholastic philosophymust be judged by its uncorrupted form in the golden age of thethirteenth century, and not by those who, in the period of decline,were forsaking its true principles. So Professor Whitehead, Fellowof Trinity College, Cambridge, writes in his book, "Scienceand the Modern World," that "the greatest contribution ofmediaevalism to the formation of the scientific movement was theinexpugnable belief that every detailed occurrence can becorrelated in a perfectly definite manner, exemplifying generalprinciples." And he adds that to the Schoolmen is due"faith in the very possibility of science." Those wordsof Professor Whitehead are more valuable than the verdict ofnonentities. It may be that modern materialists wish to live onlyby their senses which they have in common with animals, and refuseto accept as facts all that is not subject to sense-experience. Butthe Schoolmen preferred reason, and felt obliged to account forfacts made known by a revelation from God which reason justified.Knowing thus of the existence of purely spiritual beings calledangels, they quite reasonably discussed their relation to space,just as much a problem as the fact that one can get more and moreideas into his head without having to enlarge his head to providespace-accommodation for them. But the verdict that angels, likeideas, do not occupy space to the exclusion of others is aperfectly rational conclusion which irrational people too easilydismiss with a contemptuous reference to angels sitting on thepoint of a needle. No Schoolman was such a fool as to think thatany bodily posture was proper to an angel. A childish want ofthought is the chief characteristic of many modern supposedly wisemen when they begin to discuss a Scholastic philosophy of whichthey know practically nothing.