Radio Replies Vol 4 - Catholic Apologetics Online

He did not mean that reason alone can account for an act of divine faith. Such faith has as its motive, not any merely human arguments, but the authority of God who has revealed a given doctrine to be true. At the same time, human reason has rights which cannot be ignored. It justly demands that before we make an act of such faith, we have rational certainty that there is a God; that He has given a revelation; and that the particular doctrine we are asked to believe on God's word is part of that revelation. In other words, reason provides the rational foundation for a faith by which, under the influence of divine grace, we will to believe most firmly whatever God has revealed, however mysterious it may be, precisely because God has revealed it.

It is true that if people ignore the demands of reason and go only by imagination and feelings they are likely to fall into the most extravagant forms of error. The Mormons, the Seventh Day Adventists, Mrs. Eddy's Christian Scientists, the Witnesses of Jehovah, "Father Divine" who actually claims to be God, and many other peculiar sects, can find disciples from amongst those who are prepared to divorce religion from reason and intelligence. The Catholic Church has always condemned such an irrational attitude. A Catholic is never asked to treat his reason within its own legitimate field of operation with anything but the utmost respect.

No. Usually innate tendencies are those instincts which are natural to man. But the New Testament clearly shows that faith in Christ is not an innate natural tendency. "No man can come to me," Christ Himself said, "unless it be given him by My Father." Jn., VI, 66. Moreover, those who have received that gift of faith can definitely lose it. They are in no way compelled to retain it, whether they will to do so or not. Faith ever remains, under the influence of divine grace, the deliberate choice of an intelligent man's will. As man's will is free he can at any time reverse his choice and deliberately choose not to believe.

Christ was there quoting words from Isaias the prophet which demand an interpretation in keeping with the Hebrew mentality. He was, in reality, stating a fact and giving a warning, not declaring His intention. Many of the Jews, hearing His parables and suspecting the deeper meaning in them, did not want to know that meaning more clearly, nor were they prepared to pay any attention to it. And our Lord practically said of them: "One would think they were blind and deaf, and had no desire to understand and be converted and have their sins forgiven." Not His parables, therefore, but their own obstinacy and hardness of heart were the obstacles to their conversion. To say that He intended to keep anyone from repentance and conversion would be quite out of harmony with His character and with His mission as Redeemer. All His parables were intended to throw light on His teaching, not to obscure it; and to lead all who heard them to faith in the truth and to their salvation.

One does not need faith before he begins to pray. It is enough to be endowed with reason. Reason tells us that there is a God. Reason tells us that we owe our existence to God, and that we are subject to both mental and physical limitations. Reason therefore tells us to ask the God who made us to preserve us from dangers that could arise from our very limitations, and to grant us all the assistance we need. There's no question of a vicious circle. It's a spiral staircase. You don't go round and round; you go round and up. You can begin with the entirely reasonable prayer: "O God, who made me, enlighten me as to what I should do, and give me the strength to do it." If a person said only that prayer with genuine humility and perseveringly, God would give him the graces necessary to attain the faith in the full sense of the word.

That is not true. You fail to allow for the difference between the motive of one's faith, and the object of it or the thing believed. It is true that if I fully understand the nature of a thing and have a clear perception of irrefutable proof of it, there is no room for faith. I do not merely believe the thing to be true; I know it by my own perception of the reasons for it. But take something I do not know in that way, but which I hold to be true on the authority of .someone else. The object of my faith, the thing I believe, may be quite beyond my powers of understanding. Yet I may be perfectly certain that it is true. Here the degrees of certainty will be dependent upon the reliability of the authority upon which I rely.

That cannot apply to faith in the Catholic religion which has the authority of God as its guarantee. If I put my faith merely in what other human beings tell me, but of which I have no direct evidence myself, then however reasonable the grounds I may have for trusting them, my acceptance of what they say, I am relying on no more than my faith in them. This act of faith, merely natural and human, is in some measure a gamble, for human beings are not infallible and there is always the possibility that they are mistaken. In believing them I can but hope they are right; and I therefore gamble on the possibility of their being right rather than wrong. But divine and supernatural faith in what I know to have been revealed by God is not a gamble in any sense of the word. For God is infallible and quite incapable of error. Acceptance of His teachings, therefore, gives such absolute certainty that in no sense can it be called a gamble. No Catholic, so long as he retains the Catholic Faith, thinks of his religion as merely possibly or merely probably right. He has absolute certainty that it is right.

That is true.

They either believe them or have ceased to be Catholics; but I do not say that they know them all. In fact I am quite sure that most of them do not. I have spent much of my time explaining to various Catholics, to their great surprise, that certain doctrines are defined dogmas of their religion. But in order that all Catholics should have the same faith everywhere it is not necessary that they should know all the defined doctrines of the Catholic Church. Again and again, throughout her twenty centuries of history, the Catholic Church has had to condemn particular errors of various individuals, defining the right doctrines opposed to them. Multitudes of Catholics have never heard either of the errors or of the contrary definitions. To know of them all, every Catholic would have to know the whole history of theology, which would demand almost a lifetime of study!

He has implicit faith in them. We must not confuse the knowledge of every detail of the faith with the act of faith itself. Everyone who has the Catholic Faith believes that the Catholic Church is the one true Church founded and guaranteed by Christ. He therefore says: "I believe in the Holy Catholic Church and in all that she holds and teaches." Such a general act of faith includes faith in all defined doctrines whether one has heard of them or not.

Not all are necessary for his practical guidance here and now. If, in a bygone age, the Church defined the right doctrine against some error that has never been heard of since, the definition served its practical purpose then and can be left in abeyance until the old error reasserts itself, if ever it does. Meantime, the fundamental or basic things which every Catholic must not only believe but know explicitly for his practical guidance are contained in the Catholic catechism and are taught to all Catholics, whether born of Catholic parents or converted in later life to the Church. Defined doctrines over and above those contained in the catechism the Catholic is prepared to believe once he finds out that the Church teaches those also as part of God's revelation.

His faith is unaffected. By his general act of faith in the Church he is prepared to believe all that she holds and teaches. If unwittingly he did hold a wrong opinion, the moment he discovered that it was opposed to the express teaching of the Church he would renounce at once as certainly erroneous the opinion he had mistakenly thought to be permissible. All along his faith was in the Catholic Church and in all that she teaches as part of divine revelation—a faith in which all Catholics throughout the world are united. For if one ceases to have this faith he ceases to be a Catholic.

God is not responsible for every error that has been proclaimed by men in the name of reason! You are confusing reason as a power of intelligence with reasoning as the use of that power. Such confusion can lead to the most absurd conclusions. Reason is the highest natural power man possesses. Rightly used it leads to a knowledge of the truth in its own natural order. If it did not, then God would be responsible for having given us a power calculated of its very nature to lead us astray. But we have no guarantee against its misuse even in the merely natural order. Reason is not being rightly used when people ignore the rules for its right use— the ordinary rules of logic. And lapses in logic are quite a common occurrence. But there is something else to be remembered. Although reason is the highest natural faculty we possess, its supremacy as a guide to the knowledge of all truth is not absolute. There is an order of supernatural truth known to God and not discoverable by unaided human reason at all. If God reveals some of this truth which is beyond anything this created universe contains for us, then we have to take His word for it by an act of faith in Him. And since truths of this kind are beyond anything that reason can tell us, the supremacy of reason no longer holds where they are concerned. Reason realizes that God could not reveal anything untrue; but it finds the truth He does reveal beyond its capacity. In humble submission to God man's intelligence and will must then accept an order of truth beyond the sphere of natural reason. So St. Paul speaks of the Christian religion as "bringing into captivity every understanding unto the obedience of Christ." II Cor., X, 5. A reason which is brought into captivity and has to accept on the authority of Christ teachings it is incapable of discovering for itself, and even the significance of which it can no more than partially comprehend, can no longer proclaim its absolute supremacy.

No man who knows anything of human psychology would agree with you. Every day people will to believe good of others whom they like, and to believe evil of others whom they dislike, without bothering about proof. Belief, therefore, can be a wilful act. Ever so many of even our merely natural convictions are due to the will to believe them. And a religious belief, merely because it is religious, cannot claim to be exempt from the influence of the will.

Neither threats nor violence can make a man change his religious beliefs against his own will. But threats and violence can induce a change of will in a believer and persuade him to renounce former beliefs in favor of other doctrines. Throughout history many have died as martyrs for the Christian religion because they had the determined will to remain loyal to it. On the other hand many have abandoned belief in the Christian religion because they no longer had the will to believe in it.

That also is inaccurate. The late Judge Rutherford poured out a flood of booklets containing a hotch-potch of nonsense which was anything but the truth. Yet by employing every device to enkindle the will of ignorant people to accept quite uncritically the religious system he taught, he succeeded in changing the religious beliefs of thousands of Protestants, turning them into Witnesses of Jehovah.

Though Catholic dogmas certainly express the truth revealed by God, they are still not proved beyond doubt in the sense you have in mind. God has revealed many a mysterious truth without deigning to prove it to our satisfaction, demanding that we simply accept it on His authority. For example, God has told us that on the last day all men will rise from the dead. No human being can prove that that resurrection will take place in actual fact. Without any proof as the scientist understands proof, we believe it because God has said it. And in the absence of scientific proof a man can doubt it if he chooses to do so. If he accepts it, it is because he has the will to submit with docility to whatever God has revealed, however mysterious it may be.

When I say that Catholic Faith requires the will to accept it, I do not mean that the will alone is enough.

By his natural reason only an intelligent adult can study the historical evidences in favor of the claim of the Catholic religion to have been revealed by God and arrive at the conclusion that there is no doubt as to the truth of that claim. It does not follow that he at once accepts the claim. He could also acquire a sound knowledge of all the basic teachings and practices of the Catholic religion. But whilst reason alone can accomplish that much it cannot do more. Whilst it affords rational justification for an act of faith, it cannot produce that act of faith. The grace of God has to take over from there, enkindling in a man the desire to believe, inspiring a sense of obligation to do so, and giving an insight into the spiritual significance of what is to be believed. For that grace a man must pray. Finally, with that grace he must have the will to correspond. To the very last a man could be reluctant to accept the Catholic Faith through personal pride, or dread of moral obligations, or from fear of awkward social consequences and various other sacrifices which becoming a Catholic might involve. If, however, such a man yields to the grace of God, then that grace enables him to make an act of faith in the Catholic religion, not because of his previous study of the reasonable grounds for it, but because he obtains a vivid supernatural apprehension of its truth in itself, an awareness produced not by the light of reason but by the interior and spiritual light of grace; and he finds enkindled in his will a determination to cling to it as the greatest good he has ever possessed.

I can only make the further suggestion, as Sheila Kaye-Smith, herself a convert from Anglo-Catholicism, put it, that you should drop the "Anglo" and the hyphen, and actually become a Catholic.

You are confusing personal dispositions of faith with the objective teachings of the Christian Faith. The non-Catholic Christian may have personal dispositions of faith in as much of the Christian religion as he or she knows. But part of the Christian religion is not the^ Christian religion. It is only part of it. By "The Faith," considered objectively, I mean the whole of the Christian religion in its full integrity. And that is to be found only in the Catholic Church.

They are some of the things necessary to the Faith; but they are not all that the Faith implies. Faith in the Church rf Christ is necessary— but in which of the Churches claiming to be Christian must one have that faith? Certainly not in the Anglican Church. And how many Sacraments have you in mind—two, as your Church holds, or seven, as the Catholic Faith teaches? And what of the Sacrifice of the Mass? If may be that the baptism you received was quite valid. If so, the gift or power of faith was then infused into your soul. Yet it is possible to have this power of faith whilst remaining ignorant of much that you are meant as a Christian to believe. From the viewpoint of the contents of the Christian religion every act of faith you make is inadequate so long as you exclude from it belief in the One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church.

They are accused, not of being "without faith" but of being without "The Faith," meaning without the Christian Faith in its fulness and integrity. Take your own position. Anglo-Catholics believe it necessary to have an Apostolic Succession of Bishops. Congregationalists, who equally claim to be Christians, say that an Apostolic Succession of Bishops is not necessary at all. Anglo-Catholics say that Congregationalists, however good they may be personally, lack the true "Christian Faith." We Catholics merely say the same of Anglo-Catholics. Anglo-Catholics lack the "Faith" in its full sense because they reject the true doctrine of the Unity of the Church, and the doctrines of the spiritual Supremacy and Infallibility of the Pope as successor of St. Peter.

Some beliefs of Anglo-Catholics are similar to Catholic beliefs. Others are not. For the rest, an Anglo-Catholic who actually becomes a Catholic, finds himself set free from a Church in which most of the members reject his Anglo-Catholic beliefs, and has the benefit of the valid Orders and valid Sacraments of the Catholic Church, together with the consolation of being at home in that unity and obedience Christ willed His followers to maintain. There are many other advantages, but there is no need to go through them all. The important thing is to pray to know the Holy Will of God and for the courage to fulfill it.

In themselves those teachings have such authority that they oblige people who know them to accept them, if they wish to save their souls. It is possible that a person would lack belief in them merely because he had never had them sufficiently explained to him, and he might die without ever having realized their truth. If such a man were of goodwill, so that he would be prepared to accept them if he knew of them, then he would have the goodwill to correspond with such other graces as God would undoubtedly give him at least interiorly, and would save his soul despite his apparent lack of belief in the teachings of Christ as we know them.

If his unbelief is his own fault, and he repudiates the Christian religion despite his having perceived its truth, dying in such dispositions, then he will lose his soul and go to hell. Christ Himself said: "He that believeth not shall be condemned." Mark, XVI, 16. The man who lacks faith through no fault of his own could not be sent to hell for that particular reason. But there may be other reasons which would take him to hell. There are many departments of life, quite apart from belief or unbelief, in which conscience makes its demands and which will have a bearing on one's judgment. But if there be no other reasons apart from a lack of belief for which he is not responsible, then ultimately such a man will attain to eternal and supernatural happiness in heaven. In the end but one of two possible eternal destinies awaits each man, heaven or hell. If he does not go to the one he necessarily goes to the other.

He had the opportunity to exercise faith in so much of divine revela- I tion as was accessible to him. Our first parents had a direct revelation from God concerning their duties/and their destiny. They^taught their I children and the knowledge was handed on from generation to generation. I Vestiges of this primitive revelation are found to this day amongst even I pagan peoples who have never come into contact with either the Jewish I or the Christian religions. But the principles I have given you stand. I A degree of faith in truth revealed by God is required for salvation ] according to the amount of knowledge a given person has of that truth,

That would be possible only if he were very ignorant of his Catholic religion or afflicted with some form of insanity. It is possible for a Catholic to leave the Catholic Church and become a Protestant without any real conviction of the truth of any form of Protestantism at all. That has happened at times. But granted sincerity, the only possible explanations would be either lack of knowledge or mental derangement at least where religion is concerned.

Not quite. For it is quite possible for a highly intelligent and sane Catholic, who knows his religion well, to lose his faith in the Catholic religion. But if such a man did so, he would abandon Christianity altogether, and not join any non-Catholic form of religion. He would know too much and be too level-headed to turn to any non-Catholic form of Christianity founded by individual men or women centuries after the time of Christ and of the Apostles. For him it would be Catholicism or nothing.

I would not say that he was mad. As I have said, it is quite possible for a Catholic who is quite intelligent and sane to lose his faith. But if not mad, would such a man be bad? As no one who has ever had the Catholic Faith and an intelligent grasp of it can lose it without guilt on his part somewhere, I would say that such a man was certainly insincere and guilty in his first deliberate infidelities when he began to drift from his Catholic beliefs, even though later he managed to delude himself into the conviction that his atheism was justified. Bui in the case of your professor - I know the man - the fact that he attacks Christianity and Catholicism in particular unmercifully, indulging in a campaign of bitter hatred, distorting facts and inventing falsehoods, betrays a malice which forfeits any right to be regarded as sincere.

He might not be mad. He could be very intelligent and sane, though religiously bad. It is not necessary, of course, entirely, to exclude the idea of madness. There are many professors, geniuses if you like, in the particular line in which they have secured university standing, who have a bee in their bonnets on matters not connected with that particular line. A fixed idea, or an obsession, can exist side by side with sanity in all other matters. And a man afflicted in such a way will seem quite normal and well-balanced until he gets on to the subject which is his particular nightmare, when his ravings betray his mental aberration. To sum this matter up, it is always possible for a Catholic to lose his faith and abandon the Catholic Church. That follows from my repeated explanations that the act of faith always remains an act of the human will in addition to other factors involved. If, however, a Catholic does lose his faith, it is not because the Catholic Church is not the true Church. It is because the lapsed person either so lacks instruction that he does not realize what he is doing, or else because he has become mentally deranged, or else because he has developed evil and rebellious dispositions of will due to the desire of gaining some worldly advantage he cannot get as a Catholic or to the desire to escape what he has come to regard as irksome duties which fidelity to his Catholic religion would require of him.

Firstly, a man is no more hampered by Catholic religious doctrines he already knows to be true, in his search for truth not yet known, than a scientist is hampered in his researches by the definite scientific truths already established by previous scientists. Secondly, a blind degrading acceptance of the dogmas of an infallible Church is not expected of any Catholic. A Catholic must have his eyes wide open to the solid rational grounds for faith in his Church. Granted the God-given commission of the Catholic Church to teach all nations the essential truths of religion, there is nothing degrading in the obedient acceptance of what she teaches. If the acceptance of truth on the authority of a qualified teacher is degrading, then ninety per cent of all education would have to be rejected as a degrading process. Thirdly, the obedience we owe to the infallible teaching-authority of the Catholic Church is limited to the field of religion and morals. In all other fields Catholics have as much intellectual liberty as anyone else. And even in the field of religion and morals, apart from the official teachings of the Church, there is ample scope for diversity of opinion. It simply means that those things which are certain are certain. There is no advantage in not knowing them to be certain; and knowledge of the definite truth, far from being blinding and degrading, is the very opposite. It is enlightening and ennobling.

That judgment is not in accordance with historical facts. It was the Catholic Church which lifted the Western world from pagan barbarism to Christian civilization. She is the mother of architecture, music, painting and sculpture; of ethics, philosophy and education. Her monks founded schools throughout Europe, preserving the literature of the past and inspiring the literature of the future. She established the great universities oil Europe, including Oxford and Cambridge. Professor Whitehead, a non-Catholic, says that the Middle Ages were "pre-eminently an epoch of orderly thought, rationalist through and through, forming one long training of the intellect of Western Europe in the sense of order." Your verdict ignores the evidence, evidence contained in countless documents in all the libraries of the world.

In that he was mistaken. Far from being hostile towards philosophy and science during the early centuries, the Christian Church manifested the keenest possible interest in those subjects. The Christian religion had to make headway against the pagan Greek and Roman philosophers; and the defenders of Christianity had not only to refute philosophical teachings which conflicted with faith and reason, but had to offer a sound constructive philosophy in their place. The great Christian philosophers made use of all that was best in Plato and Aristotle to refute the decadent pagan schools which claimed to be followers of those great men. To speak of a Christian era as hostile to philosophy and science which produced thinkers and writers like Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Lactantius, Athenagoras and many others right through to St. Augustine of Hippo, is to talk nonsense. These men devoted themselves to a vast range of philosophical speculation, and built up a profound synthesis of the best principles of the Greek and Roman masters with Christian thought.

That would prove his contention if the Bishop did so for the sake of destroying sources of knowledge. But he did nothing of the kind. Before his election as Patriarch of Alexandria, Theophilus was a teacher of great intellectual gifts, and deeply interested in philosophy. As Patriarch, he was called upon to defend the Church at Alexandria against pagan opposition, which indulged not only in philosophical argument but often in physical violence. In the year 390 Theophilus, with the consent of the Emperor Theodosius I, suppressed a pagan temple at Alexandria. A riot ensued and a number of Christians were slain. The Christians retaliated and destroyed the celebrated temple of Serapis, including its library; and a Christian Church was built on its ruins. To argue from this that Theophilus destroyed a library, therefore he was hostile to philosophy is not history. One might as well argue that Americans are vegetarians because when bombing a town in wartime they happened to destroy a butcher's shop, thereby proving their hostility to meat!

That is not true. The Emperor Justinian closed the Neo-Platonic school of philosophy at Athens because it was propagating, not philosophy, but pagan religious ideas and trying to re-introduce the worship of the ancient Greek gods. Justinian was opposed, not to philosophy and science, but to the revival of heathen religion. Gibbon, Bury, and Westbury-Jones agree that Justinian brought the later empire to its highest point of development. He was a brilliant man, devoted to culture in all its forms, leaving behind him a legacy of engineering and architecture, and a Code of Laws which has influenced the legal institutions of the civilized world to this day.

The era of pagan Greek and Roman thought then came to an end, but not because the Church was hostile to philosophy and science. By the end of the fourth century a host of Christian writers had arisen, profoundly versed in philosophy and science in its then stage of development. Darkness came down upon the West with the continuous invasions of barbarians from the North. Goths and Vandals and Huns overran Europe, decimating the Christian population and devastating cities and institutions. The real dark ages of Europe came with the fifth century and lasted till the ninth century. And the Catholic Church had to set to work to convert these barbarians and re-establish Christian civilization. It was the Catholic Church which re-instated philosophy and science, and dotted Europe with schools and universities, until in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the main topic of conversation and discussion amongst all educated men was philosophy and science! The hostility of the Catholic Church towards philosophy and science is a myth.

If the religious doctrines in question were defined dogmas of the Catholic Church, then the intellectual supporter of them, just as any other Catholic, would know quite well that they are true with all the certainty of divine revelation. He would be equally aware that there could be no valid philosophical objections to them. If anyone proposed philosophical difficulties concerning them, then the intellectual believer, were he interested enough to do so, could devote the required time to showing either that the difficulties arose from an unsound philosophy; or else, granted the validity of the philosophical system employed, that the difficulties arose from a lack of logic in the objector. If, on the other hand, difficulties arose for himself, from his own philosophical thinking, he would, as a philosopher, want to solve those if possible. But even if he failed to do so, his conviction of the truth of doctrines known to be divinely revealed would not be shaken. He would know quite well that one's faith as a Catholic does not stand or fall with one's capacity or incapacity as a philosopher!

That sounds pretty sinister! But a Church is not captured by the; philosophy it produces. Nor does Thomistic philosophy, as Dean Inge seems to imply, enslave the mind. It liberates the mind from the shackles; of error and skepticism. What Modernists do not like about Thomistic philosophy is that it insists on the permanent value of truth, and will not let you contradict yourself. Modernists want whatever they may happen to think for the moment to be true, and they do not want to be tied down to consistency.

It is the philosophy which derives its name from St. Thomas Aquinas, ! who died in 1274 A.D. St. Thomas Aquinas brought the philosophy taught in the European Christian Universities of the Middle Ages to its highest development. In general, the philosophy of these Christian Universities or "Schools" is known as "Scholasticism." _ To understand Scholasticism, we must realize that Christians, besides knowing a great body of truth in the merely natural order, to be discovered from a study of this world, have received from God by revelation the knowledge of many truths belonging to the supernatural order which natural reason could not discover for itself. Of these revealed truths, therefore, pagan philosophers were necessarily ignorant. Now Christian philosophers knew that, since God is the Author of all truth, whether of natural truth to be discovered by men from a study of the world He created, or of supernatural truth made known to us by revelation, nothing that is really true can ever contradict anything else that is really true. They set to work, therefore, to unify and to harmonize both natural and supernatural truth. They studied the philosophy of the pagan Greeks, of Plato and Aristotle, of the Stoics and Epicureans and others; they sifted the philosophies of the ancient Romans, and of the more recent Arabians; whatever of natural truth they found in these philosophies they accepted, rejecting what was false in them. Reason and logic were their guides; but they never lost sight of the additional supernatural truths made known to mankind by divine revelation. They therefore labored to build up a rational system of both philosophy and theology which did justice to every phase of truth whether known to us by reason or by revelation. No one succeeded in the Middle Ages in this work so well as St. Thomas Aquinas, and the philosophical side of Scholasticism at its best is known as the Thomistic Philosophy. The Protestant reformers not only rejected the teaching authority of the Catholic Church in the realm of faith, but also Thomistic philosophy in the realm of reason; and the result has been both doctrinal and philosophical confusion.

Yes; although we should rather call it Neo-Thomistic philosophy. The past 700 years since the time of St. Thomas have naturally brought to light much information in the fields of science and of history of which he knew nothing. Where corrections have had to be made, they have been made; but the basic principles of the philosophy of St. Thomas, principles of what we call "philosophical realism," are permanently sound; and any departure from them leads to imaginative and often fantastic theories scarcely worthy of the name of philosophy. Students for the priesthood have to make a comparative study of these other and rival philosophies in order to be familiar with other people's ways of thinking and speaking in such matters. But the Neo-T'homistic philosophy, a philosophy of strict logic and common-sense, is the one upon which their own training is based.

It is true that philosophy, as the wisdom attainable by human reason, exists in its own right and should be the same for all men, whether Christians or not. From that point of view the expression "Christian philosophy" might seem as strange as if we were to speak of a "Christian botany" or of a "Christian, chemistry." But, still, the cases are not quite the same, for there is a difference between a science which deals with things, and a science which deals with the value, significance, purpose and ultimate reasons of things. Owing to its limitations in itself and in the amount of information at its disposal human reason can here easily go astray; and the Christian revelation does provide additional knowledge which at least supplies a corrective for our human thinking. It can therefore make a difference to a man's philosophy whether he is a Christian or not. We may, then, say that St. Thomas Aquinas taught philosophy with all the soundness to which only a Christian mind can attain.

That is too big a question for adequate treatment here. All I can say is that St. Thomas Aquinas, although a first-class original thinker, was one who -could appreciate truth wherever it might be found. He therefore studied the pagan Greek philosophies, made his own the natural truths their unaided reason had discovered, corrected their errors, supplied for their deficiencies, and developed their theories wherever they were sound. Above all, he had to correct and perfect their teachings on the validity of knowledge itself, on the nature of the Supreme Cause of the Universe, on the immortality and personality of human souls, and in the fields of natural ethics.

No. In the course of events he merely became a university professor of philosophy and theology. He felt it his duty to refute attacks on Christianity being made by the Arab philosophers who were using inaccurate translations of Aristotle for their purpose. St. Thomas took up the study of Aristotle, refuting the Arabs from the genuine text of the great Greek philosopher. Eventually St. Thomas built up a most remarkable and valuable synthesis of all that was best in philosophy in the light of both reason and faith; though he very clearly safeguarded the distinction between reason and faith, as well as their proper relationship to each other. But his synthesis cannot rightly be called a "workable compromise." The word "compromise" suggests concessions both at the expense of philosophy and at the expense of Christian revelation. St. Thomas would have none of that. In the light of Christian revelation, which he maintained inviolate, he adopted those natural truths which pagan philosophers had discoveretli and eliminated their errors.

I presume you are speaking of his philosophical teachings. The primary concern of the Catholic Church is, of course, with revealed doctrines which are the object of faith. She does not claim to be able to impose with divine authority the acceptance of any system of philosophy as such. But she approves and sanctions the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, holding it to be the soundest and highest attainment of human reason enlightened by the possession of Christian truth. She agrees, of course, that it must be progressively adapted to all further knowledge in every field accumulated since the time of St. Thomas himself. But she urges all men to study the basic principles of Thomistic philosophy and makes them a compulsory part of the training of all her priests. It can be said that the philosophy of St. Thomas has the highest authorization the Church can bestow in that field of learning.

I hope you are not so foolish as to imagine that physical science is the only reliable source of knowledge, and that religious truth is acceptable only provided it can be proved by physical science. It will be enough for me to say here that there are no facts established by physical science which in any way conflict with any dogmas of the Catholic religion.

Why should they be? The opinions of a specialist on subjects in which he is not a specialist have no particular value. There is no magic by which a man's religious opinions become reliable because he happens to be a specialist in bacteriology or in atom-bomb construction. But why bring in men of science at all? Even were they unanimous about a given religious doctrine you could not accept it on their authority if you object to all beliefs based on authority! On what grounds could you hold that in matters of religion the authority of the Catholic Church is worthless but that the authority of scientists is entirely safe and reliable?

In the field of science men who have devoted their lives to science naturally have a greater understanding of that subject than others. But a specialist in scientific subjects can be quite unfamiliar with other matters and as capable of talking nonsense as anyone else. Most really great scientists ignore the exaggerated respect of undiscerning people and candidly admit their incompetence in fields of knowledge other than their own. And Catholic scientists have not been less great as scientists because they gladly accepted their religious beliefs on the authority of the Catholic Church. A Louis Pasteur is evidence enough of that.

The very professors of science you mention would themselves reject your statement. Sciences are specified by their object. The geologist will study the earth, the astronomer the stars and planets, the physicist the properties and forces of bodies, the botanist vegetation, the biologist life in its various forms. But all these scientists are concerned with various aspects of this created universe quite apart from their relationship to God. Theology, on the other hand concerns itself with the God who created all that the natural scientists study. The sciences which concern themselves with things produced by God differ from the science which concerns itself with the God who produced them. And the physical scientists would themselves deny that the textbooks they publish are manuals of theology.

What do you mean by "duly accredited authorities"? Any authority physicists possess is dependent on the worth of their research and proofs, and on such approval as their fellow-men choose to bestow upon them. They are not accredited by God and they do not speak with the authority of God. On the other hand, the Catholic Church claims what they have never dared to claim. She claims to be directly accredited by God and to speak with the authority of God in all the exceedingly important matters God has revealed. And in expounding her teachings her theologians have the guidance in the authority of their Church which no scientist can claim in his own field of study.

Never. God is the Author of all truth, whether that truth be discovered by a scientific study of the universe He created, or whether it be made known to us by revelation. It is true that by divine revelation we may know certain truths over and above those we can get by natural scientific research, but between a truth really revealed by God and one which has undoubtedly been scientifically demonstrated, there cannot possibly be a conflict. Notice that I have said that there cannot be a conflict between a truth "really revealed" and a scientific truth "undoubtedly" demonstrated. If people have an opinion which they wrongly think to have been revealed by God, or an opinion they wrongly think to be scientific, then conflict may arise. But such conflict will be between wrong opinions, not really between revealed religion and science.

That charge is quite unjust.

The very title of the book is its own condemnation. For there is not, and never has been, a conflict between religion and science. There has I been a conflict between some misinformed would-be exponents of religion and some scientists who have forsaken for the time being their science ir order to indulge in philosophical speculations of their own. But even the scientists who have said that science is incompatible with religion are wel in the minority. In his book, "The Religion of Scientists," Mr. C. L. Draw bridge says that 129 Fellows of the Royal Society were asked whether they] thought science was opposed to religion. Of these 103 declared that ill was not. When asked further whether they thought science was even favorable to religion, 99 replied yes, the other four holding that it was neither for nor against religion.

Professor Draper was born in 1811, over 100 years ago. He died over 60 years ago, in 1882. His writings on astronomy and chemistry had some, value in his own day, though both astronomy and chemistry, of course, have progressed far beyond his stage. Unfortunately, apart from his science,; Draper was credulous enough to swallow the crude materialism of the Victorian age in which he lived; and he manifested a tendency Professor J. A. Thompson noted amongst many scientists, that of going beyond his own sphere and indulging in philosophical speculation. Now whatever authority Professor Draper may at one time have had as a scientist, his philosophy was as worthless as his materialistic premises.

Your talk of persecution is an inaccurate generalization based upon restrictive measures taken against some scientists, not the score of their science, but because they "went beyond their scientific sphere and propagated harmful philosophical or theological theories. It is quite false to say that any of their discoveries have ever proved any of the defined dogmatic teachings of the Catholic Church erroneous.

That does not prove the opposition of the Catholic Church to science. Hypatia was murdered, not because she was the daughter of Theon the astronomer, nor because she was a teacher of mathematics. The Alexandria of those days was in a constant state of tumult and political disturbances; between Jews, pagans and Christians residing there. In one of the many riots Hypatia was killed by a group of fanatical Christians because she was suspected, quite unjustly, of political intrigues. What a handful of fanatics does for another reason altogether does not prove that the attitude of the Catholic Church as such is hostile to science!

As opposed to the geocentric system of Ptolemy, Copernicus taught the heliocentric system, holding that the earth revolves around the sun. He arrived at that idea as a result of his studies of the movements of the sun and moon and planets which he undertook in the interests of reforming the calendar. And his conclusion has been accepted by all astronomers. No one today would dream of disputing it.

Copernicus was born at Thorn, a town in Prussian territory; but his father had gone there from Kracow, in Poland. He was, therefore, of Polish, not of Prussian descent. He went back to Kracow to study literature, mathematics and science at the University there. Then he went to t the University of Bologna, in Italy, to study Canon Law; and there he ( became a Doctor of Canon Law. After that he studied medicine at the j University of, Ferrara, and later practiced as a physician. Later still, he became a priest.

None whatever. He was urged by Bishops and Cardinals to publish f his discovery. In 1533 Pope Clement VII commended the Copernican theory, and when Copernicus did publish his book ten years later he dedicated it to Pope. Paul III. There were no signs of Catholic opposition until 73 years later, when it was occasioned by Galileo.

Certainly not merely by doing that. Had he done no more than that there would have been no reason why he should have been censured any more than Copernicus.

Galileo was first called before the Inquisition in 1615. Some three ij years earlier than that his adversaries, clinging to the old Ptolemaic system, ^ I fell back on Sacred Scripture as an argument against Galileo's teaching. 1 This forced Galileo, in self-defense, to attack their interpretation of Scripl ture and the argument soon became theological rather than scientific. So ! heated did the argument become that the Church stepped in. Galileo's enemies accused him of contradicting Scripture and therefore of teaching heresy. A committee of theologians appointed to examine the matter decided that Galileo's teaching was indeed opposed to Holy Scripture; and in 1616 the Inquisition ordered him neither to hold nor to continue to teach his theory. Galileo agreed to submit to this decree. But he disobeyed, continued publicly to maintain his theory, and in 1633 was compelled to renounce it once more and was sentenced to imprisonment. The latter penalty was commuted to retirement to his friend the Duke of Tuscany's Villa near Rome, where Galileo continued his scientific researches. In all this the Inquisition was not wrong in desiring to put an end to a Scriptural controversy which was causing so much disturbance; nor was it wrong in penalizing Galileo for his disobedience. The officials of the Inquisition, however, were wrong in declaring his scientific theory false and opposed to Scripture. But we must remember that, although his theory happens to have been right, Galileo could not prove it. No scientist today will admit that he advanced a single valid proof of the fact. So far as proof was concerned, the old view was just as likely as the new* one. Many scientists opposed the new theory, and were as wrong as the theologians. However in all this the infallible dogmatic teaching-authority of the Catholic Church remains quite unaffected, for the whole matter was outside the conditions required for infallible decisions. Galileo himself never wavered in his Catholic faith, and died a normal and natural death, having received the Sacraments of the Church and a special blessing from the Pope.

The decrees of 1616 and 1633 were never regarded by Catholics as having closed the scientific question. The Church encouraged men of science to study the problem and see whether Galileo's theory could possibly be demonstrated. The search for proofs of the Copernican theory went on. Public lectures were given in its favor even in Rome, above all by the Jesuit Fathers. The publication of Newton's "Principia" in 1696 settled the matter, and the Copernican system secured general acceptance. In 1757 Pope Benedict XIV reversed the decree prohibiting the teaching of the theory as an established fact, and the whole disturbance became thenceforth merely an item in history.

The Catholic religion is based on the fact that God Himself came down to earth and put Himself within our reach in the visible and tangible events of the life of Christ. The facts recorded in the New Testament are as much facts as those recorded in any other scientifically reliable historical documents; and to ignore them and the whole series of facts resulting from them during 2,000 years in the history of the Catholic Church is not in the least a scientific procedure.

If so, the statement you have just made is not certain, for it cannot be scientifically demonstrated according to your test of empirical science. The truth is that you are talking, not science, but an out-of-date positivist philosophy, irrational and intellectually bankrupt.

It would also be the end of very much else. Thousands of problems arise in our daily lives which are beyond the reach of empirical science, yet to which we know the correct answer. On different occasions and for different purposes we have to fall back on different types of judgment; and one who understands human psychology knows that thesfc various types of judgment, far from being in conflict, complete each other and help human beings to live lives that are really human and not merely mechanical and empty of all meaning. Not only your empirical science, but history, literature, art, philosophy, religion and innumerable psychological factors offer reliable contributions towards the successful living of our lives,, personally and socially, in this world—not to speak of our destiny beyond it.

Not in the sense you have in mind. Never did he deny the existence of God or maintain that His existence was a mere hypothesis. In his own lifetime he repudiated such an interpretation of his words. He insisted that the universe owed its existence to creation by God. What he did mean was this: Newton had suggested that merely natural laws could not of themselves account for all the natural developments in the universe. He thought that God Himself must at times directly intervene to preserve the stability of the cosmic system. Laplace denied that. He did not deny the existence of God. He declared that God had implanted in the universe all the natural physical laws necessary for its preservation and natural development; and that there was no need to fall back on the hypothesis of His continual intervention.

He was not referring to religious agnosticism. He was referring to the realm of physical science in which one must not profess to know for certain that for which no strictly scientific demonstration has yet been found. But in the realm of philosophy and in that of religion certainty can be had whether by sound philosophical reasoning or by divine revelation. These matters simply do not come within the scope of physical science.

Not in the sense in which you are using that word. There are no scientific grounds for rejecting the Catholic religion. The scientist who attacks it goes beyond the sphere of his science and begins to argue from a particular kind of philosophy that he happens to approve. His lack of respect for the Catholic religion is certainly not due to science. The biographies of the greatest scientists do not show a skeptical spirit. They show the reverse. The spirit of irreverence for religion and the things of God is to be found amongst those whose knowledge is most restricted; not amongst those who have comprehensive views of human life in all its activities and manifestations.

Science has thrown a good deal of light upon many subjects connected with revealed religion, and has helped to clear up many misunderstandings concerning it. But the Catholic Church has never had to modify any one of her defined doctrines, nor has science given any grounds whatever for doubting those defined doctrines.

Geologically it is certain that the earth existed millions of years before the creation of man, only gradually over a very long period becoming fit for human habitation.

It would be, were your interpretation of it correct. But you have not rightly understood the Book of Genesis. The author of that Book had no intention of giving a scientific and chronological account of creation. He intended no more than a general and popular description. For religious reasons he divided his account into six sections, calling each section a "day," and completing his description with the end of the sixth "day." His purpose was to impress on the Jews that they were to confine their work to six days and cease on the seventh in order to devote that day to bodily rest and religious duties. To adopt the purely literary device of dividing one's description into six sections, calling each section a "day" in order to inculcate a moral teaching is not to say that the events allotted to each section actually occurred within a period of twenty-four hours.

No. Nor should they be expected. Those events belong to what is known as pre-history. The Book of Genesis was written tens of thousands of years alter the events described in its first chapters. No contemporary written documents survive from men who stood by while the universe was being created, or who knew Adam and Eve and their children personally. Of later events in Genesis there were surviving human traditions and possibly written accounts. But what is recorded in the earlier chapters could have been made known to the human writer of them only by divine revelation. Scientifically and historically the documents of the New Testament can be proved reliable; but without faith in Christ and the Catholic Church one can have no guarantee of the truth of the events recorded in the primitive history contained in the first chapters of Genesis. The normal conditions for exact history as we know the word today were simply lacking then. But that does not affect the historical truth of what is recorded in the Book of Genesis, all due allowance being made for the literary form and style in which the revelation granted to Moses was committed to writing.

There is no such thing as Catholic physical science. There are Catholics, of course, who are scientists. But physical science as such has not a religious character. It is knowledge at which natural human reason can arrive by observation, experiment, and logical deduction. As for your question, a Catholic accepts the fact known by divine revelation that the wnole of this material universe was created by God. At one time it did not exist. By an act of God's omnipotent will it began to exist. What its initial condition was, and how its subsequent developments occurred, have not been revealed; except, of course, that all that has happened has/been in accordance With God's general providence. A Catholic is quite free to accept anything science can prove on any of these matters. But science cannot prove anything very definite. One scientific theory is that the material universe began with the creation of a kind of mist or nebula of atoms endowed with energy, and that by a series of condensations this nebula evolved or developed into all the galaxies of stars and planets as We now know them. But science cannot say for certain how the stars and planets, including our earth, originated. We have to be content with the fact that it is a mystery no man yet has been able to solve.

Whatever they think more probable in the light of such evidence as is available, which is not much. A Catholic has to hold, of course, that each human soul, spiritual and intellectual of its very nature, owes its existence to a special creative act of God. But when we turn to the origin of life as such, in its primitive and lower forms which undoubtedly preceded the advent of man to this world, it is an open question. There are those who think it not impossible that God implanted in an original nebula even the powers necessary for inorganic matter to become living by certain evolutionary combinations, without any special intervention on God's part. This would mean spontaneous generation. If that could be proved true, then scientists would have to deny that Pasteur refuted the possibility of spontaneous generation, as scientists have themselves maintained. Most scientists still reject spontaneous generation, holding that living things can come only from living things. Darwin held that life is due to a special creative act of God when the earth was ready for it; but that God gave life only in a very simple and primitive form from which the endless series of later forms evolved. Many scientists, however, hold that a special act of creation was necessary for the different species of living things. In all this we are in the realm of theory; of possibilities and probabilities, not of certainties. And the scientist who is a Catholic, so long as he maintains that each human soul owes its origin to a special creative act of God, is free in all the rest to hold as more likely what he believes the scientific evidence available to indicate as indeed the more probable opinion.

No scientist has succeeded in doing so yet. Should scientists succeed in doing so, then they would have proved the possibility of abiogenesis, or the origin of life from non-living matter. The truth of the Catholic religion would be quite unaffected by such a discovery.

If it does, it will find out that it was created by God. But, as a matter of fact, no discoveries by science will be able to show how the universe came into existence; how it has developed, perhaps; but not how it came to be in the first place. Science finds the universe already here, and studies it. How it got here it cannot and will never be able to say. If a scientist says that it always existed, he is not speaking as a scientist, for what he says is not a scientific conclusion at all. He is merely offering a guess, which is of no more value than the guess of anybody else.

His statement was a distortion of history. In the chaos caused by wave after wave of barbarian invasions of Europe during the earlier Middle Ages,J with the consequent destruction of cultural institutions, libraries and universities, the Catholic monasteries rescued all that could be saved of literature, art and science, including medicine. Under the dominance of barbarian hordes, medicine and works of social welfare generally were forced into the hands of the Church, and the monasteries built almshouses for the dispensing of charity, and hospitals for the care of the sick. It is a strange perversion which, instead of gratitude, can find reasons only for abuse and vilification of the monasteries for their devoted service, even though they were limited in their activities by the elementary degree of scientific knowledge then available.

Such an idea can arise only from a misreading of history. It was accepted throughout the whole of the thirteen centuries preceding the renaissance that disease was caused by "spirits." But what were those "spirits"? Galen, of Pergamum (A.D. 130-200), provided a summary of the medical theories of antiquity which remained the basis of diagnosis for centuries. He spoke of three types of so-called spirits, which were not spiritual beings, such as demons or devils, but natural physiological secretions- or juices or humors. Hence the term "humoral pathology." Galen said that there were natural spirits or humors formed in the liver; vital spirits or humors formed in the heart; and animal spirits or humors formed in the brain. Mediaeval medicine was based on Galenism; and however physiologically fantastic the system seems to us now, it did not teach that disease was mainly caused by devils. I do not say that sometimes disease was attributed to supernatural causes; at times without sufficient reason, and therefore superstitiously; at times not without good reason. But Dr. Hull's statement shows a complete misunderstanding of Galen's spirit-physiology

The priests claimed, of course, to be the authorized teachers of religion. And their teaching included the doctrine of Holy Scripture, that devils do exist, and are able to cause both spiritual and temporal disasters. But that they regarded devils as the normal cause of disease is not true. They were well aware of the principles of preventive medicine contained in the really wonderful sanitary code given in the Book of Leviticus, a code which Dr. Alexander Rattray declares to be deserving of every medical man's admiration as a means of protection against natural causes of disease. They were well aware of the significance of Christ's words that the sick need the care of the physician. And they themselves, whilst undoubtedly urging reliance upon prayer, employed natural medicinal remedies and resorted to surgery, crude though their methods may have been by our modern standards.

They were not the only weapons. Such preventive and curative remedies as were then known were also used. To pour scorn on the use of prayer also is a manifestation of ignorance. Dr. Alexis Carrel, author of "Man the Unknown," and for many years engaged in physiological research at the Rockefeller Institute, New York, insists that scientific medicine must no longer shut i ts eyes to the psycho-physiological effects of prayer, even apart from its spiritual values. He writes that his experience as a surgeon, as a doctor, as a physiologist, and the studies in the laboratory to which he devoted himself for many years on the regeneration of tissues and the healing of wounds, have enabled him to appreciate at their true value certain curative effects of prayer. And in his book, "Prayer," he says: ! "A doctor who sees a patient give himself to prayer can indeed rejoice."

I am more than willing to deal with any questions concerning that problem.

It is. So is everything else. Creed means belief in what one considers to be true. All that a man does depends on what he believes. If a man steps aside to avoid being knocked down by a car, his action is dictated by I a belief in the existence of the car, of its approach, and of the harm that will result from being hit by it. People who attack the association of religion with education are acting according to their own creed, an unproved and unprovable belief that sound education is necessarily irreligious I and materialistic.

No one could reasonably accept that. Education requires the formation of the complete human being, in bodily deportment, mental capacity, heart, will and character. All along the line there are basic facts to be imparted, and which must be learned and known, whether the child goes on to think out their implications or not. It is better, of course, if the child is I stimulated to think things out for itself in particular matters; but it is not the whole of education that the child should be stimulated to do so.

Your ideas of education are at fault. Of course, if a person is a secularist, convinced that only an irreligious education can truly be called education, then he will believe that religion and education are opposites. But he has merely transplanted the opposition between religion and his own irreligion into the field of education. He cannot expect of others an uncritical acceptance of his dogmatic assertion merely on the basis of his own irreligious assumptions. For the rest, if religion has any validity at I all, it is as integral to education as any other subject.

Firstly, inquiry does not attack. It inquires. Secondly, however sacred the truths of the Catholic creed may be to those who believe in them, anyone is quite free to inquire about them, and inquire into them. The fact that many of the wisest of men have devoted their lives to the intelligent investigation both of the grounds for belief in them, and of the full significance of each of those truths, is enough to refute the foolish statement that religion excludes inquiry. That the teachings of the creed are accepted as definite truths does not prove that religion is opposed to inquiry. If it did, one could argue that the many accepted facts of science which are not to be called into question prove that science is opposed to inquiry.

Healthy curiosity and eagerness to understand are a condition contributing towards the success of a child's education; but they are not its basis. That is to be found in teaching a child what it does not yet know whether from the viewpoint of knowledge or of behavior. The child must be got beyond its own interest and experience, and be made to realize that they are insufficient as a criterion by which to interpret the vast world of reality beyond them.

The true educator teaches his pupils what he knows quite well to be right, declares it to be right, and insists upon their learning what he has put before them. To help them to understand his teaching more fully, and grasp why it is right, he encourages his pupils to tell him of their difficulties and seeks to solve them in a way they can understand. If their degree of education is not yet sufficient to enable them to comprehend fully what he tells them, he assures them that they will see it later on for themselves, but bids them in the meantime to accept his authority for it and learn it. To encourage children to express their difficulties and to seek to solve them does not exclude authoritative teaching on the part of a master. Both positions are possible.

That is the strangest of all strange delusions. One thinks in order to arrive at the truth. Having got the truth on any particular subject, one has not still to go on thinking in order to get it, but he goes on thinking about it, penetrating more deeply into its significance and working out its applications in practice. Some people speak as if to get the truth were a crime because one still hasn't got to be looking for it! The teaching of definite knowledge on any subject is to save people the trouble of thinking out for themselves what has already been discovered, and to enable them to go on thinking from there. That is equally true of science as it is of religion. It is folly to imagine that every bit of definite knowledge we get leaves us less free to think. It leaves less room for erroneous thinking and gives additional food for correct thinking. It provides an extra bit of territory on which to walk and adds to the fulness of a man's mental world.

Education is concerned with development, but not with a lop-sided development. Mere knowledge of the purely natural sciences will not produce good men. The evils rampant in the world are due, not to lack of knowledge, but to a fundamental disorder in the will. Education, unless it embraces moral and religious training, could quite well produce no more than a clever scoundrel. Moreover, it is not true that education is concerned with inquiry and investigation. At school children are taught on the authority of their textbooks and teachers what is already known to be true from the inquiry and investigations of previous generations. Having learned at school the knowledge we inherit from the past, and having developed their own faculties whilst doing so, they can progress by inquiry and investigation in their maturer years to further discoveries. Professor Anderson was not even talking ordinary common-sense.

Addressing the "British Association for the Advancement of Science," the distinguished physicist, Lord Rayleigh, said: "That the lifelong beliefs of Newton, of Faraday, and of Maxwell, are inconsistent with the scientific habit of mind is surely a proposition which I need not pause to refute." As a matter of fact, the vast majority of those whose spirit of inquiry and scientific research provided the world with the wonderful discoveries of modern science have been profoundly religious men. In every branch of learning one will find an almost unending list of men who combined religion and science, and who would regard as puerile the statement that religion is concerned with the limitation of inquiry.

The Professor has imagined a world of make-believe all for himself! The Catholic religion declares that God has revealed certain truths about Himself and about man which man could not discover merely from a study of this universe. And it declares that those truths, though in no way against reason, are above reason in the sense that we will only partially understand them in this life. Now far from saying: "Here Inquiry Must Stop. This Is Not To Be Examined," the Catholic Church says: "Inquire, examine, employ your reason by studying the motives of credibility. Sift the evidence. Make sure that God has indeed spoken. Having made sure of that, believe what God has said because He has said it. Yet even then do not stop your inquiry and examination. Without denying what God has said, try to penetrate more and more deeply into its significance, grasping ever more profoundly its meaning and its practical application to your own lives." The trouble with men like Professor Anderson is that their own inquiries have stopped before they have acquired sufficient knowledge to discuss the subject intelligently.

The Catholic Church certainly declares religious truths revealed by God to be sacred. But there is an immense difference between a truth "not to be called in question," and "asking questions about it." We can make all the inquiries we like about any revealed religious truth, however sacred it may be. Even in natural science there are dozens of facts not to be called in question, but that does not prove that science is opposed to inquiry. As for sacred truths not being open to observation, what does the Professor mean? Does he mean that they cannot be seen with our bodily eyes, or touched and weighed and measured like material objects? If so, his own theories of education are not open to "observation" in that sense. But if he means "intelligent investigation" the fact that the wisest of men have devoted their lives to the intelligent investigation of the sacred truths of religion is enough to refute him.

The child is behaving quite sensibly on the inadequate supposition, quite intelligible in a little child, that because all else around it has beerl explained as having been made, God, too, must have been made. The ignorant Papuan also is behaving quite sensibly when, on hearing a voice! from a gramaphone for the first time, he asks how a human being can be locked up in so small a box. The better-informed white man laughs uproariously at the Papuan's simplicity as people laugh at the little child's simplicity. But what of that?

Not at all. He is being told to think again; and to think far more profoundly than before. He is encouraged to think his way past the limits; of inquiry these secularist Professors would impose upon him; to think his way past all merely visible things which cannot explain themselves*.; past all secondary causes which are themselves effects of other causes, and lift his mind to the Supreme Cause who is not an effect, but who is selfexistent and the source of all other reality, of all truth and beauty and goodness. And the truth about God provides him with a further field of inexhaustible inquiry. Far from being told to stop thinking, the one danger is that he will do so, shirking the mental effort and contenting himself with a much smaller field for his rational activities than he should.

A Catholic child certainly has not got to choose either of those alternatives. The Catholic child, duly instructed in his religion, really believes the doctrines he has been taught. There is no cynical pretense about it at all. Those doctrines are a living vital reality in the child's life. On the other hand, the child does not credulously accept those doctrines merely because told them. It will, of course, be useless to tell unbelievers that the grace of God enlightens the mind of a Catholic child to recognize for itself the truth of the teachings of Christ, a perception which of its very nature excludes am/ charge of mere credulity. Unbelievers will reject such an appeal to the supernatural. They will accuse the child of credulity unless natural and purely rational motives can be produced for its acceptance of the religious teachings put before it. Very well. The Catholic child at least has a sound rational motive in its realization of the fact that in teaching the Catholic Faith the teacher is not merely explaining his own individual opinions, or the doctrine of a particular man-made sect, but the official teachings of that vast Church which is One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic, to which innumerable Saints and Doctors and Martyrs in every age have belonged. Those who have never been Catholics and have never had this experience may deny that it is possible for a small child to apprehend such a motive. But Catholic children do apprehend it, not indeed with the clarity of an adult who has deeply studied the subject, but sufficiently for the purposes of a true moral certainty which eliminates mere credulity.

That is a dogmatic opinion which is itself opposed to common-sense, and which merely panders to those who are afraid of religious experience and who themselves seek refuge in phantasy and self-deception. Pascal made a truly profound remark when he said that in the end there are two classes of men, those who fear to lose God and those who fear to find God.

If to have had any religious beliefs taught one as a child, one could look for this "furtive mentality of the bullied child" in a statesman like William Gladstone, a scientist like Pasteur, a clergyman like Pastor Niemoller, a writer like G. K. Chesterton, in military leaders like Field Marshal Montgomery or General MacArthur, or even in the present President of the United States, General Eisenhower!

And quite rightly. What is the virtue of obedience? It is that virtue by which we submit to the authority of one acting within the limits of his lawful jurisdiction. All human authority is within a limited sphere. But the authority of God is absolute. And we are obliged to obey His commands because they are His commands, and not merely because we happen to approve of what He commands. If obedience depended on our approval, we would be justified in rebelling against God's Law as often as we disapproved of it - and that would be the end of obedience altogether. Not God's will, but our own will would be the norm of our conduct, and God's authority as such would count for nothing in our lives.

Religion - Yes or No

The Christian Church

"This Shall Be the Sign"

Dogmatic Authority of the Church

The Power-Complex Illusion

Life-Or-Death Social Problems

Those Exclusive Claims

Religious Liberty

Are Only Catholics Saved

Catholic Apologetics in Question & Answer Form

Religion - Yes or No

The Christian Church

"This Shall Be the Sign"

Dogmatic Authority of the Church

The Power-Complex Illusion

Life-Or-Death Social Problems

Those Exclusive Claims

Religious Liberty

Are Only Catholics Saved

QUESTIONS IN VOLUME 4

401. He also said that faith depends upon reason.

402. Bishop Sheen declared that "people who try to get religion without using their brains usually end up believing that some crack-pot is God because he says so."

403. You say that reason, though presupposed, cannot produce faith, which ever remains the gift of God. Can we not say that faith is an innate tendency or instinct which those who have it cannot help having?

405. If faith is the gift of God, one must pray for it. But how can one pray before he has faith?

406. You have said that if one gets the Catholic faith he is absolutely certain of the truth of your Catholic dogmas. But where there is perfect certainty there is no room for faith.

407. It seems to me that it is of the essence of faith that it is in some measure a gamble.

408. You have maintained, when speaking of the unity of your Church that all Catholics throughout the world have the same faith; that all believe the same things.

409. Do you mean to tell us that all Catholics know all the defined dogmas of the Catholic religion and believe them?

410. In that case, how can the ordinary Catholic have faith in all defined doctrines?

411. That's very mystifying to me. If a Catholic does not know all the defined dogmas of his religion what practical guidance do they afford him?

412. Owing to ignorance, a Catholic might believe the wrong thing unknowingly. What then becomes of his faith?

413. So a man has to put aside what his own reason tells him, should it conflict with the teaching authority of his Church! That is to deny the supremacy of reason and to make God Himself a deceiver of mankind.

414. You speak of the obedience of the intelligence and will. But belief is not a wilful act.

415. No threats or violence can make a man change his religious beliefs.

416. Only truth can make a man change his religious ideas, if those ideas be false.

417. Of course if your Catholic dogmas were certainly revealed by God, then they would be proved beyond doubt and one would just have to accept them.

418. If a man can choose to believe Catholic dogmas if he likes, where does the grace of God come in?

419. By what process does an adult convert to Catholicism arrive at what you term the gift of Faith?

420. I am an Anglo-Catholic, and I resent the suggestion that I do not possess the "Faith" merely because I am not a Roman Catholic.

421. Just what do you mean by faith? I can never understand the inference that all non-Catholics are without faith.

422. Does not a recognition of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost; of Jesus Christ as the Son of God; of Mary as the Mother of God; and of the Sacraments and the necessity of observing the Ten Commandments - do not these make "Faith"?

423. Is it because non-Catholics do not acknowledge the infallibility of the Pope, or any need for him, that they are accused of being without faith?

424. With beliefs so similar, what benefit would it be for an Anglo- Catholic to become a Roman Catholic?

425. Do you hold that faith in the teachings of Christ is necessary for salvation?

426. What happens to a man who is an unbeliever and dies an unbeliever?

427. What belief did primitive man have to guide him?

428. Could a Catholic abandon the Catholic Faith, and preach against I it as a Protestant in absolute sincerity.

429. I suppose you would hold this to be true of a Catholic whose I apostasy went still farther and who became an atheist?

430. I have in mind my own university professor who is an ex-Catholic, and who says he is an atheist. He attacks Christianity and Catholicism in particular unmercifully. Would you account for him by saying that he is either mad or bad?

431. If he is mad, how could he come to be a university professor?

432. I am interested in the impact of Catholicism upon learning. Is not a Catholic hampered in his search for truth by his blind degrading acceptance of the dogmas of your infallible Church?

433. In my opinion the Catholic Church, with her infallible dogmas is the greatest deterrent civilization has had to contend with.

434. Professor A. Wolf, of the University of London, in his book A "An Outline of Modern Knowledge says that the general attitude of the Christian Church from the third to the sixth century was "decidedly hostile towards philosophy and science."

435. He quotes as a fact that in 390 A.D. Bishop Theophilus destroyed one of the libraries of Alexandria.

436. He adds: "To crown it all, the Emperor Justinian had all schools of philosophy closed in 529 A.D."

437. Professor Wolf then says: "The first great period in the history of human thought thus came to an end, leaving the West to darkness and to the Church."

438. You must know that there are serious philosophical objections to certain religious doctrines.

439. In his book, "Fall of the Idols," Dean Inge said that the Roman Catholic Church has been captured by the Thomistic Philosophy.

440. Would you please explain to us what is the Thomistic Philosophy of which he speaks?

441. Do all Catholic priests have to study Thomistic philosophy?

442. You speak of a pagan philosophy and a Christian philosophy. But is not philosophy just philosophy and nothing more? Is it right, for example, to speak of the Christian philosophy of a St. Thomas Aquinas?

443. Will you explain the reconciliation of pagan and Christian philosophies within the synthesis constructed by Aquinas?

444. Did the Catholic Church expressly appoint Aquinas to sift the philosophies of previous ages and proclaim a workable compromise?

445. Has the teaching of St. Thomas the official sanction of you Church today?

446. The world is not interested in the word-spinning of philosophers. More to the point is the question as to whether your dogmas can stand up to physical science.

447. Catholics accept dogmas on the authority of their Church. But men of science are not unanimous about religious beliefs.

448. Men of science are the more intelligent section of the human race.

449. You claim that theology is the science of God. But the science master, the chemistry professor, the mathematician, etc., are also concerned with the science of God; and their findings could also he called theology.

450. Your theological science needs to re-examine itself in the light of the duly-accredited authorities of physical science.

451. In your own studies did you ever come across anything in science which conflicted with the defined dogmas of your Catholic religion?

452. Your Church has been charged again and again with straightout persecution of scientists in order to prevent, further scientific discoveries.

453. Professor Draper, M.D., LL.D., of New York, wrote a special book on the subject entitled, "The History of the Conflict between Religion and Science".

454. Is not Draper a recognized authority?

455. Right down the ages the Catholic Church has persecuted scientists when their discoveries have proved its teachings false.

455. Right down the ages the Catholic Church has persecuted scientists when their discoveries have proved its teachings false.

456. In 415 A.D. Hypatia, the daughter of Theon the astronomer, and herself a teacher of mathematics, was brutally murdered in Alexandria by Christian fanatics.

456. In 415 A.D. Hypatia, the daughter of Theon the astronomer, and herself a teacher of mathematics, was brutally murdered in Alexandria by Christian fanatics.

459. Has the Copernican system been accepted by all astronomers?

460. Was Copernicus a Prussian doctor?

461. What ecclesiastical censures did his teachings bring upon him?