46. Catholicism and Progress

The Würzburg professor of theology Dr. Herman Schell published a book entitled "Catholicism as a principle of progress" (Würzburg 1897). This title struck me as a protest against ideas to which I had become accustomed many years before. I remember that in my youth a sentence uttered by the famous Cardinal Rauscher in the Austrian Herrenhaus made a lasting impression on me. He said: "The Church knows no progress". This sentence always seemed to me to be inspired by a truly religious spirit. And it still seems so to me today. If I were a devout Catholic, I would probably take every opportunity to prove and defend this sentence. I would then say, like the Church Father Tertullian, that man no longer needs to be inquisitive after divine truth has been revealed to him through Jesus Christ. I would swear by the words of St. Thomas Aquinas that the doctrine of salvation is contained in Holy Scripture, and that reason can do nothing but use its powers to find human evidence for these eternal truths of Scripture. I would consider the freedom of thought to be a paradoxical idea, for I could hardly associate any meaning with the idea of free thought if I had to assume that reason must ultimately end up in revelation. I must confess that a believing Catholic who does things differently initially appears to me as a problem, as a big question mark. Professor Herman Schell was also such a question mark for me at first. While I was reading his book, the problem took on a more definite form. It became a psychological task. I found that in the professor's mind ideas were in perfect harmony which I had hitherto assumed to be a complete contradiction. Thus our author says: "Freedom of thought is really an ideal in so far as it means freedom from all prejudices, and remains an ideal as long as the greatest danger to judgment and to progress is the bias of prejudice. Freedom of thought means nothing other than the endeavor to break and keep out all those influences on thought which have no right to truth, because they are not facts or not actually founded, because they are only imaginations, habits of thought, false and superficial interpretations of sensory impressions or other communications, such as historical documents or religious source writings." The professor knows quite well what conclusions must be drawn from this sentence of his when it comes to different modern world views. He proves to materialism, to monism, that they are based on judgments that the mind does not examine because it has become accustomed to them, because it has become biased by living in them. "Materialism has no sense for the factual world of inner experience and the spirit; only the tangible is considered a fact. Monism does not want to accept any cause of the world that is distinct from the world and a supramundane personality: that is its dogma."

But I would now like to ask the Catholic professor what he would say if it turned out in the forum of free thought that any of the basic Christian dogmas had to be dropped? It seems to me, recalling the contents of the book, that the author has no sense of such a possibility. It is as if he were of the opinion that thought cannot arrive at anything other than the Christian truths of salvation. He wants to promote knowledge, but he is convinced that this promotion cannot consist in abandoning the essential doctrines of the Church, "beginning with the personality of the Creator and the personal immortality of the soul and ending with the historical revelation of God". If thought is to be truly free, it must also have the opportunity to penetrate to a world view which derives the order of things from powers other than a personal God, and which knows nothing of personal immortality and historical revelation. Whoever presents these doctrines of faith from the outset as goals to which thinking must come, speaks as a Catholic; but he cannot possibly make himself the defender of free thinking. This can only be its own guideline and set its own goal. For even if it is hindered by the recognition of the facts from an arbitrary flight into the fantastic, the interpretation, the explanation of the facts still depends on it. Thought is the ultimate determining factor. For Christian theology, however, it must be important to interpret the phenomena of the world in such a way that the interpretation agrees with the content of revelation. As our author also says: "The ideal that guides theological research is the conviction that the equation between correctly understood revelation and correctly interpreted reality can be established." Free thinking sails out into the unknown when it sets out in search of the truth. It does not know where the boat will drift. It only feels within itself the strength and courage to arrive at a satisfying view on its own. Catholic theology knows exactly what the realization is that thinking must arrive at. Schell knows this, because he says: "The ideal of theological science is to trace faith back to demonstrable facts and to convincing principles and reasons for proof."

The question now arises for me: How is it possible that a logically trained person like Herman Schell can unite the two assertions: thinking must be free, and: this free thinking must provide the proof that the Catholic belief in revelation is unconditionally true? This question seems to me to be a psychological one. I would like to solve it in the following way. The modern theologian is educated in the belief in divine revelation. His upbringing makes it impossible for him to doubt the truth of revelation. But alongside the divine truth of salvation, he also learns about modern science with its fruitful research methods. He gains respect for this fruitfulness. At the same time, he feels weak in the face of the achievements of the modern spirit. Only strong minds will presume to fight against this feeling; and they will also succeed in suppressing it. They will remain faithful to the true faith, to the true sentiments of their fathers, namely the Fathers of the Church, and will speak out courageously: The Church knows no progress. The others will unite black and white and, like Schell, say: "Catholicism means the covenant of peace between reason and faith, between research and revelation, without degrading and humiliating the Logos: For Christianity is the religion of the Spirit and the Logos! The true spirit of religion and holiness is only that spirit which proceeds from the word of truth." This is how those who feel a sense of shame - perhaps dormant in their unconscious - when they are seen as an opponent of progress speak.

The word "progress" has a suggestive effect on today's educated people, be they theologians, scholars, politicians, etc. How rare are the people who are proud to think "anti-progressively". Friedrich Nietzsche was one of the opponents of progress: "Progress is merely a modern idea, that is, a false idea. The European of today remains in his values deeply inferior to the European of the Renaissance; further development is by no means with any necessity increase, intensification, intensification." These sentences are found in one of the most anti-Christian books that has ever been written. But they are in a book written by a truly independent spirit. The book "Catholicism as a Principle of Progress", however, was devised by a mind that is dependent on two sides: on the spirit of true Catholicism and on a false shame that prevents it from denying the claims of anti-Catholic science. It must be described as Catholic in the true sense of the word when the author says: "Catholic is a name that does not merely designate the central church and conservative Christianity in its firmly organized world existence from time-honoured tradition, but a name that expresses a high principle, a God-given task: To realize the kingdom of God in spirit and in truth among all peoples, and indeed through all peoples and national characters, and thus to carry out Christianity in the Church really whole and full,genuine and true. " UnCatholic, however, and only out of reverence for anti-Catholic science, it is said: "The concept of God of arbitrary omnipotence, which manifests its supreme ruling power precisely in the most frequent possible breaking of the laws of nature and the mad chaos of uncontrollable forces, has no basis in reason and cannot be scientifically proven. Only God as the omnipotent realization of the perfect spiritual life, as the eternal omnipotence of infinite wisdom and holiness itself, can be proven to be an indispensable truth in the face of unbelief and makes all superstition unacceptable from the ground up." This sentence strikes me as if it had been spoken by a Haeckelian, not a professor of Catholic theology in Würzburg. A God as the realization of the perfect spiritual life, as the epitome of wisdom and holiness, is something quite different from the personal God of the Catholic, who can, however, break through the laws of nature. This is what the Gospels teach. And a completely anti-Catholic spirit speaks from the words: "Is there any need for a separate principle that everything concerning faith and the goal of life must be mediated by the personal reason and freedom of a reasonable man, by his serious examination of conscience? That is self-evident!" Yes, it is self-evident. But for an unchristian way of thinking. Anyone who takes these words seriously must refuse to bind his thinking with doctrines of faith that are fixed from the outset. But in doing so, he ceases to think catholic.

For the modern thinker, minds like Professor Schell only have a psychological interest. You can learn from them how the most contradictory ideas can live side by side in one head. The example given is particularly instructive because it is typical of a large number of modern theologians and because it shows how little logical training is able to combat the power of human emotions. The mind of the Catholic theologian is certainly trained logically. But what good is all logic if contradictory feelings and emotions develop their power from two sides. Logical thinking then becomes sophistry, which deludes the thinker into believing that things that are eternally hostile to each other can live side by side in the deepest peace.