On the Raison d'Être of Modernism

[Note: This post was born out of a recent discussion on the always thoughtful and engaging OnePeterFive with fellow Catholic Murray. As my response grew too long to post in the discussion thread, I decided to place it here rather than clog up the board over there. -RC]

St. Pius X's Pascendi Dominici Gregis diagnoses Modernism as resting upon a two-sided foundation: Agnosticism and Vitalism. The first teaches that "human reason is confined entirely within the field of phenomena, that is to say, to things that are perceptible to the senses, and in the manner in which they are perceptible" and that, as a consequence, "it has no right and no power to transgress these limits;" the second teaches that "faith, which is the basis and the foundation of all religion, consists in a sentiment which originates from a need of the divine."

Everything in St. Pius' treatment of Modernism follows necessarily from this two-sided foundation, as he very ably demonstrates. The only deficiency I would ascribe to the great Saint's work - a lack which has not been supplied in the intervening century, as far as I can tell - is that of failing to make a sufficient inquiry into the motivation behind the adoption of that foundation on the part of the Modernists.

I contend that the adoption of that foundation was ultimately driven by the desire to insulate religious faith from the attacks of post-Enlightenment science. Before I am lambasted for sympathizing with the Modernists, let me explain:

Even a cursory examination of Kant, for example, reveals that the driving force in his huge body of work is the desire to make the core claims of religion and ethics as he understood them impervious to the attacks of the new science. His deep forays into epistemology and metaphysics, while they do represent attacks on Scholasticism, were actually the by-products of his searching for a more resilient foundation for religion, and to correctly understand the three Critiques one has to read them in reverse order. His true goal was to produce a rational proof for the existence of God and an objective foundation for morality which would be impervious to the attacks which had been launched against the classical-scholastic proofs since the days of Descartes. He pursued this goal relentlessly, and was willing to sacrifice anything in order to accomplish it - including that most fundamental and natural of all presuppositions, Epistemological Realism, i.e. the belief in the ability of man to know the world as it really is. Once he had loosed himself from this foundation, he was able to go about the work of setting up a new foundation which would lead inescapably to the end he desired.

I mention this because the failure of Catholic intellectuals to successfully combat German Idealism stemmed in large part from their failure to identify the motivation at work. Kant, for his part, was cast in the role of 'enemy of traditional metaphysics' - which he was, but by circumstance, not by design. As I said, his opposition to Scholasticism was not the product of animosity towards God or even the Schoolmen, but rather of the desire to circumvent what he saw as its weaknesses in defending a reasonable faith in God and the objective moral order. Attacking Kant as an infidel metaphysicist, which was the common reaction in Catholic circles, missed the point Kant was making: advances in science - both those made in his own day as well as those which he could see just over the horizon - possessed enough explosive force to threaten the very foundations of traditional Natural Theology and Morality, and if drastic measures were not taken, the whole edifice could come crashing down. The tragic irony here is, of course, that he himself became instrumental in the tearing down of the very edifice he sought to reinforce.

I see old-school Modernists - I do not refer to the present generation of apostates usually subsumed under that name, who are true revolutionaries - in much the same way, i.e. as men seeking to insulate their badly shaken faith by resorting to means which ultimately destroy more than they preserve. What is the Agnosticism of which St. Pius speaks if not the attempt to place the object of religious knowledge, e.g. God and His Revelation, beyond the destructive reach of science? Regarding this Agnosticism, he writes: "From this it is inferred that God can never be the direct object of science, and that, as regards history, He must not be considered as an historical subject." Indeed; but removing God from the field of scientific inquiry was not by design, but rather by apparent necessity: the Modernists let themselves become convinced that faith in God cannot be confirmed by science, and that the impartial study of history will conclude any investigation by finding no place for Him. As Laplace remarked to Napoleon, God had become "an unnecessary hypothesis." If, in order to accomplish this feat, the Modernist must deny man's ability to know objective reality, so be it. This leaves the field of subjective experience, upon which ground science has precious little authority, and the doctrine of Vital Immanence as the positive foundation for religion and morality is born.

I take no exception to St. Pius X's reaction to the Modernist threat of his day: the house was on fire and a heavy hand was needed to smother the flames. But he was unsuccessful in putting out the embers, which flared up again no later than with the reign of Pius XII, because nothing substantial had been done to transcend the now open antagonism between modern science and Sacred Scripture. As I discussed in a previous article (On the Interpretation of Sacred Scripture, or The Fissue of Pope Paul VI), the Popes from Pius IX to Benedict XV had undertaken dramatic measures to shore up the defences of traditional biblical exegesis against the attacks of modern science - all of which, however, was undone with the fateful publication of Divino Afflante Spiritu in 1943, which opened the crack through which the smoke of Satan, in the form of the previously condemned historical-critical method, entered the sanctuary and fanned the embers of Modernism into the raging inferno otherwise known as Vatican II. While new priests were swearing the famously defunct Oath Against Modernism, they were at the very same time eating away at the substance of the faith in God's Revelation - namely, the claim to objective reality - like "ecclesiastical termites," to borrow an arrow from Christopher Ferrara's quiver. Once the historical-critical method caught aflame, the Church Militant found itself theologically gutted.

And we have yet to transcend - I use the term judiciously - the conflict which has been raging for the better part of 500 years. The reason the defenders of scriptural authority have languished as they have is because they have failed to appreciate not merely the effect the Enlightenment has had on the thinking of modern man (for example, that he has been rendered effectively blind to what physicist and philosopher Wolfgang Smith refers to as "vertical causation", so crucial to a correct understanding of both theology and nature), but also the motivation behind those who have succumbed to its allure: the desire to defend their own faith - warped though it is - in God, Man and the Natural World. Any attempt to engage with Neo-Modernists of a more 'classical' bent - and they are everywhere today - must start from this position.

Event: International Symposium: The Two Shall Become One

In anticipation of the re-opening of the Synod on the Family in October, an international symposium on the creation of Adam and Eve as the foundation of the Catholic doctrine on Holy Marriage will be held on September 26, 2015, at the Centro Congressi Cavour – Via Cavour 50/A (near Termini Station) in Rome. Experts in theology, philosophy, and natural science will demonstrate that the traditional doctrine of the Church on the divine creation of Adam and Eve harmonizes with the best arguments in theology and philosophy, as well as with sound natural science, including the latest findings in biology, genetics, and paleontology.  

At the end of the nineteenth century, the first wave of the modern assault on Holy Marriage began as social revolutionaries attempted to introduce divorce into Catholic countries.  In response to these coordinated attacks on Holy Marriage, Pope Leo XIII exhorted the Bishops and theologians of the Catholic Church to defend the divine institution of Holy Marriage on the foundation of the divine creation of Adam and Eve.  In his encyclical Arcanum he told the Bishops:

The true origin of marriage, venerable brothers, is well known to all. [...] We record what is to all known, and cannot be doubted by any, that God, on the sixth day of creation, having made man from the slime of the earth, and having breathed into his face the breath of life, gave him a companion, whom He miraculously took from the side of Adam when he was locked in sleep. [...] And this union of man and woman [...] even from the beginning manifested chiefly two most excellent properties [...] namely, unity and perpetuity. (Pope Leo XIII, Arcanum, 5)

According to Monsignor Barreiro, long-time director of Human Life International in Rome:

The international symposium will demonstrate the timeless wisdom of Pope Leo XIII’s teaching while exposing the serious errors in theology, philosophy and natural science that beset alternative explanations for the origins of the first human beings.

Participants in the symposium include:

• Fr. Chad Ripperger, Ph.D., Philosophy (formerly professor of Dogmatic Theology at Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary)
• D. Q. McInerny, Ph.D., Philosophy (professor of Philosophy at Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary) 
• Fr. Thomas Hickey, M.A., Theology (Faculty, Holy Apostles Seminary)
• Mr. John Wynne, (author, A Catholic Assessment of Evolution Theory)
• Dr. John Sanford, Ph.D., Plant Genetics (author, Genetic Entropy)
• Bai Macfarlane, (Director, Mary’s Advocates)
• Fr. Francesco Giordano, STD (Director, Human Life International, Rome Office).

For further information in Europe, please contact, Fr. Francesco Giordano, STD, Director, Vita Umana Internazionale, Roma (vuiroma@tin.it); in North America and elsewhere outside of Europe, please contact Hugh Owen (howen@shentel.net).

***

Please visit the Symposium's website to read Cardinal Raymond Burke's letter of welcome to participants. The event will also be streamed live.

Does Richard Dawkins Exist?

Regular readers will have noticed that things around here have taken a decidedly philosophical turn as of late. I've written several longish articles (see here, here, here, here and here) which I sincerely hope have been able to spark in you an interest in our rich Catholic philosophical heritage. Now, I realize that engaging in the study of philosophy can be a somewhat daunting task, and I'm still looking for ways to make the treasures of Catholic philosophy more readily accessible to those of you whose resources in time and energy may be limited. In the meantime, I would like to keep the flame burning by presenting you with a talk delivered earlier this year by Dr. Dennis Bonnette of the Aquinas School of Philosophy with the delightfully cheeky title Does Richard Dawkins Exist? It's just over an hour long, and it's best enjoyed in one sitting, so try to find some undisturbed time to take it in.

The presentation itself is a very accessible introduction to Aristotelian-Thomist metaphysics. Dr. Bonnette goes about his task by contrasting the Theistic Hylomorphism of the Thomist school with the dominant scientistic philosophy of the day, i.e. Atheistic Materialism. For those of you engaged in apologetics, this video is sure to whet your appetite for more substantial portions. A brief outline of the talk is as follows:

• Introduction (0:42-2:06)
• The Case for Atheistic Materialism (2:06-25:10)
• The Response of Theistic Hylomorphism (25:10-59:20)
• Conclusion (59:20-1:02:20)

If you enjoyed the video, and would like more of the same, please let me know in the comments section.

Natural Theology, Pluralism and You

A thoughtful reader has requested that I explain what, exactly, I meant when, in previous editorials, I wrote about "the propositions of natural theology." What are these and where can we find out more about them? There are several very good manuals of natural theology out there, and I plan to eventually publish a list of such manuals with links where they can be found, but for the time being, I'll just cut to the chase and present a list of the most important propositions, so as to give the various statements made in previous postings more tangibility. A basic list of propositions drawn from natural theology would include the following (in no particular order):

• God exists.
• God alone possesses aseity.
• God is one.
• God is infinite.
• God is eternal.
• God is immutable.
• God is absolutely simple.
• God is immense.
• God is omnipresent.
• God is omniscient.
• God is omnibenevolent.
• God is creator.
• God is preserver.
• God is provider, i.e. governs providentially.

The first thing to note here is that reasonable people of any religious background - whether we're talking about Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, ancient or modern pagans - agree on these propositions. This is because they are drawn from human reason, and can be known without recourse to divine revelation. Of course, there have been disagreements between rival schools of natural theology at various times in the long course of history, but these typically amount to squabbles of a highly abstract nature, and are usually of very little interest or consequence to the average person. Natural theologians are profoundly concordant in their views across the spectrum of religious traditions - which, again, demonstrates the reasonableness of the propositions themselves.

[NB: For my two perpetually angry atheist readers, please don't come at me with ancient polytheism as a counter-example unless you can point to a natural theology which is genuinely polytheistic. This is a nice way of saying don't bother, because a polytheistic natural theology doesn't exist. And no, Proclus doesn't count. So there.]

More to the point, however, is the following observation: These are not, strictly speaking, religious propositions. While they touch on matter germane to religion, they are not, in themselves, religious, and faith is not required to recognize them as true. This has several important consequences (all of which are equally applicable to natural law), viz.:

• To expect the members of a secular society to recognize the above principles is perfectly justified. In fact, any person who either does not have the mental capacity to grasp them or rejects them because of the consequences which flow naturally from them is a potential threat to the integrity and prosperity of said society whenever he or she possess the power to influence public policy.
• To expect a secular government to defend and promote the above principles is equally justified, for the same reasons. Doing so is not a violation of the secular shibboleth of separation of Church and State, for these are not tenets of faith drawn from a creed, but propositions arrived at through the light of reason. Besides, the separation of Church and State was never intended to mean the separation of God and State. That is to say, to defend the propositions of natural theology in the public square is not to promote a religion, but merely to defend common sense.
• As these propositions do not require religious faith, they do not please God (Heb. 11:6), and they do not suffice for salvation (Rom. 3:22). For the attainment of those ends, faith in Our Lord, Jesus Christ (miserere nobis), is absolutely necessary. Because God is merciful, however, people who have never heard the Gospel might be able to claim invincible ignorance before the throne of God on Judgment Day in regards to tenets of faith drawn solely from Sacred Scripture. Nonetheless, because God is just, they will not be able to claim invincible ignorance regarding the propositions of natural theology, for one need not know Sacred Scripture to recognize them as true; all that is required is a sound mind and an upright heart intent on discovering the truth.

As I've mentioned in previous editorials (see here and here), such propositions are the very glue which have hitherto held modern western societies together. They represent, to use a limited analogy, the foundation upon which each man, by civil right, is free to place either sacred theology (resp. moral theology) as taught authoritatively by the Church's Magisterium, or as taught by some heretical sect of Christianity, or as taught by some apostate or pagan religious sect, or aberrations of his own imagination, or nothing at all. Under the aegis of religious rationalism, the tacit agreement between people of faith, secular government and pluralistic society is that, as long as the fundamental propositions of natural theology and natural law are upheld as constitutive of the common good, and the rights to profess the tenets of sacred theology and to live according to the dictates of moral theology are publicly defended, then the people forego the desire to have the state acknowledge their religious authority above all others.

Readers familiar with Church teaching on Christ the Sovereign King might want to consider whether this agreement is a morally acceptable one. Either way, however, it is becoming clearer by the day that this agreement is no longer being upheld on the part of the state. And why should it? Every non-Catholic state is essentially an ultimately futile exercise in keeping the hounds of totalitarianism at bay. It is the people's job to continually remind the state of its dutiful obligations. And we have failed miserably to do just that for more than half a century.

Scholastic philosophy was intentionally abandoned after Vatican II, and this was hugely detrimental, not merely to the life of the Catholic Church, but to the very survival of western civilization. However, while the Church is protected by Our Lord's promise, western civilization is not. If - and that's an open-ended 'if' - we want to preserve what remains of the "American Way of Life," then we must forcefully restate the obligation of all members of secular society to acknowledge the propositions of natural theology and the dictates of natural law as normative, and kindly remove from power all who would attempt to undermine the same.

On Reason, Revelation, and Richard Dawkins' Sweaty Upper Lip

In the last few editorials (see here and here), I've focused my attention - and hopefully yours, too, gentle reader - on the often hidden yet vital role philosophy plays in the wider culture. There are a few loose ends I'd like to tie up, however, particularly in regards to the relationship between the natural and the sacred in philosophy, and I think I owe you something more substantial in the way of explanation regarding how philosophy is supposed to serve as a foundation for the ostensibly peaceful coexistence of peoples holding widely differing views on religious matters. In this post, the last in this series, I'll attempt to clarify the above-mentioned relationship so as to make the importance of philosophy in the struggle for the preservation of what remains of western civilization more readily apparent.

In his excellent handbook of Scholasticism entitled An Elementary Course of Christian Philosophy, Br. Louis de Poissy provides us with the following concise thesis:

Natural Theology is that part of philosophy which treats of God and his attributes, as far as they can known by the light of reason. It differs from Sacred Theology in that the latter studies God and His attributes by the light of divine revelation.

Simply put, there are two ways of learning about God, and two kinds of knowledge in regards to God:

1. Things which can be known about God only through means of divine revelation, e.g., that He is one God in three Divine Persons.
2. Things which can be know about God even if we are ignorant of divine revelation, e.g., that He is omnipotent.

That there exists one Godhead in three Divine Persons is something we would not know if God had not revealed it to us. That God is omnipotent, however, is something we can know about God simply by considering what it means for God to be, i.e. that He must possess the power to bring forth all things from nothingness, as well as the power to continually sustain all things in their existence. That is to say, omnipotence follows from God's very being, i.e. from His being God. We needn't appeal to Sacred Scripture to demonstrate that this proposition is true.

The first category of things is the domain of sacred theology; the second category is that of natural theology. Of course, some things which can be known by the light of reason, such as God's omnipotence, can also be objects of divine revelation. Recall, for example, the word of God revealed through the prophet Isaiah (44:24):

I am the Lord, who made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, who spread out the earth by Myself.

Thus, God's omnipotence can be studied as a proposition both of sacred theology and of natural theology. However, while nothing in sacred theology contradicts what we can know about God through the light of reason - sacred theology is profoundly reasonable - there is much in sacred theology which falls outside the scope of natural theology, as sacred theology approaches the holy mysteries of God. Sacred theology, therefore, is superior to natural theology, as it contains the latter implicitly while surpassing it in terms of explicit informative content.

A similar relationship also exists between other branches of philosophical inquiry. For example, while moral philosophy studies natural law, i.e. those laws which can be discovered through the light of reason, moral theology studies divine law, i.e. those laws which are revealed to us through Sacred Scripture. And just as a certain proposition, e.g. that God is omnipotent, can be treated under both natural and sacred theology, a particular law, e.g. that murder is a criminal offense, can be treated as both a natural law and a divine law.

For Catholics, both reason and revelation are perfectly reliable sources of true knowledge, and we have always made use of both sources to inform the life of both the Church and the State. The role of the Magisterium, however, plays a crucial role here, as it alone possesses the God-given authority to decide matters pertaining to the correct interpretation of revelation. Without the Magisterium, it would be every man for himself, and the unity of the Church as a human institution would be irreparably damaged. This is essentially what happened in the wake of the Protestant Revolt of the 16th century: having abandoned the Magisterium of God's Church, the Protestant revolution shattered into numerous sects, each claiming to possess the correct interpretation of God's word - a process which has continued down to the present day. Already at the time of the American Founding Fathers, there were a dozen or more major branches in the Protestant family tree of heresy. Thus, rather than serving as a fountain from which certain knowledge could be drawn, revelation had come to be seen as a source of disunity and strife among Christians. As far as the interpretation of divine revelation was concerned, society was hopelessly fragmented, and from such a condition, no religious nation - let alone a Christian one - can emerge. With revelation having been cast aside due to the corrupting influence of evil men, all that remained to the Founding Fathers was the light of reason.

What does all this have to do with the ostensibly peaceful coexistence of peoples in a pluralistic society? Three things.

First, modern America was able to attract and accommodate people of virtually any religious creed because it defended the propositions of natural theology and upheld the dictates of natural law, i.e. those things upon which any person of sound mind could agree, and it remained emphatically neutral regarding the teachings of revealed religion, i.e. those things which can only be known by the decree of religious authority. For example, "In God We Trust" did not appear on American currency by accident. But it would be a grave error to assume that the God of the Bible, the God of Abraham, the God of Revelation is being referred to here. He's not. It's the God of the philosopher, the God of Aristotle and Plato, the God of the Cosmological Argument in which the Founding Fathers placed their trust. Many of them - nearly half of the generals in the Continental Army and a good third of those who signed the U.S. Constitution - were Freemasons, for whom "God" meant the "Grand Architect of the Universe". Christians are often eager to overlook this important part of America's intellectual and spiritual patrimony - to their own detriment.

Second, post-modern America is falling apart precisely because it has stopped defending the propositions of natural theology and upholding the dictates of natural law, and has failed to remain neutral regarding the teachings of revealed religion. Everywhere one looks, the forces of deconstructivism are taking a sledgehammer to the intellectual and moral foundations of American and modern western society, with the natural anthropology of the human person, human sexuality, and the natural institution of marriage being merely the latest aspects to come under attack. The separation of Church and State is no longer satisfactory; now, the very mention of God - regardless of revelatory creed - is considered offensive to secular ears and in need of being expunged from the public consciousness. America has long since stopped attracting and is quickly becoming incapable of even accommodating people of faith; it is instead intentionally repulsing and alienating them - both within its own borders and around the world.

Third, this wave of deconstructivism can be halted by forcefully restating the principles of sound philosophy, including natural theology and natural law, in the public square. To my more incredulous readers, I offer but one example: William Lane Craig. Remember a few years back, when everyone was talking about "the New Atheism"? Remember how liberal magazines were brimming with breathless reports of the imminent sounding of the death knell of a reasonably defensible faith in God? Ever notice how the "Four Horsemen" (i.e. Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennet and Sam Harris) have become quiet as church mice as of late? (And, yes, I know that Hitchens has since gone on to his eternal reward.) One important contributing factor to this turn of events is the fact that William Lane Craig publicly debated three of them, and gave them all sound thrashings, while Richard Dawkins simply refused to undergo the same humiliation - which was in itself to concede a humiliating defeat. Lane's terrifying weapon? A slightly modified version of the Cosmological Argument. As unlikely as it might at first seem, these luminaries of godlessness positively withered in the face of something resembling a Scholastic argument. Which is not to say that the argument can't be met with thought-provoking counter-arguments. Rather, these gurus of the New Atheism were simply out of their depths, and thoroughly incapable of offering anything in the way of a coherent rebuttal. They spent years cutting their teeth on arguments drawn from sacred theology - Dawkins wrote several books devoted almost exclusively to attacking Sacred Scripture - but were floored when they ran up against a genuine argument from natural theology. Attacking the Bible was no longer an option, as Lane didn't need to appeal to Scripture to make his claim. They had to meet him on rational grounds, and they failed miserably. Result: the New Atheism is dead.

And William Lane Craig is - with all due respect - a Protestant. Catholics have 2000 years of intellectual and spiritual patrimony, including the work of some of the brightest minds the world has ever known, and yet we're attempting to defend and propagate the faith in the public square with anecdotal tales of personal encounter and emotive dialogue. It's like sending the Boy Scouts of Troop 194 when you have the 1st Marine Special Operations Battalion ready and at your disposal. We have every reason to go on the offensive and demand that the secular state recognize what people throughout history and irrespective of culture or creed have recognized as true and good. That's not advocating for religion; that's simply defending common sense.

With that being said, while there is no pressing need for Catholics to retreat from the public square and to hole up in a defensive position, we are faced with a more profound question: Should we? That is to say, if saving western civilization in its current form were up to us, should we attempt to do so? Because, let's face it, barring divine intervention, America as we know it will never be a Catholic country, and Europe will never return to its Catholic roots. America is non-Catholic - perhaps even anti-Catholic - by design. It was founded on the principles of rationalism divorced from revelation and guided in large part by the spirit of Freemasonry, with its future success depending largely upon a return to those same principles and that same spirit. Is this really something Catholics ought to work towards preserving? Or should we rather be saving up our energies for the effort of rebuilding once the coming storm of revolt and chaos has passed?

Will it be a natural death after all?

On Metaphysics, Americanism and Penguin Poop

St. Thomas Aquinas
Master of Metaphysics

A few days ago, I presented you, gentle reader, with something of an experiment in creative analogies to be drawn between fighting the culture wars and dragon slaying. As far as I can tell, you didn't read it - which, to be perfectly frank, does not entirely surprise me. I'm pretty sure mixing obscure medieval Germanic lore with even more obscure philosophical issues would top any list of things to avoid in writing popular blog posts.

While the exercise was largely cathartic - my inner medievalist is now thoroughly accoyed (!) and purring like a cat upon a bed of canary feathers - the article was nonetheless attempting to make an important point: philosophy matters. A lot. Unfortunately, however, most people don't understand what philosophy is or what role it plays in their daily lives. The mere mention of a word like "metaphysics" is usually sufficient to cast a thick glaze over the eyes of even the best-intentioned of interlocutors. On occasion, I have been tempted to replace "metaphysics" with "the quantum mechanics of sugar-plum fairies", just to see if anyone would notice. Given the utterly bewildering popularity of hip-hop music and reality TV shows among the general populace, I suspect most would not.

This was not always the case, mind you. There was a time - and not too long ago, actually - when every self-respecting educated person in the western hemisphere had a firm grasp of the essential components of the major branches of philosophy, such as logic, metaphysics, and ethics. As I noted in a recent article on the roots of America's educational system, Scholasticism played a tremendous role in the intellectual life of the American Founding Fathers, though this has been largely forgotten - or intentionally overlooked, depending upon your politics. Having reviewed Dr. James Walsh's book on the subject in some depth, it is safe to say that the Founding Fathers framed the Constitution and the Bill of Rights for a people thoroughly acquainted with the rudiments of natural theology. The very opening line of the Declaration of Independence, "We hold these truths to be self-evident," positively drips with philosophical presuppositions drawn directly from Scholastic metaphysics.

Lest there be any confusion, let me clarify that I am most certainly not asserting that the Founding Fathers were closet Catholics. On the contrary, most of them held the Catholic Church to be a contemptible institution guilty of hobbling the human intellect for centuries. Nonetheless, they begrudgingly recognized the inestimable service she has rendered to mankind by fully developing a rational system of natural theology, anthropology, cosmology and ethics. So impressed were they with this rational system that they constructed the entire edifice of the fledgling state upon it as a sure foundation. "We hold these truths to be self-evident." Sadly, an appallingly large segment of the American population today would be hard-pressed to list even one such self-evident truth, let alone to explain what "self-evident" actually means.

Thus, I make no novel claims regarding the particular religious affiliations of the Founding Fathers. Some were Anglicans, some were Presbyterians, some were Congregationalists - there were even a few Catholics, believe it or not. In the wider population, there was even greater diversity, with Quakers and Shakers, Lutherans and Unitarians, and a whole host of assorted sects. While they differed greatly in regards to their understanding of divine or supernatural theology, they all agreed on the rational principles of natural theology and morality. Anyone familiar with the principles of Freemasonry will see why it was so attractive to the Founding Fathers, and how important religious rationalism, divorced from all sectarian views, was to the success of early America.

As an aside, anyone familiar with the Catholic teaching on the subject - i.e. that natural theology intentionally divorced from dogmatic theology quickly becomes a diabolical imitation of true religion - will also see why, prior to the invention of baseball, Anti-Catholicism was the favorite All-American pastime. Catholicism threatened to upset the precarious balance struck in the American intellect: religious rationalism coupled with dogmatic indifference. Catholics were insufferably dogmatic, which required their exclusion from the institutions of higher education, and unquestioningly loyal to the Pope, which required their exclusion from the public offices of government. In short, they refused to go along to get along, which threatened the real purpose of the American Enterprise: making obscene amounts of money.

And the plan worked brilliantly, as far as such things go, provided that everyone who was destined to wield the power of government continued to receive an education in the rudiments of sound philosophy and sufficiently distanced himself from anything resembling genuine religious belief. Of course, people of faith had their role to play: Catholics, with their culture of pious submission to suffering, were ideal cheap labor in the growing cities, and Protestants, with their desire to flee all trace of authority, were ideal settlers in the expanding wilderness, and both would help to make Manifest Destiny a profitable reality. But the most their religious faith could hope to achieve vis-à-vis the state was toleration, never support. To violate the principle of indifference to dogma and enshrine one religion's beliefs in law would be to invite all kinds of internal strife and - ultimately - to threaten profit margins. That is to say, religious faith is tolerated until it interferes with the bottom line.

This is, incidentally, the proximate cause of the rapid reversal of the U.S. government's stance on issues such as same-sex unions. But the cause-in-fact is the near-complete erosion of America's intellectual and moral foundation brought about by the elimination of the principles of Scholastic philosophy from the education of the general population. Even otherwise educated Americans don't know what to make of arguments from natural law, and are perfectly mystified by appeals to objective morality. As a case in point, I provide the following excerpt from a recent article by Margery Eagen, Crux's spirituality columnist, in which she opines:

Wall Street, Main Street, the ultra-macho world of organized sports, most of America, Europe, and the industrialized world has done an about-face on gay rights and even gay marriage. Republicans are looking for a way to finesse the problem away. Yet the catechism of the Catholic Church, like some "Reefer Madness" denial of reality, still describes a "homosexual inclination" as "objectively disordered" and homosexual acts as "intrinsically disordered."

Not only does Ms. Eagen betray her own ignorance as to the actual import of the terms in question, she's dilettantish enough to wield actual quotes as scare quotes. It's hard to relate just how ridiculous that looks to anyone with even rudimentary training in Scholastic philosophy, but the following image comes close:

In her defense, Ms. Eagen - though writing for an allegedly Catholic newspaper - has very likely never even seen a manual on Scholastic ethics, let alone read one, and the distinction between moral philosophy and moral theology would, in all likelihood, be completely lost on her. And it's not (entirely) her fault. But expecting people who rely solely upon their typically malformed conscience to guide them through a complex issue such as sexual morality is like expecting a 4th grader to review a critical edition of the collected works of Chaucer. "It must be good, because it has a really pretty picture on the cover." Such an evaluation carries all the weight and intellectual merit of the typical argument in favor of same-sex unions: "They love each other, so it must be OK."

I said it before, and I'll say it several times more on this blog, God willing: The weak point of the culture of death is to be found in the soft underbelly of its metaphysical assumptions. It is there that its weakness is helplessly exposed, and it is there that we must apply the deadly strike.

This means, in the first place, educating ourselves and our children in the principles of Scholastic philosophy, i.e. logic, ontology, natural theology, anthropology, psychology, cosmology, ethics. Of course, these are to be supplemented by dogmatic theology, the natural sciences and moral theology. But these latter are not effective tools in the fight for sufficient breathing space for the practice of our Catholic Faith in a world increasingly hostile to true religion. Not only are they not effective, they can actually be counter-productive, as they give the appearance of pushing our religious beliefs off on other people. This is a fatal mistake in the context of the U.S., for the reasons outlined above. Instead, we must take the fight to the culture of death on rational - particularly metaphysical - grounds. Let the Protestant reactionaries thump their Bibles. Catholics have always excelled at philosophy, and we need not appeal to Sacred Scripture to assert what every man of sound mind is capable of ascertaining through the use of his God-given reason. That's how America - and the modern western world - was designed to work. It's by no means ideal, but it's what we have to work with.

America's Scholastic Roots

Quo vadis, Carolus?
Catholic Founding Father
Charles Carroll (1737-1832)

I'm not a big fan of American political commentary, but I do read the odd opinion piece now and again. One such piece, penned by Patrick J. Buchanan and published on his blog a week ago, especially caught my attention. Entitled The Long Retreat in the Culture War, it laments the capitulation rendered by America's political and religious conservatives in the face of the cultural revolution which has been advancing virtually unchecked since the 1960's. On every important front, from religion in the public square to marriage and the family to human sexuality, the progressives have not only taken the field, but have been allowed to dictate the terms of the surrender. Mr. Buchanan tries hard to end the piece on a positive note, but there's very little he can offer in the way of an encouraging counterbalance. The situation is grim, and we would do well to come to grips with it sooner rather than later.

The reasons why America lost - some would say sold for a song - its own soul are many and far too complex to treat in anything approaching sufficient detail in a blog post. But I recently discovered an interesting piece of the puzzle which deserves more thoughtful consideration. The discovery came by way of a book with the following title:

Education of the Founding Fathers of the Republic

Scholasticism in the Colonial Colleges:

A Neglected Chapter in the History of American Education

by

James J. Walsh M.D, Ph.D, Sc.D., E.D., etc.

Fordham University Press

1935

As you might have guessed from that title, the book sets out to demonstrate that the Founding Fathers of the American Republic - indeed, nearly all educated Americans up through the middle of the 19th century - were intimately familiar with Scholastic philosophy and the medieval methods of teaching and study, and that this familiarity imparted the intellectual and moral foundation upon which the Founding Fathers conceived the new nation. Walsh writes:

The Founding Fathers of our republic, then, were educated according to the academic traditions which had been formulated in the earlier Middle Ages by Boethius, sometimes hailed as the father of Scholasticism, developed under St. Anselm in the eleventh century, reaching their culmination in the mind of Aquinas and the group contemporary with him in the thirteenth century when there came the conciliation of Scholastic doctrines with Aristotle, thus welding together the whole course of philosophic thought.

Walsh develops the thesis in great detail, providing a careful analysis of the so-called Commencement Theses debated publicly by examinees at the great American universities, such as Harvard, Princeton, the College of Rhode Island (Brown University) and King's College (Columbia University) from the middle of the 17th to the beginning of the 19th century. He continues:

A definitely revolutionary change came over the content and the method of college and university education during the first half of the nineteenth century. [...] Scholastic philosophy, which had been the basic element of education in practically all the institutions of learning in our western civilization from the early Middle Ages down to this time, was gradually dropped from the college curriculum in all except distinctly Catholic educational institutions.

The effect of this change was dramatic. Walsh writes:

Almost needless to say, this alteration in the subjects to which the student devoted their efforts, especially during the last two years of their college course, involved a profound modification of the method and content of education. The acquisition of information now took the place to a great extent of training in thoughtfulness and in discrimination of truth from falsity on which so much emphasis had been laid in the older time.

As to the motivation behind this change away from the sound principles of Scholasticism and critical thinking and towards novel theories of education and data-gathering bordering on pursuit of the trivial, I leave it to the interested reader to peruse the volume for himself and draw his own conclusions. But the following passage is very much worth noting in this regard:

It is probably easier to fool people now than ever before. Many refuse to believe that and lay the flattering unction to their souls that we are an intelligent, discriminating people, but the stock market and its devotees, our wonder-working patent medicines, the ease with which our people fall for all sorts of frauds as well as the prevalence of political chicanery and the naivete of voters, demonstrate very clearly the ease with which our generation may be duped. We have been filling students' memories with large numbers of facts but we have not trained them in that intellectual discrimination so important to the making of distinctions between what is true and what seems true and noting how close to each other truth and falsity may be under a great many circumstances. After all, half truths are more dangerous than whole lies.

Given what we know about the relationship between Scholastic philosophy and the recognition of human nature, natural law and the objective moral order - if you need something of a refresher on this extremely important subject, I recommend the brief but thoroughly accessible article by Logan Paul Gage entitled Darwin, Design and Thomas Aquinas - is it any surprise that the abandonment of Scholastic education was followed by an inability on the part of the people to intelligently self-govern as envisioned by the Founding Fathers? Or that today's average American conservative seems utterly incapable of making a cogent moral argument without referencing the Bible?

Those who are interested may download a pdf of the above-mentioned work here.