All the problems of our society date back that tragic year 1517That is the opinion of the great pontiff Pope Leo XIII. I won’t give much introduction since the excerpt below is long. The excerpt contains both some exposition from the author of the bio of Pope Leo XIII, Fr. O’Reilly, as well as a quote from Pope Leo XIII’s letter to the Cardinal Archbishop of Cologne in 1880. Taken together, they lay out how protestant errors have resulted inevitably in the socialism, materialism, hedonism, and indifference to God we see all around us in the shattered remains of Christendom. They also stand in stark contrast to how most in the Church, including the highest leadership, propose to approach society, heretical sects, and even philosophy and theology today:
[Pope Leo XIII]………traces all the moral aberrations and political disorders of our age and of modern times to the introduction, in the sixteenth century particularly, of a false and anti-Christian philosophy, which ignores any authority superior to individual reason, eliminates all the supernatural order from the domain of the intellect and of private and social life, and enthrones naturalism, rationalism, and individualism as the law-givers in through and action of human society.
While, in his first encyclicals, he clearly warns………the entire Catholic flock of the necessity of returning, if society is to be saved form imminent ruin, to obedience to the Church, to the docile acceptance of the teaching of the one divinely appointed authority on earth, he affirms that the false wisdom or philosophy which the last three centuries [now nearly five] have followed must be set aside and Christian wisdom and philosophy made the light of all education.
A false and fatal education, in conformity with the naturalism and rationalism above mentioned, has, like the flickering of a “will o’ the wisp” in a dark night, led modern society into the marshes in which it is floundering. Religion, Christianity, Catholicism must now come with the already unfailing lamp of her divine philosophy, extricating social order from it mortal peril, and lead it back to the old paths.
This false education, this anti-Christian training of more than three hundred years has misled and ruined the Christendom reared by the Church; the old educational methods must be put in use again.
And Thomas Aquinas must once more be enthroned as “the Angel of the Schools”‘ his method and doctrine must be the light of all higher teaching, for his works are only revealed truth set before the human mind in its most scientific form.
Let there be no misunderstanding in this Leo XIII’s teaching. He is not for setting aside as pernicious, or useless, or hostile to revelation what Christian theologians, philosophers, and scientists acknowledge as true science. [The problem in our present state of calamity is that there are few reliable theologians, philosophers, or scientists to turn to who are not thoroughly imbued with that same spirit of rationalism and rejection of Divine Revelation that Pope Leo lamented and opposed throughout his pontificate. We have so few reliable voices to turn to, even including the recent past, and we have popes intimating that evolution might be valid (which Pope Leo and others totally rejected), that Genesis 1-10 might be sort of “mystical poetry” in parts, etc. And so Catholics no longer know where to turn to understand how or whether to accept theories like evolution, which were really proposed as a way to undermine the traditional Creation ethos and the whole of Christian belief that spins out from that] Writing on February 24, 1880 to the Archbishop of Cologne, he clearly expresses the value he sets on such science, while affirming the necessity of the counter-education we are here describing:
“The pest of socialism….which so deeply perverts the sense of our population, derives all its power from the darkness it causes in the intellect by hiding the light of the eternal truths, and from its corrupting the rule of life laid down by Christian morality; it can never be extirpated till the minds of its dupes are brought back to a clear knowledge of the supremely true and supremely good….To bring them thus back……is our duty….For, albeit in our age such wonderful and incredible progress – as all confess – has been made in the arts pertaining to the comfort of life as well as in the natural sciences, nevertheless the corruption of public manners goes on daily increasing. And as the history of past times has taught us that what brings erring nations back from the wrong path and preserves them from ruin is not progress in the arts or natural sciences, but their fervor in learning and fulfilling the law of Christ, we therefore ardently desire that the Church should everywhere be in the full enjoyment of her liberty, that she may bestow on the nations the benefits of this saving doctrine.“
There is in the Pontiff’s mind and purpose no antagonism to true progress and the legitimate developments of all the arts and sciences; for these follow naturally, inevitably on the increase in Christian knowledge and Christian morality in all communities. [An interesting corollary: there is growing concern among some scientists that it seems the pace of scientific breakthrough, which gained pace throughout the 19th century (as Christendom was dying out) and then reached its peak in the first half of the 20th century, has fallen off rapidly. Certainly we continue to benefit from new technologies, especially computer and communications related, but the fundamental discoveries that power the devices we enjoy now were made 50-100 years ago, and there hasn’t been nearly the same level of discovery since. Some forecast that the pace of invention and improvement in the quality of life – if it can be called that – will start to slacked and peter out as a result. According to Leo XIII, that would be due to the collapse in Christianity] But what he aims at is to make the fullness of truth, natural and supernatural, the very life of the mind by setting both the one and the other before it is stripped of all doubt and error, like the pure light presented to the sound bodily eye, entering it of its own accord and giving that organ its life by placing it in the full enjoyment of its proper object. And not that only, but the Pontiff aims at giving to the will, in this prefect light of the natural and supernatural world made known to it, the moral law of Christ, embracing not only what God has written on our hearts in the law of nature, but the supernatural law of love and divine self-sacrifice which the Father has written for us in luminous letters in the words and actions of Christ, His Incarnate Son.
————–End Quote————–
As I’ve blogged before, and as good Pope Leo XIII knew, protestantism and rationalism, combined with Cartesian philosophy, served to create an the “modern scientific ethos” which utterly rejects ANY evidence that is not strictly natural. That same science is then used to attack and “disprove” religion, especially Catholicism. Modern science was more or less designed by its founders to be antagonistic to Catholicism, and to be a weapon to be used against the Faith. Thus we should take “science-based” attacks on our Faith with a huge grain of salt, and not be afraid to use the “old” medieval, Scholastic arguments against modern science. It’s truly a situation where one faith-based community is arguing with another – it’s evangelizing a hostile religion.
And Richard Dawkins and others like him are its high priests.
http://veneremurcernui.wordpress.com/2014/12/03/all-the-problems-of-our-society-date-back-that-tragic-year-1517/
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