History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom Part 17

(80) See the Rev. A. M. Kirsch on Professor Huxley and Evolution, in The American Catholic Quarterly, October, 1877. The article is, as a whole, remarkably fair-minded, and in the main, just, as to the Protestant att.i.tude, and as to the causes underlying the whole action against Galileo.

But if Protestantism could force the papal hand in a matter of this magnitude, involving vast questions of belief and far-reaching questions of policy, what becomes of "inerrancy"--of special protection and guidance of the papal authority in matters of faith?

While this retreat from position to position was going on, there was a constant discharge of small-arms, in the shape of innuendoes, hints, and sophistries: every effort was made to blacken Galileo's private character: the irregularities of his early life were dragged forth, and stress was even laid upon breaches of etiquette; but this succeeded so poorly that even as far back as 1850 it was thought necessary to cover the retreat by some more careful strategy.

This new strategy is instructive. The original doc.u.ments of the Galileo trial had been brought during the Napoleonic conquests to Paris; but in 1846 they were returned to Rome by the French Government, on the express pledge by the papal authorities that they should be published. In 1850, after many delays on various pretexts, the long-expected publication appeared. The personage charged with presenting them to the world was Monsignor Marini. This ecclesiastic was of a kind which has too often afflicted both the Church and the world at large. Despite the solemn promise of the papal court, the wily Marini became the instrument of the Roman authorities in evading the promise. By suppressing a doc.u.ment here, and interpolating a statement there, he managed to give plausible standing-ground for nearly every important sophistry ever broached to save the infallibility of the Church and destroy the reputation of Galileo. He it was who supported the idea that Galileo was "condemned not for heresy, but for contumacy."

The first effect of Monsignor Marini's book seemed useful in covering the retreat of the Church apologists. Aided by him, such vigorous writers as Ward were able to throw up temporary intrenchments between the Roman authorities and the indignation of the world.

But some time later came an investigator very different from Monsignor Marini. This was a Frenchman, M. L'Epinois. Like Marini, L'Epinois was devoted to the Church; but, unlike Marini, he could not lie. Having obtained access in 1867 to the Galileo doc.u.ments at the Vatican, he published several of the most important, without suppression or pious-fraudulent manipulation. This made all the intrenchments based upon Marini's statements untenable. Another retreat had to be made.

And now came the most desperate effort of all. The apologetic army, reviving an idea which the popes and the Church had spurned for centuries, declared that the popes AS POPES had never condemned the doctrines of Copernicus and Galileo; that they had condemned them as men simply; that therefore the Church had never been committed to them; that the condemnation was made by the cardinals of the inquisition and index; and that the Pope had evidently been restrained by interposition of Providence from signing their condemnation. Nothing could show the desperation of the retreating party better than jugglery like this. The fact is, that in the official account of the condemnation by Bellarmin, in 1616, he declares distinctly that he makes this condemnation "in the name of His Holiness the Pope."(81)

(81) See the citation from the Vatican ma.n.u.script given in Gebler, p.

78.

Again, from Pope Urban downward, among the Church authorities of the seventeenth century the decision was always acknowledged to be made by the Pope and the Church. Urban VIII spoke of that of 1616 as made by Pope Paul V and the Church, and of that of 1633 as made by himself and the Church. Pope Alexander VII in 1664, in his bull Speculatores, solemnly sanctioned the condemnation of all books affirming the earth's movement.(82)

(82) For references by Urban VIII to the condemnation as made by Pope Paul V see pp. 136, 144, and elsewhere in Martin, who much against his will is forced to allow this. See also Roberts, Pontifical decrees against the Earth's Movement, and St. George Mivart's article, as above quoted; also Reusch, Index der verbotenen Bucher, Bonn, 1885, vol. ii, pp. 29 et seq.

When Ga.s.sendi attempted to raise the point that the decision against Copernicus and Galileo was not sanctioned by the Church as such, an eminent theological authority, Father Lecazre, rector of the College of Dijon, publicly contradicted him, and declared that it "was not certain cardinals, but the supreme authority of the Church," that had condemned Galileo; and to this statement the Pope and other Church authorities gave consent either openly or by silence. When Descartes and others attempted to raise the same point, they were treated with contempt.

Father Castelli, who had devoted himself to Galileo, and knew to his cost just what the condemnation meant and who made it, takes it for granted, in his letter to the papal authorities, that it was made by the Church. Cardinal Querenghi, in his letters; the amba.s.sador Guicciardini, in his dispatches; Polacco, in his refutation; the historian Viviani, in his biography of Galileo--all writing under Church inspection and approval at the time, took the view that the Pope and the Church condemned Galileo, and this was never denied at Rome. The Inquisition itself, backed by the greatest theologian of the time (Bellarmin), took the same view. Not only does he declare that he makes the condemnation "in the name of His Holiness the Pope," but we have the Roman Index, containing the condemnation for nearly two hundred years, prefaced by a solemn bull of the reigning Pope binding this condemnation on the consciences of the whole Church, and declaring year after year that "all books which affirm the motion of the earth" are d.a.m.nable. To attempt to face all this, added to the fact that Galileo was required to abjure "the heresy of the movement of the earth" by written order of the Pope, was soon seen to be impossible. Against the a.s.sertion that the Pope was not responsible we have all this ma.s.s of testimony, and the bull of Alexander VII in 1664.(83)

(83) For Lecazre's answer to Ga.s.sendi, see Martin, pp. 146, 147. For the attempt to make the crimes of Galileo breach of etiquette, see Dublin Review, as above. Whewell, vol. i, p. 283. Citation from Marini: "Galileo was punished for trifling with the authorities, to which he refused to submit, and was punished for obstinate contumacy, not heresy." The sufficient answer to all this is that the words of the inflexible sentence designating the condemned books are "libri omnes qui affirmant telluris motum." See Bertrand, p. 59. As to the idea that "Galileo was punished for not his opinion, but for basing it on Scripture," the answer may be found in the Roman Index of 1704, in which are noted for condemnation "Libri omnes docentes mobilitatem terrae et immobilitatem solis." For the way in which, when it was found convenient in argument, Church apologists insisted that it WAS "the Supreme Chief of the Church by a pontifical decree, and not certain cardinals," who condemned Galileo and his doctrine, see Father Lecazre's letter to Ga.s.sendi, in Flammarion, Pluralite des Mondes, p. 427, and Urban VIII's own declarations as given by Martin. For the way in which, when necessary, Church apologists a.s.serted the very contrary of this, declaring that it was "issued in a doctrinal degree of the Congregation of the Index, and NOT as the Holy Father's teaching," see Dublin Review, September, 1865.

This contention, then, was at last utterly given up by honest Catholics themselves. In 1870 a Roman Catholic clergy man in England, the Rev. Mr.

Roberts, evidently thinking that the time had come to tell the truth, published a book ent.i.tled The Pontifical Decrees against the Earth's Movement, and in this exhibited the incontrovertible evidences that the papacy had committed itself and its infallibility fully against the movement of the earth. This Catholic clergyman showed from the original record that Pope Paul V, in 1616, had presided over the tribunal condemning the doctrine of the earth's movement, and ordering Galileo to give up the opinion. He showed that Pope Urban VIII, in 1633, pressed on, directed, and promulgated the final condemnation, making himself in all these ways responsible for it. And, finally, he showed that Pope Alexander VII, in 1664, by his bull--Speculatores domus Israel--attached to the Index, condemning "all books which affirm the motion of the earth," had absolutely pledged the papal infallibility against the earth's movement. He also confessed that under the rules laid down by the highest authorities in the Church, and especially by Sixtus V and Pius IX, there was no escape from this conclusion.

Various theologians attempted to evade the force of the argument. Some, like Dr. Ward and Bouix, took refuge in verbal niceties; some, like Dr.

Jeremiah Murphy, comforted themselves with declamation. The only result was, that in 1885 came another edition of the Rev. Mr. Roberts's work, even more cogent than the first; and, besides this, an essay by that eminent Catholic, St. George Mivart, acknowledging the Rev. Mr.

Roberts's position to be impregnable, and declaring virtually that the Almighty allowed Pope and Church to fall into complete error regarding the Copernican theory, in order to teach them that science lies outside their province, and that the true priesthood of scientific truth rests with scientific investigators alone.(84)

(84) For the crus.h.i.+ng answer by two eminent Roman Catholics to the sophistries cited--an answer which does infinitely more credit to the older Church that all the perverted ingenuity used in concealing the truth or breaking the force of it--see Roberts and St. George Mivart, as already cited.

In spite, then, of all casuistry and special pleading, this st.u.r.dy honesty ended the controversy among Catholics themselves, so far as fair-minded men are concerned.

In recalling it at this day there stand out from its later phases two efforts at compromise especially instructive, as showing the embarra.s.sment of militant theology in the nineteenth century.

The first of these was made by John Henry Newman in the days when he was hovering between the Anglican and Roman Churches. In one of his sermons before the University of Oxford he spoke as follows:

"Scripture says that the sun moves and the earth is stationary, and science that the earth moves and the sun is comparatively at rest. How can we determine which of these opposite statements is the very truth till we know what motion is? If our idea of motion is but an accidental result of our present senses, neither proposition is true and both are true: neither true philosophically; both true for certain practical purposes in the system in which they are respectively found."

In all anti-theological literature there is no utterance more hopelessly skeptical. And for what were the youth of Oxford led into such bottomless depths of disbelief as to any real existence of truth or any real foundation for it? Simply to save an outworn system of interpretation into which the gifted preacher happened to be born.

The other utterance was suggested by De Bonald and developed in the Dublin Review, as is understood, by one of Newman's a.s.sociates. This argument was nothing less than an attempt to retreat under the charge of deception against the Almighty himself. It is as follows: "But it may well be doubted whether the Church did r.e.t.a.r.d the progress of scientific truth. What r.e.t.a.r.ded it was the circ.u.mstance that G.o.d has thought fit to express many texts of Scripture in words which have every appearance of denying the earth's motion. But it is G.o.d who did this, not the Church; and, moreover, since he saw fit so to act as to r.e.t.a.r.d the progress of scientific truth, it would be little to her discredit, even if it were true, that she had followed his example."

This argument, like Mr. Gosse's famous attempt to reconcile geology to Genesis--by supposing that for some inscrutable purpose G.o.d deliberately deceived the thinking world by giving to the earth all the appearances of development through long periods of time, while really creating it in six days, each of an evening and a morning--seems only to have awakened the amazed pity of thinking men. This, like the argument of Newman, was a last desperate effort of Anglican and Roman divines to save something from the wreckage of dogmatic theology.(85)

(85) For the quotation from Newman, see his Sermons on the Theory of Religious Belief, sermon xiv, cited by Bishop Goodwin in Contemporary Review for January, 1892. For the attempt to take the blame off the shoulders of both Pope and cardinals and place it upon the Almighty, see the article above cited, in the Dublin Review, September 1865, p.

419 and July, 1871, pp. 157 et seq. For a good summary of the various attempts, and for replies to them in a spirit of judicial fairness, see Th. Martin, Vie de Galilee, though there is some special pleading to save the infallibility of the Pope and Church. The bibliography at the close is very valuable. For details of Mr. Gosse's theory, as developed in his Omphalos, see the chapter on Geology in this work. As to a still later attempt, see Wegg-Prosser, Galileo and his Judges, London, 1889, the main thing in it being an attempt to establish, against the honest and honourable concessions of Catholics like Roberts and Mivart, sundry far-fetched and wire-drawn distinctions between dogmatic and disciplinary bulls--an attempt which will only deepen the distrust of straightforward reasoners. The author's point of view is stated in the words, "I have maintained that the Church has a right to lay her restraining hand on the speculations of natural science" (p. 167).

All these well-meaning defenders of the faith but wrought into the hearts of great numbers of thinking men the idea that there is a necessary antagonism between science and religion. Like the landsman who lashes himself to the anchor of the sinking s.h.i.+p, they simply attached Christianity by the strongest cords of logic which they could spin to these mistaken ideas in science, and, could they have had their way, the advance of knowledge would have ingulfed both together.

On the other hand, what had science done for religion? Simply this: Copernicus, escaping persecution only by death; Giordano Bruno, burned alive as a monster of impiety; Galileo, imprisoned and humiliated as the worst of misbelievers; Kepler, accused of "throwing Christ's kingdom into confusion with his silly fancies"; Newton, bitterly attacked for "dethroning Providence," gave to religion stronger foundations and more enn.o.bling conceptions.

Under the old system, that princely astronomer, Alphonso of Castile, seeing the inadequacy of the Ptolemaic theory, yet knowing no other, startled Europe with the blasphemy that, if he had been present at creation, he could have suggested a better order of the heavenly bodies.

Under the new system, Kepler, filled with a religious spirit, exclaimed, "I do think the thoughts of G.o.d." The difference in religious spirit between these two men marks the conquest made in this long struggle by Science for Religion.(86)

(86) As a pendant to this e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n of Kepler may be cited the words of Linnaeus: "Deum ominpotentem a tergo transeuntem vidi et obstupui."

Nothing is more unjust than to cast especial blame for all this resistance to science upon the Roman Church. The Protestant Church, though rarely able to be so severe, has been more blameworthy. The persecution of Galileo and his compeers by the older Church was mainly at the beginning of the seventeenth century; the persecution of Robertson Smith, and Winch.e.l.l, and Woodrow, and Toy, and the young professors at Beyrout, by various Protestant authorities, was near the end of the nineteenth century. Those earlier persecutions by Catholicism were strictly in accordance with principles held at that time by all religionists, Catholic and Protestant, throughout the world; these later persecutions by Protestants were in defiance of principles which all Protestants to-day hold or pretend to hold, and none make louder claim to hold them than the very sects which persecuted these eminent Christian men of our day, men whose crime was that they were intelligent enough to accept the science of their time, and honest enough to acknowledge it.

Most unjustly, then, would Protestantism taunt Catholicism for excluding knowledge of astronomical truths from European Catholic universities in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, while real knowledge of geological and biological and anthropological truth is denied or pitifully diluted in so many American Protestant colleges and universities in the nineteenth century.

Nor has Protestantism the right to point with scorn to the Catholic Index, and to lay stress on the fact that nearly every really important book in the last three centuries has been forbidden by it, so long as young men in so many American Protestant universities and colleges are nursed with "ecclesiastical pap" rather than with real thought, and directed to the works of "solemnly const.i.tuted impostors," or to sundry "approved courses of reading," while they are studiously kept aloof from such leaders in modern thought as Darwin, Spencer, Huxley, Draper, and Lecky.

It may indeed be justly claimed by Protestantism that some of the former strongholds of her bigotry have become liberalized; but, on the other hand, Catholicism can point to the fact that Pope Leo XIII, now happily reigning, has made a n.o.ble change as regards open dealing with doc.u.ments. The days of Monsignor Marini, it may be hoped, are gone. The Vatican Library, with its ma.s.ses of historical material, has been thrown open to Protestant and Catholic scholars alike, and this privilege has been freely used by men representing all shades of religious thought.

As to the older errors, the whole civilized world was at fault, Protestant as well as Catholic. It was not the fault of religion; it was the fault of that short-sighted linking of theological dogmas to scriptural texts which, in utter defiance of the words and works of the Blessed Founder of Christianity, narrow-minded, loud-voiced men are ever p.r.o.ne to subst.i.tute for religion. Justly is it said by one of the most eminent among contemporary Anglican divines, that "it is because they have mistaken the dawn for a conflagration that theologians have so often been foes of light."(87)

(87) For an exceedingly striking statement, by a Roman Catholic historian of genius, as to the POPULAR demand for persecution and the pressure of the lower strata in ecclesiastical organizations for cruel measures, see Balmes's Le Protestantisme compare au Catholicisme, etc., fourth edition, Paris, 1855, vol. ii. Archbishop Spaulding has something of the same sort in his Miscellanies. L'Epinois, Galilee, p. 22 et seq., stretches this as far as possible to save the reputation of the Church in the Galileo matter. As to the various branches of the Protestant Church in England and the United States, it is a matter of notoriety that the smug, well-to-do laymen, whether elders, deacons, or vestrymen, are, as a rule, far more p.r.o.ne to heresy-hunting than are their better educated pastors. As to the cases of Messrs. Winch.e.l.l, Woodrow, Toy, and all the professors at Beyrout, with details, see the chapter in this series on The Fall of Man and Anthropology. Among Protestant historians who have recently been allowed full and free examination of the treasures in the Vatican Library, and even those involving questions between Catholicism and Protestantism, are von Sybel, of Berlin, and Philip Schaff, of New York. It should be added that the latter went with commendatory letters from eminent prelates in the Catholic Church in America and Europe. For the closing citation, see Canon Farrar, History of Interpretation, p. 432.

CHAPTER IV. FROM "SIGNS AND WONDERS" TO LAW IN THE HEAVENS.

I. THE THEOLOGICAL VIEW.