THE work which is herewith in an English version presented to a new circle of readers, appeared originally as a publication of the Görres Gesellschaft, an association of learned men, whose chief object it is to preserve and advance the Christian-Catholic spirit in profane science and education. A number of augmented new editions increased the work to its present size and scope.
Intended at first as a defence against certain attacks made upon Catholic Moral Teaching, in popular literature as well as in scientific treatises, my book has thus gradually become an exhaustive statement and vindication of the principles of Catholic morality -- principles which in our day receive much discussion in Protestant and liberal-philosophical circles, and which are often represented as being inconsistent with the demands of modern culture.
In dealing with these principles I followed a method, which, while firmly rooted in ecclesiastical teaching and tradition, nevertheless strives to keep in view the demands of modern religious and scientific life, and it has not only found much approval among educated Catholics, clergy as well as laity, but has also made in many instances a deep and favourable impression upon unprejudiced Protestants.
It is obvious that the demands made upon apologetics, and upon the treatment of its subject, differ according to the various needs of different countries and peoples. However, it is just as obvious that the principles and most important points of controversy, especially in matters of morality, are to-day universal and they recognize no intellectual boundaries.
In English and in German speaking countries the influence of Protestant thought and sentiment is much the same. The accusations, partly malicious, against the practise of confession, against casuistry in morals, etc., find a ready reception with nearly all opponents of the Church. Serious lack of understanding and radical misconception, regarding the conscience and its relation to God and to Church authority, sin and salvation, the moral law and its relation to liberty, justification, interior and exterior action of grace, ecclesiastical and worldly life, permeate contemporaneous non-Catholic theology and literature. To these must be added the important questions of public morality, of obedience to State and Church, of economic independence and unity, of Catholic organization and permissible union of action with other creeds, all questions upon which even within the Church there exist differences of opinion that have led to important expressions by ecclesiastical authority. The discussion of such matters must arouse in every thinking man a lively interest, and there are many points in science and economics that interest equally the people of America, England, and Germany.
Some statements, especially in the introduction, indicate that the matters that gave rise to them had their origin in Germany, so that an adaptation to conditions closer to readers of this English version might have seemed in place. The translator, however, has refrained from any such attempt, and I believe correctly so, because such matters do not interfere here with the objective statement of questions and points, they rather aid by giving it a concrete form. Furthermore, I remember that in reading German translations of English works, those of Newman, Manning, and Gibbons for instance, the tracing of thought and principles to their origin and individuality seemed to me to be rather an attraction than an obstacle to their full appreciation.
May my book in this English edition spread and deepen the conviction of the truth, grandeur, and beauty of Catholic moral teaching, and thus contribute to the honour and better understanding of the Church, and to the consolation and encouragement of the faithful.
THE AUTHOR.
MÜNSTER, August, 1914.
INTRODUCTION
ATTACKS UPON CATHOLIC MORALS
THE first edition of this book appeared at a time when a very violent and noisy attack upon Catholic morals was being made in Germany.
Grassmann, a publisher in Stettin, had circulated in Protestant and Catholic circles innumerable editions of a pamphlet abounding with the most offensive charges against the moral teaching of Church, the practice of confession, and particularly against the teachings of St Alphonsus Liguori. This pamphlet was favourably received wherever inherited prejudice or ignorance caused people to be hostile to the Church, or where her present development was unwelcome for political reasons. An active propaganda distributed this work, teeming with repulsive details of moral casuistry, also amongst the Catholic laity, men and women alike, in order, if possible, to set on foot in Germany a Los-von-Rom movement.
The attack, however, was devised and carried on too vulgarly to make any impression upon Catholics with some knowledge of their faith. A writer who would assert that the immorality of a great number of the Popes was a well-known fact, that the nuns and priests massacred in the French Revolution had deserved their fate because they had been notorious perverters of morality; a writer who in all earnestness computed how many million women were annually seduced by their confessors, could arouse only contempt and pity in Catholic circles.
But how may we account for the deep impression made upon Protestant readers by pamphlets of this kind? Why is it that such offensive charges, though coming from most questionable sources, are at once believed, or receive at least serious consideration, in spite of the publicity with which the Catholic Church carries on her work, in spite of the extensive intermixture of the different denominations, and of the obvious moral and social activity of Catholics? Over and above the difference of religion and the spiritual estrangement which unhappily still results therefrom, over and above the taste for the scandalous and sensational that so often destroys all sense of truth and justice, are there, perhaps, other reasons, of a graver nature, for this attitude of mind on the part of Protestants? Are there, perhaps, reasons on the Protestant side based upon its scientific conception of the whole of Catholicism, or objections and doubts about Catholic morals produced, not by the bigotry or ignorance of some rabid pamphleteer, but by the judgment of learned men and by the mind of Protestant theology? Are there reasons even on the Catholic side, a neglect to justify in practice the teaching and organization of the Church, deficiencies and defects in the traditional practice of morality, or an indifference to the calumnies and misrepresentations which, in the interests both of truth and charity, it ought to correct?
An incentive to the consideration of the first question, the attitude of scientific Protestant theology towards Catholic morals, was furnished by the publication, in 1900, of Professor W. Herrmann's book "Römische und evangelisehe Sittlichkeit." Herrmann is a follower of Ritschl, and in his dogmatic and ethical writings he lays great stress upon the theory that the Christian faith is an absolutely free, personal act, the expression of individual experience, bound neither by revelation nor by an ecclesiastical authority. In the writings referred to, his more remote purpose is to banish from Protestantism as immoral any conception of faith that is not purely subjective, any that accepts objective truth, as guaranteed by Bible and creeds. He argues that from such a faith the idea results that the moral law is a force outside of man himself, and that thereby there are produced an untruthfulness of the inner man and a tendency to evade the law. This perverted attitude towards truth and morals is found, according to Herrmann, most conspicuously in Catholic moral theology and, especially, in Probabilism. Hence he writes: "Any one amongst us who desires to be a follower of Christ, and who is conscious of being an heir of our forefathers of the Reformation, let him consider it his duty towards God and his people to resolve firmly to lay aside the Catholic kind of faith, which eventually causes every man to be submerged in Romish morality."{1}
Herrmann makes perfectly clear to his readers what he means by "Romish morality." We shall speak of his specific charges later on, contenting ourselves here with a few select specimens of his wholesale condemnation. "What the Roman Church officially calls morality is a decay of the moral sense."{2} "The Roman Church is earnestly striving to suppress any such perception (of the essence of morality) in the people whom she professes to train as Christians."{3} The morality of the Church is a "degenerate Christianity." "It is not merely because of the perverted principles of the Church that some of her members develop an absence of conscience, nay, the Church places herself with her whole power of authority at the head of this development; she demands an absence of conscience."{4} The approval of Probabilism "has now become the gate that shuts Roman Christianity into hell."{5} At the same time the author expresses his "hearty desire" that what remains of Christianity in the Church may succeed in focing the doors of this prison. Repeatedly he praises the earnestness of Catholics individually in the face of this system. But he adds, in a resigned spirit, "We can scarcely indulge a hope that the Roman Church will he able to work her way out of her moral morass and return to Christ."{6}
Herrmann's mode of controversy has been criticised even by Protestants, who think that its acrimony tends to shock readers unaccustomed to his style, and that others, besides Catholics, feel its want of moderation.{7}
Others say that we must ascribe the harshness of his utterances to the inexorable spirit of his dialectics, which is not limited to attacks upon Catholic theoIogians.{8}
When so-called Jesuitic morality is under discussion, even theologians who otherwise regard the Catholic Church with less prejudice are seized with a similar vehement indignation.
Harnack, for instance, says: "By the aid of Probabilism this Order has transformed almost all (!) mortal sins into venial sins. It has again and again given instructions to wallow in filth, to confuse conscience, and to blot out in the confessional sin by sin. . . . The method has remained unchanged, and to-day it exercises its ravaging influence upon dogma and ethics, and upon the conscience both of the confessor and the penitent, perhaps in a more disastrous degree than at any previous time. Since the seventeenth century the forgiveness of sins in the Catholic Church has become in many respects a crafty art . . . and yet, how indestructible is this Church, and how indestructible is the conscience that seeks its God! It is able to detect Him even in the fetich, and to detect His voice even where the chorus of hell resounds in accompaniment."{9}
In order to disprove such serious accusations, it was necessary to go back to the fundamental ideas of Catholic morals, as established in the dogma and in the general consensus of the Church, and as they underlie all casuistic discussion. Only thus can their truly moral and Christian character be vindicated. The fact that the attacks were couched in a tone of unquestioned superiority forced me to draw a comparison between the Catholic and the Protestant conception of the most important questions of morality. These fundamental discussions formed the chief part of my work, and they have won recognition even in non-Catholic circles; even Herrmann, though declaring that he is not convinced by my defence of Probabilism, acknowledges that I have "brought forward suggestions deserving thorough consideration from the Protestant point of view."{10}
I did not, however, avoid the further question, viz., whether in the historical growth and the present form of Catholic morals there were any points of attack and friction which might be removed by a vigorous discussion and scientific development of fundamental ideas. In the first chapter I dealt with casuistry, as it, with other forms of moral teaching, has grown up within the Church. Showing that it is indispensable to a complete moral system and a successful method of moral instruction, I readily admitted its natural imperfections and a certain danger in applying it in a merely external and mechanical manner, In the third chapter I passed on from defence and criticism to practical suggestions. If the pure gold of moral wisdom, that abounds so much in the teaching of the Church, is to be revealed in all its beauty and value, it must be freed from the trammels of obsolete methods and presented to men of the present day in an acceptable form. There is no need of essential alteration or innovation, there can be no surrender of valuable points of view; on the contrary, the tradition of the Church itself supplies us with the best examples, and the intrinsic spirit of Catholic ethics affords the inexhaustible living source, from whence such new forms and developments may be readily derived.
Soon after the appearance of the second edition of this book, Count Paul von Hoensbroeck, an ex-Jesuit who had become a Protestant, joined the ranks of those who assail Catholic morals. In his book "Das Papsttum in seiner sozialkulturellen Wirksamkeit,"{11} he has collected not only all the charges made by previous opponents of the Church, but also all their mistakes and unfair assertions. After a thorough examination of his material and his methods, I expressed, in a work dealing exclusively with this subject, the following opinion: "Hoensbroech's book gives a most unjust and much distorted account of those matters of Catholic moral teaching and discipline which he selected for discussion. His quotations are chosen with a decided bias and they are frequently mutilated or falsified with regard to their meaning. The author's own remarks show an absolute failure on his part to penetrate to any depth into the ideas and history of the moral teaching of the Church, and he often flagrantly contradicts himself."{12}
That this judgment was not too severe became soon apparent, even to those critics who had at first thought that the author had done good service by collecting materials. Karl Jentsch, for instance, soon discovered a startling instance of the untrustworthy character of Hoensbroech's materials, and described his method in mutilating quotations as the "climax of dishonesty."{13}
In the tendency throughout Hoensbroech's work to make obscene things accessible to the great masses by translating them from cumbrous Latin works, intended to supply the means for combating immorality, into succulent German, Jentsch saw nothing but "unspeakable vulgarity, and at the same time foolish hypocrisy."{14}
A far more searching criticism of Hoensbroech's honesty and knowledge of his subject was undertaken by Dr. V. Naumann (Pilatus), a freethinking scholar, far removed from Catholicism. He concluded his review with the crushing remark: "In all historical literature known to me -- in fact in all literature in general -- I cannot recall any other work -- and I may, without boasting, claim to have read a great deal -- that is written even approximately in so reckless, frivolous, and absolutely reprehensible a manner as Count Paul von Hoensbroeck's book on Catholic morals."{15} If then, casuistry, the practical and secular part of moral teaching, found defenders, as we have seen, in men who combine a clear and unbiassed insight into facts with a deep knowledge of life, the inner, spiritual part of Catholic moral teaching, its uprightness and educational wisdom, although attacked vigorously by Herrmann, found appreciation by an eminent non-Catholic scholar, F. W. Förster, a man with whom few contemporary students of ethics can be compared, so broad is his grasp of moral ideas, so profound his knowledge of the human heart. He not only recognizes the important bearing of religion upon morality in general, but does justice to many fundamental doctrines and institutions of the Catholic Church, from the standpoint both of a student and a teacher of morals.
While in Herrmann's opinion moral and religious truth is merely a matter of personal experience, Förster emphasizes its objective and social character. While Herrmann condemns the acceptance of any doctrine which, instead of being subjectively evolved, is derived from some external source, as an outrage upon the ego, Förster sees in such an acceptance, where it rests on a moral basis, an act of genuine self-renunciation, by means of which the ego breaks through its natural limitations and renders itself worthy of higher enlightenment. While Herrmann brands all submission to authority in matters of religion as immoral, Förster considers it the only way of overcoming the bias and poverty of the individual conscience and of attaining true independence. While Herrmann looks upon the gospel and all dogma merely as aids to the personal knowledge of God, Förster maintains that "the definite formulae of faith and the interpretations which the greatest followers of Christ, from the depths of their spiritual experience, have given to the fact and meaning of His appearance on earth, are alone capable of producing that strong sense of humble susceptibility and subordination, and that firmness of faith in this truth, which only can form the necessary foundation of a civilization based on Christianity."{16}
While Herrmann reproaches the Church with attempting to suppress in her members all perception of the true nature of morality, Förster admires her wisdom and knowledge of the human soul and sees in her saints and in her religious and ascetic institutions and ideals models for modern ethics and modern ethical teaching.
VIEWS REGARDING THE CONTRAST BETWEEN CATHOLICISM AND PROTESTANTISM
The attacks upon Catholic morals that we have been discussing were not provoked by any challenge or aggressive attitude on the part of Catholics. In the introduction to my book I was able to show that Catholic theology refrains from controversy to such an extent that we actually do not possess any scientific handbook of polemics, although there are several written by Protestants. With the very reasonable desire to refute many of the old historical falsehoods invented in the interests of Protestantism, has been combined an attempt to exercise an honest censorship over writers of our faith. Unfounded accusations, such as the assertion that Luther committed suicide, were at once opposed by leading Catholic writers. In the midst of the excitement aroused by Grassmann's publications, we undertook a public inquiry into the deficiencies of Catholic handbooks on moral teaching, which was absolutely impartial. The common reproach of a general inferiority of Catholics was investigated very thoroughly, and both the charge and the facts were discussed with perhaps at times excessive humility.
On the Catholic side nothing was ever organized resembling the vast organization of the German Evangelical Alliance, in which anti-Catholic activity and the prejudice of Protestantism have free scope. When the establishment of a similar alliance was suggested, the leaders of the Catholic party in Germany rejected the proposal as against the interests of confessional peace, and preferred to found, as a protection against modern assaults upon faith, the Volksverein, with positive aims on behalf of Christianity and social welfare.
Nor is there on the Catholic side anything analogous to the flood of vehement and factional pamphlets and articles spread broadcast by the Evangelical Alliance.{17}
Although the Los-von-Rom movement was plainly involved with political, and even unchristian, aims, it was welcomed enthusiastically by German Protestants and it received their active and, to some extent, official support, -- a fact that is explicable only by an eagerness to strike a vigorous blow at the hated Catholic Church, while there is nothing analogous to such eagerness on our side.
This state of affairs must be kept in view in considering the vigorous assault made by Denifle, in 1904, upon the Protestant researches about Luther and his theology, in his book "Luther und Luthertum, in der ersten Entwicklung quellenmässig geschildert."
In his preface Denifle remarks that the preliminary work was undertaken at a time when a violent attack upon the Catholic Church was being made by Protestant theologians, but that he did not begin his study of the Reformation for the purpose of warding off this onset, still less was it aversion to Luther and his work that caused him to make researches into that period. He explains, in the introduction, that his study of the deterioration of the secular and regular clergy in the fifteenth century led him on to the great upheaval of the sixteenth century, and so to Luther himself. In any matters upon which he brought his vast industry and his critical spirit to bear, masses of historical material were unearthed and brought to light, and in the same way, when he turned his attention to Luther's writings, he had soon accumulated the documentary and critical material for a comprehensive work. No historian can at the present time question the importance of Denifle's investigations. They are indispensable to all critics of Luther's works and to all interested in the origin of his doctrine and in its relation to the exegesis and the asceticism of the Middle Ages. That his appreciation of Luther is one-sided and far from complete is acknowledged by Denifle himself. His aim was to clear the way for a more general criticism by removing deeply rooted prejudices and by the collection of materials.
It is, however, not surprising that Denifle's work on Luther aroused great excitement in Protestant circles. The accounts given of Luther's moral conduct and of his literary methods cast such deep shadows upon his character and his scientific honesty that picture thus drawn of the reformer becomes most unfavourable,
in spite of the presence here and there of pleasing features. The force of sensuality, of which Luther complains, and the necessity of sin, which he avers as the result of his own experience, are discussed by Denifle in a manner that must inevitably offend Luther's admirers, and it is actually exaggerated because Luther often speaks of sin and the stimulus to sin as if they were identical. Moreover, it would have been better if Denifle had taken into account Luther's passionate temperament and excessive imagination, instead of describing, as he often does, his many misrepresentations and false quotations as wilful lies.{18}
Great offence was taken at the blunt tone in which Denifle brings his charges against Luther and against Luther students of the present day. Moreover, though Denifle possesses a wonderful amount of knowledge regarding the history and the ideas of scholasticism, he is somewhat lacking in sympathy with modern thought and feeling, and thus fails in some degree to make his controversial arguments appeal to the general public.
In justice to Denifle, it is only fair to point out that his severity is a peculiarity of his literary style to which we had grown accustomed. Besides, he could truthfully maintain that his expressions were no more scathing than those used by Protestant theologians against the Catholic Church, but that there is the difference that the latter often judge without having real knowledge of the facts, whereas Denifle formed his opinion after a conscientious and laborious study of Luther's writings. His superiority in this respect, clearly displayed on various points, filled him with indignation at the superficiality and partisan spirit of most of Luther's admirers. The insight that he obtained into Luther's actions, into his unfair opposition to the mediaeval spirit and his untrustworthiness in autobiographical statements, aroused in Denifle an even stronger censure of Luther himself, intensified by the reformer's action in dragging down the ascetic ideals of the Church, and in defending, in the coarsest language, the right to satisfy sensual instincts. Any admirer of Luther, who is not blind to his defects, must find in his personality such striking and difficult problems that he cannot help understanding why others, of different thought and less inclined to make allowance, have so harshly condemned him. Catholic critics, furthermore, have not only deprecated Denifle's severe language, but have even on some points questioned his statements. Especially H. Grisar's essays not only contain corrections of this kind, but some valuable original remarks which, being derived from his own knowledge of Luther's, time and rise, contribute to a fair and impartial estimate of the bright, as well as of the dark, side of his character.{19}
In Grisar's great work on Luther, that subsequently appeared, it is admitted even by Protestants that he has dealt in a strictly scientific, dispassionate, and, as far as possible, objective manner with the material at his disposal.
From the Protestant side there appeared several replies and rejoinders, the authors of which rivalled Denifle in vigour of language, showing their strong religious prejudice by reiterating discredited charges against the Church. However, in other quarters, quite apart from the honour paid to Denifle by the University of Cambridge, voices were heard calling for justice and for peace.
In my opinion the most thorough and intelligent discussion of the subject, based purely on principles and in keeping with an objective historical understanding of the whole matter, is Professor K. Sell's "Katholizismus und Protestantismus in Geschichte, Religion, Politik, und Kultur."{20}
Sell thinks that proposals to lessen the religious antagonism must proceed from the Catholic party, simply because Protestantism of the present time cannot be anything but tolerant (p. vi). This statement seems hardly to agree with the sentence: "The Protestant principle is essentially the personality of Martin Luther" (p 40). The author means that the Lutheran faith, involving as it does a purely personal conviction of salvation in Christ, has rendered the Church, with her hierarchy, sacraments, and learning, altogether superfluous. He acknowledges that the principle of justification by faith alone did much harm in the Reformation period, that no Protestant theologians now accept it in the sense assigned to it by Luther, and that amongst the laity there very few who understand this vacillating and obscure expression at all. According to Sell faith is essentially independent of any historical revelation, it is a perfectly independent mental act whereby we realize God in our minds. A Catholic bases his faith on the authority of the Church and surrenders to it his own intelligence, even to the point of accepting propositions that he can only "respect" and not really believe. The dogma of the Incarnation does less, in the Catholic Church, to bring men to God and Christ than to strengthen the power of the Church. This power, however, does not exist only for its own sake; the Church aims, by ber doctrines and sacraments, by public worship and moral perfection, at securing to her children the happiness of heaven, to which a Catholic looks forward as to a definite reality.
The imposing certainty and objectivity of Catholicism gives it a tendency "to do violence to Protestantism, whilst Protestantism is inclined to treat Catholicism with contempt" (p. 124). Here Sell makes the interesting remark: "As the purpose of this dissertation is to give an historical and psychological analysis of the essential principles of the two religions, rather than to criticise them, the charges brought by one against the other can be discussed only when I am speaking of the attacking religion [i.e., Protestantism] and not of the one attacked" (p. 142). Sell thus admits that aggressiveness is characteristic of Protestantism. Hence he says nothing of the charges brought against it by Catholicism, and states as grounds of complaint alleged by Protestants the Catholic use or misuse of the Bible, compulsory celibacy, and the practice of confession. He sees in the last two institutions the danger of corrupting the relation of the sexes and of degrading woman to a mere object of desire and a plaything of passion (p. 146).
Sell finds that a real cultus is much more intimately connected with the Catholic idea of the objective presence of God and the visible Church than with the Protestant relegation of religion into the conscience of the individual. He speaks with admiration of the beauty of Catholic worship, and sets a higher value upon the social activity of the Catholic Church (the outcome of its social and universal character) (p. 155) than upon the Protestant tendency to regard more the rights of the individual (p. 187). Many of Sell's remarks on the subject of the alleged inferiority of Catholics, the comparative education of adherents of the two Churches, reveal much discretion and true historical insight.
In their attitude towards the state and its authority the Protestants were originally quite as intolerant as the Catholics; it was only by the help of the state that their religion prevailed. "Very gradually did Protestantism come to comprehend the essential separation of Church and state, based not upon its own principles, but upon the earlier idea of the secularization of all power" (p. 162). However, since the faith of the Protestant is something interior and free, he is more ready to accept the idea of toleration; and as his Church is only an assembly of the faithful, and not a Church ruled by a hierarchy, there is obviously more room left for patriotism, "for a religious reverence of ruler, government, and law" (p. 202). Catholicism, in itself, is indeed compatible with absolute political trustworthiness, but as much cannot be said "for Curialism, the ultramontane form of Catholicism, which still demands in mediaeval fashion that the state be subordinate to the Church and strives to force Catholic truth upon the modern world by compulsion, if possible, and if not, by all other effectual means" (pp. 164, 176, 188). "Curialistic Catholicism is nowadays regarded as a danger by all states. Against it, and in the interests of all creeds, the Evangelical Alliance undertakes proper resistance, having recourse even to political measures. Under the influence of this harsh, curialistic tendency, many Catholics stand as much as they can aloof from intercourse with adherents of other creeds, whilst in modern Protestants the desire to maintain religious peace and toleration have become a second nature."
These discussions undoubtedly show considerable improvement over the old-fashioned methods of controversy, but we must not overIook the fact that articles written in such a peaceable spirit come from but a very limited party amongst Protestant writers of the present day. Hostile opinions and misunderstandings continue to abound to such an extent that I can here only attempt to approach real facts with reference to a general survey of the existing state of affairs, by means of a more equal distribution of light and shade. As to the questions of doctrine and principle, the discussion in the second part of this work will give me an opportunity of referring again to the views expressed by the authors above mentioned.