The Catholic World, Vol. 10, October, 1869 to March, 1870 — John Shaqi
The Catholic World, Vol. 10, October, 1869 to March, 1870Various
Religion
The Catholic World, Vol. 10, October, 1869 to March, 1870
Various
Catholic Church -- Periodicals
Moreover, the Positivists do not reconcile the conflicting elements;
for they suppress one of the two series of terms, and relegate God,
the supernatural, principles, causes, and supersensible relations
into the region of the unknowable, and include in their grand
synthesis only positive sensible facts or phenomena and their
physical laws. They thus restrict man's existence to the first
cycle, and exclude the second or palingenesiac order, in which alone
reigns the moral law. The first or initial cycle does not contain the
word of the _ænigma_. It does not exist for itself, and therefore is
not and cannot be intelligible in or by itself. If they could succeed
in removing the anarchy complained of, they would do so by ignorance,
not science, and harmonize all intelligences only by annihilating
them.
Nor is it true that the church has lost or abandoned her grand
synthetic doctrine, or that her synthesis has ceased to be complete,
or sufficiently comprehensive. Her doctrine is Christianity; and
Christianity leaves out no ancient or modern science; has not
been and cannot be outgrown by any actual or possible progress of
intelligence; for it embraces at once all the real and all the
knowable, _reale omne et scibile_. If the church fails to command
the adhesion of all minds, it is not because any minds have advanced
in science beyond her, or have attained to any truth or virtue she
has not; but because they have fallen below her, have become too
contracted and grovelling in their views to grasp the elevation and
universality of her doctrine. She still leads the civilized world,
and commands the faith and love of the really enlightened portion of
mankind. The reason why so many in our age refuse her their adhesion
is not because her doctrine or mode or manner of presenting it are
defective, but because they are engrossed with the development and
application of the physical or natural laws, or with the first or
initial cycle, and exhaust themselves in the production, exchange,
and accumulation of physical goods, which, however attractive to
the inchoate or physical man, are of no moral or religious value.
The cause is not in the church but in them; in the fact that their
minds and hearts are set on those things only after which the heathen
seek; and they have no relish for any truth that pertains to the
teleological or moral order.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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