The War Upon Religion: Being an Account of the Rise and Progress of Anti-Christianism in EuropeCunningham, Francis A. (Francis Aloysius)
History
The War Upon Religion: Being an Account of the Rise and Progress of Anti-Christianism in Europe
Cunningham, Francis A. (Francis Aloysius)
Catholic Church -- Europe; Catholic Church -- History; Church and state -- Catholic Church
Old Glories of Portugal-- Pombal the Infamous-- Portugal and
Napoleon-- English Influence-- Dom Pedro-- Maria da Gloria
and Dom Miguel-- The Revolution of 1833-- The Present Time--
Assassination of Carlos I.-- Revolution Always Active-- The
Young King a Victim of Conspirators-- The Revolution of
1910-- Violence Against the Religious and the Clergy
Generally-- Letter of the Jesuit Provincial-- Spoliation--
Treatment of the Prisoners-- Outlawed and Exiled-- The
Charges and Their Answers-- Armaments and Subterranean
Galleries-- Alleged Wealth of the Jesuits-- Another Charge--
Alleged Secret Association-- Charge of Political Activity--
Reactionary Influence
Page 418
Introduction.
If it is true that a nation is what its doctrines are, it becomes very
easy to discover in the doctrines of contemporary Europe the last reason
of the troubles and revolutions which keep it in constant turmoil. It
has sowed the wind, now it is reaping the whirlwind. It has destroyed
the foundations, and it is but natural that the edifice should begin to
fall to its ruin.
The English Socinians, followed by Voltaire, uprooted the Christian
idea, and Rousseau after denying the true nature of God, set up the
worship of man in His place. From these ancestors was born a generation
of rationalists and atheists, who celebrated their triumphs, first in
the French Revolution, and afterwards in the general dissolution of
organized society. Out of the jumble of confused systems arose all those
philosophic, religious, moral, and social aberrations which strive to
root themselves in the human mind of the twentieth century. Among the
Catholics themselves, whenever ambition or the malign influence of
worldly allurements were in the ascendant, there were here and there
excrescences of error which tended to diminish the vigor and integrity
of the Christian spirit, and lead to that mongrel condition
characterized under the name of "Liberal Catholicism."
Rationalism, properly speaking, began in Germany, a country which, until
lately, has effected little in the domain of thought, and in the fields
of faith and reason, except to ravage and destroy the creations of
centuries. Unhappily, however, it has built up nothing in their place.
Emmanuel Kant, born in Prussia in 1724, began the process of demolition.
Materialistic philosophy had already denied the existence of the soul,
and of the invisible world; Kant proceeded to the denial of any
certitude regarding the material and visible. With him everything
assumed the character of the mythical and ideal. To explain his process
he invented in man a second reason, the practical reason, which
reconstructs what the speculative reason destroys. In fact, by
separating the faculties of the human soul from the objects which they
perceive, he led the way to systematic scepticism.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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