Ratzinger on Scientism

A few weeks ago we saw how the Catholic Church values science and how it opposes the science destroying ideology of "scientism" (the belief that all knowledge comes from science). This basic critique of the "psuedo-religion" of scientism is echoed here by none other than Pope Benedict XVI, in a quote I wanted to share as a follow up,

When science becomes the dominant element in a view of the world... This absolute value becomes exclusive; it develops into the theory that scientific knowledge is the only valid knowledge and becomes a denial of the absolute value of religion, which is itself on a different level of reality.... To maintain that it is only with these (scientific) categories that man can know anything at all is an unfounded presupposition, which in any case is shown by experience to be untrue.
(Card. Ratzinger, Truth and Tolerance, p. 31)

If you missed the original post you can read it here -  Can We Only Know Truth Via the Scientific Method?

The Last Judgement as seen in The Chronicles of Narnia

Yesterday, we took a brief look at a passage in CS Lewis' great Chronicles of Narnia series, one in which the author predicted perfectly the coming "dictatorship of relativism" and the necessary enslavement that would follow. Another passage from the same volume in the series, is well worth reflecting on after the sober thoughts of yesterday and that is what I'd like to turn our attention to today. While the Ape and his cronies, the Calormenes, seemed to have won the day by convincing the poor Narnians to accept their relativistic creed their end is ultimately doomed by the existence of the real Aslan (the real God). As much as the forces of the anti-Aslan seek to use him and his image to dominate his people, as much as they seek to push a perverse understanding of relationship with him on them - Aslan finally uses them to bring about his will. It is a classic case of God bringing good even out of evil. Here, in The Last Battle, the good brought about is the ultimate good of all Creation as he calls each and every creature home, to meet him face to face.

The creatures came rushing on, their eyes brighter and brighter as they drew nearer and nearer to the standing Stars. But as they came right up to Aslan one or other of two things happened to each of them. They all looked straight in his face; I don't think they had any choice about that. And when some looked, the expression of their faces changed terribly - it was fear and hatred... And all the creatures who looked at Aslan in that way swerved to their right, his left, and disappeared into his huge black shadow... I don't know what became of them. But the others looked in the face of Aslan and loved him, though some of them were very frightened at the same time. And all of these came in at the Door, on Aslan's right. (Ch 14)


Those on left are not heard from again, although we may have some hints of their ultimate fate when we see the Dwarfs who, having been taken in by the Ape, have decided to be too clever to ever fall for any such nonsense again. They too come face to face with Aslan, but they can't recognize his presence. He gives them food and drink to feat upon, at the request of our heroes, and lays them in a breathtaking land. The dwarfs, however, can't see the beautiful blue sky, smell the fragrant flowers, or even taste the mean given them in this grand land, they can only "see" the inside of the small stable through whose door they entered Aslan's country. Aslan even roars, but they respond only with

"Hear that? That's the gang at the other endow the Stable. Trying to frighten us. They do it with a machine of some kind. Don't take any notice. They won't take us in again!"

Our heroes are distraught over the self-imposed fate of the Dwarfs (who weren't really evil like the Ape and the Calormenes) and beg Aslan to help them, but Aslan explains,

"They will not let us help them. They have chosen cunning over belief. Their prison is only in their minds, yet they are in that prison; and so afraid of being taken in that they cannot be taken out." (Chapter 17)

 It is then that we are, with the crowd of creatures who ventured towards the right, bidden to travel "further up and further in" leaving behind a now cold, lifeless, indeed dead Narnia. As the group travels deeper and deeper into "Aslan's country" they come to see their lost friends - those who have passed into Aslan's Country ahead of them - from both Narnia and, surprisingly, England. In amazement they stare at the country side around them seeing what seems to be Narnian landmarks, but somehow they are more Narnian than Narnia ever could be. Digory, who witnessed the birth of Narnia in The Magician's Nephew, explains,

"that was not the real Narnia. That had a beginning and an end. it was only a shadow or a copy of something real in Aslan's real world. You need not mourn over Narnia... All of the old Narnia that mattered, all of the dear creatures, have been drawn into the real Narnia through the door. And of course it is different; as different as a real thing is from a shadow or as waking life is from a dream." His voice stirred everyone like a trumpet when he spoke these words: but when he added under his breath "It's all in Plato, all in Plato: bless me, what do they teach them at these schools!" the older one's laughed.

And indeed it is "all in Plato" and the Book of Revelation.

Recommended Reading:

Relativism Leads to Slavery

Just last month, in a rare post retirement appearance, Pope Benedict XVI firmly declared "relativism is lethal to faith." This echoes his papal and pre-papal warnings about the deadly drift of our society into relativism, the idea that "what is true for me is not true for you", or that we are all right all the time. Such a philosophical stance, it might be noted, isn't just lethal to faith, it is also lethal to thinking, if no one can be right or wrong, then no judgement is possible. If judgement is impossible, so too is rational thought. Thus, relativism leads into emotivism - the reduction from thought to "feelings" (that such has already happened is evident enough in normal conversation. How often must we hear, "well, I feel that..." when "I think that..." seems to be intended.) His most ringing denouncement of relativism came in 2005 right before he was raised to the Chair of Peter,

"Today, having a clear faith based on the Creed of the Church is often labeled as fundamentalism. Whereas relativism, that is, letting oneself be "tossed here and there, carried about by every wind of doctrine", seems the only attitude that can cope with modern times. We are building a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one's own ego and desires."

Homily, Mass for the Election of the Supreme Pontiff, 18 April 2005 

All of this is displayed beautifully by CS Lewis in the last installment of his Chronicles of Narnia series. The Ape (representing modern relativistic man) has duped all of Narnia into an obedient slavery to himself through the promotion of his new creed, a relativism fierce enough to claim an identity between even Christ (Aslan) and Satan (Tash).

"Please," said the Lamb, "I can't understand. What have we to do with the Calormenes?  We belong to Aslan. They belong to Tash. They have a god called Tash. They say he has four arms and the head of a vulture. They kill Men on his altar.... How could Aslan be friends with him? 

The Ape jumped up and spat at the Lamb.
"What do you understand of such things?... Tash is only another name for Aslan. All that old idea of us being right and the Calormenes being wrong is silly. We know better now. The Calormenes use different words but we all mean the same thing. Ash and Aslan are only two different names for you know Who.... Tash is Aslan and Aslan is Tash." (The Last Battle, Ch 3)

Armed with this new philosophy (and with a fake Aslan, an anti-Christ, to back him up), the Ape sets about enslaving all of Narnia, selling them to the hated (and evil) Calormenes.

How often do we find Apes in the modern west? How frequently have we heard such arguments from our own "Apes"? "Everyone is saying the same thing, only in different ways" they cry, of course nothing could be further from the truth as the great GK Chesterton clearly saw at the beginning of last century,

“There is a phrase of facile liberality uttered again and again at ethical societies and parliaments of religion: "the religions of the earth differ in rites and forms, but they are the same in what they teach." It is false; it is the opposite of the fact. The religions of the earth do not greatly differ in rites and forms; they do greatly differ in what they teach.

It is as if a man were to say, "Do not be misled by the fact that the Church Times and the Freethinker look utterly different, that one is painted on vellum and the other carved on marble, that one is triangular and the other hectagonal; read them and you will see that they say the same thing." The truth is, of course, that they are alike in everything except in the fact that they don't say the same thing…. 

So the truth is that the difficulty of all the creeds of the earth is not as alleged in this cheap maxim: that they agree in meaning, but differ in machinery. It is exactly the opposite. They agree in machinery; almost every great religion on earth works with the same external methods, with priests, scriptures, altars, sworn brotherhoods, special feasts. They agree in the mode of teaching; what they differ about is the thing to be taught. Pagan optimists and Eastern pessimists would both have temples, just as Liberals and Tories would both have newspapers. Creeds that exist to destroy each other both have scriptures, just as armies that exist to destroy each other both have guns.” (Orthodoxy, Chapter 8)

Which brings us back to the imagery of war, and finally (if the wrong side wins), of dictatorship and slavery. For the dictatorship of relativism, as Benedict himself pointed out, will finally brook no dissent (as we increasingly see)

To what extent is the people's will manipulated by publicity... by the agency of a few people who dominate public opinion? Is there not a new oligarchy of the people who decide what is modern and progressive, what somebody enlightened has to think? (Truth and Tolerance, pg. 242-243)

 Indeed there is. And being labeled by this group as "behind the times" or "a bigot" or, worse still, a "hater" carries with it every bit of opprobrium  being labeled a "heretic" did in Medieval Europe. "What do you understand of such things?" our "betters" scream at us with the Ape. But they shall meet the same fate he did - as long as we maintain the two virtues most needed by good soldiers, faithfulness and courage. We must maintain the faith - rejecting the false idol of self-worship that the culture sells us and we must be courageous, witnessing to the faith, despite the almost inevitable social ramifications, and to the truth that it presents. This is the mission of the Church in the modern world. A Church which is "a countercultural movement, not a popular one," according to Raymond Cardinal Burke. Thus I call on you my brothers to stand with the Resistance, to stand with the Counter-Revolution, to stand with the Catholic Church.

Recommended Reading:

Why Bad Popes Don't Disprove Catholicism

Last week I was sent this meme and wanted to take a moment to share my response (and elaborate on it) here for others who might be presented with this line of attack. It is the old "hey, look this pope did something bad, so Catholicism is false" argument.

The meme basically makes three claims about Leo X. First, he was an immoral man. Second, he sold tickets to heaven to people who committed horrible crimes. Third, he didn’t believe in Christianity, he “let the cat out of the bag” that the whole Jesus thing is made up so for the wordily gain of those running the Church. Let’s look at each in turn, starting with the most damning claim, that the pope didn’t believe in Christianity.

Claim 1 - Pope Leo X Admitted Christianity is Made Up

This is, so the meme claims, “the most infamous and damaging state about Christianity in the history of the Church.” And so it certainly would be, except it was never said by Pope Leo X. I challenged the atheist who sent me the meme to find the original source where this quote originates, to show some evidence that this “most damaging” quote is true. Needless to say he declined to take me up on the challenge. 

The quote first emerges in history not from the mouth of Leo, but from the pen of (you guessed it) an anti-Catholic Protestant writer during the Reformation, John Bale, who, in his anti-Catholic play "The Pageant of the Popes," has the pope-character proclaim, 

"All ages can testifie enough howe profitable that fable of Christe hath ben to us and our companie." 

That’s right, it comes from an anti-Catholic propaganda piece. It would be like reading a movie script on the life of Martin Luther King Jr., written by Ku Klux Klansmen, reading where MLK says he too believes white people make up a superior race, and believing the real MLK said it. 

The quote has been popular in anti-Catholic Protestant (and now I suppose atheist) circles ever since. Which just goes to show that some people will believe just about anything as long as it attacks the Holy Catholic Church. There's no need to fact check sources, no need to see if the claim even makes sense, as long as it assaults Mother Church, some people will swallow anything. 

Claim 2 - Pope Leo X Allowed Evil People to Buy Their Way Into Heaven

It can’t be a surprise to any of my readers that our atheist meme creator misunderstands what an indulgence is and what it does. An indulgence doesn't earn someone "pardon from hell for such sins as murder, polygamy, etc" In fact an indulgence doesn't earn anyone "pardon from hell" for any sin. The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains indulgences nicely,

"An indulgence is a remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven, which the faithful Christian who is duly disposed gains under certain prescribed conditions through the action of the Church which, as the minister of redemption, dispenses and applies with authority the treasury of the satisfactions of Christ and the saints." (1471)

Indulgences don't get people out of eternal punishment (hell), they merely remove some or all of the temporal punishment due to sins which have already been forgiven. An Indulgence will do a sinner no good for any unforgiven sins. Thus, indulgences merely allow someone who has already received forgiveness (normally through sacramental confession) to begin to "pay off" some or all of the punishment that is still due on their forgiven sins. It is basically a way to begin (and possibly complete) the process of purgation before death. Of course, the indulgence will do no one any good if they die in a state of mortal sin, in that case the sinner is damned - indulgence or no. In other words, indulgences can't get you into Heaven. Which means Leo couldn't have sold them to "pardon" people from "hell". 

Claim 3 - Pope Leo X Was an Immoral Man

The answer to this claim is... so what? Leo X isn't a saint, I know of no one who holds him up as a model of virtue or as a splendid example of a Roman Pontiff (although he did commission some fantastic art for the Church). The meme seems to think the immorality of Pope Leo is something to hold against Catholicism. This seems to be an example of the common confusion between papal infallibility (which the Church teaches) and papal impeccability (which the Church doesn't). Infallibility means the pope, when teaching officially as the pope on faith or morals, can teach without error. This is of no benefit to himself, it is a gift of the Holy Spirit to the Church for the faithful - through the infallibility of the Magisterium of the Church (which the pope can exercise by himself) the faithful can be certain the Church will not teach heresy. Impeccability would mean that the pope cannot sin. We don't believe the latter and Leo X is a good example proving it isn't true. Of course he isn't the best example, I can think of several other popes who outdid Leo - HBO's favorite, Alexander VI; the all-time worst pope Benedict IX, and a few others. That greatest of poets, Dante Alighieri, even puts a couple popes, including the one reigning while he wrote Inferno, in hell.

In the pit of the simonists Dante meets Pope Nicholas III who mistakes the pilgrim for Pope Boniface VIII:

Out of the mouth of each one there protruded
The feet of a transgressor, and the legs
Up to the calf, the rest within remained....

"Master, who is that one who writhes himself,
More than his comrades quivering,"
I said, "and whom a redder flame is sucking?"...

"Whoe'er thou art, that standouts upside down,
O doleful soul, implanted like a stake,"
To say began I, "if thou canst, speak out."...

And he cried out: "Dost thou stand there already,
Dost thou stand there already, Boniface?
By many years the record lied to me....

And truly was I son of the She-Beear,
So eager to advance the cubs, that wealth
Above, and here myself, I pocketed.

Beneath my head the others are dragged down
Who have preceded me in simony,
Flattened along the fissure of the rock.

(Canto XIX)

Popes, it turns out, are sinners in need of a savior just like the rest of us. They too must work out their salvation in fear and trembling and they too will be judged for how they lived their life. Christ promised the Church would not fail, he didn't promise a never ending parade of papal saints. That being said, the few bad popes we hear about here and there (and their "badness" is usually exaggerated) are absolutely overwhelmed by the number of truly holy men who have held the office of Peter. I can think of no other walk of life that has seen such holiness, from martyrs willing to die painful deaths for Christ, to great theologians, mystics, and men of heroic virtue the papacy has produced much more better fruit than it has bitter fruit. Pope Leo X might not have been among the saintly popes, he might even now be roasting in the fires of hell (although I certainly hope not - please join me in praying for the repose of his soul), but that is no stick to beat the Church with. You don't judge a medicine, to paraphrase Frank Sheed, by those who don't take it. And despite his many failings, Leo X never taught error - the one thing Christ promised the pope would never do.

In some ways, I must admit to wondering if the Holy Spirit didn't deliberately raise men like Leo X to the Throne of Peter. In Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron (an Italian masterpiece written during the reign of a 'bad pope'), we read (in the second tale of the first day) of a Jewish man named Abraham who is friends with a Catholic - Giannotto di Civigni who wishes to convert his friend to the Faith. Abraham is a master of jewish law and a devout man who "had been born in (the Jewish faith), and intended to live in stand die in it." After many failed attempts to bring Abraham around, Giannotto finally begins to prevail upon his friend. Abraham finally tells him,

"Look here, Giannotto, you want me to become a Christian, and I am quite prepared to do so. So much so, that I want first to go to Rome and see him whom you call God's Vicar on earth, to observe the ways and customs of him and his brother Cardinals. And if they seem to me such that... I can come to see that your faith is better than mine... I will do what I have said. But if not, I shall remain a Jew."

Giannotto, who isn't exactly pleased to hear this proposal, thinks,

"I have wasted my labor, which I thought I had employed so well, in the belief that I had converted him. Now, if he goes to the Court of Rome and sees the filthy and rascally life of the clergy, not only will he not turn from a Jew to a Christian, but if he had turned Christian he would inevitably become a Jew again."

Not exactly a ringing endorsement of the Papal Court in Boccaccio's day. Unable to convince Abraham to change his mind and convert without seeing the pope, Giannotto despairs as he watches Abraham leave. Finally, after a long trip from Paris to Rome and back again, Abraham returns and meets his old friend. Upon asking what he thought of the clergy of Rome, Abraham replies,

"It seemed to me that God is very kind to them all. For, if my observation is of any value, I saw there no sanctity, no devotion, no good works or examples of life.... But it seemed to me that lechery, avarice, gluttony,... and worse were so much in grace... that I consider Rome a forge of devilish rather than divine labors. In my opinion your Shepherd... endeavors with all haste... to reduce the Christian religion to nothing and to thrust it our of the world."

Giannotto's greatest fears were founded after all it seemed. The 'bad pope' had proven too much for his friend to bear. Or had it? Abraham continues,

"Now, since I perceive that what they endeavor to achieve (the destruction of Christianity) does not occur, but that your religion continually increases and becomes brighter and more illustrious, I justly am of the opinion that the Holy Spirit is its support and foundation...now...nothing shall prevent me from becoming a Christian. Let us go to a church, and there I will be baptized."

Abraham realized that no human institution could possibly have endured the human weaknesses of the earthly leaders of the Catholic Church, yet the Church has prospered, has flourished, for 20 centuries. Any man-made institution would have long ago collapsed (as, in fact, every other institution from 20 centuries long ago has). The bad popes, in a strange way, prove the truth of Catholicism by proving the Church hasn't been sustained by human genius or greatness, but has grown despite the failings of her leaders. More than that, the bad popes, Leo included, might have sinned, but none of them - not one - ever used his position as pope to teach that those sins he liked were okay. Popes may have, for example, had sex, but none of them taught such behavior, even in a pope, was moral. The bad popes did the one thing Jesus promised all popes would do - never error when teaching faith or morals, although some of them certainly didn't practice what they preached. Jesus warned us about this and told us how to deal with such leadership,

you must be careful to do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. (Matt 23:3)

Thus we see the meme fails to land a blow against the Holy Faith on any of the three charges it raises against it. One is an outright lie, another a complete misunderstanding, the last actually an argument for the Divine Institution of the Church.

I didn't get emailed the first 10 "know your popes" memes, but for some reason I'm guessing the holy lives of men like St. Gregory the Great, St. Leo the Great, or St. John Paul the Great are not listed among them. Atheists certainly have their fair share of men of less than heroic stature (Joe Stalin, Chairman Mao, Pol Pot, Fidel Castro, etc), but they don't seem to have the equivalent of those Catholics (the saints) who lived such inspiring lives. Maybe the creator of the meme hasn't considered the old idiom, "those who live in glass houses should not throw stones." Reflecting on that (and checking a fact here or there) might result in less mindless memes floating around cyberspace.


Recommended Reading:

Terminally Ill 29 Yr Old, Brittany Maynard, Kills Herself

Readers of the blog (and people who have been following the news at all) will be well familiar with Brittany Maynard, a terminally ill young woman who vowed to kill herself this weekend past to have, what some call "death with dignity" (I suppose that implies that those who take the heroic route of living out their natural lives, despite great suffering, are dying without dignity). We've been following her story for awhile here at Adoro, first asking What Will Become of Her Soul after her Suicide,  then noting Archbishop Gomez's Sorrow Over her Suicidal Decision, and finally rejoicing when Brittany Decided Not to Commit Suicide (surely a moment of grace brought about through the constant prayers offered on her behalf).

Of course such prayers, while providing grace, do not rob us of our most precious gift - free will. We can always choose to cooperate with God's plan for our lives, to work with His grace, or to reject that grace and those plans and go our own direction. Such is why (and how) sin entered the world. No amount of prayers can ever, in principle, force anyone to do anything (or stop anyone either). Mrs. Maynard seemed to have a grace given moment where she recoiled with horror from the fretful path she had staked out for herself, but finally succumbed to despair or weakness or pressure or fear or all of these and did the unthinkable - she killed herself. Let's not sugar coat it, there is nothing dignified with killing yourself. It is nothing to be praised, nothing to be celebrated, nothing to be cheered on, only something so horribly evil as to fill all right thinking minds with sadness, horror, and lamentations.

It would seem, from so far away, that all the conditions of mortal sin were met in this case. It is hard to see how they were not. Killing anyone, including oneself, is a violation of the Fifth Commandment and thus is grave matter. Has anyone been more publicly deliberate in making a decision than Mrs. Maynard was here? And, of course, "no one is deemed to be ignorant of the principles of the moral law, which are written in the conscience of every man" (CCC 1860).  However, ultimately, while we can and must judge acts to be evil, we can never search the deepest hearts of our brothers and sisters and never truly know what state anyone dies in, "we must entrust judgment of persons to the justice and mercy of God" (CCC 1861). Thus, we need not despair (nor presume) about her ultimate fate. Instead, we must persevere in having hope for her salvation and we must offer up prayers that she might yet rest in peace.

Please join me in prayer:

Lord Jesus Christ, king of glory,deliver the souls of all the faithful departed from the pains of Hell and the bottomless pit.Deliver them from the jaws of the lion, lest hell engulf them, lest they be plunged into darkness; but let the holy standard-bearer Michael lead them into the holy light,as once you promised to Abraham and his seed. 

Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine:et lux perpetua luceat ei.Requiescat in pace. 

May the immortal soul of Brittany Maynard rest in perpetual piece. May she see that land where every tear shall be wiped away and where there shall be no more death, mourning, crying, or pain (cf. Rev 21:4). May alright God have mercy upon her and upon all those who failed her in her most desperate hour. 

And may no other poor souls follow her most unfortunate example. 

Amen.

Truly, a sad end to a sad story.

Terminally Ill 29 Year Old to Commit Suicide - UPDATE (the power of prayer)

You'll remember the 29 year old woman who had resolved to commit suicide from a couple of posts earlier this month here (Terminally Ill 29 year old to Commit Suicide. What will Become of her Soul?) and here (Archbishop Gomez "Filled with Sadness Over 29 Year Old Woman Choosing Suicide) and no doubt from the massive media coverage it garnered. 

Well, tomorrow was supposed to be the day - her last day on Earth and, unbeknownst to her, her meeting with Christ the Just Judge. Thank God, and all of you who joined me in praying for this poor woman, she has changed her mind and decided to grant herself a stay of execution:

Denver, Colo., Oct 30, 2014 / 05:10 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- As a 29 year-old woman with terminal brain cancer reconsiders her resolve to end her life, one scholar says the change of heart indicates a more mature level of thinking.
“That’s advanced thinking, that’s higher order thinking – when you can let go of the trappings of this world and realize there is something else,” reflected Dr. Julie Masters, chairman of the Department of Gerontology at the University of Nebraska.
She told CNA Oct. 30 that Brittany Maynard’s reconsideration is an “interesting development.”
“I think reading some of the things she has said about this idea that she is there with her family and seeing the value of that offers people another perspective on end-of-life care, and what that means,” Masters said. (read more there)

Te Deum Laudamus! Te Domine confitemur! 

Truly, God is good. Keep her in your prayers that she might be brought into Eternal Life by receiving the Sacraments of the Holy Church so that she may live forever in the New Jerusalem.

Can We Only Know Truth Via the Scientific Method?

Often in online and face-to-face discussions, especially with atheists, Catholics encounter a basic objection to the existence of God - that all real knowledge is gained through empirical experimentation using the scientific method. In other words, all facts are science facts. All other "knowledge" is either subjective opinion at best or "faith" (inaccurately defined as "believing without evidence") at worst and is to be dismissed. Philosophy is also dismissed as nothing more than a pre-scientific, and unreliable, method of trying to arrive at claims that only science (sometimes written with a capital "S") can really shed light on. With this system of thought in place, the atheist rejects the philosophical arguments for the existence of God not by answering the arguments, but by dismissing philosophy altogether much in the same way moral arguments for God are dismissed by rejecting morality or aesthetic arguments for God are dismissed by rejecting beauty. The atheist, it seems, is willing to live in an increasingly small intellectual world just so long as he is able to continue to avoid the reality of God.

This system of thought is known as "scientism" and, as we  shall see, is itself not a scientific claim, but a philosophical one.

Certainly, the scientific method is a great discovery and leads, without a doubt, to knowledge about the world. No Catholic I've met has ever dismissed science or the scientific method. The Medievals had a saying which still remains true for Catholics in the twenty-first century, which is expressed most succulently by Francis Bacon,

God has, in fact, written two books, not just one. Of course, we are all familiar with the first book he wrote, namely Scripture. But he has written a second book called creation.

As St. Thomas Aquinas, and the Scholastic theologians who followed in his footsteps, never tried of arguing for, truth cannot contradict truth - what we know from Revelation (God's "first book") can never be contradicted by what we learn from the study of the natural world (God's "second book"). It is this attitude which lead Catholic clerics to create the scientific method (yes, you read that correctly - far from suppressing science, the Church created item, which is why it arose in Medieval Europe and not Arabia, Asia, or anywhere else). Pioneers of the scientific method were also men of Catholic Faith - men like Roger Bacon, a Franciscan Friar widely hailed as a "father of science;" St. Albert the Great, a Dominican Friar and the teacher of St. Thomas Aquinas; Theodoric of Freidberg, another Dominican Friar; William of Ockham, another Franciscan,; and others. In fact, the university system - was created by the Catholic Church and worked to support the development of science precisely as a means to better understand God by more accurately "reading" His "second book."

The Catholic Church's love for and promotion of science has continued through the centuries (35 lunar craters are named for Jesuit scientist-priests for example) down to this week when Pope Francis reiterated the teaching of the Catholic Church regarding the compatibility of science (again, which the Church created) and theology by saying the same thing popes have been saying since Father Georges Lemaître (a Catholic priest) discovered the Big Bang theory - namely that science and faith cannot contradict each other,

"God is not a demiurge or a conjurer, but the Creator who gives being to all things. The beginning of the world is not the work of chaos that owes its origin to another, but derives directly from a supreme Origin that creates out of love. The Big Bang, which nowadays is posited as the origin of the world, does not contradict the divine act of creating, but rather requires it. The evolution of nature does not contrast with the notion of Creation, as evolution presupposes the creation of beings that evolve”. (if you were confused by the Pope's statement, Shameless Popery has a nice article on it here.)

Which echoes the words of Pope Pius XII who wrote an encyclical on evolution, Humani Generis, laying out the same thing Francis said the other day,

the Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution

So the Church certainly accepts "science facts" as true facts, but avoids the philosophical (not scientific) error of "scientism" - the idea we started with, that all facts are science facts.

Scientism, of course, is easy to fall into in the modern world. We can look around us and see how powerful science has been. I'm able to write this blog post and share it with, literally, the world because of science. Empirical testing has revealed the truths of "God's Second Book" in such a powerful way as to revolutionize our understanding of the physical world we inhabit. I think all Catholics can agree that science is a great source of knowledge, indeed the best source of knowledge, when it comes to explaining the natural, material, physical world.

However, being a powerful source of knowledge in describing the physical world does not make science a powerful tool for knowledge about anything else - moral truths, truths about inter-personal relationships, or truths about the immaterial world (including the truth about whether such a world exists at all). Science, by the very method that makes it so powerful in answering questions about the material world, is completely incapable of saying anything about these other realities. Assuming it can is the error of scientism.

The great irony of scientism (the truth claim that all truth claims must be testable via the scientific method to be valid) is that it cannot be tested by the scientific method itself. The claim that all knowledge is scientific knowledge cannot be weighed, measured, fitted into a test-tube, put under a microscope, or observed in any way through empirical study. Scientism is not a science fact, something arrived at vie empirical observation and testing, but an epistemological claim.

Epistemology, of course, is not a branch of science but of philosophy- which is discredited by scientism as invalid speculation. Thus, we end up in the peculiar situation of having an epistemological position that epistemology is invalid because it isn't testable by science, which is immediately self-refuting. In case this isn't self-evident, allow me to demonstrate what I'm saying.

Let's let "x" stand for "the truth claim that all truth claims must be science facts to be true". We'd end up with an argument like this:

All truth claims must be testable by science ("x")
But "x" (all truth claims must be testable by science) isn't testable by science
Therefore, not "x"

Scientism disproves itself. It confuses a claim about what we can know with an empirically testable claim like "the Earth goes around the sun."

Philosophy (aka "reason") is not, as is imagined by many people today, a bunch of academics sitting around asking irrelevant and overly-technical questions (well, at least that isn't what philosophy is supposed to be, although at some universities that is what it has degenerated into). Rather philosophy is the study of reality through reason. Philosophy frequently starts with observation, just as science does, but it then moves, through deductive reasoning, to study universal truths rather than physical facts about reality. Because of this, philosophy can reach into the immaterial world and answer questions about morals and about God's existence. Far from being "less certain" than science, philosophy, because it is deductive, can arrive at certain knowledge, while science, which is inductive, can only arrive at probabilistic knowledge (except in the very rare circumstances where a complete indiction is possible).

Thus philosophy emerges as another way to truth, which is good for science because science depends upon certain truths that cannot be proven by science (indeed can't, in principle, be proven by science without science becoming a circular - and invalid - argument). As an example science cannot tell us whether our sense data is trustworthy, it has to rely on epistemology to do that. If our sense observations are not trustworthy, the entire scientific project immediately collapses. How do we know the Earth moves around the sun? Because our empirical observations tell us it does, but if our senses do not reveal the real world to us, then we can't know whether or not the Earth really moves at all - it might just be our unreliable senses playing tricks on us. Science can't give us an answer to this question, because it relies on the answer already being "yes" to prove anything. Philosophy, however, because it is not dependent upon sense data (although it can and does make use of it) can answer the question for us and by so doing can open up the possibility of doing science at all. Likewise, science depends upon philosophy to defend the necessary connection because cause and effect and the law of sufficient reason, without which science can not get off the ground.

Thus, scientism, by attacking philosophy which is necessary for science, cuts the legs out from under the whole scientific project, and in so doing, proves itself false. If science facts are the only valid facts, then the facts that support science are not valid, which invalidates science, including all the facts science proved.

Scientism is opposed by the Catholic Church, not because the Church hates science, but because she loves science and scientism would ultimately kill science itself. As it is ultimately the first step toward an irrationalism that the Church, the great defender of human reason, always and everywhere opposes.


post scriptum
Just because I know someone is bound to bring up Galileo, here is an article which explains what happened.