Philosophy of the Supernatural
Vlll. Philosophy of the Supernatural
The Two Philosophies
Philosophy is the science of principles; not, as the
superficial thinkers or unthinkers of our materialistic age would have us
believe, of sensible or material facts, the proper object of the physical
sciences, as astronomy, electricity, chemistry, mechanics, geology, hydraulics,
etc. Principles precede facts, originate
and govern them. Indeed, we know not
facts themselves nor understand their significance or meaning until we have
referred them to their principles. …All principles are supersensible and are
objects of the intellect, in no case of the senses. Some of them are known or knowable by the
light of nature; others only by the light of supernatural revelation. The science of the former is the philosophy
of the natural; of the latter, is the philosophy of the supernatural.
These two philosophies are of principles equally certain;
for the light of reason and the light of revelation are both emanations of the
divine light or Logos, and each is infallible. We may err and take that to be reason or that to be revelation which is
not revelation; but neither can itself err, for both rest on the veracity of
God, who is Truth itself and can neither deceive nor be deceived. The science of revealed principles is as
truly science as is the science of principles known by the light of nature, and
differs from it only as to its medium. We may, then, speak of the philosophy of the supernatural with as much
propriety and confidence as of the philosophy of the natural.
The philosophy of the supernatural follows the analogy of
the natural. The philosophy of the
natural presents the principles of the natural so far as they are cognizable by
natural reason in their intelligible phase, their relation to one another, and
the facts of the sensible order which they explain and govern. The philosophy of the supernatural presents
the principles so far as revealed of the supernatural order, their mutual
relation and reciprocal dependencies, and their relation to the natural order
which they explain and complete, and which without them is not only incomplete,
but absolutely without purpose or meaning. (Vol. 2, pp. 271-273.)
Defect of the Scholastic Method
The questions treated belong properly to the domain of
theology, but lie back of those ordinarily treated by our modern
theologians. Since the rise of
scholasticism theology has pursued the analytical method and has been, for the
most part, studied in separate questions and articles in detail, rather than as
a uniform and indissoluble whole. The
articles and dogmas of faith have been dissected, analyzed, accurately
described, and labeled, but except by a few superior minds not presented in
their unity or as integral and inseparable members of one living body. The objection of the traditionalists to the
scholastic method that it is rationalistic and of Dollinger and German
professordom that it is theological, not historical, and places reason above
revelation, deserves no respect and, of we are not mistaken, has been
reprobated by the Holy See. As against
the traditionalists and the German professors, the scholastic method is
approved in the Syllabus, but this does not prohibit us from pointing out that
it tends to make the student lose sight of the faith objectively considered as
an organic whole. What
moderately-instructed theologian ever regards the natural and the supernatural
as parts of one dialectic system, distinct, if you will, but inseparable in the
divine decree, or that does not look upon them as two disconnected and
independent systems? Who ever thinks of
looking below the dogma to the catholic principle that underlies it, governs
it, and binds it to every other dogma, and integrates it in the living unity of
the divine purpose in creation? (Vol. 2, p. 273.)
The Age has Lost Faith in the
Supernatural
All that we aim at here is to show that there is a
philosophy of the supernatural as well as of the natural; and that we live in
times when for the vindication of the faith against the various classes of its
enemies it is necessary to recognize and study it to a far greater extent than
it is ordinarily studied in our seminaries. The age has no respect for authority, and though we prove conclusively
that the church is divinely commissioned and assisted to teach the faith, and
is therefore infallible, we do not meet the real difficulties of the more
cultivated classes of unbelievers or prepare them to accept any article, dogma,
or proposition of faith for the reason that she teaches it. The world outside of the church may be
credulous and superstitious, able, as Clemens of Alexandria said to the Greeks,
“to believe anything and everything except the truth,” but have undeniably lost
all faith in the supernatural order, and really believe only in the natural, if
indeed even so much as that. Our
spiritists, who profess to have communication with the spirits of the departed,
do not really admit a supernatural order. The real cause of this unbelief, so far as it is intellectual, not
moral, is in the assumption that the natural and the supernatural are held by
the church as by the sects to be two separate, independent, and unrelated
orders, indeed as two antagonistic orders. They take their views of Christian theology not from the teaching of the
church, but from such errorists as Calvinists and Jansenists, who in their
theories demolish nature to make way for grace. The supernatural appears to them an anomaly in the Creator’s works;
something arbitrary, illogical, without any reason in the nature of things or the
principles of the universe. No amount of
evidence, they contend, can suffice to prove the reality of any order that is
above nature or the reach of natural reason. Hence they attempt to reduce miracles and all marvelous events, too well
authenticated to be denied as facts, to the natural order, explicable by
natural laws, though we may as yet be ignorant of these laws. (Vol. 2, p. 274.)
Relation of the Natural and the
Supernatural
The natural and the supernatural are two parts of one
original plan of creation, and are distinguished only as the initial is
distinguished from the teleological or completion. The natural is initial, the supernatural is
teleological, or the perfection or fulfillment of the natural. It was in the beginning, in arche, in principio,
the design of the Creator that the natural should be perfected, completed, or
fulfilled in the supernatural. Indeed,
we do not understand how that natural could possibly be perfected in the
natural, the creature, which is necessarily imperfect, in the creation. To assume that man can be perfected in the
natural order is to assume that he has no destiny, his existence no purpose,
and therefore no meaning, which would be tantamount to assuming that he is a mere
nullity, nothing at all. Man, nature,
the universe, all creation, originates in and proceeds by the creative act of
God from the supernatural, for God the Creator is necessarily supernatural,
that is, above and over nature. Nature
originates in the supernatural, and since we know from revelation, and might
infer from reason itself, that God creates all things for himself, it has and
can have its destiny or end only in the supernatural. The good of every creature is in attaining
its end, the fulfillment or perfection of its nature, and hence the notion
broached and defended by some theologians – not, indeed, of the first order- of
a natural beatitude is inadmissible and originates in a superficial and
incomplete view of the Creator’s design in creation, and, we may add, of the
nature of things, in the very assumption on which is founded the objection of
the unbeliever. They consider nature as
a whole, and once created with its laws that it suffices or might have sufficed
for itself – a purely deistical conception, and not changed in its nature by
what these same theologians add, that God by his superabounding goodness has
provided for those that love him something better, even supernatural
beatitude. There is and can be no
natural beatitude; because whatever is natural is finite, and the soul hungers
and thirsts for an unbounded good and can be satisfied with nothing short of
the Infinite; that is to say, God himself, who is the Supreme Good in
itself. “I shall be satisfied,” says
holy Job, “when I awake in thy likeness.” There is rest for the soul only in God. Prophets, poets, and sages of all nations and ages, as well as Christian
preachers, have borne witness to the insufficiency of every created or finite
good to satisfy the soul and give it real beatitude. All this proves that man was created for a
supernatural, not a natural, beatitude or end, and therefore that the
supernatural entered into the divine plan of creation. Whence it follows that the alleged status naturae purae “status of pure
nature” is a pure abstraction and has never existed in actual state, as the
theologians who insist on it, for the most part, concede and hold, as we
do. We are laboring to prove that man,
in point of fact, is and always has been under a gracious or supernatural
providence, and, therefore, from the first destined to a supernatural end,
attainable only through a supernatural medium. The original justice in which Adam was constituted and which placed him
on the plane of his destiny was supernatural, not produced by his nature; and
when by his prevarication he lost it he fell below his nature, became darkened
in his understanding, weakened in his will, and captive to Satan, from whose
power he is delivered only by the Incarnate Word.
That man is created for a good that transcends nature is
indicated not only by his inability to satisfy himself with any natural, that
is, created good, but also by his consciousness of his own imperfection or
incompleteness, that his reason is limited, and that he is capable of being
more than he is or can be by his unassisted natural powers. There is something mysterious and
inexplicable to us in this fact – a fact which seems to us to imply that we
have an obscure sense of the supernatural, which the vast majority of mankind
in all ages and nations in one form or another recognize. (Vol. 2, pp. 275,
276.)
Principles of the Supernatural
The principium,
or principle, as we have seen, of philosophy, or rational science, of the
science of reason, is Ens creat
existentias. …Being creates or is creating existences, corresponding to the
first verse of Genesis. In principio, Deus creavit caelum et terram, or to the
first article in the creed, “I believe in one God, maker of heaven and earth,
and all things visible and invisible.” …
The principle of theology, or what we here call
supernatural philosophy, and known to us only by revelation, is, “The Father
through Christ deifies or is deifying existences or creatures,” that is,
supernaturally elevating them to union or oneness with God, the creature to
oneness with the Creator. The medium of
this deification is the Incarnation, or the Word made flesh. The fact affirmed in the ideal or rational
formula that existences proceed from God by way of creation, or that God
creates the world and is its first cause, proves that he creates it for some
end, that it has a final cause, and a final cause and end, like its first
cause, above and beyond itself. We know
from rational philosophy that our final cause or the end for which we are
created is supernatural, but we know only in a general way that it is
supernatural, not specifically or in particular in what it consists. This we know only by revelation. We can know from reason that God creates us
for himself, because besides him there is nothing for which he can create
us. But we cannot know from reason that
he creates us to deify us, to make us one with himself, “partakers,” as St.
Peter says, “of his divine nature,” naturae
consortes divinae. Nor can we know
by natural reason that this deification of the creature is to be effected through
the Incarnation or the Word made flesh. The whole principle and scope of the teleological order, the second
cycle or the return of existences to God without absorption in him as their
final cause or last end, transcends the reach of our natural faculties or the
light of nature, and is known only by supernatural revelation.
As the philosophy of the natural order consists in the
reduction of the facts of that order to their principles and their integration
in the ideal or rational formula, Ens creat existentias, so supernatural
philosophy, or theology, consists in the reduction of all the facts, mysteries,
articles, and dogmas of the supernatural order and their integration in the
revelaed formula, The Father through Christ deifies or is deifying existentias, or the creature, that is,
elevating the creature to oneness with the Creator. The medium of the revealed formula is the
Word made flesh or the Incarnation, that is, the Hypostatic Union, by which the
created nature becomes the nature of God, or the creature is made one with the
Creator, as the medium of the rational or ideal formula is the creative act of
Being, Ens, or God. It is in this medium or creative act that the
natural and supernatural coalesce and become one, for the Hypostatic Union, or
the Incarnation of the Word, is effected by the creative act, and is that act
raised to its highest power, is its supreme effort; for it is impossible for
the creative act to rise higher or to go further than to make the creature one
with its Creator. The two orders, the
natural and the supernatural, are dialectically united by one and the same
medium and- inasmuch as both proceed from the same principle – by one and the
same creative act. (Vol. 2, pp. 278-281.)
The Incarnation
The point we make here is that the act which creates the
natural is the identical act which creates the Hypostatic Union and founds the
supernatural. The Hypostatic Union or
Incarnation is itself in the initial order, in the first cycle, or the order of
the procession of existences by the act of creation from God as first
cause. It completes that order by
carrying the creative act to its highest pitch, and initiates or founds the
teleological order, or the order of the return of existences without absorption
in him to God, as final cause, or their last end. This order, called by
If the natural and the supernatural universe are homogenous
parts of one and the same system, the point on which we here specially insist,
the whole of both parts have their unity in the principle from which they
proceed, and as the natural is created and exists for the supernatural, it is
integrated in the principle of the supernatural, Verbum caro factum est, or the Incarnation. Hence it follows that the entire creation,
whether in the natural or supernatural, the initial or the teleological order,
exists for the Incarnation, and finds in its relation to the Word made flesh
its significance, its purpose, its unity, and its integrity. This granted, it follows again that the
denial of the Incarnation would be the denial not only of the entire
supernatural order or the whole Christian system, but of all existences,
whether natural or supernatural, by denying this final cause as essential to
any created existence as the first cause. It would deny the very end for which all things exist, and deny the
universe itself by denying it any purpose or meaning. What means nothing is nothing. The Incarnation is the key to all the Creator’s
works, and we have not mastered theology or the philosophy of the supernatural
till we are able to say that the denial of any one item in those works involves
the denial of the Incarnation, or the Word made flesh. It is the highest and supreme principle of
all science, and without it nothing in the universe is scientifically
explicable. (Vol. 2, pp. 281, 282.)
Unity of the Faith
It follows from the unity of the principle of both the
natural and the supernatural that the creation in both its parts is one system,
and also that the faith is one, and the several articles and dogmas recognized
and treated by theologians form not simply a union, but are strictly one,
flowing from one and the same principle, through one and the same medium, to
one and the same end. Hence the
destructive nature of heresy, which accepts some articles of the faith and
rejects others. As all depend alike on
the Incarnation, the principle of the teleological order, the denial of any one
item of the faith is the denial of the Incarnation. All heresy impugns the Incarnation and is of
the nature of infidelity, or the absolute rejection of Christ, the Word made
flesh. This theology or the philosophy
of the supernatural must establish…by descending to particulars and showing it
in detail. (Vol. 2, p. 283.)
No New Theology
Theology, as we have said, is not a new or a
progressive science. As there can be no
new faith, so can there be no new theology or science of faith, though
theologians may differ among themselves by a more or less perfect knowledge of
it. Theologians hold their principles
from faith and reason, both of which are invariable, universal, and the same in
all ages and nations. Reason was all in
the first man that it is in us or can be in his latest posterity, and there has
never been but one revelation, according to
Analytic and Synthetic Theology
Now, in constructing theology or reproducing in our
theological science the divine plan of creation as made known to us by reason
and revelation, we may adopt, with one class of theologians, the analytical
method, and treat the subject-matter in its parts in distinct questions and
articles, without special attention to the relations of the parts to the whole
or to one another; or we may adopt the synthetic method of the early fathers and
treat the parts in their dialectic relations with one another and with the
whole which integrates them. But
whichever method we adopt, it must be one and the same theological science we
draw out and present. We must also bear
in mind that neither of the two methods ever is or ever can be pursued by
itself alone. Analysis presupposes
synthesis, for we cannot analyze what is not presented in globo or as a whole; and synthesis presupposes analysis, for we
cannot treat parts in relation to one another, or in relation to the whole
which integrates them, unless we have analyzed them, so far at least as to know
that they are parts. The difference of
the two methods is that in the one synthesis predominates, in the other analysis; or that in the one we
seek to draw out and present the truth, or the real, in its dialectic
relations, and in the other we seek to study and present it in its analytic
relations. The analytic theologian will,
in treating of grace, treat it in its several divisions, as gratia praeveniens, gratia adiuvans, gratia
sufficiens, gratia efficax, gratia habitualis, gratia actualis, etc.; the synthetic theologian, without denying
these distinctions, will consider these several graces in their unity and in
their relation to the church, their medium; also the church in relation to the
Incarnation, the source and fountain of all grace; and, still further, the
Incarnation in relation, on the one hand, to the ineffable mystery of the
Trinity, and, on the other, in relation to the eternal decree of creation and
the teleological order. …
There is no doubt that some meticulous theologians, while
composing their theology from definitions of the church, which are necessarily
analytic because made only on occasion of insurgent errors, and consequently
propose the faith only so far as necessary to condemn them and to put the
faithful on their guard against them, have failed to grasp the grand synthesis
revealed by faith and taught in the catechism. Some have maintained that nothing is de
fide till defined by the church, and hence have concocted a theory of
development and maintained that the volume of faith is increased with each new
definition, forgetting that the church, since she is infallible, can define
nothing to be de fide which has not
been of faith from the beginning, always and everywhere. (Vol. 3, p. 549.)
Creation a Dialectic Whole
The real or created order is in the plan of the
creator or the divine decree a dialectic whole, not as Pope sings,
“All are but parts of one stupendous whole
whose body nature is, and God the soul.”
Which is pure pantheism; but parts of one created whole united to God, not as the
body to the soul, but as the creature to the creator, by the creative act of
God, distinguishable from God, as the act is from the actor.
God is infinite in his freedom, because infinite in his
power, and is free to create or not to create as he wills; and if he wills to
create he is free to create what and as he wills. To the question, “Why has he created the
universe as he has or as it is?” the only answer is, and it is sufficient,
“Because he has so willed.” The vessel
has no right to say to the potter, “Why hast thou made me thus?” The creator is not responsible to his
creatures nor bound to give them a reason for creating them. But God, though he can do whatever he wills,
cannot annihilate his own being or contradict his own nature or essence, as the
blessed apostle evidently implies when he says, “It is impossible for God to
lie.” In creating or willing, God must
create or will according to his own intrinsic nature or essence. Since, then, God is, in his very essence,
supremely logical and creates all things by the Logos- logic in itself- who is
God, all his works, his entire creation, are necessarily supremely logical;
logical in all their parts and as a whole. Consequently there must be always a reason in the created order for
whatever exists in it. Every part must
have its place and its raison d’etre,
and there can be in the universe no sophisms, no anomalies, no irregularities,
no inconsistencies, no contradictions or irreconcilable dualisms or
opposites. So much follows necessarily
from the revealed mystery of the Holy Trinity, and so much follows, also, from
the character of God the creator, as congnizable by the light of nature. (Vol.
3, p. 551.)
Heterodoxy Unsystematic
The principal objections to Christianity, in our day
at least, grow out of ignorance of this fact, and arise from the three orders
being regarded as three distinct and mutually independent orders, and the
mysteries, articles, and dogmas of faith being apprehended as isolated and
unrelated facts or statements, independent one of another, without any logical connection
between them, as heterodoxy necessarily presents them, since heterodoxy is
necessarily incomplete, illogical, or sophistical; heresy never hangs together;
its several parts never cohere and never constitute a complete or organic
whole. Take any form of Protestantism
you please, and you will find that the articles and dogmas it retains from
orthodoxy are for it anomalies and have no systematic place or
significance. It asserts the
supernatural, but it has no place, no necessity for it in its conception of
creation or of the divine decree to create; and three is in its system no
reason why the natural order alone should not suffice for itself and be at once
initial and teleological, and the more logical among Protestants are constantly
struggling against tradition and formal creeds, to eliminate the supernatural
and to assert the sufficiency of the natural. In no Protestant system has the assertion of the mystery of the Trinity
or the mystery of the Incarnation any necessity or serves any purpose recognized
by the system itself. There is nothing
in the divine order as conceived and presented by Protestant theologians that
cannot be explained without as well as with the assertion of either mystery. The church, with Protestants, performs no
office, has no function, no significance, and is either a self-constituted
society, a voluntary association, or a state establishment. Even in the belief of Protestants themselves
it is no essential medium of salvation or of the Christian life, and the most
straight-laced among them hold practically that all men can be saved without
the church as well as with it- if only distinguished for intellect or wealth;
for we find them every day canonizing such, even before the last obsequies have
been paid to their bodies. What better,
according to the Protestant presentment of it, is Christianity than Greek or
Roman philosophy? Or why should sensible
men trouble their heads about it, except to get rid of it? (Vol. 3, pp. 551,
552.)
The Church
Protestants also object to the church, her constitution, doctrines, and worship, for the same reason. Having and seeking no logic in their own
system, and knowing that Christianity, as they hold it, is made up of
disconnected particulars and isolated doctrines, they fail to perceive that
Catholicity is an organic whole, in which all the parts cohere and have their
reason. They reject the authority and
office of the church, but only because they isolate her from the Incarnation and
the mediatorial
The Worship of Saints
Protestants object to the cultus sanctorum as authorized by the church and practiced by
Catholics; but for a similar reason, because they do not see its dialectical
relation to the Incarnation, to the mediatorial principle, and to the communion
of saints, and therefore do not see that to deny it would be to deny the whole
Christian order, nay, creation itself. The mediatorial principle is universal and enters into the very being
and essence of God himself, in whom is the prototype of all created
things. The three Persons of the ever-blessed
Trinity, indistinguishable from the divine being, are distinguished inter se as principle, medium, and
end. The Father is principle, the Son,
or Word, is medium, and Holy Ghost the end or consummator. In all acts, ad extra, of creation or of providence the three Persons equally
concur, but in diverse relations, the Father as principle, the Son or Word as
medium, and the Holy Ghost as end or consummator. The Logos, or Word, is the medium of
creation. Hence
In the incarnation God assumes human nature to be his own
nature, without departing with his divine nature. So that the two natures, remaining forever
distinct, without confusion or intermixture, are forever hypostatically united
in the one divine Person of the Word. This one Person, the Word, who was in the beginning with God, and who is
God, in whom are the two natures, is the one Christ, the mediator of God and
men, the MAN Christ Jesus. But the
saints are his brethren, and partake of his divine nature as well as of his
human nature, and hence are said to be deified. …Human nature, by the
hypostatic union, is deified, as says Pope St. Leo Magnus, but in the divine
personality of the Word, not in a human personality; and the blessed in heaven,
however closely united to God, retain forever their human personality, which
never becomes absorbed in the divine personality, as in the case of the human
nature assumed by the Word.
Yet the saints are like unto Christ, as says the beloved
apostle, “Dearly beloved, we are now the sons of God: and it hath not yet
appeared what we shall be. We know that when we shall appear, we shall be like
him, because we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). That is, the blessed bear a higher likeness
to God than that image and likeness to which Adam was created or than that
which is given us in the new birth even. They partake of the divine nature as well as of the human nature of
their Lord, as St. Peter says, “He has given us very great and precious
promises, that you may be partakers of the divine nature- divinae consortes naturae” (2 Pet. 1;4). If we are led by the spirit of God we are the
sons and heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ even before we are glorified
with him (Rom. 8, 14-17): but the saints are glorified and partake of the
divine nature, which is only promised in this life and held by faith; they have
become like him in that higher likeness of which Saint John speaks. They have entered into the glory of their
Lord, are sharers with him in the glory of his mediatorial kingdom. They have entered into their
joint-inheritance and must be regarded as co-workers with him. They are, in some sense, Christs, therefore
mediators by participation of both his human and divine natures, though, of
course, not of his divine personality.
Being thus exalted, deified in their nature through its
assumption by the Word, and participating of the divine nature, the cultus sanctorum is strictly dialectic
and is only their due, and, in fact, is below their real worth. It detracts
nothing from the worship due to God or to the man Christ Jesus, because it is
through the mediation of the Word made flesh that the saint acquires his worth
and becomes a co-worker with him in his mediatorial kingdom, or a mediator in a
participated sense; and worth acquired by grace or the gift of God is as much
the saint’s own as if inherited from nature or obtained by the sole exercise of
his natural powers, and is equally entitled to be recognized and honored or
worshipped. We did not understand this
when in a former article we treated the question, and represented the cultus sanctorum as the worship of God
in his works and in his noblest works, the beatified saints. Such worship is proper, but it is the worship
of God and honors God, but honors not the saint any more than it does any other
creature of God. But as here presented
we not only honor God in his saints, but we honor the saints themselves for
what they are, for the virtues they possess through the gift of grace. God in rewarding the saints rewards his own
gifts; and so he would were he to reward us for our natural virtues, since we
are by nature his creatures and have only what he gives us. (Vol. 3, pp.
553-556.)
The Worship of the Blessed Virgin
The worship of the Blessed Virgin as St. Mary rests on the
same principle; and the higher worship we render her as Mother of God, called hyperdulia, rests on her relation to the
Incarnation, her share therein and the rank or position she necessarily holds
in consequence. As St. Mary she is
surpassed or equaled by no saint in the calendar. Through the merits of Jesus Christ she was
preserved in the first instant of her conception from all taint of original
sin, and was never for one moment under the power of Satan; she was conceived
and born without sin; she was full of grace, never in her whole life committed
the slightest venial fault; she was all-holy as all-beautiful and the model of
every Christian grace and virtue. As
mother of Christ, and therefore mother of God, she is blessed among women, above
all women, and holds a rank which no other woman, nay, no other creature does
or can hold. As Mother of God she
necessarily holds the highest rank that any creature not hypostatically united
to the Divine Word can hold, next below the eternal God himself, above all
angels, archangels, cherubim, seraphim, thrones, and dominations,
principalities, and powers, all created orders, and is rightly crowned Queen of
heaven. The error of Nestorius in
refusing to recognize her as Theotokos, Dei
genetrix, or mother of God, was in denying the hypostatic union, or
dissolving Jesus, which made him Antichrist (1 John 4, 2-3); and in
maintaining, as do most Protestants, that only the humanity was born of Mary,
not the humanity hypostatically, indissolubly, and forever united to the Divine
person or Word, who is God. The human
nature of Christ has no human personality; its personality is the Word, or Son
of God; and as the human nature taken from the Virgin must have been conceived
and born a person, Mary is as truly the mother of the Person born of her as any
mother is of her son, and therefore strictly and truly the mother of God.
Now, as Mary’s relation to the Incarnate Word is
indissoluble and must ever remain, and as that relation places her in a
position above all created orders next to the uncreated Trinity, simple logic
suffices to show that the highest worship below the supreme worship, called the
worship of latria, due to God alone,
is her due and cannot be withheld without injustice. The worship is strictly logical and cannot be
denied, unless we deny the Incarnation and the Catholic principle of mediation,
the whole Christian order, indeed, the whole divine plan of creation as made
known to us by reason and revelation. The charge of superstition against the cultus sanctorum, if we accept the apostolic doctrine of the
communion of saints, the relation we have shown the saints bear to the
Incarnate Word, and the position they hold as joint-heirs and cooperators with
Christ in his mediatorial kingdom, is simply absurd. Spiritism, which evokes or consults the
spirits supposed to hover over or around the graves of the dead, is
superstition in the original sense and application of the term; but our
invocation of saints has no affinity whatever with Spiritism, for we do not
evoke them, do not call upon them to appear or to communicate to us the secrets
of the past, the present, or the future. We give the saints no honor not their due, and ask of them only to aid
and enlighten us by their prayers to God and intercession with him for us, and,
therefore, nothing injurious to the sovereign majesty of God or beyond their
power.
The pretence that the worship we render to the Mother of
God is idolatry and the grave nonsense babbled about Mariolatry must be
ascribed to the lamentable fact that Protestants have no distinctively divine
worship and are able to offer no worship due to God alone; and therefore,
because they see us offering to Mary as high a worship as they are able to
offer to God himself, they conclude that we offer her supreme worship and, of
course, are idolaters. The distinctive
act of supreme worship to God is sacrifice, and Protestants have no sacrifice,
no altar, no priest, no victim. They
hold, indeed, that Christ once in the end of the world offered himself as a
sacrifice for all; but they deny that he fives himself to men to be offered by
them as an acceptable and all-sufficient sacrifice to God and adequate to the
debt we owe him. Christ not only offered
himself once to God for the whole world, but he gives himself to us in the
church to be offered up by us upon our altars in the sacrifice of the Mass, a
clean and acceptable offering, as our
offering through the priest, as our act of supreme worship to the ever-blessed
Trinity. No creature, not all we have
that is most precious or that we hold most dear, not even our life, can be a
real sacrifice or an adequate worship of God; for all creatures, the earth and
the fullness thereof are his already. Only God is an adequate offering to God; and this offering we can make
because God gives himself to us, and him we offer by the hands of the priest in
the Eucharistic sacrifice as our act
of supreme worship. This worship we offer to God alone, never to a creature,
not even to his ever-blessed and holy Mother. (Vol. 3, pp. 556-558.)
The Sacrifice of the Mass
Protestants, rejecting the Eucharistic sacrifice offered
daily on our altars, have no distinctive religious worship, nothing to offer to
God which they may not and do not offer to creatures. Their worship consists simply of prayer and
praise; but they pray to the king, the magistrate, the court, or the
legislature, and they sing the praises of a distinguished beauty, an effective
orator, an eminent statesman, a great poet, or the conquering hero. They may not say with the Psalmist, “A
sacrifice to God is an afflicted spirit; a contrite and humble heart, O God,
thou wilt not despise” (Ps. 1, 18); but the psalmist does not mean to assert
that no other sacrifice is required; he would simply teach us that no
sacrifice, without an afflicted spirit and a contrite and humble heart, can be
acceptable from the worshipper, and he concludes by saying: “Then shall thou
accept the sacrifice of justice [the sacrifices prescribed by the law],
oblations and whole burnt offerings; then shall they lay calves upon thy altar”
(ibid. 21). Now, having themselves no
real objective worship or sacrifices to offer to God, expiatory, propitiatory,
imprecatory, or Eucharistic, and having nothing more in their external service
than they see us offering to the Blessed Virgin, they very illogically and
falsely conclude that we offer her the supreme worship due to God alone, and
cry out most lustily “Mariolatry!” and hold it the duty of the magistrate to
extirpate us as idolaters. But they
forget that, as
Invocation of Saints
The invocation of saints, the frequent prayers we address
to them, especially to Mary, holy Mother of God, are authorized by the
mediatorial principle and by the relation of Mary and the saints to the
Incarnation. They are co-workers with
Christ, and being joined by a vital, we might say an organic, union with him,
participate in his mediatorial work. We
ask of them neither grace nor pardon; we ask only the help of their prayers to
their God and ours; therefore, as we have said, nothing beyond their
power. They and we form one communion;
only we are on the way, while they have already arrived at home, are in patria and no longer pilgrims and
sojourners in a foreign land. They are
living, more living than we are, for they have entered into the fullness of
life, life eternal. They can hear our
prayers; and being filled with love and in living communion with us in this
land of sorrows and vale of tears, they cannot be indisposed to listen to our
prayers and to join their own to ours. The objections of Protestants betray their ignorance of the principle on
which the Christian order is founded, and betray a doubt of the efficacy of
prayer and also a doubt that the saints in glory retain their personality and
are really living men, with all their human individuality and human
faculties. In fact, to our non-Catholic
world there is a dark cloud hanging over the life beyond the grave, and even
the blest seem to them pale and shadowy, unsubstantial, like shades of Hades in
the beliefs of the gentiles; and like the gentiles they sit in the region and
shadow of death, filled with doubt and uncertainty, anxiety and despair. Death is to them the gate that opens not to
life and immortality, but to the dread unknown, perhaps to the inane; and they
banish from their minds, as far as possible, the thought, by engrossing
themselves in the pursuit of gain or dissipation. (Vol. 3, pp. 559, 560).
Value of the Synthetic Method
The examples we have adduced show, especially in these
times of the dislocation of men’s minds, the value of the synthetic method of
setting forth Catholic faith, and presenting the several mysteries, articles,
and dogmas in their intrinsic relation to one another, and fixing the attention
on the great principles on which rest all the orders or moments of creation,
generation, regeneration, and glorification. The heterodoxy and infidelity of the age, aside from their moral causes,
seem to us to grow out of the fact that people are taught the mysteries,
articles, and dogmas without being duly shown the principles which underlie
them, which are really catholic and are the principles alike of the three
stages of creation, or the entire created order. Not seeing this, or that there is in
Catholicity a reason for everything in it, the heterodox do not see why they
may not choose among the doctrines the church teaches; why they may not choose
this doctrine and reject that; why they may not hold the unity of God and
reject the Trinity, the Humanity of our Lord without accepting his Divinity;
why they may not accept the moral precepts of the Gospel without the mysteries
and dogmas, between which they see no logical or necessary relation. The present tendency of most Protestants is
to separate the rational order from the revealed and to fall back on the
natural without the supernatural. The
common answer in regard to the supernatural order, that all the mysteries,
articles, and dogmas rest on the same authority, and that authority, if
sufficient for one, is sufficient for all, is a just and logically conclusive
answer; but it seems to us desirable that people, as far as practicable, should
be enabled to see that not only that all are taught by the same divine
authority, but that all are virtually connected one with another and with the
whole; that no one or a part can be detached and denied without logically
denying all: as we see exemplified in the more advanced Protestants. The moral precepts of the Gospel, and what is
called the Christian life detached from faith, or the doctrines and mysteries
of revelation, lose their Christian character, are reduced to the natural
order, stand on the level of heathen morality, and are meritorious for this
life only, not for the world to come. (Vol. 3, pp. 561, 562.)