1. It has lately been asked what answer do we Catholics give to the allegation urged against us by men of the day, to the effect that we demand of our converts an assent to views and interpretations of Scripture which modern science and historical research have utterly discredited.
As this alleged obligation is confidently maintained against us, and with an array of instances in support of it, I think it should be either denied or defended; and the best mode perhaps of doing whether the one or the other, will be, instead of merely dealing with the particular instances adduced in proof, to state what we really do hold as regards Holy Scripture, and what a Catholic is bound to believe. This I propose now to do, and in doing it, I beg it to be understood that my statements are simply my own, and involve no responsibility of any one besides myself.
2. A recent work of M. Renan’s is one of those publications which have suggested or occasioned this adverse criticism upon our intellectual position. The author’s abandonment of Catholicism seems, according to a late article in a journal of high reputation, in no small measure to have come about by his study of the Biblical text, especially that of the Old Testament. ‘He explains,’ says the article, ‘that the Roman Catholic Church admits no compromise on questions of Biblical criticism and history’ … though ‘the Book of Judith is an historical impossibility. Hence the undoubted fact that the Roman Catholic Church … insists on its members believing … a great deal more in pure criticism and pure history than the strictest Protestants exact from their pupils or flocks.’ Should, then, a doubting Anglican contemplate becoming Catholic by way of attaining intellectual peace, ‘if his doubts turn on history and criticism, he will find the little finger of the Catholic Church thicker than the loins of Protestantism.’
3. The serious question, then, which this article calls on us to consider, is whether it is ‘an undoubted fact,’ as therein stated, that the Catholic Church does ‘insist’ on her children’s acceptance of certain Scripture informations on matters of fact in defiance of criticism and history. And my first duty on setting out is to determine the meaning of that vague word ‘insists,’ which I shall use in the only sense in which a Catholic can consent to use it.
I allow, then, that the Church, certainly, does ‘insist,’ when she speaks dogmatically, nay or rather she more than insists, she obliges; she obliges us to an internal assent to that which she proposes to us. So far I admit, or rather maintain. And I admit that she obliges us in a most forcible and effective manner, that is, by the penalty of forfeiting communion with her, if we refuse our internal assent to her word. We cannot be real Catholics, if we do not from our heart accept the matters which she puts forward as divine and true. This is plain.
3. Next, to what does the Church oblige us? and what is her warrant for doing so? I answer, The matters which she can oblige us to accept with an internal assent are the matters contained in that Revelation of Truth, written or unwritten, which came to the world from our Lord and His Apostles; and this claim on our faith in her decisions as to the matter of that Revelation rests on her being the divinely appointed representative of the Apostles and the expounder of their words; so that whatever she categorically delivers about their formal acts or their writings or their teaching, is an Apostolic deliverance. I repeat, the only sense in which the Church ‘insists’ on any statement, Biblical or other, the only reason of her so insisting, is that that statement is part of the original Revelation, and therefore must be unconditionally accepted,—else, that Revelation is not, as a revelation, accepted at all.
The question then which I have to answer is, What, in matter of fact, has the Church (or the Pope), as the representative of God, said about Scripture, which, as being Apostolic, unerring Truth, is obligatory on our faith, that is, de fide?
5. Many truths may be predicated about Scripture and its contents which are not obligatory on our faith, viz., such as are private conclusions from premises, or are the dicta of theologians. Such as about the author of the Book of Job, or the dates of St. Paul’s Epistles. These are not obligatory upon us, because they are not the subjects of ex cathedrâ utterances of the Church. Opinions of this sort may be true or not true, and lie open for acceptance or rejection, since no divine utterance has ever been granted to us about them, or is likely to be granted. We are not bound to believe what St. Jerome said or inferred about Scripture; nor what St. Augustine, or St. Thomas, or Cardinal Caietan or Fr. Perrone has said; but what the Church has enunciated, what the Councils, what the Pope, has determined. We are not bound to accept with an absolute faith what is not a dogma, or the equivalent of dogma (vide infra, section 17), what is not de fide; such judgments, however high their authority, we may without loss of communion doubt, we may refuse to accept. This is what we must especially bear in mind, when we handle such objections as M. Renan’s. We must not confuse what is indisputable as well as true, with what may indeed be true, yet is disputable.