The Catholic World, Vol. X, October 1869

"We notice in this review the article on the Spirit of Romanism for a single point only, which it makes, for as a whole it is not worth considering. Father Hecker asserts in his Aspirations of Nature, that, ""Endowed with reason, man has no right to surrender his judgment; endowed with free-will, man has no right to yield up his liberty. Reason and free-will constitute man a responsible being, and he has no right to abdicate his independence."" To this and several other extracts from the same work to the same effect, the Christian Quarterly opposes what is conceded by Father Hecker and held by every Catholic, that every one is bound to believe whatever the church believes and teaches. But bound as a Catholic to submit his reason and will to the authority of the church, how can one assert that he is free to exercise his own reason, and has no right to surrender it, or to abdicate his own independence? Father Hecker says, ""Religion is a question between the soul and God; no human authority has, therefore, any right to enter its sacred sphere."" Yet he maintains that he is bound to obey the authority of the church, and has no right to believe or think contrary to her teachings and definitions. How can he maintain both propositions?

What Father Hecker asserts is that man has reason and free-will, and that he has no right to forego the exercise of these faculties, or to surrender them to any human authority whatever. Between this proposition and that of the plenary authority of the church in all matters of faith or pertaining to faith and sound doctrine, as asserted by the Council of Trent and Pius IX. in the Syllabus, the Christian Quarterly thinks it sees a glaring contradiction. Father Hecker, it is to be presumed, sees none, and we certainly see none. Father Hecker maintains that no human authority has any right to enter the sacred sphere of religion, that man is accountable to no man or body of men for his religion or his faith; but he does not say that he is not responsible to God for the use he makes of his faculties, whether of reason or free-will, or that God has no right to enter the sacred sphere of religion, and tell him even authoritatively[2] what is truth and what he is bound to believe and do. When I believe and obey a human authority in matters of religion, I abdicate my own reason; but when I believe and obey God, I preserve it, follow it, do precisely what reason itself tells me I ought to do. There is no contradiction, then, between believing and obeying God, and the free and full exercise of reason and free-will. Our Cincinnati contemporary seems to have overlooked this very obvious fact, and has therefore imagined a contradiction where there is none at all, but perfect logical consistency. Our contemporary is no doubt very able, a great logician, but he is here grappling with a subject which he has not studied, and of which he knows less than nothing.

It is a very general impression with rationalists and rationalizing Protestants, that whoso asserts the free exercise of reason denies the authority of the church, and that whoso recognizes the authority of the church necessarily denies reason and abdicates his own manhood, which is as much as to say that whoso asserts man denies God, and whoso asserts God denies man. These people forget that the best of all possible reasons for believing any thing is the word, that is, the authority of God, and that the highest possible exercise of one's manhood is in humble and willing obedience to the law or will of God. All belief, as distinguished from knowledge, is on authority of some sort, and the only question to be asked in any case is, Is the authority sufficient? I believe there were such persons as Alexander the Great, Julius Cæsar, Charlemagne, Louis XIV., Robespierre, and George Washington, on the authority of history, the last two, also, on the testimony of eye-witnesses, or persons who have assured me that they had seen and known them personally; yet in the case of them all, my belief is belief on authority. On authority, I believe the great events recorded in sacred and profane history, the building of the Temple of Jerusalem in the reign of Solomon, the captivity of the Jews, their return to Judea under the kings of Persia, the building of the second temple, the conquest of Jerusalem by Titus and the Roman army, the invasion of the Roman empire by the northern barbarians, who finally overthrew it, the event called the reformation, the thirty years' war, etc. Nothing is more unreasonable or more insane than to believe any thing on no authority; that is, with no reason for believing it. To believe without authority for believing is to believe without reason, and practically a denial of reason itself.

Catholics, in fact, are the only people in the world who do, can, or dare reason in matters of religion.