Replacing reason with faith, as the solidarist political
scientist and jurist Heinrich Rommen pointed out in his book on the natural
law, is the inevitable consequence of putting your private interpretation of
the Will (opinion/faith) over Intellect (knowledge/reason), and leads (as Adler
concurred) to pure moral relativism, even nihilism, and is the basis of
totalitarian government. Everything ends
up being opinion. Knowledge itself
becomes fit only for ridicule. Might makes
right.
 |
| Triumph of the Will |
The only honest atheist, then, is one who admits he holds
his non-belief by a faith as firm as the faith by which others hold their
belief. He understands that faith is not
“believing something you know is not true,” but believing something that is not
manifestly true, i.e., cannot be proven.
Faith does not contradict reason, as even many believers suppose, but
goes beyond it. As Pope Pius XII
explained in the opening passages of Humani
Generis (1950), faith and reason complement each other, they do not
contradict — or either your faith or your reason is flawed.
Is human understanding of either faith or reason
perfect? Hardly. As Saint Paul said, “For now we see through a
glass, darkly.” (1 Cor. 13:12.) Whatever the cause, we do not grasp the
essentials of either faith or reason as readily or as surely as many people seem
to think. We must respect others’
beliefs, even if they are non-beliefs or seem to us to be complete nonsense, if
we cannot prove our case.
 |
| Gossip and slander are everywhere spread. |
Even
then, if someone is doing no harm even by what we can prove is wrong, we must
leave them free and unmolested. That
includes refraining from backbiting: statements that we believe to be true but which
are damaging to another that we have no right to reveal. Our own proofs may be wrong. On earth, only the pope is infallible . . .
and that is a matter of faith, of opinion, not reason, and therefore cannot be
used to prove anything.
If an atheist expects others to respect his non-belief, then,
he must respect their belief. As Archbishop
John Ireland explained in “State Schools and Parish Schools,” his address
before the National Education Association of the United States in 1890,
“Secularists and unbelievers will demand their
rights. I concede their rights. I will not impose upon them my religion,
which is Christianity. But let them not
impose upon me and my fellow-Christians their religion, which is
secularism. Secularism is a religion of
its kind, and usually a very loud-spoken and intolerant religion. Non-sectarianism is not secularism, and, when
non-sectarianism is intended, the secularist sect must not claim for itself the
field which it refuses to others. I am
taking my stand upon our common American citizenship. The liberty that I claim, I grant.”
