Soon after
publishing Saint Francis of Assisi,
G.K. Chesterton wrote an introduction to a rather ponderous doctoral thesis by a
student of his friend, Msgr. Ronald A. Knox, an obscure American priest by the
name of Fulton J. Sheen. Sheen’s book, God and Intelligence in Modern Philosophy in
Light of the Philosophy of Saint Thomas (1925), is, at one and the same
time, Sheen’s most substantive work and the most difficult of all his
voluminous writings to read. It has
almost none of the fluid ease, even sprightliness, that mark even his second
book, Religion Without God (1928) —
the “sequel” to God and Intelligence
— as well as all his later works.
This is
understandable. God and Intelligence is the only thing Sheen published not written
specifically for a popular audience, but to fulfill the requirements for his
doctorate.
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| Obscure priest named Fulton J. Sheen |
Even so, the book
is well worth reading, assuming one is prepared for what to the modern mind is
some extremely intricate, if logical reasoning.
As Chesterton explained, alluding to the attacks on Christianity by the
New Christian and Neo-Catholic movement that received its name with the
publication in 1825 of Henri de Saint-Simon’s Nouveau Christianisme,
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| Free-Thinker George Bernard Shaw |
In this book [i.e., God and Intelligence — ed.], as in the modern world generally, the Catholic Church
comes forward as the one and only real Champion of Reason. There was indeed a hundred years ago a school
of free-thinkers which attacked Rome by an appeal to reason. But most of the recent free-thinkers are, by
their own account rather than by ours, falling from reason even more than from
Rome. One of the best and the most
brilliant of them, Mr. Bernard Shaw, said only the other day that he could
never entirely agree with the Catholic Church because of its extreme
rationalism. . . .
The question to which Dr. Sheen here applies the rational as opposed
to the irrational method is the most tremendous question in the world, perhaps
the only question in the world. For that
reason I prefer to leave its intrinsic consideration to him; and in these few
words of introduction to deal with the method rather than the subject
matter. The subject matter is the nature
of God in so far as it can be apprehended at all by the nature of man. As Dr. Sheen points out, the intellectual
purity of the problem itself is much confused nowadays by a sort of sentimental
version of the divine dignity of man. . . .
The blasphemy is not ours. It
is enough for us that our enemies have retreated from the territory of reason,
on which they once claimed so many victories, and have fallen back upon the
borderlands of myth and mysticism, like so many other barbarians with whom
civilization is at war. (G.K.
Chesterton, “Introduction,” Fulton J. Sheen, God and Intelligence in Modern Philosophy in Light of the Philosophy of
St. Thomas. New York: IVE Press,
2006, 9-11.)
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| Maisie Ward |
In her biography
of Chesterton, Maisie Ward related that when Chesterton informed her and her
husband, Frank Sheed, that he was writing a book about St. Thomas Aquinas, she
was worried that he was overreaching himself.
She said she would have been even more worried had she known that he had
already dictated half the text to Dorothy Collins, his secretary, before doing
any research and then sending her to London to buy some books on Aquinas. “What books?”
“I don’t know.” (Maisie Ward, Gilbert Keith Chesterton. New York: Sheed & Ward, 1943, 619.)
This sounds
bizarre until we put what Chesterton was doing in context. Once we realize that Saint Thomas Aquinas: The “Dumb Ox” is not an exposition of Thomist
philosophy, but a response to Tawney and others of the New Christian-socialist
movement, everything falls into place.
Chesterton didn’t
have to read up on Aquinas before starting work, because he already knew what
he was going to say, having had the thoughts running through his head for years. He had identified the issue he wanted to
address a decade before, and had received an intensive education in the essence
of Aquinas’s philosophy — most especially the first principle of reason (the
“principle of contradiction,” that nothing can both be and not be at the same
time under the same conditions) — from
“the American Chesterton,” Fulton J. Sheen, plus what he picked up from Msgr.
Ronald Knox . . . who had already spent years himself on the issue, and would
spend a few more before finally putting his thoughts down in Enthusiasm (1950).
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| "I'd rather have that commentary on Aristotle!" |
All Chesterton really
had to do was dictate a very detailed outline that would need a little editing and
polishing to turn into proper book form, and then go to some references to fill
in the details and make certain he got the facts straight. “Some books on Aquinas” — never mind what — might
actually have been almost more than he needed to finish the job.
And what was it
Chesterton wanted to say? Briefly, he
was going to give another try at answering the question, What is man, that Thou
art mindful of him? (Psalms 8:4.) The whole problem with the New Christians and
socialists, in fact, was and remains a distorted concept of man, and thus of
God in Whose image and likeness man is made.
One of the
Catholic Church’s most fundamental principles with respect to the temporal
order (existence in this life) is the sovereignty of the human person under
God. The things of Earth are only
important insofar as they contribute to or assist in the task of people
becoming more fully human. As Fulton
Sheen put it,
The Western World
must learn that Totalitarianism cannot be overcome by Socialism, by laissez-faire Capitalism, by
Individualism, or by any combination of these, for what has gone wrong is not
the means of living, but the ends. The economic and political chaos of the
modern world can be overcome only by a non-political, non-economic,
non-Marxian, non-Freudian concept of a man and society. This does not mean that
politics and economics are of no value; they are. But it means they are of
secondary value for, unless we know the nature of the creature for whom
politics and economics exist, it is just as useless to meddle with them as it
is to fool with a blast furnace unless we know its purpose. Unless we restore
the Christian concept of man, and thus build a human rather than an economic
order, we will be forced into a Totalitarianism in the hour we are doing our
most to combat it. (Sheen, Philosophies at War, op. cit., 97-98.)
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| Pope Pius XI |
And what is “the
Christian concept of man”? Pius XI
stated it very well: “Only man, the human person, and not society in any form
is endowed with reason and a morally free will.” (Divini
Redemptoris, § 29.) This “Christian
concept of man” corrects the capitalist distortion that puts the right to be an
owner in a special class, and completely refutes the socialist doctrine that
transforms the right to be an owner from a natural right, to an expedient,
prudential matter.
And why is the
socialist/New Christian position wrong?
Because (as Fulton Sheen insisted) it puts man at the center, not
God. To the New Christian and socialist, man is not made in God’s image and likeness, but the other way around.
This has profound
implications. The Catholic Church teaches that the natural law is based
on what we can discern from human nature through the use of reason. That is because human nature is a reflection
of God’s Nature, which (God’s knowledge and reasoning being absolutely perfect)
is “self realized” in His Intellect. If,
therefore, something is contrary to reason, it is necessarily contrary to human
nature, and being contrary to human nature, is necessarily contrary to God’s
Nature, and is wrong — always, no exceptions.
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| The Triumph of the Will |
The socialist/New
Christian says, no, that is not correct.
If something is contrary to love, the greater good of humanity, the
expedience of the State, or anything else that can be justified as the Will of
God (or the People, Der Volk, the Spirit of the Age, or anything else), then it is
necessarily wrong, despite the fact that it is in conformity with human nature
as discerned by the force and light of human reason. Faith trumps reason. The Will triumphs over the Intellect. Might makes right.
That is why
Aristotelian-Thomist philosophers through the ages have insisted that the
natural law must therefore be discerned by reason and accepted by the
Intellect, not accepted on faith by the Will.
Shifting the knowledge of right and wrong, of good and evil, from the
Intellect to the Will — from reason to faith — is, in every case, the direct
route to totalitarianism, whether religious or political.
And that was the
issue Chesterton addressed in his book on St. Thomas Aquinas — the assault on
reason, that is, on common sense.
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