Catholic Church and Deism
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Relations between the Catholic Church and Deism have historically largely been critical, with the Church having an openly hostile view on Deism, and Deist thinkers criticizing all revelation-based religion, specifically including Catholicism, as false and man-made.
In 1826 Cayetano Ripoll, a schoolmaster in Valencia, Spain, was executed by the Inquisition for allegedly teaching deist principles.[1][2] The Chairman of the Board of Faith from the Diocese of Valencia, Miguel Toranzo, an inquisitor, sent to the nuncio Archbishop of Valencia a report that said Ripoll did not believe in Jesus Christ, in the mystery of the Trinity, in the Incarnation of God the Son, in the Holy Eucharist, in the Virgin Mary, in the Holy Gospels, in the infallibility of the Holy Catholic Church, or in the Apostolic Roman Congregation. Ripoll did not fulfill his Easter duty, he discouraged children from reciting the 'Ave Maria Purisima' and suggested they need not bother making the sign of the cross. It was alleged that, according to Ripoll, it was not necessary to hear Mass in order to save one's soul from damnation, and he failed to instruct them to give due reverence to the Sacraments of the Catholic Church, even the Viaticum administered for the comfort of the sick and to pardon the dying that they might be resurrected into heaven.
In 1834, publisher Giovanni Silvestri posthumously published a volume of sermons of Italian Padre Filippo Nannetti di Bibulano (aka il Filippo Nani, Padre da Lojano; 1759–1829), who named deism as being among beliefs he condemned, railing against "Jews, Muslims, Gentiles, Schismatics, Heretics, Pandeists, Deists, and troubled, restless spirits."[3]
The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913) recounts Catholic opposition in this period to Deism, of which it said:
The deistical tendency passed through several more or less clearly defined phases. All the forces possible were mustered against its advance. Parliaments took cognizance of it. Some of the productions of the deists were publicly burnt. The bishops and clergy of the Establishment were strenuous in resisting it. For every pamphlet or book that a deist wrote, several "answers" were at once put before the public as antidotes. Bishops addressed pastoral letters to their dioceses warning the faithful of the danger. Woolston's "Moderator" provoked no less than five such pastorals from the Bishop of London. All that was ecclesiastically official and respectable was ranged in opposition to the movement, and the deists were held up to general detestation in the strongest terms.[4]
The 1992-published Catechism of the Catholic Church, like the Catholic Encyclopedia written nearly a century before it, similarly addresses Deism, in Part 1, Section 2, Chapter 1, Article I, Paragraph 285:
285 Since the beginning the Christian faith has been challenged by responses to the question of origins that differ from its own. Ancient religions and cultures produced many myths concerning origins. Some philosophers have said that everything is God, that the world is God, or that the development of the world is the development of God (Pantheism). Others have said that the world is a necessary emanation arising from God and returning to him. Still others have affirmed the existence of two eternal principles, Good and Evil, Light and Darkness, locked, in permanent conflict (Dualism, Manichaeism). According to some of these conceptions, the world (at least the physical world) is evil, the product of a fall, and is thus to be rejected or left behind (Gnosticism). Some admit that the world was made by God, but as by a watch-maker who, once he has made a watch, abandons it to itself (Deism). Finally, others reject any transcendent origin for the world, but see it as merely the interplay of matter that has always existed (Materialism). All these attempts bear witness to the permanence and universality of the question of origins. This inquiry is distinctively human.[5]
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ↑
Anderson, James Maxwell (2002). Daily life during the Spanish Inquisition (illustrated ed.). Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 83. ISBN 0-313-31667-8. Retrieved 2009-03-03. Search this book on
- ↑ "Reflections". 2010. Retrieved 2010-04-28. English translation of an account of Ripoll's trial and execution.
- ↑ Padre Filippo Nannetti di Bibulano (aka il Filippo Nani, Padre da Lojano), in Sermons and Panegyrics of the Father Filippo Nani of Lojana, Giovanni Silvestri, publisher, 1834, p. 284, Sermon XVIII: Miracles: "Ma questa religione predestinta col taumaturgo segnale si trova ella nel mondo i' Dove? in qual gente? in qual lido? Nelle sinagoghe giudaiche, o nelle meschìte dell l'Asia? Nelle pagoda cinesi, o nella società di Ginevra? Giudei, Maomettani, Gentili, Scismatici, Eretici, Pandeisti, Deisti, geni torbidi, e inquieti." ("But this religion predestined by the thaumaturgist signal, where in the world is she? in which people? on which shores? In Jewish synagogues, or mosques of Asia? Pagoda in Chinese, or in society in Geneva? Jews, Muslims, Gentiles, Schismatics, Heretics, Pandeists, Deists, and troubled, restless spirits.")
- ↑ "Deism", The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913).
- ↑ "Catechism of the Catholic Church, Part 1, Section 2, Chapter 1, Article I". The Holy See. Retrieved January 1, 2019.
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