Catholic religion concepts and history

Dogma & Doctrine

In the Catholic faith there is a common ground, a true cohesion that exists between dogma and doctrine. Dogma is Natura non-facit saltus. Everywhere the more complicated forms develop from the simpler forms, the higher from the lower, and the human from the animal. To explain the mental and social development of humankind, much weight must be laid on outer environment, climate, soil, flora, and fauna. With this, one must take into account, as an inward element, the natural disposition, and the racial or popular character. Religion can only be realized as a product of these elements, and in connection with general development. All supernatural explanations, which recognize the influence of the free will of God or of man on this general development, are excluded. Strict evolutionary principles do not admit a real substance and ontological reason of phenomena, nor their teleological destination. The theory of evolution recognizes in history causes and laws, but no aims or ideas; it is occupied only with what is, and not with what ought to be. (Chantepie De La Saussaye, 1891, p. 11)

The Catholic theologians, replying to the Protestants and Humanists, generally presented the Assumption as a definite doctrine but not of faith. These deserve to be remembered because they were the first, it seems, explicitly to declare the evolution of Catholic dogma as an argument of apologetics. (Miegge, 1955, p. 99)

The word 'dogma' itself, means tenet, and it would therefore have been perfectly allowable if, in what has already been said, one had talked of the dogmatic elements in the various religions. However, it is better to define more closely the conception of dogma, in which one considers the general characteristics of myth and doctrine. Dogma presupposes a church, a communion, which is essentially a communion of belief, in which the belief is fixed by a canon, a sacred book, a common symbol, or a creed. These are descriptive of the bible. The bible is a sacred book that is observed by all in the catholic faith as "the book" of learning and expression that is used to create a global understanding among Christians, and a guide of how life should be lived. Common symbols are the sign of the cross, the rosary etc. The dogma is considered as a construction of the piety and the theological thought of the Church from certain premises contained explicitly or implicitly in the New Testament. The historical conception of Cardinal Newman appears to inspire the Catholic historians of dogma more and more widely. That great Catholic, who had preserved from his Anglican origin certain needs of liberty and modernity, taught, as is well-known, that dogma is a living organism that develops on the lines of its premises and according to its intrinsic dynamic. This thesis was the great discovery of modernism and for having maintained it with the intention of dogmatic renovation many eminent Catholics in the first years of the century had to experience the rigors of excommunication. It is reported that no one seems to remember that to-day when the dynamic conception of dogma has been put to the service of Mariology. As it has been said, the Church chews slowly but always ends by assimilating useful discoveries, even if at first it has condemned them. (Miegge, 1955, p. 20)

The defining of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception is an event fraught with the greatest consequences. It was the first definition dogmatically pronounced by the pope as such. The dogma of papal infallibility was not yet defined but it was to be a few years later in the Vatican Council of 1870. It is logical to believe that the definition of the Immaculate was in some way a general test a of the new papal prerogative and a sounding of Catholic opinion throughout the world to see how it would react to the exercise of such privilege. The applause with which the Catholic world accepted it, except for a strict minority of high personalities who dissented, was such as to permit at once the launching of the decree that completed the evolution of papal authority in the Church. It counts for nothing to object to this interpretation that the pope consulted the Episcopal body before declaring the dogma, because he did not declare it in the name of the episcopate but in his own name. It can be presumed that in any dogmatic definition to come the pope will never act without the fullest consultation with the Church, as is seen to-day with regard to the Assumption of the Virgin. This however does not alter the fact that from 1854 as de facto date and from 1870 as the date de jure, the pope is the normal organ of dogmatic definition for the Church. (Miegge, 1955, p. 130)

Church doctrine as a bond of communion, as an expression of piety, as the development of a confession of faith, forms the conception of dogma in the history of religion. "It has been said with reason that the doctrine of the Last Judgment was at once "the care and also the consolation of the Middle Ages." (Petry, 1956, p. 334) Doctrine is the written expression and beliefs that as proposed in the Bible. One does not speak of dogma where there is no church, therefore not in discussing the mythological religions of the ancient world, although these may possess numerous doctrinal elements; nor in the individual developments of religious doctrine; nor in the sects in which religious communion is based, not on a common creed, but on (Chantepie De La Saussaye, 1891, p. 230)

An example of Catholic doctrine is; to the Orthodox Church the Virgin Mary belongs to the basic truth of the Incarnation; by her continued veneration and association with Jesus in the devotions of that Church, it is felt that the approach of God to men is made more intimate. She deserves honor for the high function of being the mother of the Incarnate One, and it would be unworthy to lay her aside as an instrument that is forgotten when the need is past. In her person, she "represents the whole of humanity, through the grace of God in her all the sanctity accessible to humanity is attained, even after the fall, in the Church of the Old Testament." Her presence in the circle of devotion adds warmth and in her and by her the feminine receives a place in piety in connection with the Holy Spirit. The Orthodox Church does not accept the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary in the sense that she was exempt at birth from original sin, for this would separate her from the human race and she could not then have transmitted to her Son this true humanity. (Miegge, 1955, p. 10)