[Question:]{.underline} Is it necessary to understand Naturalism to be supernatural?
[Answer:]{.underline} The study of this modern error is indeed fundamental to the formation of a supernatural character, and in knowing how to face up to a world penetrated by this Naturalism. Archbishop Lefebvre called the understanding of this error “absolutely indispensable”: “Understanding Naturalism is necessary. It is a term that appears again and again in the writings of these popes. They speak constantly of Naturalism, and thus it is essential to understand the significance they attach to it, namely the error opposed to the Church`s doctrine on the disequilibrium of the human soul, wounded as a consequence of original sin, even after this sin has been pardoned.” (Against the Heresies, pp. 76 & 78).
However, the difficulty in getting a grasp on the error of Naturalism lies in the fact that it is not one particular error or list of errors, but that it has a multitude of different aspects and manifestations. The 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia has this to say: “Naturalism is not so much a special system as a point of view or tendency common to a number of philosophical and religious systems; not so much a well-defined set of positive and negative doctrines as an attitude or spirit pervading and influencing many doctrines…This tendency consists essentially in looking upon nature as the one original and fundamental source of all that exists…”(Vol X, p. 713). In his encyclical of 1884 condemning Freemasonry, Pope Leo XIII describes Naturalism in its radical form that is so characteristic of Freemasonry, denying all the supernaturally revealed Catholic doctrines, in particular original sin, the Redemption, sanctifying grace, the Church, the efficacity of the sacraments. He points out that they spread their errors, not by requiring any abjuration of these Catholic doctrines, but in a much more subtle and deceptive way: “They thereby teach the great error of this age — that a regard for religion should be held as an indifferent matter, and that all religions are alike. This manner of reasoning is calculated to bring about the ruin of all forms of religion, and especially of the Catholic religion, which, as it is the only one that is true, cannot without great injustice, be regarded as merely equal to other religions”. (Humanum genus, §16).
Leo XIII points out that this radical form of Naturalism leads to Communism (Ib. §23), for refusing Revelation and the existence of God altogether, it ends up by denying the natural law and conscience, both Providence and free will, both private property and personal responsibility. Here lies the final perversity of Naturalism. By denying Almighty God and His grace, it ends up by denying man`s nature itself, so that the Pope can say: “Their chief dogmas are so greatly and manifestly at variance with reason that nothing can be more perverse” (Ib. §24).
However, of equal interest to our students are the other manifestations of a more mitigated form of naturalism equally condemned by Leo XIII, visible not only in modern society, but also in the post-conciliar church. There is the practical denial of the wounds of original sin, and of our need for prayer, penance, mortification and sacrifice. There is the error of indifferentism mentioned above, of which Archbishop Lefebvre states that “it is the very foundation of the false ecumenism and the false religious liberty” of Vatican II (Religious Liberty Questioned, p. 43). There is the denial of the objective rule of morality, founded on the Eternal law, condemned by Pope Pius XII as Situation Ethics, called by Leo XIII an “independent” and “free” subjective morality (Op. Cit. §19). There is the life of pleasure, focussed on the seeking of earthly peace and justice (now called Liberation Theology), so as to “do away with the expectation of heaven, and bring down all happiness to the level of mortality, and, as it were, sink it in the earth” (Ib. §20). There is the undermining of the sanctity of marriage, by the overturning of its primary end, children, which is done both by recourse to methods of birth control and also by divorce with the ready availability of annulments for lack of due discretion. There is the destruction of the Catholic school system, so that “the education of youth shall be exclusively in the hands of laymen and that nothing which treats of the most important and most holy duties of men to God shall be introduced into the instructions on morals” (Ib. §21). There is the egalitarianism of modern democracy that destroys divinely instituted authority, now promoted in the Church under the name of collegiality, and there is its consequence, the separation of Church and State promoted by Vatican II. Pope Leo XIII again: “The Naturalists lay down that all men have the same right, and are in every respect of equal and like condition…also that the State should be without God; that in the various forms of religion there is no reason why one should have precedence of another; and that they are all to occupy the same place” (Ib. §22).
These are but some of the manifestations of Naturalism, all of which are applications of the principles of the French Revolution embraced by Vatican II: - that all men are equal, without distinction of authority, revelation or truth; that the universal brotherhood of all men must be substituted for the supernatural charity that unites the mystical body of Christ, and that individual liberty must reign supreme, heedless of the constraints of God`s commandments and the Church`s laws. If we teach our youth about these machinations of the prince of darkness, it is, to borrow once more the words of Pope Leo XIII, for “the great benefit of drawing the minds of men to liberty, fraternity and equality [of right]{.underline}; not such as the Freemasons absurdly imagine, but such as Jesus Christ obtained for the human race and St. Francis aspired to: the liberty of sons of God, through which we may be free from slavery to Satan or to our passions, both of them most wicked masters; the fraternity whose origin is in God, the common Creator and Father of all; the equality which, founded on justice and charity, does not take away all distinctions among men, but, out of the varieties of life, of duties and of pursuits, forms that union and that harmony which naturally tend to the benefit and dignity of the State” (Ib. §34).
Answered by Father Peter Scott, SSPX.