15. What we properly investigate in this article is whether there is in man a moral necessity, or obligation, of professing religion. We have nevertheless placed a more general title before it, so that those things which are treated more fully by others as distinct questions might be included briefly. For some are accustomed to ask - 1) whether any religion exists. Now if the moral necessity of professing religion is shown, it must necessarily exist. 2) They also ask whether religion is necessary to man by a necessity as it were physical, insofar as he cannot be well without religion. But if the moral obligation of professing religion, flowing from the very nature of man, is shown, religion must certainly be called necessary in that sense; for what is natural to man is necessary to him. - 3) It is usual to ask whether religion is useful to man; and they attempt to show its utility by various arguments. They say, for example: a) the more religious men are, the more they love one another and take care not to harm one another; indeed, they are solicitous to bring mutual help to one another. b) To all men exposed to calamities, diseases, pains, and evils of every kind, religion is of the greatest consolation; for it brings it about that we either hope to be freed from them by divine help, or that we bear them patiently, expecting from God the reward of patience. Let the just be compared with the impious. If both should suddenly be deprived of goods, possessions, children, friends; indeed, if it should happen that they are betrayed by friends, deserted by parents, assailed with injury by all, and especially by those upon whom one has conferred benefits, what will happen? etc. But these and similar arguments, which are easily found by all, are only secondary; for the true and principal utility which comes to man from the profession of religion is that which arises from the execution of law and from adherence to God as the ultimate end. Therefore it will be enough for us to confirm the obligation of professing some religion by those arguments from which the existence, utility, and necessity of religion flow, as it were, of themselves.
16. Moreover, we are not yet here dealing with revealed religion, but with some religion in general. For this reason the question is set up against most turbulent men, who, as the Supreme Pontiff Pius IX says (Allocution Maxima quidem, June 9, 1862, from which propositions 3 and 56 condemned in the Syllabus were taken), “as worshipers of perverse doctrines, babble that the laws of morals do not need divine sanction, and that it is by no means necessary that human laws be conformed to natural right or receive from God the force of obliging; and therefore they assert that no divine law exists. Furthermore, they dare to deny every action of God upon men and the world, and rashly affirm that human reason, with no respect whatever had for God, is the sole arbiter of true and false, of good and evil, and that the same human reason is a law to itself, and by its natural powers suffices for caring for the good of men and peoples.”
17. Hence it is plain that in the present question we are dealing - 1) against atheists: since they deny the existence of God, who is the object of religion and worship, they must deny every religion. - 2) Against pantheists, who, under whatever form they defend their error, finally agree in this, that they confound man with God; and therefore, since man cannot be both inferior and superior with respect to himself, they deny every dependence upon God, or every religion. 3) Against materialists, who, if they deny only the existence of spirit in man, as we have said, by that very fact deny the knowledge of God and free dependence upon Him; but if they deny the existence of spirit of any kind, they remove from the midst God Himself, the object of religion and worship. 4) Against fatalists, who reject divine providence and human freedom. 5) More directly against absolute indifferentists, who neglect religion as a thing altogether indifferent and in no way necessary. And among these must be numbered those who proclaim man’s absolute independence, the absolute autonomy of reason, and the absolute liberty, as they say, of conscience. We have said absolute, because there are certain milder indifferentists who indeed acknowledge the necessity of some worship toward God, but nevertheless teach that it is lawful for anyone to profess whatever religion he pleases; against these we shall treat below.
18. But the arguments by which the doctrine to be established is confirmed disclose the true foundations of religion; hence they also overthrow the errors of those who seem to acknowledge some religion, but remove its true foundation. It is proved false, for example, what the eudaemonists assert, namely that religion is necessary only because it is a necessary means to happiness; for God must be worshiped by us not only because He is good to us, but also and chiefly because He is good in Himself. The doctrine of Machiavelli is proved false and most impious, according to whose opinion religion is required only as a necessary means for obtaining external security in the civil state.
19. These things, therefore, having been noted beforehand. Section 2. The proposed question is solved. PROP. I. - 1. From principles known by natural light it is clearly shown that there is in man a moral necessity of professing religion; 2. nor can moral obligation exist or be conceived without religion. Therefore they wander from the truth who so establish the autonomy of human reason that they teach it to be the sole arbiter of good and evil, and to be a law to itself.
20. Proof of the first part. I. Man is bound to act according to the right order of nature, since the first principle of morality is “preserve order.” But according to the order of nature, man depends totally upon God, by whom he was created. Therefore he is bound to act with this dependence. Now just as any being whatever is bound to act in a manner consonant with its nature and with the powers or faculties which are in it (for faculties are proximately ordered to operation and are an indication of the will of the Creator), so man, endowed with reason and free will, ought to exercise free operation with reason going before. But religion consists in man’s free dependence upon God. Therefore. See Taparelli (Natural Right, vol. 1, c. 9).
21. Genuensis speaks excellently on this matter (Metaphysics, p. 7, c. 5, Section 20): “This dependence between us and God constitutes a necessary relation, from which it further follows that we owe Him service and religion. Wherefore, as man cannot exist except from God, so it is absurd that he should live without knowledge and worship of his Author. In one word: our religion toward God necessarily follows upon the nature of God and our own.” Surely obedience is owed by an inferior to a superior or lord; but no one is more man’s lord than God, since He obtains dominion over man as the craftsman over the work of his hands, as Creator over creature; therefore. Feelings of gratitude are owed to a benefactor; but God is the supreme bestower of all goods. Reverence and love are owed to a father; but God is most eminently man’s father. Honor is owed to a king; but God is the supreme king, King of kings and Lord of lords, immortal King of the ages, to whom honor, power, and glory are owed.
22. II. Man is bound to pursue his ultimate end; for it is easily shown that the first principle of morality, “preserve order,” is equivalent to another: “act according to the end appointed for you by the Creator,” since the discussion concerns the moral order, which is taken only from the end. But the ultimate end of man, as is proved in philosophy, is God (see St. Thomas, Contra Gentiles, book 3, c. 17). Therefore man is bound to tend toward God. But he cannot accomplish this unless he knows both God and the means which lead to Him, and accommodates his operations to this knowledge. Therefore man is bound to perform this. But if he performs this, he already acknowledges and fulfills the moral relations which exist between himself and God, in which, as we have said (n. 7), religion consists. Therefore.
23. Wherefore unbelievers, who attempt to despoil man of religion, are opposed to the perfection and happiness of man himself. They are opposed to his perfection indeed; for man does not attain it unless he attains his good, nor is he supremely perfect unless he attains his supreme good. But the supreme good of man is his ultimate end. “That to which,” says St. Thomas (Contra Gentiles, book 3, c. 16), “something tends when it is outside it, and in which it rests when it has it, is its end. But each thing, if it lacks its proper perfection, is moved toward it, as far as lies in it; but if it has it, it rests in it. Therefore the end of each thing is its perfection. But the perfection of anything is its own good. Each thing therefore is ordered to the good as to an end.” See also chapter 3. - They are opposed also to man’s happiness. For man’s happiness consists in the ultimate end, in the possession of which alone he rests. But the ultimate end cannot be anything except God, who created, provides for, and preserves all things. Now man acknowledges God as ultimate end when he acts on account of Him and worships and glorifies Him; and this is done through theoretical and practical religion. Therefore man, just as, lacking theoretical religion, he lacks the due knowledge of the ultimate end toward which he ought to tend and of the means which lead him to it, so, lacking practical religion, cannot perform those things upon the right execution of which his eternal happiness depends.
24. III. Religion is ordered to rendering due honor to the true God. But in order that someone be held worthy of honor, it is required that he shine forth with excellence; and God is infinitely excellent, for He who by the nod of His will established all things from nothing must contain, formally or virtually, all perfections with eminence. On the other side, in order that someone render this due honor to God, he must possess intelligence, by which, being able to contemplate the divine excellence, he can be carried into admiration of it and be subject to it; and of this sort is man’s nature. Therefore, when the nature both of God and of man is considered, the bond of religion necessarily arises. But the bond which rests upon such an objective foundation then has as many titles as there are divine attributes. For whether you consider God’s wisdom or infinite holiness, or His supreme dominion or justice, or divine providence, it is impossible that God not demand from intelligent creatures that subjection and dependence which, according to the objective order, is owed to Him and of which rational creatures are capable.
25. IV. From the common sense of nature, which becomes known 1) in natural inclination, manifested in that instinct by which, when danger threatens, man is impelled to pray to God: this testimony we can call, with Tertullian, the testimony of the soul naturally Christian, or at least naturally religious. “This soul,” he says (Apology, c. 7), “although pressed down by the prison of the body, although hemmed in by depraved institutions, although weakened by lusts and concupiscences, although enslaved to false gods; nevertheless, when it comes to itself again, whether from excess or from some illness, names God, for this reason alone, because this one God is properly true, good, and great. And ‘what God shall have given’ is the voice of all. It also invokes Him as judge: ‘God sees,’ and ‘I commend it to God’… O testimony of the soul naturally Christian.” 2) From sacrifices. For sacrifices are found among all peoples. Among all, indeed, sacrifices of animals were in use; but among certain fiercer nations even human sacrifices were sometimes offered, especially in the greatest public calamities. Christianity abolished all sacrifices of living beings, and especially human sacrifices; nevertheless, it substituted for them the unbloody sacrifice of Jesus Christ. 3) From explicit testimonies. Thus, for example, Plutarch (Against Colotes the Epicurean) says: “And if you go through the lands, you may find cities lacking walls, letters, kings, houses, wealth, coinage, ignorant of gymnasia and theaters; but no one has ever seen a city lacking temples and gods, which does not use prayers, an oath, an oracle, which does not sacrifice for good things, which does not strive to avert evils by sacred rites. But I think a city could more easily be founded without soil than a state cohere or stand with religion and the gods utterly removed.” Julian (Letter to Heraclius): “Before instruction we are all persuaded that there is some deity, that we must look to Him, that we must hasten to Him; and I believe our souls are so related to God as things endowed with sight are to light.” Cicero (Oration for Flaccus): “Each city has its own religion. Nature, indeed, knows how to venerate God; nor is there any man who lacks a law which commands this.” And in the Tusculan Disputations (book 1, c. 13): “This seems to be brought forward as the firmest reason why we believe that there are gods: that no nation is so savage, no one of all men so monstrous, that an opinion of the gods has not imbued his mind. Many think wrongly about the gods, for this is usually brought about by a vicious custom; nevertheless all judge that there is a divine force and nature. Nor indeed does the conversation or agreement of men bring this about; the opinion has not been confirmed by institutions, nor by laws. But the agreement of all nations in every matter must be thought a law of nature.” And in On the Nature of the Gods (book 1, n. 23) he reports: “Protagoras of Abdera, indeed… a sophist perhaps the greatest in those times, when he had put this at the beginning of his book, ‘Concerning the gods I cannot say either that they are or that they are not,’ by order of the Athenians was driven out from city and territory, and his books were burned in assembly.” 4) The impious themselves, who would wish to abolish every religion, lest they seem to be opposed to the whole human race, speak everywhere of religion, although they pervert its genuine idea. Therefore one may say here what Cicero observes concerning the existence of God (On the Nature of the Gods, Section 5): “And so it is agreed among all men of all nations. For it is innate in all, and as it were engraved in the mind, that there are gods. What they are like varies; that they exist no one denies.” Now one of the reasons for which they judge that religion must be bidden farewell is that, they say, it has made men fanatics. Therefore men are so far from being indifferent with respect to religion that rather they make very much of it! 5) But Bayle strives only ineptly to weaken this common consensus of the human race by saying that it must be attributed to man’s indolence. For Cicero had already responded to this and similar exceptions in the same place (Section 2): “An opinion so stable would not remain, nor would it be confirmed by length of time, nor could it have grown old together with the centuries and ages of men. For we see that other fictitious and vain opinions have vanished with length of time… For time destroys the inventions of opinions; it confirms the judgments of nature. And so, both among our own people and among others, the worship of the gods and the sanctities of religions exist day by day greater and better.” This argument could be illustrated at greater length; see, among others, Valsecchi (On the Foundations of Religion, etc., vol. 1, cc. 8-10).
26. Proof of the second part. I. With the concept of the true God, Creator of man and of all things, as is easily plain from the arguments given for the first part of the thesis, religion is intimately and necessarily connected. Therefore the arguments which prove that no moral obligation exists when God is removed also prove that it is destroyed when religion is removed. Hence: Every obligation is founded upon some law; but law emanates from a legislator endowed with authority and power, for it is “a certain ordinance of reason for the common good, promulgated by him who has care of the community.” Therefore, if law does not exist, moral obligation does not exist either; hence the Apostle says (Rom. 4:15): “where there is no law, neither is there transgression.” But, when God is removed, no legislator endowed with authority exists. For just as, when necessary being is removed, contingent being cannot exist, so without a first, absolute, and independent legislator, a second and dependent one cannot exist.
27. St. Thomas explains this argument excellently in this way (I-II, q. 93, a. 3): “In all ordered movers it is necessary that the power of the second mover be derived from the power of the first mover, because the second mover does not move except insofar as it is moved by the first. Hence in all those who govern we see the same thing: that the account of governance is derived from the first governor to the second governors, just as the account of those things which are to be done in a city is derived from the king, through a precept, to the lower administrators; and also in the arts, the account of artificial acts is derived from the architect to the lower craftsmen, who work by hand. Therefore, since eternal law is the account of governance in the supreme governor, it is necessary that all accounts of governance which are in lower governors be derived from the eternal law.” But accounts of this sort belonging to lower governors are any other laws besides the eternal law. Hence all laws, insofar as they participate in right reason, are to that extent derived from the eternal law; and on this account Augustine says in book 1 of On Free Choice, chapter 6, near the end, that in temporal law there is nothing just and legitimate which men have not derived for themselves from the eternal law.
28. II. When God, the true source of moral obligation, has been removed, they substitute human reason for Him. But human reason cannot be the supreme source of moral obligation. For: 1) A nature which is not independent does not have an independent faculty; but human nature, created, contingent, finite, is essentially dependent. Therefore reason also, which is its faculty, must be dependent. But that which by its own nature is dependent cannot be the supreme source of obligation, since it itself is subject to that upon which it depends. Therefore. 2) The office of reason is not to produce its object, but to know it; and therefore it supposes that object and must be conformed to it, in order that it be true and right. Therefore, if human reason knows and reports moral obligation, it does not produce that obligation, but rather supposes it. 3) No one can be morally obligated except by his superior. But human reason is not superior to man. Therefore. 4) If human reason, as the supreme source of moral obligation, were to command or forbid something, it would do this freely or necessarily. But if it did this freely, the essential distinction between virtue and vice, good and evil, would be destroyed; nor would there be any action intrinsically good or evil, which certainly is opposed to common sense. But if it did this necessarily, it would be bound antecedently to its own command, and therefore it would not be the supreme source of obligation. Perhaps they will say that reason is indeed bound antecedently to its own command, but is bound by the objective order itself of things. But truly - 1) when God is removed, in what is founded the immutability, necessity, and universality of the essential order of things? - 2) Who obligates us to conform our operations to the essential and objective order of things? - 3) The principal obligations which arise from the objective order of things are certainly duties toward God; if nevertheless human reason can shake off the yoke of God (this is what those who deny religion do), what obligation at last will stand safe? 5) The pagans themselves acknowledged truths of this sort, which nevertheless recent unbelievers, in the clearest light of Christian revelation, pretend to ignore. Hence Cicero (On the Laws, book 2, chapter 4): “This, therefore, I see,” he says, “was the opinion of the wisest men: that law was neither something thought up by the talents of men, nor some decree of peoples, but something eternal, which governed the whole world by the wisdom of commanding and forbidding. Thus they said that that first and ultimate law was the mind of God, compelling or forbidding all things by reason; from which that law which the gods gave to the human race is rightly praised. For it is the reason and mind of the wise man, suitable for commanding and for deterring.” And a little later he says: “For it was reason proceeding from the nature of things, both impelling to right action and calling away from fault; and it does not finally begin to be law when it has been written, but when it has arisen; and it arose together with the divine mind. Wherefore true and chief law, suitable for commanding and forbidding, is the right reason of supreme Jove.”
29. III. The matter can be confirmed from the consequences of the impious doctrine which we oppose. For since, when God and religion have been removed, human reason would be unequal to founding moral obligation, they finally came to this: that some placed the source of all honesty and obligation in the heaping up of riches, or in utility; others in pleasure; others in the right of the physically stronger; and all utterly lost the notion of right. Hence propositions 58, 59, and 61 were condemned in the Syllabus: 58. “Every discipline of morals and all honesty ought to be placed in heaping up and increasing riches in any way whatever and in satisfying pleasures.” 59. “Right consists in a material fact, and all duties of men are an empty name, and all human facts have the force of right.” 61. “Successful injustice of fact brings no detriment to the sanctity of right.” Namely, while they too greatly extolled the force and rights of reason, by the just judgment of God they were compared with unwise beasts and were made like them! But to pursue these things belongs to another place.