- Catholic Enlightenment
The term Catholic Enlightenment refers to a heterogeneous phenomenon in
Ancien Régime Europe and Latin America. It stands for the Church policy pursued by a Catholicenlightened monarch and/or his ministers as well as for a "reform movement" (which was a watchword for the adoption ofProtestant assertions or the principles of Enlightenment philosophers) within the Roman Catholic clergy to find answers to the ever-growingsecularism of that period: In contrast to thezeitgeist ofrationalism , which in its pure form rejectsrevelation as contrary to reason, Catholic Enlightenment is characterised by the attempt of "reform-oriented" parts of the church to counter the onrush of mainstream Enlightenment. They endeavoured to reconcile what they saw as conflicting concepts of "reason", which is seen as the sole source oftruth by rationalists, and "revelation" as a disclosure of information by divine agency. It is by definition beyond the ordinary course of a rationalist conception ofnature and was ipso facto a prime target for "enlightened" intellectuals and statesmen. In doing so, they challenged the very foundations ofChristianity , and that consequently culminated in the complete suppression of Catholicism in favour of aCult of Reason during theReign of Terror in the French Revolution.The secular Enlightenment was, however, by no means atheistic, but it declaimed certain tenets crucial to the Catholic Church as merely historic and man-made and therefore fictitious. Many of the most influential philosophers of that time, like the
Encyclopédistes ,Voltaire orReimarus , weresecularists or promoted adeist view: In a nutshell, they proclaimed that nature was the only revelation God has ever made and thus the preoccupation with any other alleged revelation was superfluous. Additionally theBible (and theOld Testament in particular) was considered contradictory in itself to pure reason and to the perfection of God. Others, likeLessing , agreed with respect to biblicism and revelation, but he was more lenient toward "emotional (i.e. unenlightened) Christs" who were in need of the gospels to do good. Still, he detested what he perceived as ecclesiasticalobscurantism andintolerance : He postulated a "Christianity of Reason" without the Tradition anddogma ta of the Church, which he rejected. For Lessing it was all about theEducation of Humankind and this very attitude was actually a stereotype of the "enlightened" elite: They saw themselves as guardians of reason and lowered Christ to principally a useful educator of virtue who was - in their opinion - just to be "freed" from from what they saw as a fake and superstitious church-masquerade of the so-called "Dark Ages ".While basically under the same rationalistic pressure, the
Protestant churches of Northern Europe could react a bit more flexibly to the rational challenge of the Enlightenment, because they already had suppressed the Church,monasticism , and the veneration of theSaint s. Protestant thinkersFact|date=December 2007 joined forces with the "enlightened" critics of their Catholic rival and in that way Protestantism could evade harsh criticism of their own doctrine ofsola scriptura to a certain degree.The self-conception of Roman Catholicism on the other hand was (and is) not only the opposite of the Protestants' dry plainness and austerity, but also of their deliberate provinciality of independent national churches. The Catholic Church is supranational and was, especially since the
Counter-Reformation , flamboyant and splendidlybaroque in appearance. With respect to its colourfulfeast s, processions andiconodule venereration it was in charge of everything extraordinary in community life. But this kind of devoutness was in the eyes of its critics rather anxious for effect and created some collective identity through a joint experience, which made a Catholic a Catholic, but it wasn't so much aimed at the inner persuasion of the faithful based on reason and natural "virtue ", which the proponents of the Enlightenment, but not the Church, saw as the only two means of personal formation. Instead, so thought the so-called "enlightened" men, it was an utterly visual world, and that was in the conceptual and iconophobic context of philosophy an illusionary world. Furthermore, the opponents of the Church claimed that theabbey s started to look like pompous baroque castles which were anything but humble. The clergy, they said, was enormous and the hierarchybyzantine and incomprehensible with almost all senior jobs being reserved for the aristocracy assecundogeniture , which undoubtedly was of no theological significance at all. It was "merely" tradition. Combined with its supranational nature, all of these things made the Church extremely inflexible, because with any unnecessary Protestant change, which the Church dismissed as absurd to even desire, the prominence of the Church was at risk of being supplanted by the ambitions of statesmen and the liberal intelligentsia.But for most so-called "enlightened" thinkers, the point at issue was the freedom of thought: In spite of all perceived progress they had made in science and in the arts, they complained that theology was still in the very centre of academic life, with the
Jesuits controlling the universities almost everywhere. In the eyes of their critics - and much to the chagrin of "enlightened" monarchs who competed with their Protestant peers for prestige - the Jesuits failed to embrace modernity the way Protestant universities and academies did. Fact|date=December 2007Apart from ignoring the problem, there were two possible ways to confront the criticism: To fight it off in order to protect the Church's traditional position and role or to act as if the Church was in need of reform and disengange it from what the "enlightened" critics saw as outdated ballast, either to appease the critics or out of real persuasion.
The group of
apologist s abode by Rome, because any reformatory change of the status quo would have weakened thePapacy and its naturalprimacy consequentially, not to mention that it would have opposed the Catholic Faith. Theultramontane camp was spearheaded by theSociety of Jesus which first came into being as the Catholic fortress against the Reformation and rose to the occasion impressively. Since that time the Jesuits played key roles in the administrative machinery of State, university, and Church in every Catholic nation and they were often most influential confessors at court. They were answerable to the Pope only and had a reputation of being elitist, unscrupulous, and obesessed with power.Fact|date=December 2007 They were clouded in secrecy and thus people were fascinated with their alleged intrigues to defend the Papacy. Given the crucial influence of the Society of Jesus and their obstructionism against any kind of reform, be it modest or radical, they attracted most of the critics' attention: It was necessary to break their firm resistance to change Catholicism if the motives of the Church's enemies were to avail in any way.The camp that desired to secularise and Protestantise the Church's position, on the other hand, had no visual spearhead and was very heterogeneous, and they found themselves in the company of Protestant and "enlightened" critics in their effort to overcome the Jesuits, and in doing so they all can be described as anti-Jesuits. So it's not wrong to state that the alleged antagonism between Enlightenment and Catholicism was in fact overshadowed by a severe conflict about the Jesuit influence. Those who took part in the
suppression of the Jesuits included:* The Portuguese prime minister
Marquês de Pombal suppressed the Jesuits as early as 1759 in Portugal and its colonial empire. He broke off the diplomatic relations with the Papacy until 1770 and reorganized the educational system and modernised the teachings by spending more tax money: He added faculties of natural science to theUniversity of Coimbra , introduced general vocational education and rose the number of teachers. To rival the Jesuits' alleged obscurantism the Order of theOratorians presented themselves markedly progressive with a huge modern library and a prominent experimental laboratory to entertain and impress the nobility.* The Austrian chancellor
Wenzel Anton von Kaunitz and KaiserJoseph II claimed that a sovereign state's authority also covers ecclesiastical affairs. With their reforms, generally referred to asJosephinism , the borders of the dioceses were adjusted to the Archduchy of Austria, the Jesuits's influence was reduced and a Patent of Tolerance of 1781 allowed some freedom of worship.* The French prime minister Étienne-François, duc de
Choiseul allowed theEncyclopédie to be published and was on good terms with thephilosophes . With the backing of the royal maîtresseMadame de Pompadour , who was denied absolution by the Jesuits for being an adulteress, Choiseul was a declared opponent of the Society of Jesus and the obsolete baroque catholicism he thought they represented.* As prime minister in the kingdom of Naples
Bernardo Tanucci successfully reduced the ecclesiastical influence and played a crucial role in the suppression of the Jesuits in all Bourbon states (France, Spain, Parma and all their colonies) in 1767.Further reading
Kenneth Maxwell. "Pombal - Paradox of the Enlightenment". Cambridge, 1995.
Richard van Dülmen. "Religion und Gesellschaft". Frankfurt, 1989.
Samuel J. Miller. "Portugal and Rome - An Aspect of the Catholic Enlightenment". Rome, 1978.
Ernst Cassirer. "Philosophy of the Enlightenment". 1932.
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