The World's Debt to the Catholic Church

Kant said there are two supreme mysteries, the starry heavens at night and man's conscience. Since his time we have greatly increased the scope of the heavens. Instead of the few hundred thousand stars that had been discovered at that time by the human eye and their imperfect telescopes, the photographic plate and our perfected telescopes have revealed many hundred millions of them, probably even billions. In spite of the immense increase in the mystery of the universe, the extent of which has been modified by the difference between a few hundred thousand heavenly bodies and almost as many billions of them, the moral law stamped on man's conscience is still quite as great a mystery as that of the universe itself. We have extended the domain of the almost infinitely little in bacteriology and of the indefinitely minute in the realm of the atom down to the negative ion, but it is still as true as it was when Clerk Maxwell, the great English Physicist, first stated it that the most wonderful thing in science is "that spirit of order, our scientific confidence in which is never shaken by the difficulty which we experience in tracing it in the complex arrangements of visible things, and of which our moral estimation is shown in all our attempts to think and speak the truth and to ascertain the exact principles of distributive justice" He added, "From the ineffaceable characters impressed on them (the ultimate particles of matter) we may learn that these aspirations, after accuracy in measurement, truth in statement, and justice in action, which we reckon among our noblest attributes as men, are ours because they are essential constituents of the image of Him Who in the beginning created not only the heaven and the earth, but the materials of which heaven and earth consist."

All men have an abiding sense of right and wrong. It is true that it is perfectly possible for men when their own interests or desires urge them and when the example of others disturbs them, to form a habit of contravening this sense of right and wrong. And such a habit like every other habit creates a second nature and may make them feel that they are justified in doing things which their inner voice of conscience at first told them to be wrong. A false conscience, that is, the creation of a false sense of right and wrong, is not so difficult if a man is determined on the pursuit of certain selfish ends. Above all there are a number of very natural bodily cravings with regard to which, if they are once deeply aroused, the laws of conscience may prove barriers of but the slightest kind. The love of money, or covetousness, for it may be an overwhelming desire for even small amounts of money, may lead people to contradict the deepest, holiest feelings that we have. Fathers and mothers may send their children of six and seven to work long hours in a factory to the manifest detriment of their health and their affection may be completely eclipsed by the thought of the few miserable pennies which they receive as their children's wages. They may even come to think that they are quite justified in doing this because they see others doing it, but even in them there is always a sense of obligation in the matter that nags at them and constantly has to be pushed into the background and there are twinges of affection which prompt them to pity their children and take better care of them; but backed up by the example of others they persist in their cruelty to their own flesh and blood until others intervene and prevent them from exploiting them. The story of the abuse of children down the ages and the necessity for them to be cared for by others besides their own fathers and mothers is one of the striking examples in the history of mankind of the need of a guardian for the weak and of a mentor who shall make the strong realize that might is not right and who will thus arouse their dormant sense of right and wrong. [Note 19]