TIHIE

CATIHIOIUC

SCIENTIST

by

FRANCIS J. HELTSHE



 



ì

HA
VE you ever heard the remark

made that the Catholic Church has

blocked and viewed with hostility the

progress of art, literature and science?

Have you come to believe, not knowing

anything definite exactly, but more as a

result of stories heard from time to time

over the years that the Catholic Church

discourages its followers from the con­

ducting of great experiments; that it

views both science and scientists with

fear and distrust; that its sons are warn­

ed not to read scientific works for fear

that through science the folly of their

beliefs might come to light with a sub­

sequent turn from the Faith?

I know that I have heard such re­

marks, and that friends who have come

to me with myriad questions trembling

upon their lips have heard them and half

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THE CATHOLIC

SCIENTIST

by

FRANCIS J. HBLTSHB

r



believed, so willing seems perverse hu­
man nature to give credence to any
story, however fantastic, that may be
circulated to the discredit of the Roman
faith. Believe me, these stories are mere
libels, oft-repeated, but nonetheless as
often false.

Undeniable historical facts show us
that quite to the contrary the master­
pieces of each and every division of civil­
ization are but the result of the inspira­
tion Catholic Faith and the Catholic
Church has given to the great masters
... to the artists, writers and scientists
beyond compare who have been num­
bered among the most faithful sons of
the Catholic Church of Rome .

. To say that these Catholics were great
artists or scientists, inventors or writ­
ers, despite the influence and warnings
of Holy Mother Church is like saying of
your auto that it has negotiated a steep
grade despite the weight of the engine
that drives it. That the Church herself
has been foremost in encouraging and
guiding the genius of her great sons is
discovered when one considers that more
than sixty seats of scientific learning, all
of them world-famous, were either es­
tablished by the Popes themselves or
with their approval.

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Among them are numbered the great

universities of Aberdeen, Basel, Berges,

Bologna, Bordeaux and Cahors ; those
at

Oxford and Cambridge; at Coimbra,

Cologne, Copenhagen, and Cracow; the

University of Dublin and the renowned

institutions at Drogheda, Erfurt, Flor­

ence, Frieberg, Glasgow and
Grenoble.

The universities at Greifswalds, Heidel­

berg, Huesca, Ingolstadt and Leipzig;

those at Lerida, Lima, Louvain, Mainz,

Nantes, Naples, Ofen, Orleans, Padua,

Paris, Pavia, Perugia, Pracenza, Prague

and Poitiers; and, Rome, Rostock, St.

Andrew, Salamanca, Seville, Siena, San­

to Domingo, Tubingen, Toulouse, Turin,

Trevisio, Trier, Upsala, Valence, Valen­

cia, Valladolid, Vercelli and Vienna.
The

famous Catholic University of America

at Washington, the Institutum Divi

Thomae, with principal laboratories in

Cincinnati, Ohio, and the great scientific

schools at Wittenberg and Wurzburg

and many others.

Beyond this; perhaps the most exact­

ing of all sciences is that of Theology,

the Science of Faith. And when one con­

siders theastounding fact that from the

Year 1109 A.D. when theological studies

began first to be systematically pursued,

to the beginning of the 20th Century,

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there had flourished within the fold of
the Catholic Church more than 12,000
theological writers whose work all
Christendom readily admits has never
been equalled or excelled, one begins to
see that Science could not. be anathema
to Catholicism. Similarly one might re­
mark upon an equal number of Catholic
writers who have excelled in the field of
mental philosophy, second only to theol­
ogy in excellence among the sciences,
superior to the natural sciences as the
soul is superior to the body of man.

Consider for a moment that Galileo
was a devout Catholic to the last day of
his life; that the Catholic Church was
for a time skeptical as to the validity of
his work and claims. Did the Church, by
virtue of such doubt, deny to Galileo his
instruments, his measures, his tools? The
answer is that the Church, to the con­
tracy, saw to it that even while con­
demnation proceedings were instituted
against him; he was given every oppor­
tunity and means, by the Church to
pursue his experiments. It must not be
forgotten that, while there was as yet no
sufficient proof of the Copernican sys­
tem, defended by Galileo, no objection
was made to its being taught as an hy­
pothesis which explained all phenomena
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7

in a simpler manner than the Ptolemaic,
and might, for all practical purposes be

adopted by astronomers. When, in 1624,
Galileo visited Rome, he met with what
is rightly described as "a noble and gen­
erous reception." Urban VIII, who, as
Cardinal Barberini, had been his friend
and had opposed his condemnation in

1616, conferred on his visitor a pension,
to which as a foreigner in Rome Galileo
had no claim, and which, says Brewster,
must be regarded as an endowment of
Science itself.

Encouraged by Catholic teachers, Sal­
vino degli Armati, a devout Catholic,
developed spectacles and lenses in the

year 1280 to assist human vision. Gal­
vani and Volta! discovered and made

clear the continuous current of electric

energy which was the foundation of the

telegraph and the telephone. The baro­
meter came from the mind of Evan­

gelista Torricelli in the seventeenth

century. All of these men were devout
sons of the Church and received Cath­
olic training as the prelude to their
successful scientific experimentations.

A great Catholic physiologist, Bell­

ingeri, discovered the double set of
nerves in the human body, one for mo-

l. The volt. unit of electromotive force, is named after Volta.



tion and one for sensation; the Theatine

Monk, Piazzi, discoverer of the first

planetoid Ceres, gave the world the first

perfect catalogue of the then known
stars in 1788; the Mariner's Compass
was perfected by Flavio Gioia, stalwart
son of the Church, at Amalfi, in the 14th

century; the printing press came from
the hand and mind of the Catholic Gu­

tenberg in the 15th century, while fire­
arms owe their origin to the Catholic

Monk, Berthold Schwarz, who invented
them in the 13th century.

Daguerre and Niepce, fellow Cath­

olics, in the 1850's contributed most to
the discovery of photography, while the
camera obscura came from the brain

of Gianbattista della Porta two cen­

turies before. The magic lantern, which
led to the portrayals of the majestic
human cavalcade on the silver screen

. . . to the creation of Hollywood and
the spectacles there created . . . was

developed by the Jesuit Father Athan­
asius Kircher in 1680. Electric light,
opening a whole new era of discovery,
was first made practical by the Catholic
Leon Foucault, who in 1844 gave the
world the first practical electric arc

light.
On and on we might read through the

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galaxy of the greats, until the glory of

having given to the world many of its

greatest and more important scientific

truths seems to belong exclusively .to

Catholicity . . . From Bartholomeus

Angelicus (fi 1230 - 1250), the English

Franciscan, who wrote the first great
medieval encyclopedia of science to

Father Julius Arthur Nieuwland, che­

mist and botanist at Notre Dame Uni­

versity, discoverer of a method for

production at low cost of synthetic rub­

ber. From clocks, the invention of three

monks, Gerbert, Pacifico of Verona, and

Abbott William Hirschau in the year

999, to the devout Catholic, Louis Pas­

teur of the 19th century, father of bac­

teriology, famed for his vaccine against

hydrophobia, for successfully combating
the silkworm disease and for pasteuri­
zation.

The storage battery by Gaston Plante

in 1859, the principle of the hydraulic

press by Blaise Pascal in 1647, the Tor­

sion-Balance electrometer for accurate

measurements by Coulomb in 1806, all

advancing the progress of civilization

by untold measures of time were the

works of Catholics.

The famous Cardinal Wiseman once

delivered an address before the Catholic

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Literary Society of Leeds, England, in
which he said with regard to scientific

progress: ". . . a phenomenon has, per­
haps, been lying before the unseeing
eyes of mankind for centuries ... per­

haps for thousands of years. During
this period it has passed unobserved.

Finally comes the happy genius who sees
in it a great truth, principle, or law,
and the world is given the germ of
another most important discovery. That

happy genius is entitled to consideration
as the .inventor or discoverer, although
what he has given in imperfect form
may, through the work of a second

geniu� acquire greater perfection. The
Catholic Church may justly claim
among its sons a preponderance of both
types."

There were, in such state, the laws
of Crystallography, for example, dor­
mant and unknown until produced by a
humble priest, the Abbe Hauy in the
early 19th century.

And then there was the great
genius of the Catholic Gregor Johann
Mendel, Augustinian priest and biol­
ogist, author of Mendel's law of
heredity, which lays the very founda­
tions of modern genetics, and so of all
modern biology; and Marconi whose

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!
.j,

wireless telegraphy led surely to the

radio marvels of this latter-day age of

light metals and plastics.
Nor can we pass by without mention­

ing such immortals as Ampere, Bee­

querel, Blot, Copernicus, Fresnel, Gri­

maldi, Malpighi, Malus, Mariotte,

Morgagni, Schubert, Valentine, Wagner,

and the myriad other great masters

whom the mention of these few calls

to mind. 'And above and beyond them

all, perhaps one will remember Leo­

nardo da Vinci ... da Vinci, master of

masters of the Italian period of the

great Renaissance of human thought.

Metaphysics, following the whole

field in its broad aspects, is almost ex­

clusively a Catholic science. The work

of St. Thomas Aquinas alone offsets the

work of all latter day metaphysicians,

including that of the renowned German

masters. Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio,

Tasso, Arisoto, all were devout Catholic

Christians. And in the history of man­

kind it is recorded that when this

earthly parade fell to its lowest depth,
when morals and hopes alike were at

lowest ebb, it was the great and im­

mortal Francisco Petrarch who snatch­

ed it back with his deathless compila­
tions in the Italian, "Trionfi" and the

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"Canzoniere," by his penning of his
"Carmen bucolicum" in twelve eclogues,
his "Epistolae metricae" in three books
of hexameters, and his dialogues with
St. Augustine (De contemptu mundi)
to awaken a world from its pagan
dreams.

Catholic mathematicians gave the

world Analytical Geometry.t proved the
Binomial 'I'heorem,s solved the Cubic

Equation," invented the Calculus of

Residues.s and discovered the method of

resolving equations of the fourth de­

gree;5 also the reformed calendar and
the counterpoint, equivalent to a new
creation in music.

The great maritime adventurers,
striking out from the North with bold

Viking songs on their lips were all
Catholics. The great navigators, so per­
fecting the science as to lead to the

discovery of new worlds and ever-open­
ing frontiers . . . finding the Cape of
Good Hope and the New World were
sons of the Catholic Church. Lief Eric­

son, skirting the Nordic shores, striking
through unknown seas ever westward

1. Rene Descartes (1596-1650)
2. Bernard Bolzano (1781-1848)
3. Girolamo Cardan (1501-1576)
4. Augustin Louis Cauchy (1789-18'7)
s. Ludovici Ferrari (Born 1522- )

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with his Catholic monks by his side

came first to America. Columbus and

his caravel, invoking the blessing of

God and the Pope, struck out across the

uncharted wastes of the Atlantic, brav­

ing superstition and fear and all manner

of danger to come first upon the

southern isles. Ferdinand Magellan,
stout seaman with the dauntless spirit
in the heart of him and songs of his

sun-kissed vineyards upon his lips first

circumnavigated the terrestial globe,

sailing through all of its seas, viewing
all of its wave-washed shores and the

signet at his mast was always the Cross

of Christ and the Catholic Church.

In the great industrial fields which

brought civilization to its highest level,
the application of all of the great scien­

tific truths was' first fostered by Cath­
olics and the Catholic Church.

Consider then the field of architec­

ture, whether as an art or science, can

it be truthfully stated that the Catholic

Church has known a peer in its per­

fection? The Gothic architecture of

Rome has been at once the admiration

and despair of all of our modern archi­
tects and the glorious old cathedrals of

Europe stand as perpetual challenges to
the inventive genius of man and as

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monuments to the science and skill of

their Catholic builders.

The first museum known was the one

established at the Vatican in Rome; the

first botanical garden was a Catholic

creation, at Pisa in 1543; and the first

newspaper ever published left a Catholic

press at Venice in 1562. Catholics found­

ed the first Scientific Society at Naples,
in 1560, and the first bank, at Venice, in
thelzth century.

Sometimes one will encounter an ob­

jection to the science of faith ... that
there is no progress in it. Actually, dog­
matic theology may appear. quite the
most rigid of the branches of this

science, but even ·in it, after a passage
of time, we find better definitions, better

understandings, deeper and more thor­

ough knowledge of the dogmas in their
relations with one another and with

history. As a matter of fact, Canon law
has not only kept abreast of civil law,
but has gone far beyond it in the scien­
tific realm. Progress has always been
marked in the biblical, historical and
pastoral disciplines. As far back as the
5th century St. Vincent of Lerins, com­

menting on the question of whether or
not there should be progress of religion
in the Catholic Church, said: "Certainly

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let there be progress, and as much as

may be ... but so that it be really pro­
gress in the faith, not an alteration
of it."

Science that is changed is' not pro­
gressing, but abandoned, rather, and so
it is with faith. The argument that the

great scientists have been largely athe­
istic is blasted into nothingness when
one understands that up to the time of

Voltaire and Rousseau, and during the
eras in which nearly all the great Prin­

ciples were discovered, the greatest of
the scientists, to a man, spoke with

great reverence of God and his Creation.

Hereafter, in hearing the false and
malicious libel ... "No one of the arts

or sciences has escaped the anathemas
of Rome!" one could not do better than

to bear in mind the expression of the
great English statesman and scholar,
William Gladstone, who upon hearing
that identical libel, replied:

"Since the first three hundred years
of persecution, the Roman Catholic
Church has marched for fifteen cen­

turies at the head of human civilization,
and has driven, harnessed to its chariot
as the horses of a triumphal car, the
chief intellectual and material forces of

the world; its genius, the genius of the

IS



world; its greatness, glory and grandeur
and majesty have been almost, though
not absolutely, all that in these respects
the world has had to boast of."

THIS IS PAMPHLET No. 13

Published Br

THE CATHOLIC INFORMATION SOCIETY

214 West 31st St., New York 1, N. Y.

(OPPOSITE P�N TERMINAL)

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