Chapter 4.
Controversies
AS WE HAVE SEEN, Rosmini's life was punctuated by attacks on his philosophical and theological works. Some of these attacks, and Rosmini's own defence against them, were made in language that today would be considered intemperate. Some were motivated by antipathy to new ideas, or by the conservative attitude then thought by many to be a necessary bulwark against revolutionary idealism inside and outside the Church.
Politics also played a part in the problems which beset Rosmini almost as soon as he came to maturity. As a defender of church freedom, he was the object of suspicion from every totalitarian regime with which he was in contact; as an ardent believer in the impossibility of restraining nationalistic fervour in Italy, many of his ideas were not acceptable to the authorities of the Austrian Empire, of which he was a subject, nor to the feeling prevalent in ecclesiastical diplomacy at a time when the temporal authority of the papacy needed to be secured, it was thought, against every possible inroad. Nor did Rosmini's position as founder of a religious congregation save him from what could be construed as opposition springing from misunderstanding of his calling, and misapprehension of new applications of principle in the religious life.
But such opposition would have been seen for what it was - the rough and tumble of history refining the comprehension of Rosmini's teaching and activity - if two facts had not intervened to produce almost total obliteration of Rosmini's contribution to philosophy and theology. The first occurred during his lifetime, the second posthumously.
1848, the 'year of revolutions', saw the flight of Pope Pius IX from Rome to Gaeta. The crisis, precipitated by the assassination of Pellegrino Rossi, the papal Prime Minister, on November 15th, brought about a change of policy in Roman diplomacy which from now on stood out against the cause of Italian unity. Rosmini, who saw that the unity of the Italian nation was inevitable, hoped for the founding of a confederation of Italian states, the only way, as he saw it, of safeguarding the independence of the Papacy.
|
|
It is foolish to think that anything can deter a nation from attaining its unanimous desire. It is even more foolish to imagine that its desire can be deterred by insignificant forces. The nation will overcome all obstacles; its impetus can be illuminated and controlled, but never impeded. It is extremely probable therefore that the present movement in Italy will not end until the country has become a nation ... There seems no way of avoiding [the dangers facing the Church] unless the desired unity of Italy is promoted by means of a Confederation of Italian states (1). |
It was to further this purpose that Rosmini found himself in Rome during the fatal last days of Rossi. Having accepted the office of special legate of the Piedmontese government, which he repudiated when his own conditions for mediation between the Pope and the Piedmontese were abandoned, he followed Pius IX, at the Pope's request, to Gaeta. His presence at the Papal court and the favour he enjoyed from the Pope were an obvious embarrassment to the pro-Austrian policy of Cardinal Antonelli, and it was not long before the pressure put on Pius IX to abandon his constitutional views was reflected in Rosmini's request to leave Gaeta for Naples, where he spent a great part of his time (from 24th January 1849) writing his unfinished Introduzione del vangelo secondo Giovanni commentata (Commentary on the Introduction to the Gospel according to John), a sublime mystical and metaphysical work.
Rosmini saw the Pope again at Gaeta some months later, on June 9th, 1849, three days after Pius IX had confirmed a decree of the Congregation of the Index placing Rosmini's Cinque piaghe della santa Chiesa and his Costituzione civile secondo la giustizia sociale amongst the list of prohibited books. Of this decree Rosmini knew nothing, nor did the Pope mention it either then or during the last audience Rosmini had with him on June 14th. Only on August 15th, on his return journey to Stresa, was Rosmini informed at Albano near Rome of the decree, to which he submitted humbly and completely. This prohibition was the first incident which set Rosmini apart from the great following which had been his until that moment.
The tragedy of the prohibition lay, however, not only in the discrediting of Rosmini in ecclesiastical eyes, but also in the extinction of the one spiral of light which might have prevented the Church's closing in on herself in so many ways for the next century. And Rosmini's prophecy about the total loss of the Papal states was in fact fulfilled:
| . |
If a monarchy or a republic were to come to power as a single State in Italy ... the States of the Church would inevitably be lost. Even Rome would go the same way, because that city alone would be suitable as a capital (2) |
Moreover, Rosmini's appeal in the Five Wounds of the Church for renewal of liturgical life in the Church, for reform of education amongst the clergy, for unity among the bishops, for consultation with the people, for freedom from governmental pressure in the choice of new bishops, and for proper use of the Church's temporalities, was to remain practically unheeded until the second Vatican Council. Only after the end of the Council, and some two months before the abolition of the Index itself in July 1966, was licence given (3) by Cardinal Ottaviani, Pro-Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (which succeeded to the work of the Congregation of the Index, and the Holy Office) for the book to be printed once more.
The prohibition of these two works did not put an end to the attacks on Rosmini's position during the remainder of his life or after his death. However, the decree Dimittantur of 1854, in which all his published works were declared free of heterodoxy, did ensure that the debate continued on more or less acceptable lines for about twenty years. Certainly, it lacked the venom which had earlier characterised it.
After Rosmini's death, and despite the Dimittantur, hostilities were renewed with great vigour in the second half of the 1870's as Leo XIII continued the work of rehabilitation of Thomism, a process which culminated in 1879 with the publication of the encyclical Aeterni Patris. Revived interest in St. Thomas, which Rosmini himself had encouraged in all his writings, led to the adoption by churchmen of Neo-Thomism as their quasi-official philosophy, and to an attempt to outlaw every other kind of rational thought within ecclesiastical circles. In particular, any philosophy which projected notions of an intuitive, natural bond of truth between the Creator and human beings was looked upon with great suspicion. In other words, a philosophy which would depend for its first principles upon a natural light of truth was not acceptable.
The position of Neo-Thomism within church circles took on the appearance of what we may call 'dogmatic' philosophy, a branch as it were of the field of dogma in which the Church as Church possessed its own authority. Only 'dogmatic' philosophy would answer the need keenly felt by many ecclesiastics to defend the political 'rights' of the Church. Despite the genuine effort of Leo XIII to come to terms with the ills of modern, capitalist society (4), the still lingering conception of the Church as a hegemony in a worldly sense required the 'appropriation' of a philosophy which would be able to sustain ecclesiastico-political requirements. The limitations of such a stance were soon to be revealed in the upsurge of Modernism, against which dogmaticism, in the philosophical sense, was powerless.
In the meantime, 40 propositions taken from posthumous and non-posthumous works of Rosmini had been condemned in the decree Post Obitum (5). Under suspicion as teachings which catholicae veritati haud consonae videbantur (seemed scarcely to accord with catholic truth), these propositions were condemned as reprobandae, damnandae, and proscribendae (to be reproved, condemned and proscribed) without, however, falling under any theological note. In other words, they were not condemned as 'heretical', 'offensive to pious ears', or damnable in any specific way, and no attempt was made in the document to connect their condemnation with the suspicion which had caused their delation.
Three things stand out concerning this condemnation. First, the delation of the propositions as catholicae veritati haud consonae indicates that the difficulties raised by the teaching underlying the propositions were felt to be theological, rather than philosophical. No other meaning can be given to the phrase 'catholic truth'. Second, the first 24 propositions are nevertheless concerned with philosophical matters, and in particular with the question of the intellectual relationship between the creature and the Creator. It was obviously felt as essential that Rosmini's view of such a relationship should be undermined from the beginning. Third, the immense difficulties under which the compilers laboured to produce the propositions is clear from the way in which several of the propositions are stitched together. The most obvious example is found in no. 12: Finita realitas non est, sed Deus facit eam <%4>addendo infinitae realitati limitationem. Esse initiale fit essentia omnis entis realis. Esse quod actuat naturas finitas ipsis coniunctum, est recisum a Deo (Finite reality is not, but God makes it be by adding limitation to infinite reality. Initial being becomes the essence of every real being. Being, which actuates finite natures, having been joined to them, is cut off from God).
This proposition, although taken from the Teosofia, a single, posthumous work, and made to run as a single assertion, is composed of sentences scattered across many pages and taken from more than one volume of the book, as the following translation of Rosmini's own words, and references to their sources, makes clear:
'Finite reality is not, but he [God] makes it be by adding limitation to
infinite reality' (Teosofia, vol 1, n. 681).
'Initial being ... becomes the essence of every real being' (Ibid, n.
458).
'Being, which actuates finite natures, joined with these by being cut off from
God ...' (vol. 3, n. 1425).
The practical impossibility of giving any meaning to these words without reference to their context is itself indicative of the difficulties faced by the compilers who intended to offer Proposition 12 as evidence of pantheism in Rosmini. His genuine views on this matter are, however, clearly expressed in the following passage from his Commentary on the Introduction to the Gospel according to John:
|
|
When there is question of the modes in which
the divine subsistence is limited, we do not mean that the divine substance
receives, or can receive limitations. However, the divine substance is
being, and consequently being which, as its concept shows, is able to be
in two modes, unlimited and limited. Unlimited and unchangeable being is proper
to the divine substance; limited being is proper to the creature. The divine
substance contains therefore the possibility of creatures because
in it is to be found being which can be limited. But the creature is not
present in the divine substance. What is present - because being is present,
and being contains in its concept the possibility of limitation -
is the reason underlying the creature's possibility of existence. |
It is matters of this kind which have prompted the re-examination of the 40 propositions by a commission of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith which began its work in the autumn of last year (1991). But there is no doubt that for almost the whole of this century the propositions attained the end for which they were intended: Rosmini's work stood no chance of acceptance, or even impartial examination, by the mainstream of Catholic thought. And lacking a home base, as it were, it has inevitably been unable to penetrate the world at large. Now that attitudes have changed, mainly through the devoted work of the few who stood by his 'system of truth' during the period of persecution, it is to be hoped that his work will have the general acceptance it deserves.
Notes
(1). To Cardinal Castracane, 25th May 1848, EC, vol. 3, p. 323.
(2). Ibid.
(3). Cf. S. Congregazione per la dottrina della fede, prot. n. 9/66 (unedited), 27th April 1966.
(4). Cf. the encyclical, Rerum novarum, 1891.
(5). 14th December, 1887; published 7th March, 1888.
(6). EN, p. 27-28.