Sancta Mater Ecclesia

Holy Mother Church, or Sancta Mater Ecclesia in Latin.  The One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, just as it's said, also in Latin, in the interesting picture above.  Or, according to the inscription at the Basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome, built at the order of the Emperor Constantine and dedicated in 324 C.E. by Pope Sylvester I, omnium urbis et orbis ecclesiarum mater et caput, the mother and head of all the churches in the city and the world.

Old Mother Church, in truth.  Quite old, really, as age is measured in human history.  As I've posted before, I have a sentimental fondness for it as it was at one time, during my youth.  It gave a certain joy to my youth, as we as altar boys said its God did as we went to God's altar, or if not joy a kind of distinction. 

It's curious how we refer to institutions, particularly those we look back upon in fondness, as "mother."  We call our old schools Alma Mater.  I suppose we can call Mother Church the same, as it can be said to have nourished us Catholics for a time.  But nourished us in what exactly?

It must be admitted that one thing Mother Church encouraged, probably throughout its long history, is reason, or more particularly reasoning, as it was developed before the Church came to exist.  That may seem an odd thing to say, given that the beliefs of Catholicism, taken literally, seem unreasonable.  That's likely why they often are not taken literally, particularly by those believers who reason or employ reason in its defense.

Regardless, though, I think it fair to say that the Church has always honored reason and reasoning.  The Church Fathers employed reasoning in condemning the pagans.  Tertullian, a lawyer, knew reasoning in the form of rhetoric at least.  That was a lawyer's tool, particularly in those times.  The Church Fathers, like Augustine, knew their philosophy (pagan, of course) well, and were educated in the manner in which ancient pagans were educated and had been for centuries.  The great pagan philosophers didn't take pagan religion literally, either.  Why should Christian philosophers?

So, I think the early Church soon abandoned the position seemingly taken by Paul, rejecting the "wisdom of the wise."  Instead, it accepted it; assimilated it, in fact, and made it serve the purposes of the Church.

I think its also fair to say that the Church has always honored culture, education, history.  It kept the wisdom of the ancients alive, through the work of its monks, even if they functioned as mere scriveners, patiently copying the great works of the past.  As a result it fostered great thinkers even during what are called the Dark Ages; Abelard, Duns Scotus, Aquinas, Bonaventure, William of Ockham; it's an impressive list.  It borrowed from the heathen as needed in order to do so, and so rediscovered Aristotle via learned Moslems.  Aristotle so impressed churchmen he was called "The Philosopher."  Thomas Aquinas famously modified Aristotelian thought so as to make it the foundation of Catholic philosophy--known as Thomism.  It still has its adherents today.

For these services Mother Church deserves honor.  I wonder, though, if in inculcating its sons and daughters with a love or reasoning, culture, history and education Old Mother Church gave her children the learning needed to lead them to think her cupboard of reason was, ultimately, bare, as that of Old Mother Hubbard was bare of nourishment.

Learning can be dangerous to a religion, especially when learning involves fostering the capacity to reason, to think logically, to ask questions.  Eventually, those questions address the fundamental premises of Catholicism and Christianity, e.g. the divinity of Jesus, Original Sin, Heaven and Hell, the Trinity, the redeeming character of the sacraments, transubstantiation.  What could be their justification?  How can they be justified, in modern times?  How could Jesus be both God and man?  What sense does the seemingly endless list of sins, so specific to human beings, and a belief in a God-man, make given the vastness of the universe and given that our world is such a tiny, tiny part of it?

To someone trained to reason, recourse to revelation and faith is unpersuasive.  It's a kind of resignation.

Mother Church certainly has managed to survive for centuries, so perhaps it hasn't arranged its own destruction after all.  Perhaps it hasn't undermined the fundamental beliefs which make it distinctive.  But it seems to me that it does, necessarily.  And so a choice must be made, to be Catholic by disregarding reason or accepting that fundamental beliefs or premises are not to be "taken literally."  But that, it seems to me, is to accept a Catholicism, a Christianity, which has lost all which makes it distinctive.