The Disfigured Face: Traditional Natural Law and Its Encounter with Modernity

Chapter Six: The Survival of Tradition

77 Chapter Six The Survival of Tradition One of those teachers selected by Pope Leo “to implant the doctrine of Thomas Aquinas in the minds of students” was a Belgian priest named Desiré Joseph Mercier. Mercier was only twenty-eight years old when Aeterni Patris appeared in 1879, yet the encyclical seems to have left a lifelong impression on the young priest. Mercier, who had been ordained in 1874, would help to establish a chair in Thomistic philosophy at the University of Louvain.1 A few years later, the Institut Supérieur de Philosophie was also founded at Louvain. In 1894, Mercier was named president of the Institut.2 Clearly, Pope Leo’s teachings had been received by the young Mercier and by others in Belgium with great enthusiasm. Unlike many of the Thomists who had come before him, Mercier was very interested in modern science. He was especially interested in a newly emerging discipline, experimental psychology.3 As a scholar he was strongly committed to the idea that all of the sciences could work together with philosophy to form a unified, rational whole.4 Mercier’s approach in this sense was much more open than that of most of his nineteenth-century predecessors. This fact, however, does not mean that Mercier necessarily embraced all modern philosophical ideas. He was, rather, quite skeptical of some modern philosophers, especially of the Germans, whom Mercier believed were responsible for the ethical deterioration of Germany: A mental atmosphere has been produced in Germany in which legal matters are divorced from moral right. Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche , have spread this through all ranks of society. In this 78 The Disf igured Face atmosphere, a militarist idea of things has been formed, and has gathered strength, according to which a nation has a right to live and to develop its life to any extent, without being answerable for its doings before that moral tribunal of the conscience which judges our every-day actions.5 Obviously, what Mercier could see in early-twentieth-century Germany was the rejection of the older natural-law tradition that, by that time, had been abandoned in most of Western Europe. He also understood the philosophical basis for this change better than most other observers. Indeed, by 1907, when he was named cardinal, Mercier had established an outstanding reputation as a scholar and was, without question, one of the leading Catholic intellectuals of his day.6 Cardinal Mercier, however, was much more than a keen observer of contemporary thought and events. What makes him different from so many other philosophers is that Mercier would have the opportunity to put his ideas into practice. Seven years after his appointment as cardinal , Belgium was occupied by German forces. His heroic stand against the Germans during the First World War made him an international celebrity. In many of Cardinal Mercier’s letters and speeches we can see the strong influence of Thomas Aquinas. One quite explicit example of this doctrine is seen in an address entitled “For Our Soldiers,” given on July 21, 1916, concerning justice and retribution: Whatever may be our sufferings, we must not wish to show hatred towards those who have inflicted them. Our national unity is joined with a feeling of universal brotherhood. But even this feeling of universal brotherhood is dominated by our respect for unconditional justice, without which no relationship is possible, either between individual or between nations. And that is why, with St. Thomas Aquinas, the most authoritative teacher of Christian Theology, we proclaim that public retribution is commendable. Crimes, violation of justice, outrage on the public peace, whether enacted by an individual or by a group, must be repressed . Men’s minds are stirred up, tortured, uneasy, as long as the guilty one is not put back in his place, as the strong, healthy, The Survival of Tradition 79 colloquial expression has it. To put men and things back in their places is to reestablish order, readjust the balance, and restore peace on a just basis.7 Cardinal Mercier’s powerful sense of justice is clearly evident in this passage. His appeal here is not to any specific treaty or document of international agreement, but rather to a sense of natural justice, which is a fundamental part of natural law. In this insistence on natural justice rather than on any particular legal code we see that Mercier was quite similar in outlook to Pope Leo...