The church and science / by Sir Bertram C.A. Windle.

  • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
Date:
1920
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The church and science / by Sir Bertram C.A. Windle. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    43/440 page 23
    HUMAN ANATOMY this parenthetic chapter is introduced, and if it does nothing else than inform them that in the erudite works of Dr. J. J. Walsh of New York they can find a complete answer to all these misstatements, it will at least have achieved the purpose of making it plain that there is an answer, and a very sufficient answer too, to all these misrepresentations of the attitude of the Church towards learning of all kinds, and especially towards that kind of learning which is known as Science.1 How have these misrepresentations come to exist ? We may leave aside those baser persons who have de¬ liberately invented accusations of intolerance : there have been such, and with them there is no way of dealing except by showing the utter falsity of their statements. But there are others, blameworthy though less blameworthy, who have been content to take their facts secondhand from writers who do not seem to have taken any particular trouble to verify the statements to which they have com¬ mitted themselves.2 Let us take one instance of a hoary fable which has from generation to generation served as an example of the obscurantist policy of the Popes ; I refer to the oft-repeated statement that the dissection of human bodies was for- 1 “ The Popes and Science ” is the first of Dr. Walsh's works which the reader should apply himself to, and, having done so, he will not require any persuasion to continue his reading of the remainder of the series. With respect to Galileo, the reader is advised to consult the late Fr. J. Gerard’s penny pamphlet if he desires a very brief statement of the matter. If he wishes for fuller information, he will find it in the admirable account, with full copies of all the documents in connection with the matter, written by Fr. Ernest R. Hull, s.j., from which most of the facts and quotations in this chapter are taken. As will be gathered from those quotations, neither of the above-named writers is desirous of blinking the unpleasant facts connected with the case under discussion. All of these books are published by the Catholic Truth Society, which also pub¬ lishes a volume, Twelve Catholic Men of Science,” edited by the writer of these pages, in which a good many answers may be found to the allega¬ tions complained of in this and the previous chapter. 2 I might call attention to a recent work by a really distinguished geologist, Canon Bonney—“ The Present Relations of Science and Religion,” London, Robert Scott, 1913—in which almost the whole of the chapter on the Catholic Church is based on White's “ Warfare of Science,” which has been so frequently refuted and by none more successfully than by Dr. Walsh. Bonney's accuracy may be judged from the fact that he states that Newman’s ” Essay on Development ” was “ written to justify his secession to the Roman Communion 1
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