The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1920-12-04
POPULAR AP0L0GET|CS
Adapted from the German of Rev.
Peter Mikes, S. j., by Rev.
James Watcher.
81. Dogma Fabrication.

Objection: In the Roman Church
new dogmas are fabricated; only in
recent times the doemas of the I'M
macuIate Conception and papaI infaI-
ibility. "And the Roman dogma
fabrication has not yet reached an end
at the Vatican Council" (Tschackert,
PoIemik, p. 164.)
Answer: /. The expression dogma
fabrication" fits to the dogmas which
Tschackert proposes in his "Polemik, :"
but which have nothing in common
with dogmas in the Catholic sense
For in the Catholic sense dogmas are
truths revealed by God, which the
Church commands us to believe as
such. What, therefore, God has not
On the other hand it is not necessary
for new dogma to be revealed just
now, but it suffices that it was re-
vealed, but till now it has not been
expressly proposed as belonging to the
deposit of faith, or that the sense of
the doctrine is more clearly formu-
lated, or defined against heretical
denial. The fact is that only in this
way new dogmas are declared; for it
has always been taught by the Church
and the Vatican Council has anew en-
phasiZed the doctrine that with the
death of the Apostles new revelations
came to an end. Therefore new dog
mas can only arise in the sense that
old truths, that always have been in
the deposit of faith, are more clearly
proposed to our belief and declared as
part of the deposit of faith by the
infallible teaching authority of the
Church.
If in our time the dogmas of the
Immaculate Conception and papal in
fallibility have been defined, we have
now lin regard 10 these two dogmas
clearness and certainty which d
hundred years ago the children of the
Church did not enjoy. To be sure,
nothing has been revealed which was
not revealed to the Christians of all
centuries; but we have now the adj
vantage of the clear and certain
knowledge that these truths are in the
deposit of the faith. 1t was
indeed not impossible to come to the
knowledge of this fact: but there
were so many difficulties connected
with it that many did not arrive at
this certainty. The dogma was there
but it was not sufficiently proposed for
all" (Christian Pesch, s. j., CLAUDE,
Dogmen und geschichtliche Tatsachen
Faith, Dogmas and Historical Facts.
p. 1867 In that work opp. 156-21O
the dogma and it's development is
more fully explained.
?. The magic word in our time is
evolution" What is good in it we
have had long ago in the Catholic
Church before modern scientists made
it word to coniure by. Religious
truths have their development, but an
organically, quietly progressive one, not
destroying ITSELF but developing itself
AS the history of dogmas in the Cath.
Ollie Church clearly shows.
The deposit of faith in the Catholic
Church is not an old dead fossil as
in the Greek-Russian Church, nor a
formation which is partly dissolving
itself as in the hundreds of Prot
estant Churches, but it is living Or
ganism, which in spite of it's develop
ment always remains the same, like
the old and the young tree.
The so-called development or evolu
ton of the infidel world-view is nc
steady, organic development but an
unsteady, revolutionary, phantastic
round-dance of always new form
around the center of truth; it is a
sudden flashing up and disappearance
of binding and terrible systems about
'the beyond of good and evil, truth
and error" where beasts and madmen
bid one another farewell. At least
every decade we have a new doctrine
or system, one denying what the other
asserts.