Taken from the book Világnézeti Válaszok (Answers Regarding Worldviews) by P. Béla Bangha S.J.
Who talks about religion today? The age of religion is over and humanity is moving towards new ideas.
This is what the enemies of religion have been saying for a few hundred or a thousand years, and religion is still here and alive, and is always gaining new momentum, often in places where it was thought to be almost buried. The reason for this is that religion is so serious a matter, and so deeply rooted in the very nature of man, that even if its voice is silenced for a time, it always reappears and claims its natural rights.
Religion always has been and always will be as long as man lives on earth. For every man, who is not blind and insane, must of necessity ask himself sooner or later the question: where does the world come from? Where does life go? And what is the reason, the purpose, the meaning of everything that happens? And as soon as man searches for these questions, he will find no serious answer to them except the one that leads to God and is the foundation of religion.
An educated man can exist without religion.
If he forcibly silences the voice of reason within him that seeks the ultimate great questions, then man can indeed exist for a time without religion. This, however, is not a sign of education, but rather of intellectual poverty, of narrow-mindedness, of a lack of courage that often only arbitrarily narrows the intellectual orientation. History shows, however, that it is precisely the most cultured and profound minds that have sought solutions to questions of worldview, and most of them have found them in the Christian religion. No one, therefore, has the right to see in religion a lack of education.
On the contrary, it is suspicious that it is the semi-literate who, in contrast to religion, invoke their own great education. As few as there are not religious people among the truly educated, so frequent is the empty-headed boasting of unbelief among the shallowly educated or only one-sidedly educated (e.g. in technology), and most of all among the ranks of the completely uneducated screamers. In the majority of cases, irreligion is a sign of thoughtlessness, grandiloquence and intellectual adolescence.
Religion kills the joy of life.
It is true that religion does not allow the unbridled and unconscionable indulgence of our instincts. Religion puts a brake on our passions and sets limits to our excessive desires. But it also protects the most precious treasure of social coexistence: morality and mutual respect for rights.
Woe to human society if everyone could do as he pleased! If the thief were free to steal, if the tyrant were free to be cruel, if the clever and cunning were free to prey on his neighbour, if the higher in rank were free to abuse the subordinate position of others at will, if husband and wife were free to indulge their desires and trample on marital fidelity, if children were free to commit depravity and forget with impunity their duty of gratitude and respect to their parents. The unrestrained pursuit of the joys of life would only benefit embezzlers, robbers, and evildoers, not honest men.
There is, however, a particular joy of life: the joy of a good conscience, the peace of the love of God and love of men and the blessed security of the hope of eternal life, which, though not so noisy as the pleasures of sensuality, is a deeper, truer, more uplifting joy than all worldly delights. And religion is the true mother and bearer of this joy.
Modern science has overthrown religion.
It used to be fashionable to talk that way; it is no longer. Science is now more modest, Indeed, which science would have overthrown religion? And which thesis of religion has it brought down? Point out specifically: where is that specific contradiction, and do not be content with idle talk! No thesis of the Catholic religion has ever yet been shown in the name of any science to be false and contrary to science. The reverse is true: every tenet of irreligion and unbelief is all scientific nonsense.
If there were indeed a contradiction between religion and science, it would have been noticed first of all by those giants of intellect who could combine the most brilliant knowledge with the most childlike faith and piety, if such giants of intellect as Newton and Laplace, Volta and Ampère, Gauss and Cauchy, […] and Gregor Mendel, Röntgen and Maxwell, found no contradiction between religion and science, what right have dwarfs, petty freethinking party secretaries and Bolshevik ignoramuses to cry out against religion in the name of science?
The main thing is that everyone should live honestly, religion is secondary.
First of all; we need religion precisely so that everyone can be honest! Secondly: he who is not religious, that is, he who does not do his duty to God, already cannot be called honest. Is it important that everyone should be honest? Correct; let every man therefore do his duty. But all his duties, and above all his duties to God! For where men do not obey God, experience has shown that they do not observe the duties of honour and decency towards one another. Pope Pius XII rightly writes that wars, breaches of contracts, enmities and intemperance arise from the fact that he who does not bow before the law of God does not bow before any moral law.
Among the religious there are those who are without character and even evil-doers, but among the irreligious there are also men of character.
It follows, at most, that there are exceptions everywhere. But everyone feels that someone is an exception if, being a religious man, he forgets himself to such an extent that his actions are not in accordance with the lofty ideals which arise from religion. And it is likewise a striking exception if a man is fastidiously attentive to the requirements of natural morality, but at the same time fails to notice that he is falling short in the highest and most natural duty; that of worshipping and serving God. The noblest men, the most shining examples of duty and conscientiousness, the most unselfish patriots and fathers of families, the noblest mothers and spouses, the most devoted children and the purest youth, have always been found to grow up on the soil of religious life, while the evildoers, the deceivers, the fornicators and thieves, the selfish, the unscrupulous tramplers on others, are almost without exception among the irreligious. You only have to look around in life!
God does not need me to bow down to Him outwardly.
He does not “need” it, that is true, but you do need it, you do have an obligation. The king or prince or governor does not need you to pay him homage when you appear before him, yet he may require you to pay him homage, and to pay it in such form as he desires and the law requires.
It is not God who requires your outward show of respect, but reason and morality, honour and divine law, which require the obligatory expression of a sense of submission and obedience.
Christianity degrades human dignity because it demands humiliation, bowing down, servitude.
Humble and obedient submission to the Almighty God is indeed the elementary duty of all of us. But this duty does not humiliate or degrade us. On the contrary, that boastful pride, which does not even want to bow before its supreme Lord and Creator, but with childish defiance and imagination pretends to be its own God, as if it had given itself all that it has by the free grace of God, degrades much more. To bow before God the Creator is exalting; to serve God is to reign.
Besides, is it not strange that it is those who speak so highly of human dignity who are themselves slaves: slaves to their own petty, even base inclinations, and who bow to the ground before men, if it is about getting from them some small distinction or material advantage!
I am religious, but I live my own religion.
Why don’t you add: I am a scientist, but I only follow the science of my own making! I love arithmetic, but I use my own multiplication table. I am rich, but I only have banknotes that I forged myself. I am a soldier, but I do not take orders from any officer, but I go and shoot and fight where and when it suits me. Religion is not a matter of individual pleasure. In determining what is the right religion, we are not the supreme judges, but God. The only right religion is that which follows, accepts, practices and lives according to what God has revealed and commanded. “My own” religion is only as good as a man wishing to only acknowledge laws created by himself against the state. This would be mere rebellion and open denial of the nation.
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Religion does not prevent suffering, nor does it eradicate sin from the world, nor does it eliminate injustice and oppression of the poor.
Where religion is extinct from souls, it indeed cannot work miracles. The vast majority of human ills and sufferings are the result of sin, and therefore of the neglect of religion, e.g. most wars. If men were more religious, all of them, the leaders, the administrators of the destinies of states, there would certainly be less evil in the world, less injustice, less inequality, less unrest, less evil. All evils could not be eradicated from the earth, including, for example, most diseases and death. But that is not the task of religion. Religion ennobles suffering and gives the suffering person the spiritual strength to bear the inevitable pain calmly and trustingly in God; it sweetens even the most embarrassing humiliation and sickness, and even death.
It is precisely because it leaves man utterly without consolation and hope in the face of the problem of suffering, and especially of the dreadful necessity of death, that irreligion is the greatest curse.
It makes no difference who follows what religion!
This is basically like saying: it doesn’t matter who follows what multiplication table!
Whoever says two by two is ten, or even nine hundred, is just as right as whoever says two by two is four.
Religion is not a fantasy, nor a game, but truth, and truth cannot be contrary to itself. Only that religion is true, therefore, which contains only what God has revealed and commanded. Any religion which differs in any respect from this is an erroneous religion, either because it does not accept all that God has revealed or commands, or because it teaches as a divine revelation what God has not revealed. It is not true, therefore, that it makes no difference who follows what religion!
Every religion says that it is right; how can I be sure which one is right?
We concede that it often takes a great deal of study for the individual man to find the essential difference between false and erroneous religions and the true religion. The upbringing, the environment, the prejudices picked up without criticism often make it very difficult to find one’s way. But it is objectively impossible that God could have made true religion so unrecognizable and not have given it such distinguishing marks by which it can be recognized as such and distinguished from error.
And indeed, whoever seriously investigates, whoever studies the Catholic religion and other religions without partiality, will come to the recognition of the one true Church with almost infallible certainty. What these distinguishing marks are will be discussed below.
We worship one God; no matter what church we go to.
Truly, it does not follow from the fact that we worship one God that it does not matter how we worship Him or what we regard as His revelation and command. Jews and Muslims worship one God, but it may not be the same whether I am a Jew, a Muslim or a Christian. It is likewise not the same whether, as a Christian, I serve and worship God within the framework of the Catholic religion, which is fully authentic and based on the divine will, or within a framework which is more or less contrary to God’s decrees.
Is everyone damned then and only Catholics saved?
Again, this does not follow from the above. For it is one thing whether a religion is in itself true and alone right, and another whether there may not be some men who, though objectively wrong, are wrong through no fault of their own, and so their error does not count morally. He who does not cling to an erroneous religion out of negligence, contempt, or obstinacy, but is the victim of a bona fide error, does not thereby commit a sin, and is not damned for it.
Let every man, therefore, remain in the faith into which he was born.
Again, this does not follow from the above. On the contrary, it is the most sacred duty of every man to seek the truth, the revelation and will of God, that is, the true religion, to the best of his ability, and when he has found it, to follow it through all obstacles. But if through no fault of his own he remains in error, he does not sin. If, on the other hand, he has recognized the truth and does not follow it, he sins grievously, and for this he may be damned.
Are not “heaven” and “hell” childish expressions?
If God says that there is eternal happiness and eternal punishment, which we shall shortly call heaven and hell, then it is not only possible to believe in them, but necessary to believe in them. Indeed, it is the only serious course of action to believe in them.
Even if I do not see it, there can be something and there is. For I cannot see my mind, and presumably there is one. The afterlife, by the way, will be discussed below.
This text is in released under the Creative Commons Zero License. The original author died in 1939, therefore the original Hungarian text is in the public domain.