The Birth of Modern European Thought

I.               Science at Midcentury

A.     Charles Darwin and the Theory of Evolution

1.     The Origin of Species

a.     Darwin was a British biologist

b.     His watershed book, the Origin of Species, challenged the idea of special creation by proposing a revolutionary theory of biological evolution.

2.     Key Points

a.     Informed by Thomas Malthus’s Essay on Population, Darwin concluded that every living plant and animal takes part in a constant “struggle for existence.”

b.     Only the “fittest” species survive this struggle.

c.      The fittest are determined by a process of natural selection in which new species emerge after gradually accumulating new modifications.

B.     Social Darwinism

1.     Herbert Spencer, an English sociologist, applied Darwin’s theories to human society. Spencer argued that free economic competition was natural selection in action. The best companies make profits while inefficient ones go bankrupt. The same rules also apply to individuals.

2.     Wealthy business and industrial leaders used social Darwinism to justify their success and oppose social welfare programs.

3.     Social Darwinists also applied the theories of natural selection and survival of the fittest to races and nations. Their theories helped rationalize and justify imperialism, racism, and militarism.

C.     Conflict Between Church and State

1.     Great Britain

a.     Education Act of 1870 provided for state-supported schools run by elected school boards, whereas previously the government had given grants to religious schools.

b.     Education Act of 1902 provided funding for both religious and nonreligious schools and imposed the same standards on each.

2.     France

a.     Falloux Law of 1850

b.     local priest provided religious education in the public schools

                                  The Third Republic vs. the Catholic Church

c.      Between 1878 and 1886, a series of educational laws sponsored by Jules Ferry (1832-1893) replaced religious instruction in the public schools with civic training.

1.     Germany and the Kulturkampf

a.     In 1870, Bismarck removed the clergy from overseeing local education in Prussia and set education under state direction.

b.     “May Laws” of 1873 (applied to Prussia but not the entire German Empire)

               required priests to be educated in German schools and universities and to   

               pass state examinations.

                                               i.     state could veto the appointments of priests.

                                              ii.     Many clergy refused to obey these laws and by 1876 Bismarck had either arrested or expelled all Catholic bishops from Prussia

                                            iii.     Kulturkampf failed as many Germans remained loyal to the Catholic Church

D.    Areas of Religious Revival

1.     Despite state attempts to strip the Christian churches in Europe of privileges and power, new churches and religious schools expanded and devotion increased in some areas.

a.                    Many in France believed they lost the Franco-Prussian War due to sin and increased piety in France in the 1870s and 1880s is evident.

b.                   Cult of the miracle of Lourdes

2.     The Roman Catholic Church and the Modern World

a.     Syllabus of Errors issued by Pope Pius IX in 1864

b.     pitted the Catholic faith against science, philosophy, and politics.

3.     First Vatican Council 1869

a.     Papal infallibility

b.     The pope was the ultimate source of truth when speaking on matters of faith and morals.

c.      No earlier pope had asserted such centralized authority within the church.

d.     Pope Pius IX and many other Roman Catholics believed the Church could only sustain itself in the modern world of nation-states with large electorates by centering the authority of the church in the papacy itself.

4. Pope Pius X (r. 1903-1914)

a. Required all priests to take an anti-Modernist oath.