Nova et vetera

“Inquiry into final causes is sterile, and, like a virgin consecrated to God, produces nothing.”

—Francis Bacon¹

At the heart of empirical science is—as these words by the father of modern science reveal—an eradication, or “sterilizing,” of what had previously been the hallmark of all scientific inquiry: the conviction that natural beings are really inclined from within to nature-specified and nature-perfecting ends. Faulting previous scientists and philosophers for imposing their own logical or mental order upon nature, which in itself was judged to be orderless, Bacon inaugurated a new scientific era. Introducing the “new instrument” (novum organum) of inductive reasoning, he ousted the deductive method that reasons from “ordered” hypotheses. Rather than anticipate nature, we must interpret her, the founding father of empiricism argues. To be sure, this would require long hours of painstaking observation, but the efforts—as Bacon accurately predicted—were quickly rewarded by knowledge hitherto unimagined.

Of course, this new treasury of knowledge was likewise forged by the conviction that scientific advancement need answer to no moral code other than its own advancement. Given Bacon’s denial of nature’s own normative value, the only values governing empirical science are, as Pope Francis observes in his encyclical Laudato Si’, [End Page 1227] those of “utility or security.”² Moreover, because this science understands nature as “formless” and “completely open to manipulation,”³ it encourages “a Promethean vision of mastery over the world” whereby the divine command to exercise dominion over nature (e.g., Gen 1:28–30) is transformed from stewardship to domination.⁴ Technology tends “to absorb everything” into its “ironclad logic,” Pope Francis continues, including “the naked elements of both nature and human nature”:⁵

Men and women have constantly intervened in nature, but for a long time this meant being in tune with and respecting the possibilities offered by the things themselves. It was a matter of receiving what nature itself allowed, as if from its own hand. Now, by contrast, we are the ones to lay our hands on things, attempting to extract everything possible from them while frequently ignoring or forgetting the reality in front of us.⁶

Perhaps nowhere is the logic of empiricism as portrayed by Pope Francis so manifest, I will argue in these pages, as in the prophetic character of the popularly designated “birth-control encyclical,” Humane Vitae: “prophetic,” the bishops of the 1980 synod on marriage and family recognized, “not only in [its] defense of the freedom of conscience of the Third World [i.e., against pressure from first-world nations to control local population growth],” but also and most especially, Joseph Ratzinger reports, “as a defense of the human being and of creation in general” from a common disregard for “God’s creative intentions” (Schöfungsidee Gottes) for the world, including his intentions for human persons.⁷ [End Page 1228]

To be sure, as Ratzinger notes, it is commonly argued that we must protect nature “from the human being; but [the fact] that the human being is also a creation and that he [or she] must protect creation in himself [or herself], that [fact] the human being does not want to see.” To disregard, even “scorn” (Verachten), the “reason” (Vernunft) of creation is, however, Ratzinger continues, to ironically deny the very foundation of technology, including contraceptive technologies in the case at hand. For, “technology could not exist if creation did not bear reason within itself,”⁸ if it were not meaningful as the expression of “a creative reason.”⁹

Pointing in this way to the normative value of human nature qua created, Ratzinger likewise points to the foundation of a sound ecology whose importance—he acknowledges many years later as Pope—“is no longer disputed.” Nonetheless “neglected,” he regretfully observes in words that would eventually inspire Pope Francis, is what he calls “an ecology of man”:

Man too has a nature that he must respect and that he cannot manipulate at will. Man is not merely self-creating freedom. Man does not create himself. He is intellect and will, but he is also nature, and his will is...