Freedom in Asia

          It seems strange that the organizers of this discussion should have invited to read the paper on Freedom a man bound by a vow of obedience. Perhaps this is their way of suggesting that freedom is a pretty complicated thing, and that it cannot be understood, much less practised, without relating it to all sorts of other things quite dissimilar and even antithetic, among which, conceivably, may be found the concept of authority. Indeed, we might even find that the sum of freedom in the world would, after all, be greater if more people took a vow of obedience, or at least practised it occasionally.

          I am assuming that this is not a metaphysical discussion of the existence and nature of freedom as such; that the term "freedom" as we shall use it here is shorthand for "a free society." By a free society I understand one in which there is a consensus to recognize and respect a twofold principle: the principle of natural rights and the principle of popular sovereignty.

          By natural rights, I mean moral claims to do, possess or use, which the human person has simply because he is a human person; hence, which he has from nature, and ultimately from nature's God. Since he does not have them from the State, the State cannot take them away; by this the free society is distinguished from the totalitarian society.

          By popular sovereignty, I mean that form of government which is by consent of the governed. This implies some institutionalized procedure whereby the people select and control the holders of State authority and take part in the determination of public policy. It is the kind of policy in which, to use Aristotle's phrase, "the citizen rules and is ruled in turn," and by this the free society is distinguished from the authoritarian society.

Is Freedom Possible?

          I further assume that the question is not whether a free society is desirable, but whether it is possible here in the Philippines (and by extension in the rest of Asia); and if so by what means it may be established and maintained.

          There are observers both in the East and West who entertain grave doubts of the viability of a free society in the Philippines, and indeed in Asia as a whole. The reasons advanced for so doubting are manifold, but two in particular deserve serious consideration: one economic, the other cultural.

          The economic reason is briefly this. Popular sovereignty to be effective requires that the majority of citizens possess a vote in public affairs which is both intelligent and free. By "intelligent" is meant two things. First, that the vote one casts is based on personal knowledge of the basic issues involved in an election. Second, that the citizens spend some time in the consideration and discussion of public affairs, and thus contribute to the formation of a true consensus of the community, a consensus which shall not be merely the psychologically imposed doctrine of the few who control the media of mass communication and the political machines. By a "free" vote two things are also meant. First, that the citizen is able to cast a vote which is an expression of his true mind, and not one which has either been bought or extorted from him. Second that the citizen can freely communicate his mind to his government at least to this extent, that the public consensus in the formation of which he has had a part exerts a pressure upon government strong enough to influence its decisions.

          But where the majority of citizens live on the margin of subsistence and have no security of tenure in their means of livelihood, their vote can be neither intelligent nor free. And such seems to be the case in our country and in Asia generally. Now where popular control of government is non-existent or weak, there is inevitable drift towards totalitarianism or some form or other of authoritarianism.

          The argument from culture is based on the thesis that both the principle of natural rights and the principle of popular sovereignty are historically Western in origin. Neither principle is indigenous to Asia, as may be shown from an examination of its principal cultural traditions.

          From the dawn of history, many centuries before Christ, to the fall of the Manchu dynasty in 1911, the Chinese people have been ruled by an emperor at the apex of the most highly centralized bureaucracy the world has ever seen. As Son of Heaven, this absolute monarch derived his powers not from the consent of the governed but from the mandate of Heaven. There was no institutional check as there were no theoretical limits, to his sovereign will. The imperial boards and commissions with which he was surrounded could advise, and on very rare occasions, and always on peril of their lives, remonstrate; but it was he, and he alone, who decided. Traditional Japanese government was no less authoritarian. Here, the imperial power rested not merely on a divine mandate, but on physical descent from the Sun Goddess, traced in unbroken succession for ages eternal. As for the Hindu concept of monarchy, this was if possible even more absolutist than that of either China or Japan; for in India as well as in the Hinduized states of Southeast Asia the ruler was not only the representative or the descendant of divinity but manifest divinity itself.

          It is true that through contact with the West a minority of cultivated Asians have assimilated Western ideas of popular government; but it is more than doubtful whether these ideas can really take root in Asia, not only because of the strength of Asian tradition, but also because of the prevalence of anti-Western feeling in the former colonial countries.

          There would be no point in continuing this discussion if the preceding argument were wholly valid; but it is not. I believe that both economically and culturally a free society is possible in Asia, and specifically in this country; that is, it is possible to develop for it both an economic base and an indigenous cultural frame.

Europe Did It
          With regard to the economic base, we would do well to recall that Europe in the early modern period was a predominantly agricultural society in which the majority of the people lived on the margin of subsistence under highly precarious forms of tenure; in short, Europe was then very much what Asia is today. If Europeans were able in spit of this to develop the economic base for a free society, there seems to be no reason why Asians cannot. And the process would be roughly analogous: the increase of production accompanied by effective arrangements for a more equitable distribution of the product, the whole within the framework of an increasingly mobile society. But this part of our discussion had best be left to the economics phase of our seminar.
          There is no denying the fact that there is a strong authoritarian strand in the political tradition of Asian peoples. But to recognize this fact is not the same as to affirm that Asian political tradition consists of nothing else. Such an affirmation can be justified only by a highly selective process of reasoning which omits other, equally significant elements in Asian culture and history. If we are to resort to this kind of reasoning, it can be quite easily shown that there is little or no hope of a free society developing anywhere in the West, either.
          If we consider Western society at almost any time before the great revolutions of the eighteenth century and focus our attention on certain selected aspects of its culture to the exclusion of the rest, we can pretty well convince ourselves that Europeans did not know what freedom was and did not want it even if they did. Roman law, from which most of the legal systems of Europe are derived, was codified under the auspices of the emperor Justinian, at the very height of a despotism which can advantageously stand comparison with the Chinese. In fact, what the Chinese autocrat practised, the Byzantine autocrat raised to the dignity of a legal maxim: Quod placuit principi legis babet vigorem ― What seems good to the ruler has force of law.
          Throughout the Middle Ages, from Charlemagne to Richard III, the dominant form of government in Europe, indeed the only form of government the vast majority of Europeans knew, was feudal monarchy. And it does no good to cite Magna Carta, for if there ever was a reactionary document, it was that. The "freemen" whose rights and privileges it asserted so vigorously were not the common people of England but its great barons, who saw in the momentary weakness of the king their chance to assert their own power. Only later, much later, did English jurists and statesmen, with that sovereign disregard for mere consistency which is the strength of English political institutions, give to Magna Carta a democratic construction which would have rendered its signers speechless with amazement.

Machiavelli to Louis XV
          Indeed, if we continue this line of thought, we may well arrive at the conclusion that the trend in the West, as the Middle Ages gave way to modern times, was towards ever increasing authoritarianism, towards despotisms ever more absolute. For at the threshold of the modern age stands Machiavelli, for whom the whole art of government was to acquire power, and having acquired it, to retain it and increase it; while on the very eve of revolution France was filled with the formidable figure of Louis XIV, who probably did not say "L'etat c'est moi," because he did not need to say it.
          But if this is so, how can we possibly explain the delgue that, in fulfillment of the cynical prophecy of Louis XV, overwhelmed his successor? If Europe, on our showing, could not possibly have bred democracy, how did democracy come to be? Surely it can only be because our analysis has been faulty; because we have not taken all the available evidence into account. We have considered Justinian, but not the intrepid councils of the Christian Church that asserted, even against despots like Justinian, the indefeasible claims of conscience and the truth. We have mentioned the kings of England but not its parliaments, and those stout burghers who made good the principle that grants of money to a government must be preceded by a redress of grievances. We have quoted Machiavelli but not Bellarmine, looked at Louis XIV but not Locke.

The Chinese Tradition
          It is by a similar fallacy, I submit, that those who despair of freedom in Asia have been deceived. True enough, the Chinese political tradition is that the emperor ruled by the mandate of heaven; but what is the intent of this mandate, and what are its terms? It is a mandate making the ruler mediator between heaven and earth, and by keeping the good earth, and all who live by it, in harmony with the laws of heaven, to assure the peace and prosperity of the realm. This he must do by offering the stated sacrifices in due season, according to the appropriate rites; but also, as the great Confucius taught, by being himself a shining example to all his people of obedience to heaven, and to those essential because internal rites which constitute propriety and moral behavior. If he fails to do this, earth ceases to be in harmony with heaven; the realm goes to rack and ruin, and the people perish under the intolerable burdens of tyranny and the natural calamities resulting from a universe out of joint.
          What then?
          Why then, the Confucians declare, the ruler must be considered as having lost the mandate of heaven, and it shall be lawful for anyone, even the humblest peasant, to raise the standard of revolt. But what is this, if not an Asian statement, centuries before the American Declaration of Independence, of one of the substantive principles of that Declaration? I mean that principle of freedom which asserts that "whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem more likely to effect their safety and happiness."
          Again, it can be argued that the bureaucracy of the Chinese empire was an elite, a ruling caste of mandarins; but how was this caste recruited? By a system of civil service examinations which was already hundreds of years in existence when European governments were still appointing captains of troops and collectors of revenue by the peculiar procedure of selling these offices to the highest bidder. Nor can it be argued that the Chinese civil service examinations were not really a democratic institution because in practice, owing to the nature of the Chinese language and the conditions of Chinese society, only the members of the gentry class had the leisure and the resources to take and pass them.
          For we are not here concerned with practice but with principle; we are trying to discover whether Asian culture can provide, from its own resources, the principles by which a free society may be organized and maintained. And here certainly is one such principle: the principle of a civil service based on merit, whereby the highest offices of state lie open to the humblest in the land, provided only he is able to establish by a competitive test his ability to fill them.

Social Discipline in Japan
          It is not often remarked that considering the length of the recorded history of Asia, the highly centralized form of government which has come to be considered characteristically Japanese is of fairly recent vintage. It dates only from the time of troubles in the sixteenth century out of which emerged the military dictatorship of the Tokugawa shoguns. As for the theory investing the emperor with a limitless, because divine, sovereignty, that is more recent still, being essentially the creation of the daimyo and young samurai who, stung into action by the intrusion of the West into the secular seclusion of their country, transferred power from the Tokugawa shogun to the emperor and so to their own hands as the emperor's servants and advisers.
          These architects of the new Japan were of course thoroughgoing oligarchs, and while they organized an imperial diet and all the trappings of Western representative government, they had little sympathy with ― indeed, hardly any understanding of ― democracy. But they had one outstanding quality, paradoxical though it may seem, which is essential to the development of a free society. I refer to the ability to collaborate in a common enterprise and the willingness to sacrifice individual interests and differences to further that enterprise. It was this quality of total dedication to a common cause that enabled them to resist Western domination and in the process raise Japan to the status of greater power. Admittedly, it was to be found in its full development only in a few, an elite ― in men like Ito, Yamagata, Saionji ― but there seems to be no question that a sense of social discipline exists in varying degrees at every level of Japanese society and may in fact be considered a Japanese national characteristic.
          Now just as order is not the antithesis but the correlative of freedom, so it is impossible even to think of a free society without postulating a high degree of social discipline. Our own Rizal, who stands at the very sources of our national consensus, saw this clearly and expressed it to his associates of La Solidaridad in some of the most perceptive lines he ever wrote:

          En las sociedades nacientes, no debe reinar el espiritu de transiqencia, tratándose de pequeñeces que no afectan al fondo de la cosa; en las discusiones debe dominar la tendencia conciliatoria, antes que la tendencia a la oposición. Nadie debe resentirse de una derrota; cuando alguna opinión sea rechazada, el autor en vez de desesperar y retraerse, debe por el contrario aguardar otra ocasión en que se le haga justicia. El individuo debe desaparecer ante el bién de la sociedad. Y para que el muy delicado amor propio del filipino, que es además individualista inconsciente, salga lo menos herido en las discusiones y se eviten discontentos, bueno sería que a todas las proposiciones, propuestas, proyectos etc. se añadiese siempre la fórmula finál: así opinamos si los otros miembros o solidarios no tienen nada que objetar: esta u otra fórmula parecida que creais más conveniente. He visto muchas discusiones por cuestiones de amor propio. Esto aparte de que las decisiones de la mayoría, después de suficiente discusión, son sagradas e incuestionables.

          It can readily be admitted that social discipline by itself does not suffice. A certain amount of rugged individualism is necessary to the citizens of a free society, and it may well be argued that the prospects of democracy in Japan might have been brighter if the Japanese had been more individualistas; if they did not have too little of that amor propio of which Rizal apparently thought Filipinos have too much.
          And yet, if four centuries of authoritarian government has infused in the Japanese national character too strong a dose of conformism. I must once again call attention to the fact that that was not always the case. The feudal age of Japan, which corresponds almost exactly with the European Middle Ages, saw the flowering of Zen Buddhism, a characteristically Japanese modification of this Asian religion which stressed, almost to an extreme, the essential incommunicability of personal experience and hence, as a logical corollary, the autonomy of the individual. If a significant contribution to the development of European freedom is claimed for the Protestant idea of private judgment, I do not see why the basic principles of Zen could not provide a point of departure for a truly Asian form of individualism.

Hindu Political Tradition
          The divine monarchy of Hindu political tradition has often been cited as proof that Asians are congenitally incapable of conceiving any but a monolithic order of society; and on first glance the Hinduized empires of Southeast Asia do present an impressive facade of omnipotent government. One has merely to leaf through pictures of Angkor and Borobudur, or visit the reality itself, to receive the overwhelming impression of state power pressing by its weight all vestige of individual freedom and dignity out of the subjects on which it rests. Yet this impression must be accepted with wide reservations.

          There is a text in the Nagarakertagama concerning King Hayam Wuruk of Java (1350-1389) which seems significant in this connection. It runs:

          Truly King Hayam Wuruk is a great potentate. He is without cares and worries. He indulges in all pleasures. All beautiful maidens in Janggala and Kediri are selected for him, as many as possible, and of those who are captured in foreign countries the prettiest girls are brought into his harem.

          What seems to me significant is the standard or norm of greatness in a potentate which is here assumed. It is that a potentate is great if he has no cares and worries and devotes himself assiduously to the collection of concubines. It is not impertinent to ask what time he would have left under these conditions for the tasks of government, especially the tasks of omnipotent government. And the answer that emerges, not only from this isolated text but from numberless indications scattered throughout the length and breadth of Southeast Asian history, is that he had very little. The total picture we get of these Hinduized empires is that, provided the central government was assured of its revenues, it left to the local communities of village and town the conduct of their own affairs. In short, while Southeast Asian government was omnipotent in theory, the holders of this limitless power did not, in actual fact, practice their omnipotence very much.

          There was thus room under the umbrella of seemingly total power for the growth of a large measure of local self-government and even for village democracy of a sort ― not indeed the Western sort, but an Asian sort which cannot antecedently be condemned as spurious simply because it is Asian. This is perhaps the place gently to remonstrate with those Western thinkers and statesmen who seem to believe that the instances of self-government which are pointed out to them in Asia cannot be genuine because they do not assume the forms with which they are familiar.

          If they look back a little in the history of their own culture, if they look back no further than the medieval guild and the medieval commune, they will encounter perfectly functional democracies which had neither the theoretical basis nor the structural lines specified by the America or French Revolutions, but which functioned no less effectively.

Adat in Indonesia

          One clue to the vigor of local self-government in pre-colonial Indonesia is the truly amazing development there of adat, or customary law. Now custom is nothing else but the consensus of a community. It may begin at very primitive levels, at the level of wergeld and trial by ordeal, as did the Germanic codes of the Dark Ages; but if the English experience is any warrant, custom is what develops into common law and common law is what ultimately destroys that "divinity which doth hedge a king," transmuting the mailed and helmeted form of William the Conqueror into the much less formidable and much more gracious shape of Elizabeth II.

The Case of the Philippines

          If local autonomy was so vigorous in Java, at the very heart of the Srivijaya and Majapahit empires, it is reasonable to expect that it was much more so here in the Philippines, which lay at the periphery if not entirely outside the area of their effective control. We have little reliable evidence to go on, but it is surely significant that Magellan perished trying to enforce the will of Raja Humabon on a village headman who did not see eye to eye with his (theoretically) absolute sovereign.

          I am very far indeed from asserting that Lapu-Lapu was a democrat; that would be almost as ridiculous as saying that he was a nationalist. But this at least we can say, that there are in Indonesian and Philippine tradition, just as there are in Chinese and Japanese tradition, certain elements favorable to the growth of free societies; that democracy in the West had initially no more capital than this to bank on; and hence that there is as much hope for truly indigenous forms of popular government in Asia today as there was in the Europe of the good despots.

          Here in the Philippines we have the advantage besides of a Christian tradition almost four centuries old. For what Christianity has to offer is precisely that which is lacking in Asian tradition ― a sense of the sacredness of the human person, any human person, whether he be king or peasant, datu or alipin. Incidentally, this is the very element which Christianity contributed to the cultural tradition of the West. The Greeks, to whom we owe the very word democracy, did not have it; nor did the Romans, to whom we owe the very word republic.

          The kind of popular government in which the entire adult population has some voice, and which we today consider the only kind of democracy worthy of the name, would have been inconceivable to either Pericles or Cicero. For by democracy they meant the rule not of all the people but of all the citizens; and from the class of citizens they excluded, as a matter of course, all slaves. It may be true, as Lincoln hoped, that "government of the people by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth"; but this at least is true, that it would never have appeared on earth had not Christ been born.

Free, and Asian

          Thus, while Asian culture, if looked at from one angle, may appear to be heavily authoritarian, it is found upon closer examination to be not deficient in those elements which can provide a framework for a free society; one, moreover, which shall not be merely a borrowing from the West, alien, external, and unassimilated, but truly indigenous, organic both with our present and our past.

          But if these elements making for freedom are to be made to prevail over the elements favoring authoritarian rule, one thing above all is necessary: leadership equal to the task. The history of democracy tends to show that people's governments are not established by the people but by an elite, and often a relatively small one. Whether the people's government will be such in name only or also in fact will depend upon this elite, upon its concept of the purposes and responsibilities of political power.

          It will also depend, in large measure, upon the ability of its members to integrate the principles of democracy with the total culture of their nation and region; and this means that they must be democrats without ceasing to be Asians, and Asians without ceasing to be democrats.

          Thus, the future of free societies in Asia would seem to depend on whether we are able to develop a political leadership which, pending the creation of effective popular control of government, has, built into it, the internal discipline of a democratic awareness; and an intellectual leadership capable of integrating the principle of natural rights and the principle of popular sovereignty with authentic Asian traditions of civility.

          The eventual shape and structure of such societies we cannot yet envision; but granted the above, there are grounds for hoping that they will be socities both free and Asian.

― Fr. Horacio Luis de la Costa y Villamayor, S.J.
Presented at seminar on Freedom, Economics and Culture by
the Congress for Cultural Freedom and
the Philippine Columbian Association

Published in The Sunday Times Magazine

Manila, 22 January 1961

Kampung Scene by Basuki Abdullah.

The State University and Religion

          Any consideration of the relationship between universities in general and religion must begin with the obvious fact that the very idea of a university is religious and, specifically, Christian in origin.
          It was from the bosom of medieval Christendom, at Paris, Bologna, Oxford, Salamanca, that the first universities of Europe sprang into being; and it was virtue of the protection and patronage extended to them by the papacy that they won the right to an autonomous existence independent of local or state control.
          The first universities of Spanish America, those of Lima, Mexico and Santo Domingo, were likewise founded by the Catholic Church; while those of English America arose under the sponsorship of the various Christian denominations into which the original Thirteen Colonies were divided.
          Thus, Harvard and Yale are Puritan foundations; Columbia and William and Mary, Anglican; Princeton, Presbyterian; Rutgers, Dutch Reformed; Dartmouth, Congregationalist; Georgetown, Catholic.

          This fact suggests that the aims of religion, or at any rate the Christian religion, are not incompatible with the aims of the university as such; indeed, it suggests that these two institutions may be mutually complementary.

          However, there are those who do not accept this conclusion, claiming that organized religion ― or rather, one organized religion, the Catholic Church ― is by its very nature opposed to the basic purposes for which universities are established.

          They make this claim in the face of the historical fact, with which one must presume they are familiar, that the Church was founding universities long before state universities were even thought of.

          This contention is not new. It is at least two hundred years old, having been first proposed by certain philosophers a number of times since then, notably by the Oxford scholar John Henry Newman, who was also, incidentally, a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church.

          However, since it has been recently restated in order to apply to this university, not a few of whose students and professors are Catholics, it may not be amiss to consider it briefly here.

          The Catholic Church, then, is and cannot help but be an obstacle to the proper functioning of a university, particularly if it be a state university. Such is the contention. What is the argument advanced in support of it? As far as I am able to understand it, the argument runs as follows.

          A university is a community of teachers and students dedicated to the preservation, dissemination and advancement of learning. Learning in this context means the entire range of truths attainable by the human mind, as well as the methods or procedures by which they are attained.

          Now in order that the university may function towards this objective, there is one absolutely indispensable requirement: freedom. Since no limits can be set as to where truth may lie, or how it may be apprehended, neither can any limitations be imposed on the search for it, other than those inherent in the seeker and the instruments and materials at his command.

          The university community, both teachers and students alike, must be completely free to seek the truth wherever it may be found, and completely free to express, exchange, discuss and criticize the results of their free enquiry. These two freedoms, the freedom of enquiry and the freedom of expression, together constitute what is termed academic freedom.

          The only acceptable limitation to this freedom, as has been stated, is that internal to the activity itself, namely, the competence of the scholar, thee established discipline of his field of enquiry, the accuracy of his tools, and the availability of his materials.
          To impose any other limitation from without is to imperil the search for truth, to falsify the truth already gained, and to prevent its communication to others; in short, to render the university incapable of attaining the end for which it exists.
          Now it is precisely in this vital area of academic freedom, the argument continues, that the university feels itself threatened by the Catholic Church. For the Catholic Church claims to be the sole depository and authoritative interpreter of a unique revelation which has God himself for author.
          The essential content of this revelation is held to be beyond the power of reason to discover or even adequately to comprehend; it must therefore be accepted on faith, that is solely on the testimony of God revealing.
          Hence, whatever the Church may declare as part of the revelation or essentially related to it, is by that very fact removed from the sphere of free enquiry and rational discussion; it can only be taken on faith.
          Thus, an external limitation is imposed on the freedom of enquiry and of teaching; and that not only in theology, but in every other discipline which may impinge in any way on revelation and endanger the integrity of its content.
          Such is the argument in favor of the assertion that the Catholic Church is by nature destructive of academic freedom, and hence of the essential requirement without which the state university ― or any university, for that matter ― can neither function nor exist. It is derived from the contemporary writing on the subject which I have been able to consult. I have tried to state it as fairly as I can. Let us now examine it as objectively as we are able.
          It will be noted at once that the entire argument hinges on how the object and the act of faith are understood. For in order that it may validly conclude, it is necessary to assume that both the revelation which is the object of faith, and the act or assent of faith itself, are irrational.
          If the doctrine proposed as having been revealed by God is contrary to reason or altogether impervious to it, and if the assent to such doctrine is simply demanded without any rational justification being offered for it, there would indeed be grounds for saying that a purely arbitrary and external restraint is being placed on the human mind.
          The point is, that this is precisely how the Catholic Church does not understand the object and the act of faith.
          What is faith, to the Catholic? It is the free assent which he gives to the truths revealed by God because it is God who reveals them. Preceding and conditioning this free assent is a whole train of reasoning whereby its reasonableness is made manifest: that God exists; that he has actually made a revelation; that, being God, he can neither deceive nor be deceived; and that this revelation, unchanged, undiminished, is that which is now proposed by the Catholic Church.
          This train of reasoning is largely implicit in simple and uneducated persons; but in those capable of sustained and systematic thought it must conform to the most rigorous demands of logic and evidence. The Church herself demands this. This is why the convert must undergo a catechumenate, more or less exacting according to his capacity, before he is formally admitted into the body of faithful.
          And that is also why the Church insists that those born within her fold must learn the rational grounds for their faith, not only in childhood, but at every major stage of their intellectual development: in high school, and again in college, and once again in the university, conformably to the increasing maturity and penetration of their critical faculty.
          Faith, then, is a rational assent; and being such, it is of necessity a rational acceptance of the consequences that flow from that assent. The data of revelation are accepted as all truth must be accepted once it is seen to be truth.
          If there is any restraint in this, any limitation on the freedom of the mind, it is exactly the same restraint, exactly the same limitation, as that which the acquisition of any truth imposes on any thinker in any rational discipline whatever.
          Moreover, this assent is not only rational; it is free. Not only is there no external compulsion on the Catholic to believe, but even the objective evidence in favor of belief, overwhelming though it is, does not force the assent of faith itself. Free on the part of man, it is also free on the part of God; a gift freely offered and received. Such is the teaching of the Church. One may readily gather from it what value this supposedly tyrannical institution places on human freedom.
          Thus, faith as we Catholics understand it, is not a limitation but a liberation. Far from reducing the scope of human knowledge, faith vastly enlarges it; and this in three ways.
          First, by putting within the mind's reach truths which it could never attain by its own efforts; second, by strengthening its natural feebleness even in the areas within its competence; and third, by throwing the entire range of knowledge into a new light, and thus enabling the mind to see it (though darkly, as in a glass) as God himself sees the universe which he has made.
          Faith, then, far form contradicting reason, presupposes it; far from diminishing the range of reason, it extends that range; and any limits which it may seem to impose on the exercise of the reasoning faculty are only those which truth itself, the object of knowledge, imposes on the act and process of knowing.
          In the light of this analysis, let us now reexamine the argument stated earlier to the effect that the Catholic Church is destructive of academic freedom.
          It is said, for instance, that the Catholic is compelled by his Church to assent to certain propositions called "dogmas" or "mysteries" ― such as, that God is one nature but three persons; or, that the second Person of the Blessed Trinity possesses both a human nature and a divine ― propositions which are by definition beyond the ability of reason to discover, and hence incapable of rational proof.
          There are here two ambiguities, one in the use of the word "compelled," the other in the sense given to the phrase "incapable of rational proof." The implication in the word "compelled" is that the believer assents against his will, or against his better judgment. But this is not the case; the act of faith, as we have seen, is an act both rational and free.
          As for certain revealed truths being "incapable of rational proof," this is true in the sense that the nexus between the terms of such proposition cannot be humanly perceived by an examination of the terms themselves; but it is not true if taken to mean that the nexus cannot be affirmed, and rationally affirmed, on the testimony of God revealing.
          In other words, the proposition "God is three persons in one nature" is incapable of proof, if the only kind of proof you will accept is an analysis of the terms of the proposition.
          But this is not to proceed rationally, for there are other ways, equally valid, of arriving at a firm apprehension of the truth, and one of these is to accept, from motives clearly and rationally perceived, the testimony of God himself.
          Again, it is said that the Catholic scholar may not affirm anything contrary to the data of revelation, even though what is affirmed lies within the limits of his competence and is supported by rational proof.
          To state the case thus is to prejudge it, for the statement assumes that it is possible for a rationally demonstrated proposition to contradict the data of revelation rightly interpreted. But this is precisely what we claim to be impossible, for truth cannot contradict itself.
          If therefore the Catholic scholar in the course of his researches, comes upon a seeming contradiction between fact rationally perceived and truth divinely revealed, he proceeds exactly as he would if a similar seeming contradiction arose between two rationally perceived facts within the same system.
          That is to say, knowing that there can be no real contradiction between two facts, he goes back over the data supporting the two terms of the apparent contradiction, to see wherein his reasoning has been at fault or a conclusion has been extended beyond the evidence.
          In the same manner, the Catholic scholar examines the evidence for the fact which appears to be at variance with revelation, to see whether it is indeed a fact or merely the semblance of one; and by the same token he analyzes the alleged datum of revelation to discover whether it is indeed such, and not merely an erroneous construction placed upon the revelation itself.
          Surely no one can see in the procedure anything that violates either the conscience or the freedom of the scholar. Non-Catholics may indeed reject the data of revelation as being founded on insufficient evidence; that is their privilege.
          But they ought at least to recognize that Catholic scholars do affirm revelation on what they claim to be sufficient evidence, and not merely because they tremble in mortal terror of some Grand Inquisitor. I should think this is the minimum courtesy which one member of the academic community can extend to another.
          Since, then, it is on the sufficiency of the evidence for revelation that we differ, let our dispute be on that: Has there been a revelation? Has this revelation come down to us? Has it come down to us intact, and in recognizable form?
          Or alternatively, if they imagine this to be the easier course, let those who differ from us produce one single, solitary, indisputable fact which clearly contradicts an established datum of revelation. Then we shall be joined on a real issue.
          But to accuse Catholics of intellectual dishonesty and lack of moral courage, and the Catholic Church of abridging the proper freedom of the mind, simply because Catholics accept as truth not only what reason demonstrates but what God reveals ― this seems to me to be a singularly inept way of avoiding an intellectual problem by falsifying it. It does not even have the merit of being clever. It is, in fact, an admission of defeat.
          But to resume. The difficulty has been urged that if the Catholic Church does not abridge the rational freedom of the scholar in theory, it certainly does so in practice. It forbids, for instance, the reading of certain books, and from time to time directs that certain doctrines are not to be taught or publicly professed by Catholics. Do not these prohibitions impair the progress of science by striking at two of its most important prerequisites, free access to relevant material, and free discussion of the results of research?
          This difficulty proceeds from not taking into account a very simple and obvious fact, namely, that the Catholic Church is not a church exclusively for university students and professors. It is a church for all men, and actually includes all kinds and conditions of men, in addition to women and little children. Since we are so many, there are bound to be among us a few persons of some intelligence, and even learning.
          Indeed, if one searched very hard through our present and past membership, one might conceivably find a name or two, an Augustine, a Mendel, a Dante, a Copernicus, an Aquinas, a Pasteur, a Palestrina, a Raphael, a Bellarmine, a Cervantes, a Maritain ― a name here and there that has escaped oblivion because of some modest contribution which its professor happened to make to the sum of human knowledge and enlightenment.
          But the vast majority of Catholics are admittedly very simple people who have not had the advantages of a university education, and never will.
          And yet, the Church is a mother to them also; or rather, to them especially, for they have the greater need. And so, like a wise and careful mother, she takes what precautions she can lest they expose their faith and virtue to dangers which they have neither the equipment nor the training to repel.
          One such danger is that of reading books which either attack religion or morals, or present them in a way that is likely to be misunderstood by the uninstructed.
          It is in order to ward off this danger that the Church forbids the reading of such books to Catholics; and since the danger is a general one, the prohibition takes the form of a general regulation.
          This does not mean, of course, that those who have a good reason for reading such books, and who are competent to handle them, may not readily obtain permission to do so from the proper authorities. Nor does it mean that the Church is afraid of these books, in the sense of being afraid that there is no real answer to the attacks, misrepresentations and ambiguities that they contain.
          There is no real difficulty in disposing of these difficulties, but it does require a certain fund of information and a development of the critical faculty which are ordinarily acquired only by advanced formal education.
          The same principle applies to the directives which the central authority of the Church sometimes issues to those who teach in her schools. These directives usually pertain to disputed matter, closely related to revelation, which are still in the stage of hypothesis.
          The intention is not to prevent such matters from being studied or discussed by those who are competent to do so, but to prevent their being prematurely taught to students who have not yet developed the ability to distinguish hypothesis from fact, especially in a problem of some complexity.
          Is this a limitation on the teacher's freedom of expression? It is; but, I believe, a reasonable one. To hold one's opinion privately is one thing; for that, one is responsible only to one's conscience and to God.
          But to teach an opinion to others is quite another thing; for by teaching one contracts a responsibility with respect to those whom one teaches, who are still in their formative stage, and also with respect to the common good, whether of the academic community or the larger society of which it is a part, whose stability and good order may be endangered by the dissemination of rash or ill-considered opinions.
          Even the most resolute advocates of academic freedom readily admit that this freedom can and ought to be limited in the interests of the common good. Well, then, the Church appeals to no different principle when she moderates the teaching of opinions which fall short of truth, and of hypotheses whose validity are still in doubt, whenever such teaching is likely to loosen the hold of ordinary Catholics on the truths upon which their eternal salvation depends.
          Briefly, then, I do not believe that the autonomy of this university is in any danger from the presence in it of Catholic students and professors, even if they were here in much greater numbers than they are.
          The Church to which they are proud to belong has never in the long course of her history abridged the rightful freedoms of the human person made to the image and likeness of God, whether it be the freedom of conscience, the freedom to seek the truth, or the freedom to speak it.
          On the contrary, her heroes of every age and clime have gladly shed their blood to uphold these freedoms; and we, their unworthy successors, daily pray at the holy sacrifice of the Mass for the strength to follow their example.
          Nor do we claim these freedoms merely for ourselves, but for all those who may hold a different belief, but who sincerely seek to serve God in their own fashion, even as we do in ours.
          We are bound to disagree among ourselves on many points of doctrine and practice, but surely we can work together to create within the confines of this university, now approaching its fiftieth year, a clear, clean atmosphere of mutual respect and trust, where all may pursue to the best of their ability that one infinite, inexhaustible, supremely lovable Truth whom all men seek, albeit in different ways.

― Fr. Horacio Luis de la Costa y Villamayor, S.J.

Originally delivered at a symposium at the U.P. on the theme:

"The Autonomy of the State University"

Published in the Philippine Collegian

Quezon City, September 1957

Quezon Hall, The University of the Philippines Diliman, Quezon City. c. 1950s.