The Roman Catholic Church: La Iglesia Católica Romana

Table of Contents

The Roman Catholic Church

Lecture I

Lecture II

Lecture III

La Iglesia Católica Romana

Conferencia I

Conferencia II

Conferencia III

On-line Activities

About the Lecturer

About the Translator

The Roman Catholic Church

Three Lectures given by

Rudolf Steiner

La Iglesia Católica Romana

Tres conferencias dictadas por

Rudolf Steiner

2024

Anthroposophical Publications

Fremont, Michigan USA

The Roman Catholic Church

Copyright © 2024

by Anthroposophical Publications.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

Three lectures for the members of the Anthroposophical Society given by Rudolf Steiner in May and June 1920 at Dornach, Switzerland. From the collected work, Means for Healing the Social Organism, Bibliography No. 198. The translator for the English edition is unknown.

Spanish Translation by,

María Teresa Gutiérrez

Cover design, and editing by,

James D. Stewart

Visit the website at https://www.elib.com/

Printed in the United States of America 

First Printing: Aug 2024

Anthroposophical Publications

Fremont, Michigan USA

https://AnthroposophicalPublications.org/

The Roman Catholic Church

Three Lectures for members of the Anthroposophical Society

by Rudolf Steiner

Lecture I

Dornach, May 30, 1920

My Dear Friends,

To carry our spiritual understanding of things farther, we shall need more and more to turn our attention to certain historical facts. During the last decades our members have led a pleasant life, devoted entirely to the acquisition of knowledge from the lectures and discussions which have been held in different places. Nevertheless, this has formed an impenetrable wall, over which in many cases there has been a great reluctance to look out at what was happening in the outside world. But, if we want to see what is happening in the world in the right light, if we do not wish to found a sect but an historical movement — something which no other movement than ours can be — then we need to know the historical background for what is all around us in the world. And the way in which we ourselves are treated, particularly here in this place, where we have never done anything in the slightest degree aggressive, makes it doubly necessary for us really to look over the wall and to understand something of what is going on in the world. Therefore, I should like to combine what I have to say in the next few days with some historical comments, in order to draw attention to certain facts, without a knowledge of which we shall probably not now be able to get any further.

Today I want first of all to point out one thing. You know that about the beginning of the last third of the Nineteenth Century something found a foothold in the various civilized states of Europe and America, which was known as a realistic conception of life, a conception of life which was in essentials based on the achievements of the Nineteenth Century and on those which had prepared the way for that century. At the beginning of the last third of the Nineteenth Century people everywhere spoke in quite a different way, their underlying tone was different from what it became in the later decades, and still more in the decades of the Twentieth Century. The forms of thought which dominated wide circles became during this time essentially different. Today I will only mention one example. At the beginning of the last third of the Nineteenth Century the belief prevailed among educated people that the human being ought to form his own convictions out of his own inner self, about the most important affairs of life; and that even if, helped by the discoveries of science, he does so, a common social life is, nevertheless, possible in the civilized world. There was, so to say, a kind of dogma, but a dogma freely recognized in the widest circles, that, among people who had reached a certain degree of culture, freedom of conscience was possible. It is true that in the decades that followed no one had the courage to attack this dogma openly; but there was more or less unconscious opposition to it. And at the present time, after the great world catastrophe [the First World War], straightaway this dogma is something which in the widest circles is being repressed, is being nullified, though, of course, that fact is more or less disguised. In the sixties of the Nineteenth Century the belief prevailed in the widest circles that the human being must have a certain freedom as regards everything connected with his religion. The emergence of this belief was noted in certain quarters, and I have already pointed out how on the 8th of December 1864, Rome launched an attack against it. I have often told you how this whole movement was handled by Rome, how in the

Papal Encyclical of 1864

https://www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius09/p9quanta.htm,

which appeared at the same time as the

Syllabus

https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/creeds1.vi.ix.html),

it is expressly said: The view that freedom of conscience and of religion is given to each human being as his own right is a folly and a delusion.

At the time when Europe was experiencing the high tide, a provisional high tide, of this conception of freedom of conscience and of religious worship, Rome made an official pronouncement that it was a delusion.

I only want to put this before you as an historic fact; and in so doing I want to call your attention to what took place at a time when, for a large number of people, this question had arisen and called for a response from out the very springs of human conscience — the question: How do we as human beings make progress in our religious life? This question, posed in deep earnestness and really in such a way as to show that consciences were involved, was a significant question of the time. I should just like to read you something which illustrates how the cultured people of the day were deeply preoccupied with it.

There are in existence speeches of Rumelin whom I mentioned recently in connection with Julius Robert Mayer and the Law of Conservation of Energy. There exist speeches of Rumelin made in the year 1875, thus in this very period of which I am now speaking. In them he analyzed the difficulties humanity experiences in this very matter of the further study of religious questions. He also points out how necessary it is to follow these difficulties with clear insight. Anyone with intimate knowledge of this period knows that the following words of Rumelin expressed the conviction of many hundreds of people. Of course, we do not need to advocate the peculiar form of science which arose at that time; insofar as we are Anthroposophists we are equipped to develop those scientific tendencies further, with a clear perception of their relative errors; and we are also equipped for recognizing that if science remains stationary at that standpoint, we can get absolutely no farther with it. In the widest circles judgments arose on many points to do with religion, and we should recall these judgments today. The thoughts of thousands of people at that time were expressed by Rumelin in 1875 in the following words:

There has indeed at all times been a line of demarcation between knowledge and belief, but never has there been such an impassable abyss between them as that constituted today by the concept of miracle. Science has grown so strong in its own development, so consistent in its various branches and trends, that it flatly and without further ado points the door to the miracle in every shape and form. It recognizes only the miracle of all miracles, that a world exists and just this world. But within the cosmos it rejects absolutely any claim that interruption of its order and of its laws is something conceivable or in any way more desirable than their immutable validity. For to all the natural-historical and philosophical sciences the miracle with all its implications is nonsense, a direct outrage on all reason and on the most elementary bases of human knowledge. Science and miracle are as contradictory as reason and unreason.

When, about the turning point of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, I began to speak in public lectures on certain anthroposophical questions, a last echo of the mood I have just described still existed. I do not know whether there are many here who followed these first lectures of mine, but in many of them I drew attention to the problems of repeated earth lives and of the destiny of human beings as they pass through one life after another. Now in dealing with these problems you will find that I always pointed out right at the end of the lecture that if one believes in the old Aristotelian idea that every time a person is born a new soul is created that has to be implanted into the human embryo, a miracle is thereby ordained for every single life. The concept of miracle can only be overcome in a sense that is justified if one accepts reincarnation, whereby each single life can be linked up with the previous life on earth without any miracle. I still remember well that I concluded one of my Berlin lectures with these words: We are going to overcome in the right way that most important thing, the concept of miracle.

Since then, of course, things have changed throughout the civilized world. That is primarily a historical fact, my dear friends, but it comprises something which is of the utmost interest to us. That