FIDEISM. – A theory that exaggerates the importance and role of faith while diminishing or even rendering almost null the rights of reason, to the point of denying the human intellect the very capacity to attain any truth, even of a natural order.
Fideism is a philosophical and theological system depending on whether its application is extended to all kinds of knowledge or is limited to the religious sphere. If by faith one understands the purely human act by which one believes a truth on the authority of parents and past generations who have transmitted it, fideism is often more precisely called traditionalism (v.); whereas if one intends the supernatural act of faith necessary for justification, one has fideism in the strict and rigorous sense of the term. Alongside absolute fideism, which proclaims the total and necessary inactivity of reason in the demonstrative process of the existence of God, the other premises of natural religion, and the divinity of Christianity, there is also moderate fideism or semi-rationalism, which admits the possibility and usefulness of certain rational operations, though their value does not exceed the degree of mere probability.
Fideism has been reached by various paths. While fideism as a tendency gives too little to reason and too much to faith or belief, it arose from that distrust of the value of reason which, from the Sophists of Greece to modern critics, has never entirely disappeared from the history of human thought. As a system, it appeared within Catholicism in the first half of the 19th century, in reaction to the excesses of rationalism, and counts among its principal advocates the supporters A. de Bonald (d. 1840), F. de Lamennais (d. 1854), G. Ventura (d. 1861), L. Bautain (d. 1867), A. Bonnetty (d. 1879), and F. Brunetière (d. 1906). They were moved by noble and holy intentions, namely, the lively desire to save the Catholic faith from all attacks and defend it from all objections of unbelievers and rationalists. But in reality, by withdrawing from faith the proof of reason and affirming that it is faith that leads to faith, they contributed, unwittingly, to perpetuate the ancient calumny, already launched by the pagan philosopher Celsus, which is still heard today even on the lips of the most serious and well-disposed adversaries of Catholics. Hence the Church intervened promptly and decisively, safeguarding in various circumstances the rights of reason, especially with regard to the foundations of faith.
For the Church’s teaching on the rational credibility of the Catholic faith, V. FAITH.