PROGRESS. - Without reference to particular activities (economic, spiritual, industrial, juridical, etc.), the word currently sums up two converging concepts: the ceaseless conquest of scientific and practical truths; and the attainment of greater comforts and more extensive automation in the life of men, so that these, gradually relieved of the heaviest labors and of the most troublesome cares, may devote themselves to higher forms of activity and enjoyment.
Unlike the more complete and solemn concept of civilization (v.), with which it is often confused, the idea of progress, at least in the common acceptation of the term, concerns above all the satisfaction of practical needs and aspirations, and not the integral vision of life, of the world and of the destiny of men. Hence, while civilizations are born, develop and die out, and one may speak of crises and involutions of civilization, progress is one and indefinite.
It is an element of civilization, far from exhausting it: in the centuries, however, that run from rationalism to materialism, the confusion between the two was so intimate that, in reacting against it, progress was sometimes set in opposition to civilization, and some, even Catholics, in order to defend civilization believed they had to hurl themselves against progress, held responsible for imbalances in reality attributable only to the mismatch between scientific and moral progress.
Two vital sectors of civilization have suffered because of this mismatch: the moral and the economic, both of which have remained backward and neglected in the face of the successes and seductions of scientific and industrial progress. There is even no lack of those who assert a clear moral regression, judging from certain persistent manifestations of immorality and insensitivity, particularly linked to the phenomena of war and of great international politics; and an economic regression, on the basis of present arrangements, absolutely inadequate to the real needs of exchange (v.).
There is no doubt that scientific and technical progress, by itself, materializes life and places a growing power of good and of evil, and therefore a growing responsibility, in the hands of men whose character it simultaneously does not strengthen and whose virtues it depresses: it moreover subjects social life to centrifugal, and therefore disintegrating, forces, such as hedonism and the division of labor (one-sidedness, competition, rivalry, a spirit of struggle and of domination), without succeeding in neutralizing them with equivalent centripetal forces such as charity, a homogeneous morality and an economic order that opposes to the division of productive labor the concentration of exchange labor (v.).
To deficient moral and economic progress is due the excessive trust in force in general and in political force in particular, there spreading the conviction that every problem of associated life would easily become insoluble, even without study and without the exercise of virtue, whenever one had at one's disposal the levers of political power. Hence the scramble for government and the general orientation, in social questions, toward solutions of force: and hence the growth to gigantic proportions and the entanglement of derived and secondary problems, such as the so-called social and political problems really are, which, considered instead as principal, appear insoluble within the sphere of rationality.
The uneven rhythm of progress in the various sectors and directions, and the uneven capacity for assimilation on the part of individuals, classes and peoples, bring it about that scientific progress, and the culture that draws its inspiration solely from it, disturb the slower evolutionary processes of reflective thought, of consciences, of customs and of systems of interests: whence, unleashing appetites before having the means suitable for satisfying them, they have sometimes been the occasion and instrument of struggle, sources of naive enthusiasms and of ferocious illusions.
Only an integral progress, accompanied by generous and intelligent charity, can save equilibrium and peace.
Bibliography2 works
Mario Baronci