RELIGION (IN MORAL THEOLOGY). —
I. DEFINITION
From the Latin *religio*, whose meaning varies depending on whether it is derived from *relegere* (“to consider, to treat with care”), according to the more correct morphological interpretation of Cicero: “those who diligently reconsider and, as it were, reread all things pertaining to the worship of the gods are called *religiosi* from *relegendo*, just as from *eligendo* we have *elegentes*, and from *diligendo* we have *diligentes*” (*De natura deorum*, II, 28); or according to the interpretation of Lactantius from *religare*, “to bind, to constrain”: “this bond of piety binds us to God, and we are *religiati*, whence Religion itself takes its name, not as Cicero interpreted it, from *relegendo*” (*Divinae Institutiones*, IV, 28), followed by St. Augustine (Retractations, I, 13), who nevertheless also inclines toward Cicero’s interpretation (*De civitate Dei*, X, 3). It should be noted that before Cicero consecrated its meaning as worship rendered to the divinity, the word originally signified rather “fear,” “superstitious scruple” provoked by the presence or contact of what, as sacred and mysterious, is forbidden to the profane: “dies religiosi,” “loca religiosa,” “fingere sibi religionem” (Caesar, *De bello Gallico*, VI, 36), “animos multiplex religio invasit” (Livy, IV, 30). It has been rightly observed thatperhaps because of this primitive and inferior meaning, Religion was never deified in the official cult of the Romans, unlike Pietas. Christianity adopted and exalted the meaning of the bond that unites man to the divinity.
The word *religion* in its broadest sense, applicable to every type of religion, primitive or superior, natural or revealed, denotes a bond of dependence that reconnects man to one or more superior Powers, upon which he feels and knows he depends, and to which he renders acts of worship, both individual and collective.
Essential Elements. — This definition includes all the essential elements that constitute religion, namely: 1) belief (intellectual element) in superior Powers, which, according to the various types and degrees of religion, may be one or many, personal or impersonal; 2) the bond of dependence, of whatever kind and provoked by whatever element, that links man to them; 3) the practical manner in which this bond is manifested, which constitutes that ensemble of rites and ceremonies by means of which religion is concretized in human groupings and expresses their sentiments and needs.
The bond of dependence had already been identified as specific to religion by the Protestant theologian F. Schleiermacher (q.v.) in an effort to react simultaneously against the subjectivism of Fichte and the Enlightenment rationalism of the 18th century. This bond, which is not that of a slave toward his master, is suggested by the experienced recognition of one’s own nothingness that the human creature feels in the presence of something outside itself that transcends it: Kreutzerfehl! — this is what R. Otto (q.v.) called it, a term accepted even by eminent Catholic theologians; the religious sentiment may well be called the sentiment of the creature, that is, the sentiment of the nothingness from which God has drawn us and into which we are always in the act of falling, but from which divine omnipotence continually saves us (Graneris).
Already St. Thomas Aquinas had, with remarkable insight, recognized in the sense of our fundamental deficiency the metaphysical root of religion, which modern theology, enriched by the contributions of psychological research and the findings of etymology, has confirmed: human reason dictates to man that he submit to some Being superior to himself on account of the deficiencies he experiences within himself (“propter defectus quos in seipso sentit”), in regard to which he feels the need to be aided and guided by some superior Being; and whoever this Being may be, it is the Being whom all call God” (*Summa Theologiae*, II-II, q. 85, a. 1).
In recognizing the two elements resulting from the definition, which are found in every religion — namely, the objective element, that is, the complex of relations between God and men, and the subjective element, that is, the disposition of the mind to render to God the worship due to Him — all scholars of the religious phenomenon are in agreement: ancient and modern Catholic theologians; cf. Ad. Tanqueray (*Synopsis Theologiae Dogmaticae Fundamentalis*, I, *De vera religione*, 12th ed., Rome 1908, p. 26); E.-H. Pinard de la Boullaye (*L’étude comparée des religions*, 3rd ed., II, Paris 1925, p. 5); J. G. Frazer, Protestant ethnologist (*The Golden Bough*, I, London 1913, p. 222); A. Loisy, rationalist historian of religions (*La religion*, Paris 1917, p. 49).
II. CLASSIFICATION
Religions may be classified from different points of view:a) Theological, proper to those that derive from a founder or reformer who has given them a Sacred Book that is the source of their dogmatic teaching and ethical norm. The Koran (22:9) calls them “religions of the Book.” Such are the biblical religions (q.v.), Judaism and Christianity, which owe their dogmatic content to a Revelation (q.v.) of God begun in the Old Testament and completed in the New; Islam, whose sacred book, the Koran, given by Muhammad as a revelation from God, is considered by Muslims to be the source of their theology, philosophy, law, and ethics; Zoroastrianism, whose sacred book, the Avesta, was given by Zarathustra as a revelation from the Wise Lord, Ahura Mazda. It should be noted, however, that not all sacred writings possessed by various peoples have a revealed character: neither the *Kojiki*, *Nihongi*, *Engishiki* of Japanese Shinto (q.v.); nor the Five Classics of Confucian China (q.v.); nor the *Tao-te-King* of Lao Tzu (q.v., TAOISM); nor the *Siddhanta* of Jainism (q.v.); nor the *Tripitaka* of Buddhism, though all serve as norms for the religious life of the peoples who revere them.
b) Philosophical, which evaluates religions according to their intellectual and moral content; Hegel’s well-known division is into natural religions of individual spirituality and free subjectivity (Judaism, Greece, Rome) and religions of absolute finality (Christianity). The modern phenomenological school, which stems from L. van der Leeuw, prefers to study the various religious phenomena in themselves, considered as ideal types, without concern for time or causal connection or intellectual evaluation. Here the categories multiply, since there are few points of view that can be considered typical: the object and subject of religion; their reciprocal action, both external and internal; the historical figures in which religion is concretized: religions of monism and dualism, of struggle and of peace, of works and of Grace, etc. (van der Leeuw); or the various rational types: Nordic, Armenid (= Mediterranean), Mongolian (Mensching). The typological criterion must be used with caution, both that of van der Leeuw, which too much disregards history in which the various acquired types take on life and color, and that of Mensching, because the pure and exclusive type, just as it is not found in religions, is not found even in races.
c) Historical in the broad sense, that is, corresponding to the historical-social development of human groups, which presents three phases: tribal, characterized by animistic manifestations; national, characterized by the political nature of the great religions of antiquity: Egypt, Babylonia, Greece, Rome; supranational or universal, characterized by monotheism: Judaism, Christianity, Islam.
The first two phases belong to the so-called natural religions, which are a complex of practices rather than doctrines, lacking a fixed creed, and not centered on the person of a founder; if a name is invoked, it is that of a codifier of rites, such as Numa, rather than a revealer of a religious system. The religions of the third type arise within pre-existing religions. They are truly the work of a divine founder (Jesus) or of a reformer who lived in the full light of history (Buddha, Mohammed) and thus present themselves as a reaction against the prevailing religion, boasting a superior ethic in service of a universal concept: the code of the divinity, a ritual cleansed of animistic elements, and an eschatology that guarantees the faithful the reward of good deeds performed in life. Alternatively, these religions, to better express the tendency from which they arise and to lend greater credence to their content, are linked to a mythical founder of divine nature (Dionysus, Osiris, Mithras, etc.), into whose service one enters through a special initiation kept secret from the uninitiated; in whose life (which includes episodes of suffering, death, and resurrection, generally deriving from the original agrarian significance of these deities) the entire faith and morality of the initiate is summarized; in whose sacrificial celebration, at once efficacious and commemorative, lies the key to salvation and thus the certain faith in a blessed immortality (v. MYSTERIES).
III. CULT AND THEOLOGY
In religion, therefore, two elements are discerned: one practical and one theoretical,also called, depending on the perspective from which they are examined, cult and belief, liturgy and theology, movement (of the body) and representation (mental), rite and myth.
Though distinct from one another, these elements are inseparable when the religious act is considered, for the ritual action that the religious person performs toward the higher Powers is determined by the idea he has of them. In the act of worship, a special relationship is established between the individual (or the group) and the higher Powers, almost a sacred atmosphere that envelops both and through which both ultimately become actors, to the point that in some rites an individual or group, qualified for this function, assume the roles of the deity represented by symbols or masks, or personified by the officiant and his attendants; this is precisely what distinguishes a rite from a theatrical performance.
The cultic elements of a religion can be grouped around four points: 1) the places of worship, ranging from a simple clearing in a dense forest to the most sumptuous building (v. TEMPLE); 2) the persons, namely the priest in the most varied categories, from the average sorcerer to the priest invested with specific high functions (v. PRIESTHOOD); 3) the times, namely the festivals of the sacred calendar that mark a rhythm in the religious life of the group (v. CALENDAR); 4) the rites, namely all those gestures, movements, and formulas by which the individual and the group enter into contact with the higher Powers (v. INTROITO).
The theoretical element unfolds around two subjects, sources of rich developments: 1) God, who in natural religions has given rise to the most varied mythical constructions concerning the creation of the gods (theogony), of the world (cosmogony), of man (anthropogony), and in the historical religions proper to a high-culture environment, to profound and sometimes sublime speculations in theology and mysticism; 2) the soul and its destiny (v. ESCHATOLOGY; DAMNATION).
IV. RELIGION ACCORDING TO CATHOLIC THEOLOGY
Religion, considered objectively according to its substance and the manner in which it is communicated, is either natural or supernatural. The existence of God, His creative and providential action, and the moral law inscribed in the human heart are truths to which human reason can attain on its own: in this case, religion is natural in substance and in the manner by which it is reached. If those truths are confirmed, whether directly or indirectly, by God, the religion, natural in substance, becomes supernatural in the mode of communication. If, however, they concern truths to which the human mind cannot attain by considering created things, but only through a revelation from God—for example, regarding the mysteries of the Unity and Trinity of God and the Incarnation—then religion is supernatural, and thus revealed even in its substance (v. REVELATION).Religion is also considered by Catholic theology as a moral virtue insofar as it is subordinate to the cardinal virtue of justice, for it is a duty of justice to render to God the homage due to Him; indeed, it is the most excellent of moral virtues because more than any other it draws one close to Him, operating both within the soul and externally in individual and social life all that pertains most directly to divine worship (St. Thomas, Sum. Theol., 2a-2ae, q. 8, art. 8). V. CULT.
From this dual perspective, the acts of the virtue of religion are divided into internal and external. Internal acts are devotion, namely the act of the will by which a person offers himself to God to serve Him; prayer (v.) and adoration (v.), which may be purely internal or externally manifested through some bodily gesture: prostration, genuflection, bowing, joining or spreading the hands, etc. External acts are those in which the body is also engaged, such as in collective manifestations of religion, such as the sanctification of feast days, offerings, the Sacrifice of the Mass, and acts in which the individual commits himself before God, such as oaths, vows, and choral offices.
Against religion, one may sin by defect or by excess, that is, through acts of irreligion or superstition. Irreligious acts are those against the worship of God that sin by defect and dishonor Him, reducing one to practical indifference, tempting God, simony, or sacrilege. Superstitious acts are those that sin by excess, namely abuses and deviations from religion, and include idolatry, vain observances, divination, magic, and spiritism (v. the individual entries).
V. RELIGION AND CIVILIZATION
Only through the absolute obligation imposed by religion upon the moral law—an obligation that cannot be the result of acquired habits or agreed-upon human conventions, but must come from the will of a transcendent legislator who can reward and punish—is the existence of an orderly society made possible. Religion is therefore the foundation upon which the social edifice rests, ensuring its cohesion and promoting, along with civil progress, intellectual progress as well—that complex of elements that constitute civilization. The more a civilization deserves this name, the more the religious sentiment remains associated with the intellectual, with which it was born; for it is precisely the rational element that determines the superiority of a religion and keeps it equally distant from the stolid ignorance of fanaticism and the blind pride of rationalism.Regarding the development of religion within ancient and modern human groups and the most suitable method for such studies, V. PRIMITIVE, religion of; RELIGIONS, comparative study of.