RELIGION (IN MORAL THEOLOGY). —
I. DEFINITION
From Lat. religio, whose meaning varies according to whether it is derived from relegere (“to consider, to treat diligently”), in accordance with Cicero’s morphologically more correct interpretation: “those who carefully reconsider and, as it were, reread everything pertaining to the worship of the gods are called religious from relegendo, just as eligentes comes from eligendo, and diligentes from diligendo” (De natura deorum, II, 28); or according to Lactantius’s derivation from religare, “to bind, to constrain”: “bound by this bond of piety and tied to God, we have received the name Religion from this, not as Cicero interpreted it, from relegendo” (Div. Inst., IV, 28), followed by St. Augustine (Retract., I, 13), who nevertheless also inclines toward Cicero’s interpretation (De civ. Dei, X, 3). It should be noted that before Cicero consecrated its meaning of worship rendered to the divinity, the word originally signified rather “fear,” “superstitious scruple” provoked by the presence or contact of that which, as sacred and mysterious, is forbidden to the profane: “dies religiosi,” “loca religiosa,” “fingere sibi religionem” (Caesar, De bello Gall., VI, 36), “animus multiplex religio invasit” (Livy, IV, 30). It has rightly been observed thatperhaps because of this primitive and debased meaning, Religio was never deified in the official worship of the Romans, as Pietas was instead. Christianity adopted and exalted the meaning of the bond that unites man to the divinity.
The term r., in its broadest sense, applicable to every type of r., primitive or higher, natural or revealed, denotes a bond of dependence that reconnects man to one or more superior Powers upon whom he feels and knows himself to depend, and to whom he renders acts of worship, both individual and collective.
Essential elements. — This definition includes all the essential elements constituting r., namely: 1) belief (the intellectual element) in the superior Powers, which according to the various types and degrees of r. may be one or more, personal or impersonal; 2) the bond of dependence, of whatever kind and provoked by whatever element, which connects man to them; 3) the practical manner in which this bond manifests itself, constituting that whole of rites and ceremonies through which r. takes concrete form in human groups and expresses their sentiments and needs.
The bond of dependence had already been indicated as specific to r. by the Protestant theologian F. Schleiermacher (v.), in an effort simultaneously to react against Fichte’s subjectivism and the Enlightenment rationalism of the eighteenth 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 before something outside itself and transcending it: R. Otto (v.) called it “Kresturgefühl,” an epithet also accepted 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 drew us and into which we are always in the process of falling; from which, however, divine omnipotence continually saves us” (Graneris).
St. Thomas Aquinas had already, with admirable insight, recognized in the awareness of our fundamental deficiency the metaphysical root of r.; modern theology, enriched by the contribution of psychological research and the findings of ethnology, has confirmed this: “human reason tells man to submit to some Being superior to him because of the deficiencies he experiences in himself (‘propter defectus quos in seipso sentit’), with regard to which he feels the need to be helped and directed by some superior Being; and, whoever he may be, this is the Being who among all is called God” (Sum. Theol., 2ᵃ-2ᵃc. 85, 1).
In recognizing the two elements resulting from the definition, which are found in every r., 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 agree: ancient and modern Catholic theologians; cf. Ad. Tanqueray (Synopsis Theol. Dogm. Fund., I, De vera religione, 12ᵃ ed., Rome 1908, p. 26); E.-H. Pinard de la Boullaye (L'étude comparée des religions, 3ᵃ ed., II, Paris 1925, p. 5); J. G. Frazer, Protestant ethnologist (The Golden Bough, I, London 1913, p. 222); A. Loisy, rationalist hierograph (La religion, Paris 1917, p. 49).
II. CLASSIFICATION
Religions can be classified from various points of view:a) theological, proper to those that derive from a founder or reformer who gave 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 (v. BIBBIA), Judaism and Christianity, which owe Revelation (v.) from God begun in the Old Testament and completed in the New; Islam, whose sacred book, the Koran, presented by Muhammad as a revelation from God, is consi-
dered by Muslims the source of their theology, philosophy, law, and ethics; and Zoroastrianism, whose sacred book, the Avesta, was given by Zarathustra as a revelation of the Wise Lord, Ahura Mazda. It should be noted, however, that not all the sacred writings possessed by the various peoples have a revealed character: neither the Kojiki, Nihongi, Engishiki of Japanese Shinto (v. SHINTO); nor the five King China (v.); nor the Tao-te-King of Laotse (v. TAOISMO); nor the Siddhanta Jainism (v.); nor the Tripitaka of Buddhism; although all serve as norms for the religious life of the peoples who venerate them.
b) philosophical, which evaluates religions according to their intellectual and moral content; well known is Hegel’s division into natural religions of spiritual individuality and free subjectivity (Judaism, Greece, Rome) and religions of absolute purpose (Christianity). The modern phenomenological current associated with L. van der Leeuw prefers to study the various religious phenomena in themselves, considered as ideal types, without concern for time, causal connection, or intellectual evaluation. Here the categories multiply, since the points of view to be regarded as typical are extremely numerous: the object and subject of religion; their reciprocal action, both external and internal; the historical forms in which religion takes concrete shape: religions of monism and dualism, of struggle and tranquility, of works and Grace, etc. (van der Leeuw); or the various racial types: Nordic, Armenid (= Mediterranean), Mongolic (Menschling). The typological criterion must be employed with caution, both that of van der Leeuw, which disregards too greatly the history in which the various types acquire life and color, and that of Menschling, because the pure and exclusive type, just as it is not found in religions, is not found among races either.
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 polytheism 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, have no determined formula of faith, and do not appeal to the person of a founder; if a name is mentioned, it is that of a codifier of rites, such as Numa, not that of a revealer of a religious system. Religions of the third type arise within pre-existing religions. They are truly due to the work of a divine founder (Jesus) or of a reformer who lived in the full light of history (Buddha, Muhammad), and thus present themselves as a reaction against the prevailing religion and claim a superior ethic grounded in a universalistic concept of divinity, a ritual purged of animistic elements, and an eschatology that guarantees the faithful the fruits of the good actions performed in life. Or these religions, in order better to express the tendency from which they result and to lend greater authority to their content, link themselves to a mythical founder of divine nature (Dionysus, Osiris, Mithra, etc.), into whose army one enters by means of a special initiation kept secret from the uninitiated; in whose life—which contains episodes of suffering, death, and resurrection, generally attributable to the original agrarian significance of these divinities—the entire faith and morality of the adherent are summed up; and in whose sacrificial celebration, at once efficacious and commemorative, lies the key to salvation and hence the certain faith in a blessed immortality (v. MISTERI).
III. WORSHIP AND THEOLOGY
Religion therefore comprises two elements: one practical and one theoretical,also called, according to the different standpoint from which they are examined, worship and belief, liturgy and theology, movement (of the body) and representation (of the mind), rite and myth.
Although clearly distinct from one another, they are inseparable when the religious act is performed, because the ritual action carried out by the religious person with regard to the Higher Powers is determined by the idea that he or she has of them. In the act of worship, a special relationship is established between the individual (or group) and the Higher Powers, almost a sacred atmosphere that envelops them both, and through which both ultimately become actors, to the point that in certain rites an individual or group qualified for this function assumes the role of the divinity represented by symbols or masks, or impersonated by the person presiding over the ceremony and by his or her attendants; this is precisely what distinguishes a rite from a theatrical performance.
The cultic elements of a religion may be grouped around four points: 1) places of worship, ranging from a simple clearing in the depths of a forest to the most sumptuous building (v. TEMPIO); 2) persons, that is, the priesthood in its most varied categories, from the healer-sorcerer to the priest invested with important specific functions (v. SACERDOZIO); 3) times, that is, the festivals of the sacred calendar that establish a rhythm for the religious life of the group (v. CALENDARIO); 4) rites, that is, all those gestures, movements, and formulas by which the individual and the group enter into contact with the Higher Powers (v. RITO).
The theoretical element develops around two subjects, the source of exceedingly rich elaborations: 1) God, who in natural religions has given rise to the most varied mythical creations relating to the creation of the gods (theogony), the world (cosmogony), and humanity (anthropogony), and who, in the historical religions proper to an environment of advanced culture, has given rise to profound and at times sublime speculations of theology and mysticism; 2) the soul and its destiny (v. ESCATOLOGIA; REDENZIONE).
IV. R. ACCORDING TO CATHOLIC THEOLOGY. — R., considered objectively according to its substance and the manner in which it is communicated, is natural or supernatural. The existence of God, his creative and providential action, and the moral law engraved in the heart of man are all truths to which human reason can attain by itself: in this case r. is natural both in substance and in the manner by which it is attained. If those truths are confirmed to us by God, either directly or indirectly, r., natural in substance, becomes supernatural in the manner of its communication. If, however, these are truths to which the human mind cannot attain by deriving them from consideration of created things, but only on the basis of a revelation from God—for example, concerning the mysteries of the Unity and Trinity of God and of the Incarnation and Death of the Redeemer—then we have supernatural r., and therefore r. revealed also in substance (v. RIVELAZIONE).
R. is likewise considered by Catholic theology as a moral virtue insofar as it is subordinate to the cardinal virtue of justice, since it is an obligation of justice to render God the homage that is due to him: indeed, it is the most excellent of the moral virtues because, more than any other, it draws one closer to him by carrying out, within the soul and in the external life of the individual and society, all that refers most directly to divine worship (s. Tommaso, Sum. Theol, 2a-2ae, 81, 8). V. CULTO.
From this twofold point of view, the acts of the virtues of r. are divided into internal and external. Internal are devotion, that is, the act of the human will by which a person offers himself to God in order to serve him; an prayer (v.) adoration (v.), which may be purely internal or may manifest itself externally through some gesture of the body: prostration, genuflection, bowing, the joining or extending of the hands, etc. External are those in which the body is also employed, as in the collective manifestations of r., such as the sanctification of feast days, offerings, the Sacrifice of the Mass, and acts in which the individual binds himself before God, such as the oath, the vow, and choral worship.
One can sin against r. through defect or excess, that is, through acts of irreligion or superstition. Irreligious are those acts against the worship of God that sin through defect and therefore dishonor him; they include practical indifference, the tempting of God, simony, and sacrilege. Superstitions are those acts that sin through excess, that is, abuses and deviations from r.; they include idolatry, vain observance, divination, magic, and spiritism (v. under the individual entries).
V. R. E CIVILTÀ. — Only by virtue of the absolute obligatory force imposed by r. upon the moral Law—an imposition that cannot be the effect of acquired habits or agreed human conventions, but must derive from the will of a transcendent legislator who can reward and punish—is the existence of an ordered society made possible. R. is therefore the foundation upon which the social edifice rests; it ensures its cohesion and promotes, together with civil progress, intellectual progress as well—that complex of elements which constitute civilization. Civilization merits this name all the more insofar as religious sentiment remains associated with intellectual sentiment, together with which it was born; for it is precisely the rational element that determines the superiority of a r. and keeps it equally distant from the foolish ignorance of fanaticism and the blind pride of rationalism.
Concerning the development of r. within ancient and modern human groups, and concerning the most suitable method for this kind of study, V. PRIMITIVI, religione dei; RELIGIONI, studio comparato delle.