Show r r r lGR APELECTVREs Au Ablo Atlilress on t lc Sul > jogt el ReligIon and Science A very fair house greeted Mgr Capel last night and his lecture Is Religion Opposed to Science 1 was listened to with great interest Mgr Capel was introduced intro-duced to the audience by Governor Mur distinguished Mgr Capel of ray as the whom we have all heard I Monsignor in his opening remarks I thanked the Governor but said it would have been better to have termed him the him notorious Mgr Capel This placed and his audience immediately a friendly friend-ly footing and gave to each that sympa evening so thy which always makes an i entertaining I His first illustration was that of a man who dares not balance his books fearing I to find them largest on the wrong side I So it is with a great many in investigating science conflicts between I the apparent is and religion The balance though I usually found to be on the right side find out when men were bold enough to I for themselves He pointed out the great I difference between true science and the facts of nature with which science I has to deal True science said Monsignor Monsig-nor discovers the law which controls these facts The discovery of a fact is not the discovery of a law Nor is a scientific theory of the true relation of these facts science Their law is eternal while the theories regarding that law change The Monsignor illustrated the inaccuracy of common language in speaking of things by saying there was not a person in the audience who would not understand this sentence I will meet you tomorrow at 7 p m just before sunset And yet said Mgr nothing could be more inaccurate than this and if an astronomical friend were appealed to to say wherein the sentence sen-tence was inaccurate he would tell you that the sun never sets This very well illustrated the general unscientific use of language He illustrated the conception of eternal things by saying that we never say that two and two were four or will be four but that two and two are four always have been and ever will be It was nonsense non-sense to say that a man cannot conceive of eternity not otherwise be known by man There is no conflict between revelation and science for they are as two railroad tracks the one He illustrated what substance was by telling the story of the Irishman When asked what the matter was of which the table was composed he replied Never mind When asked what was mind he answered No matter This illustrated the limit of our knowledge of the essence of things Revelation was the making known of things by God directly and which could above the other revelation being the upper one science the lower one and they might travel to the end of the world and there would never be any conflict He denied that there was a single dogma of Holy Church which in any way forbade I for-bade the pursuit of science and the following fol-lowing of its conclusion to a logical result Holy Church only forbade its members to sustain scientific theories and conclusions con-clusions by invoking the authority author-ity of Scripture This was the crime of Galileo and the thing for which he was punished He challenged any person in the audience to cite a single dogma of the Mother Church which in any way conflicted with science The infallibility of the Pope could not determine whether a scientific theory was true or not It was not its domain j its province is the moral world and the in terprepation of Gods will as made known through revelation Science sometimes conflicts with spurious revelation with which you seem to be troubled here to some extent but never with true revelation revela-tion The scientific men of today would have everything their own way as to theories of things were it not for the Catholic Church as they did not care anything for the various denominations of Protestants Mgr could not join in the condemnation of the Middle Ages Ii and their light and learning which was so popular nor condemn the Church for her course when she was the mother and mistress of Europe especially when he remembered that some of the most important discoveries which have advanced the world were made before be-fore the time of Luther and the apostacy of the Protestants Among these things were the art of printing the telescope j the microscope spectacles j the pendulum pendu-lum j the mariners compass j and others He spoke of the work which had been done in discovering the circulation of the blood by the universities of Pisa and Pavia some centuries before Harvey To do Mgr Capel justice is impossible in a brief report and even a verbatim report would be inadequate His manner man-ner of speaking is polished dignified and earnest j it is the manner of a scholar without the stiffness of a university professor pro-fessor He lectures again tomorrow evening his subject being Mans Relations Rela-tions to the Other World |