Science and progress in the context of modernist discourse in the Polish lands at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries Krzysztof Bochenek

<jats:p>The history of debates concerning the relationship between the natural sciences and theology has a long tradition in Western intellectual history. With the advent of the Enlightenment, religion and theology were increasingly marginalised as manifestations of backwardness and gradually excluded from the domain of science. In response, currents emerged within the Church aimed at renewal and adaptation to the profound transformations taking place in the modern world. In its struggle against the proponents of modernism, Pope Pius X issued the encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis in 1907, condemning modernists as enemies of the Church. This decision sparked several years of debate, including within the Polish context. A Polish advocate of modernism, the Capuchin Father Kajetan Wysłouch (Antoni Szech), argued that if the Church wished to emerge from stagnation, it needed to recognise the significance of the great advances in human thought and acknowledge that it was possible to be both a sincere Catholic and a supporter of progress. After leaving the Church, however, he described its teachings as Sisyphean labours, claiming that they were impossible for contemporary people to accept. Another cleric, Father Euzebiusz Stateczny, who concealed his modernist sympathies, proposed an integration of knowledge and faith whereby religion might find support in the achievements of biology and the exact sciences. Bishop Teodorowicz wrote: “If we wish to win over the modern individual to the Church, the faith of the Apostles must also be illumined by the aureole of science, in which the contemporary mind believes devoutly and unreservedly.” Idzi Radziszewski, in turn, observed: “Among the Church’s devoted adherents we find thousands of illustrious names that have rendered immense service to science. Impartial history teaches us that throughout the ages the Church has been a great patron of learning.” Shortly after the First World War, Bishop Pelczar expressed concern about the use of science as an instrument of destruction: “In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, voices were increasingly raised calling for religion to be replaced by modern culture; yet that culture suffered a disgraceful bankruptcy in the recent war, for it did not restrain supposedly Christian nations from acts that were truly barbaric and inhuman, such as poisoning combatants with gas and bombing open cities.” This observation, which acknowledges the achievements of science while simultaneously recognising the threats it may pose to humanity, remains consistent with the position of the Catholic Church in the twenty-first century.</jats:p>