Humanism

[billcu1]

What exactly is Humanism and what’s the church’s stance on it?

 

[bzkoss236]

One definition puts it:

**Humanism **- An outlook or system of thought attaching prime importance to human rather than divine or supernatural matters. Humanist beliefs stress the potential value and goodness of human beings, emphasize common human needs, and seek solely rational ways of solving human problems.

And as far as I can tell, the Church only condemns Atheistic Humanism.
CCC 2124:

The name “atheism” covers many very different phenomena. One common form is the practical materialism which restricts its needs and aspirations to space and time. Atheistic humanism falsely considers man to be “an end to himself, and the sole maker, with supreme control, of his own history.”[59] Another form of contemporary atheism looks for the liberation of man through economic and social liberation. “It holds that religion, of its very nature, thwarts such emancipation by raising man’s hopes in a future life, thus both deceiving him and discouraging him from working for a better form of life on earth.”[60]

*bolded mine

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Humanism is a product of the Renaissance, or the turning away from matters more theological to matters more human. It was stimulated largely by rediscovering the ancient world. Humanism to a large degree repudiates a Christocentric world in favor of a materialistic conception of human nature and the belief that science trumps both religion and philosophy. Humanist Association in the modern world are largely progressive and atheistic.

Here is an article on humanism from the old Catholic Encyclopedia.

newadvent.org/cathen/07538b.htm

 

[Abu]

In Christian Humanism: A Critique of the Secular City and Its Ideology, 1978, Thomas Molnar points out that over the centuries, so-called Christian Humanism came to be a contradiction in terms, because some Humanists distorted the true relationship between Creator and human creature….many centuries before Darwinian evolutionary ideas became popular. (Creation Rediscovered, Gerard J Keane, TAN 1999, p 289-90).

U.K. Bishop O’Donohue: Catholics, he said, face “the challenge of secular humanism, the question of moral values in a scientific-technological culture, and the increasing tensions caused by reason sundered from faith.”

Bl John Paul II agreed with his good friend theologian Henri de Lubac that atheistic humanism had through the Gulag and Auschwitz led to the utilitarianism that makes people into toys for manipulation by others, and analysed:
“the factors that are obstacles in the process of humanism. Among the most common should be mentioned the loss of faith in reason and its ability to arrive at the truth, the refusal of transcendence, nihilism, relativism, the forgetfulness of being, the denial of the soul, the prevalence of the irrational or feeling, the fear of the future and existential anxiety……Christian humanism, as St Thomas demonstrated, has an ability to preserve the meaning of man and his dignity.” [Message to the International Thomistic Congress, *L’Osservatore Romano, English ed., October 15, 2003,6. In The Mind That Is Catholic, Fr James V Schall, S.J., The Catholic University of America Press, 2008, p 182].

 

[Lotharson]

Actually, one can also be a Christian humanist.

While being weak and sometimes truly wicked, man is also capable of wonderful deeds, as Jesus made clear in some of his parables.

I believe that God made the laws for me, but not that God made man for the laws, as many pagan religions taught.

I believe that every human being is extremely valuable through the image of God in her.

So yes, I’m a Christian humanist who is fed up with antitheists hijacking the word.

Lovely greetings from Germany.
Liebe Grüsse aus Deutschland.

Lothars Sohn - Lothar’s son
lotharlorraine.wordpress.com

 

[billcu1]

In Christian Humanism: A Critique of the Secular City and Its Ideology, 1978, Thomas Molnar points out that over the centuries, so-called Christian Humanism came to be a contradiction in terms, because some Humanists distorted the true relationship between Creator and human creature….many centuries before Darwinian evolutionary ideas became popular. (Creation Rediscovered, Gerard J Keane, TAN 1999, p 289-90).

U.K. Bishop O’Donohue: Catholics, he said, face “the challenge of secular humanism, the question of moral values in a scientific-technological culture, and the increasing tensions caused by reason sundered from faith.”

Bl John Paul II agreed with his good friend theologian Henri de Lubac that atheistic humanism had through the Gulag and Auschwitz led to the utilitarianism that makes people into toys for manipulation by others, and analysed:
“the factors that are obstacles in the process of humanism. Among the most common should be mentioned the loss of faith in reason and its ability to arrive at the truth, the refusal of transcendence, nihilism, relativism, the forgetfulness of being, the denial of the soul, the prevalence of the irrational or feeling, the fear of the future and existential anxiety……Christian humanism, as St Thomas demonstrated, has an ability to preserve the meaning of man and his dignity.” [Message to the International Thomistic Congress, *L’Osservatore Romano

, English ed., October 15, 2003,6. In The Mind That Is Catholic, Fr James V Schall, S.J., The Catholic University of America Press, 2008, p 182].

I did read a wikipedia article too on humanism. It said that secularism has become mixed or synomynous with the philosophy of humanism. The two are distinct also.