AMERICAN CATHOLICS AND SCIENCE 519 



Secretariat formally on a world-wide scale, a decision put into 

 effect at the Vienna Congress of Pax Romana. The Executive 

 Secretary-Treasurer of the Guild was elected a member of the 

 Council. Thus the Guild now has international connections 

 and works with Catholic scientists throughout the world for a 

 better understanding between science and religion. 



The Guild has grown in stature and membership, but many 

 Catholic scientists remain apart. Some object to it, as we have 

 seen, on the grounds that such an organization would tend to 

 separate Catholic scientists from their colleagues. Such divi- 

 siveness is diametrically opposed to the purposes of the Guild. 

 In that case, then, why any Catholic professional organization? 

 Why a guild of Catholic physicians, of Catholic attorneys.? 

 In each instance the answer is the same: Facets of these dis- 

 ciplines reflect philosophical and theological problems. If the 

 lamentable mistakes of the past are to be avoided. Catholic 

 physicians, lawyers and scientists must meet with philosophers 

 and theologians, perhaps even in harmonious dispute. The 

 time of the omnicompetent man of the Renaissance is past. No 

 present-day Pico would set out calmly to write de omni re 

 scibili et quihusdam aliis. The syntheses of the great scho- 

 lastics, embodying the positive knowledge of their own time, 

 retain their value, but the flood of discovery since then demands 

 evaluation — and the guidance — of their thought. European 

 scientists have engaged in this effort, and have considerable 

 influence on their contemporaries. In France the Union Fran- 

 caise des Scientifiques Catholiques, and in Great Britain the 

 Philosophy of Science Group of the Newman Association hold 

 regular meetings at which philosophical and theological ques- 

 tions raised by science are discussed. The annual Spode House 

 Conference of the latter group is especially stimulating. 



Catholic scientists in the United States tend to avoid the 

 philosophical aspects of science, and one finds few of them in 

 organizations like the Philosophy of Science Association, where 

 they should be active in relating the findings of modern science 

 to scholastic philosophy. 



