sistent: in Catholics, it would be not only inconsistent but a heresy.
The Council of the Vatican has with great precision condemned this error in these words: 'Catholics can have no just cause of calling into doubt the faith they have received from the teaching authority (magisterium) of the Church, and of suspending their assent, until they shall have completed a scientific demonstration of the truth of their faith.'[1]
Again, the Council lays down, in respect to 'sciences properly so called, a principle which a fortiori applies to 'historical science,' with signal impropriety so called, by declaring 'that every assertion contrary to the truth of enlightened faith is false … Wherefore all faithful Christians are not only forbidden to defend as legitimate conclusions of science all such opinions as are known to be contrary to the doctrine of faith, especially if they have been condemned by the Church, but are altogether bound to hold them to be errors, which put on the fallacious appearance of truth.'[1]
I have said that the treatment of history can only be called science with signal impropriety; and for the following reasons:
According to both philosophers and theologians, science is the habit of the mind conversant with necessary truth; that is, truth which admits of demonstration, and of the certainty which excludes the possibility of its contradictory being true.
According to the scholastic philosophy, science is defined as follows:
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