バートランド・ラッセル「現代のカトリックの知的衰弱」
* 原著： Religion and Science, 1935, chapt.5: Soul and Body
* 出典：牧野力(編)『ラッセル思想辞典』所収
以下は、牧野力氏の要旨訳（ただし字句を少し修正）に原文を追加したものです。
古代において主としてプラトン的だったキリスト教哲学者達の学説も、11世紀以後には主としてアリストテレス的になった。最も偉大なスコラ学者トマス・アクィナス (Thomas Aquinas, 1225頃-1274)は、今日でもカトリック教会における哲学的正統説の基準とされている。
バチカン（法王庁/教皇庁）の統制を受ける教育機関の教師達は、歴史的な関心から、デカルトやロック、カントやヘーゲルの体系を解釈するが、唯一の「真実なる体系」は「熾天使博士（してんし・はかせ）」("seraphic doctor"：イタリアの神学者ボナベントゥラ(Bonaventure)の尊称)の体系であることを明白にしなければならない。
・・・。
教義と結びついた至難な問題についての重要な論議を、一方では単なる冗談として扱い、他方では教義の弁護に使うことは、現代の正統信仰の知的衰弱を示す一つの徴候である。 死後の肉体が蘇生するとの信仰から、死体を火葬にするのに反対、禁止する事にも見られよう。
( The doctrine of Christian philosophers, which was mainly Platonic in the ancient world, became mainly Aristotelian after the eleventh century. Thomas Aquinas (1225- 1274), who is officially considered the best of the scholastics, remains to this day the standard of philosophical orthodoxy in the Roman Catholic Church. Teachers in educational institutions controlled by the Vatican, while they may expound, as matters of historical interest, the systems of Descartes or Locke, Kant or Hegel, must make it clear that the only true system is that of the "seraphic doctor." The utmost permissible licence is to suggest, as his translator does, that he is joking when he discusses what happens at the resurrection of the body to a cannibal whose father and mother were cannibals. Clearly the people whom he and his parents ate have a prior right to the flesh composing his body, so that he will be left destitute when each claims his own. This is a real difficulty for those who believe in the resurrection of the body, which is affirmed by the Apostles' Creed.
It is a mark of the intellectual enfeeblement of orthodoxy in our age that it should retain the dogma while treating as a mere pleasantry a grave discussion of awkward problems connected with it. How real the belief still is may be seen in the objection to cremation derived from it, which is held by many in Protestant countries and by almost all in Catholic countries, even when they are as emancipated as France. )
