In August 12, 1950, Pius XII issued the encyclical Humani Generis, “concerning certain false opinions which threaten to sap the foundations of Catholic teaching.”1 For the Catholic theologian and philosopher, HG is perhaps the most significant document to come out of Rome in the last fifty years. Although the encyclical covers a broad expanse of modern philosophical and theological questions, the purpose of this article is limited to an inquiry into its positive teaching regarding the natural power of human reason to know God. Furthermore, this teaching will be studied in the light of HG’s critique of existentialism. Thus our aim is to study the teaching of HG on man’s natural power to know God, and on the existentialist approach to that knowledge.
Even a cursory account of the encyclical’s remote background, found in Modernism, and its proximate occasion, furnished by the so-called “new theology” and other post-war trends in Europe, would make a study in itself.2 It will be enough here to note that most of the dangerous doctrines in the air originated from questionable philosophic positions.3 Consequently, a large portion of HG is devoted to these metaphysical and epistemological aberrations which supplied the basis for the censured theological theories. We shall treat in this article only of the principal philosophic trend, namely, existentialism.
https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=2789
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