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The Crisis of Faith | By Father John Hardon, S.J.

The Crisis of Faith | By Father John Hardon, S.J.

The Crisis of Faith | By Father John Hardon, S.J. Print-friendly version

Every rational human being believes. When we believe we accept the word of another person. Someone knows that something is true, either from experience or reason, and we accept what he tells us because we trust that he knows what he is talking about and is not deceiving us.

On this basis the only unbeliever would be a person who is completely out of his mind. We believe that the persons whom we call our father and mother are our parents. We believe that what we are buying is what the store tells us is worth paying for. We believe that the lessons we learned in childhood are true. Who would even enter marriage unless both partners believed in the spouse with whom they were entering matrimony?

In a word, faith is part of our very nature as rational human beings. However, it is one thing to believe in other people and something else to believe in God. To believe in what people tell us is called human faith. To believe in what God has revealed is called Divine faith. To be still more clear, Divine faith properly so called is the assent of our intellect to what God has revealed, not because we comprehend what God tells us it true, but only because we accept a truth on His authority who can neither deceive, or be deceived.

God cannot deceive because He is all good and therefore cannot tell a lie. He cannot be deceived because He knows all things and therefore can never be wrong.

St. John the Evangelist raises one of the most embarrassing questions in the Bible. How is it, he asked, that we who are so ready to believe in men are so slow to believe in God? The answer is painfully obvious. We are so slow to believe in God because what He demands of us is nothing less than to accept incomprehensible mysteries which are beyond our human capacity even to conceive before they are revealed, and beyond our grasp to fully penetrate even after they are revealed.

We see that faith and revelation are related as cause and effect. God reveals Himself, who He is and what He wants; if we respond we believe.

All of this has been a prelude to the real message of this article, for the present crisis in the Catholic Church is really a crisis of faith.

What is the Crisis?

A crisis in general is a situation that was unexpected but that poses certain grave problems for urgent solution. It is in the nature of a disaster, but not quite. More accurately, it could be described as impending disaster that calls for immediate and drastic action. If action is promptly and properly taken, the impending disaster will not occur. In fact, as a result of meeting the serious problems that a crisis raises, great good will come from having risen to the critical situation.

When we say that the Church is faced with a crisis of faith, we mean just that. It is a critical period in the Church's life when millions of her faithful are confused about their beliefs. They are uncertain about what as Catholics they are to hold. And as a result they are emotionally insecure, bewildered and, in Christ's words, wandering as sheep without a shepherd.

Wherein precisely lies the crisis? It might be described as a communitarian state of mind which differs somewhat in different people. But many of them are in one of three mental attitudes towards even the most sacred mysteries of Divine revelation.

Some are in open rebellion against the faith of their fathers. They resent the fact that, as some will tell you, they had been brainwashed to believe what modern science, or scholarship, or study, or the social sciences, or psychology now show to have been useful props in the past, or perhaps convenient labels for the unknown, but these beliefs are no longer tenable today.

Other people are not yet ready to discard the Faith they may still cherish with one part of their being, maybe for emotional or ritual or personal reasons. But they have serious doubts about so much of what Catholics used to believe with the naivete of children. Some articles of faith they are willing to admit, but others they have strong reservations about.

There is so much talk nowadays about collegiality that what used to be called the papal primacy is, for such people, no longer an established article of faith.

There are so many theories going the rounds about transfinalization and transignification that belief in the real bodily presence of Christ in the Most Holy Eucharist, for such people, is uncertain to say the least. That is why some priests are so casual in their indiscriminate giving of Holy Communion to anyone, whether Catholic or Protestant or, for that matter, Jewish or Hindu.

There is so much speculation everywhere, they feel, about Christ's personality, that it seems to them that to bring Christ down to our own level we must make Him a human person, who perhaps, in the Nestorian fashion, was also divine; but He only gradually developed His full awareness of who He was. He could not, it is thought, have been truly human if from the first moment of His existence He was conscious of His dual identity.

There are so many problems raised by the demographic experts, and the social scientists about the expanding world population, that not a few people seriously doubt the teaching of the Church on contraception. And besides, rearing a normal family in contraceptive societies like America would place an intolerable burden on Catholics. So they settle for questioning the Church's magisterium and follow instead the teaching of the Church's sworn enemies.

Among priests, they have heard and read so much about being open to the Spirit, so much about problems of identity, so much about optional celibacy, so much about leadership instead of authority, about relating to the world, about cultic mentality instead of sound involvement, about the Eucharist as a meal, and confession being emotionally harmful, so much about a functional priesthood, so much about the hierarchy as teachers, indeed, but not divinely authorized to command obedience.

We have acquired a whole new vocabulary about relevance, and involvement and harmonization and power politics and the third way and sensitivity programs and ritual preoccupation and respectful disobedience and communal discernment and institutionalism, that it is no wonder so many have serious doubts not only about this or that feature of Catholic life, but even about its value at all.

Given all that is happening, a third group of people are not rejecting the Faith or in serious doubt about Catholic doctrine, but they are bewildered. Modern popes have addressed in their documents the synonyms for bewilderment that besets millions of the still faithful faithful. They are confused, and distraught, and perplexed, and worried and some are all but crushed by the spectacle of a post-conciliar Church that is caught up in an interior convulsion of spirit that has rocked all of Christendom to its foundations.

In spite of brave words to the contrary, anyone familiar with what is happening is concerned; and the spectacle shows no signs of an early abating.

Why the Crisis?

Sheer realism, then, requires that we admit there is a crisis of faith in the Church. What are we to make of it? How to explain it? Why is there a crisis at all? By now many explanations have been given and they all have merit, insofar as they honestly face the facts and concede what those who still believe firmly are convinced is true: that for numerous still nominal Catholics, and for not a few of their clerical, religious and lay leaders, the unqualified faith of Catholic Christianity has been weakened and for some of them has been lost.

What complicates the issue and, in fact, is part of the crisis, is that not infrequently those who no longer interiorly believe in the integrity of God's revelation insist that they are not only Christians and Catholics but frankly better Christians and better Catholics than those whom they condescendingly call pre-counciliar, or anti-intellectual, or simply unaware of what is going on.







There is no point here in answering the learned objections brought up against the historic faith of the Catholic Church. Nor is there room in the present context for dealing at length with those who speak of discontinuity of faith in place of continuity, or who opt for a continuing revelation that erases the notion of a completed revelation in the person of Jesus Christ and the apostolic age, or who insist on redefining every single premise of the Church's perennial teaching, in favor of a process theology in which everything - including God - is said to be in perpetual and never-ending change.

Why did such a crisis come about in the first place? Surely no phenomenon is without some explanation, and this one better be explained. The explanation is not hard to find. There is a crisis of faith in the Catholic Church because there has been an intrusion of alien ideas.

The moment we say this, however, we are immediately confronted with the two terms, "intrusion" and "alien ideas," for the simple reason that those responsible for the crisis will deny either that there has been an intrusion or that the new ideas are anything else except that they are "new," but they should not be called alien.

An idea is alien to any religion when it openly contradicts what that religion stands for. For example: the Catholic Church has always believed that God is all perfect because He is infinite. There are now writers, ostensibly Catholic, who say the opposite, that God is finite and, in fact, He needs us to reach whatever perfection He will eventually attain.

The Catholic Church has always believed that God became man in the Person of Jesus Christ. There are now learned writers who deny this: they believe that Jesus is somehow divine because God was close to Him, but He is really only human, the Man from Nazareth.

The Catholic Church has always believed that Christian marriage is an indissoluble union of one man and one woman until death. There are now presumably Catholic moralists who say that is part of the past. From now on (they say) even sacramental marriages can and should be dissolved with the freedom to enter a second or a third partnership after divorce.

The Catholic Church has always believed that Jesus Christ practiced the counsels of chastity, poverty, and obedience, and those who receive the grace are urged to follow His example. But now there are ostensibly Catholic proponents of a new spirituality that erases this whole tradition. Instead of celibacy they propose meaningful relationships with persons of the opposite or same sex; instead of actual poverty they would substitute a subjective concern for the poor, and instead of obedience they promote shared responsibility or group consensus to replace authority.

But if these ideas are alien, in the sense of foreign to the Catholic philosophy of life, are they intrusions? Yes, they are on several counts, as anyone who knows what is taking place in the world can testify.

They are first of all an intrusion because they are unjustified by the premises of authentic Roman Catholicism. A finite God is not an infinite God; a merely human Jesus is not the Son of God who became man for our salvation; a sacramental priesthood is not a merely functional ministry; an indissoluble marriage is not a dissoluble marriage; and a purely subjective poverty or nominal celibacy or verbal obedience are not the evangelical counsels that the Church has declared were revealed to us in the life and teaching of the Savior.

Either the Catholic Church remains constant in her fundamental articles of faith, over the centuries, or she is no longer the Church founded by Christ.

These alien ideas are furthermore an intrusion because for many persons they have literally invaded people's minds by unsuspected credence being given to things that appeared orthodox but are in fact heterodox.

It is not to lay blame on particular individuals whose names by now are commonplace to anyone professionally in the sacred sciences. What is beyond question is that in many, perhaps most, cases when these vagrant ideas were first ventilated they seemed so plausible, even persuasive, that it is not surprising there have been so many victims of this massive assault on the believing Catholic mind.

But there is one more reason that must sadly be added to explain why it is justifiable to call what we are describing an invasion of alien ideas. An invasion is, by definition, done not only by an outside force and not only surreptitiously. It is also done coercively.

Of course it is not always by physical force, although physical violence even now is being exercised against millions of our fellow Christians in China, and Africa, where the most inhuman means are used to break down the resistance of priests, religious and the laity - to give up their Catholic heritage.

What is meant by intrusion is the coercive pressure: psychological and social, economic and legal, academic and professional, educational and governmental that cumulatively can become all but irresistible to conformity with the people and agencies and institutions that are in control of today's mind-shaping structures and social communications.

That some of these compulsive elements have also entered the sacred precincts of the Church's organization is not strange. There is a crusade of conformism in societies like America. Woe to anyone who dares to raise a voice in protest or who invokes the rights of conscience to protect himself from those who, in the name of conscience, are demanding allegiance to doctrinaire theories of a structure-less Church, or a cult-less priesthood, or a ruleless religious life, or that every marriage is open to ecclesiastical annulment.

Just one more observation, a plea for confidence, which means implicit trust in God.

No one who knows what the situation is, doubts that the Catholic Church is going through a veritable emergency of faith. What is an emergency but a time for urgent decisions, that is discriminating judgment? What leaders of the Church need to do today is not be shaken by the storm that is raging all around them, but to hold on literally for dear life to what Christ has revealed, to what has been defended for us by the champions of orthodoxy like Athanasius, Augustine, Jerome and Gregory the Great, lived out before us by saints and mystics like Benedict, Francis and Ignatius Loyola, like Clare, Margaret Mary and Teresa, like Elizabeth Seton and Thomas More, and experienced by us in whatever span of life we have so far lived.

There are seductive voices everywhere and some are very erudite. They may also claim numbers on their side. But no, the numbers in favor of the true Faith and the true Church are legion. They are all the myriad souls since Christ ascended to His Father who are now in the Church Triumphant. They are our intercessors before the throne of God, as they are also our consolation that we are not deceived. The present crisis is really a challenge or, better, a glorious opportunity to prove our loyalty to Christ the Truth so that one day we may possess Christ our Life who told us not to fear, "I have overcome the world." So shall we, with the help of His grace, and the Church will be the better and stronger for the experience of these critical times.

Prayer

Lord Jesus, you foretold that your Church would suffer opposition and persecution, even as you did. You declared that, so far from being anxious or worried, we should actually rejoice when the world hates us and says all manner of evil against us, for your Name. Give us the courage we need to resist the onslaught of seductive untruth. Above all, give us the confidence to realize that the trials of this life are a prelude to the glory that waits us, provided we have remained unshaken in our allegiance to you and your spouse, the Holy Catholic Church, of which you are the Teacher and the Guide. Amen.


This article originally appeared in the March/April 1996 of The Catholic Faith. Like many of Fr. Hardon’s articles, it was both timely and timeless.

---

Father John Hardon, S.J. (b. June 18th, 1914 - d. December 30, 2000) was the Executive Editor of The Catholic Faith magazine. He was ordained on his 33rd birthday, June 18th, 1947 at West Baden Springs, Indiana. Father Hardon was a member of the Society of Jesus for 63 years and an ordained priest for 52 years. Father Hardon held a Masters degree in Philosophy from Loyola University and a Doctorate in Theology from Gregorian University in Rome. He has taught at the Jesuit School of Theology at Loyola University in Chicago and the Institute for Advanced Studies in Catholic Doctrine at St. John's University in New York. A prolific writer, he authored over forty books, including The Catholic Catechism, Religions of the World, Protestant Churches of America, Christianity in the Twentieth Century, Theology of Prayer, The Catholic Lifetime Reading Plan and two question and answer catechisms on the Holy Father's encyclicals The Gospel of Life and The Splendor of Truth. In addition, he was actively involved with a number of organizations, such as the Institute on Religious Life, Marian Catechists, Eternal Life and Inter Mirifica, which publishes his catechetical courses. For more about Fr. Hardon, visit this page at Dave Armstrong’s website.

CATHOLIC LIBRARY: Lamentabili Sane (1907)

CATHOLIC LIBRARY: Lamentabili Sane (1907)

Lamentabili Sane

The Syllabus of Errors
(Condemning the Errors of the Modernists)
Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office
July 3, 1907 WITH TRULY LAMENTABLE RESULTS, our age, casting aside all restraint in its search for the ultimate causes of things, frequently pursues novelties so ardently that it rejects the legacy of the human race. Thus it falls into very serious errors, which are even more serious when they concern sacred authority, the interpretation of Sacred Scripture, and the principal mysteries of Faith. The fact that many Catholic writers also go beyond the limits determined by the Fathers and the Church herself is extremely regrettable. In the name of higher knowledge and historical research, (they say), they are looking for that progress of dogmas which is, in reality, nothing but the corruption of dogmas. These errors are being daily spread among the faithful. Lest they captivate the faithful's minds and corrupt the purity of their faith, His Holiness, Pius X, by Divine Providence, Pope, has decided that the chief errors should be noted and condemned by the Office of this Holy Roman and Universal Congregation. Therefore, after a very diligent investigation and consultation with the Reverend Consultors, the Most Eminent and Reverend Lord Cardinals, the General Inquisitors in matters of faith and morals have judged the following proposals to be condemned and proscribed. In fact, by this current decree, they are condemned and proscribed.

1. The ecclesiastical law which prescribes that books concerning the Divine Scriptures are subject to previous examination does not apply to critical scholars and students of scientific exegesis of the Old and New Testament.
2. The Church's interpretation of the Sacred Books is by no means to be rejected; nevertheless, it is subject to the more accurate judgment and correction of the exegetes.
3. From the ecclesiastical judgments and censures passed against free and more scientific exegesis, one can conclude that the Faith the Church proposes contradicts history and that Catholic teaching cannot really be reconciled with the true origins of the Christian religion.
4. Even by dogmatic definitions the Church's magisterium cannot determine the genuine sense of the Sacred Scriptures.
5. Since the Deposit of Faith contains only revealed truths, the Church has no right to pass judgment on the assertions of the human sciences.
6. The "Church learning" and the "Church teaching" collaborate in such a way in defining truths that it only remains for the "Church teaching" to sanction the opinions of the "Church learning."
7. In proscribing errors, the Church cannot demand any internal assent from the faithful by which the judgments she issues are to be embraced.
8. They are free from all blame who treat lightly the condemnations passed by the Sacred Congregation of the Index or by the Roman Congregations.
9. They display excessive simplicity or ignorance who believe that God is really the author of the Sacred Scriptures.
10. The inspiration of the books of the Old Testament consists in this: The Israelite writers handed down religious doctrines under a peculiar aspect which was either little or not at all known to the Gentiles.
11. Divine inspiration does not extend to all of Sacred Scriptures so that it renders its parts, each and every one, free from every error.
12. If he wishes to apply himself usefully to Biblical studies, the exegete must first put aside all preconceived opinions about the supernatural origins of Sacred Scripture and interpret it the same as any other merely human document.
13. The Evangelists themselves, as well as the Christians of the second and third generations, artificially arranged the evangelical parables. In such a way they explained the scanty fruit of the preaching of Christ among the Jews.
14. In many narrations the Evangelists recorded, not so much things that are true, as things which, even though false, they judged to be more profitable for their readers.
15. Until the time the canon was defined and constituted, the Gospels were increased by additions and corrections. Therefore there remained in them only a faint and uncertain trace of the doctrine of Christ.
16. The narrations of John are not properly history, but a mystical contemplation of the Gospel. The discourses contained in his Gospel are theological meditations, lacking historical truth concerning the mystery of salvation.
17. The fourth Gospel exaggerated miracles not only in order that the extraordinary might stand out but also in order that it might become more suitable for showing forth the work and glory of the Word Incarnate.
18. John claims for himself the quality of witness concerning Christ. In reality, however, he is only a distinguished witness of the Christian life, or the life of Christ in the Church at the close of the First Century.
19. Heterodox exegetes have expressed the true sense of the Scriptures more faithfully than Catholic exegetes.
20. Revelation could be nothing else than the consciousness man acquired of his revelation to God.
21. Revelation, constituting the object of the Catholic faith, was not completed with the Apostles.
22. The dogmas the Church holds out as revealed are not truths which have fallen from heaven. They are an interpretation of religious facts which the human mind has acquired by laborious effort.
23. Opposition may, and actually does, exist between the facts narrated in Sacred Scripture and the Church's dogmas which rest on them. Thus the critic may reject as false facts the Church holds as most certain.
24. The exegete who constructs premises from which it follows that dogmas are historically false or doubtful is not to be reproved as long as he does not directly deny the dogmas themselves.
25. The assent of faith ultimately rests on a mass of probabilities.
26. The dogmas of the Faith are to be held only according to their practical sense; that is to say, as perceptive norms of conduct and not as norms of believing.
27. The divinity of Jesus Christ is not proved from the Gospels. It is a dogma which the Christian conscience has derived from the notion of the Messias.
28. While He was exercising His ministry, Jesus did not speak with the object of teaching He was the Messias, nor did His miracles tend to prove it.
29. It is permissible to grant that the Christ of history is far inferior to the Christ Who is the object of faith.
30. In all the evangelical texts the name "Son of God" is equivalent only to that of "Messias." It does not in the least way signify that Christ is the true and natural Son of God.
31. The doctrine concerning Christ taught by Paul, John and the Councils of Nicea, Ephesus and Chalcedon is not that which Jesus taught but that which the Christian conscience conceived concerning Jesus.
32. It is impossible to reconcile the natural sense of the Gospel texts with the sense taught by our theologians concerning the conscience and the infallible knowledge of Jesus Christ.
33. Everyone who is not led by preconceived opinions can readily see that either Jesus professed an error concerning the immediate Messianic coming or the greater part of His doctrine as contained in the Gospels is destitute of authenticity.
34. The critics can ascribe to Christ a knowledge without limits only on a hypothesis which cannot be historically conceived and which is repugnant to the moral sense. That hypothesis is that Christ as man possessed the knowledge of God and yet was unwilling to communicate the knowledge of a great many things to His disciples and posterity.
35. Christ did not always possess the consciousness of His Messianic dignity.
36. The Resurrection of the Savior is not properly a fact of the historical order. It is a fact of merely the supernatural order (neither demonstrated nor demonstrable) which the Christian conscience gradually derived from other facts.
37. In the beginning, faith in the Resurrection of Christ was not so much in the fact itself of the Resurrection, as in the immortal life of Christ with God.
38. The doctrine of the expiatory death of Christ is Pauline and not evangelical.
39. The opinions concerning the origin of the Sacraments which the Fathers of Trent held and which certainly influenced their dogmatic canons are very different from those which now rightly exist among historians who examine Christianity.
40. The Sacraments had their origin in the fact that the Apostles and their successors, swayed and moved by circumstances and events, interpreted some idea and intention of Christ.
41. The Sacraments are intended merely to recall to man's mind the ever-beneficent presence of the Creator.
42. The Christian community imposed the necessity of Baptism, adopted it as a necessary rite, and added to it the obligation of the Christian profession.
43. The practice of administering Baptism to infants was a disciplinary evolution, which became one of the causes why the Sacrament was divided into two, namely, Baptism and Penance.
44. There is nothing to prove that the rite of the Sacrament of Confirmation was employed by the Apostles. The formal distinction of the two Sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation does not pertain to the history of primitive Christianity.
45. Not everything which Paul narrates concerning the institution of the Eucharist (1 Corinthians 11:23-35) is to be taken historically.
46. In the primitive Church the concept of the Christian sinner reconciled by the authority of the Church did not exist. Only very slowly did the Church accustom herself to this concept. As a matter of fact, even after Penance was recognized as an institution of the Church, it was not called a Sacrament since it would be held as a disgraceful Sacrament.
47. The words of the Lord, "Receive the Holy Spirit; whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained" (John 20:22-23), in no way refer to the Sacrament of Penance, in spite of what it pleased the Fathers of Trent to say.
48. In his Epistle (Chapter 5:14-15) James did not intent to promulgate a Sacrament of Christ but only commend a pious custom. If in this custom he happens to distinguish a means of grace, it is not in that rigorous manner in which it was taken by the theologians who laid down the notion and number of the sacraments.
49. When the Christian supper gradually assumed the nature of a liturgical action those who customarily presided over the supper acquired the sacerdotal character.
50. The elders who fulfilled the office of watching over the gatherings of the faithful were instituted by the Apostles as priests or bishops to provide the necessary ordering of the increasing communities and not properly for the perpetuation of the Apostolic mission and power.
51. It is impossible that Matrimony could have become a Sacrament of the new law until later in the Church since it was necessary that a full theological explication of the doctrine of grace and the Sacraments should first take place before Matrimony should be held as a Sacrament.
52. It was far from the mind of Christ to found a Church as a society which would continue on earth for a long course of centuries. On the contrary, in the mind of Christ the kingdom of heaven together with the end of the world was about to come immediately.
53. The organic constitution of the Church is not immutable. Like human society, Christian society is subject to a perpetual evolution.
54. Dogmas, Sacraments and hierarchy, both their notion and reality, are only interpretations and evolutions of the Christian intelligence which have increased and perfected by an external series of additions the little germ latent in the Gospel.
55. Simon Peter never even suspected that Christ entrusted the primacy in the Church to him.
56. The Roman Church became the head of all the churches, not through the ordinance of Divine Providence, but merely through political conditions.
57. The Church has shown that she is hostile to the progress of the natural and theological sciences.
58. Truth is no more immutable than man himself, since it evolved with him, in him, and through him. (It is not Truth that evolves with man,  It is man's understanding of Truth  that evolves with him)
59. Christ did not teach a determined body of doctrine applicable to all times and all men, but rather inaugurated a religious movement adapted or to be adapted to different times and places.
60. Christian Doctrine was originally Judaic. Through successive evolutions it became first Pauline, then Joannine, finally Hellenic and universal.
61. It may be said without paradox that there is no chapter of Scripture, from the first of Genesis to the last of the Apocalypse, which contains a doctrine absolutely identical with that which the Church teaches on the same matter. For the same reason, therefore, no chapter of Scripture has the same sense for the critic and the theologian.
62. The chief articles of the Apostles' Creed did not have the same sense for the Christians of the first age as they have for the Christians of our time.
63. The Church shows that she is incapable of effectively maintaining evangelical ethics since she obstinately clings to immutable doctrines which cannot be reconciled with modern progress.
64. Scientific progress demands that the concepts of Christian doctrine concerning God, creation, revelation, the Person of the Incarnate Word, and Redemption be re-adjusted.
65. Modern Catholicism can be reconciled with true science only if it is transformed into a non-dogmatic Christianity; that is to say, into a broad and liberal Protestantism.

The following Thursday, the fourth day of the same month and year, all these matters were accurately reported to our Most Holy Lord, Pope Pius X. His Holiness approved and confirmed the decree of the Most Eminent Fathers and ordered that each and every one of the above-listed propositions be held by all as condemned and proscribed.
Peter Palombelli
Notary, Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith

CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Modernism

CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Modernism

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Modernism

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• Origin of the Word
• Theory of Theological Modernism
  • The essential error of Modernism
  • Catholic and Modernist Notions of Dogma Compared
• Various Degrees of Modernism and its Criterion
• Proofs of the Foregoing Views
• Modernist Aims Explained by its Essential Error
• Modernist Propositions Explained by its Essential Error
• The Modernist Movement
• The Philosophical Origin and Consequences of Modernism
  • The Origin
  • The Consequences
• The Psychological Causes of Modernism
• Pontifical Documents Concerning Modernism
• Reference Material
  • Protestant Sources
  • Modernist Sources
  • Catholic Sources

Origin of the word

Etymologically, modernism means an exaggerated love of what is modern, an infatuation for modern ideas, "the abuse of what is modern", as the Abbé Gaudaud explains (La Foi catholique, I, 1908, p. 248). The modern ideas of which we speak are not as old as the period called "modern times". Though Protestantism has generated them little by little, it did not understand from the beginning that such would be its sequel. There even exists a conservative Protestant party which is one with the Church in combating modernism. In general we may say that modernism aims at that radical transformation of human thought in relation to God, man, the world, and life, here and hereafter, which was prepared by Humanism and eighteenth-century philosophy, and solemnly promulgated at the French Revolution. J.J. Rousseau, who treated an atheistical philosopher of his time as a modernist, seems to have been the first to use the word in this sense ("Correspondance à M. D.", 15 Jan. 1769). Littré (Dictionnaire), who cites the passage; explains: "Modernist, one who esteems modern times above antiquity". After that, the word seems to have been forgotten, till the time of the Catholic publicist Périn (1815-1905), professor at the University of Louvain, 1844-1889. This writer, while apologizing for the coinage, describes "the humanitarian tendencies of contemporary society" as modernism. The term itself he defines as "the ambition to eliminate God from all social life". With this absolute modernism he associates a more temperate form, which he declares to be nothing less than "liberalism of every degree and shade" ("Le Modernisme dans l'Église d'après les lettres inéditesde Lamennais", Paris, 1881). During the early years of the present century, especially about 1905 and 1906, the tendency to innovation which troubled the Italian dioceses, and especially the ranks of the young clergy, was taxed with modernism. Thus at Christmas, 1905, the bishops of the ecclesiastical provinces of Turin and Vercelli, in a circular letter of that date, uttered grave warnings against what they called "Modernismo nel clero" (Modernism among the clergy). Several pastoral letters of the year 1906 made use of the same term; among others we may mention the Lenten charge of Cardinal Nava, Archbishop of Catania, to his clergy, a letter of Cardinal Bacilieri, Bishop of Verona, dated 22 July, 1906 and a letter of Mgr Rossi, Archbishop of Acerenza and Matera. "Modernismo e Modernisti", a work by Abbate Cavallanti which was published towards the end of 1906, gives long extracts from these letters. The name "modernism" was not to the liking of the reformers. The propriety of the new term was discussed even amongst good Catholics. When the Decree "Lamentabili" appeared, Mgr Baudrillart expressed his pleasure at not finding the word "modernism" mentioned in it (Revue pratique d'apologetique, IV, p. 578). He considered the term "too vague". Besides it seemed to insinuate "that the Church condemns everything modern". The Encyclical "Pascendi" (8 Sept., 1907) put an end to the discussion. It bore the official title, "De Modernistarum doctrinis". The introduction declared that the name commonly given to the upholders of the new errors was not inapt. Since then the modernists themselves have acquiesced in the use of the name, though they have not admitted its propriety (Loisy, "Simples réflexions sur le decret 'Lamentabili' et sur l'encyclique 'Pascendi' du 8 Sept., 1907", p. 14; "Il programma dei modernisti": note at the beginning).

Theory of theological Modernism

The essential error of Modernism

A full definition of modernism would be rather difficult. First it stands for certain tendencies, and secondly for a body of doctrine which, if it has not given birth to these tendencies (practice often precedes theory), serves at any rate as their explanation and support. Such tendencies manifest themselves in different domains. They are not united in each individual, nor are they always and everywhere found together. Modernist doctrine, too, may be more or less radical, and it is swallowed in doses that vary with each one's likes and dislikes. In the Encyclical "Pascendi", Pius X says that modernism embraces every heresy. M. Loisy makes practically the same statement when he writes that "in reality all Catholic theology, even in its fundamental principles the general philosophy of religion, Divine law, and the laws that govern our knowledge of God, come up for judgment before this new court of assize" (Simples réflexions, p. 24). Modernism is a composite system: its assertions and claims lack that principle which unites the natural faculties in a living being. The Encyclical "Pascendi" was the first Catholic synthesis of the subject. Out of scattered materials it built up what looked like a logical system. Indeed friends and foes alike could not but admire the patient skill that must have been needed to fashion something like a coordinated whole. In their answer to the Encyclical, "Il programma dei Modernisti", the Modernists tried to retouch this synthesis. Previous to all this, some of the Italian bishops, in their pastoral letters, had attempted such a synthesis. We would particularly mention that of Mgr Rossi, Bishop of Acerenza and Matera. In this respect, too, Abbate Cavallanti's book, already referred to, deserves mention. Even earlier still, German and French Protestants had done some synthetical work in the same direction. Prominent among them are Kant, "Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der reinen Vernunft" (1803); Schleiermacher, "Der christliche Glaube" (1821-1822); and A. Sabatier, "Esquisse d'une philosophie de la religion d'aprè la psychologie et l'histoire" (1897). The general idea of modernism may be best expressed in the words of Abbate Cavallanti, though even here there is a little vagueness: "Modernism is modern in a false sense of the word; it is a morbid state of conscience among Catholics, and especially young Catholics, that professes manifold ideals, opinions, and tendencies. From time to time these tendencies work out into systems, that are to renew the basis and superstructure of society, politics, philosophy, theology, of the Church herself and of the Christian religion". A remodelling, a renewal according to the ideas of the twentieth century — such is the longing that possesses the modernists. "The avowed modernists", says M. Loisy, "form a fairly definite group of thinking men united in the common desire to adapt Catholicism to the intellectual, moral and social needs of today" (op. cit., p. 13). "Our religious attitude", as "Il programma dei modernisti" states (p. 5, note l), "is ruled by the single wish to be one with Christians and Catholics who live in harmony with the spirit of the age". The spirit of this plan of reform may be summarized under the following heads:

• A spirit of complete emancipation, tending to weaken ecclesiastical authority; the emancipation of science, which must traverse every field of investigation without fear of conflict with the Church; the emancipation of the State, which should never be hampered by religious authority; the emancipation of the private conscience whose inspirations must not be overridden by papal definitions or anathemas; the emancipation of the universal conscience, with which the Church should be ever in agreement;
• A spirit of movement and change, with an inclination to a sweeping form of evolution such as abhors anything fixed and stationary;
• A spirit of reconciliation among all men through the feelings of the heart. Many and varied also are the modernist dreams of an understanding between the different Christian religions, nay, even between religion and a species of atheism, and all on a basis of agreement that must be superior to mere doctrinal differences.

Such are the fundamental tendencies. As such, they seek to explain, justify, and strengthen themselves in an error, to which therefore one might give the name of "essential" modernism. What is this error? It is nothing less than the perversion of dogma. Manifold are the degrees and shades of modernist doctrine on the question of our relations with God. But no real modernist keeps the Catholic notions of dogma intact. Are you doubtful as to whether a writer or a book is modernist in the formal sense of the word? Verify every statement about dogma; examine his treatment of its origin, its nature, its sense, its authority. You will know whether you are dealing with a veritable modernist or not, according to the way in which the Catholic conception of dogma is travestied or respected. Dogma and supernatural knowledge are correlative terms; one implies the other as the action implies its object. In this way then we may define modernism as "the critique of our supernatural knowledge according to the false postulates of contemporary philosophy". It will be advisable for us to quote a full critique of such supernatural knowledge as an example of the mode of procedure. (In the meantime however we must not forget that there are partial and less advanced modernists who do not go so far). For them external intuition furnishes man with but phenomenal contingent, sensible knowledge. He sees, he feels, he hears, he tastes, he touches this something, this phenomenon that comes and goes without telling him aught of the existence of a suprasensible, absolute and unchanging reality outside all environing space and time. But deep within himself man feels the need of a higher hope. He aspires to perfection in a being on whom he feels his destiny depends. And so he has an instinctive, an affective yearning for God. This necessary impulse is at first obscure and hidden in the subconsciousness. Once consciously understood, it reveals to the soul the intimate presence of God. This manifestation, in which God and man collaborate, is nothing else than revelation. Under the influence of its yearning, that is of its religious feelings, the soul tries to reach God, to adopt towards Him an attitude that will satisfy its yearning. It gropes, it searches. These gropings form the soul's religious experience. They are more easy, successful and far-reaching, or less so, according as it is now one, now another individual soul that sets out in quest of God. Anon there are privileged ones who reach extraordinary results. They communicate their discoveries to their fellow men, and forthwith become founders of a new religion, which is more or less true in the proportion in which it gives peace to the religious feelings. The attitude Christ adopted, reaching up to God as to a father and then returning to men as to brothers — such is the meaning of the precept, "Love God and thy neighbour" — brings full rest to the soul. It makes the religion of Christ the religion par excellence, the true and definitive religion. The act by which the soul adopts this attitude and abandons itself to God as a father and then to men as to brothers, constitutes the Christian Faith. Plainly such an act is an act of the will rather than of the intellect. But religious sentiment tries to express itself in intellectual concepts, which in their turn serve to preserve this sentiment. Hence the origin of those formulae concerning God and Divine things, of those theoretical propositions that are the outcome of the successive religious experiences of souls gifted with the same faith. These formulae become dogmas, when religious authority approves of them for the life of the community. For community life is a spontaneous growth among persons of the same faith, and with it comes authority. Dogmas promulgated in this way teach us nothing of the unknowable, but only symbolize it. They contain no truth. Their usefulness in preserving the faith is their only raison d'être. They survive as long as they exert their influence. Being the work of man in time, and adapted to his varying needs, they are at best but contingent and transient. Religious authority too, naturally conservative, may lag behind the times. It may mistake the best methods of meeting needs of the community, and try to keep up worn-out formulae. Through respect for the community, the individual Christian who sees the mistake continues in an attitude of outward submission. But he does not feel himself inwardly bound by the decisions of higher powers; rather he makes praiseworthy efforts to bring his Church into harmony with the times. He may confine himself, too, if he cares, to the older and simpler religious forms; he may live his life in conformity with the dogmas accepted from the beginning. Such is Tyrrell's advice in his letter to Fogazzaro, and such was his own private practice.

Catholic and Modernist notions of dogma compared

The tradition of the Catholic Church, on the other hand, considers dogmas as in part supernatural and mysterious, proposed to our faith by a Divinely instituted authority on the ground that they are part of the general revelation which the Apostles preached in the name of Jesus Christ. This faith is an act of the intellect made under the sway of the will. By it we hold firmly what God has revealed and what the Church proposes to us to believe. For believing is holding something firmly on the authority of God's word, when such authority may be recognized by signs that are sufficient, at least with the help of grace, to create certitude. Comparing these notions, the Catholic and the modernist, we shall see that modernism alters the source, the manner of promulgation, the object, the stability, and the truth of dogma. For the modernist, the only and the necessary source is the private consciousness. And logically so, since he rejects miracles and prophecy as signs of God's word (Il programma, p. 96). For the Catholic, dogma is a free communication of God to the believer made through the preaching of the Word. Of course the truth from without, which is above and beyond any natural want, is preceded by a certain interior finality or perfectibility which enables the believer to assimilate and live the truth revealed. It enters a soul well-disposed to receive it, as a principle of happiness which, though an unmerited gift to which we have no right, is still such as the soul can enjoy with unmeasured gratitude. In the modernist conception, the Church can no longer define dogma in God's name and with His infallible help; the ecclesiastical authority is now but a secondary interpreter, subject to the collective consciousness which she has to express. To this collective consciousness the individual need conform only externally; as for the rest he may embark on any private religious adventures he cares for. The modernist proportions dogma to his intellect or rather to his heart. Mysteries like the Trinity or the Incarnation are either unthinkable (a modernist Kantian tendency), or are within the reach of the unaided reason (a modernist Hegelian tendency). "The truth of religion is in him (man) implicitly, as surely as the truth of the whole physical universe, is involved in every part of it. Could he read the needs of his own spirit and conscience, he would need no teacher" (Tyrrell, "Scylla and Charybdis", p. 277). Assuredly Catholic truth is not a lifeless thing. Rather is it a living tree that breaks forth into green leaves, flowers, and fruits. There is a development, or gradual unfolding, and a clearer statement of its dogmas. Besides the primary truths, such as the Divinity of Christ and His mission as Messias, there are others which, one by one, become better understood and defined, e.g. the dogma of the Immaculate Conception and that of the Infallibility of the Pope. Such unfolding takes place not only in the study of the tradition of the dogma but also in showing its origin in Jesus Christ and the Apostles, in the understanding of the terms expressing it and in the historical or rational proofs adduced in support of it. Thus the historical proof of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception has certainly been strengthened since the definition in 1854. The rational conception of the dogma of Divine Providence is a continual object of study; the dogma of the Sacrifice of the Mass allows the reason to inquire into the idea of sacrifice. It has always been believed that there is no salvation outside the Church, but as this belief has gradually come to be better understood, many are now considered within the soul of the Church who would have been placed without, in a day when the distinction between the soul and the body of the Church had not generally obtained. In another sense, too dogma is instinct with life. For its truth is not sterile, but always serves to nourish devotion. But while holding with life, progress and development, the Church rejects transitory dogmas that in the modernist theory would be forgotten unless replaced by contrary formulae. She cannot admit that "thought, hierarchy, cult, in a word, everything has changed in the history of Christianity", nor can she be content with "the identity of religious spirit" which is the only permanency that modernism admits (Il programma dei Modernisti). Truth consists in the conformity of the idea with its object. Now, in the Catholic concept, a dogmatic formula supplies us with at least an analogical knowledge of a given object. For the modernist, the essential nature of dogma consists in its correspondence with and its capacity to satisfy a certain momentary need of the religious feeling. It is an arbitrary symbol that tells nothing of the object it represents. At most, as M. Leroy, one of the least radical of modernists, suggests, it is a positive prescription of a practical order (Leroy, "Dogme et critique", p. 25). Thus the dogma of the Real Presence in the Holy Eucharist means: "Act as if Christ had the local presence, the idea of which is so familiar to you". But, to avoid exaggeration, we add this other statement of the same writer (loc. cit.), "This however does not mean that dogma bears no relation to thought; for (1) there are duties concerning the action of thinking; (2) dogma itself implicitly affirms that reality contains in one form or another the justification of such prescriptions as are either reasonable or salutary".

Various degrees of Modernism and its criterion

Modernist attacks on dogma, as we have already remarked, vary according to the degree in which its doctrines are embraced. Thus, in virtue of the leading idea of their systems, Father Tyrrell was an agnostic modernist, and Campbell (a Congregationalist minister) is a symbolic modernist. Again the tendency to innovation is at times not at all general, but limited to some particular domain. Along with modernism in the strict sense, which is directly theological, we find other kinds of modernism in philosophy, politics, and social science. In such cases a wider meaning must be given to the term. Here, however, it is needful to speak a word of warning against unreasonable attacks. Not every novelty is to be condemned, nor is every project of reform to be dubbed modernist because it is untimely or exaggerated. In the same way, the attempt fully to understand modern philosophic thought so as to grasp what is true in such systems, and to discover the points of contact with the old philosophy, is very far from being modernism. On the contrary, that is the very best way to refute modernism. Every error contains an element of truth. Isolate that element and accept it. The structure which it helps to support, having lost its foundation, will soon crumble. The name modernist then will be appropriate only when there is question of opposition to the certain teaching of ecclesiastical authority through a spirit of innovation. The words of Cardinal Ferrari. Archbishop of Milan, as cited in "La Revue Pratique d'Apologétique" (VI, 1908, p. 134), will help to show the point of our last remark. "We are deeply pained", he says, "to find that certain persons, in public controversy against modernism, in brochures, newspapers and other periodicals, go to the length of detecting the evil everywhere, or at any rate of imputing it to those who are very far from being infected with it". In the same year, Cardinal Maffei had to condemn "La Penta azurea", an anti-modernist organ, on account of its exaggeration in this respect. On the other hand, it is regrettable that certain avowed leaders of modernism, carried away perhaps by the desire to remain within the Church at all costs — another characteristic of modernism — have taken refuge in equivocation, reticence, or quibbles. Such a line of action merits no sympathy; while it explains, if it does not altogether justify, the distrust of sincere Catholics.

Proofs of the foregoing views

But does the principle and the quasi-essential error of modernism lie in its corruption of dogma? Let us consult the Encyclical "Pascendi". The official Latin text calls the modernist dogmatic system a leading chapter in their doctrine. The French translation, which is also authentic, speaks thus: "Dogma, its origin and nature, such is the ground principle of modernism." The fundamental principle of modernism is, according to M. Loisy, "the possibility, the necessity and the legitimacy of evolution in understanding the dogmas of the Church, including that of papal infallibility and authority, as well as in the manner of exercising this authority" (op. cit., p. 124). The character and leaning of our epoch confirm our diagnosis. It likes to substitute leading and fundamental questions in the place of side issues. The problem of natural knowledge is the burning question in present-day metaphysics. It is not surprising therefore that the question of supernatural knowledge is the main subject of discussion in religious polemics. Finally, Pius X has said that modernism embraces all the heresies. (The same opinion is expressed in another way in the encyclical "Editae" of 16 May, 1910.) And what error, we ask, more fully justifies the pope's statement than that which alters dogma in its root and essence? It is furthermore clear — to use a direct argument — that modernism fails in its attempt at religious reform, if it makes no change in the Catholic notion of dogma. Moreover, does not its own conception of dogma explain both a large number of its propositions and its leanings towards independence, evolution, and conciliation?

Modernist aims explained by its essential error

The definition of an unchangeable dogma imposes itself on every Catholic, learned or otherwise, and it necessarily supposes a Church legislating for all the faithful, passing judgment on State action — from its own point of view of course — and that even seeks alliance with the civil power to carry on the work of the Apostolate. On the other hand, once dogma is held to be a mere symbol of the unknowable, a science which merely deals with the facts of nature or history could neither oppose it nor even enter into controversy with it. If it is true only in so far as it excites and nourishes religious sentiment, the private individual is at full liberty to throw it aside when its influence on him has ceased; nay, even the Church herself, whose existence depends on a dogma not different from the others in nature and origin, has no right to legislate for a self-sufficing State. And thus independence is fully realized. There is no need to prove that the modernist spirit of movement and evolution is in perfect harmony with its concept of ever-changing dogma and is unintelligible without it; the matter is self-evident. Finally, as regards the conciliation of the different religions, we must necessarily distinguish between what is essential to faith regarded as a sentiment, and beliefs which are accessory, mutable, and practically negligible. If therefore you go as far as making the Divinity a belief, that is to say, a symbolical expression of faith, then docility in following generous impulses may be religious, and the atheist's religion would not seem to differ essentially from yours.

Modernist propositions explained by its essential error

We make a selection of the following propositions from the Encyclical for discussion:

• the Christ of faith is not the Christ of history. Faith portrays Christ according to the religious needs of the faithful; history represents Him as He really was, that is, in so far as His appearance on earth was a concrete phenomenon. In this way it is easy to understand how a believer may, without contradiction, attribute certain things to Christ, and at the same time deny them in the quality of historian. In the "Hibbert Journal" for Jan., 1909, the Rev. Mr. Robert wished to call the Christ of history "Jesus" and reserve "Christ" for the same person as idealized by faith;
• Christ's work in founding the Church and instituting the sacraments was mediate, not immediate. The main point is to find supports for the faith. Now, as religious experience succeeds so well in creating useful dogmas, why may it not do likewise in the matter of institutions suited to the age?
• The sacraments act as eloquent formulae which touch the soul and carry it away. Precisely; for if dogmas exist only in so far as they preserve religious sentiment, what other service can one expect of the sacraments?
• The Sacred Books are in every religion a collection of religious experiences of an extraordinary nature. For if there is no external revelation, the only substitute possible is the subjective religious experience of men of particular gifts, experiences such as are worthy of being preserved for the community.

The Modernist movement

The late M. Périn dated the modernist movement from the French Revolution. And rightly so, for it was then that many of those modern liberties which the Church has reproved as unrestrained and ungoverned, first found sanction. Several of the propositions collected in the Syllabus of Pius IX, although enunciated from a rationalist point of view, have been appropriated by modernism. Such, for example are, the fourth proposition which derives all religious truth from the natural force of reason; the fifth, which affirms that revelation, if it joins in the onward march of reason, is capable of unlimited progress; the seventh, which treats the prophecies and miracles of Holy Scripture as poetical imaginings; propositions sixteen to eighteen on the equal value of all religions from the point of view of salvation; proposition fifty-five on the separation of Church and State; propositions seventy-five and seventy-six, which oppose the temporal power of the pope. The modernist tendency is still more apparent in the last proposition, which was condemned on 18 March, 1861: "The Roman Pontiff can and ought to conform with contemporary progress, liberalism, and civilization." Taking only the great lines of the modernist movement within the Church itself. we may say that under Pius IX its tendency was politico-liberal, under Leo XIII and Pius X social; later, under Pius X, its tendency became avowedly theological. It is in France and Italy above all that modernism properly so-called, that is, the form which attacks the very concept of religion and dogma, has spread its ravages among Catholics. Indeed, some time after the publication of the Encyclical of 8th September, 1907 the German, English, and Belgian bishops congratulated themselves that their respective countries had been spared the epidemic in its more contagious form. Of course, individual upholders of the new error are to be found everywhere, and even England as well as Germany has produced modernists of note. In Italy, on the contrary, even before the Encyclical appeared, the bishops have raised the cry of alarm in their pastoral letters of 1906 and 1907. Newspapers and reviews, openly modernist in their opinions, bear witness to the gravity of the danger which the Sovereign Pontiff sought to avert. After Italy it is France that has furnished the largest number of adherents to this religious reform or ultra-progressive party. In spite of the notoriety of certain individuals, comparatively few laymen have joined the movement; so far it has found adherents chiefly among the ranks of the younger clergy. France possesses a modernist publishing house (La librairie Nourry). A modernist review founded by the late Father Tyrrell, "Nova et Vetera", is published at Rome. "La Revue Moderniste Internationale" was started this year (1910) at Geneva. This monthly periodical calls itself "the organ of the international modernist society". It is open to every shade of modernist opinions, and claims to have co-workers and correspondents in France, Italy, Germany, England, Austria, Hungary, Spain, Belgium, Russia, Rumania and America. The Encyclical "Pascendi" notes and deplores the ardour of the modernist propaganda. A strong current of modernism is running through the Russian Schismatic Church. The Anglican Church has not escaped. And indeed liberal Protestantism is nothing but a radical form of modernism that is winning the greater number of the theologians of the Reformed Church. Others who oppose the innovation find refuge in the authority of the Catholic Church.

The philosophical origin and consequences of Modernism

The origin

Philosophy renders great service to the cause of truth; but error calls for its assistance too. Many consider the philosophic groundwork of modernism to be Kantian. This is true, if by Kantian philosophy is meant every system that has a root connection with the philosophy of the Koenigsberg sage. In other words, the basis of modernist philosophy is Kantian if, because Kant is its father and most illustrious moderate representative, all agnosticism be called Kantism (by agnosticism is meant the philosophy which denies that reason, used at any rate in a speculative and theoretical way, can gain true knowledge of suprasensible things). It is not our business here to oppose the application of the name Kantian to modernist philosophy. Indeed if we compare the two systems, we shall find that they have two elements in common, the negative part of the "Critique of Pure Reason" (which reduces pure or speculative knowledge to phenomenal or experiential intuition), and a certain argumentative method in distinguishing dogma from the real basis of religion. On the positive side, however, modernism differs from Kantism in some essential points. For Kant, faith is a really rational adhesion of the mind to the postulates of practical reason. The will is free to accept or reject the moral law; and it is on account of this option that he calls its acceptance "belief". Once it is accepted, the reason cannot but admit the existence of God, liberty, and immortality. Modernist faith, on the other hand, is a matter of sentiment, a flinging of oneself towards the Unknowable, and cannot be scientifically justified by reason. In Kant's system, dogmas and the whole positive framework of religion are necessary only for the childhood of humanity or for the common people. They are symbols that bear a certain analogy to images and comparisons. They serve to inculcate those moral precepts that for Kant constitute religion. Modernist symbols, though changeable and fleeting, correspond to a law of human nature. Generally speaking, they help to excite and nourish the effective religious sentiment which Kant (who knew it from his reading of the pietists) calls schwärmerei. Kant, as a rationalist, rejects supernatural religion and prayer. The modernists consider natural religion a useless abstraction; for them it is prayer rather that constitutes the very essence of religion. It would be more correct to say that modernism is an offshoot of Schleiermacher (1768-1834), who though he owed something to Kant's philosophy, nevertheless built up his own theological system. Ritschl called him the "legislator of theology" (Rechtf. und Vers., III, p. 486). Schleiermacher conceives the modernist plan of reforming religion with the view of conciliating it with science. Thus would he establish an entente cordiale among the various cults, and even between religion and a kind of religious sentimentality which, without recognizing God, yet tends towards the Good and the Infinite. Like the modernists, he has dreams of new religious apologetics; he wants to be a Christian; he declares himself independent of all philosophy; he rejects natural religion as a pure abstraction, and derives dogma from religious experience. His principal writings on this subject are "Ueber die Religion" (1799: note the difference between the first and the later editions) and "Der Christliche Glaube" (1821-22). Ritschl, one of Kant's disciples, recognizes the New Testament as the historical basis of religion. He sees in Christ the consciousness of an intimate union with God, and considers the institution of the Christian religion, which for him is inconceivable without faith in Christ, as a special act of God's providence. Thus has he prepared the way for a form of modernism more temperate than that of Schleiermacher. Though he predicted a continual development of religion, Schleiermacher admitted a certain fixity of dogma. For this reason it seems to us that modernists owe their radical evolutionary theory to Herbert Spencer (1820-1903). It was through the writings of A. Sabatier (18391901), a French Protestant of the Broad Church type) that the religious theories we have spoken of, spread among the Latin races, in France and in Italy. It is in these countries, too, that modernism has done greatest harm among the Catholics. Sabatier is a radical modernist. He has especially drawn upon Schleiermacher for the composition of his two works on religious synthesis ("Esquisse d'une philosophie de la religion d'aprè la psychologie et l'histoire", Paris, 1897; Les religions d'autorité et la religion de l'esprit", Paris, 1902). The fundamental error of the modernist philosophy is its misunderstanding of the scholastic formula which takes account of the two aspects of human knowledge. Doubtless, the human mind is a vital faculty endowed with an activity of its own, and tending towards its own object. However, as it is not in continual activity, it is not self-sufficient; it has not in itself the full principle of its operations, but is forced to utilize sensible experience in order to arrive at knowledge. This incompleteness and falling short of perfect autonomy is due to man's very nature. As a consequence, in all human knowledge and activity, account must be taken both of the intrinsic and of the extrinsic side. Urged on by the finality that inspires him man tends towards those objects which suit him, while at the same time objects offer themselves to him. In the supernatural life, man acquires new principles of action and, as it were, a new nature. He is now capable of acts of which God is the formal object. These acts, however, most be proposed to man, whether God deigns to do so by direct revelation to man's soul, or whether, in conformity with man's social nature, God makes use of intermediaries who communicate exteriorly with man. Hence the necessity of preaching, of motives of credibility, and of external teaching authority. Catholic philosophy does not deny the soul's spontaneous life, the sublimity of its suprasensible and supernatural operations, and the inadequacy of words to translate its yearnings. Scholastic doctors give expression to mystical transports far superior to those of the modernists. But in their philosophy they never forget the lowliness of human nature, which is not purely spiritual. The modernist remembers only the internal element of our higher activity. This absolute and exclusive intrinsecism constitutes what the Encyclical calls "vital immanence". When deprived of the external support which is indispensable to them, the acts of the higher intellectual faculties can only consist in vague sentiments which are as indetermined as are those faculties themselves. Hence it is that modernist doctrines, necessarily expressed in terms of this sentiment, are so intangible. Furthermore, by admitting the necessity of symbols, modernism makes to extrinsecism a concession which is its own refutation.

The consequences

The fact that this radically intrinsic conception of the spiritual or religious activity of man (this perfect autonomy of the reason vis-à-vis of what is exterior) is the fundamental philosophical conception of the modernists, as the alteration of dogma is the essential characteristic of their heresy, can be shown without difficulty by deducting from it their entire system of philosophy. First of all, of their agnosticism: the vague nature which they attribute to our faculties does not permit them, without scientific observation, to arrive at any definite intellectual result. Next, of their evolutionism: there is no determined object to assure to dogmatic formulae a permanent and essential meaning compatible with the life of faith and progress. Now, from the moment that these formulae simply serve to nourish the vague sentiment which for modernism is the only common and stable foundation of religion, they must change indefinitely with the subjective needs of the believer. It is a right and even a duty for the latter freely to interpret, as he sees fit, religious facts and doctrines. We meet here with the a priorisms to which the Encyclical "Pascendi" drew attention. We wish to insist a little on the grave consequence that this Encyclical puts especially before our eyes. In many ways, modernism seems to be on the swift incline which leads to pantheism. It seems to be there on account of its symbolism. After all, is not the affirmation of a personal God one of these dogmatic formulae which serve only as symbolic expressions of the religious sentiment? Does not the Divine Personality then become something uncertain? Hence radical modernism preaches union and friendship, even with mystical atheism. Modernism is inclined to pantheism also by its doctrine of Divine Immanence that is, of the intimate presence of God within us. Does this God declare Himself as distinct from us? If so, one must not then oppose the position of modernism to the Catholic position and reject exterior revelation. But if God declares Himself as not distinct from us, the position of modernism becomes openly pantheistic. Such is the dilemma proposed in the Encyclical. Modernism is pantheistic also by its doctrine of science and faith. Faith having for object the Unknowable cannot make up for the want of proportion that modernists put between the intellect and its object. Hence, for the believer as well as for the philosopher, this object remains unknown. Why should not this "Unknowable" be the very soul of the world? It is pantheistic also in its way of reasoning. Independent of and superior to religious formulae, the religious sentiment on the one hand originates them and gives them their entire value, and, on the other hand, it cannot neglect them, it must express itself in them and by them; they are its reality. But we have here the ontology of pantheism, which teaches that the principle does not exist outside of the expression that it gives itself. In the pantheist philosophy, Being or the Idea, God, is before the world and superior to it, He creates it and yet He has no reality outside the world; the world is the realization of God.

The psychological causes of Modernism

Curiosity and pride are, according to the Encyclical "Pascendi", two remote causes. Nothing is truer; but, apart from offering an explanation common to all heretical obstinacy, we ask ourselves here why this pride has taken the shape of modernism. We proceed to consider this question. In modernism we find, first of all, the echo of many tendencies of the mentality of the present generation. Inclined to doubt, and distrustful of what is affirmed, men's minds tend of their own accord to minimize the value of dogmatic definitions. Men are struck by the diversity of the religions which exist on the face of the earth. The Catholic religion is no longer, in their eyes, as it was in the eyes of our ancestors, the morally universal religion of cultured humanity. They have been shown the influence of race on the diffusion of the Gospel. They have been shown the good sides of other cults and beliefs. Our contemporaries find it hard to believe that the greater part of humanity is plunged in error, especially if they are ignorant that the Catholic religion teaches that the means of salvation are at the disposal of those who err in good faith. Hence they are inclined to overlook doctrinal divergencies in order to insist on a certain fundamental conformity of tendencies and of aspirations. Then again they are moved by sentiments of liberalism and moderation, which reduce the importance of formal religion, as they see in the various cults only private opinions which change with time and place, and which merit an equal respect from all. In the West where people are of a more practical turn, a non-intellectual interest explains the success of heresies which win a certain popularity. Consider the countries in which modernism is chiefly promulgated: France and Italy. In these two countries, and especially in Italy, ecclesiastical authority has imposed social and political directions which call for the sacrifice of humanitarian and patriotic ideas or dreams. That there are important reasons for such commands does not prevent discontent. The majority of men have not enough virtue or nobility to sacrifice for long, to higher duties, a cause which touches their interest or which engages their sympathy. Hence it is that some Catholics, who are not quite steady in their faith and religion, attempt to revolt, and count themselves fortunate in having some doctrinal pretexts to cover their secession. The founder of the periodical "La Foi Catholique", a review started for the purpose of combating modernism, adds this explanation: "The insufficient cultivation of Catholic philosophy and science is the second deep explanation of the origin of modernist errors. Both have too long confined themselves to answers which, though fundamentally correct, are but little suited to the mentality of our adversaries, and are formulated in a language which they do not understand and which is no longer to the point. Instead of utilizing what is quite legitimate in their positive and critical tendencies, they have only considered them as so many abnormal leanings that must be opposed . . ." (Gaudeau, "La Foi Catholique", I, pp. 62-65). Another point is that the intrinsic nature of the movement of contemporary philosophy has been too much despised or ignored in Catholic schools. They have not given it that partial recognition which is quite consonant with the best scholastic tradition: "In this way, we have failed to secure a real point of contact between Catholic and modern thought" (Gaudeau, ibid.). For lack of professors who knew how to mark out the actual path of religious science, many cultured minds, especially among the young clergy, found themselves defenseless against an error which seduced them by its speciousness and by any element of truth contained in its reproaches against the Catholic schools. It is scholasticism ill-understood and calumniated that has incurred this disdain. And for the pope, this is one of the immediate causes of modernism. "Modernism", he says "is nothing but the union of the faith with false philosophy". Cardinal Mercier, on the occasion of his first solemn visit to the Catholic University of Louvain (8 December, 1907), addressed the following compliment to the professors of theology: "Because, with more good sense than others, you have vigorously kept to objective studies and the calm examination of facts, you have both preserved our Alma Mater from the strayings of modernism and have secured for her the advantages of modern scientific methods." ("Annuaire de l'Université Catholiquede Louvain", 1908, p. XXV, XXVI.) Saint Augustine (De Genesi contra Manicheos, I, Bk. I, i) in a text that has passed into the Corpus Juris Canonici (c. 40, c. xxiv, q. 3) had already spoken as follows: "Divine Providence suffers many heretics of one kind or another, so that their challenges and their questions on doctrines that we are ignorant of, may force us to arise from our indolence and stir us with the desire to know Holy Scripture." From another point of view, modernism marks a religious reaction against materialism and positivism, both of which fail to satisfy the soul's longing. This reaction however, for reasons that have just been given, strays from the right path.

Pontifical documents concerning Modernism

The semi-rationalism of several modernists, such as Loisy for instance, had already been condemned in the Syllabus; several canons of the Vatican Council on the possibility of knowing God through his creatures, on the distinction between faith and science, on the subordination of human science to Divine revelation on the unchangeableness of dogma, deal in a similar strain with the tenets of modernism. The following are the principal decrees or documents expressly directed against modernism.

• The pope's address on 17 April, 1907, to the newly-created cardinals. It is a résumé which anticipates the Encyclical "Pascendi".
• A letter from the Congregation of the Index of 29 April, 1907, to the Cardinal Archbishop of Milan with regard to the review "Il Rinnovamento". In it we find more concrete notions of the tendencies which the popes condemn. The letter even goes so far as to mention the names of Fogazzaro, Father Tyrrell, von Hügel and the Abbate Murri.
• Letters from Pius X, 6 May, 1907, to the archbishops and bishops and to the patrons of the Catholic Institute of Paris. It shows forth clearly the great and twofold care of Pius X for the restoration of sacred studies and Scholastic philosophy, and for the safeguarding of the clergy.
• The decree "Lamentabili" of the Holy Office, 3-4 July, 1907, condemning 65 distinct propositions.
• The injunction of the Holy Office, "Recentissimo", of 28 August, 1907, which with a view to remedying the evil, enjoins certain prescriptions upon bishops and superiors of religious orders.
• The Encyclical "Pascendi", of 8 September, 1907, of which we shall speak later on.
• Three letters of the Cardinal Secretary of State, of 2 and 10 October, and of 5 November, 1907, on the attendance of the clergy at secular universities, urging the execution of a general regulation of 1896 on this subject. The Encyclical had extended this regulation to the whole Church.
• The condemnation by the Cardinal-Vicar of Rome of the pamphlet "Il programma dei modernisti", and a decree of 29 October, 1907, declaring the excommunication of its authors, with special reservations.
• The decree Motu Proprio of 18 November, 1907, on the value of the decisions of the Biblical Commission, on the decree "Lamentabili", and on the Encyclical "Pascendi". These two documents are again confirmed and upheld by ecclesiastical penalties.
• The address at the (Consistory of 16 December, 1907.
• The decree of the Holy Office of 13 February, 1908, in condemnation of the two newspapers, "La Justice sociale" and "La Vie Catholique". Since then several condemnations of the books have appeared.
• The Encyclical "Editae" of 26 May, 1910, renewed the previous condemnations.
• Still stronger is the tone of the Motu Proprio "Sacrorum Antistitum", of 1 September, 1910, declared:
• by a decree of the Consistorial Congregations of 25 September, 1910. This Motu Proprio inveighs against modernist obstinacy and specious cunning. After having quoted the practical measures prescribed in the Encyclical "Pascendi", the pope urges their execution, and, at the same time, makes new directions concerning the formation of the clergy in the seminaries and religious houses. Candidates for higher orders, newly appointed confessors, preachers, parish priests, canons, the beneficed clergy, the bishop's staff, Lenten preachers, the officials of the Roman congregations, or tribunals, superiors and professors in religious congregations, all are obliged to swear according to a formula which reprobates the principal modernist tenets.
• The pope's letter to Prof. Decurtins on literary modernism.

These acts are for the most part of a disciplinary character (the Motu Proprio of September, 1910, is clearly of the same nature); the decree "Lamentabili" is entirely doctrinal; the Encyclical "Pascendi" and the Motu Proprio of 18 March, 1907, are both doctrinal and disciplinary in character. Writers do not agree as to the authority of the two principal documents; the decree "Lamentabili" and the Encyclical "Pascendi". In the present writer's opinion, since the new confirmation accorded to these decrees by the Motu Proprio, they contain in their doctrinal conclusions the infallible teaching of the Vicar of Jesus Christ. (For a more moderate opinion cf. Choupin in "Etudes", Paris, CXIV, p. 119-120.) The decree "Lamentabili" has been called the new Syllabus, because it contains the proscription by the Holy Office of 65 propositions, which may be grouped under the following heads: Prop. 1-8, errors concerning the teaching of the Church; Prop. 9-19, errors concerning the inspiration, truth, and study of Holy Writ, especially the Gospels; Prop. 20-36, errors concerning revelation and dogma; Prop. 37-38, Christological errors; Prop. 39-51, errors relative to the sacraments; Prop. 52-57, errors concerning the institution and organization of the Church; Prop. 58-65, errors on doctrinal evolution. The Encyclical "Pascendi" in the introduction laid bare the gravity of the danger, pointed out the necessity of firm and decisive action, and approved of the title "Modernism" for the new errors. It gives us first a very methodical exposition of modernism; next follows its general condemnation with a word as to corollaries that may be drawn from the heresy. The pope then goes on to examine the causes and the effects of modernism, and finally seeks the necessary remedies. Their application he endeavors to put into practice by a series of energetic measures. An urgent appeal to the bishops fittingly closes this striking document.

Sources

Protestant Sources

KANT, Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der reinen Vernunft (2nd ed., 1794)
FICHTE, Versuch einer Kritik aller Offenbarung (1792)
SCHLEIRMACHER, Ueber die Religion, Reden an die Gebildeten unter ihren Veraechtern (4th ed., 1831)
IDEM, Der christliche Glaube nach den Grundsaetzen der evangelischen Kirche, im Zusammenhang dargestellt (1811-22; 6th ed., 1884(
SCHELLING, Vorlesungen ueber die Methode des akademischen Studiums (3rd ed., 1830);
HEGEL, Vorlesungen ueber die Philosophie der Religion (1832), in vols. XI and XII of his complete works;
RITSCHL, ALBRECHT, Die christliche Lehre von der Rechtfertigung und Versoehnung (3 vol., 1870-84);
IDEM, Theologie und Metaphysik (1881);
HERMAN, Die Gewissheit des Glaubens und die Freihet der Theologie (2nd ed., 1889);
LIPSIUS, Dogmatische Beitraege (1878);
IDEM, Philosophie und Religion (1885)
LANGE, Geschichte des Materialismus (4th part, 3rd ed., 1876)
SCHWARZ, Zur Geschichte der neusten Theologie (3rd ed., 1864);
EUCKEN, from his numerous works on the subject we may mention Der Wahrheitsgehalt der Religion (1901); PFLEIDERER, Die Religion, ihr Wesen und ihre Geschichte (2nd vol., 1869);
IDEM Grundriss der christlichen Glaubens- und Sittenlehere (1880);
IDEM, Entwickelung der protestantischen Theologie seit Kant (1892);
SABATIER, Esquisse d'une philosophie de la religion aprè la philosophie et l'histoire (1897);
IDEM, Les religions d'autorite et la religion de l'espirit [posthumous] (1902);
HAMILTON, Discussion on Philosophy and Literature (3rd ed., 1866);
CAMPBELL, The New Theology (London, 1907);
HARNACK, Das Wesen des Christentums (enlarged ed., Jena, 1908);
GORE (anti-modernist), The New Theology and the Old Religion (London 1907);
HAKLUYT (anti-modernist), Liberal Theology and the Ground of Faith (London, 1908); Father Tyrell's Modernism: an expository criticism of "Through Scylla and Charybdis" in an open letter to Mr. Athelstan Riley (London, 1909).

Modernist Sources

MURRI, Psicologia della religione, note ed appunti, published under the pseudonym of SOSTENE GELLI (Rome, 1905);
IDEM, Democrazia e christianesimo;
IDEM, I principi comuni in Programma della societa regionale di cultura (Rome, 1906);
IDEM, La Vita religiosa nel cristianesimo: Discorsi (Rome, 1907)
IDEM, La filosofia nuova e l'enciclica contro il modernismo (Rome, 1908)
FOGAZZARO, Il Santo (Milan, 1905);
Il Programma dei Modernisti. Riposta all' Enciclica di Pio X, "Pascendi Dominici gregis" (Rome, 1908);
VOGRINEC, Nostra maxima culpa! Die bedraengte Lage der katholischen Kirche, deren Ursachen und Vorschlaege zur Besserung (Vienna and Leipzig, 1904);
LOISY, l'Evangile et l'Église (Paris, 1902);
IDEM, Autour d'un petit livre (Paris, 1903);
IDEM, Simples reflexions sur le decret du Saint-Office "Lamentabili sane exitu", et sur l'Encyclique "Pascendi Dominici gregis" (Ceffonds, 1908);
LEROY, Dogme et critique (Paris) [In referring to this book, which has been condemned, we do not wish to make any reflexion on the Catholicity of the author];
TYRRELL, Lex orandi (London, New York, Bombay, 1906);
IDEM, A confidential letter to a friend who is a professor of anthropology, It. tr. (inaccurate) in Il Corriere della Sera (1 January, 1906); Letters to His Holiness Pope Pius X by a Modernist (Chicago, 1910)

Catholic Sources

PORTALIE, Dogme et Histoire in Bulletin de litterature ecclesiastique (Feb. to March, 1904);
CAVALLANTI, Modernismo e Modernisti (Brescia, 1907);
MERCIER, Le modernisme, sa position vis-a-vis de la science, sa condamnation par le Pape Pie X (Brussels, 1908);
DE TONQUEDEC, La notion de verite dans la philosophie nouvelle (Paris, 1908);
LEPIN, Christologie : Commentaire des propositions 27-38 du decret du S. Office "Lamentabili" (Paris, 1908);
LEBRETON, L'encyclique et la theologie modernista (Paris, 1908);
GAUDAUD, Les erreurs du Modernisme in La foi catholique (1908, 1909);
PESCH, Theologische Zeitfragen, Glaube, Dogmen und geschichtlichen Tatsachen. Eine Untersuching ueber den Modernismus, 4th series (Freibug im Breisgau, 1908);
HEINER, Der neue Syllabus Pius X (Mainz, 1908);
MICHELITSCH, Der neue Syllabus (Gras and Vienna, 1908);
KNEIB, Wesen und Bedeutung der Encyclika gegen den Modernismus (Mainz, 1908);
GODRYEZ, The doctrine of Modernism and its refutation (Philadelphia, 1908);
RICKABY, T he Modernist, (London, 1908);
MAUMUS, Les modernistes (Paris, 1909);
VERMEERSCH, De modernismo tractatus et notae canonicae cum Actis S. Sedis a 17 April, 1907 ad 25 Sept., 1910 (Bruges, 1901)

About this page

APA citation. Vermeersch, A. (1911). Modernism. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved October 5, 2013 from New Advent: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10415a.htm

MLA citation. Vermeersch, Arthur. "Modernism." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 10. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1911. 5 Oct. 2013 .

Transcription. This article was transcribed for New Advent by Gerard Haffner.

Ecclesiastical approbation. Nihil Obstat. October 1, 1911. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., Censor. Imprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York.

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