With modern day technology many people think that "old" encyclicals are "passe." Is that the case with "Pascendi Dominici Gregis" (Feeding the Lord's Flock)? No! It is more necessary now than ever!
A contemporary understanding of Pascendi for the Catholic Laity ™
2008 BY Roger
LeBlanc
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Dedication
†
This book is dedicated to Jesus
Christ,
The Blessed Virgin Mary,
And in honor of Pope St. Pius X
Roger
Trudeau-LeBlanc
Foreword by Dr. Alice von Hildebrand,
"Homer is new and fresh this morning, while there is nothing perhaps, as old and tired as today's newspaper." (Charles Peguy) I wish to apply these words to Pius X's magnificent Encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis. Written 102 years ago, it is not only "New and fresh," but gives us a message whose importance and urgency increased since it was written. We are very indebted to Mr. LeBlanc for having made it accessible to a large public. Papal Encyclicals are not always easy reading. While totally faithful to its message, he made it a must reading for every Catholic who realizes how his faith is threatened by the cancer of modernism. "Tolle, lege (Take it and read)" (St. Augustine's Confessions, VIII)
- Alice von Hildebrand
Foreword by Dr. Alice von Hildebrand,
"Homer is new and fresh this morning, while there is nothing perhaps, as old and tired as today's newspaper." (Charles Peguy) I wish to apply these words to Pius X's magnificent Encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis. Written 102 years ago, it is not only "New and fresh," but gives us a message whose importance and urgency increased since it was written. We are very indebted to Mr. LeBlanc for having made it accessible to a large public. Papal Encyclicals are not always easy reading. While totally faithful to its message, he made it a must reading for every Catholic who realizes how his faith is threatened by the cancer of modernism. "Tolle, lege (Take it and read)" (St. Augustine's Confessions, VIII)
- Alice von Hildebrand
Introduction
On September 8, 1907, Pope St. Pius X issued the Encyclical “Pascendi Dominici Gregis” (Feeding the
Lord’s Flock) in which he condemned Modernism in all of its forms. He called it
“The Synthesis of all Heresies.”
He wrote this Encyclical to protect the Catholic Church from the
insidious influences, and attacks, that came from Atheism, Agnosticism,
Protestantism, Humanism, Secularism, Existentialism, Freudianism, Behaviorism, and
all the "isms" that would undermine Divine Revelation. It was also a response to the work of the Masonic
movement.
The Holy Father brought to bear the full power of the Papacy
against anyone who would advocate or embrace Modernism. And he made it crystal
clear the only way to deal with Modernists was to have them rooted out of
the Church. They were to be suppressed in every way possible, and at every level, because he knew they corrupted anything they touched.
This brings us to the question, "What is Modernism?"
It refers to
the notion that a “fully modern man” has been forever changed by science so
that he will now accept only what he can observe by way of experiment through
the scientific method (Empirical evidence).
He must not put his faith in anything outside of measurable and
observable phenomena, and this means the modern man must no longer look at life
and religion like “the Men of Old.”
As a result of this attitude, the modern man dismisses scholastic
philosophy because it exposes and roots out the errors found in Modernist
thinking. This is why Modernists seek out philosophers who embrace Modernism.
These men believe that all the doctrines and dogmas of the Church are to be
"harmonized" with science. In
turn, they use the scientific method to judge history itself. They make science
the absolute standard as they go about telling us that all the historical
claims of the miraculous and the divine cannot be proven by the scientific
method. Therefore, they conclude, all that is associated with the miraculous
and the divine must be removed from Scripture.
Pascendi Dominici Gregis did in fact hinder the progress of the
Modernists for a time, but they pressed forward and ravaged educational systems
with Modernism. As a result, Catholics
in our day are not as well equipped to receive and understand the importance of
“Pascendi” as those in former days. Our spiritual vision has been dimmed.
This brings us to “Feeding the Lord’s Flock - A Contemporary
Understanding of Pascendi and the Errors of Modernism.” It was written to help Catholics understand
the great dangers which Pope St. Pius X warned us about. It follows paragraph by paragraph the identical
layout of “Pascendi Dominici Gregis” while remaining completely faithful to the
theological and philosophical conclusions, as well as the mandates given us
by Pope St. Pius X.
Table of Contents
11 – Venerable
Brethren, Health and the Apostolic
Blessing
13 - The gravity of the situation
17 - Division of the Encyclical
18 - Analysis of Modernist Teaching
18 - Agnosticism its Philosophical principle
22 - Vital Immanence
30 - Deformation of Religious History, the
Consequence
39 - The origin of Dogmas
43 - Evolution
47 - The Modernist as Believer
Individual
Experience and Religious Certitude
51 - Religious Experience and Tradition
52 - Faith and science
54 - Faith subject to science
58 - The Methods of Modernists
60 - The Modernist as Theologian:
His Principles,
Immanence and Symbolism
67 - Dogma and the Sacraments
70 - The Holy Scriptures
74 - The Church
78 - The Relations between Church and State
81 - The Magisterium of the Church
86 - The Evolution of Doctrine
99 - The Modernist as historian and critic
104 - Criticism and its principles
112 - How the Bible is dealt with
116 - The Modernist as Apologist
123 - Subjective Arguments
125 - The Modernist as reformer
128 - Modernism and all the Heresies
135 - The cause of Modernism
138 - Methods of Propagandism
145 - Remedies
146 - I - the Study of Scholastic Philosophy
148 - II - Practical application
150 - III - Episcopal Vigilance over Publications
153 - IV - Censorship
155 - Priests as Editors
156 - V - Congresses
157 - VI - Diocesan Watch Committees
160 - VII - Triennial Returns
163 - Glossary of Terms
167 - Deposit of Faith
169 - Scriptural Basis for the Magisterium
171 - The Syllabus of Errors
(Condemning
the Errors of the Modernist)
From the
Sacred Congregation of the Holy
Office
179 – The Oath Against Modernism
Venerable Brethren, Health and the Apostolic Blessing:
1.) Jesus Christ created His Church and crowned
it with the office of the Papacy to protect the Deposit of Faith. The Popes and those Bishops in communion
with him must guard this Deposit of Faith with their own blood if
necessary. It is their duty to guard with
the greatest vigilance the Deposit of Faith delivered to the saints and to
teach the faithful what is essential in matters of faith and morals. And it is their duty to expose and explain in
detail those persons and things that would undermine the mission which Christ
gave to His Church. The Church is
obligated to carry out these tasks so that the faithful are not swept away by
novel ideas and insidious attempts to undermine Christ’s Church which is His
Kingdom on earth.
Can anyone who is of sound
heart and mind fail to understand that Christ gave this mission to His Church
and the grace to meet this task?
It would be supremely
naïve for anyone to think that the Church does not have enemies not only among
men, but also among demons. This has
been the case ever since Christ founded His Church, and it will be so until the
end of time. And there has never been a
time when the watchfulness of the supreme pastor of the Church was not
necessary to guard and protect the Catholic Church and her faithful body of
believers. And we know that the
enemies of the human race are to be found in men speaking perverse things (Acts 20:30), “vain talkers and
seducers” (Titus1:10), men who
are “erring and driving into error” (2nd Timothy 3:13).
Still, it must be
admitted that the number of the enemies of the cross of Christ has in these
last days increased exceedingly, and that they are striving by artful means and
in entirely new ways that are full of deceitful tact to destroy the vital
energy of the Church. And if they could,
they would overthrow the Kingdom of Christ.
We are living in a time in which the insidious nature of Modernism has
set itself up against God and His Church as never before. And chief among its artful means of deception
is “relativism” which is the denial that absolute truths exist.
When Modernists preach
their doctrine of relativism they would reduce morality to be license that
would satisfy any desire without respect to sin. They would reduce reason to the irrational
and turn it into a tool for atheism, and they would turn theology itself into a
utility that serves atheism because they deny that God is knowable.
Therefore, we must no
longer be silent. If we remain silent we
would fail in our most sacred duty. The
kindness that we have shown Modernists has been fruitless, and if we remain
silent, the blame for the propagation of their errors would fall on us due to a
failure and forgetfulness to exercise the duties of our office with which we
have been charged by Jesus Christ Himself.
We must understand that
the enemies of the church will settle for nothing less than the subversion of
Christ’s Church. They have worked
tirelessly to bring the world to such a time and to such a state that relativism in all of its forms would
take up residence in the hearts and minds of even the unsuspecting
faithful. Tragically, many simply do not
recognize the presence of relativism within them, nor are they aware of how it
affects their relationship with the church.
The Gravity of the
Situation
2.) It is therefore
necessary that the Church must act with all diligence and without hesitation to
seek out and expose the enemies of the church that have armed themselves with
error in order to wreak havoc in the very heart of the Church. They must be exposed and brought out from the
shadows into the light of day because it is in the shadows they prefer to do
their evil deeds.
We would be remiss if we
did not admit that the enemies found in the very bosom of the Church are numbered
among the Catholic laity, and even worse, in the very ranks of her
priests. Tragically, due to a failure to
properly train priests, there are priests who are not equipped to educate and
guide their flocks. And there are
priests who live with a false zeal that go about spreading errors because they
have been educated with false concepts in philosophy and theology. Their education has appealed to their pride
instead of fostering a manner of humility and submission to the Church. They are enemies who march against the Church
posing as reformers of the church. In
the end, they must find themselves squarely at odds with, and against Jesus
Christ Himself as they attack His very person.
They attempt to strip Him of His Divine nature and reduce Him to a mere
man.
3.) When these reformers
are exposed and their schemes are seen in the light of day, it does not matter
if they express astonishment that they are counted among the enemies of the
church. And no one should be surprised
that it is the obligation of the church to expose them as such. The church must protect the flock from their
errors before they can be implanted into the hearts and minds of the
faithful. The Church is the rock and
bulwark against all errors; therefore, it is our duty to open the way back to
the Church for those who have been blinded by the errors of Modernism.
God alone knows the
motives in the heart of those opposed to His Church, but no one should think
the Church is unreasonable when it assesses the Modernists systems of belief,
their manner of speech, and their actions as hostile to the Church. God shines the light of grace on their
reason and prods their conscience in the midst of their schemes. The Church regards these enemies in the
Church to be the most insidious and the most lethal of all her enemies because
they operate from within the very heart of the Church, and their poison spreads
throughout the body. Having a more
familiar knowledge and inner workings of the church they are able to more
effectively implant the seeds of destruction which grow into trees of bad
fruit.
Furthermore, the enemies
within the church are not content to undermine only those things that some
might consider of lesser importance such as disciplines and attempts to clarify
doctrine. They are set upon the total
destruction of the Church at her very core, and her core is the papacy which
gives us certainty in all matters of faith and morals.
By attacking the papacy
and the Bishops in union with the successor of St. Peter, Modernists intend to
water down and ultimately destroy all Catholic truths. They are astute and skillful in their plans,
and they use whatever is available to them to accomplish their objective. They are particularly dangerous because they
will appear to be Catholic in what they teach, but they tweak their words in
such a way as to lay the seeds of doubt and corruption. They intend to do away with faith and
nothing less. They attempt to elevate
“reason” to be above “faith”, as though faith is without its own reasons for
assenting to that which has been revealed by God. These insidious Modernists
appear to be “reasonable Catholics” but they are wolves in sheep’s clothing.
If they are not stopped,
they become daring and feel emboldened; they are resolute and determined not to
leave a shred of anything Catholic intact.
It must also be noted that these enemies within the church lead very
active lives, and they are very industrious in their passions, often leading
lives with a reputation of morality that is unstained. They do so because they intend to use their
lifestyle and ceaseless activity to make what they teach appear credible. We are not to be fooled! Lifestyle and activity do not equal wisdom
and sanctity.
Lastly, the Church finds
it very difficult to reach the conscience of her enemies. It offers the cure for what ails them, but
they have become so corrupted by their own doctrines and desires to undermine
the church that they reject all authority and medicinal remedies. They appeal to the “rights of conscience” but
they fail to see the “obligations of conscience”. They fail to see that conscience is measured
by the “natural law” and that “doctrine” is measured by the definitions and
declarations of the Church. It does not
matter how much they assert that their work is done in the spirit of love, the
result of their obstinacy and disobedience to the church reveals that they
operate in the spirit of pride and rebellion.
The Church has extended
every kindness in correcting them, but they have refused even this. The church was left with no other option than
to chastise them in a more severe way, and for a time they stopped what they
were doing. But, after a time, they
returned to their destructive agenda and forced the Church to expose what they
do in the shadows and bring it publicly into the light of day. The stakes in this battle are souls and all
that is Catholic! If churchmen remain
silent in the face of such evil they would be party to, and guilty of crimes
against the church. We must now break
silence in order to expose before the whole Church the true colors of those men
who have assumed this bad disguise known as Modernism.
Division of the
Encyclical
4.) We must now set about
to expose the methods and devices of the Modernists. They are also known as “Relativists” and “Liberals”.
They hide what they
intend to instill in the hearts and minds of the faithful by presenting their
system and doctrines without any particular order or systematic arrangement. As a strategy, it must appear scattered, and
at times even chaotic, and they do this for a number of reasons. This allows them to appear confused in what
they present to us for consideration which gives them the appearance that they
are honestly seeking truth. They even
appear to be hesitant in what they do, feigning humility, but behind their eyes
and in their hearts lurks resolve, and they are steadfast and unyielding.
It is the task of the
Church to collect the pieces of their puzzle that seem to have no
interconnectedness and show that they are actually pieces from the same
puzzle. When the image on the puzzle appears,
we will demonstrate the source of their errors and provide remedies to refute
them so that the faithful can avoid the traps which the enemies of the church
have set to ensnare them.
Analysis of Modernist Teaching
5.) So then, we need to
consider how Modernists approach the Church. They come to us as philosophers,
believers, theologians, historians, critics, apologists, and reformers. We will distinguish them one from the other
to accurately reveal their systems and methods of evil, and we will demonstrate
the treacherous and deceitful consequences of their doctrines.
Agnosticism, its
Philosophical Principle
6.) We begin by looking
at the philosopher.
Modernists have lost a
true and perennial understanding of religious philosophy because their views
are built upon Agnosticism.
They assert that God
cannot be known in reason alone, and in so doing they attempt to sever
scholastic philosophy from being a true and faithful daughter of theology. Since they assert that God cannot be known in
reason they limit man to what he can know in matters of religion. According to them, religion can only be what
man can observe through phenomena. In
other words, they limit man to what he can perceive with his senses, and they
conclude by saying that man has no right or power to go beyond what he can
observe with his senses.
Modernists make the claim
that man’s reason is incapable of lifting itself up to the point where it can
recognize the existence of God as a fact, even by means of what he
observes.
As a result, Modernists
tell us that God can never be the direct object of science, and that when it
comes to “history” God must never be considered part of historical
reality.
We quickly perceive the motives
of Modernists when we consider their attacks on “Natural Theology” and “External
Revelation”. They would simply do
away with them altogether. And they
would do away with “Intellectualism” which they call a ridiculous and a system
defunct of long ago. And the fact that
the Church formally condemned them for what they do means nothing to them. We know this because they show no restraint
on their part as they continue to scheme against the Church.
From this, we know their
motives. They intend and attempt to
insert their ideology and influence in what they teach, and furthermore, we see
their lack of credibility and inability to speak about the nature of “revealed
truth” in all matters.
The church speaks
clearly. It has formally condemned the claim
that God cannot be known in reason alone, and since Modernists fail to
acknowledge that God can be known in reason alone, they claim that theology and
the knowledge of revealed truth cannot be properly referred to as “knowledge”,
and that even Natural Theology cannot be included in the “category of knowledge”.
The 1st
Vatican Council defined that God can be known by the light of reason alone:
“If anyone says that the
one true God, our Creator and Lord, cannot be known with certainty by the
natural light of human reason by means of the things that are made, let him be
anathema.”
And also:
"If anyone says that
it is not possible or not expedient that man be taught, through the medium of
divine revelation, about God and the worship to be paid Him, let him be
anathema.”
“Natural Theology” which
man can use to demonstrate “the existence of God as a fact” points a man to
accept the “fact of revelation” in the same way that the “Natural Law”
predisposes man to the Eternal Laws of Revealed Truth. And “external signs”,
meaning observable phenomena involving miracles that can be attributed to God
alone, must be accepted in the “category of knowledge” and a path to faith in
God who is the creator of all things, but external to them, meaning that God is
independent of what he created. He does
not need them for His own Eternal Existence.
And finally:
“If anyone says that
divine revelation cannot be made credible by external signs, and that therefore
men should be drawn to the faith only by their personal internal experience or
by private inspiration, let him be anathema.”
As a result of their
obstinacy, Modernists will transition from a state of agnosticism which is a
claim to be ignorant in the matter of God, into a state of atheism which is a “declaration”
that God does not exist. And they do so
without any justification or demonstrable reason in “phenomenology” or “natural
theology” to justify their assertion as an atheist. Once they make a “declaration” that God does
not exist, it is now upon them to “prove” that He does not exist as a “fact”.
It is impossible for them to “prove” that God does not exist, yet, in their
boldness, they insert atheism into the scientific method and historical
analysis.
Science cannot
demonstrate that God does not exist, and therefore the scientific method cannot
speak to this matter in any of its disciplines. The most that Modernists can
say about history or science is that they do not know anything about God based
upon their understanding of reality, and even in these areas they are in
error. Their philosophy is barren and
blind. It is cut off from the land of
scholastic philosophy.
And like rebellious
children that have been caught in the act of doing something wrong they claim
to know nothing about the offense that has been committed. Yet, they transition from claiming to know
nothing about God into war against God, and they do so with the intent of
trying to find ways to say that God did not intervene in history. This is what has given birth to false methods
in Critical Historical Analysis regarding Revelation, Sacred Scripture, and the
Authority and Nature of the Church.
And it does not matter to
them that they cannot produce any reason, or fact, to justify a transition from
agnosticism to atheism. They will simply
have no other view of science and history that is not based upon and imbued
with the disposition and character of atheism. They pervert not only natural
inquiry which leads to God, but they even pervert the evil of agnosticism and
bring it to new depths of evil. A
dedicated agnostic should denounce atheism.
As atheists, Modernists
intend to exclude God and all that is divine from everything, which in the end
becomes an attack on the most sacred Person of Jesus Christ. And this attack extends to the Sacred
Mysteries of His life, death, Resurrection, and Ascension into Heaven.
Vital Immanence
7.) We must also note
that the denial of the existence of God is only one face of the agnostic turned
atheist. They also put forward the
notion of “vital immanence” which, in this case is the search for God beginning
and ending within man himself, and nothing external to himself.
Such a man is already
closed off to God. Even when we consider
religion in terms of the natural or supernatural which are capable of demonstrating
themselves and God as facts, Modernists dismiss these facts as though they do
not matter. Modernists attempt to destroy
Natural Theology because they want to close the door to “revelation”. They want to shut down the arguments of
credibility that prove the existence of God that are found in “Natural
Theology”. And in so doing, they hope to
shut down any acceptance of the fact that the source of “Revelation” is from the
same God that can be known in reason. It
is insufferable to them that God should be real, and is “external” and “other”
than what he created, because this would destroy them where they stand.
But they will have none of
God as a fact, and they turn instead to their own fabrications. For the Modernist, the search for God must now
be found within man, and since man is alive, he concludes religion itself must
therefore be a form of life. But he
measures the “life of religion” by the life of man, rather than God who is life
itself. And he does so to open the door
to the evolution of doctrine as we shall see later on.
But when man measures the
“life of religion” against himself because he is alive, he gives birth to what
is known as the principle of “religious immanence”. It is the notion that religion is alive
because man is alive. And since the
Modernist rejects God only to regard himself as God, he now concludes that revelation
comes from man.
This gives birth to
“Vital Phenomenon” which is the Modernists notion that any “religious
experience”, regardless of what religion we consider, falls into the category
of “religious immanence” which we just spoke of. And they conclude this because “all men are
alive”. Therefore, in the mind of the Modernist, every “religious experience”,
every “religious feeling” in any religion becomes a “valid religious experience”
simply because man is alive. And he
concludes, therefore, that all “religious experiences and feelings” are valid
“living religions” in spite of the fact that living men reject God and the
Catholic Church.
To be clear, the Modernist
defines religion as “nothing more than what makes a man feel religious.” That is the bottom line criteria. This is what the Modernists claim gives rise
to religion.
We must now ask a
question. Where does the Modernist think
a “religious experience” comes from, since they reject revelation from
God? Modernists believe a “religious
experience” springs from a “necessity” or an “impulse” from “within the heart
of man”, and that it is a “movement” which comes from “the subconscious” within
man. But they tell us this impulse lays
hidden and dormant within the subconscious until some need arises to “feel
religious”. In short, the “religious experience” for a Modernist is “sentimentality”
and nothing more. As a result, they
hold to the view that “knowledge of religion” does not take place in the “conscious
intellect”, and therefore, since they reject God as a knowable fact that is
natural to the intellect, they reject God from the “knowledge of religion.”
God is the “object of
religion”, but if man rejects God and considers himself to be God, man himself now
becomes “the author of religion”. And as
a result, the Modernist can only conclude that “faith” which is the basis and
foundation of all religion must now be defined as “a need for the divine” which
comes from within man which only man can satisfy. So, to the Modernist, man is now “the author
of faith, the object of faith, and the one who completes his own faith, all
within himself”. Therefore, the Modernist believes he is accountable only to
himself.
This is why they refuse
to acknowledge the fact of God which is demonstrable even in “Natural Theology”.
They do not want the knowledge of religious truth to reside in the “conscious
intellect” because it means their entire system crashes. And this is why they refuse to meet the God
who is outside of creation, the God who is capable of being known as a fact through
reason which takes place in the “conscious intellect”. This is why they try to
justify their view of faith which resides in the “unknowable
subconscious”. The Modernists are like
spoiled children who take their ball home with them when they are losing the
game they like to play.
They go within themselves
after taking with them what they have seen in the world with their senses, and then
they shut their eyes to outside reality.
And they let the “forms, shapes, and colors” of what they have seen mingle
with what comes from their “subconscious”.
And from this mingling comes their “religious feelings” which they now
call a “religious experience”.
And it is at this very point
that the Modernist will “subjectively interpret” what they have seen “according
to what they feel”, and whatever they interpret this “religious experience” to
mean they will now regard it to be a “religious revelation”. And this “revelation” becomes the object of where
they put their faith. It is by this
means that the Modernist system regards man to be the “author of faith”, and
therefore the object of his own faith” as determined by whatever religious “experience”
he can produce, as we shall see in more detail.
But let us consider
something else. Since “religious truths”
are “internal” and therefore “subjective” in the Modernist, and are not allowed
to be present in the “conscious intellect” in any objective intellectual manner,
the Modernist completely removes himself from Natural Theology and Religious
Theology. Since for him there can be
nothing “objective” in the religious experience which resides in the “conscious
intellect”, it means that “religious truths” are forever tied to the “subconscious”
for the Modernist. And this is the
dilemma within the Modernist that forces him to conclude that “religious
truths” can only be “symbolic” because if he reaches out to hold it as
something solid and objective in “religious truth”, it eludes him as it sinks
into his subconscious. Therefore, the
religious experience, for him can only be measured by what he feels his “religious
experience means”. And this is what
gives birth to the Modernists’ view of “symbolic faith”. And due to the fact that feelings are always
changing, the Modernist will conclude that “faith” is always changing and therefore,
forever evolving, as we shall see. And
this is why modernism must be cut off at the root before it reaps much damage.
And when we consider that
relationships between things constitute what we refer to as phenomena, the
Modernist will turn away from the facts that the phenomena reveals about
God. They stubbornly turn away from what
they intuitively know, and they fly to the first impulse of “religious feeling”
within them. And they run into the
darkness to greet what they “feel” which comes from an impulse in their
subconscious and say, “Let this be our light”.
They call the light which the intellect knows about the fact of God to
be darkness, and they call the darkness of the subconscious, light. It is the age of “enlightenment” in which all
is darkness.
At this point, Modernists
will set about to protect their turf of “religious sentimentality” by putting
limits on their understanding of “objective knowledge in religion”. Since the Modernist turns away from the fact
of God as knowable, and since nothing of religion is “knowable as an objective
fact in the conscious intellect”, he has placed self-imposed limits on the
“external visible world” and the “internal conscious world”. The Modernist will then claim anything beyond
these limits is “unknowable”.
He will then tell us that
there is no experience in the “conscious intellect” that can account for this “need
for the divine” that is found within man.
And this is the direct result of the fact that he rejects that “fact of
God” as “knowable in the conscious intellect”.
Therefore, he becomes utterly and pitifully dependent upon what he
“feels about religion” to resolve whatever it is he is trying resolve in his
life according to his version of “faith and revealed truth”. And therefore, this need in the “subconscious
intellect” becomes the object of his faith where he meets his “own divine
reality”. One can only pity the
Modernist at this point. This is where
the Modernist defines “his faith”, and it is what he regards to be “the
beginning of religion itself.” God is
not in his equation. The Modernist has
once again embraced the temptation of Adam and the error that he is divine in
his own nature. And this opens the door
to endless errors and deep blindness about how he understands his own nature
and the world around him.
8.) But the modernist
goes even further in his folly. He
perverts the Natural Law which is a basic and innate awareness of right and
wrong in each person that resides in the “conscience”. He will then tie his “conscience” to his
“understanding of religion”. And because
he regards man to be divine through “immanence”, he regards his “conscience” to
be a “divine right” to determine the limits of conscience. And he therefore
appeals to the “supremacy of conscience” in matters of religion that he may
turn away from the fact that God is “knowable” which reason tells him he is obligated
to accept. This turns “conscience” which
was given by God to help man along the way into self-abuse which manifests
itself in all manner of corruption and error.
Conscience was designed to be a man’s friend, but the Modernists would
turn it into the enemy by claiming that the boundaries of conscience are
limitless. And he regards his “new
understanding of conscience” to be a sufficient guide to proper living as he
now uses it to justify immorality and all corruption.
And in all of this, the
Modernist will tell us that “revelation is simply mans need for religion”, and that
the “the divine manifestation” is actuated by some “religious feeling” within
his own nature. And from this he will
conclude that whatever man can experience in what is “knowable” but not
objective in the “conscious intellect” is how he defines religion. This is how religion is resolved for
him. He starts and ends with himself and
therefore regards himself to be divine.
He is the need for God and He is the God who resolves his own need. He is the revealer of his own need for God
and he is the God who reveals himself to himself to resolve his own needs. In other words, he is full of himself and has
no room for God.
And Modernists wish to
establish what they have corrupted and make it the standard in all
religions. They regard their corruption
to be on the same level and equal footing of God who actually intervenes in
time and space, and they demand that everyone submit to their corruption. They even have the audacity to demand the same
of the supreme authority of the Church that Jesus Christ founded. They spurn the Church in her capacity to
teach, and her authority to legislate, particularly when it comes to sacred
liturgy and all disciplinary action.
They are rebels without a reason.
Deformation of Religious
History the Consequence
9.) Beginning with
Agnosticism which turned into Atheism, we see that “atheism” has become the foundation
of religion in how the Modernists understand religion. And they proceed to use their view of religion
to “critique history” and “revelation”, but they are cut off from objective
reality in these matters and want to make what is purely “subjective” the
measure of both history and revelation.
What they deemed as a
“matter of private conscience with a divine right” in how they formed their
view of religion now spills over and becomes “the standard” which they wish to
impose on the “conscience” of everyone else in the matter of religion. And they do this all by a simple “fiat” that
proceeds from their arrogance unlike the “fiat” of a humble virgin through whom
God came into the world.
And keep in mind, when
the Modernist talks about what is “unknowable” he does not present what is “unknowable”
as an object of faith because it would be absurd to say “Let us have faith in
what is unknowable”. He must have
something to present to make his view of faith appear credible. He must have some working elements “that are
not unknown” as the “elements” of “his view of faith”. But such a man has shut down his reason by
which God can be known as a fact through what He created. So when he claims
“what is unknown” serves as the basis of faith, he says faith cannot have any
association to the infinite God of whom we have glimpses through what He
created which reason confirms. He
rejects what “we know in part”. For
him, the “unknowable” is strictly tied to this side of creation and his
subconscious. The Modernist will not
accept anything outside of creation, or anything in the “conscious intellect”
as knowable and objective in faith. It is that simple.
Yet, we will find the
Modernist pontificate “the unknown”.
This is like being in a room full of people and saying, “Everyone who is
not here, raise your hand”. But, the Modernist will press forward with the
absurd because he has designs. He needs
the “unknown” as a tool because he wishes to associate his views with “phenomenon”
in order to corrupt the realm of Science and History.
For his purposes,
phenomenon may be an act of nature containing within itself something
mysterious; or it may be a man whose character, actions, and words “apparently”
cannot be reconciled with the ordinary laws of science and history. His “faith” which is attracted by the
“unknowable” unites itself with the phenomenon which cannot yet be fully
explained. The Modernist then gives the whole of his self to the phenomenon so
the phenomena and the Modernists permeate each other which results in a
“merging” which now has its own life.
And from this, two principles follow.
The first principle is a
sort of “transfiguration” of
the phenomenon. The Modernist elevates the
experience of the phenomenon above its own true condition so the phenomena will
become adaptable to whatever the Modernist wishes to infuse into it. And when he has done this, he will call his
interpretation of the experience a “true revelation” and the object of “divine
faith”.
But since the Modernist lives in the land of atheism, he will then project all that he does “within himself” onto the Church and then accuse Catholics of doing this very thing in matters of revelation and an understanding of history. But such a man is blind to the fact that the Church stands with the God whom can be known, and his attacks on how the Church understands history become the equivalent of someone who is inebriated and claims that the world is upside down.
But since the Modernist lives in the land of atheism, he will then project all that he does “within himself” onto the Church and then accuse Catholics of doing this very thing in matters of revelation and an understanding of history. But such a man is blind to the fact that the Church stands with the God whom can be known, and his attacks on how the Church understands history become the equivalent of someone who is inebriated and claims that the world is upside down.
The Church is in union
with the “fact of God” in “Natural Theology” with “reason”, and “objective revelation”
which comes from God.
And in the second
principle the Modernist does the same.
He “disfigures faith” because he wants to define “faith” to be a
“phenomena” which is independent of the circumstances of place and time when it
serves his purposes. And its purpose is
served when he uses the “first principle” we just mentioned, when he accuses
the Church of attributing things to Jesus that he claims were not real
according to the time and place in which Jesus lived. And he makes these
charges through the corrupt lens of his view of reality. He wants to “transfigure” the divine person
of Jesus Christ into a human person and therefore corrupt the real history of
the Lord of History, Jesus Christ. This is the “second principle” of “disfiguration”
at work. The Modernist poisons
everything he touches.
The Modernist will then
take the second “principle of disfiguration” and paint history with his own
disfiguration of history, all the while, accusing the Church of doing the very
thing that he does. But the Church is
blameless in the face of his charges.
And he will repeatedly
accuse the Church of using the “second principle of disfiguration” in relation
to everything which the Church teaches because it has a divine association to
God in the context of history. And he
will say the further that we go back in time the more we can see what he terms
“the disfigurement of history” that came about from the Catholic Church, its
dogma, and its doctrines.
And these charges come
from a Modernist who understands faith to be an “interpretation of a phenomena”
that is linked to the “invisible” because it hides in his “subconscious”, and
therefore is “unknowable in his conscious intellect”, which is the result of an
“impulse” that produced a “religious feeling” which can never be “objective
revelation”. And to him, this means
faith is a religious feeling which he calls “unknowable as an objective reality
in the conscious intellect” because he does not have access to the subconscious.
And then he concludes that revelation is merely “symbolic” of God in man, and
therefore man must have faith in himself. And his “faith”, which is forever
tied to the “subconscious”, therefore, has no right to ever claim objectivity
to anyone outside of himself in the matter of faith.
This is the man that
tells the Church how it must view history.
This is the man who “believes” in the “soul of the universe”, some
“divine invisible principle”, which he cannot demonstrate as existing in
observable phenomenon, but nevertheless, uses to justify his “Immanent” view of
reality. He allows this for himself, but
this same man, the Modernist, mocks the Church when it speaks of an invisible
God who is known as a fact through what is visible. This is the man who fails to see that “all
that is” exists only because of “uncaused cause” which “cause and effect”
speaks of and which crushes his Modern views where he stands. This is the man who would pontificate to the
rest of humanity as though the universe revolves around him. The Modernist is a
living contradiction. He wants things
both ways to suit his rebellion.
Therefore, from these two
principles of “transfiguration” and “disfiguration” the Modernist produces “two
laws” which he then unites with his “third principle” which is “agnosticism”. These “three principles” (a type of unholy
trinity) constitute the very foundation of the Modernist’s view of Historical
Critical Analysis.
We will illustrate how
their method works by something we just touched upon concerning the Person of
Christ.
Modernists tell us that
in the Person of Christ they find nothing of the divine in his life from a
historical perspective. Since they
reject the divine in Christ, they are left only with the human Jesus whose life
they measure according to science and historical data. And here we see their “three principles” at
work:
·
In
virtue of their foundational principle which is “agnosticism”, anything in
history that is suggestive of the divine in the person of Jesus Christ must be
rejected.
·
Then,
according to their second principle, the historical Person of Christ was unduly
“transfigured” over time by the
faith of those who wanted him to be divine, so therefore, everything that
raises Him above the historical human condition must be removed.
·
And
last but not least, their third principle which claims that the Person of
Christ has been “disfigured” by the faith of believers in Him requires that
everything about Him that is not in keeping with the character, circumstances,
and education according to the time in which He lived must be discarded, and
that includes what is said of His deeds and Words.
This is the absurd
reasoning of a Modernist, but nonetheless, it is his approach to Historical
Criticism.
If one were to follow
these three principles to their own “logical conclusion”, Modernists cannot
claim history ever happened beyond their own memory because they did not
“experience it as phenomena”. And
according to their terms, it must be presumption for them to speak of history
in the light of “historical phenomena” because they did not “experience it as
an observable phenomenon.”
And this means they must
rely on “things that they see” to make conclusions about the facts of history
that are “external” to their own experience of phenomena according to the time
in which they live. But they will not
allow the same when it comes to God. In
His case, “things that they see” cannot lead to the conclusion that Jesus is
divine because He is “external to their own experience of phenomena” even
though causal relationships prove the fact of God.
10.) Therefore, according
to the Modernists, “Religious Sentiments” come from “vital immanence” which is
the search for God beginning and ending within man himself, and nothing
external to himself.
And the Modernist tells
us the “religious sentimentality” within man is what produces the “seed/germ”
of all religion, and that “religious sentimentality” can explain everything
that has ever come and gone, or that will ever be, in matters of religion.
And in their blindness
they proceed to tell us that “Religious Sentimentality”, which was only
rudimentary and almost without form when it was first felt within a man,
gradually matured under the influence of the blind doctrine of “Religious
Immanence”. This is the notion that
religion is alive because man is alive, and that man is God. Therefore, says
the Modernist, “Religious Sentimentality is alive”. But to hide their absurdity
they want the obstinacy in their heart and mind to be defined as “Mysterious”.
Therefore, the Modernists
conclude that the origin of all religion, even supernatural religion, is only a
development of “religious sentimentality”.
And they tell us that the Catholic Church is no exception. In their minds the Church is no different
and no better than any other religion.
For them, all “religious sentimentality” and “religious experience” comes
from “Vital Immanence” which is the search for God’s beginning and ending
within man himself, and nothing external to himself. And in utter blasphemy they even make the
claim that “Vital Immanence” applies to Jesus Christ just as much as it does to
anyone else. They think that they are
honoring Him, or that they are generous in their assessment of His humanity by
saying he was a perfect human specimen, the likes of which has never been seen,
or ever will be seen. They patronize
him to their own demise.
And yet, Venerable Brethren,
these audacious, sacrilegious assertions and lamentable heresies and ramblings
come not only from the babbling of foolish unbelievers and infidels, they come
from Catholics, and yes, even from priests who preach such heresies
openly. And these men boast that they
are going to reform the Church with their ravings.
There is no longer any
doubt that Modernists embrace the old heresy which claims “a certain level of
divinity” in the human nature that we have in common. They claim a type of “right to the
supernatural order for human nature”.
And tragically, the world
has come to a state far beyond that.
Modernists have gone so far as to say that our most holy Catholic
Religion emanated from the human nature of Jesus Christ, claiming that He is
not divine. They tell us that our
religion sprang forth spontaneously and in its entirety from some “Religious
Sentimentality” that Jesus Christ experienced within Himself.
Let us be clear. There is no more perfidious, destructive
attack on the Holy Catholic Faith than this.
It is a satanic attack on the entire supernatural order. It is for this reason that the Vatican
Council most justly decreed:
"If anyone says that
man cannot be raised by God to a knowledge and perfection which surpasses
nature, but that he can and should, by his own efforts and by a constant
development attain finally to the possession of all truth and good, let him be
anathema" (De Revel., can.
3).
The Origin of Dogmas
11.) To this point,
Venerable Brethren, there has been little mention of the intellect. But, as we have seen, according to the teaching
of the Modernists, the intellect plays a role, or has a part in the “act of
faith”, but the object of faith can never reside in the conscious intellect as objectively
knowable. And it is important that we
understand their method of attack.
We see their attack in
this way. We have spoken of “Religious
Sentimentality” frequently, but, “Religious Sentimentality” is not
“knowledge”. Therefore, in the Modernist
understanding of how “God” manifests himself to man, the “manifestation” comes
to us not from God, but from man, in a manner that is “indistinct and confused”
because it is not knowledge, it is therefore only “Religious Sentimentality”. Believing this to be the case, the Modernist
can hardly perceive the “manifestation” due to the nature of the manifestation.
The Modernist will then tell
us that a “necessary ray of light” should be shined upon the “feeling of
Religious Sentimentality” so that “God may be discovered in the midst of the
religious feelings” so that “God” can be set apart from the feelings. And they tell us the task of the intellect is
to do that very thing. They will tell us
the purpose, or the “office” of the intellect, is to reflect upon the
“religious feeling” and analyze it.
At this point, the Modernist
will tell us that once the man has completed his reflection, having sufficiently
analyzed the “Religious feeling” he will begin to transform what he feels into
mental pictures of the “Vital Phenomena” (religious experience) which rises up
from within him, which he will then express with words. And since Modernists regard “Vital Phenomena”
to be “any religious experience”, regardless of what religion we speak of,
Vital Phenomena falls into the category of “religious immanence” because all
men are alive. Therefore every religious experience in any religion becomes a
valid living religious experience, because man is alive, and his “Religious
Sentimentality” therefore becomes a living religion. This is why the Modernists are fond of saying
“the religious man must ponder
his faith” but his view of faith is saturated with relativism.
Continuing, the Modernist
tells us that when the intellect encounters “Religious Sentimentality”, the
intellect will focus on it. And after
the intellect looks at the “religious sentimental feeling”, the intellect will
produce a new mental image of the “religious feeling” much like a painter would
do when he restores an old painting that was perishing with age.
This is the primary
approach of Modernism concerning the intellect.
In Modernism, the intellect has two functions. First, by a “spontaneous act” it expresses a
concept which it produced from analyzing “Religious Sentimentality” in the form
of a very simple statement. Then, upon
reflection and deeper consideration, or as they say, by elaborating on the
thought, the intellect expresses another “second statement” which has been
built upon the initial “simple statement”.
And they tell us the “second statement” which came from the “first
simple statement” is more perfect and distinct.
And they tell us the process keeps going on this way. And they tell us that some of these
statements will finally develop to the point that the Supreme Magisterium of
the Church will give its seal of approval to some statement that evolved in
this manner. And the Modernists claim
this is the nature and development of what “constitutes a dogmatic statement”.
12.) We have now reached
one of the principle points in the Modernists system of thought, namely, the
origin and nature of Dogma. On the one
hand they tell us that the origin of Dogma comes from simple ideas, which, in a
certain manner, are necessary for faith.
But the Modernist will distinguish between “Dogma” and “Revelation”. And the reason he makes the distinction is because
authentic revelation requires a clear manifestation of God in the “conscious
intellect”. And even though this fact is
to be found in authentic revelation, the Modernists will turn away from it and
instead look at what he calls “the principle of transfiguration”, which according
to them, produces Dogma.
This being the case, the
Modernists will then tell us that in order to ascertain “the nature of dogma”
we must first discover the relationship between the “religious formulas” and the
“subjective interpretation” of the person who is interpreting his own religious
feeling.
And the Modernist will
tell us that “religious formulas” (interpretation of the person) have no
purpose other than to provide the “believer” with a means to account for the
faith he holds “within himself”. The
views of others do not matter to him. It
is entirely subjective.
In the mind of the
Modernists, these formulas (interpretations) therefore unite the believer to
his faith. But in reality, when it comes
to the matter of “faith”, his interpretations of his own “religious feelings”
are “inadequate expressions” about the “object of his faith”. He cannot define an objective view of faith in
reality. All he can say is that he has
“religious feelings”. And the reason his
interpretations are inadequate is because when he goes to write down his
formulas on the chalkboard of “his conscious intellect” he finds out the
chalkboard is not solid, but instead is a “vapor” and his hand sinks through it
into his “subconscious” where nothing can be written. And the religious feeling that comes from
that vapor cannot write anything on the chalkboard that he can read. He can only “feel what is written”.
And due to the fact that
the Modernist shuts out objective reality, and does not even understand his own
person, he is left with no other alternatives but to claim that “formulas” are
only “symbols” of faith, and that they can never express anything absolute,
particularly as they relate to “External Revelation” that comes from God simply
because he rejects the fact that God is objectively knowable in the conscious
intellect.
In the end, the Modernist
ends up calling the results of his own interpretations “symbols” which are mere
instruments he uses to express his own interpretation of his own “religious
feelings”. It is all about him. Surely, such a person is a most pitiful
creature, puffed up in the insecurity that comes from open rebellion to make
such foolish claims.
Evolution
13.) This leads the
Modernist to conclude that an evolutionary process is involved with Dogma, and
all the teachings of the Catholic Church.
Since the Modernist
maintains that is impossible for “symbols” to express absolute truth he then
turns and refers to his “symbols” as “images of truth”, and he requires these
“images of truth” to conform to his own “Religious Feelings”. And as “instruments”, these “images of truth”
now become “vehicles of truth”. And
these “vehicles of truth” in like manner must conform to his “Religious
Feelings”.
Now, understand that there
is one thing that the Modernist will embrace as an “absolute”, and that
absolute would be “his religious feelings”.
In reality, he has embraced a vapor that cannot serve him. And that is because the “nature of feelings”
is such that they are always changing, from moment to moment, almost in an
infinite way. And this means there is
nothing absolute in his belief because there are an infinite amount of
different religious feelings that he may have as he passes through different
phases of life. And as a result, this means his “beliefs” change according to
the “formula” (interpretation of his feeling) that he chooses to interpret his
“religious feeling.”
So, the Modernist
concludes that the “formula” which the Church calls Dogmas, must therefore be
subject to change just like the “Modernist’s formula” allows for change. Consequently, the formula too, which we call
dogmas, must be subject to these unexpected changes, and everything is to be determined
by “Religious Feelings” which are always in a state of flux and change.
And this is the method
that Modernists use to attack the authentic Dogma of the Catholic Church. They want to make way for what they refer to
as “the intrinsic evolution of
dogma.” And when we examine the “dogma” and “doctrine” of the Modernists, we
see an immense collection of clever arguments known as sophisms, but they are
always flawed. They would use “sophisms”
as a means to ruin and destroy all religion.
They tell us that Dogma
is not only able to evolve, but that it must evolve and change according to
their principles. In fact, their claim
that Dogma must change is a primary deduction that comes from their principle
of “vital immanence” which is nothing more than the search for God beginning
and ending within man himself, and nothing external to himself.
And as a result of this,
simply because they are living individuals subject to change, their “religious
formulas” (interpretations) must also be subject to change if they are to be
“truly religious” and not “mere theological speculation”. For them, “religious interpretation” must be
living and follow “Religious Feelings.”
But the Modernists will then
tell us that “formulas” were “made for religious feelings”, especially if they
are merely imaginations.
What they are claiming is
this: a proper understanding of “formulas” has more to do with where the
formula came from rather than the number or the quality of the formulas that
Modernists use to interpret their “Religious Feelings”. For them, the necessary thing to understand
is that “religious formulas” should conform to “religious feelings”.
And this means that whenever
a Modernist embraces “original religious formulas” to interpret his “religious
feelings” he has sanctioned that particular formula in his heart, for the time
being. And this means that “secondary formulas of interpretation”, and
everything that comes from them, must also proceed under the guidance of
whatever the Modernist believer may “feel” within their own heart.
And this means that the
Modernist holds the view that “religious formula” must adapt to the “personal
faith” of the “believer” because they regard “religious formulas” to be alive
in a living person who changes.
And they argue that if
this is not allowed, if adaptation is not allowed, then “religious formulas”
have lost the value of their “power to interpret religious feelings”, and
therefore the believer must change their “original formula” and embrace a new
one to interpret the next “religious feeling” they have. Such is the world of the religious
relativist.
And since the lot and
character of the “religious formulas” that Modernists embrace is so convoluted,
it is no wonder that their understanding of “dogmatic formulas” is so corrupted
and precarious. And because they view
dogmatic formulas in such a corrupt way it should come to us as no surprise that
Modernists regard the Authentic Dogmas of the Catholic Church with such
contempt and open disrespect.
But Modernists have the
audacity to accuse the Church of taking the wrong road in the matter of Dogma.
They accuse the Church of failing to have a proper understanding that
distinguishes between what is “religious” and what is “moral”. And they make this claim accusing the Church
of holding to its formula for Dogma while they would have religion fall into
ruin.
They
are the
blind leading the blind, inflated with a boastful science. They have reached the heights of folly wherein
they pervert the eternal concept of truth and the true nature of religious
sentiment; and with their “new system” they have fallen under the influence of
a blind and unchecked passion for novelty.
And they give no thought at all to finding some solid foundation of
truth. And while they despise the Holy
and Apostolic Traditions of the Church, they embrace other vain, futile, uncertain
doctrines that have been condemned by the Church. And in the height of their vanity they
actually think that they have found rest in an alleged ability to retain truth
itself without error in their thinking.
Blind guides they are, leading blind men.
The Modernist as
Believer:
Individual Experience and
Religious Certitude
14.) Thus far, Venerable
Brethren, we have considered the Modernist from a philosophical
perspective. If we regard the Modernist
to be a “believer” as defined by Modernism, we can identify how and why he is
different from the philosopher.
The Philosopher can
recognize the necessity of the divine reality of God as the object of faith.
And the Philosopher knows this reality is not to be measured or affirmed as
being true belief according to what he can feel within his heart. He will not shut out the objective reality of
faith and then confine “faith” to the sphere of “phenomena”.
But if you ask a
Modernist “What is the reason that they “believe and what do they believe in?” they
will answer that their belief is determined by the “personal experience of each
individual.” This is where the Modernists differ from the Rationalists, and they
fall into the opinion of the Protestants and pseudo-mystics.
The following is how they
pose to explain themselves. They will
tell us:
“In the religious sense,
one must recognize or admit a kind of intuition in the heart which puts man in
immediate contact with the reality of God.
This infuses such a persuasion of God’s existence and His action both
within and without man that his conclusion that God exists rises above any need
to prove this according to the scientific method.”
Modernists conclude this “intuition”
is a real experience that surpasses all rational experience. And if anyone denies the reality of this
experience, as do the Rationalists, they claim that the fault is in the person
who fails to understand the experience, and the reason they fail to understand
the experience, according to the Modernist, is because the person is not
sufficiently moral to produce the experience. Modernists, therefore, believe that
the evidence necessary to prove that one is a “believer” rests in whether or
not they can produce a “religious experience”.
This understanding of
“belief” in the “believer” has no connection to Catholic teaching. We have already seen how the fallacies of
Modernists have been condemned by the Vatican Council. Later on we shall see how these errors,
combined with those we have already mentioned, open the way for Atheism.
Modernists actually proclaim,
some in a confused and timid manner and others in a most open manner, that all
religions are true. And it is clear why
they cannot say otherwise. Based on their theories which are all subjective, on
what grounds could falsehood be part of any religion? Everything, according to
them, is determined by what a person “feels”, and how they interpret their “Religious
Feeling”. There are no standards that are objective for everyone because
Modernists deny absolutes in this area.
And anyone who disagrees
with the Modernists will be told by them that any person or religion that holds
to false things in any religion is due to the fact there was an “incorrect
interpretation of religious feelings” that came about from an “incorrect
formula” produced by the “conscious intellect.”
Modernists cannot have it
both ways. If religion is determined by the “interpretation” (formula) of
“Religious Feelings” that come from the “subconscious” within a person to meet
the “conscious intellect” that is waiting to analyze the feeling which is done
by producing a formula by which they may interpret the “feeling” that can never
be an “absolute”, what then, gives a Modernist the right to come along at any
point and accuse someone of falsely interpreting anything when they are using
the very tools the Modernists supplied them to interpret their “feelings”?
Modernists will also try
to make excuses for the differences of opinion that exist in their own
ranks. They will tell us that “Religious
Feelings” may be more or less perfect, more or less intense, but nevertheless
they are all the same in that they are all “Religious Feelings”. And if the “intellectual formula” is to be true
it must respond to and obey the “Religious Feelings” according to the
intellectual capacity of the believer.
But Modernists fail to see this does nothing to eliminate the relativism
which is inherent in the Modernists’ concept of Religion and what it means to
have faith.
And when it comes to
conflict that is within different religions, the most that Modernists will
admit about Catholicism is that the Catholic Church has more truth because it
is “more living”, and due to this it is more deserving of the name Christian
than other religions because it corresponds more fully with the origins of
Christianity which they regard to be void of all that is divine.
But what is most amazing
is that there are Catholics and Priests, who, even though they act outraged
over the errors of Modernists, in reality, they act as though they fully
approve of their errors. And we know
this because they lavish praises and bestow high public honors on these
teachers of falsehood. And their
admiration of them goes beyond the admiration of the false teacher who may not
be totally corrupt, but their admiration is now seen to approve the errors
which these persons openly profess and propagate with all of their power and
ability to do so.
Religious Experience and
Tradition
15.) There is yet another
element which is absolutely contrary to Catholic teaching that is found within
Modernism. And it is this: When
“personal experience” or “religious feeling” becomes the standard of defining
“belief”, it becomes an attack on the “Tradition” of the Church which has been
in place since the day that Jesus Christ established the Catholic Church.
The Modernist views the “Tradition”
of the Church as a communication of an original religious experience that
occurred within Jesus Christ Himself which then came down to us and evolved
over the centuries through “preaching an intellectual formula”. And Modernists maintain that in addition to
the value this “experience represents” there comes a kind of fruitfulness, a
kind of suggestion within the “believer” to produce or stimulate “religious
feeling” within themselves. They will do this when their “religious feelings”
grow sluggish so they can renew their “feeling” they once had to bring it back.
They also believe that a
person who does not yet believe can become a believer by suggesting, or
producing a “religious feeling” within themselves. And they will, from that point on, be a
believer because they know what it is to have a “religious experience”, and that
they now know how to keep it alive from that point on once having tasted it.
And the Modernist
maintains this is how “religious experience” was preached to the nations, not
only by those who preached in the past, but also among future generations
through books and oral transmission from one to another.
There are times that this
false understanding of “religious experience” takes root and thrives, but at
other times it withers and dies at once.
But for the Modernist, to live is a proof of religious truth because for
them life and religious truth are one and the same thing. This is another reason why Modernists infer
that all existing religions are equally true, because if they were not, there
would be no one alive who is living out these religions. So once again, the
Modernists’ understanding of a “religious experience” produces the false
conclusion that all existing religions are equally true simply because other
religions have a “religious experience” within living people.
Faith and Science
16.) We have proceeded
far enough, Venerable Brethren, to say that we have in hand sufficient material
from the Modernists that will enable us to see how they view the relationship
between faith and science, including history which is also considered to be
under the auspices of science.
In the first place,
Modernists tell us that the object of faith and science are different and
extraneous to each other. “Faith”
concerns itself solely with something that science declares to be “unknowable”
for the purposes of Science.
So it is argued that there
can never be any disagreement between faith and science because each keeps its
own ground, each has a separate field assigned to it. Science, therefore, is entirely concerned
with the reality of phenomena in the visible world in which faith can have no
part.
Modernists tell us this
means there can be nothing in the visible world which can belong to the realm
of faith. Therefore, according to their
standard, the life of Christ can be seen only in terms of what is human. There can be nothing of the divine in His
life that is accessible by faith.
They will argue that what
we know of Christ falls within the category of “phenomena”, but any kind of
faith put in Christ would be rooted in fabrications about His life and His
person which came about from historical accounts that “transfigured” and
“disfigured” what we know of Him.
Therefore, Modernists use “science” to remove anything that would speak
of Christ as being divine in His person so that “Religious Feelings” are not
connected to any belief in Christ as divine.
This results in people
questioning whether or not Jesus Christ actually performed miracles, or that He
made real prophecies, or whether He truly rose from the dead and ascended into
Heaven. And it is because Modernists
have split science and faith in this manner, thereby making them incompatible
using this method of Modernists, the agnostic scientist will then say, “No.
There were no miracles and prophecies about Christ, they are all myths.” So then, when it comes to “faith”, Modernists
will say there is no conflict between faith and science because they cannot
conflict.
Now, among themselves,
Modernist philosophers will deny that the historical Jesus performed any
miracles, but if they are believers, they will confirm each other in whatever way
they understand living a life of faith in Christ means to them as individuals. This means they split Christ in two: a Christ
that is not divine and a pantheistic Christ that is Divine as are all men.
Faith Subject to Science
17.) Modernists insist
upon the superiority of science over faith.
They argue that one cannot believe that faith and science are entirely
independent of each other. In fact, they
will constantly maintain that science is independent of faith, but faith is not
independent of science.
They will argue that
faith is subject to science on three counts.
But they are wrong on each count.
First, they look only at
what is inside the believer. They never
look on the “outside” of the believer.
And as we have seen, Modernists limit the experience of knowing God to a
religious formula that is produced by the believer within himself, which the
believer regards as a religious fact.
Therefore, God now
becomes made in the image of someone’s “Religious Feelings” and He exists only
within the realm of what a man can conjure up in his imagination. Nevertheless, the Modernist adheres to the
concept of “Immanence” which is the idea that there
is an invisible spiritual or cosmic principle that is not measurable empirical
data or phenomena, but is present within the natural universe itself. And here we see the double standard in the
Modernist. This is the very reason that he
rejects a creator who transcends the existence of all things. The Modernist
will allow, and even acknowledge, an “invisible spiritual or cosmic principle”
that is not measurable according to empirical data or phenomena so long as it
is not God. As a result, the Modernist,
in his hypocritical double standard, moves from “Immanence” to “Vital
Immanence” which now becomes the search for God beginning and ending within man
himself, and nothing external to himself.
In spite of his hypocritical
one sided view of the transcendent, the Modernist dismisses and reduces
religious facts to things that are, in his mind, subject to the scrutiny of
science. And that is because he thinks everything
falls under the control of observable phenomena, and therefore under the control
of science when it comes to God.
And
Modernists will tell the believer to leave the world if he must, but as long as
he is in the world, everything is under the authority of science. The believer is told he must keep his faith
independent of science, but at the same time he is told that faith is not
allowed to be independent of the laws, the judgments, and observations of
science. The Modernist insists on these terms in the hope of making science the
measure of history and superior to faith. This puts science in control of
Historical Critical Analysis.
Second, they want to make
a distinction between the “divine reality of God” and the “idea of God”. Modernists dismiss God because science cannot
speak to the “divine reality of God”. The
“idea of God” is different because in their mind it is the result of something
that comes from within man, and that which comes from man is related to
observable phenomena. And this makes the “idea of God” subject to science. They subjugate the “idea of God” to science and
they allege to soar to the “absolute and the ideal” through philosophy in what
is called the “logical order”.
But the
Modernists reject what is perennial and absolute in the logical order and they crash
rather than soar. They blind themselves to what is objective. So, in the end, the “idea of God” is in
control of Modernists who used a corrupted philosophy and an illegitimate use
of science to form conclusions about the “idea of God”. And they do so in order to direct the “idea
of God” along the path of an “evolutionary process” so that it can pass through
the filter of Modernism. And in so doing,
they get to remove what they regard to be any extraneous elements which may
lead the observer to have faith in God who is external to what He created.
And third, the Modernist
will tell us that faith and science are opposed to each other, but this is a
“straw man argument” because in reality they are not opposed. And because the Modernist “needs” faith and
science to be opposed, he will make a demand which he has no right to
make. He will appeal to the fact that
man will not allow “dualism” to exist within himself. But there is no “dualism”; there is no
contradiction between objective faith and science. Therefore, the claim that man must somehow
find a way to harmonize faith and science, when in fact there is no discord, is
a false demand that is made by the Modernist in order to subjugate faith to
observable phenomena according to the terms set forth by science regarding the
observable universe.
So it becomes clear that
even though Modernists want science to be completely independent of faith, they
need to make faith subject to science even though they tell us they are
supposed to be strangers to each other.
Everything that
Modernists advocate and put forth, Venerable Brethren, is in formal opposition to
the teachings of Our Predecessor, Pius IX, where he lays it down that:
“In matters of religion
it is the duty of philosophy not to command but to serve, not to prescribe what
is to be believed but to embrace what is to be believed with reasonable
obedience, and not to scrutinize the depths of the mysteries of God but to
venerate them devoutly and humbly.”
The Modernists completely
invert the order of the parts, as we have seen.
They argue that science must be completely independent of faith, but
faith must be subject to science.
And of these Modernists apply
the words of another Predecessor of Ours, Gregory IX., addressed to some
theologians of his time:
“Some among you, puffed
up like bladders with the spirit of vanity strive by profane novelties to cross
the boundaries fixed by the Fathers, twisting the meaning of the sacred text
... according to the philosophical teaching of the rationalists, not for the
profit of their hearer but to make a show of science ... these men, seduced by
strange and eccentric doctrines, turn the head into the tail and force the
queen to serve the handmaid.”
The Methods of Modernists
18.) The methods of the
Modernists become still clearer to anybody who studies their conduct which is
in perfect harmony with their teachings.
In their writings and
addresses they flip flop advocating one doctrine now, another later, as though
they cannot make up their mind so that we will consider them vague and doubtful
of their own positions. But this is done
deliberately and advisedly, and the reason they do this is to be found in their
demand that science and faith must be kept apart. It is a strategy, and this is how we can
identify what they contrive.
In their books and
writings we find some things which might well be approved by a Catholic, but on
turning over the page, one is confronted by other things which might well have
been dictated by a rationalist. When
they write about history they make no mention of the “divinity of Christ”, but
when they are in the pulpit they profess it clearly. With the same strategy, when speaking of
history, they make no mention of the Church Fathers and the Councils held by
the Church over the centuries which confirm and expound the faith. Instead, when catechizing people, they merely
cite them respectfully. And with the same strategy, they make a distinction
between exegesis, which is an explanation of Sacred Scripture, and that which is
guided by science so they may subjugate exegesis to the historical critical
methods of the Modernists.
And with the same
strategy still, when dealing with philosophy, history, and criticism, acting on
the principle that science in no way depends upon faith, they feel no special
horror within themselves as they tread in the footsteps of Luther. And they display certain contempt for
Catholic doctrines, for the Holy Fathers, for the Ecumenical Councils, and for
the ecclesiastical magisterium. And
should they be taken to task for what they do, they complain that they are
being deprived of their liberty.
Lastly, guided by the
theory that faith must be subject to science, they continuously and openly
criticize and rebuke the Church because she will not bend; because she will not
submit and accommodate her dogmas to the demands of the Modernists. While at
the same time, the Modernists endeavor to introduce a new, Modernists’ brand of
theology which supports the aberrations of their philosophers as they go about
trying to stamp out the Sacred Theology of the Church that has been held from
the beginning of the Church.
The Modernist as
Theologian:
His Principles, Immanence
and Symbolism
19.) It is time, Venerable Brethren, to consider
the Modernists in the arena of theology. It is a difficult task to expose each of their
sophisms because they embrace so many to justify their case, but it is a matter
that can be disposed of quickly.
The Modernist theologian
has set about to reconcile faith with science, but like the Modernist
Philosopher, he would make one subject to the other. Meaning, he would make Theology subject to
science. He uses the identical principles
that we have seen in the Modernist philosopher to accomplish this task which
are the principles of “immanence” (spiritual or cosmic principle) and
“symbolism” which he then applies to the believer. The process by which he does this is extremely
simple:
·
The Modernist Philosopher declares: The principle of faith is
Immanent which means there is a spiritual or cosmic
principle that is present within the natural universe itself, but there is no
creator who transcends the existence of all things.
·
The believer adds to this
saying: This principle is God.
·
The Modernist theologian
adds: God is Immanent in man. And since
the Modernist rejects the fact of God, he makes himself God. It is a grasp for divinity.
And the process we have
just seen is what gives birth to “Theological
Immanence” which is equal to saying that the study of God is the study
of man. In like manner to the
Philosopher, the Theologian takes the position that anything which represents
itself as the object of faith is merely symbolical. But the task of the Modernist philosopher is
to convince the believer that the “object of faith” is “God in himself, in his
own nature”. And in turn, the Modernist
theologian proclaims that representations
of the divine reality are symbolical. And this is what gives birth to “Theological Symbolism.”
It is clear that the
Modernists views of “Theological Immanence” and “Theological Symbolism” are
truly enormous errors, and their pernicious, destructive character will be seen
clearly from an examination of their consequences.
Consider “symbolism” according to Modernist thinking.
Since symbols are but symbols
that correspond to their objects they are merely instruments in the hands of
the believer that he uses to paint a view of religion in terms of how he wants
to interpret his “religious feelings”.
But the Modernist will tell the believer not to stress over the
“formula” that he uses to interpret his “religious feelings”.
The believer is then told
the only purpose of a formula is to seek “absolute truth” (which is not
admissible in Modernism). He does not
believe he can ever arrive at absolute truth, but hopes he can be united to “some
truth”. The Modernist fails to see that
all truth is absolute in what is expressed in the same way that a “part of the
whole has wholeness in itself.”
After having corrupted
truth with a formula devised by Modernists, they tell us the formula itself
reveals and conceals at the same time, that is to say, the formula is a means
to express something without ever being able to express what it is. And this is directly related to the false
formula of the Modernists. As we have
seen, and will see further, this corrupted formula is given birth by the supposition
that objective reality can never be found because man, in his “conscious
intellect” meets his “religious feelings” which are ever changing, and he tries
to interpret them which results in a “symbolism” of what he feels. He has closed his eyes to objective reality
outside of himself, and enters into a land without objectivity in all that he
considers religious.
The Modernist would have
the believer use their individual “formulas” only insofar as they are useful to
them. They claim the purpose of a formula is to be a help, not a hindrance, but
in the end, it closes off all objective reality to the believer. Nevertheless, the believer is to go about
using his “formulas” out of social respect due to formulas which the public
magisterium (not the Catholic Magisterium) has deemed suitable for expressing
the “common consciousness” until such time as the same public magisterium
(public opinion) says otherwise.
Concerning “Immanence” (spiritual or cosmic principle),
we must add, it is not easy to determine what Modernists mean by it, for their
opinions on the subject vary. Some
understand it in the sense that God who works in man is more intimately present
in him than man is in even himself, meaning that man is God. And if this is accepted as a fact, then man
is free from reproach, he is free to interpret religion in any manner he
wishes.
Others hold that the
“divine action” is one with the “action of nature”, as the action of the “first
cause” is one with the action of the “secondary cause”, but this would destroy
the supernatural order. This error is saying that the “effect” is the same as
the “cause” and therefore “equal to the cause” which is impossible. In theological terms it is the same as saying
that man is God.
Others explain
“Immanence” in a way that relishes pantheism which identifies the universe with
God or God with the universe, “God is all, and all is God”, man is part of the
universe, therefore man is God and God is man.
In truth, pantheism stacks up best with the rest of their doctrines.
20.) The “Principle of
Immanence” is always reduced to the idea of a
“spiritual” or “cosmic principle” that is present within the natural universe
itself, but there is no creator who is external and transcendent to the existence
of all things. Therefore, in his own
mind, man becomes God. But, as we
pointed out, if you ask the Modernist to demonstrate this “spiritual cosmic
principle” which is invisible and cannot be seen in observable phenomenon, they
cannot do so. And these are men who
reject God as external creation because He is invisible and cannot be seen in observable
phenomenon. Try as they may, they cannot
drag God down to their level and demands.
Cause and effect reality cancels out their system.
But facts do not matter
to the Modernists. They press forward in
willful blindness and unite the “Principle of Immanence” with another which is
called the “Principle of divine
permanence.” “Immanence” differs
from “Permanence” in the same way that “private experience” differs from the “experience transmitted by tradition.” And since Modernists believe that man is
divine, what others add to his own ideas becomes “permanent” because it was
built by others and is carried forward in time.
This results in “Divine Permanence.”
And this leads us to Modern
theologians who are Agnostics. They tell
us that the Church and the Sacraments are not to be regarded as being
instituted by Christ Himself. Agnostics
see Christ as nothing more than a man whose “religious consciousness” was, like
all other men, formed by degrees. And
they deny the fact that Christ’s human intellect was infused by knowledge from
His own divine person because this would mean that He is God in time, and
external to time, and all that He created. Therefore, since Modernists adhere
to “Immanence” which does not allow for the existence of a creator who is
external to all He created, and therefore “external to their system”, they relegate Jesus to the common lot of all men.
Modernist theologians
also reject the fact the Christ instituted the Church and the Sacraments
because they embrace the “law of evolution” which requires the “growth of the
seed” which takes place over time being exposed to various circumstances and
conditions. They tell us the truths of
Christianity cannot exist without followers who added to what Christ taught,
and this formed an “evolution of Christianity” each time something was added.
And lastly, the Modern
theologian tells us that history itself forbids us to acknowledge that Christ
instituted the Church and the Sacraments.
They will admit that Christ founded the Church and the Sacraments in a
“certain manner by way of mediation.”
What does the Modernist mean by this?
He asserts that all “Christian consciences” are rooted in the same
manner that Christ was rooted in His own conscience. They regard the “conscience of Christ” to be
the “seed of a plant that grew into Christianity”. Christ is the seed and the tree would be His
followers. And they tell us in the same
way the branches share in the life of the seed, so do Christians share in the
life of Christ. They reduce omniscience to the “conscience of Christ” by
reducing Jesus Christ to a mere man.
They also assert that
just as Christ lived His own life “according to faith”, in like manner all
Christians do the same. And they make
the claim it was the collective body of Christians who expanded Christ’s
original human thoughts, and they allege this is where the Church and the
Sacraments came from. And from this, the
Modernist will tell us that Christ was divine only in a pantheistic sense,
therefore all men are just as divine as Christ, and in the same sense. And from this, they will tell us that the
“thoughts of Christ” are divine because he is “part of the universe”, and they
became “permanent” because His original thoughts survived the ages and
flourished which resulted in “divine permanence”. And they will conclude that “divine
permanence” can be used in the same way to account for the nature of the Church
and the Sacraments in that they regard them to be built on Christ and expanded
upon by the Church. And Modernists make the same claims about Scripture and
Dogma, and from this they conclude that Dogma and Scripture are ever
evolving.
When you combine all of
these Modernist views you end up with a complete system of theology which is
corrupted and errant. And as such, it is
more than enough for the Modernist theologian to corrupt the minds of others
because, in the end, he professes all conclusions in theology are subject to
the conclusions of science which must be accepted and respected.
No one will find it difficult
to understand that Modernist theologians try to apply their mistaken theories wherever
they can and in whatever way they can, which we intend to examine.
Dogma and the Sacraments
21.) So far we have
touched upon the way Modernists understand the origin and nature of faith. But faith has many branches, and chief among
them is the Church, dogma, worship, devotions, and the books which we call
“Sacred Scripture”. It is necessary for the
Church to expose what Modernists teach regarding Dogma and the Sacraments. Let Us look first at how they apply their
errors to Dogma.
We have already made
clear what the Modernist believes concerning the origin and nature of
Dogma. But to remind you, they believe dogma
comes from an “impulse” which the believer must clarify first for himself and
then elaborate upon with his thoughts out of a necessity for both himself and
others. He does this to render his understanding
of dogma clear to his own conscience, and then to the conscience of others for
them to understand. The result is this:
rather than dogma proceeding from on high by Christ through His Church, the Modernist
will argue that dogma develops internally in the believer through the process
of investigating, and refining his “primitive mental formula”. He will exempt himself from being required to
explain his “formula” saying there is no “logical need” to do so. He will say that he can only express his
“conclusion” but the root of his “formula” lays hidden in his “subconscious” so
that he can exempt himself from the obligation of providing an “observable”
formula. Nevertheless, in his boldness,
forcing his view upon others, he will go on to explain how he used “his formula”
to interpret his “impulse” of his “Religious Feeling”. And he sinks further and further into himself
as he interprets his “impulse” according to circumstances which he regards as
“Vital to Himself”. This results in a
relativistic approach to Dogma.
From their “primitive
formula” the Modernist will build “secondary” formulas like different levels of
a building that rest on the foundation.
And they keep adding level upon level until they form a building, any
building, any view of faith, in any view of religion whatsoever. Their construction of doctrine is applauded
in the arena of public opinion as though the public has been endowed with the
capacity to approve the “construction” as a type of “public magisterium”. And
they regard the public “common consensus” to be an affirmation of “common
consciousness”, which they regard to be the authority that declares and defines
Dogma.
Their understanding of
Dogma is not alive. It is cut off from
God and from the Church. But even though
it is dead, it has the appearance of Dogma.
First of all, Dogma does
not spring from the speculation of theologians. Theologians assist the Church
in explaining Dogma, but they are not a parallel Magisterium. But, Modernist theologians will use their corrupted
understanding of where Dogma comes from like a utility which serves to keep
order and harmonize religion with science, always demanding that religion bends
to science. With their false understanding of Dogma they claim to have the
capacity to remove opposition between faith and science, and they claim the
ability to illumine Dogma and defend religion on the outside while they set the
course of the Church for destruction from within.
Concerning worship, there
is not much to say that has not already been said about their perfidious
approach to Dogma. That being said, we
must still expose how they have attacked the Sacraments and have built a false
understanding of them for the sake of the Church.
Among the errors found in
Modern Theologians, their attack on the Sacraments is of the most serious
nature. Everything in their system is explained by “inner impulses” or
“necessities”. In the mind of the Modernist, the Sacraments are the result of a
“double impulse” or “two needs”.
The “first need” that the
Modernist has is the need to provide some kind of visible, sensible
manifestation of religion. And the “second
need” is a way of expressing religion, but this would be impossible if there is
not some visible form of religion, hence the need for the “first need”. The combination of these “two needs” is how
the Modernist understands the “consecrating acts” which are called Sacraments. The Sacraments must have some visible form,
or manifestation, that allows him to express his view of religion.
But keep in mind, for the
Modernist, the Sacraments are merely “symbols or signs”, void of efficacy,
namely “grace”. But nevertheless, the
Modernist sees the Sacraments as something he can use, like a utility, which he
will use if he can to disfigure the structure of the Church. As pointed out, the Modernist rejects the reality
of grace in the Sacraments, but they will allow the efficacy to be redefined as
mere “phrases” used in the Sacraments that have been accepted among the populace,
phrases that appeal to itching ears. And
the Modernist, using the Sacraments like a utility, will insert his ideas into
the phrases which propagate the ideas of the Modernist into the population at
large, but always void of grace in the Sacrament itself.
They deceive people and
tell them that the phrases used in the Sacraments are to impress the populace
by creating “Religious Feelings”, but nothing more. They tell us the sacraments
have been instituted for the sole purpose of fostering faith according to
“religious feelings” rather than to receive grace “by the action of God”. This
view is held by Modernists and it has been condemned by the Council of Trent
which says:
“If anyone says that
these sacraments are instituted solely to foster the faith, let him be
anathema.”
The Holy Scriptures
22.) We have already
touched upon the way Modernists view Sacred Scripture. According to the principles of the Modernist,
the Scripture is regarded to be nothing more than a summary of “experiences”. But, they are not the kind of experiences that
come and go for just anyone. They will
even tell us what is found in Scripture are the kind of experiences that are
extraordinary and striking in their nature.
But, they will then tell us that these “experiences” are not to be found
“only in the Catholic Church”. They can
be found in any religion, and they assess these “experiences” in other religions
indifferent to whether or not grace is to be found in these “experiences”. This puts “any experience” in “any religion”
on par with revelation given by Jesus Christ. And this is precisely what they
teach about the Catholic Books of both the Old and New Testaments and how we
are to understand them.
But to suit their own
theories they try to be clever by saying:
“Although experience is
something that belongs to the present, experience may draw from experiences of
the past and the future inasmuch as any believer may live the past through
memory, and in the same manner those in the present moment are willing to live
out the future.”
Confined by their model
of theology, they look at the historical and eschatological nature of Sacred
Scripture and Apocalyptic Books. God
does indeed speak through the Sacred Scripture, but the Modernist Theologian
would reduce the voice of God to the Modernists’ understanding of “Immanence”
and “Vital Permanence.” This is the same
as saying:
“Man is God finding God in Himself, and
speaking within Himself gives rise to his expression to others who in turn build
upon his expression”.
The Modernist will then
tell us that “inspiration” is distinguished from the “impulse” by the “need” to
express himself in words, or writing, as a result of the “impulse” or
“religious feeling” he “experiences”. This is the understanding of inspiration that
is found in the Modernist who embraced his concept of “Immanence”. Consider the heinous nature of this attack
against the very inspiration that comes from the Holy Spirit.
The Modernist cuts the
Holy Spirit out of the picture and reduces inspiration to that which comes from
the “first impulse or desire” within a man.
It reduces inspiration to a “religious need” within the believer regardless
of what it is that stimulates him to speak or to reveal his expression of
faith. He feels inspired to write about
what moves him inside, much like a poet.
So the impulse that moves the poet is like the “impulse of Religious
Feeling” that moves him to express how he feels as “man who is God, as God in
man”. Just as the poet is “set on fire”,
“God in Man” sets man on fire because “Man is God.” This is to make man the
Holy Spirit. And in the end the “God
within the Modernist” is cut off from the true God because we are not God.
We have seen how the
Modernists attack Divine Inspiration from the Holy Spirit. And they go so far as to say there is nothing
in Sacred Scripture that does not come from a Modernists’ understanding of
inspiration. But inspired by whom, God or man? Some Modernists might be more disposed to
consider Scripture in a more orthodox manner than certain other Modernists who
tend to restrict inspiration, even on Modernists’ terms, when it comes to material
that they are examining. And they do
this to see if it was inspired according to their subjective understanding of
inspiration. But, in the end, it is all
a mere juggling of words. For if we examine the Bible, according to the tenets
of agnosticism, meaning the Bible is a human work made by men for men, and then
allow the Modern theologian to proclaim that it is divine by “immanence” (some
spiritual or cosmic principle), what room is there left in it for authentic
inspiration from the Holy Spirit? General inspiration in the Modernists’
understanding of inspiration is easy to find, but inspiration in the Catholic
sense? No! There is not a trace of it to be found in anything
they say or write.
The Church
23.) A wider field for
comment is opened when you come to treat of the changes in tactics devised by
the Modernists in their attack against the Church.
They begin by saying that
the Church came into being as a result of two needs.
The first need - is the
individual believers need to communicate his faith with others, especially if
he believes that he has had some kind of “original” or “special” experience.
And secondly - when it is
accepted that each person is free to define their faith, they discover a need
to come together collectively to form a sort of society, which is their
understanding of the nature of the Church.
And they believe this “society” comes together to guard, promote,
propagate, and protect the “collective consensus”.
If we ask the Modernist, “What
is the nature of the Church?” they will tell us that the nature of the Church
is merely the “collective conscience of individuals” which is founded upon the
principle of “vital permanence”. The
Church becomes the collective body of people who build on the idea of someone
who came before them making it a permanent feature of History. In reality, the Modernist is busy doing a
rewrite of history.
The Modernist will then
say that the character of the “collective conscience” and “vital permanence”
(staying power) will depend on the “first believer”, which according to
Modernist is Jesus Christ who believed in His own “Religious Experience” within
himself just the same as any other man does.
Modernists will acknowledge
that every society needs a directing authority to guide its members towards the
“common end” so that it may conserve, with prudence, the elements that unite a
religious society which are “doctrine and worship”. And prudence, in the mind of the Modernist,
is simply another way of saying that they do not want the Church to reprimand
them for their ideas.
The goal of Modernists is
to strip the Church of authority in three areas so they may give that authority
to themselves.
The three areas are:
·
Disciplinary
authority
·
Dogmatic
authority
·
Liturgical
authority
They will begin by arguing
that the “nature of authority” in the Church must rest in its origin, namely,
human nature, and therefore, the rights and duties of the Church rest in human
nature as well. They will tell us that
in times past it was an error to think that authority came from “without”, meaning
directly from God. And they will tell us that authority modeled on God in the
hands of men in the Church becomes tyrannical and abusive in the human
experience.
And from this conclusion they
will tell us that the “old form of authority” has now grown old and
obsolete. They will then argue that
authority in the church proceeds not from the Magisterium of the Holy Catholic
Church, but rather, from a true and living authority that emanates from the “collective
conscience of the members of its society.” In other words, they want the Authentic
Magisterium of the Church to bend to the will of popular opinion. Their view of authority emanates from the
Church without a Magisterium unless the Magisterium is defined as the
“collective conscience”.
So they conclude that
true authority in the Church has its origins in the “Religious Conscience” of
the people. And that being the case,
every member in the Church, including the Pope, must bend to the will of the
people, the will of the majority.
And Modernists will also demand
that the Magisterium drop its authority, otherwise they will indeed carry out
their agenda and label the Church as tyrannical. They have pushed society to the edge so that liberty
has become license to do evil, and once the voice of the “public conscience”
demands the right to govern civil order in a “religious society” we have
arrived at a new low.
At this point, the
Modernist will tell us that they are bound in conscience not to God or to the
Church, but to what their own conscience tells them. And that it now behooves the ecclesiastical
authority in the Church to conform itself to the democratic process, and if it
does not, it can get itself ready for war.
This is their demand. In their
mind the Church must bend and recognize the “will of the people” in the Church and
as the governing body unless it wishes to provoke and foment indigestion and
conflict in the consciences of mankind. This is how vile they regard the
authority of the Church to be.
The Modernist will then
make the observation that there are not “two consciences” in man any more than
there are “two lives”. There is nothing
new in that. But, the Modernist wishes
to say there is only “one man, each with his own conscience” in the “collective
Church”. But the “one man” must not
represent the “one collective conscience”, or the “one collective authority” unless
the “collective conscience” is viewed as a new form of ecclesiastical authority
that is independent of the “one Pope, one man” with a Magisterium of Bishops in
union with him. It must be a new form of authority that has fashioned the
Church after the manner of a “democratic society”.
And Modernists threaten
the Church with the warning that the penalty for refusing to give in to the
Modernists’ view of the Church will be disastrous. They threaten the Church by informing us that
they have tasted the liberty of freedom apart from the Magisterium. It tastes good to the rebellious, just as it
did in the fall of man. They tell us this new understanding of liberty is now
spread so far and wide into the Church and society that it is madness for the
Church to think that the knees of the people will bend once again to the
Magisterium of the Church. And they
threaten the Church even more. They tell
us if they are forcibly confined and held in bonds by the doctrines and Dogmas
as understood by the Catholic Church ever again, then terrible outburst would
occur, sweeping away not only the Church but all of religion.
Their one anxiety, their
one demand, is to find a way to reconcile authority of the Church with the “liberty”
of the believers. And the only acceptable solution for them is for authority to
be taken away from the Magisterium and given to the people where “democracy” is
the authority. And the reason they want
to do this is so they can mandate the evolution of Dogma and Doctrine.
The Relations between
Church and State
24.) And adding to the
pressure that they exert within the Church, they bring to bear the same
pressure on the relationships that the Church has with the secular state and
other religions.
Modernists tell the
Church that it must concede its authority if it expects to have friends in the
world and in the State. And this
includes secular societies and other religious societies with which it must
have contact to develop relations. And
if the Church does not concede its authority, it can expect trouble from these
other societies as well. And in order to
make the Church relinquish its authority, they accuse the Church of thinking and
acting as though Catholics are the only ones who exist in the world. This serves as a way of putting pressure on
the Church to stop evangelizing other religions. It is to pressure the Church to give up the
hope of converting others to Catholicism.
It is a direct attack on a proper understanding of ecumenism.
Modernists tell the
Church that the rights and duties of the church must be based on the
“collective conscience of its members”, as we have seen, but, like any good
functioning society, it must have a built-in checks and balance”. And for the
Modernist, “science is king”, therefore they demand that science must rule
faith.
Modernists will once again
insist that “faith and science” are strangers that cannot meet, unless they
meet on their terms. They will insist
they cannot meet because they have different ends in mind in the same way that
Church and State have different ends in mind.
And they will conclude that faith and science can never meet in terms of
authority and governing principles.
Therefore, the Modernist
will tell the Church that in past centuries, the Church was able to make the
temporal order submissive to the Church only because in former days the Church
was able to convince men that the Church had been instituted directly by God as
the author of the Supernatural Order found in the Church.
But Modernists in our day
reject and repudiate the doctrine of the Church as coming from God. And they reject this understanding of the
Church both in philosophy and history. As
a result of this, the Modernist tells the State that it must therefore severe
itself from any union with the Church.
The State must force the Catholic to become citizens of the State with
allegiance to it, rather than to be citizens of the Church with allegiance to
the Church.
And the Modernist tells
every Catholic that as a citizen of secular society he has a right and a duty
to work for the common good of the secular order that has separated itself from
the Church in whatever way he thinks best.
And as a true deceiver, the Modernist will then tell those who leave the
Church that in their heart they must no longer heed or trouble themselves with
the authority of the Catholic Church when it makes demands on them as to how
they are to conduct themselves in the political and secular affairs in a
secular society. They claim the Church
has no right to make demands on them. And
they tell the fallen away that they must not pay any attention to reprimands or
punishments of the Church either in public or in private.
When one considers all
that is in the mind of the Modernist, it is clear the Modernist would have
people believe that if the Church maps out any line of conduct with a demand to
follow it under any pretext or conditions whatsoever, the Church will be guilty
of abusing their ecclesiastical authority. And if that happens, the Modernist
is told that he must act with all his might to resist what the Church
prescribes.
These principles found in
the Modernist have been solemnly condemned by Our Predecessor Pius VI in his
Constitution “Auctorem fidei”.
The Magisterium of the
Church
25.) But it is not enough
in the Modernists’ school of thought that the State should be separated from
the Church. In the same way that the
elements of observable phenomena are the subject of science, so too, in temporal
matters of any civil society, the Modernist demands that the Church must be
subjected to the state, and that includes the elements of her doctrine and
dogma.
Modernists do not say
this openly, yet - but they will say it when they wish to follow their logic to
its logical conclusion on this point.
And given the fact that the State has absolute authority in temporal
matters, it will follow that when the “believer” is “not fully satisfied” because
the Church did not bend to his demands of how the “internal acts of religion”
should be held and implemented, he will now accept an “external authority” that
he has made, but not a “God who is external to what he has made.” The only “external authority” that a
Modernist will accept is when the “State” takes control of the administration
and reception of the Sacraments as we see in some regimes.
This is the agenda of the
Modernist. He strives to make the
ecclesiastical authority of the Catholic Church whose authority can only be
exercised with “external acts” fall completely under the dominion of the
State. And if the Modernist can convince
the “collective conscience” to instill into secular government the notion that
the doctrinal teachings of the Catholic Church constitute a form of hatred
towards those who do not accept its teachings, then retribution against the
Church must be administered by the state.
It is this inevitable
clash between Church and State that impels many liberals and Protestants to
reject all external worship, and yes, all external religious community as
well. And in the end, they advocate for
what they call “individual religion”.
And if Modernists have
not yet reached their goals, they ask the Church in the meantime to be good
enough to follow them spontaneously wherever they want to lead Her. And they want the Church to adapt Herself to
whatever civil structure is in vogue.
This is how they understand “disciplinary” authority.
But far more advanced and
far more pernicious are their teachings on “doctrinal” and “dogmatic”
authority. The following is what the
Modernists want the Magisterium of the Church to become:
·
No
religious society can be a real entity unless the “religious conscience” of its
members is one. This means society must adopt “one formula” to guide all men in
conscience. But these two things:
“religious conscience” and “one formula” require a “common mind” that has an
“office of authority” so that it can find and determine the “formula” that best
corresponds with the “common conscience”. And the authority that resides in
this “office of authority” must be sufficient in power that it can impose on
the community of believers the “formula” that has been decided upon in collaboration
between the “collective conscience” and the “office of authority.”
·
From
the combination of these two things, the “common mind of the believers” will
draw up the “formula” for belief, and the “authority of office” will impose
it. The only purpose of the Modernists Magisterium,
therefore, is to enforce the will of the people. It has no authority to impose
on believers any doctrine that does not have the consent of the believers. It is the combination of these two things
that creates the structure of an “ecclesiastical Magisterium” for the
Modernist.
·
Their
concept of a “Magisterium” derives its power from the “individual conscience”
and exists only to serve and enforce the will of the individual and collective
conscience.
·
Their
Magisterium would have as its mandate, for the sake of public utility and for
the benefit of its believers, a concept of the Magisterium that must actually
submit to the will of the believers.
This means the structure of the Magisterium must be democratic.
·
The
Magisterium cannot abuse its authority by assuming for itself the right to
prevent any individual who, in conscience, wishes to freely and openly reveal
the “religious impulses”, or their “religious feelings” in public. These
religious feelings, in the mind of the Modernist, are what constitute the
“evolution of Dogma”, and are therefore necessary for the survival of their
model of the Church. Therefore, to suppress these “religious impulses” in any
individual without due process would be an abuse of power in the Magisterium that
they created (rather than God through His Church) which is formed to serve the
“individual conscience”.
·
Therefore,
in the mind of the Modernist, due process and a corresponding measure of authority
must be observed by the New Magisterium when it exercises its authority.
·
Therefore,
to condemn and prohibit a believer’s writings without the knowledge of the
author, without hearing his explanations, without discussion of his ideas,
would be a form of tyranny in the Magisterium.
This means a way must be found to ensure that the Magisterium does not
abuse its authority, that it must respect the rights and liberty of the
believer.
·
In
the meantime, the proper course for the “Catholic believer” will be to proclaim
publicly his profound respect for authority, but he shall not be prohibited
from continuing and publishing his writings, nor shall his work be condemned
for any reason.
·
From
this view of the Magisterium flows this model of the Church for the Modernist: The reason that the Church exists is entirely
for “spiritual purposes”. Therefore, all religious authority must strip itself
of all “external pomp which adorns it in the eyes of the public”.
In the end, the Modernist
fails to realize that while religion is essentially for the soul, it is not
exclusively for the soul that the Catholic Magisterium exists. It exists
because Jesus Christ instituted it, so to honor the Magisterium of the Catholic
Church is to honor Jesus Christ Himself.
The Evolution of Doctrine
26.) In order to conclude
the whole question of faith and its various branches, we still have to
consider, Venerable Brethren, what the Modernists have to say about the
development of these various branches.
First of all, they lay
down a rule, or a general principle, which says that in a living religion
everything in it is subject to change simply because it is alive in its members.
And therefore, it must in fact change throughout time.
In this way, Modernists
impose on the Church a demand that evolution becomes the foundation of understanding
any branch of faith. They argue that
under the laws of evolution, everything is subject to death, and in their
minds, that includes Dogma, the Church as Christ instituted it, worship, Sacred
Scripture, and even faith itself. And
the penalty for not obeying the laws of evolution is the death of religion.
No one should be astonished
or surprised to learn that “evolution” is the platform of the Modernist when considering
what they have said about each brand of faith and theology. Having laid down the law and demand for the
acceptance of “evolution” in religion, we see what Modernists have in mind from
what they have told us themselves.
Look first at how they
view faith. They tell us the “primitive
form of faith” was rudimentary and common to all men alike, not just Catholics,
because it has its origin in “human nature” and “human life”. And from this comes “evolution” of religion
which is necessary. It is this which
gives birth to what we might call “Vital Evolution”. And Modernists tell us
this is what brings progress to the Church.
And they go even further
in telling us that in the “evolution of doctrine” an “external source” (God) is
not allowed because they know this crushes the notion that doctrine and dogma
evolves. They will tell us that a proper understanding of the “evolution of
doctrine” rests in an ever increasing perfusion of “religious feelings” experienced
in the “conscience of the body of believers”.
Not only are Modernists wrong about how they understand the “evolution
of Dogma”, they are wrong in saying that “Dogma evolves”. Neither doctrine nor
dogma evolves. What was in the Church from
the beginning is the same as it is now.
We have the benefit of deeper insights about dogma and doctrine which
come from the Church, but the insights rest on what has always been.
Nevertheless, Modernists
continue advocating the evolution of doctrine.
And they tell us that the progress of evolution in doctrine and theology
is twofold:
·
Negative
·
And
positive.
The Negative – Modernists
tell us that evolution of doctrine eliminates all of the extraneous elements in
doctrine that do not survive the process of evolution, for example, those
elements which are derived from the family or nationality.
The Positive – As a
result, man is “refined” in his intellectual and moral being by this evolution
of doctrine. And by means of this
“refining”, man comes to see in a clearer and a more full way what is truly
divine in the “form of ideas”. And as a
result, “Religious Feelings” in man will become more acute, meaning they will
be heightened so he can “feel more religious”.
By removing the “fact of
God” from doctrine and allowing only “ideas about God” in doctrine, Modernists
intend to open the door to evolution in doctrine. An “External God” is not allowed because it
prevents the evolution of doctrine and this leaves doctrine to be willy-nilly,
whatever they want the “idea of the divine” to be.
Yet, Modernists tell us that
if faith is to be fruitful and efficacious, if it is to progress, the same
concepts of evolution must be applied to any branch of faith and theology in order
to justify its existence in the evolutionary process
This is a total
repudiation of the way Christ established His Church. And they are so bold as to patronize the
prophets, and even Christ Himself, in order to subject them to the scrutiny of
evolution. Modernists call them
“prophets” for their own purposes of utility. They would use Christ and the
prophets, and make no mistake about it, their objective is to crush the divinity
in Christ and the prophets under the jaws of evolution.
And to do so, they will
approach the lives of the prophets, and Christ, by acknowledging that there was
something mysterious about their lives.
But they insist that when the believer observed the “mysterious” in the
life of Christ and the prophets, it was the “faith of the believer” that
interpreted what was mysterious in them, and that it was the believer who gave
birth to a divine association with the person of Jesus Christ and the mystery
in the lives of the prophets.
Therefore, in the mind of
the Modernist, the “divinity of Christ” is merely a projection onto His person
that came from the “believer”, and that Jesus Christ is not really divine. And the Modernist will tell us that the
reason this happened is because Jesus and the prophets had been singled out simply
because the “mysterious element” in their lives “new and original experiences”
that were in full harmony with the “religious needs” of their time. But the Modernist also tells us that the
“religious needs” of former times are no longer applicable because the evolution
of doctrine has changed our “religious needs”.
Modernists conclude,
therefore, by telling us that evolution in Dogma, (which they call progress)
will come about when obstacles to evolution are surmounted, when the enemies of
evolution are vanquished, and that when objections to evolution are refuted all
will be well.
So then, the Modernist
presses forward, never ceasing in effort to instill the principles of evolution
into all branches of religion in order to penetrate and corrupt what is
“profound” and contained in the “mysteries of faith.” They want to strike at the revelation of God.
They want to strike at the very Person of Jesus Christ as they tell us that
anything unexplainable in His life, or the life of the Prophets, is explainable
from the natural order that we have yet to discover. That is how they define “mystery”. It is simply something that we have yet to
discover that “Jesus and the prophets” tapped into but did not fully
understand.
But they will tolerate
nothing of God who is “external/eternal” to their scheme. They refuse anything
and everything that involves God as the Creator of all that exists. If they cannot get their hands and their
minds around an infinite creator, He is not welcome.
They have placed their hopes
in the folly that one day, their god of evolution will be able to account for
what is mysterious in the life of Jesus and the prophets strictly in terms of evolution, so that in the end
they may proclaim “evolution as their god” and the author of revelation in “the
second coming of man”.
And since Modernists deny
the divinity of Christ, they tell us that the evolution of Doctrine and Dogma
began after Jesus initially perceived a “Religious Feeling” within
Himself. And through the course of
history, believers slowly and gradually projected and added their own
“religious feelings and ideas” onto “His religious experience” until finally
the body of believers created a belief that Jesus is in fact God.
Modernists dismiss the
claim that He is divine saying that claim is a mere product of evolution, while
at the same time they dismiss the teaching of the Catholic Church which tells
us that He is God, and “external to all created reality”. In the end, the “principle of evolution” is
the only thing the Modernist regards as important. They claim “evolution” is necessary to
“stimulate the evolution of worship” and that whatever it produces by way of
belief is secondary to the “principle of evolution in doctrine.”
And they go further. They
claim this “evolution of worship” is necessary because it accommodates the manners
and customs of various peoples according to time and circumstances. And along with the needs of these peoples,
the “evolution of worship” will add those things which any particular culture
considers of value to help us “understand religion.” They insist that the Church must adopt the
“evolution of doctrine” in order to avail itself of the “things” considered of
value in any particular culture, and that by adding these “things”, the evolutionary
process helps us to “understand doctrine”.
In their mind, “culture” must contribute to the evolution of doctrine.
And finally, the
Modernists tell us that the evolution within the Church itself is fed by the
need to adapt itself to the historical conditions of its surroundings, and that
it must harmonize (conform) to existing forms of “religious belief” in any
society, irrespective of the culture or religion. They demand that the Church bring into the
bosom of the Church everything of all religions so that in the aggregate there
is a fuller understanding of religion and a “new face of revelation”. And this is why Modernists put the demand on
the Catholic Church to cease in its mission to evangelize people in other
religions, and instead, become subject to them.
This is how the Modernist understands every branch of religion in the
Church.
But before we continue,
we wish to point out the fact that Modernists demand that the theory of
evolution in doctrine must remain open to the “necessities and needs” of what
has yet to be expressed.
All of this constitutes
the Modernists’ understanding of the Historical Critical Method.
27.) Continuing with the “evolution of doctrine”,
Modernists will admit even their understanding of the development of doctrine
has limits. They will proceed to tell us,
if the evolution of doctrine is left unchecked it would burst the boundaries of
“tradition” (which in their mind means only what is human) and separate itself
from its “primitive vital principle” (the initial religious experience of an
individual which became permanent) and ruin all that had evolved, and that it
would end all progress that comes about through evolution.
When taking a closer look
at their “doctrine of evolution” we see that it is clear in their mind that
evolution in doctrine is the result a redefinition of two conflicting forces:
·
One
force which tends towards progress
·
The
other force towards conservatism
They understand the force
of “conservatism” as their understanding of “tradition” in the Church. And
tradition has “religious authority” as its representative, namely, the “common
consensus”. And that being the case, the
right and duty of “conservatism” is to protect “tradition”. This means the authority which rests in conservatism
is above the problems and conditions in life and it hardly notices if at all,
the prickly struggles in the evolutionary process.
The “Progressive force”
is opposed to “conservatism”. This force
responds to the “inner needs” of “individual conscience” and ferments within the
Modernist, especially in those who are in most intimate contact with the
necessities of life.
We can already see,
Venerable Brethren, the introduction of that most pernicious doctrine of the
Modernist that would corrupt the laity and turn them against the Magisterium by
making them the very measure and factor of progress in the Church according to
their demand for the evolution of doctrine in the Church.
This means that the
Modernists must institute and retain a type of “covenantal union” between their
understanding of the two forces which are “Conservatism” and “Progressive”, that is to
say, between “authority” and “individual conscience” wherein “changes” and
“advances” take place. Modernists
determine that there must be a kind of co-existing compromise that exists
between these two forces when it comes to the Church as instituted by Jesus
Christ in order to ply their way into the Church to undermine Her at Her very
foundation.
They maintain that there
are some individuals in the “collective body” whose “individual conscience”
will bring pressure to bear on the “collective conscience” of the rest of the believers
in the “collective body”, and on those who have been charged with authority in
their model of the church as well. And in return, the authority, whose nature
it is to conserve doctrine must consent to a compromise with the “progressive
force” whose nature is to change doctrine.
And once an agreement has been made, the authority in the Church becomes
a utility of the Modernist to preserve and guard the compromise agreement.
With all of this in mind,
one can understand how it is that Modernists express astonishment when they are
reprimanded or punished. What is imputed to them as a fault they regard as a
sacred duty. They presume to understand the “needs of the
conscience” better than anyone else because in their minds they come closer to
the “individual conscience” of other believers than does the “ecclesiastical
authority” established by Christ. They
believe they embody an understanding of the “needs of conscience” in such a way
that they feel free to speak for themselves and to write publicly as though
they are duty bound to do so, in spite of the reprimands that come from the
divine institution of the Catholic Church founded by Jesus Christ.
Modernists encourage those
who are reprimanded by saying:
“Let the Church rebuke
them if it pleases, they do not heed the Church because they have their own conscience
on their side, and an intimate experience with religion that tells them with
certainty that they should be praised for their positions and not blamed.”
And in their twisted
agenda against the Church, Modernists conclude that there is no progress in the
Church without a battle, and that a battle has victims, and in their own minds
they are victims just like the prophets and Christ Himself because “their
message” is not accepted by the Catholic Church. The Modernists are not the victims, they are
the perpetrators.
But do not expect them to
complain too loudly about this. They
present themselves as having no bitterness or hatred in their hearts towards
the Magisterium which they claim has treated them badly. They feign piety in the face of a “harsh
Church” which scolds them. The Modernist
says to himself, “Why be bitter about being scolded? After all, a misguided
authority is just doing its misguided duty”.
And in the battle, when
they have become victims in their own minds, their sole grief, their one lament
is that the Church is deaf to their demands, warnings, and threats. In fact, they maintain the Church impedes
“the progress of souls” because it is deaf to the “wisdom of the Modernist.”
But they believe the hour
must come that will crush the old model of the Church because they believe it
is inevitable that the laws of evolution will ultimately take charge of
doctrine, dogma and authority. They
believe that evolution will crush the Catholic Church which basis its authority
on a “God who is external” to what He created; to a God who speaks through His
Church. In short, they believe that they are
invincible if they stand by the principle of “evolution in doctrine.”
And in spite of the
reprimands and condemnations imposed on them by the Church they go on their way
feigning to be victims, masking themselves with the incredible audacity of
wanting to appear humble. While they
make pretense by bowing with their heads, within their heart lurks a rebellious
man ever more bold and intent to carry out his plans and purposes against the
Church. And they follow their plans
wittingly and unwittingly for two reasons:
First, because they feel
their personal agenda is part of their system of authority, and that the
Catholic Church should encourage them in their beliefs rather than punish,
reprimand, and dethrone them. And now,
more than ever, they feel emboldened to remain within the ranks of the Church,
pushing their agenda to gradually transform the “collective conscience of
believers” so that the believers may join with them in their fight against the
Catholic Church as Christ established it.
But in saying this, the
Modernist fails to perceive that the “collective conscience” is not yet with
them, for in fact, they are trying to form the collective conscience of these
people. Therefore, they have no right to
claim they are interpreters of the collective conscience. Nor can they claim that the Catholic Church
is aloof from the collective conscience because, in fact, it was given to the Church
established by Christ to form individual consciences. It was not given to the
Modernists.
And in the end, the
Modernists must understand that they will not be judged according to a
“collective conscience”. Everyone will be
judged according to individual conscience that had obligations and duties, not
just rights. They will be judged for claiming a “false claim to rights” that
was used to justify rebellion against the Church.
28.) And so it is,
Venerable Brethren, there is to be found nothing stable in the Modernists whether
they are authors or propagandists. In their minds, there is nothing immutable
in the Church that cannot be divided up or evolve. And they are not without forerunners in their
corrupt doctrines, for it was about these forerunners that our predecessor Pius
IX wrote when he said:
“These enemies of divine
revelation extol human progress to the skies, and with rash and sacrilegious
daring would have it introduced into the Catholic religion as if this religion
were not the work of God but of man; or some kind of philosophical discovery
susceptible of perfection by human efforts.”
And on the subjects of
revelation and dogma in particular, the doctrine of the Modernists offers
nothing new. We find their doctrine
exposed and condemned in the Syllabus of Pius IX which explains their corrupt
understanding of doctrine in their own words:
“Divine revelation is
imperfect and therefore subject to continual and indefinite progress,
corresponding with the progress of human reason"
And this corrupt
understanding of doctrine was condemned even more solemnly in the Vatican Council
(Vatican Council 1) which stated:
“The doctrine of the
faith which God has revealed has not been proposed to human intelligences to be
perfected by them as if it were a philosophical system, but as a divine deposit
entrusted to the Spouse of Christ to be faithfully guarded and infallibly
interpreted. Hence also that sense feeling of the sacred dogmas is to be
perpetually retained which our Holy Mother the Church has once declared, nor is
this sense feeling ever to be abandoned on plea or pretext of a more profound
comprehension of the truth.”
Nor is the development of
our knowledge, even concerning the faith, impeded by this pronouncement of the
Vatican Council. On the contrary it is
aided and promoted. For the same Council
continues:
“Let intelligence and
science and wisdom, therefore, increase and progress abundantly and vigorously
in individuals, and in the mass, in the believer and in the whole Church,
throughout the ages and the centuries - but only in its own kind, that is,
according to the same dogma, the same sense, the same acceptation.”
The Modernist as
Historian and Critic
29.) We have studied the
Modernist as a philosopher, a believer, and a theologian. It now remains for us to consider him as a
historian, a critic, an apologist, and a reformer.
30.) There are some Modernists devoted to
historical studies that are deeply anxious not to be regarded as philosophers.
They profess to know nothing about philosophy, but this is merely a smoke
screen. It is a very astute way of
trying to hide their objectives. In
fact, they strive to be seen as individuals that have no preconceptions about
any philosophical theories which could be used against them to say that they
lack objectivity. But the truth is,
their views and criticisms of history are saturated with their philosophies and
what is in vogue, and their “historic-critical” conclusions are the natural
outcome of their philosophical principles which are corrupt. This is obvious to
anyone who reflects upon their principles.
Their first three laws
are contained in those three principles that we already dealt with which are:
·
The
principle of agnosticism
·
The
principle of transfiguration
·
The
principle of disfiguration
Let us look at the
consequences that flow from each of these.
First principle,
Agnosticism - tells us that history, like science, deals entirely with
phenomena, and the consequence is that God, and every intervention of God in
human affairs, is to be relegated to the domain of faith where it must remain apart
from historical reality because Modernists demand that faith cannot have any
relation to a “knowable God” who is “external to”, and “other than” what He
created.
This means the Modernist
rejects everything the Church teaches when it tells us that the divine and the
human come together in Christ, the Church, the Sacraments, and the many other
objects in which the divine and human come together. The Modernist refuses what the Church teaches
on these matters and vows to break them apart. In his mind, and at all costs, these
two things can never be allowed to remain united.
And the reason that Modernists
try to break them apart is so they can teach that the “human element” alone
belongs to history, like every other science, because they deal entirely with
observable phenomena. They simply will
not allow faith to mingle with reality from a historical perspective.
This is why it is common
and indeed necessary for Modernists to make a distinction between the “Christ
of History” and the “Christ of faith”, the “Church of history” and the “Church
of faith”; the “Sacraments of history” and the “Sacraments of faith”, and so on
in similar matters.
Second Principle,
Transfiguration - We find that Modernists
working in the capacity of a Historical Critic with his corrupted demands will
tell the Church that anything which elevates the human condition to the divine
in Scripture, doctrinal teachings, or historical accounts has been
“transfigured” by the “faith of the believers”.
That is to say, the human element has been raised above the historical
conditions of the time in which the person lived.
At this point, the
Modernist Historian believes that it is his obligatory task to eliminate all
the “additions” that are not proper to what he perceives to be historical
reality, meaning, he will allow nothing of divine intervention, and nothing of
the divine to mingle with the human condition.
He must remove from all records the element of “faith” and relegate it
to a category he creates called the “history of faith” where “faith in a
transcendent God” can have no connection to the human experience.
Therefore, when the
Modernist historian encounters the person of Christ, he will deliberately set
aside all that surpasses any man in his natural condition, including what
psychology tells us of man, and also according to what we know of the time and
place in which Christ lived.
Third Principle,
Disfiguration - the Modernist Historian demands that everything in history should
pass through the filter of the Modernist Historians’ perspective. He will relegate to the “history of faith”
all things that he regards as an exaggeration, which is to say, any association
to divinity is in his mind, an exaggeration.
Everything that is not in harmony his judgment of history according to “his
view of the facts” must be removed from the historical context. And this includes anything that is “not in
character” with the human condition of any person, including Jesus Christ.
Therefore, the Modernist
Historian will deny that Christ ever uttered to the multitudes those things
which are not in keeping of the human condition. They will delete anything of the supernatural
regarding His Person and will allow Him to be a historical human person only.
And as a result, they delete from the historical person of Jesus all things divine
that are found in Scripture about Him.
They regard these things to be no more than “allegories”. And of His discourses which relate to a
transcendent creator, they will relegate them to the realm of “faith” where
they can have no part in historical reality.
When we ask the
Modernist, “On what basis do you distinguish allegory from what is history?”, they
will tell us that their decisions are based upon the character of the man, his
condition in life, his education, and the complexity of the circumstances under
which the “facts” took place. In short,
in the last analysis, their decisions are merely subjective. Someone else will have a different
understanding of the facts. This is the equivalent of “Sola Scriptura” in
history.
When they are confronted
on the fact that their determination as to what is historical is merely a
subjective determination, they will tell us that they make their decisions by
putting themselves into the position and conditions that Christ found Himself
in, and then attribute to Him what they personally would have done under the
same circumstances. And by doing this,
they tell us that they are working from something that is already known or is self
evident about Christ, namely that He is human, and that they arrive at their
conclusions based upon a Modernists’ philosophical point of view which they use
to measure the person of Christ. But
they will deny they make their judgments based upon philosophical principles
which are in fact corrupt, prejudiced, and lacking.
In the end, they proclaim
that Christ, according to what they call “His real history”, was not God and never did anything divine, and
that as man He did and said only what they will allow Him to have said or done,
judging from the time in which he lived.
In their mind, if they cannot be God then Christ cannot be God.
Criticism and its
Principles
31.) The Modernist
Historian tells us that conclusions about history come about from a
philosophical examination of the past. But criticism depends upon history or
there could be no criticism of history, philosophically or otherwise.
The Modern critic looks
at the data that he receives from the historian, and to form his conclusions he
divides his documents into two categories.
Anything that remains
after being filtered will be regarded by the Modernist as “real history”. The three filters the Modernist uses are:
·
The
principle of agnosticism
·
The
principle of transfiguration
·
The
principle of disfiguration
The Critic of the data given
to him by the historian then divides his documents into two parts. Everything that remains in the material given
to them, the leftovers, is regarded as the “internal history of faith”. The rest is to be regarded as “the history of
faith”.
The Modernist is very
careful to make these two divisions. The
“history of faith” and “internal history of faith” are translated to mean:
·
Real
history
·
Internal
history of faith
And they set these two
views of history against each other telling us the “internal history of faith”
is not real.
And we have as a result,
another presentation given to us by the Modernists that tells us there are two
different Christ’s: a real Christ of history, and then a “Christ of faith” who
never really existed. The only real Christ, according to the Modern critic, is
a human who lived in the past at a given time and place in history. And they will tell us that Christ was never
anything more than a man who lived with “pious meditation” like any other
believer. It is for this reason that the
Modernists will tell us that the Christ in the Gospel of St. John has nothing
to do with real history, but is only a pious meditation about Jesus from
beginning to end.
32.) The demand of the Critic does not end
here. Even though he believes that he has
dominion over how we are to understand history, he still has need for the Modernist
Philosopher. The following demonstrates how the Modernist Critic and the
Modernist Philosopher corrupt history.
After the Critic divides
history into the two categories we mentioned:
·
Real
history
·
Internal
history of faith
The Philosopher steps in
again with his Dogma of “vital immanence” which is the search for God beginning
and ending within man himself, and nothing external to himself. He does not allow for the existence of God
who created all things to be included in the critique of history. To the
Modernist who roots his belief in “Immanence”, “man is God and God is man”, and
that is the bottom line for him.
From this point on, the Modernist
Philosopher will proceed to demand that everything he received from the Modern
Critic concerning the history of the Church can be explained in terms of “Vital
Emanation”, which is to say, everything that the Catholic Church regards as of
divine origin came about from some “need” within the Catholic Church which
produced an exaggeration which then came to be regarded as divine, which in
turn became the object of faith.
The Modernist Philosopher
will argue that “no fact” (article of faith) can be regarded as coming before
the “need which produced it”, therefore, everything the Catholic Church teaches
concerning something of “divine origin” must be discarded from a historical perspective.
What happens next? The
same Philosopher goes over, once again, Sacred Scripture and all other material
at his disposal, and then writes down what he deems a list of “successive needs
in the Church” as they relate to Dogma, Doctrine, Liturgy, and other matters as
well. After he has done this, he will hand his list of “successive needs” back
over to the Modernist Critic.
The Modern Historical
Critic now has in his hands a list that has been drawn up by a Modernist
Philosopher.
At this point, the Critic
will take those “things” which the Philosopher determined gave birth to the
“history of faith” because they are associated with the “divine”. But the Modernist will not accept them into
historical analysis because he rejects the fact of God.
The Critic will then
arrange claims in Scripture that are associated with the divine (history of
faith) by time period so that they correspond with the “lists of needs in the
Church” drawn up by the Modernist Philosopher.
The Critic will then tell us that the accounts associated with the
“divine” in Scripture came from the “needs of the Church.” And he will conclude
this is how Scripture must be understood.
The Critic will then make
the assertion that some parts of Sacred Scripture, such as the Epistles
themselves, are accounts of the “divine” which were created by the “needs of
the Church.” And he will then assert that everything considered to be “divine
in the Epistles” are not part of human history because he rejects the existence
of God, and therefore he rejects the divine in the Epistles.
He will then set about to
determine the “age of the document” he is critiquing according to his own subjective
interpretation of when he thinks the “needs of the Church” manifested
themselves in history.
After this, he will make
a further distinction between the “beginning of a fact”, meaning where a “need”
gave birth to what is considered “divine”, and compare that to “the development
of what is now considered to be divine.”
The Modernist will look
at the life of Christ and ask, “When did the Church have a “need” for God to be
among man?” When did the Christ child “become divine” to satisfy this “need”
for God to be with us? At what point in
time did the Church attribute “divinity” to a child that is merely human? And what of the miracles Christ performed
when He grew up? The accounts of
“miracles” would be more evidence of “needs” among the believers “who made the
child divine” in the first place, and a time period must be determined to
associate a “need” which gave birth to anything in Scripture that is
“associated with the divine.”
At this point, the Critic
must go back over his documents that he arranged according to his understanding
of “needs within the Church”. He will
now divide these documents into two parts:
·
Human
historical
·
Birth
of claims associated with the divine.
He will then take all that
is associated with the divine, and make a further distinction:
·
The
birth of the divine
·
The
development of the divine
He will then arrange them
according to the time period which he determined them to be. He does this so he can claim a “beginning
point” for each claim in Scripture associated with the divine and then point to
a time period where the “need” generated the “beginning point” of belief that
raised a human historical condition to the status of the divine. And thus, he will say “for every association
of the divine in Scripture there is a corresponding need” in a particular time
period that produced the association with the divine.
Another example of how
the Modern Critic works can be seen this way.
Man has a need for the divine.
The believer makes Jesus, a mere human, divine. Man does not want to die. This need to live forever reaches a high
point at a particular time in history and the Church creates an account of
Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead.
Jesus becomes the Lord of Life.
And the Modernist will
tell us this is how all Scriptural accounts associated with the divine can be
explained. His entire Critical
Historical Analysis is done rejecting the fact of God and then he presents his
“Historical Critical Analysis.”
33.) The Modernists philosopher will show up once
again, and impose on the Modernist historian the obligation to determine all
that he concludes according to the “laws and precepts of historical evolution.”
And the next task for the
Modernist historian is to scrutinize his documents again, and examine carefully
all the circumstances and the conditions in history that affected the Church
during different time periods. He must
also examine the “conserving force” in the Church in what She maintains, as
well as the “needs of the Church” both internally and on the outside that stimulated
Her progress, and the obstacles the Church had to face as well. And he must do this so that he can form
conclusions in such a way as to try and demonstrate the laws of evolution at
work in all these things.
And once he has done
this, he will finish his work as a historian by drawing up a history of the
“evolutionary development” that he will refer to as “facts”.
And like the next act in
a play, the Modernist Critic comes back on stage and finishes the document concerning
Scripture, and everything else he has in front of him, on his terms. He sets about to write, and when done, he
sets forth a revised historical critical analysis.
Venerable Brethren, we
must now ask, “Who is the author of history? Is it the Historian? Is it the Critic?” In the end it is neither
of the two. It is the Modernist Philosopher
who critiques history.
From beginning to end, the
Modernist Historical Critic makes the demand that we accept everything in Scripture
associated with the Divine as coming from a “need” to build on something that
is already known. And as a result, the
Modernist Historical Critical Analysis reeks of heresy.
These men are certainly
to be pitied, because it is of them the Apostle might say:
“They became vain in
their thoughts...professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.”
But at the same time,
they deserve the just indignation against them which they receive, because they
accuse the Church of arranging and confusing what is in Sacred Scripture, and
all else, after Her own “needs and fashions” to support the objectives of the
Church. In reality, they are accusing
the Church of something because their conscience is troubled, for they are
projecting onto the Church that which is in them. It is they who corrupt history.
How the Bible is dealt with
34.) What the Modernist
delivers to us as “historical fact” is nothing but a dismembering and butchering
of Sacred Scripture. And according to the way they partition history over the centuries,
the Modernist concludes that the Scriptures can no longer be attributed to the
authors whose names they bear.
The Modernist does not
hesitate to affirm, in general, that these books, and especially the Pentateuch
and the first three Gospels, have gradually evolved from a primitive brief
narration. They will tell us the
narration evolved due to additions and interpolations of theological and allegorical
interpretations, by transitions, or by joining different passages together.
To say it briefly and
concisely, the Modernists tell us that whatever is within the Sacred Books, the
Church must admit to a “vital evolution” which sprang forth and corresponds
with the “evolution of faith”. And they
tell us the “traces of this evolution” are so visible in Scripture that one
could almost write a history of it. And
indeed, these Modernists do try to rewrite history according to how they see it
with such self-confidence that they demand we accept their view of the
“evolution of faith”.
They do so with such
presumption that one might believe that they have a time machine which transports
them back to where they are sitting next to the writers of Scripture. They write their account of history as though
they are witnessing with their own eyes the writers of history whom they allege
amplified Scripture “beyond human historical fact” which they claim accounts
for the “divine” in Sacred Scripture.
To aid them in their
assertions, Modernists call to their assistance that branch of criticism which
they refer to as “textual criticism”, and they labor like scholars to tell us
that this or that “fact” or “phrase” is not in its right place. And they will
add to their criticisms other arguments of a similar kind.
The Modernists have in
fact constructed for themselves certain types of narration and discourses
whether or not something in Scripture is out of place based upon their
preconceived verdict.
Judge if you can how men
with such a system are qualified to practice Historical Criticism. To hear them talk about their works on the
Sacred Books in which they allege to have been able to discover so much that is
defective, one would imagine that before they were born nobody ever even
glanced through the pages of Sacred Scripture.
But, the facts are not on their side. Throughout history a whole
multitude of Doctors, infinitely superior to the Modernists in genius, in
erudition, in sanctity, have sifted the Sacred Books in every way, and rather
than finding imperfections in them, have thanked God more and more for His
divine bounty in having vouchsafed to speak thus to men the deeper they have
gone into them.
Modernists consider those
who have come before them as being disadvantaged in their assessment of
Scripture because they did not use a philosophy that rejects God from a
historical perspective, and because they did not make “themselves god” in their
critique of Scripture. Modernists
corrupt all things because, in their own mind, everything revolves around them.
Venerable Brethren, we
believe that we have set forth with sufficient clarity the historical critical
method of the Modernists. The
Philosopher leads the way, and after him follows the historian, and then after
the historian comes the “internal” and “textual critics”.
And since it is natural
for “primary cause” to communicate “its virtue” to “secondary cause”, it is
quite clear that the criticism We are concerned about is not just any kind of
criticism, but that type of criticism which at its root is “Agnostic criticism,
Immanent criticism, and Evolutionist Criticism.”
Therefore, anyone who
adopts the historical critical method of the Modernists and employs it in any
way makes the same profession as that of the Modernists and are thereby guilty
of the same errors, and they place themselves in direct opposition to Catholic
teaching. And this being so, it is of
great surprise to find the extent to which their methods have found acceptance
among certain Catholics.
There are two reasons for
this:
The first comes from the
close alliance between Modern historians and critics from the Modernists’
school of thought. They have come
together on their own to form a movement independent of all difference of
nationality or religion.
Second is that their
boundless arrogance and self-confidence by which, if one of them from among
their ranks makes any utterance, the others applaud him in chorus as though God
has spoken. They crown their own and
proclaim with one voice the notion that science has taken another step
forward. And if an outsider to their
ranks should step forward and even hint at saying “hold on a moment, let me
take a look at your ‘new discovery’, I would like to inspect it myself”, the Modernists
will converge upon him as “one” and they will form a coalition against
him. They will accuse anyone who denies
their “new discovery” as being one who is ignorant, but to the one who embraces
their discovery, the Modernists will embrace and defend with all of their
praise.
In this way they win over
people who seek titles, honour, and worldly glory, and they entrap not only a
few. But if these people knew who it was
that was embracing them, they would shrink back in horror and flee.
And there is also a
domineering, overbearing manner in those who teach the errors of the
Modernists. And there are the unthinking many who are more shallow in mind and assent
to the teachers of Modernism with thoughtless compliance. Together they create
such a corrupted atmosphere that it spreads out like a poison that seeks to
penetrate everything, and it carries infection with it. But let us now look at the “apologist” for
Modernism.
The Modernist as
Apologist
35.) The Modernist apologist is dependent upon the
Modernist Philosopher in two ways.
The first way is
“indirectly”, inasmuch as his “subject matter” is history that has been
dictated and rewritten by the Modernist Philosopher, as we have seen.
And secondly, the
apologist is “directly dependent” upon the Modernist Philosopher because he
takes his laws and his principles, his doctrine and his conclusions, from the Modernist
Philosopher.
Therefore, the common
guideline from the Modernist school of thought is that the new apologetics must
be taken from and fed by psychological and certain historical sources. As a result,
the Modern apologist will enter into the arena of debate bowing to the
“rationalists” in a manner of apology, telling them that they act with the intentions
of a Modern apologist. And although they
are defending “religion”, they have no intention whatsoever of using and
employing data from the Sacred Books or the understanding of history currently
in use in the Church. They will deride
the “old ways” and “old methods” as though real history was written on modern
principles and checked rigorously against modern methods.
In all of this they claim
that they are not arguing in a way to appeal to emotions and prejudices in
people instead of the ability of these people to think. Rather, they will claim
that they are sincerely of the opinion that the truth about Scripture,
Tradition, and Church history is to be found only in their understanding of
history. And they tell us that they
should not be required to make a profession of their own sincerity about what
they write. They feel above that because they are already known and praised by
the rationalists who fight with them against the church under the same banner
and in the same cause. And they not only praise each other formally, but they
also bestow honors and awards upon each other as though their prizes which they
give and take mean anything before the Lord.
And furthermore, they use
the praises they give to each other to offset and compensate for their “hurt
feelings” when they are reprimanded by the Church. They think nothing of the insults they hurl
at God and the Church. And to the one
who is a real Catholic and faithful to the Church that Jesus Christ
established, the prizes and the words of praise that these Modernists have for
each other only provokes disgust.
But let us see how the
Modernist conducts his apologetics. The goal is to make the “non-believer”
attain that “experience” of what it
means to be a Catholic according to the Modernists’ understanding of the
Church. There are two ways that he
goes about doing this which are the “objective” and the “subjective”.
First, he approaches
those who are not yet Catholic from a position of agnosticism, and this is his
method. He tells the unwitting that his
understanding of the Catholic religion is endowed with such a vitality that every
psychologist and historian of good faith is compelled to recognize that history
hides some elements of the unknown.
And the Modernist takes
it upon himself to prove that the Catholic religion as it exists today is not that
which was founded by Jesus Christ, that is to say, the Church as it is today is
nothing but the progressive development of the “seed” or “germ” of religion
which He brought into the world.
Therefore, the Modernist feels that it is of primary importance that he
identifies what this “seed” or “germ” was.
And he claims that he can prove what the seed was by the following
formula:
First, Christ announced
the coming of the Kingdom of God which was to be realized within a brief lapse
of time in which he was to become the Messiah.
He is the divine agent who gave us this notion and He is the one who
ordained it to develop over time through a process of evolution.
Next, it must be shown
how this “seed”, this “germ”, was always “immanent” and “permanent” in the Catholic
religion, and that it has slowly developed during the course of history,
adapting itself successively to the different circumstances and environments to
which it was exposed, borrowing from these environments through “vital
assimilation” all the dogmatic, doctrinal, cultural, and ecclesiastical forms
that served its purpose, while on the other hand, it surmounted all the
obstacles that were put in front of it, and that it vanquished all of its
enemies, and survived all assaults and combat levied against it.
And the Modernist will
conclude by telling us that anyone who gives fair consideration to the amount
of obstacles, adversaries, attacks, and combats, the sheer “vitality and
fecundity” which the Church has shown through all of this would be evidence of
the “laws of evolution”, but they will acknowledge these laws are insufficient
to explain its survival when one considers the entire history of the Church.
At this point, they
assert an “unknown factor” in the “germ” which then grows and presents itself
before the Church. And without realizing
it, the Modernists fail to see that their understanding of the “primitive germ”
is merely a known assumption that is based upon an agnostic and an evolutionist
philosophy, and they define the “germ” in a self serving way that fits with
their view and their claims. What they cannot account for in the “unknown”
proceeds from their rejection of what is divine.
36.) And while these new apologist go about with
their false understanding of faith which they hope to insert into souls, they
are more than willing to grant and recognize that there are many things in the
Church which they find repulsive. They
do so to ingratiate those with itching ears and the unsuspecting. And they go further. They openly admit, with ill-conceived
satisfaction, that they have found errors and contradictions even in the Dogmas
of the Church. And they feign to defend
the Church according to their understanding of the Church by saying these
errors are not only “excusable”, but, curiously enough, that they are even
right and proper, and even to be expected.
Modernists will tell us
that within the Sacred Books there are many passages referring to scientific or
historical claims where there are clearly errors to be found. But, they will then say that “these errors” do
not matter much because the subject of these Sacred Books is not meant to deal
with the facts of science and history, but rather, they deal only with religion
and morality.
They will tell us that in
the Sacred Books the Church has used an inappropriate understanding of history
and science to serve as a type of covering, like a wrap, in order to make the
“religious and moral” experiences wrapped up within them more understood and
more quickly acceptable to the masses. They tell us that the masses naturally
understand the reason why science and history are used in this way within the
Sacred Books. And they have the audacity
to tell us that had a correct understanding of science and history been used in
examining Scripture, transmitting what is “religious and moral” to the masses
would have been more difficult. They make this claim to further enhance their
views of history and morality. And this
is the reason why they are willing to “admit errors”.
Furthermore, they say
that the Sacred Books, being essentially religious books, are necessarily
living, or “quick with life”. They tell
us that life has “its own truths and its own logic” which is quite different
from “rational truth and rational logic”, as though they belong to a different
level or order of existence.
And in their evolutionist
mindset, they tell us these “living books”, as is the case with all life, have
within them the “truth of adaptation” and of “proportional balance” between
“fact” and “necessity” in order to express moral and religious truths, both of
which live within the medium of evolution and serve the end for which they live,
namely, evolution of doctrine and dogma.
Finally, the Modernists,
losing all sense of control go so far as to proclaim as true and legitimate
everything in Scripture is explainable by life itself, and this shuts out the
very nature of revealed truth from life experience. And of the Modernists and their “laws of
evolution” the Church says:
“We, Venerable Brethren,
for whom there is but one and only one truth and who hold that the Sacred Books
are written under the inspiration of
the Holy Ghost, and have God for their author (Conc. Vat., De Revel., c. 2) declare that this
is equivalent to attributing to God Himself the lie of utility or officious
lie, and We say with St. Augustine:
“In
an authority so high, admit but one officious lie, and there will not remain a
single passage of those apparently difficult to practice or to believe, which
on the same most pernicious rule may not be explained as a lie uttered by the
author willfully and to serve a purpose. (Epist.28).
and thus it will come about”, the holy Doctor continues, “that everybody will believe and refuse to
believe what he likes or dislikes.””
But the Modernists
continue in their agenda with delight.
And they will claim that certain arguments used by the Church that are
based upon Scripture, such as those based upon prophecies, even though they
have no rational foundation to rest upon (according to the Modernist), is
acceptable to use as clever devices for the sake of preaching which is
justified by life itself.
But do Modernists stop
here? No, in fact they are ready to
admit, rather, they are ready to proclaim that Christ Himself clearly erred in
determining the time when the coming of the Kingdom of God was to take place,
and they tell us that we must not be surprised at this since even Christ was
subject to the laws of life. How far will the Modernist go!
After this, what is to
become of the dogmas of the Church if they have their way? They tell us that the dogmas of the Church
brim over with flagrant contradictions, but that it does not matter because
logic tells them what is true and what is not true, and that the dogmas can
serve as “symbolic truth”.
They will tell us that we
are dealing with the infinite, and the infinite has a variety of aspects. In short, to maintain and defend their
theories, they do not hesitate to pay the noblest homage to the “infinite” that
can be paid while they turn the infinite into a mass of contradictory
propositions. And when they justify even
contradiction, what is it that they will refuse to justify according to their
perfidious “Laws of evolution”?
Subjective Arguments
37.) The Modernists realize that it is not only
“objective arguments” that can bring the “non-believer” to embrace faith. There are also “subjective arguments” that
can be considered. And for this reason,
the Modern Apologist will return back to his “doctrine of immanence” with evil
intentions.
The Modern apologist sets
about to convince the “non-believer” that deep down in the very depths of their
nature and in their personal life there is a “hidden need” that desires some
kind of religion. And they do this
because they know that man is a religious being by nature, but they wish to
corrupt Catholicism in the following manner.
They will tell the non-believer that “a generic view of religion cannot
satisfy them”. In fact, they will tell them only Catholicism can satisfy them,
but there is a condition attached to what they promise. They will tell the non-believer that only the
Modernists’ version of Catholicism can be understood and accepted as an
essential pre-condition of Catholicism that leads the way to a perfect
“development of life”.
The Church must speak out
against Modernists in this regard. We
have grave reason to do so because there are many Catholics who, while
rejecting “immanence” (the reality and indwelling presence of a transcendent
God) as a doctrine, will use a Modernists’ understanding of it in their methods
and in their apologetics for nefarious purposes. And they do so with such
imprudence that they seem to admit there is not only a capacity and suitability
for the supernatural within human nature, but that there is a true and rigorous
need for the supernatural order. And in
doing so, they infect what is true about “man being made FOR God” with the
corruption that comes about from using the principle of “vital immanence” in
their apologetics “which says that man is God”, and that the search for God
begins and ends in man, thereby attributing divinity to man instead of
God.
And it must also be said,
the moderate Modernists who make appeals for the necessity to use the
Modernists’ methods in their apologetics while having a heart for what the
Church teaches, they are gravely mistaken and are guilty of the sin of
Modernism. Compromise of the divine is
heresy.
As for the others who we
refer to as “Integralists”, they would tell the non-believer that there is
hidden in their very own being the same “germ” or “seed” which Christ Himself
had in His own human consciousness which He then transmitted to mankind.
Venerable Brethren, what
we have seen is a summary description of the method of apologetics that are
used by Modernists which is in tune with their perfidious doctrines and methods
which are replete with error. Their methods and their agenda are not for the
edification of the faithful, but for their destruction. They are not for the making of Catholics, but
for the seduction of those who are Catholic in order to lead them into
heresy. They tend to the utter
subversion of all religion.
The Modernist as Reformer
38.) We must now say a
few words about the “reformer”. From
all that we have seen, from all that has preceded us to this point, it is
abundantly clear how passionate and eager are the men of “innovation”. There is
a mania for the cause that is within them.
In all of Catholicism there is absolutely nothing they will not try to
corrupt.
They wish Philosophy to
be reformed, especially in the ecclesiastical seminaries. They seek to remove
scholastic philosophy which exposes their corruption in philosophy so that it
is relegated to the dustbin of history to be classified, as it were, among
those “intolerant” and “obsolete” systems.
They want seminarians to be taught modern philosophy which they claim is
the only true philosophy suited to the times in which we live. They want the
reform of theology so that they can replace it with “rational theology”, and to
have “modern philosophy” for its foundation.
And they want “positive theology” to be founded on the history of dogma
which they want understood in terms of the evolution of Dogma.
And as for history, they
want history to allow only that which conforms to their understanding of
history using only their methods and modern principles to examine it.
Therefore, they demand
and affirm that the evolution of Dogma must be harmonized with science and
their understanding of history using their version of the historical critical
method. And they are so bold as to
assert that there should be no dogmas allowed into the Catechism except those
which have been reformed by them which are within reach of the capacity of the
“people” to understand.
Regarding worship, the
Modernist tells us that the number of external devotions is to be reduced, if
not eliminated, and that steps must be taken to prevent them from increasing or
from coming back. And among the ranks of
the Modernists are admirers of “symbolism”, but there are only some a bit more
accepting of symbolism. And even though
they hold to a twisted understanding of symbolism which is united to
“immanence”, all the Modernists cry out and demand that the ecclesiastical
government in the Church must be reformed in all of its branches, but most
especially in its disciplinary and dogmatic departments.
They insist that both
inwardly and outwardly, the Church must be brought into harmony with the “Modern
conscience” which now, in its entirety, tends towards democracy in the
“collective conscience” which must share in the ecclesiastical government of
the Church. They tell us that a share
in this government of the Church must be given to the lower ranks of the
clergy, and even to the laity. And they
tell us that authority in the Church must be decentralized, and they make this
demand saying that there is too much authority in Rome.
They tell us that Roman
Congregations, especially the index and the Holy Office, must be likewise
modified. They tell us ecclesiastical
authority must change its conduct in the social and political world, while
keeping in place the organizational structure of the Church so that the
Modernists can use it and its political organizations to insert their Modernist
agenda and penetrate them with their perfidious spirit.
With regard to morals,
the Modernists adopt the principle of the Americanisms, telling us that the
“active virtues” are more important than the “passive”, and are to be more
encouraged to be practiced. And they
want the clergy to return to their primitive humility and poverty, and that
their ideas and action should adopt the principles of modernism. And there are
some who will gladly listen to the teaching of their Protestant masters who
would desire the suppression of celibacy in the clergy. There is nothing left in the Church which
they do not want to be reformed by them, according to their principles.
Modernism and All the
Heresies
39. Venerable Brethren, it may seem to some that
we have dealt at too great a length in our desire to expose the doctrines of
the Modernists for whom and what they are.
But it was necessary that the Church refute their customary charge that
we do not understand their ideas. We
need to inform them, and those whom they would deceive, that we do indeed meet
them where they are. And also to show
that their system is not one of scattered and unconnected theories, but come
together and connect in an organized system.
And we exposed this fact to show that you cannot admit any one of their
modernist elements without admitting all of them into the Church.
For the same reasons we
have had to expose Modernism in a somewhat instructive, didactic manner without
shrinking from using certain uncouth terms which the Modernists have brought
into use. And now, can anybody who takes
a survey of the whole of their system be surprised that We should define it as
the synthesis of all heresies?
Undoubtedly, if anyone
were to undertake the task of collecting all the errors that have been brought
against the faith of the Catholic Church into one collection, and then gather
the poison that comes from them and put them all into one drop of poison, he
could not do a better job than the Modernists have done in their attempt to
inject the body of Christ with their poison.
But in reality, they have
gone further than this, for as we have already indicated and made clear, their
system would mean the destruction not of the Catholic religion alone, but of
all religion. It is with good reason
that rationalists applaud them, for the most sincere and frank among the
rationalists warmly welcomes the Modernist as their most valuable ally in their
march against the Church.
Let us turn for a moment,
Venerable Brethren, to that most disastrous doctrine of agnosticism.
Those who embrace and
advocate agnosticism would shut down every intellectual path to God, as though
man can be barred from what is most natural to him, namely, his need for God. And in their hope to shut down every
intellectual path to God, the agnostics serve up as though it were food on a
menu a “better way” to understand God is through what man finds in himself according
to his “religious feelings” and in his “religious sense”. For after all, they tell us, what is
“Religious feeling” but the reaction of the soul to the action of intelligence
and the senses. But, if you take away
the intelligence in man who is already inclined to follow his senses he becomes
their slave.
And from another point of
view, agnostics are doubly mistaken in their fantasies because “religious
feeling” will never be able to destroy “common sense” which tells us that
emotions and everything else that leads the heart into captivity, proves to be
a hindrance instead of a help in the discovery of truth.
The Catholic Church
speaks of truth in itself. But the
claims of the Modernists are a purely subjective claim to truth which comes about
only from an internal “sense” or “feeling” and “action”. But while their subjectivist interpretations
of truth may serve a purpose for the play of words, what they deduce is of no
benefit to the man who wants above all things to know whether or not there is a
God outside of himself into whose hands he is to fall into one day.
Interestingly, Modernists
will call into play their own experience to justify their system, but what does
their experience matter? What does it
add to that “feeling of God” within the soul?
Absolutely nothing beyond a certain feeling of religious intensity, and
a deepening, corresponding “conviction” about what they perceive as the object
of their subjective religious views.
But these two things: “an
intensified religious feeling” and “a deeper conviction” will never make the
religious feeling, or the religious sense, into anything but feeling or sense,
nor will they alter the nature of their standard of revelation which is “religious
feeling”.
And the “religious
feeling” they have is liable to deception when the intelligence of man is
removed from the equation and is no longer allowed to guide man in his
“feelings”. They would have a man
believe that he is on the right path according to the intensity of the
“religious feelings” he can produce. The more intense the religious feeling the
more sentimental it is to him, and the more certain he is convinced that he is on
the right path. This is a system that
locks him in his error.
In matters of religious
sentiment and religious experience, you know, Venerable Brethren, how necessary
is prudence and how necessary, too, the science which directs prudence is
important in this matter. You know it
from your own dealing with souls. There
are souls in which “sentiment” is the master and is predominant in the soul,
and you know the same from your readings of ascetical theology, books for which
the Modernists have little esteem. These
books testify to a science and solidity far greater than theirs, and to a
refinement and subtlety of observation far beyond anything the Modernists claim
to have for themselves in their own system but fail to demonstrate.
We regard it to be
nothing short of madness, or at least complete impertinence and audacity to
accept as true, and without investigation, to trust oneself to the control of
the Modernists whose corrupted system is the boast, the pride, and joy of the
Modernists. For their system will never
be complete because the very nature of it is subjective and cut off from
objective reality.
Let us put this question
to the Modernist. If they hold and
esteem the value and force of “experiences” so highly, why do they not attach
with equal weight and authority the “experience” of so many countless thousands
of Catholics who proclaim to the Modernists that they are on the path to
destruction? Are the only valid
“catholic experiences” those which are false and deceptive?
The vast majority of
mankind holds, and will always hold firmly to the fact that if a person is
guided by “what they feel” and “experience” alone, without the guidance of
enlightened reason, and according to the terms set forth by Modernism, they
cannot come to the knowledge of God.
What then remains in the system of Modernism? Nothing but atheism and the absence of all
religion.
Certainly the Modernists’
doctrine of “the symbolism of God” cannot save us. For if all the “intellectual elements”, as
they call them, of religions are nothing more than mere symbols of God, will
not the very name of God, or the divine personality of God also be a symbol? And if this is what the Modernists contend,
the personality of God will become a matter of doubt because by their doctrine
of “immanence” man declares that “man is God and God is man”.
The Modernists system can
only leave man searching and in doubt.
Therefore God is in search of himself in the Modernist way of thinking. In this manner, the Modernist becomes joined
to Pantheists and to pantheism pure and simple because their doctrine and
understanding of divine immanence leads directly to pantheism.
Therefore, we ask this
question of the Modernists:
“Does a proper
understanding of divine immanence lead us to the conclusion that God is
distinct from man? And if it does, in what way does it differ from Catholic
doctrine which makes this claim, and why, therefore, do you reject the doctrine
of external revelation? If it does not lead to the conclusion that God is
distinct from man, you have embraced pantheism.”
Now the doctrine of Immanence,
according to the Modernist, holds and professes that every phenomenon of
conscience that takes place within the conscience of man proceeds from man, as
man. The simple and the rigorous
conclusion of this thinking can only lead to one thing which is this: it is to
claim that man is identical to God, and God is identical to man. And once again, we see the age old temptation
under a different veil where man is grasping at divinity while trying to cast
out God.
To conclude that the
identity of man equals God is pure and unfettered pantheism. And so too, in the same manner, is the
distinction which Modernists make between science and faith when it leads to
the same conclusion, namely, to argue that man is God. According to Modernists,
the object of science is “the reality of the knowable”, but the object of
faith, on the contrary, is the reality of the “unknowable”. In their ignorance of scholastic philosophy
they make these claims.
And the Modernists make
these claims because they say there is no proportion, no known quantity between
the object of faith (God), and the intellect since, in their minds, God is
unknowable. Yet they claim they are God, so, if they follow their own logic, they
cannot claim to know symbolism as knowable.
Therefore, they cannot claim they are God. They are forced by logic to return back to
being human only, in search of God but refusing God.
Therefore, in his
ignorance and in his stubbornness, the Modernist concludes that the “unknowable”
about God remains and will eternally remain unknowable to the believer as well
as to the philosopher. Therefore, Modernism
pushes to the brink the claim that if any religion is possible at all, it can
only be the religion of an unknowable reality.
And while this
“unknowable reality” of the Modernist might not be the “soul of the universe”
of which certain rationalists speak, there is something that we do see, and it
is this: The Modernists’ system demonstrates a superabundant manner and variety
of roads which lead to atheism. Modernism
leads to the annihilation of all religion.
And in fact, the error of Protestantism made the first step on this
path, Modernism takes the second step, and atheism is the third and final step.
The Cause
of Modernism
40.) To penetrate still deeper into the meaning of
Modernism, and to find a suitable remedy for so deep a wound, it behooves Us,
Venerable Brethren, to investigate the causes which gave birth to Modernism and
those causes which fosters its growth.
The close and immediate cause of Modernism in which there is no doubt about
its origin, is found in a perversion and error within the mind.
There are also more
distant causes which can be reduced to two things: curiosity and pride. Curiosity by itself, if not prudently
regulated, suffices to account for all errors.
Such is the opinion of Our predecessor, Gregory XVI, who wrote:
“A lamentable spectacle
is that presented by the aberrations of human reason when it yields to the
spirit of novelty, when against the warning of the Apostle it seeks to know
beyond what it is meant to know, and when relying too much on itself it thinks
it can find the truth outside the Catholic Church wherein truth is found
without the slightest shadow of error.” (Ep. Encycl. Singulari nos, 7
Kal. Jul. 1834).
But it is pride which blinds
man beyond comparison to any other defect or sinful disposition within him. It is pride which exercises its influence to sway
a soul into blindness and into error. In
short, pride is the throne of Modernism.
It sits in its own house, finding sustenance everywhere in its
perfidious doctrines, and it has a desire to flaunt itself on any possible
occasion. It is pride which fills the
Modernists with that self-assurance by which they consider themselves and their
doctrine as though they are the masters of all others. It is pride that puffs them up with vain glory
that is so deep that they regard themselves to be the sole possessors of knowledge
which leads them to say of themselves, elated and inflated with presumption:
“We are not as the rest
of men.”
And to ensure that they
are not seen as other men, they embrace all that is novel as though it is
profound by default of being novel, and in so doing, they embrace the most
absurd novelties in the matters of religion, theology, philosophy, and history.
It is pride that wells up
within them which accounts for their spirit of disobedience, and in their pride
they demand a compromise between authority and liberty. And it is due to their pride that they seek
to be “reformers of others” while they neglect to “reform themselves”. And they do not see while they demand obedience
from others, they are as utter defect and utterly wanting in their own duty and
obligation to respect the supreme authority that is over them that was given to
the Church by Jesus Christ.
Truly, there is no road
which leads so directly and so quickly to Modernism as pride. And when a Catholic layman or a priest forgets
the precepts of the Christian life which obliges us to renounce ourselves if we
decide to follow Christ, if he does not rip pride from his own heart, then it
will be him before all others who is fully ripe to be picked from a tree in a
continuing grasp at divinity. He will be
fully ripe to embrace the errors of Modernism.
For this reason,
Venerable Brethren, it will be your first duty to resist such victims of pride
who try to make inroads with Modernism into the very bosom of the Church. If they are to be employed, employ them only
in the lowest and most obscure offices.
And the higher they try to rise, the lower you must place them so that
the lowliness of their place and position may limit their power to cause
damage. Examine most carefully your
young clerics personally, and by the directors of your seminaries, and when you
find the spirit of pride among them, reject them without compunction from the
priesthood. Had we only prayed to God
that this had always been done with the vigilance and constancy that was
required to prevent them from gaining entrance to the Catholic Church!
41.) If we move on from
the moral to the intellectual causes of Modernism, the first and the primary
thing which presents itself is “ignorance”.
Yes, these very Modernists who seek to be esteemed as “Doctors of the
Church”, these same people who speak so loftily about Modern Philosophy, show
contempt for scholasticism, and they have embraced Modern philosophy that is
bankrupt and covered with false glamour, precisely because their ignorance of
scholasticism leaves them without the means of being able to recognize their own
confusion of thought. They are left
steeped in their own sophistry and confusion.
Their entire system, containing so many great errors, has been given
birth from the marriage between a false understanding of philosophy and a false
theology.
Methods of Propagandism
42. Had they only displayed less zeal and energy
in propagating Modernism, it would have been evidence that leaned more towards
confusion, but it is pride which is primary in them. They do not tire, and they labor in behalf of
their cause so intently that one cannot help but feel pain watching them waste
so much energy in their endeavor to ruin the Church, when instead, they might
have used their energy in the service of the Church had only their efforts been
better directed.
Their devices to delude
men are of two kinds. The first is to
remove obstacles from their path, and the second is to devise ways to actively
apply Modernism with patience using every resource that is available to them
that will serve their purpose. And they
are not ignorant of the fact that there are three primary obstacles which stand
in their way. They are:
·
The
scholastic method of philosophy
·
The
authority and tradition of the Fathers
·
The
Magisterium of the Catholic Church
It is against these three
that they wage an unrelenting war.
Against scholastic
philosophy and theology they use the weapons of ridicule and contempt. Whether they act out of ignorance or fear of
scholasticism that inspires them in their conduct is irrelevant. The fact is, they move with a passion for
“novelty” that is always united to a hatred of scholasticism, and there is no
surer sign that a man is a servant of Modernism than when he begins to show a
dislike for the scholastic method. Let
the Modernists and their admirers remember the proposition which Pope Pius IX
condemned:
“The method and
principles which have served the ancient doctors of scholasticism when treating
of theology no longer correspond with the exigencies of our time or the
progress of science.” (Syll. Prop.
13)
Modernists exercise all
of their ingenuity in an effort to diminish the strength of “Tradition” by falsifying
the character of Tradition. They wish to
rob it of all of its weight and authority.
But for Catholics, nothing will remove the authority of the Second
Council of Nicea which will always have the force of law, where it condemns
those:
“Who dare, after the
impious fashion of heretics, to deride the ecclesiastical traditions, to invent
novelties of some kind ... or endeavor by malice or craft to overthrow any one
of the legitimate Traditions of the Catholic Church.”
And Catholics will hold
for law, also, the profession of the fourth Council of Constantinople:
“We therefore profess to
preserve and guard the rules bequeathed to the Holy Catholic and Apostolic
Church, by the Holy and most illustrious Apostles, by the orthodox Councils,
both general and local, and by every one of those divine interpreters, the
Fathers and Doctors of the Church.”
Wherefore the Roman
Pontiffs, Pius IV and Pius IX ordered the insertion in the profession of faith
of the following declaration:
"I most firmly admit
and embrace the apostolic and ecclesiastical traditions and other observances
and constitutions of the Church.”
And in their audacity, the
Modernists pass judgment on the early Holy Fathers of the Church even as they
do upon Tradition. With skill yet filled
with impertinence, they assure the public that the Church Fathers, while
personally most worthy of all veneration, were entirely ignorant of history and
criticism. And the Modernists are so
bold in their pride they act as though they forgive the Fathers who were
victims in their understanding because they were limited to the time in which
they lived.
Finally, the Modernists
try in every way at their disposal to diminish and weaken the authority of the
ecclesiastical magisterium itself by sacrilegiously falsifying the nature of
its origin, character, and rights, and by freely repeating the calumnies of her
adversaries. To all the band of
Modernists may be applied those words of our predecessor who sorrowfully wrote
with such pain:
“To bring contempt and
odium on the mystic Spouse of Christ, who is the true light, the children of
darkness have been wont to cast in her face before the world a stupid calumny, and
perverting the meaning and force of things and words, to depict her as the
friend of darkness and ignorance, and the enemy of light, science, and
progress.” (Motu-proprio, Ut mysticum, 14 March, 1891).
This being so, Venerable
Brethren, there is little reason to wonder that the Modernists vent all of their
bitterness and hatred on Catholics who zealously fight for the Church against
the errors of Modernism. There is no
kind of insult which they do not heap upon faithful Catholics, but their usual
charge against true Catholics is that they are filled with ignorance and
obstinacy, and that they are fearful of change. And when a truly Catholic
adversary rises up against these Modernists with an intellect and scholarship
that he applies against Modernists with a force that makes him mighty and
fearsome, the Modernists will seek to make a conspiracy of silence around him
to nullify the effects of his attack on Modernism.
This conspiracy towards
Catholics is all the more offensive because instead of endearing the true
Catholic to their heart, they hail with admiration in such a way that knows no
bounds, those writers who come over to their camp, hailing the work of
Modernism, exuding a passion for novelty in every page as they are spurred on
in the midst of applause from a chorus of like minded people, all for the price
of their very soul.
For them the scholarship
of a writer is in direct proportion to the recklessness of his attacks on
antiquity, and of his efforts to undermine tradition and the ecclesiastical
magisterium. And when one of their
numbers falls under the condemnations of the Church, the rest of them, to the
horror of good Catholics, gather round him and heap public praise upon him, and
venerate him almost as a martyr for the sake of “truth”.
The young, the excited,
and the confused, impressed with all the praise for their “saint of Modernism”
who is now a victim because he was reprimanded by the Church, out of fear of
being branded as ignorant by Modernists, will join in the praise of Modernism
and applaud their new victim hero. And
there are others who wish to rank among “the learned” in Modernism. But all of them are goaded within their own
hearts and minds by intellectual curiosity and pride, and it is not uncommon to
see these people surrender themselves into darkness as they give themselves up
to Modernism.
43.) Let us look now at some of the clever devices
used by Modernists to make use of their merchandise. What efforts do they not make to win new
recruits.
They seize upon professorships
in the seminaries and universities, and gradually make of them chairs of pestilence.
From these sacred chairs they scatter, though not always openly, the seeds of
their doctrines; they proclaim their teachings without disguise in congresses;
they introduce them and make them the vogue in social institutions. Under their
own names and under pseudonyms they publish numbers of books, newspapers,
reviews, and sometimes one and the same writer adopts a variety of pseudonyms
to trap the unsuspecting and those readers who are not cautious into believing that
they are reading from a multitude of Modernist writers.
In short, with feverish
activity there is nothing they do not try to accomplish in act, speech, and
writing. And what is the result of all
this? We have to deplore the spectacle of many young men, once full of promise
and capable of rendering great services to the Church, now gone astray.
It is also a subject of
grief to Us that many others who, while they certainly do not go so far as some
others, have still been so infected by breathing a poisoned atmosphere that
they think, speak, and write with a degree of laxity which makes other
Catholics ill as well. And those who have been infected are to be found among
the laity, and in the ranks of the clergy, and they are even to be found in the
last place one would expect to find them, namely, in religious
communities.
And whenever they
consider biblical questions, they do so using only Modernist principles. If
they write history, they carefully, and with ill-concealed satisfaction, drag
into the light of day and under the guise of claiming to tell the whole truth
and nothing but the truth, everything they can find that they may corrupt it
and cast a stain upon the Church.
Under the sway of certain
“assumed” conceptions they destroy as far as they can the pious traditions of
the faithful, and bring into disrespect certain relics highly venerable that
come from antiquity. They are possessed by the empty desire of having their
names upon the lips of the public, and they know that they would never succeed
in their attempts to destroy the Church if they were to say only what has
always been said by all men who attack the Church.
At the same time, it may
well be that they have persuaded, or convinced themselves, that in all they do
they are really serving God and the Church. In reality they only offend both,
perhaps less in the works which they do than in the disposition of spirit by
which they write. They offend God and the Church by the encouragement they give
toward those who promote the goals of the Modernists.
Remedies
44.) Against this
multitude of grave errors found in Modernism which seeks to destroy in secret
and in the light of day as it advances, our predecessor Leo Xlll, of happy
memory, worked strenuously, both in his words and his acts, especially as
regards the study of the Bible.
But, as we have seen, the
Modernists are not easily deterred by such weapons. With an affectation of
great submission and respect, they proceeded to twist the words of the Pontiff
to their own sense of spirituality and what they feel about it, and they tried
to deflect his charges against them as though he must have meant what he said
and did about others, and not them. And
for this reason the evil of Modernism has continued to increase from day to
day.
We, therefore, Venerable
Brethren, have decided to suffer no longer delay, and to adopt at once the most
effective measures in our power. We
exhort and conjure you to see to it that in this most grave matter that no one
shall be in a position to say that you have been in the slightest degree
wanting in vigilance, zeal, or firmness. And what we ask of you and expect of
you, we ask and expect also of all other pastors of souls, of all educators and
professors of clerics, and in a very special way of the superiors of religious
institutions.
I - The Study of
Scholastic Philosophy
45.) In the first place,
with regard to studies, we will it and strictly ordain that scholastic
philosophy be made the basis of the sacred sciences. It goes without saying
that:
“If anything is met with
among the scholastic doctors which may be regarded as something investigated
with an excess of subtlety, or taught without sufficient consideration;
anything which is not in keeping with the certain results of later times;
anything, in short, which is altogether destitute of probability, We have no
desire whatever to propose it for the imitation of present generations.” (Leo
XIII. Enc. Aeterni Patris).
And let it be clearly
understood that above all things when We prescribe scholastic philosophy We
refer primarily to that which the Angelic Doctor has bequeathed to us, and We,
therefore, declare that all the ordinances of Our predecessor on this subject
continue fully in force, and, as far as may be necessary, We do decree anew,
and confirm, and ordain that they be strictly observed by all.
In seminaries where they
have been neglected it will be for the Bishops to exact and require their
observance in the future; and let this apply also to the superiors of religious
orders. Further, we admonish professors to bear well in mind that they cannot
set aside St. Thomas, especially in metaphysical questions, without grave disadvantage.
46.) On this
philosophical foundation the theological edifice is to be carefully raised.
Promote the study of theology, Venerable Brethren, by all means in your power,
so that your clerics on leaving the seminaries may carry with them a deep
admiration and love of it, and always find in it a source of delight:
“For in the vast and
varied abundance of studies opening before the mind which seeks truth,
everybody knows how the old maxim describes theology as so far in front of all
others that every science and art should serve it and be to it as handmaidens
(Leo XIII., Lett. ap. In Magna, Dec. 10, 1889).
We will add that We deem
worthy of praise those who with full respect for tradition, the Fathers, and
the ecclesiastical magisterium, endeavor, with well-balanced judgment and
guided by Catholic principles (which is not always the case), to illustrate
positive theology by throwing upon it the light of true history. It is
certainly necessary that positive theology should be held in greater
appreciation than it has been in the past, but this must be done without detriment
to scholastic theology; and those who do so are to be disapproved of as Modernists
who exalt positive theology in such a way as to seem to despise the scholastic.
47.) With regard to
secular studies, let it suffice to recall here what our predecessor has
admirably said:
“Apply yourselves
energetically to the study of natural sciences: in which department the things
that have been so brilliantly discovered, and so usefully applied, to the
admiration of the present age, will be the object of praise and commendation to
those who come after us." (Leo XIII. Alloc., March 7, 1880).
But this is to be done
without interfering with sacred studies, as our same predecessor prescribed in
these most weighty words:
"If you carefully
search for the cause of those errors you will find that it lies in the fact
that in these days when the natural sciences absorb so much study, the more severe
and lofty studies have been proportionately neglected -- some of them have
almost passed into oblivion, some of them are pursued in a half-hearted or superficial
way, and, sad to say, now that the splendor of the former estate is dimmed,
they have been disfigured by perverse doctrines and monstrous errors." (Loco
cit.).
We ordain, therefore,
that the study of natural sciences in the seminaries be carried out according
to this law.
II - Practical
Application
48.) All these
prescriptions and those of our predecessor are to be kept in mind whenever
there is question of choosing directors and professors for seminaries and Catholic
Universities. Anyone who in any way is found to be tainted with Modernism is to
be excluded without compunction from these offices, whether of government or
teaching, and those who already occupy them are to be removed. The same policy
is to be adopted towards those who openly or secretly lend countenance to
Modernism either by extolling the Modernists and excusing their culpable
conduct, or by carping at and criticizing scholasticism, the Fathers, and the
Magisterium of the Church, or by refusing obedience to ecclesiastical authority
in any of its depositories; and towards those who show a love of novelty in
history, archaeology, biblical exegesis; and finally towards those who neglect
the sacred sciences or appear to prefer the sacrilegious.
In all this question of
studies, Venerable Brethren, you cannot be too watchful or too constant, but
most of all in the choice of professors, for as a rule the students are modeled
after the pattern of their masters. Strong
in the consciousness of your duty, you must act always in this matter with
prudence but vigorously.
49.) Equal diligence and
severity are to be used in examining and selecting candidates for Holy Orders.
Far, far from the clergy should be the love of novelty! God hates the proud and
the obstinate. For the future the doctorate of theology and canon law must
never be conferred on anyone who has not successfully completed the regular
course of scholastic philosophy; if conferred without completion of scholastic
philosophy, it shall be held as null and void.
The rules laid down in
1896 by the Sacred Congregation of Bishops and Regulars for the clerics, both
secular and regular, of Italy concerning the frequenting of the Universities,
We now decree to be extended to all nations. Clerics and priests inscribed in a
Catholic Institute or University must not in the future enroll or take those
courses in civil Universities for which there are chairs in the Catholic
Institutes under the control or influence of Modernists. If this has been
permitted anywhere in the past, we ordain that it be not allowed in the future.
Let the Bishops who form the Governing Board of such Catholic Institutes or
Universities watch with all care that these commands be constantly observed.
III. - Episcopal
Vigilance over Publications
50.) It is also the duty
of the Bishops to prevent writings infected with Modernism, or favorable to it,
from being read when they have been published, and to hinder their publication if
they have not yet been published. No books or papers or periodicals of this
kind whatsoever are to be permitted to seminarians or university students. The injury to them would be not less than that
which is caused by reading immoral material - actually, it would be far greater,
for such writings poison Christian life at its very fount.
The same decision is to
be taken concerning the writings of some Catholics, who, though not badly
disposed themselves, but ill-instructed in theological studies and imbued with
modern philosophy, they strive to make modernism harmonize with the faith, and,
as they say, to turn it to the profit of the faith. The name and reputation of Modernist authors draws
them and causes them to read without suspicion, and they are, therefore, all
the more dangerous in gradually preparing the way for Modernism.
51.) To add some more
general directions, Venerable Brethren, in a matter of such gravity, we bid you
to do everything in your power to drive out of your dioceses, even by solemn
interdict, any pernicious books that may be in circulation there. The Holy See
neglects no means to remove writings of this kind, but their numbers have now
grown to such an extent that it is impossible to censure them all. Hence it happens sometimes that the medicine
arrives too late, for the disease has taken root during the delay. We require,
therefore, that the Bishops, putting aside all fear and the prudence of the
flesh, despising the clamor and outcries of evil men, shall gently but by all
means, firmly and constantly, each do his own part in this work, remembering
the injunctions of Leo XIII in the Apostolic Constitution Officiorum:
“Let the Ordinaries,
acting in this also as Delegates of the Apostolic See, exert themselves to
proscribe and to put out of reach of the faithful injurious books or other writings
printed or circulated in their dioceses.”
In this passage it is
true, the Bishops receive an authorization, but they have also a duty imposed
on them. Let no Bishop think that he
fulfills his duty by denouncing to us one or two books, while a great many
others of the same kind are being published and circulated. Nor are you to be deterred by the fact that a
book has obtained elsewhere the permission which is commonly called the
“Imprimatur” from some other place, both because this may be merely simulated,
and because it may have been granted through carelessness, or with too much
ease, or excessive confidence placed in the author which sometimes happens in
religious Orders. Besides, just as the
same food does not agree with everyone, it may happen that a book, harmless in
one person, may, on account of different circumstances, be hurtful in another. Should a Bishop, therefore, after having
taken the advice of prudent persons, deem it right to condemn any such books in
his diocese, we give him ample faculty to do so, but we impose it upon him to
do so as well.
Let all this be done in a
fitting manner, and in certain cases it will suffice to restrict the
prohibition to the clergy; but in all cases it will be obligatory on Catholic
booksellers not to put on sale books condemned by the Bishop. And while we are
on the subject of booksellers, we wish the Bishops to see to it that
booksellers do not, through desire for gain, engage in evil trade by selling
unsound books and material.
It is certain that in the
some of the catalogs on sale we find the books of the Modernists are not
infrequently announced with any small praise. If they refuse obedience, let the
Bishops, after due admonition, have no hesitation in depriving them of the
title of Catholic booksellers. This applies, and with still more reason, to
those who have the title of Episcopal booksellers. And if they have the title
of Pontifical booksellers, let them be denounced to the Apostolic See.
Finally, we remind all of
Article XXVI of the above-mentioned Constitution Officiorum:
"All those who have
obtained an apostolic faculty to read and keep forbidden books, are not thereby
authorized to read and keep books and periodicals forbidden by the local
Ordinaries unless the apostolic faculty expressly concedes permission to read
and keep books condemned by anyone whomsoever."
IV. – Censorship
52.) It is not enough to
hinder the reading and the sale of bad books - it is also necessary to prevent
them from ever being published. Hence, let the Bishops use the utmost
strictness in granting permission to print. Under the rules of the Constitution
“Officiorum”, many publications require the authorization of the Ordinary, and
in certain dioceses (since the Bishop cannot personally make himself acquainted
with them all) it has been made the custom to have a suitable number of official
censors for the examination of writings. We have the highest esteem for this
institution of censors, and we not only exhort, but we order that it be
extended to all dioceses. In all episcopal Curias, therefore, let censors be
appointed for the revision of works intended for publication, and let the
censors be chosen from both ranks of the clergy - secular and regular - men
whose age, knowledge, and prudence will enable them to follow the safe and
golden means in their judgments. It shall be their office to examine everything
which requires permission for publication according to Articles XLI and XLII of
the above-mentioned Constitution. The censor shall give his verdict in writing.
If it be favorable, the
Bishop will give the permission for publication by the word “Imprimatur”, which
must be preceded by the “Nihil obstat” and the name of the censor. In the Roman
Curia, official censors shall be appointed in the same way as elsewhere, and
the appointment of them shall belong to the Master of the Sacred Palaces, after
they have been proposed to the Cardinal Vicar and have been approved and
accepted by the Sovereign Pontiff.
It will also be the
office of the Master of the Sacred Palaces to select the censor for each of the
writings. Permission for publication will be granted by him as well as by the
Cardinal Vicar or his Vicegerent, and this permission, as above prescribed,
must he preceded by the “Nihil obstat” and the name of the censor. Only on a very rare and exceptional occasion,
and on the prudent decision of the Bishop, shall it be possible to omit mention
of the censor. The name of the censor
shall never be made known to the authors until he shall have given a favorable
decision, so that he may not have to suffer any annoyance from the author
either while he is engaged in the examination of a writing, or in case he
should withhold his approval. Censors shall never be chosen from the religious
orders until the opinion of the Provincial, or in Rome of the General, has been
privately obtained, and the Provincial or the General must give a conscientious
account of the character, knowledge, and orthodoxy of the candidate. We
admonish religious superiors of their most solemn duty never to allow anything
to be published by anyone subject to their authority without permission from
themselves and from the Ordinary.
Finally, we affirm and
declare that the title of “censor” with which a person may be honored has no
value whatever, and can never be offered to make credible the private opinions
of him who holds it.
Priests as Editors
53.) Having said this much in general, we now
ordain in particular a more careful observance of Article XLII of the
above-mentioned Constitution Officiorum.
It is forbidden to secular priests, without the previous consent of the
Ordinary, to undertake the editorship of papers or periodicals.
This permission shall be
withdrawn from any priest who makes a wrong use of it after having been admonished. With regard to priests who are
“correspondents” or “collaborators” of periodicals, it frequently happens that
they write material infected with Modernism for their papers or periodicals. Let the Bishops see to it that they do not
offend in this manner; and if they fail in this duty, let the Bishops make due
provision with the authority delegated by the Supreme Pontiff. Let there be, as far as this is possible, a
special Censor for newspapers and periodicals written by Catholics. It shall be his duty in office to read in due
time each book and material after it has been published, and if he finds
anything dangerous in it let him order that it be corrected. The Bishop shall
have the same right even when the censor has seen nothing objectionable in a
publication.
V - Congresses
54.) We have already
mentioned congresses and public gatherings as among the means used by the
Modernists to propagate and defend their opinions. In the future, Bishops shall
not permit Congresses of priests except on very rare occasions. When they do
permit them it shall only be on condition that matters appertaining to the
Bishops or the Apostolic See shall not be treated in them, and that no
resolutions, motions, or petitions be allowed that would imply a usurpation of
sacred authority, and that absolutely nothing is said in them which savor of
Modernism, Presbyterianism, or laicism.
At congresses of this
kind, which can only be held after permission in writing has been obtained in
due time and for each case, it shall not be lawful for priests of other
dioceses to be present without the written permission of their Ordinary.
Furthermore, no priest must lose sight of the solemn recommendation of Leo
XIII:
“Let priests hold as
sacred the authority of their pastors, let them take it for certain that the
sacerdotal ministry, if not exercised under the guidance of the Bishops, can
never be either holy, or very fruitful, or worthy of respect.”
VI – Diocesan Watch
Committees
55.) But to what avail,
Venerable Brethren, will be all our commands and prescriptions if they be not
dutifully and firmly carried out? In
order that this may be done it has seemed expedient to us to extend to all
dioceses the regulations which the Bishops of Umbria, with great wisdom, laid
down for theirs many years ago:
“In order,” they say, “to
extirpate the errors already propagated and to prevent their further diffusion,
and to remove those teachers of impiety through whom the pernicious effects of
such diffusion are being perpetuated, this sacred Assembly, following the
example of St. Charles Borromeo, has decided to establish in each of the
dioceses a Council consisting of approved members of both branches of the
clergy, which shall be charged with the task of noting the existence of errors
and the devices by which new ones are introduced and propagated, and to inform
the Bishop of the whole, so that he may take counsel with them as to the best
means for suppressing the evil at the outset and preventing it spreading for
the ruin of souls or worse still, gaining strength and growth.” (Acts of the
Congress of the Bishops of Umbria, Nov. 1849, tit 2, art. 6).
We decree, therefore,
that in every diocese a council of this kind, which we are pleased to name the “Council
of Vigilance,”' be instituted without delay. The priests called to have a part
in it shall be chosen somewhat after the manner above prescribed for the
censors, and they shall meet every two months on an appointed day in the
presidency of the Bishop. They shall be bound to secrecy as to their deliberations
and decisions, and in their functions shall be included the following: they
shall watch most carefully for every trace and sign of Modernism both in
publications and in teaching, and to preserve the clergy and the young from it
they shall take all prudent, prompt, and efficacious measures. Let them combat
the novelties of words, remembering the admonitions of Leo XIII. (Instruct.
S.C. NN. EE. EE., 27 Jan., 1902):
“It is impossible to
approve in Catholic publications a style inspired by unsound novelty which
seems to deride the piety of the faithful and dwells on the introduction of a
new order of Christian life, on new directions of the Church, on new
aspirations of the modern soul, on a new social vocation of the clergy, on a
new Christian civilization, and many other things of the same kind.”
Language of the kind here
indicated is not to be tolerated either in books or in lectures, or from chairs
of learning. The Councils must not neglect the books that deal with the pious
traditions of different places or of sacred relics. Let them not permit such
questions to be discussed in journals or periodicals destined to foster piety,
either with expressions savoring of mockery or contempt, or by dogmatic
pronouncements, especially when, as is often the case, what is stated as a
certainty either does not pass the limits of probability or is merely based on
prejudiced opinion.
Concerning sacred relics,
let this be the rule: When Bishops, who alone are judges in such matters, know
for certain that a relic is not genuine, let them remove it at once from the
veneration of the faithful; if the authentications of a relic happen to have
been lost through civil disturbances, or in any other way, let it not be
exposed for public veneration until the Bishop has authenticated it. The argument of prescription or well-founded
presumption is to have weight only when devotion to a relic is commendable by
reason of its antiquity, according to the sense of the Decree issued in 1896 by
the Congregation of Indulgences and Sacred Relics:
“Ancient relics are to
retain the veneration they have always enjoyed except when in individual
instances there are clear arguments that they are false or superstitious.”
In passing judgment on
pious traditions let it always be borne in mind that in this matter the Church
uses the greatest prudence, and that she does not allow traditions of this kind
to be narrated in books except with the utmost caution and with the insertion
of the declaration imposed by Urban VIII; and even then she does not guarantee
the truth of the fact narrated; she simply does not forbid belief in things for
which human arguments are not lacking. On this matter the Sacred Congregation
of Rites, thirty years ago, decreed as follows:
“These apparitions or
revelations have neither been approved nor condemned by the Holy See, which has
simply allowed them to be believed on purely human faith, on the tradition
which they relate, corroborated by testimony and documents worthy of credence.”
(Decree, May 2, 1877)
Anyone who follows this
rule has no cause to fear. For the devotion based on any apparition, in so far
as it regards the fact itself, that is to say, in so far as the devotion is
“relative”, always implies the condition of the fact being true; while in so
far as it is absolute, it must always based on the truth, seeing that its
object is the persons of the saints who are honored. The same is true of
relics.
Finally, we entrust to
the Councils of Vigilance the duty of overlooking assiduously and diligently
social institutions as well as writings on social questions so that they may
harbor no trace of Modernism, but obey the prescriptions of the Roman Pontiffs.
VII – Triennial Returns
56.) Lest what We have laid down thus far should
pass into oblivion, We will it and ordain that the Bishops of all dioceses, a
year after the publication of these letters and every three years
thenceforward, furnish the Holy See with a diligent and sworn report on all
prescriptions which have been decreed in this Our Letter, and on the doctrines
that find currency among the clergy, and especially in the seminaries and other
Catholic institutions, and We impose the like obligation on the Generals of
Religious Orders with regard to those who are under them.
57.) This, Venerable Brethren,
is what we have thought it our duty to write to you for the salvation of all
who believe. The adversaries of the Church will doubtless abuse what we have
said to refurbish the old calumny by which we are disparaged and said to be the
enemy of science and of the progress of humanity.
In order to oppose them
with a new answer to such accusations, which the history of the Christian
religion refutes by never-failing arguments, it is Our intention to establish
by every means in our power a special Institute in which, through the
co-operation of those Catholics who are most eminent for their learning, the
advance of science and every other department of knowledge may be promoted
under the guidance and teaching of Catholic truth. God grant that we may happily
realize our design with the assistance of all those who bear a sincere love for
the Church of Christ. But of this we propose to speak on another occasion.
58.) Meanwhile, Venerable
Brethren, fully confident in your zeal and work, We beseech for you with Our
whole heart and soul the abundance of heavenly light, so that in the midst of
this great danger and disturbance of men’s minds from the insidious invasions
of error from every side, that you may see clearly what you ought to do, and
labor to do it with all your strength and courage.
May Jesus Christ, the
author and finisher of our faith, be with you in His power; and may the
Immaculate Virgin, the destroyer of all heresies, be with you by her prayers
and aid. And we, as a pledge of our affection and of Divine assistance in the
face of adversity, grant most affectionately and with all of our heart to you,
our clergy and people, the Apostolic Benediction.
Given at St. Peter's,
Rome, September 8, 1907, in the fifth year of Our Pontificate. PIUS X
Glossary of Terms
·
Contingent reality
- refers to the fact that everything God created is dependent, or “contingent
upon” the will of God to simply exist.
· Immanence – For the Modernist is idea
that there is a spiritual or cosmic principle that is present within the
natural universe itself, but there is no creator who transcends the existence
of all things. Those who embrace
“immanence” reject a God who is external to that which He created, and who is
independent of all things that he created.
In so doing, Modernists reject the fact of creation. They turn away from the fact that all things
depend upon the creator to remain in existence.
In the end, man is seen as god without the need of a transcendent God.
· Immanence Inspiration - The Modernist tells us
that “inspiration” is distinguished from the “impulse” by the “need” to express
himself in words or writing as a result of the “impulse” or “religious feeling”
from within himself. This is an understanding
of inspiration in one who embraces the concept of “Immanence”.
· Pantheism – In the end calls all
things God. And it says that all things are united by the “cosmic principle”,
or the “soul of God” which is found in “immanence”. Pantheism flows from the notion of
“immanence”. There is no room for a
“transcendent” creator. A new definition
of the “immanence of God” is that the universe is God. Therefore man becomes God. It is simply a veiled attempt to grasp at
divinity in a new manner.
· Primitive vital principle - the initial religious
experience of an individual which became permanent.
· Principle of divine permanence
- differs
from “Immanence” and “Permanence” in the same way that “private experience” differs from the “experience transmitted by
tradition.” And since Modernists believe
that man is divine, what others add to his ideas becomes “permanent” because it
was built by others. This results in “Divine
Permanence.”
·
Religious Experience – Religious Sentimentality.
· Religious Immanence - It is the notion that
religion is alive because man is alive, and man is God, therefore revelation
comes from man.
· Religious Sentimentality – Whatever makes a man
“feel religious” within himself?
· Subsistent reality
- refers to God’s own nature and existence which is from all eternity and depends
upon nothing for His own existence.
· Vital Emanation - To the Modernist it
would be everything that the Catholic Church regards to be divine origin came
about from some “need” within the Catholic Church.
· Vital Evolution – The notion that the “primitive
form of faith” was rudimentary and common to all men alike, not just Catholics,
because it has its origin in “human nature” and “human life”. And from this comes “evolution” of religion
which is necessary.
· Vital Immanence - Is the search for God
beginning and ending within man himself, and nothing external to himself.
· Vital Permanence – The collective body of
people who build on the idea of someone who came before them, thereby making it
a permanent feature of History.
· Vital Phenomenon - According to
Modernists, is any “religious experience”, regardless of what religion we speak
of. It falls into the category of
“religious immanence” because all men are alive. Therefore every religious
experience in any religion becomes a valid religious experience, because man is
alive, and is therefore a living religion.
Deposit of Faith
What then, is this
“Deposit of Faith” which the Church has been commissioned to guard and
protect? It is the body of truth in
matters of faith and morals contained in Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition
by which we are saved. Jesus Christ
entrusted these truths to His Apostles, and they have been handed down to us
and guarded by the successors to the Apostles.
It is their duty and right to preserve and proclaim these truths.
From the Catholic
Catechism we read,
“The apostles entrusted
the sacred deposit of the faith (the depositum fidei; see 1 Tim 6:20; 2 Tim
1:12-14) contained in Sacred Scripture and Tradition, to the whole of the Church.’
By adhering to (this heritage) the entire holy people, united to its pastors,
remains always faithful to the teaching of the apostles, to the brotherhood, to
the breaking of bread (the Eucharist) and the prayers. So, in maintaining,
practicing and professing the faith that has been handed on, there should be a
remarkable harmony between the bishops and the faithful.”
A Series of books for the
Scriptural basis for the Magisterium of the Catholic Church can be found at:
http://catholicseries.com
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 Faithfull’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 that treats lightly the condemnations passed by the
Sacred Congregation of the Index or by the Roman Congregations.
9.
They
display excessive simplicity or ignorance who believes 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 Messiahs.
28.
While
He was exercising His ministry, Jesus did not speak with the object of teaching
He was the Messiahs, 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 "Messiahs." 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 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 and 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.
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.
66.
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
THE OATH AGAINST MODERNISM
Given by His Holiness St. Pius X September 1, 1910.
To be sworn to by all
clergy, pastors, confessors, preachers, religious superiors, and professors in
philosophical-theological seminaries.
I _______ firmly embrace
and accept each and every definition that has been set forth and declared by
the unerring teaching authority of the Church, especially those principal
truths which are directly opposed to the errors of this day. And first of all,
I profess that God, the origin and end of all things, can be known with
certainty by the natural light of reason from the created world (see Rom.
1:90), that is, from the visible works of creation, as a cause from its
effects, and that, therefore, his existence can also be demonstrated: Secondly,
I accept and acknowledge the external proofs of revelation, that is, divine
acts and especially miracles and prophecies as the surest signs of the divine
origin of the Christian religion and I hold that these same proofs are well
adapted to the understanding of all eras and all men, even of this time.
Thirdly, I believe with equally firm faith that the Church, the guardian and
teacher of the revealed word, was personally instituted by the real and historical
Christ when he lived among us, and that the Church was built upon Peter, the
prince of the apostolic hierarchy, and his successors for the duration of time.
Fourthly, I sincerely hold that the doctrine of faith was handed down to us
from the apostles through the orthodox Fathers in exactly the same meaning and
always in the same purport. Therefore, I entirely reject the heretical
misrepresentation that dogmas evolve and change from one meaning to another
different from the one which the Church held previously. I also condemn every
error according to which, in place of the divine deposit which has been given
to the spouse of Christ to be carefully guarded by her, there is put a
philosophical figment or product of a human conscience that has gradually been
developed by human effort and will continue to develop indefinitely. Fifthly, I
hold with certainty and sincerely confess that faith is not a blind sentiment
of religion welling up from the depths of the subconscious under the impulse of
the heart and the motion of a will trained to morality; but faith is a genuine
assent of the intellect to truth received by hearing from an external source.
By this assent, because of the authority of the supremely truthful God, we
believe to be true that which has been revealed and attested to by a personal
God, our creator and lord.
Furthermore, with due
reverence, I submit and adhere with my whole heart to the condemnations,
declarations, and all the prescripts contained in the encyclical Pascendi
and in the decree Lamentabili, especially those concerning what is known
as the history of dogmas. I also reject the error of those who say that the
faith held by the Church can contradict history, and that Catholic dogmas, in
the sense in which they are now understood, are irreconcilable with a more
realistic view of the origins of the Christian religion. I also condemn and
reject the opinion of those who say that a well-educated Christian assumes a
dual personality-that of a believer and at the same time of a historian, as if
it were permissible for a historian to hold things that contradict the faith of
the believer, or to establish premises which, provided there be no direct
denial of dogmas, would lead to the conclusion that dogmas are either false or
doubtful. Likewise, I reject that method of judging and interpreting Sacred
Scripture which, departing from the tradition of the Church, the analogy of
faith, and the norms of the Apostolic See, embraces the misrepresentations of
the rationalists and with no prudence or restraint adopts textual criticism as
the one and supreme norm. Furthermore, I reject the opinion of those who hold
that a professor lecturing or writing on a historico-theological subject should
first put aside any preconceived opinion about the supernatural origin of
Catholic tradition or about the divine promise of help to preserve all revealed
truth forever; and that they should then interpret the writings of each of the
Fathers solely by scientific principles, excluding all sacred authority, and
with the same liberty of judgment that is common in the investigation of all
ordinary historical documents.
Finally, I declare that I
am completely opposed to the error of the modernists who hold that there is
nothing divine in sacred tradition; or what is far worse, say that there is,
but in a pantheistic sense, with the result that there would remain nothing but
this plain simple fact-one to be put on a par with the ordinary facts of
history-the fact, namely, that a group of men by their own labor, skill, and
talent have continued through subsequent ages a school begun by Christ and his
apostles. I firmly hold, then, and shall hold to my dying breath the belief of
the Fathers in the charism of truth, which certainly is, was, and always will
be in the succession of the episcopacy from the apostles. The purpose of this
is, then, not that dogma may be tailored according to what seems better and
more suited to the culture of each age; rather, that the absolute and immutable
truth preached by the apostles from the beginning may never be believed to be
different, may never be understood in any other way.
I promise that I shall
keep all these articles faithfully, entirely, and sincerely, and guard them
inviolate, in no way deviating from them in teaching or in any way in word or
in writing. Thus I promise, this I swear, so help me God.
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