PASCENDI
DOMINICI GREGIS
ENCYCLICAL OF POPE PIUS X
ON THE DOCTRINES
OF THE MODERNISTS
To the Patriarchs, Primates, Archbishops, Bishops
and other Local Ordinaries in Peace
and Communion with the Apostolic See.
September 8, 1907
Venerable Brethren, Health and Apostolic Benediction.
1. The office divinely committed to Us of feeding
the Lord's flock has especially this duty assigned to it by Christ,
namely, to guard with the greatest vigilance the deposit of the
faith delivered to the saints, rejecting the profane novelties
of words and oppositions of knowledge falsely so called. There
has never been a time when this watchfulness of the supreme pastor
was not necessary to the Catholic body; for, owing to the efforts
of the enemy of the human race, there have never been lacking
"men speaking perverse things" (Acts xx. 30), "vain
talkers and seducers" (Tit. i. 10), "erring and driving
into error" (2 Tim. iii. 13). Still it must be confessed
that the number of the enemies of the cross of Christ has in these
last days increased exceedingly, who are striving, by arts, entirely
new and full of subtlety, to destroy the vital energy of the Church,
and, if they can, to overthrow utterly Christ's kingdom itself.
Wherefore We may no longer be silent, lest We should seem to fail
in Our most sacred duty, and lest the kindness that, in the hope
of wiser counsels, We have hitherto shown them, should be attributed
to forgetfulness of Our office.
Gravity of the Situation
2. That We make no delay in this matter is rendered
necessary especially by the fact that the partisans of error are
to be sought not only among the Church's open enemies; they lie
hid, a thing to be deeply deplored and feared, in her very bosom
and heart, and are the more mischievous, the less conspicuously
they appear. We allude, Venerable Brethren, to many who belong
to the Catholic laity, nay, and this is far more lamentable, to
the ranks of the priesthood itself, who, feigning a love for the
Church, lacking the firm protection of philosophy and theology,
nay more, thoroughly imbued with the poisonous doctrines taught
by the enemies of the Church, and lost to all sense of modesty,
vaunt themselves as reformers of the Church; and, forming more
boldly into line of attack, assail all that is most sacred in
the work of Christ, not sparing even the person of the Divine
Redeemer, whom, with sacrilegious daring, they reduce to a simple,
mere man.
3. Though they express astonishment themselves,
no one can justly be surprised that We number such men among the
enemies of the Church, if, leaving out of consideration the internal
disposition of soul, of which God alone is the judge, he is acquainted
with their tenets, their manner of speech, their conduct. Nor
indeed will he err in accounting them the most pernicious of all
the adversaries of the Church. For as We have said, they put their
designs for her ruin into operation not from without but from
within; hence, the danger is present almost in the very veins
and heart of the Church, whose injury is the more certain, the
more intimate is their knowledge of her. Moreover they lay the
axe not to the branches and shoots, but to the very root, that
is, to the faith and its deepest fires. And having struck at this
root of immortality, they proceed to disseminate poison through
the whole tree, so that there is no part of Catholic truth from
which they hold their hand, none that they do not strive to corrupt.
Further, none is more skilful, none more astute than they, in
the employment of a thousand noxious arts; for they double the
parts of rationalist and Catholic, and this so craftily that they
easily lead the unwary into error; and since audacity is their
chief characteristic, there is no conclusion of any kind from
which they shrink or which they do not thrust forward with pertinacity
and assurance. To this must be added the fact, which indeed is
well calculated to deceive souls, that they lead a life of the
greatest activity, of assiduous and ardent application to every
branch of learning, and that they possess, as a rule, a reputation
for the strictest morality. Finally, and this almost destroys
all hope of cure, their very doctrines have given such a bent
to their minds, that they disdain all authority and brook no restraint;
and relying upon a false conscience, they attempt to ascribe to
a love of truth that which is in reality the result of pride and
obstinacy.
Once indeed We had hopes of recalling them to a better sense,
and to this end we first of all showed them kindness as Our children,
then we treated them with severity, and at last We have had recourse,
though with great reluctance, to public reproof. But you know,
Venerable Brethren, how fruitless has been Our action. They bowed
their head for a moment, but it was soon uplifted more arrogantly
than ever. If it were a matter which concerned them alone, We
might perhaps have overlooked it: but the security of the Catholic
name is at stake. Wherefore, as to maintain it longer would be
a crime, We must now break silence, in order to expose before
the whole Church in their true colours those men who have assumed
this bad disguise.
Division of the Encyclical
4. But since the Modernists (as they are commonly
and rightly called) employ a very clever artifice, namely, to
present their doctrines without order and systematic arrangement
into one whole, scattered and disjointed one from another, so
as to appear to be in doubt and uncertainty, while they are in
reality firm and steadfast, it will be of advantage, Venerable
Brethren, to bring their teachings together here into one group,
and to point out the connexion between them, and thus to pass
to an examination of the sources of the errors, and to prescribe
remedies for averting the evil.
Analysis of Modernist Teaching
5. To proceed in an orderly manner in this recondite
subject, it must first of all be noted that every Modernist sustains
and comprises within himself many personalities; he is a philosopher,
a believer, a theologian, an historian, a critic, an apologist,
a reformer. These roles must be clearly distinguished from one
another by all who would accurately know their system and thoroughly
comprehend the principles and the consequences of their doctrines.
Agnosticism its Philosophical Foundation
6. We begin, then, with the philosopher. Modernists
place the foundation of religious philosophy in that doctrine
which is usually called Agnosticism. According to this teaching
human reason is confined entirely within the field of phenomena,
that is to say, to things that are perceptible to the senses,
and in the manner in which they are perceptible; it has no right
and no power to transgress these limits. Hence it is incapable
of lifting itself up to God, and of recognising His existence,
even by means of visible things. From this it is inferred that
God can never be the direct object of science, and that, as regards
history, He must not be considered as an historical subject. Given
these premises, all will readily perceive what becomes of Natural
Theology, of the motives of credibility, of external revelation.
The Modernists simply make away with them altogether; they include
them in Intellectualism, which they call a ridiculous and long
ago defunct system. Nor does the fact that the Church has formally
condemned these portentous errors exercise the slightest restraint
upon them. Yet the Vatican Council has defined, "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" (De Revel.,
can. I); 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" (Ibid., can. 2); 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" (De Fide, can. 3). But how the Modernists
make the transition from Agnosticism, which is a state of pure
nescience, to scientific and historic Atheism, which is a doctrine
of positive denial; and consequently, by what legitimate process
of reasoning, starting from ignorance as to whether God has in
fact intervened in the history of the human race or not, they
proceed, in their explanation of this history, to ignore God altogether,
as if He really had not intervened, let him answer who can. Yet
it is a fixed and established principle among them that both science
and history must be atheistic: and within their boundaries there
is room for nothing but phenomena; God and all that is divine
are utterly excluded. We shall soon see clearly what, according
to this most absurd teaching, must be held touching the most sacred
Person of Christ, what concerning the mysteries of His life and
death, and of His Resurrection and Acension into heaven.
Vital Immanence
7. However, this Agnosticism is only the negative
part of the system of the Modernist: the positive side of it consists
in what they call vital immanence. This is how they advance from
one to the other. Religion, whether natural or supernatural, must,
like every other fact, admit of some explanation. But when Natural
theology has been destroyed, the road to revelation closed through
the rejection of the arguments of credibility, and all external
revelation absolutely denied, it is clear that this explanation
will be sought in vain outside man himself. It must, therefore,
be looked for in man; and since religion is a form of life, the
explanation must certainly be found in the life of man. Hence
the principle of religious immanence is formulated. Moreover,
the first actuation, so to say, of every vital phenomenon, and
religion, as has been said, belongs to this category, is due to
a certain necessity or impulsion; but it has its origin, speaking
more particularly of life, in a movement of the heart, which movement
is called a sentiment. Therefore, since God is the object of religion,
we must conclude that faith, which is the basis and the foundation
of all religion, consists in a sentiment which originates from
a need of the divine. This need of the divine, which is experienced
only in special and favourable circumstances, cannot, of itself,
appertain to the domain of consciousness; it is at first latent
within the consciousness, or, to borrow a term from modern philosophy,
in the subconsciousness, where also its roots lies hidden and
undetected.
Should anyone ask how it is that this need of the divine which
man experiences within himself grows up into a religion, the Modernists
reply thus: Science and history, they say, are confined within
two limits, the one external, namely, the visible world, the other
internal, which is consciousness. When one or other of these boundaries
has been reached, there can be no further progress, for beyond
is the unknowable. In presence of this unknowable, whether it
is outside man and beyond the visible world of nature, or lies
hidden within in the subconsciousness, the need of the divine,
according to the principles of Fideism, excites in a soul with
a propensity towards religion a certain special sentiment, without
any previous advertence of the mind: and this sentiment possesses,
implied within itself both as its own object and as its intrinsic
cause, the reality of the divine, and in a way unites man with
God. It is this sentiment to which Modernists give the name of
faith, and this it is which they consider the beginning of religion.
8. But we have not yet come to the end of their
philosophy, or, to speak more accurately, their folly. For Modernism
finds in this sentiment not faith only, but with and in faith,
as they understand it, revelation, they say, abides. For what
more can one require for revelation? Is not that religious sentiment
which is perceptible in the consciousness revelation, or at least
the beginning of revelation? Nay, is not God Himself, as He manifests
Himself to the soul, indistinctly it is true, in this same religious
sense, revelation? And they add: Since God is both the object
and the cause of faith, this revelation is at the same time of
God and from God; that is, God is both the revealer and the revealed.
Hence, Venerable Brethren, springs that ridiculous proposition
of the Modernists, that every religion, according to the different
aspect under which it is viewed, must be considered as both natural
and supernatural. Hence it is that they make consciousness and
revelation synonymous. Hence the law, according to which religious
consciousness is given as the universal rule, to be put on an
equal footing with revelation, and to which all must submit, even
the supreme authority of the Church, whether in its teaching capacity,
or in that of legislator in the province of sacred liturgy or
discipline.
Deformation of Religious History the Consequence
9. However, in all this process, from which,
according to the Modernists, faith and revelation spring, one
point is to be particularly noted, for it is of capital importance
on account of the historico-critical corollaries which are deduced
from it. - For the Unknowable they talk of does not present itself
to faith as something solitary and isolated; but rather in close
conjunction with some phenomenon, which, though it belongs to
the realm of science and history yet to some extent oversteps
their bounds. Such a phenomenon may be an act of nature containing
within itself something mysterious; or it may be a man, whose
character, actions and words cannot, apparently, be reconciled
with the ordinary laws of history. Then faith, attracted by the
Unknowable which is united with the phenomenon, possesses itself
of the whole phenomenon, and, as it were, permeates it with its
own life. From this two things follow. The first is a sort of
transfiguration of the phenomenon, by its elevation above its
own true conditions, by which it becomes more adapted to that
form of the divine which faith will infuse into it. The second
is a kind of disfigurement, which springs from the fact that faith,
which has made the phenomenon independent of the circumstances
of place and time, attributes to it qualities which it has not;
and this is true particularly of the phenomena of the past, and
the older they are, the truer it is. From these two principles
the Modernists deduce two laws, which, when united with a third
which they have already got from agnosticism, constitute the foundation
of historical criticism. We will take an illustration from the
Person of Christ. In the person of Christ, they say, science and
history encounter nothing that is not human. Therefore, in virtue
of the first canon deduced from agnosticism, whatever there is
in His history suggestive of the divine, must be rejected. Then,
according to the second canon, the historical Person of Christ
was transfigured by faith; therefore everything that raises it
above historical conditions must be removed. Lately, the third
canon, which lays down that the person of Christ has been disfigured
by faith, requires that everything should be excluded, deeds and
words and all else that is not in keeping with His character,
circumstances and education, and with the place and time in which
He lived. A strange style of reasoning, truly; but it is Modernist
criticism.
10. Therefore the religious sentiment, which
through the agency of vital immanence emerges from the lurking
places of the subconsciousness, is the germ of all religion, and
the explanation of everything that has been or ever will be in
any religion. The sentiment, which was at first only rudimentary
and almost formless, gradually matured, under the influence of
that mysterious principle from which it originated, with the progress
of human life, of which, as has been said, it is a form. This,
then, is the origin of all religion, even supernatural religion;
it is only a development of this religious sentiment. Nor is the
Catholic religion an exception; it is quite on a level with the
rest; for it was engendered, by the process of vital immanence,
in the consciousness of Christ, who was a man of the choicest
nature, whose like has never been, nor will be. - Those who hear
these audacious, these sacrilegious assertions, are simply shocked!
And yet, Venerable Brethren, these are not merely the foolish
babblings of infidels. There are many Catholics, yea, and priests
too, who say these things openly; and they boast that they are
going to reform the Church by these ravings! There is no question
now of the old error, by which a sort of right to the supernatural
order was claimed for the human nature. We have gone far beyond
that: we have reached the point when it is affirmed that our most
holy religion, in the man Christ as in us, emanated from nature
spontaneously and entirely. Than this there is surely nothing
more destructive of the whole supernatural order. Wherefore 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. So far, Venerable Brethren, there has been
no mention of the intellect. Still it also, according to the teaching
of the Modernists, has its part in the act of faith. And it is
of importance to see how. - In that sentiment of which We have
frequently spoken, since sentiment is not knowledge, God indeed
presents Himself to man, but in a manner so confused and indistinct
that He can hardly be perceived by the believer. It is therefore
necessary that a ray of light should be cast upon this sentiment,
so that God may be clearly distinguished and set apart from it.
This is the task of the intellect, whose office it is to reflect
and to analyse, and by means of which man first transforms into
mental pictures the vital phenomena which arise within him, and
then expresses them in words. Hence the common saying of Modernists:
that the religious man must ponder his faith. - The intellect,
then, encountering this sentiment directs itself upon it, and
produces in it a work resembling that of a painter who restores
and gives new life to a picture that has perished with age. The
simile is that of one of the leaders of Modernism. The operation
of the intellect in this work is a double one: first by a natural
and spontaneous act it expresses its concept in a simple, ordinary
statement; then, on reflection and deeper consideration, or, as
they say, by elaborating its thought, it expresses the idea in
secondary propositions, which are derived from the first, but
are more perfect and distinct. These secondary propositions, if
they finally receive the approval of the supreme magisterium of
the Church, constitute dogma.
12. Thus, We have reached one of the principal
points in the Modernists' system, namely the origin and the nature
of dogma. For they place the origin of dogma in those primitive
and simple formulae, which, under a certain aspect, are necessary
to faith; for revelation, to be truly such, requires the clear
manifestation of God in the consciousness. But dogma itself they
apparently hold, is contained in the secondary formulae.
To ascertain the nature of dogma, we must first find the relation
which exists between the religious formulas and the religious
sentiment. This will be readily perceived by him who realises
that these formulas have no other purpose than to furnish the
believer with a means of giving an account of his faith to himself.
These formulas therefore stand midway between the believer and
his faith; in their relation to the faith, they are the inadequate
expression of its object, and are usually called symbols; in their
relation to the believer, they are mere instruments.
Its Evolution
13. Hence it is quite impossible to maintain
that they express absolute truth: for, in so far as they are symbols,
they are the images of truth, and so must be adapted to the religious
sentiment in its relation to man; and as instruments, they are
the vehicles of truth, and must therefore in their turn be adapted
to man in his relation to the religious sentiment. But the object
of the religious sentiment, since it embraces that absolute, possesses
an infinite variety of aspects of which now one, now another,
may present itself. In like manner, he who believes may pass through
different phases. Consequently, the formulae too, which we call
dogmas, must be subject to these vicissitudes, and are, therefore,
liable to change. Thus the way is open to the intrinsic evolution
of dogma. An immense collection of sophisms this, that ruins and
destroys all religion. Dogma is not only able, but ought to evolve
and to be changed. This is strongly affirmed by the Modernists,
and as clearly flows from their principles. For amongst the chief
points of their teaching is this which they deduce from the principle
of vital immanence; that religious formulas, to be really religious
and not merely theological speculations, ought to be living and
to live the life of the religious sentiment. This is not to be
understood in the sense that these formulas, especially if merely
imaginative, were to be made for the religious sentiment; it has
no more to do with their origin than with number or quality; what
is necessary is that the religious sentiment, with some modification
when necessary, should vitally assimilate them. In other words,
it is necessary that the primitive formula be accepted and sanctioned
by the heart; and similarly the subsequent work from which spring
the secondary formulas must proceed under the guidance of the
heart. Hence it comes that these formulas, to be living, should
be, and should remain, adapted to the faith and to him who believes.
Wherefore if for any reason this adaptation should cease to exist,
they lose their first meaning and accordingly must be changed.
And since the character and lot of dogmatic formulas is so precarious,
there is no room for surprise that Modernists regard them so lightly
and in such open disrespect. And so they audaciously charge the
Church both with taking the wrong road from inability to distinguish
the religious and moral sense of formulas from their surface meaning,
and with clinging tenaciously and vainly to meaningless formulas
whilst religion is allowed to go to ruin. Blind that they are,
and leaders of the blind, inflated with a boastful science, they
have reached that pitch of folly where they pervert the eternal
concept of truth and the true nature of the religious sentiment;
with that new system of theirs they are seen to be under the sway
of a blind and unchecked passion for novelty, thinking not at
all of finding some solid foundation of truth, but despising the
holy and apostolic traditions, they embrace other vain, futile,
uncertain doctrines, condemned by the Church, on which, in the
height of their vanity, they think they can rest and maintain
truth itself.
The Modernist as Believer:
Individual Experience and Religious Certitude
14. Thus far, Venerable Brethren, of the Modernist
considered as Philosopher. Now if we proceed to consider him as
Believer, seeking to know how the Believer, according to Modernism,
is differentiated from the Philosopher, it must be observed that
although the Philosopher recognises as the object of faith the
divine reality, still this reality is not to be found but in the
heart of the Believer, as being an object of sentiment and affirmation;
and therefore confined within the sphere of phenomena; but as
to whether it exists outside that sentiment and affirmation is
a matter which in no way concerns this Philosopher. For the Modernist
.Believer, on the contrary, it is an established and certain fact
that the divine reality does really exist in itself and quite
independently of the person who believes in it. If you ask on
what foundation this assertion of the Believer rests, they answer:
In the experience of the individual. On this head the Modernists
differ from the Rationalists only to fall into the opinion of
the Protestants and pseudo-mystics. This is their manner of putting
the question: In the religious sentiment one must recognise a
kind of intuition of the heart which puts man in immediate contact
with the very reality of God, and infuses such a persuasion of
God's existence and His action both within and without man as
to excel greatly any scientific conviction. They assert, therefore,
the existence of a real experience, and one of a kind that surpasses
all rational experience. If this experience is denied by some,
like the rationalists, it arises from the fact that such persons
are unwilling to put themselves in the moral state which is necessary
to produce it. It is this experience which, when a person acquires
it, makes him properly and truly a believer.
How far off we are here from Catholic teaching we have already
seen in the decree of the Vatican Council. We shall see later
how, with such theories, added to the other errors already mentioned,
the way is opened wide for atheism. Here it is well to note at
once that, given this doctrine of experience united with the other
doctrine of symbolism, every religion, even that of paganism,
must be held to be true. What is to prevent such experiences from
being met within every religion? In fact that they are to be found
is asserted by not a few. And with what right will Modernists
deny the truth of an experience affirmed by a follower of Islam?
With what right can they claim true experiences for Catholics
alone? Indeed Modernists do not deny but actually admit, some
confusedly, others in the most open manner, that all religions
are true. That they cannot feel otherwise is clear. For on what
ground, according to their theories, could falsity be predicated
of any religion whatsoever? It must be certainly on one of these
two: either on account of the falsity of the religious sentiment
or on account of the falsity of the formula pronounced by the
mind. Now the religious sentiment, although it may be more perfect
or less perfect, is always one and the same; and the intellectual
formula, in order to be true, has but to respond to the religious
sentiment and to the Believer, whatever be the intellectual capacity
of the latter. In the conflict between different religions, the
most that Modernists can maintain is that the Catholic has more
truth because it is more living and that it deserves with more
reason the name of Christian because it corresponds more fully
with the origins of Christianity. That these consequences flow
from the premises will not seem unnatural to anybody. But what
is amazing is that there are Catholics and priests who, We would
fain believe, abhor such enormities yet act as if they fully approved
of them. For they heap such praise and bestow such public honour
on the teachers of these errors as to give rise to the belief
that their admiration is not meant merely for the persons, who
are perhaps not devoid of a certain merit, but rather for the
errors which these persons openly profess and which they do all
in their power to propagate.
Religious Experience and Tradition
15. But this doctrine of experience is also under
another aspect entirely contrary to Catholic truth. It is extended
and applied to tradition, as hitherto understood by the Church,
and destroys it. By the Modernists, tradition is understood as
a communication to others, through preaching by means of the intellectual
formula, of an original experience. To this formula, in addition
to its representative value, they attribute a species of suggestive
efficacy which acts both in the person who believes, to stimulate
the religious sentiment should it happen to have grown sluggish
and to renew the experience once acquired, and in those who do
not yet believe, to awake for the first time the religious sentiment
in them and to produce the experience. In this way is religious
experience propagated among the peoples; and not merely among
contemporaries by preaching, but among future generations both
by books and by oral transmission from one to another. Sometimes
this communication of religious experience takes root and thrives,
at other times it withers at once and dies. For the Modernists,
to live is a proof of truth, since for them life and truth are
one and the same thing. Hence again it is given to us to infer
that all existing religions are equally true, for otherwise they
would not live.
Faith and Science
16. Having reached this point, Venerable Brethren,
we have sufficient material in hand to enable us to see the relations
which Modernists establish between faith and science, including
history also under the name of science. And in the first place
it is to be held that the object of the one is quite extraneous
to and separate from the object of the other. For faith occupies
itself solely with something which science declares to be unknowable
for it. Hence each has a separate field assigned to it: science
is entirely concerned with the reality of phenomena, into which
faith does not enter at all; faith on the contrary concerns itself
with the divine reality which is entirely unknown to science.
Thus the conclusion is reached that there can never be any dissension
between faith and science, for if each keeps on its own ground
they can never meet and therefore never be in contradiction. And
if it be objected that in the visible world there are some things
which appertain to faith, such as the human life of Christ, the
Modernists reply by denying this. For though such things come
within the category of phenomena, still in as far as they are
lived by faith and in the way already described have been by faith
transfigured and disfigured, they have been removed from the world
of sense and translated to become material for the divine. Hence
should it be further asked whether Christ has wrought real miracles,
and made real prophecies, whether He rose truly from the dead
and ascended into heaven, the answer of agnostic science will
be in the negative and the answer of faith in the affirmative
- yet there will not be, on that account, any conflict between
them. For it will be denied by the philosopher as philosopher,
speaking to philosophers and considering Christ only in His historical
reality; and it will be affirmed by the speaker, speaking to believers
and considering the life of Christ as lived again by the faith
and in the faith.
Faith Subject to Science
17. Yet, it would be a great mistake to suppose
that, given these theories, one is authorised to believe that
faith and science are independent of one another. On the side
of science the independence is indeed complete, but it is quite
different with regard to faith, which is subject to science not
on one but on three grounds. For in the first place it must be
observed that in every religious fact, when you take away the
divine reality and the experience of it which the believer possesses,
everything else, and especially the religious formulas of it,
belongs to the sphere of phenomena and therefore falls under the
control of science. Let the believer leave the world if he will,
but so long as he remains in it he must continue, whether he like
it or not, to be subject to the laws, the observation, the judgments
of science and of history. Further, when it is said that God is
the object of faith alone, the statement refers only to the divine
reality not to the idea of God. The latter also is subject to
science which while it philosophises in what is called the logical
order soars also to the absolute and the ideal. It is therefore
the right of philosophy and of science to form conclusions concerning
the idea of God, to direct it in its evolution and to purify it
of any extraneous elements which may become confused with it.
Finally, man does not suffer a dualism to exist in him, and the
believer therefore feels within him an impelling need so to harmonise
faith with science, that it may never oppose the general conception
which science sets forth concerning the universe.
Thus it is evident that science is to be entirely independent
of faith, while on the other hand, and notwithstanding that they
are supposed to be strangers to each other, faith is made subject
to science. All this, Venerable Brothers, is in formal opposition
with 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, but not to prescribe what is to be
believed but to embrace what is to be believed with reasonable
obedience, not to scrutinise the depths of the mysteries of God
but to venerate them devoutly and humbly.
The Modernists completely invert the parts, and to them may be
applied the words of another Predecessor of Ours, Gregory IX.,
addressed to some theologians of his time: Some among you, inflated
like bladders with the spirit of vanity strive by profane novelties
to cross the boundaries fixed by the Fathers, twisting the sense
of the heavenly pages . . .to the philosophical teaching of the
rationals, not for the profit of their hearer but to make a show
of science . . . these, seduced by strange and eccentric doctrines,
make the head of the tail and force the queen to serve the servant.
The Methods of Modernists
18. This becomes still clearer to anybody who
studies the conduct of Modernists, which is in perfect harmony
with their teachings. In the writings and addresses they seem
not unfrequently to advocate now one doctrine now another so that
one would be disposed to regard them as vague and doubtful. But
there is a reason for this, and it is to be found in their ideas
as to the mutual separation of science and faith. Hence in their
books you find some things which might well be expressed by a
Catholic, but in the next page you find other things which might
have been dictated by a rationalist. When they write history they
make no mention of the divinity of Christ, but when they are in
the pulpit they profess it clearly; again, when they write history
they pay no heed to the Fathers and the Councils, but when they
catechise the people, they cite them respectfully. In the same
way they draw their distinctions between theological and pastoral
exegesis and scientific and historical exegesis. So, too, acting
on the principle that science in no way depends upon faith, when
they treat of philosophy, history, criticism, feeling no horror
at treading in the footsteps of Luther, they are wont to display
a certain contempt for Catholic doctrines, or the Holy Fathers,
for the Ecumenical Councils, for the ecclesiastical magisterium;
and should they be rebuked for this, 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
criticise the Church because of her sheer obstinacy in refusing
to submit and accommodate her dogmas to the opinions of philosophy;
while they, on their side, after having blotted out the old theology,
endeavour to introduce a new theology which shall follow the vagaries
of their philosophers.
The Modernist as Theologian:
His Principles, Immanence and Symbolism
19. And thus, Venerable Brethren, the road is
open for us to study the Modernists in the theological arena -
a difficult task, yet one that may be disposed of briefly. The
end to be attained is the conciliation of faith with science,
always, however, saving the primacy of science over faith. In
this branch the Modernist theologian avails himself of exactly
the same principles which we have seen employed by the Modernist
philosopher, and applies them to the believer: the principles
of immanence and symbolism. The process is an extremely simple
one. The philosopher has declared: The principle of faith is immanent;
the believer has added: This principle is God; and the theologian
draws the conclusion: God is immanent in man. Thus we have theological
immanence. So too, the philosopher regards as certain that the
representations of the object of faith are merely symbolical;
the believer has affirmed that the object of faith is God in Himself;
and the theologian proceeds to affirm that: The representations
of the divine reality are symbolical. And thus we have theological
symbolism. Truly enormous errors both, the pernicious character
of which will be seen clearly from an examination of their consequences.
For, to begin with symbolism, since symbols are but symbols in
regard to their objects and only instruments in regard to the
believer, it is necessary first of all, according to the teachings
of the Modernists, that the believer do not lay too much stress
on the formula, but avail himself of it only with the scope of
uniting himself to the absolute truth which the formula at once
reveals and conceals, that is to say, endeavours to express but
without succeeding in doing so. They would also have the believer
avail himself of the formulas only in as far as they are useful
to him, for they are given to be a help and not a hindrance; with
proper regard, however, for the social respect due to formulas
which the public magisterium has deemed suitable for expressing
the common consciousness until such time as the same magisterium
provide otherwise. Concerning immanence it is not easy to determine
what Modernists mean by it, for their own opinions on the subject
vary. Some understand it in the sense that God working in man
is more intimately present in him than man is in even himself,
and this conception, if properly understood, is free from reproach.
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, and this would destroy the supernatural order.
Others, finally, explain it in a way which savours of pantheism
and this, in truth, is the sense which tallies best with the rest
of their doctrines.
20. With this principle of immanence is connected
another which may be called the principle of divine permanence.
It differs from the first in much the same way as the private
experience differs from the experience transmitted by tradition.
An example will illustrate what is meant, and this example is
offered by the Church and the Sacraments. The Church and the Sacraments,
they say, are not to be regarded as having been instituted by
Christ Himself. This is forbidden by agnosticism, which sees in
Christ nothing more than a man whose religious consciousness has
been, like that of all men, formed by degrees; it is also forbidden
by the law of immanence which rejects what they call external
application; it is further forbidden by the law of evolution which
requires for the development of the germs a certain time and a
certain series of circumstances; it is, finally, forbidden by
history, which shows that such in fact has been the course of
things. Still it is to be held that both Church and Sacraments
have been founded mediately by Christ. But how? In this way: All
Christian consciences were, they affirm, in a manner virtually
included in the conscience of Christ as the plant is included
in the seed. But as the shoots live the life of the seed, so,
too, all Christians are to be said to live the life of Christ.
But the life of Christ is according to faith, and so, too, is
the life of Christians. And since this life produced, in the courses
of ages, both the Church and the Sacraments, it is quite right
to say that their origin is from Christ and is divine. In the
same way they prove that the Scriptures and the dogmas are divine.
And thus the Modernistic theology may be said to be complete.
No great thing, in truth, but more than enough for the theologian
who professes that the conclusions of science must always, and
in all things, be respected. The application of these theories
to the other points We shall proceed to expound, anybody may easily
make for himself.
Dogma and the Sacraments
21. Thus far We have spoken of the origin and
nature of faith. But as faith has many shoots, and chief among
them the Church, dogma, worship, the Books which we call "Sacred,"
of these also we must know what is taught by the Modernists. To
begin with dogma, we have already indicated its origin and nature.
Dogma is born of the species of impulse or necessity by virtue
of which the believer is constrained to elaborate his religious
thought so as to render it clearer for himself and others. This
elaboration consists entirely in the process of penetrating and
refining the primitive formula, not indeed in itself and according
to logical development, but as required by circumstances, or vitally
as the Modernists more abstrusely put it. Hence it happens that
around the primitive formula secondary formulas gradually continue
to be formed, and these subsequently grouped into bodies of doctrine,
or into doctrinal constructions as they prefer to call them, and
further sanctioned by the public magisterium as responding to
the common consciousness, are called dogma. Dogma is to be carefully
distinguished from the speculations of theologians which, although
not alive with the life of dogma, are not without their utility
as serving to harmonise religion with science and remove opposition
between the two, in such a way as to throw light from without
on religion, and it may be even to prepare the matter for future
dogma. Concerning worship there would not be much to be said,
were it not that under this head are comprised the Sacraments,
concerning which the Modernists fall into the gravest errors.
For them the Sacraments are the resultant of a double need - for,
as we have seen, everything in their system is explained by inner
impulses or necessities. In the present case, the first need is
that of giving some sensible manifestation to religion; the second
is that of propagating it, which could not be done without some
sensible form and consecrating acts, and these are called sacraments.
But for the Modernists the Sacraments are mere symbols or signs,
though not devoid of a certain efficacy - an efficacy, they tell
us, like that of certain phrases vulgarly described as having
"caught on," inasmuch as they have become the vehicle
for the diffusion of certain great ideas which strike the public
mind. What the phrases are to the ideas, that the Sacraments are
to the religious sentiment - that and nothing more. The Modernists
would be speaking more clearly were they to affirm that the Sacraments
are instituted solely to foster the faith - but this is condemned
by the Council of Trent: If anyone say that these sacraments are
instituted solely to foster the faith, let him be anathema.
The Holy Scriptures
22. We have already touched upon the nature and
origin of the Sacred Books. According to the principles of the
Modernists they may be rightly described as a collection of experiences,
not indeed of the kind that may come to anybody, but those extraordinary
and striking ones which have happened in any religion. And this
is precisely what they teach about our books of the Old and New
Testament. But to suit their own theories they note with remarkable
ingenuity that, although experience is something belonging to
the present, still it may derive its material from the past and
the future alike, inasmuch as the believer by memory lives the
past over again after the manner of the present, and lives the
future already by anticipation. This explains how it is that the
historical and apocalyptical books are included among the Sacred
Writings. God does indeed speak in these books - through the medium
of the believer, but only, according to Modernistic theology,
by vital immanence and permanence. Do we inquire concerning inspiration?
Inspiration, they reply, is distinguished only by its vehemence
from that impulse which stimulates the believer to reveal the
faith that is in him by words or writing. It is something like
what happens in poetical inspiration, of which it has been said:
There is God in us, and when he stirreth he sets us afire. And
it is precisely in this sense that God is said to be the origin
of the inspiration of the Sacred Books. The Modernists affirm,
too, that there is nothing in these books which is not inspired.
In this respect some might be disposed to consider them as more
orthodox than certain other moderns who somewhat restrict inspiration,
as, for instance, in what have been put forward as tacit citations.
But it is all mere juggling of words. For if we take the Bible,
according to the tenets of agnosticism, to be a human work, made
by men for men, but allowing the theologian to proclaim that it
is divine by immanence, what room is there left in it for inspiration?
General inspiration in the Modernist sense it is easy to find,
but of inspiration in the Catholic sense there is not a trace.
The Church
23. A wider field for comment is opened when
you come to treat of the vagaries devised by the Modernist school
concerning the Church. You must start with the supposition that
the Church has its birth in a double need, the need of the individual
believer, especially if he has had some original and special experience,
to communicate his faith to others, and the need of the mass,
when the faith has become common to many, to form itself into
a society and to guard, increase, and propagate the common good.
What, then, is the Church? It is the product of the collective
conscience, that is to say of the society of individual consciences
which by virtue of the principle of vital permanence, all depend
on one first believer, who for Catholics is Christ. Now every
society needs a directing authority to guide its members towards
the common end, to conserve prudently the elements of cohesion
which in a religious society are doctrine and worship.
Hence the triple authority in the Catholic Church, disciplinary,
dogmatic, liturgical. The nature of this authority is to be gathered
from its origin, and its rights and duties from its nature. In
past times it was a common error that authority came to the Church
from without, that is to say directly from God; and it was then
rightly held to be autocratic. But his conception had now grown
obsolete. For in the same way as the Church is a vital emanation
of the collectivity of consciences, so too authority emanates
vitally from the Church itself. Authority therefore, like the
Church, has its origin in the religious conscience, and, that
being so, is subject to it. Should it disown this dependence it
becomes a tyranny. For we are living in an age when the sense
of liberty has reached its fullest development, and when the public
conscience has in the civil order introduced popular government.
Now there are not two consciences in man, any more than there
are two lives. It is for the ecclesiastical authority, therefore,
to shape itself to democratic forms, unless it wishes to provoke
and foment an intestine conflict in the consciences of mankind.
The penalty of refusal is disaster. For it is madness to think
that the sentiment of liberty, as it is now spread abroad, can
surrender. Were it forcibly confined and held in bonds, terrible
would be its outburst, sweeping away at once both Church and religion.
Such is the situation for the Modernists, and their one great
anxiety is, in consequence, to find a way of conciliation between
the authority of the Church and the liberty of believers.
The Relations Between Church and State
24. But it is not with its own members alone
that the Church must come to an amicable arrangement - besides
its relations with those within, it has others outside. The Church
does not occupy the world all by itself; there are other societies
in the world, with which it must necessarily have contact and
relations. The rights and duties of the Church towards civil societies
must, therefore, be determined, and determined, of course, by
its own nature as it has been already described. The rules to
be applied in this matter are those which have been laid down
for science and faith, though in the latter case the question
is one of objects while here we have one of ends. In the same
way, then, as faith and science are strangers to each other by
reason of the diversity of their objects, Church and State are
strangers by reason of the diversity of their ends, that of the
Church being spiritual while that of the State is temporal. Formerly
it was possible to subordinate the temporal to the spiritual and
to speak of some questions as mixed, allowing to the Church the
position of queen and mistress in all such, because the Church
was then regarded as having been instituted immediately by God
as the author of the supernatural order. But his doctrine is today
repudiated alike by philosophy and history. The State must, therefore,
be separated from the Church, and the Catholic from the citizen.
Every Catholic, from the fact that he is also a citizen, has the
right and the duty to work for the common good in the way he thinks
best, without troubling himself about the authority of the Church,
without paying any heed to its wishes, its counsels, its orders
- nay, even in spite of its reprimands. To trace out and prescribe
for the citizen any line of conduct, on any pretext whatsoever,
is to be guilty of an abuse of ecclesiastical authority, against
which one is bound to act with all one's might. The principles
from which these doctrines spring 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 for the Modernist school
that the State should be separated from the Church. For as faith
is to be subordinated to science, as far as phenomenal elements
are concerned, so too in temporal matters the Church must be subject
to the State. They do not say this openly as yet - but they will
say it when they wish to be logical on this head. For given the
principle that in temporal matters the State possesses absolute
mastery, it will follow that when the believer, not fully satisfied
with his merely internal acts of religion, proceeds to external
acts, such for instance as the administration or reception of
the sacraments, these will fall under the control of the State.
What will then become of ecclesiastical authority, which can only
be exercised by external acts? Obviously it will be completely
under the dominion of the State. It is this inevitable consequence
which impels many among liberal Protestants to reject all external
worship, nay, all external religious community, and makes them
advocate what they call, individual religion. If the Modernists
have not yet reached this point, they do ask the Church in the
meanwhile to be good enough to follow spontaneously where they
lead her and adapt herself to the civil forms in vogue. Such are
their ideas about disciplinary authority. But far more advanced
and far more pernicious are their teachings on doctrinal and dogmatic
authority. This is their conception of the magisterium of the
Church: No religious society, they say, can be a real unit unless
the religious conscience of its members be one, and one also the
formula which they adopt. But his double unity requires a kind
of common mind whose office is to find and determine the formula
that corresponds best with the common conscience, and it must
have moreover an authority sufficient to enable it to impose on
the community the formula which has been decided upon. From the
combination and, as it were fusion of these two elements, the
common mind which draws up the formula and the authority which
imposes it, arises, according to the Modernists, the notion of
the ecclesiastical magisterium. And as this magisterium springs,
in its last analysis, from the individual consciences and possesses
its mandate of public utility for their benefit, it follows that
the ecclesiastical magisterium must be subordinate to them, and
should therefore take democratic forms. To prevent individual
consciences from revealing freely and openly the impulses they
feel, to hinder criticism from impelling dogmas towards their
necessary evolutions - this is not a legitimate use but an abuse
of a power given for the public utility. So too a due method and
measure must be observed in the exercise of authority. To condemn
and prescribe a work without the knowledge of the author, without
hearing his explanations, without discussion, assuredly savours
of tyranny. And thus, here again a way must be found to save the
full rights of authority on the one hand and of liberty on the
other. In the meanwhile the proper course for the Catholic will
be to proclaim publicly his profound respect for authority - and
continue to follow his own bent. Their general directions for
the Church may be put in this way: Since the end of the Church
is entirely spiritual, the religious authority should strip itself
of all that external pomp which adorns it in the eyes of the public.
And here they forget that while religion is essentially for the
soul, it is not exclusively for the soul, and that the honour
paid to authority is reflected back on Jesus Christ who instituted
it.
The Evolution of Doctrine
26. To finish with this whole question of faith
and its shoots, it remains to be seen, Venerable Brethren, what
the Modernists have to say about their development. First of all
they lay down the general principle that in a living religion
everything is subject to change, and must change, and in this
way they pass to what may be said to be, among the chief of their
doctrines, that of Evolution. To the laws of evolution everything
is subject - dogma, Church, worship, the Books we revere as sacred,
even faith itself, and the penalty of disobedience is death. The
enunciation of this principle will not astonish anybody who bears
in mind what the Modernists have had to say about each of these
subjects. Having laid down this law of evolution, the Modernists
themselves teach us how it works out. And first with regard to
faith. The primitive form of faith, they tell us, was rudimentary
and common to all men alike, for it had its origin in human nature
and human life. Vital evolution brought with it progress, not
by the accretion of new and purely adventitious forms from without,
but by an increasing penetration of the religious sentiment in
the conscience. This progress was of two kinds: negative, by the
elimination of all foreign elements, such, for example, as the
sentiment of family or nationality; and positive by the intellectual
and moral refining of man, by means of which the idea was enlarged
and enlightened while the religious sentiment became more elevated
and more intense. For the progress of faith no other causes are
to be assigned than those which are adduced to explain its origin.
But to them must be added those religious geniuses whom we call
prophets, and of whom Christ was the greatest; both because in
their lives and their words there was something mysterious which
faith attributed to the divinity, and because it fell to their
lot to have new and original experiences fully in harmony with
the needs of their time. The progress of dogma is due chiefly
to the obstacles which faith has to surmount, to the enemies it
has to vanquish, to the contradictions it has to repel. Add to
this a perpetual striving to penetrate ever more profoundly its
own mysteries. Thus, to omit other examples, has it happened in
the case of Christ: in Him that divine something which faith admitted
in Him expanded in such a way that He was at last held to be God.
The chief stimulus of evolution in the domain of worship consists
in the need of adapting itself to the uses and customs of peoples,
as well as the need of availing itself of the value which certain
acts have acquired by long usage. Finally, evolution in the Church
itself is fed by the need of accommodating itself to historical
conditions and of harmonising itself with existing forms of society.
Such is religious evolution in detail. And here, before proceeding
further, we would have you note well this whole theory of necessities
and needs, for it is at the root of the entire system of the Modernists,
and it is upon it that they will erect that famous method of theirs
called the historical.
27. Still continuing the consideration of the
evolution of doctrine, it is to be noted that Evolution is due
no doubt to those stimulants styled needs, but, if left to their
action alone, it would run a great risk of bursting the bounds
of tradition, and thus, turned aside from its primitive vital
principle, would lead to ruin instead of progress. Hence, studying
more closely the ideas of the Modernists, evolution is described
as resulting from the conflict of two forces, one of them tending
towards progress, the other towards conservation. The conserving
force in the Church is tradition, and tradition is represented
by religious authority, and this both by right and in fact; for
by right it is in the very nature of authority to protect tradition,
and, in fact, for authority, raised as it is above the contingencies
of life, feels hardly, or not at all, the spurs of progress. The
progressive force, on the contrary, which responds to the inner
needs lies in the individual consciences and ferments there -
especially in such of them as are in most intimate contact with
life. Note here, Venerable Brethren, the appearance already of
that most pernicious doctrine which would make of the laity a
factor of progress in the Church. Now it is by a species of compromise
between the forces of conservation and of progress, that is to
say between authority and individual consciences, that changes
and advances take place. The individual consciences of some of
them act on the collective conscience, which brings pressure to
bear on the depositaries of authority, until the latter consent
to a compromise, and, the pact being made, authority sees to its
maintenance.
With all this in mind, one understands how it is that the Modernists
express astonishment when they are reprimanded or punished. What
is imputed to them as a fault they regard as a sacred duty. Being
in intimate contact with consciences they know better than anybody
else, and certainly better than the ecclesiastical authority,
what needs exist - nay, they embody them, so to speak, in themselves.
Having a voice and a pen they use both publicly, for this is their
duty. Let authority rebuke them as much as it pleases - they have
their own conscience on their side and an intimate experience
which tells them with certainty that what they deserve is not
blame but praise. Then they reflect that, after all there is no
progress without a battle and no battle without its victim, and
victims they are willing to be like the prophets and Christ Himself.
They have no bitterness in their hearts against the authority
which uses them roughly, for after all it is only doing its duty
as authority. Their sole grief is that it remains deaf to their
warnings, because delay multiplies the obstacles which impede
the progress of souls, but the hour will most surely come when
there will be no further chance for tergiversation, for if the
laws of evolution may be checked for a while, they cannot be ultimately
destroyed. And so they go their way, reprimands and condemnations
notwithstanding, masking an incredible audacity under a mock semblance
of humility. While they make a show of bowing their heads, their
hands and minds are more intent than ever on carrying out their
purposes. And this policy they follow willingly and wittingly,
both because it is part of their system that authority is to be
stimulated but not dethroned, and because it is necessary for
them to remain within the ranks of the Church in order that they
may gradually transform the collective conscience - thus unconsciously
avowing that the common conscience is not with them, and that
they have no right to claim to be its interpreters.
28. Thus then, Venerable Brethren, for the Modernists,
both as authors and propagandists, there is to be nothing stable,
nothing immutable in the Church. Nor indeed are they without precursors
in their doctrines, for it was of these that Our Predecessor Pius
IX wrote: 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. On the subject
of revelation and dogma in particular, the doctrine of the Modernists
offers nothing new - we find it condemned in the Syllabus of Pius
IX., where it is enunciated in these terms: Divine revelation
is imperfect, and therefore subject to continual and indefinite
progress, corresponding with the progress of human reason; and
condemned still more solemnly in the Vatican Council: 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 the
sense, too, of the sacred dogmas is that which our Holy Mother
the Church has once declared, nor is this sense 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 - 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. After having studied the Modernist as philosopher,
believer and theologian, it now remains for us to consider him
as historian, critic, apologist, reformer.
30. Some Modernists, devoted to historical studies,
seem to be greatly afraid of being taken for philosophers. About
philosophy, they tell you, they know nothing whatever - and in
this they display remarkable astuteness, for they are particularly
anxious not to be suspected of being prejudiced in favour of philosophical
theories which would lay them open to the charge of not being
objective, to use the word in vogue. And yet the truth is that
their history and their criticism are saturated with their philosophy,
and that their historico-critical conclusions are the natural
fruit of their philosophical principles. This will be patent to
anybody who reflects. Their three first laws are contained in
those three principles of their philosophy already dealt with:
the principle of agnosticism, the principle of the transfiguration
of things by faith, and the principle which We have called of
disfiguration. Let us see what consequences flow from each of
them. Agnosticism tells us that history, like ever other 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 as belonging to it alone. In things where
a double element, the divine and the human, mingles, in Christ,
for example, or the Church, or the sacraments, or the many other
objects of the same kind, a division must be made and the human
element assigned to history while the divine will go to faith.
Hence we have that distinction, so current among the Modernists,
between the Christ of history and the Christ of faith, between
the sacraments of history and the sacraments of faith, and so
on. Next we find that the human element itself, which the historian
has to work on, as it appears in the documents, has been by faith
transfigured, that is to say raised above its historical conditions.
It becomes necessary, therefore, to eliminate also the accretions
which faith has added, to assign them to faith itself and to the
history of faith: thus, when treating of Christ, the historian
must set aside all that surpasses man in his natural condition,
either according to the psychological conception of him, or according
to the place and period of his existence. Finally, by virtue of
the third principle, even those things which are not outside the
sphere of history they pass through the crucible, excluding from
history and relegating to faith everything which, in their judgment,
is not in harmony with what they call the logic of facts and in
character with the persons of whom they are predicated. Thus,
they will not allow that Christ ever uttered those things which
do not seem to be within the capacity of the multitudes that listened
to Him. Hence they delete from His real history and transfer to
faith all the allegories found in His discourses. Do you inquire
as to the criterion they adopt to enable them to make these divisions?
The reply is that they argue from the character of the man, from
his condition of life, from his education, from the circumstances
under which the facts took place - in short, from criteria which,
when one considers them well, are purely subjective. Their method
is to put themselves into the position and person of Christ, and
then to attribute to Him what they would have done under like
circumstances. In this way, absolutely a priori and acting on
philosophical principles which they admit they hold but which
they affect to ignore, 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, judging
from the time in which he lived, can admit Him to have said or
done.
Criticism and its Principles
31. And as history receives its conclusions,
ready-made, from philosophy, so too criticism takes its own from
history. The critic, on the data furnished him by the historian,
makes two parts of all his documents. Those that remain after
the triple elimination above described go to form the real history;
the rest is attributed to the history of the faith or as it is
styled, to internal history. For the Modernists distinguish very
carefully between these two kinds of history, and it is to be
noted that they oppose the history of the faith to real history
precisely as real. Thus we have a double Christ: a real Christ,
and a Christ, the one of faith, who never really existed; a Christ
who has lived at a given time and in a given place, and a Christ
who has never lived outside the pious meditations of the believer
- the Christ, for instance, whom we find in the Gospel of St.
John, which is pure contemplation from beginning to end.
32. But the dominion of philosophy over history
does not end here. Given that division, of which We have spoken,
of the documents into two parts, the philosopher steps in again
with his principle of vital immanence, and shows how everything
in the history of the Church is to be explained by vital emanation.
And since the cause or condition of every vital emanation whatsoever
is to be found in some need, it follows that no fact can ante-date
the need which produced it - historically the fact must be posterior
to the need. See how the historian works on this principle. He
goes over his documents again, whether they be found in the Sacred
Books or elsewhere, draws up from them his list of the successive
needs of the Church, whether relating to dogma or liturgy or other
matters, and then he hands his list over to the critic. The critic
takes in hand the documents dealing with the history of faith
and distributes them, period by period, so that they correspond
exactly with the lists of needs, always guided by the principle
that the narration must follow the facts, as the facts follow
the needs. It may at times happen that some parts of the Sacred
Scriptures, such as the Epistles, themselves constitute the fact
created by the need. Even so, the rule holds that the age of any
document can only be determined by the age in which each need
had manifested itself in the Church. Further, a distinction must
be made between the beginning of a fact and its development, for
what is born one day requires time for growth. Hence the critic
must once more go over his documents, ranged as they are through
the different ages, and divide them again into two parts, and
divide them into two lots, separating those that regard the first
stage of the facts from those that deal with their development,
and these he must again arrange according to their periods.
33. Then the philosopher must come in again to
impose on the historian the obligation of following in all his
studies the precepts and laws of evolution. It is next for the
historian to scrutinise his documents once more, to examine carefully
the circumstances and conditions affecting the Church during the
different periods, the conserving force she has put forth, the
needs both internal and external that have stimulated her to progress,
the obstacles she has had to encounter, in a word everything that
helps to determine the manner in which the laws of evolution have
been fulfilled in her. This done, he finishes his work by drawing
up in its broad lines a history of the development of the facts.
The critic follows and fits in the rest of the documents with
this sketch; he takes up his pen, and soon the history is made
complete. Now we ask here: Who is the author of this history?
The historian? The critic? Assuredly, neither of these but the
philosopher. From beginning to end everything in it is a priori,
and a priori in a way that reeks of heresy. These men are certainly
to be pitied, and of them the Apostle might well say: They became
vain in their thoughts. . . professing themselves to be wise they
became fools (Rom. i. 21, 22); but, at the same time, they excite
just indignation when they accuse the Church of torturing the
texts, arranging and confusing them after its own fashion, and
for the needs of its cause. In this they are accusing the Church
of something for which their own conscience plainly reproaches
them.
How the Bible is Dealt With
34. The result of this dismembering of the Sacred
Books and this partition of them throughout the centuries is naturally
that the Scriptures can no longer be attributed to the authors
whose names they bear. The Modernists have no hesitation in affirming
commonly that these books, and especially the Pentateuch and the
first three Gospels, have been gradually formed by additions to
a primitive brief narration - by interpolations of theological
or allegorical interpretation, by transitions, by joining different
passages together. This means, briefly, that in the Sacred Books
we must admit a vital evolution, springing from and corresponding
with evolution of faith. The traces of this evolution, they tell
us, are so visible in the books that one might almost write a
history of them. Indeed this history they do actually write, and
with such an easy security that one might believe them to have
with their own eyes seen the writers at work through the ages
amplifying the Sacred Books. To aid them in this they call to
their assistance that branch of criticism which they call textual,
and labour to show that such a fact or such a phrase is not in
its right place, and adducing other arguments of the same kind.
They seem, in fact, to have constructed for themselves certain
types of narration and discourses, upon which they base their
decision as to whether a thing is out of place or not. Judge if
you can how men with such a system are fitted for practising this
kind of criticism. To hear them talk about their works on the
Sacred Books, in which they have been able to discover so much
that is defective, one would imagine that before them nobody ever
even glanced through the pages of Scripture, whereas the truth
is that a whole multitude of Doctors, infinitely superior to them
in genius, in erudition, in sanctity, have sifted the Sacred Books
in every way, and so far from finding imperfections in them, have
thanked God more and more the deeper they have gone into them,
for His divine bounty in having vouchsafed to speak thus to men.
Unfortunately, these great Doctors did not enjoy the same aids
to study that are possessed by the Modernists for their guide
and rule, - a philosophy borrowed from the negation of God, and
a criterion which consists of themselves.
We believe, then, that We have set forth with sufficient clearness
the historical method of the Modernists. The philosopher leads
the way, the historian follows, and then in due order come internal
and textual criticism. And since it is characteristic of the first
cause to communicate its virtue to secondary causes, it is quite
clear that the criticism We are concerned with is an agnostic,
immanentist, and evolutionist criticism. Hence anybody who embraces
it and employs it, makes profession thereby of the errors contained
in it, and places himself in opposition to Catholic faith. This
being so, one cannot but be greatly surprised by the consideration
which is attached to it by certain Catholics. Two causes may be
assigned for this: first, the close alliance, independent of all
differences of nationality or religion, which the historians and
critics of this school have formed among themselves; second, the
boundless effrontery of these men. Let one of them but open his
mouth and the others applaud him in chorus, proclaiming that science
has made another step forward; let an outsider but hint at a desire
to inspect the new discovery with his own eyes, and they are on
him in a body; deny it - and you are an ignoramus; embrace it
and defend it - and there is no praise too warm for you. In this
way they win over any who, did they but realise what they are
doing, would shrink back with horror. The impudence and the domineering
of some, and the thoughtlessness and imprudence of others, have
combined to generate a pestilence in the air which penetrates
everywhere and spreads the contagion. But let us pass to the apologist.
The Modernist as Apologist
35. The Modernist apologist depends in two ways
on the philosopher. First, indirectly, inasmuch as his theme is
history - history dictated, as we have seen, by the philosopher;
and, secondly, directly, inasmuch as he takes both his laws and
his principles from the philosopher. Hence that common precept
of the Modernist school that the new apologetics must be fed from
psychological and historical sources. The Modernist apologists,
then, enter the arena by proclaiming to the rationalists that
though they are defending religion, they have no intention of
employing the data of the sacred books or the histories in current
use in the Church, and composed according to old methods, but
real history written on modern principles and according to rigorously
modern methods. In all this they are not using an argumentum ad
hominem, but are stating the simple fact that they hold, that
the truth is to be found only in this kind of history. They feel
that it is not necessary for them to dwell on their own sincerity
in their writings - they are already known to and praised by the
rationalists as fighting under the same banner, and they not only
plume themselves on these encomiums, which are a kind of salary
to them but would only provoke nausea in a real Catholic, but
use them as an offset to the reprimands of the Church.
But let us see how the Modernist conducts his apologetics. The
aim he sets before himself is to make the non-believer attain
that experience of the Catholic religion which, according to the
system, is the basis of faith. There are two ways open to him,
the objective and the subjective. The first of them proceeds from
agnosticism. It tends to show that religion, and especially the
Catholic religion, is endowed with such vitality as to compel
every psychologist and historian of good faith to recognise that
its history hides some unknown element. To this end it is necessary
to prove that this religion, as it exists today, is that which
was founded by Jesus Christ; that is to say, that it is the product
of the progressive development of the germ which He brought into
the world. Hence it is imperative first of all to establish what
this germ was, and this the Modernist claims to be able to do
by the following formula: Christ announced the coming of the kingdom
of God, which was to be realised within a brief lapse of time
and of which He was to become the Messiah, the divinely-given
agent and ordainer. Then it must be shown how this germ, always
immanent and permanent in the bosom of the Church, has gone on
slowly developing in the course of history, adapting itself successively
to the different mediums through which it has passed, borrowing
from them by vital assimiliation all the dogmatic, cultural, ecclesiastical
forms that served its purpose; whilst, on the other hand , it
surmounted all obstacles, vanquished all enemies, and survived
all assaults and all combats. Anybody who well and duly considers
this mass of obstacles, adversaries, attacks, combats, and the
vitality and fecundity which the Church has shown throughout them
all, must admit that if the laws of evolution are visible in her
life they fail to explain the whole of her history - the unknown
rises forth from it and presents itself before us. Thus do they
argue, never suspecting that their determination of the primitive
germ is an a priori of agnostic and evolutionist philosophy, and
that the formula of it has been gratuitously invented for the
sake of buttressing their position.
36. But while they endeavour by this line of
reasoning to secure access for the Catholic religion into souls,
these new apologists are quite ready to admit that there are many
distasteful things in it. Nay, they admit openly, and with ill-concealed
satisfaction, that they have found that even its dogma is not
exempt from errors and contradictions. They add also that this
is not only excusable but - curiously enough - even right and
proper. In the Sacred Books there are many passages referring
to science or history where manifest errors are to be found. But
the subject of these books is not science or history but religion
and morals. In them history and science serve only as a species
of covering to enable the religious and moral experiences wrapped
up in them to penetrate more readily among the masses. The masses
understood science and history as they are expressed in these
books, and it is clear that had science and history been expressed
in a more perfect form this would have proved rather a hindrance
than a help. Then, again, the Sacred Books being essentially religious,
are consequently necessarily living. Now life has its own truth
and its own logic, belonging as they do to a different order,
viz., truth of adaptation and of proportion both with the medium
in which it exists and with the end towards which it tends. Finally
the Modernists, losing all sense of control, go so far as to proclaim
as true and legitimate everything that is explained by life.
We, Venerable Brethren, for whom there is but one and only truth,
and who hold that the Sacred Books, written under the inspiration
of the Holy Ghost, 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 practise or to believe, which on the same most pernicious rule
may not be explained as a lie uttered by the author wilfully 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 pursue
their way gaily. They grant also that certain arguments adduced
in the Sacred Books, like those, for example, which are based
on the prophecies, have no rational foundation to rest on. But
they will defend even these as artifices of preaching, which are
justified by life. Do they stop here? No, indeed, for they are
ready to admit, nay, to proclaim that Christ Himself manifestly
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! After
this what is to become of the dogmas of the Church? The dogmas
brim over with flagrant contradictions, but what matter that since,
apart from the fact that vital logic accepts them, they are not
repugnant to symbolical truth. Are we not dealing with the infinite,
and has not the infinite an infinite variety of aspects? In short,
to maintain and defend these theories they do not hesitate to
declare that the noblest homage that can be paid to the Infinite
is to make it the object of contradictory propositions! But when
they justify even contradiction, what is it that they will refuse
to justify?
Subjective Arguments
37. But it is not solely by objective arguments
that the non-believer may be disposed to faith. There are also
subjective ones at the disposal of the Modernists, and for those
they return to their doctrine of immanence. They endeavour, in
fact, to persuade their non-believer that down in the very deeps
of his nature and his life lie the need and the desire for religion,
and this not a religion of any kind, but the specific religion
known as Catholicism, which, they say, is absolutely postulated
by the perfect development of life. And here We cannot but deplore
once more, and grievously, that there are Catholics who, while
rejecting immanence as a doctrine, employ it as a method of apologetics,
and who do this so imprudently that they seem to admit that there
is in human nature a true and rigorous necessity with regard to
the supernatural order - and not merely a capacity and a suitability
for the supernatural, order - and not merely a capacity and a
suitability for the supernatural, such as has at all times been
emphasized by Catholic apologists. Truth to tell it is only the
moderate Modernists who make this appeal to an exigency for the
Catholic religion. As for the others, who might be called intergralists,
they would show to the non-believer, hidden away in the very depths
of his being, the very germ which Christ Himself bore in His conscience,
and which He bequeathed to the world. Such, Venerable Brethren,
is a summary description of the apologetic method of the Modernists,
in perfect harmony, as you may see, with their doctrines - methods
and doctrines brimming over with errors, made not for edification
but for destruction, not for the formation of Catholics but for
the plunging of Catholics into heresy; methods and doctrines that
would be fatal to any religion.
The Modernist as Reformer
38. It remains for Us now to say a few words
about the Modernist as reformer. From all that has preceded, some
idea may be gained of the reforming mania which possesses them:
in all Catholicism there is absolutely nothing on which it does
not fasten. Reform of philosophy, especially in the seminaries:
the scholastic philosophy is to be relegated to the history of
philosophy among obsolete systems, and the young men are to be
taught modern philosophy which alone is true and suited to the
times in which we live. Reform of theology; rational theology
is to have modern philosophy for its foundation, and positive
theology is to be founded on the history of dogma. As for history,
it must be for the future written and taught only according to
their modern methods and principles. Dogmas and their evolution
are to be harmonised with science and history. In the Catechism
no dogmas are to be inserted except those that have been duly
reformed and are within the capacity of the people. Regarding
worship, the number of external devotions is to be reduced, or
at least steps must be taken to prevent their further increase,
though, indeed, some of the admirers of symbolism are disposed
to be more indulgent on this head. Ecclesiastical government requires
to be reformed in all its branches, but especially in its disciplinary
and dogmatic parts. Its spirit with the public conscience, which
is not wholly for democracy; a share in ecclesiastical government
should therefore be given to the lower ranks of the clergy, and
even to the laity, and authority should be decentralised. The
Roman Congregations, and especially the index and the Holy Office,
are to be reformed. The ecclesiastical authority must change its
line of conduct in the social and political world; while keeping
outside political and social organization, it must adapt itself
to those which exist in order to penetrate them with its spirit.
With regard to morals, they adopt the principle of the Americanists,
that the active virtues are more important than the passive, both
in the estimation in which they must be held and in the exercise
of them. The clergy are asked to return to their ancient lowliness
and poverty, and in their ideas and action to be guided by the
principles of Modernism; and there are some who, echoing the teaching
of their Protestant masters, would like the suppression of ecclesiastical
celibacy. What is there left in the Church which is not to be
reformed according to their principles?
Modernism and All the Heresies
39. It may be, Venerable Brethren, that some
may think We have dwelt too long on this exposition of the doctrines
of the Modernists. But it was necessary, both in order to refute
their customary charge that We do not understand their ideas,
and to show that their system does not consist in scattered and
unconnected theories but in a perfectly organised body, all the
parts of which are solidly joined so that it is not possible to
admit one without admitting all. For this reason, too, We have
had to give this exposition a somewhat didactic form and not to
shrink from employing certain uncouth terms in use among the Modernists.
And now, can anybody who takes a survey of the whole system be
surprised that We should define it as the synthesis of all heresies?
Were one to attempt the task of collecting together all the errors
that have been broached against the faith and to concentrate the
sap and substance of them all into one, he could not better succeed
than the Modernists have done. Nay, they have done more than this,
for, as we have already intimated, their system means the destruction
not of the Catholic religion alone but of all religion. With good
reason do the rationalists applaud them, for the most sincere
and the frankest among the rationalists warmly welcome the modernists
as their most valuable allies.
For let us return for a moment, Venerable Brethren, to that most
disastrous doctrine of agnosticism. By it every avenue that leads
the intellect to God is barred, but the Modernists would seek
to open others available for sentiment and action. Vain efforts!
For, after all, what is sentiment but the reaction of the soul
on the action of the intelligence or the senses. Take away the
intelligence, and man, already inclined to follow the senses,
becomes their slave. Vain, too, from another point of view, for
all these fantasias on the religious sentiment will never be able
to destroy common sense, and common sense tells us that emotion
and everything that leads the heart captive proves a hindrance
instead of a help to the discovery of truth. We speak, of course,
of truth in itself - as for that other purely subjective truth,
the fruit of sentiment and action, if it serves its purpose for
the jugglery of words, it is of no use to the man who wants to
know above all things whether outside himself there is a God into
whose hands he is one day to fall. True, the Modernists do call
in experience to eke out their system, but what does this experience
add to sentiment? Absolutely nothing beyond a certain intensity
and a proportionate deepening of the conviction of the reality
of the object. But these two will never make sentiment into anything
but sentiment, nor deprive it of its characteristic which is to
cause deception when the intelligence is not there to guide it;
on the contrary, they but confirm and aggravate this characteristic,
for the more intense sentiment is the more it is sentimental.
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. You know it from your
own dealings with sounds, and especially with souls in whom sentiment
predominates; you know it also from your reading of ascetical
books - books for which the Modernists have but little esteem,
but which testify to a science and a solidity very different from
theirs, and to a refinement and subtlety of observation of which
the Modernists give no evidence. Is it not really folly, or at
least sovereign imprudence, to trust oneself without control to
Modernist experiences? Let us for a moment put the question: if
experiences have so much value in their eyes, why do they not
attach equal weight to the experience that thousands upon thousands
of Catholics have that the Modernists are on the wrong road? It
is, perchance, that all experiences except those felt by the Modernists
are false and deceptive? The vast majority of mankind holds and
always will hold firmly that sentiment and experience alone, when
not enlightened and guided by reason, do not lead to the knowledge
of God. What remains, then, but the annihilation of all religion,
- atheism? Certainly it is not the doctrine of symbolism - will
save us from this. For if all the intellectual elements, as they
call them, of religion are pure symbols, will not the very name
of God or of divine personality be also a symbol, and if this
be admitted will not the personality of God become a matter of
doubt and the way opened to Pantheism? And to Pantheism that other
doctrine of the divine immanence leads directly. For does it,
We ask, leave God distinct from man or not? If yes, in what does
it differ from Catholic doctrine, and why reject external revelation?
If no, we are at once in Pantheism. Now the doctrine of immanence
in the Modernist acceptation holds and professes that every phenomenon
of conscience proceeds from man as man. The rigorous conclusion
from this is the identity of man with God, which means Pantheism.
The same conclusion follows from the distinction Modernists make
between science and faith. The object of science they say is the
reality of the knowable; the object of faith, on the contrary,
is the reality of the unknowable. Now what makes the unknowable
unknowable is its disproportion with the intelligible - a disproportion
which nothing whatever, even in the doctrine of the Modernist,
can suppress. Hence the unknowable remains and will eternally
remain unknowable to the believer as well as to the man of science.
Therefore if any religion at all is possible it can only be the
religion of an unknowable reality. And why this religion might
not be that universal soul of the universe, of which a rationalist
speaks, is something We do see. Certainly this suffices to show
superabundantly by how many roads Modernism leads to the annihilation
of all religion. The first step in this direction was taken by
Protestantism; the second is made by Modernism; the next will
plunge headlong into atheism.
THE CAUSE OF MODERNISM
40. To penetrate still deeper into Modernism
and to find a suitable remedy for such a deep sore, it behoves
Us, Venerable Brethren, to investigate the causes which have engendered
it and which foster its growth. That the proximate and immediate
cause consists in a perversion of the mind cannot be open to doubt.
The remote causes seem to us to be reduced to two: curiosity and
pride. Curiosity by itself, if not prudently regulated, suffices
to explain 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 fruit outside the Church wherein
truth is found without the slightest shadow of error (Ep. Encycl.
Singulari nos, 7 Kal. Jul. 1834).
But it is pride which exercises an incomparably greater sway over
the soul to blind it and plunge it into error, and pride sits
in Modernism as in its own house, finding sustenance everywhere
in its doctrines and an occasion to flaunt itself in all its aspects.
It is pride which fills Modernists with that confidence in themselves
and leads them to hold themselves up as the rule for all, pride
which puffs them up with that vainglory which allows them to regard
themselves as the sole possessors of knowledge, and makes them
say, inflated with presumption, We are not as the rest of men,
and which, to make them really not as other men, leads them to
embrace all kinds of the most absurd novelties; it is pride which
rouses in them the spirit of disobedience and causes them to demand
a compromise between authority and liberty; it is pride that makes
of them the reformers of others, while they forget to reform themselves,
and which begets their absolute want of respect for authority,
not excepting the supreme authority. No, truly, there is no road
which leads so directly and so quickly to Modernism as pride.
When a Catholic laymen or a priest forgets that precept of the
Christian life which obliges us to renounce ourselves if we would
follow Jesus Christ and neglects to tear pride from his heart,
ah! but he is a fully ripe subject for the errors of Modernism.
Hence, Venerable Brethren, it will be your first duty to thwart
such proud men, to employ them only in the lowest and obscurest
offices; the higher they try to rise, the lower let them be placed,
so that their lowly position may deprive them of the power of
causing damage. Sound your young clerics, too, most carefully,
by yourselves and by the directors of your seminaries, and when
you find the spirit of pride among any of them reject them without
compunction from the priesthood. Would to God that this had always
been done with the proper vigilance and constancy.
41. If we pass from the moral to the intellectual
causes of Modernism, the first which presents itself, and the
chief one, is ignorance. Yes, these very Modernists who pose as
Doctors of the Church, who puff out their cheeks when they speak
of modern philosophy, and show such contempt for scholasticism,
have embraced the one with all its false glamour because their
ignorance of the other has left them without the means of being
able to recognise confusion of thought, and to refute sophistry.
Their whole system, with all its errors, has been born of the
alliance between faith and false philosophy.
Methods of Propagandism
42. If only they had displayed less zeal and
energy in propagating it! But such is their activity and such
their unwearying capacity for work on behalf of their cause, that
one cannot but be pained to see them waste such labour in endeavouring
to ruin the Church when they might have been of such service to
her had their efforts been better employed. Their articles to
delude men's minds are of two kinds, the first to remove obstacles
from their path, the second to devise and apply actively and patiently
every instrument that can serve their purpose. They recognise
that the three chief difficulties for them are scholastic philosophy,
the authority of the fathers and tradition, and the magisterium
of the Church, and on these they wage unrelenting war. For scholastic
philosophy and theology they have only ridicule and contempt.
Whether it is ignorance or fear, or both, that inspires this conduct
in them, certain it is that the passion for novelty is always
united in them with hatred of scholasticism, and there is no surer
sign that a man is on the way to Modernism than when he begins
to show his dislike for this system. Modernists and their admirers
should remember the proposition condemned by Pius IX: The method
and principles which have served the doctors of scholasticism
when treating of theology no longer correspond with the exigencies
of our time or the progress of science (Syll. Prop. 13). They
exercise all their ingenuity in diminishing the force and falsifying
the character of tradition, so as to rob it of all its weight.
But for Catholics the second Council of Nicea 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 endeavour 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 conserve 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. The Modernists pass the same judgment on the most
holy Fathers of the Church as they pass on tradition; decreeing,
with amazing effrontery that, while personally most worthy of
all veneration, they were entirely ignorant of history and criticism,
for which they are only excusable on account of the time in which
they lived. Finally, the Modernists try in every way to diminish
and weaken the authority of the ecclesiastical magisterium itself
by sacrilegiously falsifying its origin, character, and rights,
and by freely repeating the calumnies of its adversaries. To all
the band of Modernists may be applied those words which Our Predecessor
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, no wonder the Modernists
vent all their gall and hatred on Catholics who sturdily fight
the battles of the Church. But of all the insults they heap on
them those of ignorance and obstinacy are the favourites. When
an adversary rises up against them with an erudition and force
that render him redoubtable, they try to make a conspiracy of
silence around him to nullify the effects of his attack, while
in flagrant contrast with this policy towards Catholics, they
load with constant praise the writers who range themselves on
their side, hailing their works, excluding novelty in every page,
with choruses of applause; 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; when one of their number falls under the condemnations
of the Church the rest of them, to the horror of good Catholics,
gather round him, heap public praise upon him, venerate him almost
as a martyr to truth. The young, excited and confused by all this
glamour of praise and abuse, some of them afraid of being branded
as ignorant, others ambitious to be considered learned, and both
classes goaded internally by curiosity and pride, often surrender
and give themselves up to Modernism.
43. And here we have already some of the artifices
employed by Modernists to exploit their wares. What efforts they
make to win new recruits! They seize upon chairs 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 incautious reader into believing in a whole multitude
of Modernist writers - in short they leave nothing untried, in
action, discourses, writings, as though there were a frenzy of
propaganda upon them. And the results of all this? We have to
lament at the sight of many young men once full of promise and
capable of rendering great services to the Church, now gone astray.
And there is another sight that saddens Us too: that of so many
other Catholics, who, while they certainly do not go so far as
the former, have yet grown into the habit, as though they had
been breathing a poisoned atmosphere, of thinking and speaking
and writing with a liberty that ill becomes Catholics. They are
to be found among the laity, and in the ranks of the clergy, and
they are not wanting even in the last place where one might expect
to meet them, in religious institutes. If they treat of biblical
questions, it is upon Modernist principles; if they write history,
it is to search out with curiosity and to publish openly, on the
pretext of telling the whole truth and with a species of ill-concealed
satisfaction, everything that looks to them like a stain in the
history of the Church. Under the sway of certain a priori rules
they destroy as far as they can the pious traditions of the people,
and bring ridicule on certain relics highly venerable from their
antiquity. They are possessed by the empty desire of being talked
about, and they know they would never succeed in this were they
to say only what has been always said. It may be that they have
persuaded themselves that in all this they are really serving
God and the Church - in reality they only offend both, less perhaps
by their works themselves than by the spirit in which they write
and by the encouragement they are giving to the extravagances
of the Modernists.
REMEDIES
44. Against this host of grave errors, and its
secret and open advance, Our Predecessor Leo XIII., of happy memory,
worked strenuously especially as regards the Bible, both in his
words and his acts. But, as we have seen, the Modernists are not
easily deterred by such weapons - with an affectation of submission
and respect, they proceeded to twist the words of the Pontiff
to their own sense, and his acts they described as directed against
others than themselves. And the evil has gone on increasing from
day to day. We therefore, Venerable Brethren, have determined
to adopt at once the most efficacious measures in Our power, and
We beg and conjure you to see to it that in this most grave matter
nobody will ever be able 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 and 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 an excess of subtlety, or 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 above all things that the scholastic
philosophy We prescribe is 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 by all strictly observed. In seminaries where they
may have been neglected let the Bishops impose them and require
their observance, and let this apply also to the Superiors of
religious institutions. Further let Professors remember that they
cannot set St. Thomas aside, especially in metaphysical questions,
without grave detriment.
46. On this philosophical foundation the theological
edifice is to be solidly raised. Promote the study of theology,
Venerable Brethren, by all means in your power, so that your clerics
on leaving the seminaries may admire and love it, and always find
their delight in it. For in the vast and varied abundance of studies
opening before the mind desirous of 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 Holy Fathers, and the ecclesiastical magisterium, undertake,
with well-balanced judgment and guided by Catholic principles
(which is not always the case), seek to illustrate positive theology
by throwing the light of true history upon it. Certainly more
attention must be paid to positive theology than in the past,
but this must be done without detriment to scholastic theology,
and those are to be disapproved as of Modernist tendencies who
exalt positive theology in such a way as to seem to despise the
scholastic.
47. With regard to profane studies suffice it
to recall here what Our Predecessor has admirably said: Apply
yourselves energetically to the study of natural sciences: the
brilliant discoveries and the bold and useful applications of
them made in our times which have won such applause by our contemporaries
will be an object of perpetual praise for those that come after
us (Leo XIII. Alloc., March 7, 1880). But this do without interfering
with sacred studies, as Our Predecessor in these most grave words
prescribed: 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 they
are fallen from their old estate, they have been dis figured by
perverse doctrines and monstrous errors (loco cit.). We ordain,
therefore, that the study of natural science in the seminaries
be carried on under this law.
II - Practical Application
48. All these prescriptions and those of Our
Predecessor are to be borne in mind whenever there is question
of choosing directors and professors for seminaries and Catholic
Universities. Anybody who in any way is found to be imbued with
Modernism is to be excluded without compunction from these offices,
and those who already occupy them are to be withdrawn. The same
policy is to be adopted towards those who favour Modernism either
by extolling the Modernists or excusing their culpable conduct,
by criticising scholasticism, the Holy Father, or by refusing
obedience to ecclesiastical authority in any of its depositaries;
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 to them the profane. 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 modelled after the pattern of their
masters. Strong in the consciousness of your duty, act always
prudently but vigorously.
49. Equal diligence and severity are to be used
in examining and selecting candidates for Holy Orders. Far, far
from the clergy 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 anybody who has not made the regular
course of scholastic philosophy; if conferred 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 follow
in civil Universities those courses for which there are chairs
in the Catholic Institutes to which they belong. If this has been
permitted anywhere in the past, We ordain that it be not allowed
for the future. Let the Bishops who form the Governing Board of
such Catholic Institutes or Universities watch with all care that
these Our 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 favourable to it from being
read when they have been published, and to hinder their publication
when they have not. No book or paper or periodical of this kind
must ever be permitted to seminarists or university students.
The injury to them would be equal to that caused by immoral reading
- nay, it would be 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, strive to make this harmonize with the
faith, and, as they say, to turn it to the account of the faith.
The name and reputation of these authors cause them to be read
without suspicion, and they are, therefore, all the more dangerous
in preparing the way for Modernism.
51. To give you some more general directions,
Venerable Brethren, in a matter of such moment, We bid you 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 put down writings of
this kind, but the number of them has now grown to such an extent
that it is impossible to censure them all. Hence it happens that
the medicine sometimes arrives too late, for the disease has taken
root during the delay. We will, therefore, that the Bishops, putting
aside all fear and the prudence of the flesh, despising the outcries
of the wicked, gently by all means but constantly, do each his
own share of 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 prescribe and to put out of reach of the faithful injurious
books or other writings printed or circulated in their dioceses.
In this passage the Bishops, it is true, receive a right, but
they have also a duty imposed on them. Let no Bishop think that
he fulfils this 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
the Imprimatur elsewhere, both because this may be merely simulated,
and because it may have been granted through carelessness or easiness
or excessive confidence in the author as may sometimes happen
in religious Orders. Besides, just as the same food does not agree
equally with everybody, it may happen that a book harmless in
one may, on account of the different circumstances, be hurtful
in another. Should a Bishop, therefore, after having taken the
advice of prudent persons, deem it right to condemn any of such
books in his diocese, We not only give him ample faculty to do
so but We impose it upon him as a duty to do so. Of course, it
is Our wish that in such action proper regard be used, and sometimes
it will suffice to restrict the prohibition to the clergy; but
even in such cases it will be obligatory on Catholic booksellers
not to put on sale books condemned by the Bishop. And while We
are on this subject of booksellers, We wish the Bishops to see
to it that they do not, through desire for gain, put on sale unsound
books. It is certain that in the catalogues of some of them the
books of the Modernists are not unfrequently announced with no
small praise. If they refuse obedience let the Bishops have no
hesitation in depriving them of the title of Catholic booksellers;
so too, and with more reason, if they have the title of Episcopal
booksellers, and if they have that of Pontifical, let them be
denounced to the Apostolic See. Finally, We remind all of the
XXVI. article of the abovementioned Constitution Officiorum: All
those who have obtained an apostolic faculty to read and keep
forbidden books, are not thereby authorised to read books and
periodicals forbidden by the local Ordinaries, unless the apostolic
faculty expressly concedes permission to read and keep books condemned
by anybody.
IV. - Censorship
52. But it is not enough to hinder the reading
and the sale of bad books - it is also necessary to prevent them
from being printed. Hence let the Bishops use the utmost severity
in granting permission to print. Under the rules of the Constitution
Officiorum, many publications require the authorisation of the
Ordinary, and in some dioceses it has been made the custom to
have a suitable number of official censors for the examination
of writings. We have the highest praise for this institution,
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 of age, knowledge and prudence who will know how
to follow the golden mean 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 favourable,
the Bishop will give the permission for publication by the word
Imprimatur, which must always be preceded by the Nihil obstat
and the name of the Censor. In the Curia of Rome official censors
shall be appointed just as elsewhere, and the appointment of them
shall appertain to the Master of the Sacred Palaces, after they
have been proposed to the Cardinal Vicar 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 writing. 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 always be preceded by the Nihil obstat and the name of the
Censor. Only on very rare and exceptional occasions, 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 favourable decision,
so that he may not have to suffer annoyance either while he is
engaged in the examination of a writing or in case he should deny
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 solemn duty never to allow anything to be published by
any of their subjects without permission from themselves and from
the Ordinary. Finally We affirm and declare that the title of
Censor has no value and can never be adduced to give credit to
the private opinions of the person 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 direction 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, as it happens not unfrequently
that they write matter infected with Modernism for their papers
or periodicals, let the Bishops see to it that this is not permitted
to happen, and, should they fail in this duty, let the Bishops
make due provision with 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
office to read in due time each number after it has been published,
and if he find 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 be not treated
in them, and that no motions or postulates be allowed that would
imply a usurpation of sacred authority, and that no mention be
made in them 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 take part without the
written permission of their Ordinary. Further 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 respectable (Lett. Encyc. Nobilissima Gallorum, 10 Feb., 1884).
VI - Diocesan Watch Committees
55. But of what avail, Venerable Brethren, will
be all Our commands and prescriptions if they be not dutifully
and firmly carried out? And, in order that this may be done, it
has seemed expedient to Us to extend to all dioceses the regulations
laid down with great wisdom many years ago by the Bishops of Umbria
for theirs.
"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 dif fusion 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
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 nipping the evil in the bud 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 form 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 under the presidency of the Bishop.
They shall be bound to secrecy as to their deliberations and decisions,
and their function shall be as follows: They shall watch most
carefully for every trace and sign of Modernism both in publications
and in teaching, and, to preserve from it the clergy and the young,
they shall take all prudent, prompt and efficacious measures.
Let them combat 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 of 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 vocation of the clergy, on a new Christian civilisation.
Language of this kind is not to be tolerated either in books or
from chairs of learning. The Councils must not neglect the books
treating of the pious traditions of different places or of sacred
relics. Let them not permit such questions to be discussed in
periodicals destined to stimulate piety, neither with expressions
savouring of mockery or contempt, nor 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 the 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 verified 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 suppositions.
In passing judgment on pious traditions be it always 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
but forbid belief in things for which human arguments are not
wanting. On this matter the Sacred Congregation of Rites, thirty
years ago, decreed as follows: These apparitions and revelations
have neither been approved nor condemned by the Holy See, which
has simply allowed that they be believed on purely human faith,
on the tradition which they relate, corroborated by testimonies
and documents worthy of credence (Decree, May 2, 1877). Anybody
who follows this rule has no cause for fear. For the devotion
based on any apparition, in as far as it regards the fact itself,
that is to say in as far as it is relative, always implies the
hypothesis of the truth of the fact; while in as far as it is
absolute, it must always be based on the truth, seeing that its
object is the persons of the saints who are honoured. 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 harbour
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
fall into oblivion, We will 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 the prescriptions contained in them, 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 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 traduced
as the enemy of science and of the progress of humanity. In order
to oppose a new answer to such accusations, which the history
of the Christian religion refutes by never failing arguments,
it is Our intention to establish and develop 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
progress of science and other realms of knowledge may be promoted
under the guidance and teaching of Catholic truth. God grant that
we may happily realise our design with the ready assistance of
all those who bear a sincere love for the Church of Christ. But
of this we will 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 perturbation of men's minds from the insidious invasions
of error from every side, you may see clearly what you ought to
do and may perform the task with all your strength and courage.
May Jesus Christ, the author and finisher of our faith, be with
you by 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 adversity,
grant most affectionately and with all Our heart to you, your
clergy and people the Apostolic Benediction.
Given at St. Peter's, Rome, on the 8th day of
September, 1907, the fifth year of our Pontificate.
PIUS X
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