As some who stop in here may be aware, we have a variety of blogs, not just this one. And what they also may be aware of is that with some of those, blogs that have a specific theoretical purpose have tended to evolve over time to where commentary is particularly common on them. This has become particularly true on our blog
Lex Anteinternet which features a lot of commentary.
Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi, Santa Fe, New Mexico. If this cathedral looks somewhat unfinished, that is because it is. This Romanesque style cathedral lacks the spires which it was designed to have, a not uncommon thing on many older churches as their builders lacked the funds to complete that portion of them, but they built the church anyway.
On this blog, we've generally resisted that, although here, in this post, we break down at last and pen some commentary. The reason is that we recently happened to hear a podcast interview of Benjamin Wiker on the topic of Modernism. I wouldn't have expected the topic of architecture to be included in this interview, but it did. Wiker commented that modern church architecture expresses modernism in the context of criticizing modernism, a that term would have been used in the encyclical On The Doctrine of Modernist, released by Pope Pius X in 1907. In this context, the term is somewhat akin to "liberalism" or "secularism" I've posted the encyclical below as a giant appendix below, for those who may not be familiar with it and who want to read it. My having done that, of course, will make this by far the longest post ever attempted here by some huge margin.
Anyhow Wiker makes the interesting observation that in his view, traditional Church architecture reflects the truths, missions and prospective of the Church and church architecture is a manifestation of the doctrines meant to reinforce both body and soul of the truths of the church. I've never thought about that, but I think that's quite correct. It would also explain, I'd note, why different denominations have styles that are distinct to themselves in quite a few cases, and why other denominations have churches that traditionally closely resembled each other. We wouldn't expect, for instance, a Catholic church to really have the same style as a New England Congregationalist church. Indeed, every now and then when we see a church that features a style (or a name) that we tend to associate with another denomination, its a little shocking both in preception but perhaps theologically as well, as we grasp what the intended meaning genrally is. For example, there is a Presbyterian Church in Greeley Colorado that is very Gothic in its architecture and which is dedicated in memory of St. Patrick of Ireland. That just seems a bit unusual.
St. Anthony of Padua Church, Casper Wyoming. This church was built just after World War One, during which time Casper was a small city, but which none the less saw the construction, during this same period, of several of these very large classically styled churches.
Wikier takes the position that in order to undermine the Church and its meaning you must undermine the architecture. He asserts that modernist are radically centered on the individual and that this is contrary to the core of the Christian message and no how you feel about liberalism or secularism, that is undoubtedly correct. He therefore feels that modernist, even when they profess Christianity, have to take it on in that context, and part of that is taking on the architecture. He asserts that you have to have a church where you feel you are the center of the universe, and noisy rather than contemplative, in order to do that. One way he put it is that you have to have a church were there is no cultural difference between what we find at the shopping mall and what we find at the Mass.
St. Mary's Cathedral, Cheyenne Wyoming. This large Catholic cathedral was built to serve the entire state of Wyoming, the diocese for this cathedral, at a time when the population of Wyoming was very small and in a locality where Catholics have always been a minority of the state's population.
I'll leave those interested in that line of thought, and it is very interesting, to follow up on that themselves, but what I do note in the context of this blog is that I don't like "modern" church archtiecture. I simply do not. I've stated that before, but over time I've violated that prinicipal here and I've posted quite a few church photographs that feature it. I've debated about doing that over time, and oddly enough recently I've thought about trying to avoid that more in the future, and in fact I have been avoiding it. I'm not sure if its because I've been sensing, sort of, what Wiker states in regards to mondernist, or if I just flat out don't like modern church architecture, but I tend to shy away from photographing churches, as a rule, that don't have the look of more classic churches.
The risk, of course, when you do that is that you offend somebody. Somebody will take that as a personal attack on their faith, which it is not meant to be. There are a lot of congregations out there that can't afford a traditional church structure, maybe. But then there are also a lot that have built strutures for volume. Well, I think Wiker has a point. A church ought to feel and look like one. Ones that look like office building or warehouses risk, I suspect, becoming just that at some point. At any rate, they won't be appearing here, as the point of this blog isn't to take pictures of every church that exist West of the Missippii, but rather to catalog and dislay the architeicture of churches of classic and emblematic architecture. We're going to try to stick to that more closely in the future.
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VENERABLE BRETHREN, HEALTH AND THE APOSTOLIC BLESSING:
1. One of the primary obligations assigned by Christ to the office divinely
committed to Us of feeding the Lord's flock is that of guarding with the
greatest vigilance the deposit of the faith delivered to the saints, rejecting
the profane novelties of words and the gainsaying 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,"1
"vain talkers and seducers,"2 "erring and driving into error."3 It must,
however, be confessed that these latter days have witnessed a notable increase
in the number of the enemies of the Cross of Christ, who, by arts entirely new
and full of deceit, are striving to destroy the vital energy of the Church, and,
as far as in them lies, utterly to subvert the very Kingdom of Christ. Wherefore
We may no longer keep silence, 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 set down to lack of diligence in the discharge of
Our office.
2. That We should act without delay in this matter is made imperative
especially by the fact that the partisans of error are to be sought not only
among the Church's open enemies; but, what is to be most dreaded and deplored,
in her very bosom, and are the more mischievous the less they keep in the open.
We allude, Venerable Brethren, to many who belong to the Catholic laity, and,
what is much more sad, to the ranks of the priesthood itself, who, animated by a
false zeal for the Church, lacking the solid safeguards 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, put themselves forward
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 audacity, they degrade to the
condition of a simple and ordinary man.
3. Although they express their astonishment that We should number them
amongst the enemies of the Church, no one will be reasonably surprised that We
should do so, if, leaving out of account the internal disposition of the soul,
of which God alone is the Judge, he considers their tenets, their manner of
speech, and their action. Nor indeed would he be wrong in regarding them as the
most pernicious of all the adversaries of the Church. For, as We have said, they
put into operation their designs for her undoing, 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 from the very fact that their knowledge
of her is more intimate. Moreover, they lay the ax not to the branches and
shoots, but to the very root, that is, to the faith and its deepest fibers. And
once having struck at this root of immortality, they proceed to diffuse poison
through the whole tree, so that there is no part of Catholic truth which they
leave untouched, none that they do not strive to corrupt. Further, none is more
skillful, none more astute than they, in the employment of a thousand noxious
devices; for they play the double part of rationalist and Catholic, and this so
craftily that they easily lead the unwary into error; and as 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
irreproachable morality. Finally, there is the fact which is all but fatal to
the hope of cure that 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 mind, and to this end
We first of all treated them with kindness as Our children, then with severity;
and at last We have had recourse, though with great reluctance, to public
reproof. It is known to you, Venerable Brethren, how unavailing have been Our
efforts. For a moment they have bowed their head, only to lift it more
arrogantly than before. 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 We must interrupt a silence which it would be criminal to prolong,
that We may point out to the whole Church, as they really are, men who are badly
disguised.
4. It is one of the cleverest devices of the Modernists (as they are commonly
and rightly called) to present their doctrines without order and systematic
arrangement, in a scattered and disjointed manner, so as to make it appear as if
their minds were in doubt or hesitation, whereas in reality they are quite fixed
and steadfast. For this reason it will be of advantage, Venerable Brethren, to
bring their teachings together here into one group, and to point out their
interconnection, and thus to pass to an examination of the sources of the
errors, and to prescribe remedies for averting the evil results.
5. To proceed in an orderly manner in this somewhat abstruse subject, it must
first of all be noted that the Modernist sustains and includes within himself a
manifold personality; he is a philosopher, a believer, a theologian, an
historian, a critic, an apologist, a reformer. These roles must be clearly
distinguished one from another by all who would accurately understand their
system and thoroughly grasp the principles and the outcome of their doctrines.
6. We begin, then, with the philosopher. Modernists place the foundation of
religious philosophy in that doctrine which is commonly called Agnosticism.
According to this teaching human reason is confined entirely within the field of
phenomena, that is to say, to things that appear, and in the manner in which
they appear: it has neither the right nor the power to overstep these limits.
Hence it is incapable of lifting itself up to God, and of recognizing 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, everyone will
at once perceive what becomes of Natural Theology, of the motives of
credibility, of external revelation. The modernists simply sweep them entirely
aside; they include them in Intellectualism, which they denounce as a system
which is ridiculous and long since defunct. 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";4 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'';5 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."6 It may be asked,
in what way do the Modernists contrive to 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, they proceed from the fact of ignorance as to whether God has in fact
intervened in the history of the human race or not, to explain this history,
leaving God out 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, as a consequence of this most absurd teaching, must
be held touching the most sacred Person of Christ, and the mysteries of His life
and death, and of His Resurrection and Ascension into Heaven.
7. However, this Agnosticism is only the negative part of the system of the
Modernists: the positive part consists in what they call vital immanence. Thus
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, and the road to revelation closed by 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 of 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. In this way is
formulated the principle of religious immanence. Moreover, the first actuation,
so to speak, of every vital phenomenon -- and religion, as noted above, belongs
to this category -- is due to a certain need or impulsion; but speaking more
particularly of life, it has its origin in a movement of the heart, which
movement is called a sense. Therefore, as God is the object of religion, we must
conclude that faith, which is the basis and foundation of all religion, must
consist in a certain interior sense, originating in a need of the divine. This
need of the divine, which is experienced only in special and favorable
circumstances, cannot of itself appertain to the domain of consciousness, but is
first latent beneath consciousness, or, to borrow a term from modern philosophy,
in the subconsciousness, where also its root lies hidden and undetected.
It may perhaps be asked how it is that this need of the divine which man
experiences within himself resolves itself into religion? To this question the
Modernist reply would be as follows: Science and history are confined within two
boundaries, the one external, namely, the visible world, the other internal,
which is consciousness. When one or other of these limits 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 the subconsciousness, the need of the divine in a
soul which is prone to religion excites -- according to the principles of
Fideism, without any previous advertence of the mind -- a certain special sense,
and this sense possesses, implied within itself both as its own object and as
its intrinsic cause, the divine reality itself, and in a way unites man with
God. It is this sense to which Modernists give the name of faith, and this is
what they hold to be the beginning of religion.
8. But we have not yet reached the end of their philosophizing, or, to speak
more accurately, of their folly. Modernists find in this sense not only faith,
but in and with faith, as they understand it, they affirm that there is also to
be found revelation. For, indeed, what more is needed to constitute a
revelation? Is not that religious sense which is perceptible in the conscience,
revelation, or at least the beginning of revelation? Nay, is it not God Himself
manifesting Himself, indistinctly, it is true, in this same religious sense, to
the soul? 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 to say, God is
both the Revealer and the Revealed.
From this, Venerable Brethren, springs that most absurd tenet of the
Modernists, that every religion, according to the different aspect under which
it is viewed, must be considered as both natural and supernatural. It is thus
that they make consciousness and revelation synonymous. From this they derive
the law laid down as the universal standard, according to which religious
consciousness is to be put on an equal footing with revelation, and that to it
all must submit, even the supreme authority of the Church, whether in the
capacity of teacher, or in that of legislator in the province of sacred liturgy
or discipline.
9. 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 historicocritical corollaries which they deduce
from it. The unknowable they speak of does not present itself to faith as
something solitary and isolated; hut on the contrary in close conjunction with
some phenomenon, which, though it belongs to the realms of science or history,
yet to some extent exceeds their limits. Such a phenomenon may be a fact 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, seizes upon 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, an elevation by which it becomes more adapted to clothe itself with
the form of the divine character which faith will bestow upon it. The second
consequence is a certain disfiguration -- so it may be called -- of the same
phenomenon, arising from the fact that faith attributes to it, when stripped of
the circumstances of place and time, characteristics which it does not really
possess; and this takes place especially in the case of the phenomena of the
past, and the more fully in the measure of their antiquity. From these two
principles the Modernists deduce two laws, which, when united with a third which
they have already derived from agnosticism, constitute the foundation of
historic criticism. An example may be sought in 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. Lastly, 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 strict keeping with
His character, condition, and education, and with the place and time in which He
lived. A method of reasoning which is passing strange, but in it we have the
Modernist criticism.
10. It is thus that the religious sense, 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. This sense, which was at first only rudimentary and almost
formless, under the influence of that mysterious principle from which it
originated, gradually matured with the progress of human life, of which, as has
been said, it is a certain form. This, then, is the origin of all. even of
supernatural religion. For religions are mere developments of this religious
sense. 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, and by no
other way, in the consciousness of Christ, who was a man of the choicest nature,
whose like has never been, nor will be. In hearing these things we shudder
indeed at so great an audacity of assertion and so great a sacrilege. And yet,
Venerable Brethren, these are not merely the foolish babblings of unbelievers.
There are Catholics, yea, and priests too, who say these things openly; and they
boast that they are going to reform the Church by these ravings! The question is
no longer one of the old error which claimed for human nature a sort of right to
the supernatural. It has gone far beyond that, and has reached the point when it
is affirmed that our most holy religion, in the man Christ as in us, emanated
from nature spontaneously and of itself. Nothing assuredly could be more utterly
destructive of the whole supernatural order. For this reason 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."7
11. So far, Venerable Brethren, there has been no mention of the intellect.
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 sense of which We have
frequently spoken, since sense is not knowledge, they say 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 certain light should
be cast upon this sense so that God may clearly stand out in relief and be set
apart from it. This is the task of the intellect, whose office it is to reflect
and to analyze; and by means of it, 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 think his
faith. The mind then, encountering this .sense, throws itself upon it, and works
in it after the manner of a painter who restores to greater clearness the lines
of a picture that have been dimmed with age. The simile is that of one of the
leaders of Modernism. The operation of the mind in this work is a double one:
first, by a natural and spontaneous act it expresses its concept in a simple,
popular 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 precise and
distinct. These secondary propositions, if they finally receive the approval of
the supreme magisterium of the Church, constitute dogma.
12. We have thus reached one of the principal points in the Modernist's
system, namely, the origin and the nature of dogma. For they place the origin of
dogma in those primitive and simple formulas, which, under a certain aspect, are
necessary to faith; for revelation, to be truly such, requires the clear
knowledge of God in the consciousness. But dogma itself, they apparently hold,
strictly consists in the secondary formulas .
To ascertain the nature of dogma, we must first find the relation which
exists between the religious formulas and the religious sense. This will be
readily perceived by anyone who holds that these formulas have no other purpose
than to furnish the believer with a means of giving to himself an account of his
faith. 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.
Hence it is quite impossible to maintain that they absolutely contain the
truth: for, in so far as they are symbols, they are the images of truth, and so
must be adapted to the religious sense 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 sense. But the object of the
religious sense, as something contained in the absolute, possesses an infinite
variety of aspects, of which now one, now another, may present itself. In like
manner he who believes can avail himself of varying conditions. Consequently,
the formulas which we call dogma must be subject to these vicissitudes, and are,
therefore, liable to change. Thus the way is open to the intrinsic evolution of
dogma. Here we have an immense structure of sophisms which ruin and wreck all
religion.
13. Dogma is not only able, but ought to evolve and to be changed. This is
strongly affirmed by the Modernists, and clearly flows from their principles.
For among the chief points of their teaching is the following, which they deduce
from the principle of vital immanence, namely, that religious formulas if they
are to be really religious and not merely intellectual speculations, ought to be
living and to live the life of the religious sense. This is not to be understood
to mean that these formulas, especially if merely imaginative, were to be
invented for the religious sense. Their origin matters nothing, any more than
their number or quality. What is necessary is that the religious sense -- with
some modification when needful -- 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 are brought forth the
.secondary formulas must proceed under the guidance of the heart. Hence it comes
that these formulas, in order 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
need to be changed. In view of the fact that the character and lot of dogmatic
formulas are so unstable, it is no wonder that Modernists should regard them so
lightly and in such open disrespect, and have no consideration or praise for
anything but the religious sense and for the religious life. In this way, with
consummate audacity, they criticize the Church, as having strayed from the true
path by failing to distinguish between the religious and moral sense of formulas
and their surface meaning, and by clinging vainly and tenaciously to meaningless
formulas, while religion itself is allowed to go to ruin. "Blind'- they are, and
"leaders of the blind" puffed up with the proud name of science, they have
reached that pitch of folly at which they pervert the eternal concept of truth
and the true meaning of religion; in introducing a new system in which "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 and vain, futile, uncertain doctrines,
unapproved by the Church, on which, in the height of their vanity, they think
they can base and maintain truth itself."8
14. Thus far, Venerable Brethren, We have considered the Modernist as a
philosopher. Now if We proceed to consider him as a believer, and seek to know
how the believer, according to Modernism, is marked off from the philosopher, it
must be observed that, although the philosopher recognizes the reality of the
divine as the object of faith, still this reality is not to be found by him but
in the heart of the believer, as an object of feeling and affirmation, and
therefore confined within the sphere of phenomena; but the question as to
whether in itself it exists outside that feeling and affirmation is one which
the philosopher passes over and neglects. For the Modernist believer, on the
contrary, it is an established and certain fact that the reality of the divine
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, he
answers: In the personal experience of the individual. On this head the
Modernists differ from the Rationalists only to fall into the views of the
Protestants and pseudo-mystics. The following is their manner of stating the
question: In the religious sense one must recognize a kind of intuition of the
heart which puts man in immediate contact with the reality of God, and infuses
such a persuasion of God's existence and His action both within and without man
as far to exceed 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, they
say that this arises from the fact that such persons are unwilling to put
themselves in the moral state necessary to produce it. It is this experience
which makes the person who acquires it to be properly and truly a believer.
How far this position is removed from that of Catholic teaching! We have
already seen how its fallacies have been condemned by the Vatican Council. Later
on, we shall see how these errors, combined with those which we have already
mentioned, open wide the way to Atheism. Here it is well to note at once that,
given this doctrine of experience united with that of symbolism, every religion,
even that of paganism, must be held to be true. What is to prevent such
experiences from being found in any religion? In fact, that they are so is
maintained by not a few. On what grounds can Modernists deny the truth of an
experience affirmed by a follower of Islam? Will they claim a monopoly of true
experiences for Catholics alone? Indeed, Modernists do not deny, but actually
maintain, some confusedly, others frankly, that all religions are true. That
they cannot feel otherwise is obvious. For on what ground, according to their
theories, could falsity be predicated of any religion whatsoever? Certainly it
would be either on account of the falsity of the religious .sense or on account
of the falsity of the formula pronounced by the mind. Now the religious sense,
although it maybe 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 sense 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
vivid, and that it deserves with more reason the name of Christian because it
corresponds more fully with the origins of Christianity. No one will find it
unreasonable that these consequences flow from the premises. But what is most
amazing is that there are Catholics and priests, who, We would fain believe,
abhor such enormities, and yet act as if they fully approved of them. For they
lavish such praise and bestow such public honor on the teachers of these errors
as to convey 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 sake
of the errors which these persons openly profess and which they do all in their
power to propagate.
15. There is yet another element in this part of their teaching which is
absolutely contrary to Catholic truth. For what is laid down as to experience is
also applied with destructive effect to tradition, which has always been
maintained by the Catholic Church. Tradition, as understood by the Modernists,
is a communication with others of an original experience, through preaching by
means of the intellectual formula. To this formula, in addition to its
representative value they attribute a species of suggestive efficacy which acts
firstly in the believer by stimulating the religious sense, should it happen to
have grown sluggish, and by renewing the experience once acquired, and secondly,
in those who do not yet believe by awakening in them for the first time the
religious sense and producing the experience. In this way is religious
experience spread abroad among the nations; 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. Thus we are once more led to infer that all existing
religions are equally true, for otherwise they would not survive.
16. We have proceeded sufficiently far, Venerable Brethren, to have before us
enough, and more than enough, to enable us to see what are the relations which
Modernists establish between faith and science -- including, as they are wont to
do under that name, history. And in the first place it is to be held that the
object-matter of the one is quite extraneous to and separate from the
object-matter of the other. For faith occupies itself solely with something
which science declares to be for it unknowable. Hence each has a separate scope
assigned to it: science is entirely concerned with phenomena, into which faith
does not at all enter; faith, on the contrary, concerns itself with the divine,
which is entirely unknown to science. Thus it is contended 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 can 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
transferred into 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 a philosopher speaking to philosophers and
considering Christ only in historical reality; and it will be affirmed by the
believer as a believer speaking to believers and considering the life of Christ
as lived again by the faith and in the faith.
17. It would be a great mistake, nevertheless, to suppose that, according to
these theories, one is allowed to believe that faith and science are entirely
independent of each other. On the side of science that is indeed quite true and
correct, but it is quite otherwise 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 one takes away the divine reality
and the experience of it which the believer possesses, everything else, and
especially the religious formulas, belongs to the sphere of phenomena and
therefore falls under the control of science. Let the believer go out of the
world if he will, but so long as he remains in it, whether he like it or not, he
cannot escape from the laws, the observation, the judgments of science and of
history. Further, although it is contended 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 philosophizes 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 its knowledge
concerning the idea of God, to direct it in its evolution and to purify it of
any extraneous elements which may have entered into it. Hence we have the
Modernist axiom that the religious evolution ought to be brought into accord
with the moral and intellectual, or as one whom they regard as their leader has
expressed it, ought to be subject to it. Finally, man does not suffer a dualism
to exist in himself, and the believer therefore feels within him an impelling
need so to harmonize 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 Brethren, is
in formal opposition to the teachings of Our predecessor, Pius IX, where he lays
it down that: "In matters of religion it is the duty of philosophy not to
command but to serve, not to prescribe what is to be believed, but to embrace
what is to be believed with reasonable obedience, not to scrutinize the depths
of the mysteries of God, but to venerate them devoutly and humbly."9
The Modernists completely invert the parts, and of them may be applied the
words which another of Our predecessors Gregory IX, addressed to some
theologians of his time: "Some among you, puffed up like bladders with the
spirit of vanity strive by profane novelties to cross the boundaries fixed by
the Fathers, twisting the meaning of the sacred text...to the philosophical
teaching of the rationalists, not for the profit of their hearer but to make a
show of science...these men, led away by various and strange doctrines, turn the
head into the tail and force the queen to serve the handmaid."10
18. This will appear more clearly to anybody who studies the conduct of
Modernists, which is in perfect harmony with their teachings. In their writings
and addresses they seem not unfrequently to advocate doctrines which are
contrary one to the other, so that one would be disposed to regard their
attitude as double and doubtful. But this is done deliberately and advisedly,
and the reason of it is to be found in their opinion as to the mutual separation
of science and faith. Thus in their books one finds some things which might well
be approved by a Catholic, but on turning over the page one is confronted by
other things which might well have been dictated by a rationalist. When they
write history they make no mention of the divinity of Christ, but when they are
in the pulpit they profess it clearly; again, when they are dealing with history
they take no account of the Fathers and the Councils, but when they catechize
the people, they cite them respectfully. In the same way they draw their
distinctions between exegesis which is theological and pastoral and exegesis
which is scientific and historical. So, too, when they treat of philosophy,
history, and criticism, acting on the principle that science in no way depends
upon faith, they feel no especial horror in treading in the footsteps of
Luther11 and are wont to display a manifold contempt for
Catholic doctrines,
for the Holy Fathers, for the Ecumenical Councils, for the
ecclesiastical magisterium; and should they be taken to task for this,
they complain that they
are being deprived of their liberty. Lastly, maintaining the theory that
faith
must be subject to science, they continuously and openly rebuke the
Church on
the ground that she resolutely refuses to submit and accommodate her
dogmas to
the opinions of philosophy; while they, on their side, having for this
purpose
blotted out the old theology, endeavor to introduce a new theology which
shall
support the aberrations of philosophers.
19. At this point, Venerable Brethren, the way is opened for us to consider
the Modernists in the theological arena -- a difficult task, yet one that may be
disposed of briefly. It is a question of effecting the conciliation of faith
with science, but always by making the one subject to the other. In this matter
the Modernist theologian takes exactly the same principles which we have seen
employed by the Modernist philosopher -- the principles of immanence and
symbolism -- and applies them to the believer. 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 it as certain that the representations of the object of
faith are merely symbolical; the believer has likewise 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. These errors are truly of the gravest kind and the
pernicious character of both 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 does not lay too much stress on the formula, as formula, but avail
himself of it only for the purpose of uniting himself to the absolute truth
which the formula at once reveals and conceals, that is to say, endeavors to
express but without ever succeeding in doing so. They would also have the
believer make use of the formulas only in as far as they are helpful 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 shall provide otherwise. Concerning immanence it is not easy to
determine what Modernists precisely 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 even in himself; and this conception, if
properly understood, is irreproachable. 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 savors of pantheism, and this, in
truth, is the sense which best fits in 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 illustrating what is meant will be found in the Church and
the sacraments. The Church and the sacraments according to the Modernists, are
not to be regarded as having been instituted by Christ Himself. This is barred
by agnosticism, which recognizes in Christ nothing more than a man whose
religious consciousness has been, like that of all men, formed by degrees; it is
also barred by the law of immanence, which rejects what they call external
application; it is further barred by the law of evolution, which requires, for
the development of the germs, time and a certain series of circumstances; it is
finally, barred by history, which shows that such in fact has been the course of
things. Still it is to he 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 branches 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, according to faith, is divine, and so, too, is the life of Christians.
And if this life produced, in the course 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 make out that the Holy Scriptures and the dogmas
are divine. And in this, the Modernist theology may be said to reach its
completion. A slender provision, in truth, but more than enough for the
theologian who professes that the conclusions of science, whatever they may be,
must always be accepted! No one will have any difficulty in making the
application of these theories to the other points with which We propose to deal.
21. Thus far We have touched upon the origin and nature of faith. But as
faith has many branches, and chief among them the Church, dogma, worship,
devotions, the Books which we call "sacred," it concerns us to know what the
Modernists teach concerning them. To begin with dogma, We have already indicated
its origin and nature. Dogma is born of a sort of impulse or necessity by virtue
of which the believer elaborates his thought so as to render it clearer to his
own conscience and that of others. This elaboration consists entirely in the
process of investigating and refining the primitive mental formula, not indeed
in itself and according to any logical explanation, but according to
circumstances, or vitally as the Modernists somewhat less intelligibly describe
it. Hence it happens that around this primitive formula secondary formulas, as
We have already indicated, gradually continue to be formed, and these
subsequently grouped into one body, or one doctrinal construction 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 both to harmonize religion with science and to remove
opposition between them, and to illumine and defend religion from without, 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 Modernist errors are of the most serious
character. For them the sacraments are the resultant of a double impulse or need
-- for, as we have seen, everything in ttheir system is explained by inner
impulses or necessities. The first need is that of giving some sensible
manifestation to religion; the second is that of expressing it, which could not
be done without some sensible form and consecrating acts, and these are called
sacraments. But for the Modernists, sacraments are bare 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 the popular ear, inasmuch as
they have the power of putting certain leading ideas into circulation, and of
making a marked impression upon the mind. What the phrases are to the ideas,
that the sacraments are to the religious sense, that and nothing more. The
Modernists would express their mind 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 says that these sacraments are instituted solely
to foster the faith, let him be anathema.12
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
summary of experiences, not indeed of the kind that may now and again come to
anybody, but those extraordinary and striking experiences which are the
possession of every 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 draw its material in like manner from the past and the
future 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 apocalyptic books are included among
the Sacred Writings. God does indeed speak in these books through the medium of
the believer, but according to Modernist theology, only by immanence and vital
permanence. We may ask, what then becomes of inspiration? Inspiration, they
reply, is in nowise distinguished from that impulse which stimulates the
believer to reveal the faith that is in him by words of writing, except perhaps
by its vehemence. It is something like that which happens in poetical
inspiration, of which it has been said: There is a God in us, and when he
stirreth he sets us afire. It is in this sense that God is said to be the origin
of the inspiration of the Sacred Books. The Modernists moreover affirm
concerning this inspiration, that there is nothing in the Sacred Books which is
devoid of it. In this respect some might be disposed to consider them as more
orthodox than certain writers in recent times who somewhat restrict inspiration,
as, for instance, in what have been put forward as so-called tacit citations.
But in all this we have mere verbal conjuring. For if we take the Bible,
according to the standards of agnosticism, namely, as a human work, made by men
for men, albeit the theologian is allowed to proclaim that it is divine by
immanence, what room is there left in it for inspiration? The Modernists assert
a general inspiration of the Sacred Books, but they admit no inspiration in the
Catholic sense.
23. A wider field for comment is opened when we come to what the Modernist
school has imagined to be the nature of the Church. They begin with the
supposition that the Church has its birth in a double need; first, the need of
the individual believer to communicate his faith to others, especially if he has
had some original and special experience, and secondly, when the faith has
become common to many, the need of the collectivity to form itself into a
society and to guard, promote, and propagate the common good. What, then, is the
Church? It is the product of the collective conscience, that is to say, of the
association of individual consciences which, by virtue of the principle of vital
permanence, depend all 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 foster 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
this conception has 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 highest development. In the civil order the
public conscience has introduced popular government. Now there is in man only
one conscience, just as there is only one life. It is for the ecclesiastical
authority, therefore, to adopt a democratic form, 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 now obtains, can recede. Were it forcibly pent up and held in bonds, the
more terrible would be its outburst, sweeping away at once both Church and
religion. Such is the situation in the minds of 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 the believers.
24. But it is not only within her own household that the Church must come to
terms. Besides her relations with those within, she has others with those who
are outside. The Church does not occupy the world all by herself; there are
other societies in the world., with which she must necessarily have dealings and
contact. The rights and duties of the Church towards civil societies must,
therefore, be determined, and determined, of course, by her own nature, that, to
wit, which the Modernists have already described to us. The rules to be applied
in this matter are clearly those which have been laid down for science and
faith, though in the latter case the question turned upon the object, while in
the present case we have one of ends. In the same way, then, as faith and
science are alien 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, conceding 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 this doctrine is
today repudiated alike by philosophers and historians. 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 rebukes. For the
Church to trace out and prescribe for the citizen any line of action, on any
pretext whatsoever, is to be guilty of an abuse of authority, against which one
is bound to protest with all one's might. Venerable Brethren, the principles
from which these doctrines spring have been solemnly condemned by Our
predecessor, Pius VI, in his Apostolic Constitution Auctorem fidei.13
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. This, indeed, Modernists may not yet say openly, but
they are forced by the logic of their position to admit it. For granted the
principle that in temporal matters the State possesses the sole power, it will
follow that when the believer, not satisfied with merely internal acts of
religion, proceeds to external acts -- such for instance as the reception or
administration 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 urges many among liberal
Protestants to reject all external worship -- nay, all external religious
fellowship, and leads them to advocate what they call individual religion. If
the Modernists have not yet openly proceeded so far, they ask the Church in the
meanwhile to follow of her own accord in the direction in which they urge her
and to adapt herself to the forms of the State. Such are their ideas about
disciplinary authority. But much more evil and pernicious are their opinions on
doctrinal and dogmatic authority. The following 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 also the formula
which they adopt. But this 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 necessarily
follows that the ecclesiastical magisterium must be dependent upon them, and
should therefore be made to bow to the popular ideals. To prevent individual
consciences from expressing freely and openly the impulses they feel, to hinder
criticism from urging forward dogma in the path of its necessary evolution, is
not a legitimate use but an abuse of a power given for the public weal. So too a
due method and measure must be observed in the exercise of authority. To condemn
and proscribe a work without the knowledge of the author, without hearing his
explanations, without discussion, is something approaching to tyranny. And here
again it is a question of finding a way of reconciling the full rights of
authority on the one hand and those of liberty on the other. In the meantime the
proper course for the Catholic will be to proclaim publicly his profound respect
for authority, while never ceasing to follow his own judgment. Their general
direction for the Church is as follows: that the ecclesiastical authority, since
its end is entirely spiritual, should strip itself of that external pomp which
adorns it in the eyes of the public. In this, they forget that while religion is
for the soul, it is not exclusively for the soul, and that the honor paid to
authority is reflected back on Christ who instituted it.
26. To conclude this whole question of faith and its various branches, we
have still to consider, Venerable Brethren, what the Modernists have to say
about the development of the one and the other. First of all they lay down the
general principle that in a living religion everything is subject to change, and
must in fact be changed. In this way they pass to what is practically their
principal doctrine, namely, evolution. To the laws of evolution everything is
subject under penalty of death -- dogma, Church, worship, the Books we revere as
sacred, even faith itself. The enunciation of this principle will not be a
matter of surprise to anyone 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 operates. 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 perfusion of the religious sense into
the conscience. The progress was of two kinds: negative, by the elimination of
all extraneous elements, such, for example, as those derived from the family or
nationality; and positive, by that intellectual and moral refining of man, by
means of which the idea of the divine became fuller and clearer, while the
religious sense became more acute. For the progress of faith the same causes are
to be assigned as those which are adduced above to explain its origin. But to
them must be added those extraordinary men whom we call prophets -- 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
religious needs of their time. The progress of dogma is due chiefly to the fact
that obstacles to the faith have to be surmounted, enemies have to be
vanquished, and objections have to be refuted. Add to this a perpetual striving
to penetrate ever more profoundly into those things which are contained in the
mysteries of faith. Thus, putting aside other examples, it is found to have
happened in the case of Christ: in Him that divine something which faith
recognized in Him was slowly and gradually expanded in such a way that He was at
last held to be God. The chief stimulus of the evolution of worship consists in
the need of accommodation to the manners and customs of peoples, as well as the
need of availing itself of the value which certain acts have acquired by usage.
Finally, evolution in the Church itself is fed by the need of adapting itself to
historical conditions and of harmonizing itself with existing forms of society.
Such is their view with regard to each. And here, before proceeding further, We
wish to draw attention to this whole theory of necessities or needs, for beyond
all that we have seen, it is, as it were, the base and foundation of that famous
method which they describe as historical.
27. Although evolution is urged on by needs or necessities, yet, if
controlled by these alone, it would easily overstep the boundaries of tradition,
and thus, separated from its primitive vital principle, would make for ruin
instead of progress. Hence, by those who study more closely the ideas of the
Modernists, evolution is described as a resultant from the conflict of two
forces, one of them tending towards progress, the other towards conservation.
The conserving force exists in the Church and is found in tradition; tradition
is represented by religious authority, and this both by right and in fact. By
right, for it is in the very nature of authority to protect tradition: and in
fact, since 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 works in them -- especially in such of them as are in more close and
intimate contact with life. Already we observe, Venerable Brethren, the
introduction of that most pernicious doctrine which would make of the laity the
factor of progress in the Church. Now it is by a species of covenant and
compromise between these two forces of conservation and progress, that is to say
between authority and individual consciences, that changes and advances take
place. The individual consciences, or some of them, act on the collective
conscience, which brings pressure to bear on the depositories of authority to
make terms and to keep to them.
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. They understand the needs of consciences
better than anyone else, since they come into closer touch with them than does
the ecclesiastical authority. Nay, they embody them, so to speak, in themselves.
Hence, for them to speak and to write publicly is a bounden duty. Let authority
rebuke them if 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 victims; 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 they readily
admit that it is only doing its duty as authority. Their sole grief is that it
remains deaf to their warnings, for in this way it impedes the progress of
souls, but the hour will most surely come when further delay will be impossible,
for if the laws of evolution may be checked for a while they cannot be finally
evaded. And thus they go their way, reprimands and condemnations not
withstanding, masking an incredible audacity under a mock semblance of humility.
While they make a pretense of bowing their heads, their minds and hands are more
boldly 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. And in saying this, they fail to perceive
that they are avowing that the collective conscience is not with them, and that
they have no right to claim to be its interpreters.
28. It is thus, Venerable Brethren, that for the Modernists, whether as
authors or propagandists, there is to be nothing stable, nothing immutable in
the Church. Nor, indeed, are they without forerunners 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."14 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";15 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 also that sense of the sacred dogmas is to be perpetually
retained 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."16 Nor is the development of our knowledge, even concerning the faith,
barred by this pronouncement; on the contrary, it is supported and maintained.
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."17
29. We have studied the Modernist as philosopher, believer, and theologian.
It now remains for us to consider him as historian, critic, apologist, and
reformer.
30. Some Modernists, devoted to historical studies, seem to be deeply anxious
not to be taken for philosophers. About philosophy they profess to know nothing
whatever, and in this they display remarkable astuteness, for they are
particularly desirous not to be suspected of any prepossession in favor of
philosophical theories which would lay them open to the charge of not being, as
they call it, objective. 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 outcome of their philosophical principles. This will
be patent to anyone who reflects. Their three first laws are contained in those
three principles of their philosophy already dealt with: the principle of
agnosticism, the theorem of the transfiguration of things by faith, and that
other which may be called the principle of disfiguration. Let us see what
consequences flow from each of these. Agnosticism tells us that history, like
science, deals entirely with phenomena, and the consequence is that God, and
every intervention of God in human affairs, is to be relegated to the domain of
faith as belonging to it alone. Wherefore in things where there is combined a
double element, the divine and the human, as, for example, in Christ, or the
Church, or the sacraments, or the many other objects of the same kind, a
division and separation must be made and the human element must he left to
history while the divine will he assigned to faith. Hence we have that
distinction, so current among the Modernists, between the Christ of history and
the Christ of faith; the Church of history and the Church of faith; the
sacraments of history and the sacraments of faith, and so in similar matters.
Next we find that the human element itself, which the historian has to work on,
as it appears in the documents, is to be considered as having been transfigured
by faith, that is to say, raised above its historical conditions. It becomes
necessary, therefore, to eliminate also the accretions which faith has added, to
relegate 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, according to what psychology tells us of him, or according to what we
gather from the place and period of his existence. Finally, they require, by
virtue of the third principle, that even those things which are not outside the
sphere of history should pass through the sieve, excluding all and relegating to
faith everything which, in their judgment, is not in harmony with what they call
the logic of facts or not 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. We may peradventure inquire on what
principle they make these divisions? Their reply is that they argue from the
character of the man, from his condition of life, from his education, from the
complexus of the circumstances under which the facts took place; in short, if We
understand them aright, on a principle which in the last analysis is merely
.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 hold but which they profess 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, consider that He ought to have said or done.
31. As history takes its conclusions from philosophy, so too criticism takes
its conclusions 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, as we have already said, we have a twofold
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
never lived outside the pious meditations of the believer -- the Christ, for
instance, whom we find in the Gospel of St. John, which, according to them, is
mere meditation 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 dogma 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 or want, it follows that no fact can be regarded as
antecedent to the need which produced it -- historically the fact must be
posterior to the need. What, then, does the historian do in view of this
principle? He goes over his documents again, whether they be contained in the
Sacred Books or elsewhere, draws up from them his list of the particular needs
of the Church, whether relating to dogma, or liturgy, or other matters which are
found in the Church thus related, 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
list 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 has manifested itself in the
Church. Further, a distinction must be made between the beginning of a fact and
its development, for what is born in 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, separating those that
regard the origin 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 enjoin upon the historian the
obligation of following in all his studies the precepts and laws of evolution.
It is next for the historian to scrutinize 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 a history of the development in its broad lines.
The critic follows and fits in the rest of the documents. He sets himself to
write. The history is finished. 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 an
apriorism that reeks of heresy. These men are certainly to be pitied, of whom
the Apostle might well say: "They became vain in their thoughts...professing
themselves to be wise, they became fools.''18 At the same time, they excite
resentment when they accuse the Church of arranging and confusing the texts
after her own fashion, and for the needs of her cause. In this they are accusing
the Church of something for which their own conscience plainly reproaches them.
34. The result of this dismembering of the records, 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 generally that these books, and especially the
Pentateuch and the first three Gospels, have been gradually formed from a
primitive brief narration, by additions, by interpolations of theological or
allegorical interpretations, or parts introduced only for the purpose of joining
different passages together. This means, to put it briefly and clearly, that in
the Sacred Books we must admit a vital evolution, springing from and
corresponding with the 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
it. Indeed, this history they actually do write, and with such an easy assurance
that one might believe them to have seen with their own eyes 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 labor to
show that such a fact or such a phrase is not in its right place, 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
assured verdict as to whether a thing is or is not out of place. Let him who can
judge how far they are qualified in this way to make such distinctions. To hear
them descant of 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 turned over the pages of Scripture. The truth is that a whole
multitude of Doctors, far superior to them in genius, in erudition, in sanctity,
have sifted the Sacred Books in every way, and so far from finding in them
anything blameworthy have thanked God more and more heartily the more deeply
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 they did not have for their rule
and guide 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 the internal and textual critics.
And since it is characteristic of the primary cause to communicate its virtue to
causes which are secondary, it is quite clear that the criticism with which We
are concerned is not any kind of criticism, but that which is rightly called
agnostic, immanentist, and evolutionist criticism. Hence anyone who adopts it
and employs it makes profession thereby of the errors contained in it, and
places himself in opposition to Catholic teaching. This being so, it is much a
matter for surprise that it should have found acceptance to such an extent among
certain Catholics. Two causes may be assigned for this: first, the close
alliance which the historians and critics of this school have formed among
themselves independent of all differences of nationality or religion; second,
their boundless effrontery by which, if one then makes any utterance, the others
applaud him in chorus, proclaiming that science has made another step forward,
while if an outsider should desire to inspect the new discovery for himself,
they form a coalition against him. He who denies it is decried as one who is
ignorant, while he who embraces and defends it has all their praise. In this way
they entrap not a few, who, did they but realize what they are doing, would
shrink back with horror. The domineering overbearance of those who teach the
errors, and the thoughtless compliance of the more shallow minds who assent to
them, create a corrupted atmosphere which penetrates everywhere, and carries
infection with it. But let Us pass to the apologist.
35. The Modernist apologist depends in two ways on the philosopher. First,
indirectly, inasmuch as his subject-matter is history -- history dictated, as we
have seen, by the philosopher; and, secondly, directly, inasmuch as he takes
both his doctrines and his conclusions from the philosopher. Hence that common
axiom of the Modernist school that in the new apologetics controversies in
religion must be determined by psychological and historical research. The
Modernist apologists, then, enter the arena, 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
written upon the old lines, but real history composed on modern principles and
according to the modern method. In all this they assert that they are not using
an argumentum ad hominem, because they are really of the opinion that the truth
is to be found only in this kind of history. They feel that it is not necessary
for them to make profession of 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 would only
provoke disgust in a real Catholic, but use them as a counter-compensation to
the reprimands of the Church. Let us see how the Modernist conducts his
apologetics. The aim he sets before himself is to make one who is still without
faith attain that experience of the Catholic religion which, according to the
system, is the sole basis of faith. There are two ways open to him, the
objective and the subjective. The first of them starts 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 recognize that its history hides some element of the unknown. To this end it
is necessary to prove that the Catholic religion, as it exists today, is that
which was founded by Jesus Christ; that is to say, that it is nothing else than
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 he able to do by the following formula: Christ announced the
coming of the kingdom of God, which was to be realized within a brief lapse of
time and of which He was to become the Messias, the divinely-given founder and
ruler. Then it must be shown how this germ, always immanent and permanent in the
Catholic religion, has gone on slowly developing in the course of history,
adapting itself successively to the different circumstances through which it has
passed, borrowing from them by vital assimilation all the doctrinal, 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. Anyone 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, not
perceiving that their determination of the primitive germ is only an a priori
assumption of agnostic and evolutionist philosophy, and that the germ itself has
been gratuitously defined so that it may fit in with their contention.
36. But while they endeavor by this line of reasoning to prove and plead for
the Catholic religion, these new apologists are more than willing to grant and
to recognize that there are in it many things which are repulsive. 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 -- that it is even right and
proper. In the Sacred Books there are many passages referring to science or
history where, according to them, manifest errors are to he found. But, they
say, the subject of these books is not science or history, but only 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 the expression of science and
history in a more perfect form would have proved not so much a help as a
hindrance. Moreover, they add, the Sacred Books, being essentially religious,
are necessarily quick with life. Now life has its own truths and its own logic
-- quite different from rational truth aand rational logic, belonging as they do
to a different order, viz., truth of adaptation and of proportion both with what
they call the medium in which it lives and with the end for which it lives.
Finally, the Modernists, losing all sense of control, go so far as to proclaim
as true and legitimate whatever is explained by life.
We, Venerable Brethren, for whom there is but one and only one truth, and who
hold that the Sacred Books, "written under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost,
have God for their author''19 declare that this is equivalent to attributing
to God Himself the lie of utility or officious lie, and We say with St.
Augustine: "In an authority so high, admit but one officious lie, and there will
not remain a single passage of those apparently difficult to practice or to
believe, which on the same most pernicious rule may not be explained as a lie
uttered by the author willfully and to serve a purpose."20 And thus it will
come about, the holy Doctor continues, that "everybody will believe and refuse
to believe what he likes or dislikes in them," namely, the Scriptures. But the
Modernists pursue their way eagerly. They grant also that certain arguments
adduced in the Sacred Books in proof of a given doctrine, like those, for
example, which are based on the prophecies, have no rational foundation to rest
on. But they defend even these as artifices of preaching, which are justified by
life. More than that. 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 He Himself was subject to the laws of life! After this what is to
become of the dogmas of the Church? The dogmas bristle with flagrant
contradictions, but what does it matter 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 statements! But when they justify even
contradictions, what is it that they will refuse to justify?
37. But it is not solely by objective arguments that the non-believer may be
disposed to faith. There are also those that are subjective, and for this
purpose the modernist apologists return to the doctrine of immanence. They
endeavor, in fact, to persuade their non-believer that down in the very depths
of his nature and his life lie hidden the need and the desire for some 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 again We have grave reason to complain 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,
not merely a capacity and a suitability for the supernatural, such as has at all
times been emphasized, within due limits, by Catholic apologists, but that there
is in human nature a true and rigorous need for the supernatural order. 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 he called integralists, they
would show to the non-believer, as hidden in his being, the very germ which
Christ Himself had in His consciousness, and which He transmitted to mankind.
Such, Venerable Brethren, is a summary description of the apologetic method of
the Modernists, in perfect harmony with their doctrines -- methods and doctrines
replete with errors, made not for edification but for destruction, not for the
making of Catholics but for the seduction of those who are Catholics into
heresy; and tending to the utter subversion of all religion.
38. It remains for Us now to say a few words about the Modernist as reformer.
From all that has preceded, it is abundantly clear how great and how eager is
the passion of such men for innovation. In all Catholicism there is absolutely
nothing on which it does not fasten. They wish philosophy to be reformed,
especially in the ecclesiastical seminaries. They wish the scholastic philosophy
to be relegated to the history of philosophy and to be classed among absolute
systems, and the young men to be taught modern philosophy which alone is true
and suited to the times in which we live. They desire the 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
written and taught only according to their methods and modern principles. Dogmas
and their evolution, they affirm, are to be harmonized with science and history.
In the Catechism no dogmas are to be inserted except those that have been
reformed and are within the capacity of the people. Regarding worship, they say,
the number of external devotions is to he reduced, and 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. They cry out that
ecclesiastical government requires to be reformed in all its branches, but
especially in its disciplinary and dogmatic departments They insist that both
outwardly and inwardly it must be brought into harmony with the modern
conscience which now wholly tends towards democracy; a share in ecclesiastical
government should therefore be given to the lower ranks of the clergy and even
to the laity and authority which is too much concentrated should be
decentralized The Roman Congregations and especially the index and the Holy
Office, must be likewise modified The ecclesiastical authority must alter its
line of conduct in the social and political world; while keeping outside
political organizations it must adapt itself to them 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, and
are to be more encouraged in practice. They ask that the clergy should return to
their primitive humility and poverty, and that in their ideas and action they
should admit the principles of Modernism; and there are some who, gladly
listening to the teaching of their Protestant masters, would desire the
suppression of the celibacy of the clergy. What is there left in the Church
which is not to be reformed by them and according to their principles?
39. It may, perhaps, seem to some, Venerable Brethren, that We have dealt at
too great length on this exposition of the doctrines of the Modernists. But it
was necessary that We should do so, both in order to meet 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, as it were, in a closely
connected whole, so that it is not possible to admit one without admitting all.
For this reason, too, We have had to give to this exposition a somewhat didactic
form, and not to shrink from employing certain unwonted terms which the
Modernists have brought into use. And now with Our eyes fixed upon the whole
system, no one will be surprised that We should define it to be the synthesis of
all heresies. Undoubtedly, were anyone to attempt the task of collecting
together all the errors that have been broached against the faith and to
concentrate into one the sap and substance of them all, he could not succeed in
doing so better than the Modernists have done. Nay, they have gone farther than
this, for, as We have already intimated, their system means the destruction not
of the Catholic religion alone, but of all religion. Hence the rationalists are
not wanting in their applause, and the most frank and sincere among them
congratulate themselves on having found in the Modernists the most valuable of
all allies.
Let us turn for a moment, Venerable Brethren, to that most disastrous
doctrine of agnosticism. By it every avenue to God on the side of the intellect
is barred to man, while a better way is supposed to be opened from the side of a
certain sense of the soul and action. But who does not see how mistaken is such
a contention? For the sense of the soul is the response to the action of the
thing which the intellect or the outward senses set before it. Take away the
intelligence, and man, already inclined to follow the senses, becomes their
slave. Doubly mistaken, from another point of view, for all these fantasies of
the religious sense 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 truth in
itself -- for that other purely subjective truth, the fruit of the internal
sense and action, if it serves its purpose for the play of words, is of no
benefit to the man who wants above all things to know whether outside himself
there is a God into whose hands he is one day to fall. True, the Modernists call
in experience to eke out their system, but what does this experience add to that
sense of the soul? 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 the sense of the soul into anything but sense, nor
will they alter its nature, which is liable to deception when the intelligence
is not there to guide it; on the contrary, they but confirm and strengthen this
nature, for the more intense the sense is the more it is really sense. And as we
are here dealing with religious sense and the experience involved in it, it is
known to you, Venerable Brethren, how necessary in such a matter is prudence,
and the learning by which prudence is guided. You know it from your own dealings
with souls, and especially with souls in whom sentiment predominates; you know
it also from your reading of works of ascetical theology -- works for which the
Modernists have but little esteem, but which testify to a science and a solidity
far greater than theirs, and to a refinement and subtlety of observation far
beyond any which the Modernists take credit to themselves for possessing. It
seems to Us nothing short of madness, or at the least consummate temerity to
accept for true, and without investigation, these incomplete experiences which
are the vaunt of the Modernist. Let Us for a moment put the question: If
experiences have so much force and value in their estimation, why do they not
attach equal weight to the experience that so many thousands of Catholics have
that the Modernists are on the wrong path? Is it that the Catholic experiences
are the only ones which are false and deceptive? The vast majority of mankind
holds and always will hold firmly that sense and experience alone, when not
enlightened and guided by reason, cannot reach to the knowledge of God. What,
then, remains but atheism and the absence of all religion? Certainly it is not
the doctrine of .symbolism that will save us from this. For if all the
intellectual elements, as they call them, of religion are nothing more than mere
symbols of God, will not the very name of God or of divine personality be also a
symbol, and if this be admitted, the personality of God will become a matter of
doubt and the gate will be opened to pantheism? And to pantheism pure and simple
that other doctrine of the divine immanence leads directly. For this is the
question which We ask: Does or does not this immanence leave God distinct from
man? If it does, in what does it differ from the Catholic doctrine, and why does
it reject the doctrine of external revelation? If it does not, it is 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
distinction which Modernists make between science and faith leads to the same
conclusion. 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 the fact that there is no proportion between
its object and the intellect -- a defect of proportion 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
philosopher. Therefore if any religion at all is possible, it can only be the
religion of an unknowable reality. And why this might not be that soul of the
universe, of which certain rationalists speak, is something which certainly does
not seem to Us apparent. These reasons suffice to show superabundantly by how
many roads Modernism leads to atheism and to the annihilation of all religion.
The error of Protestantism made the first step on this path; that of Modernism
makes the second; atheism makes the next.
40. To penetrate still deeper into the meaning of Modernism and to find a
suitable remedy for so deep a sore, it behooves Us, Venerable Brethren, to
investigate the causes which have engendered it and which foster its growth.
That the proximate and immediate cause consists in an error of the mind cannot
be open to doubt. We recognize that the remote causes may be reduced to two:
curiosity and pride. Curiosity by itself, if not prudently regulated, suffices
to account for all errors. Such is the opinion of Our predecessor, Gregory XVI,
who wrote: "A lamentable spectacle is that presented by the aberrations of human
reason when it yields to the spirit of novelty, when against the warning of the
Apostle it seeks to know beyond what it is meant to know, and when relying too
much on itself it thinks it can find the truth outside the Catholic Church
wherein truth is found without the slightest shadow of error."21
But it is pride which exercises an incomparably greater sway over the soul to
blind it and lead it into error, and pride sits in Modernism as in its own
house, finding sustenance everywhere in its doctrines and lurking in its every
aspect. It is pride which fills Modernists with that self-assurance by which
they consider themselves and pose as the rule for all. It is pride which puffs
them up with that vainglory which allows them to regard themselves as the sole
possessors of knowledge, and makes them say, elated and inflated with
presumption, "We are not as the rest of men," and which, lest they should seem
as other men, leads them to embrace and to devise novelties even of the most
absurd kind. It is pride which rouses in them the spirit of disobedience and
causes them to demand a compromise between authority and liberty. It is owing to
their pride that they seek to be the reformers of others while they forget to
reform themselves, and that they are found to be utterly wanting in respect for
authority, even for the supreme authority. Truly there is no road which leads so
directly and so quickly to Modernism as pride. When a Catholic layman or a
priest forgets the precept of the Christian life which obliges us to renounce
ourselves if we would follow Christ and neglects to tear pride from his heart,
then it is he who most of all is a fully ripe subject for the errors of
Modernism. For this reason, Venerable Brethren, it will be your first duty to
resist such victims of pride, to employ them only in the lowest and obscurest
offices. The higher they try to rise, the lower let them be placed, so that the
lowliness of their position may limit their power of causing damage. Examine
most carefully your young clerics by yourselves and by the directors of your
seminaries, and when you find the spirit of pride among them reject them without
compunction from the priesthood. Would to God that this had always been done
with the vigilance and constancy which were required!
41. If we pass on from the moral to the intellectual causes of Modernism, the
first and the chief which presents itself is ignorance. Yes, these very
Modernists who seek to be esteemed as Doctors of the Church, who speak so
loftily of modern philosophy and show such contempt for scholasticism, have
embraced the one with all its false glamour, precisely because their ignorance
of the other has left them without the means of being able to recognize
confusion of thought and to refute sophistry. Their whole system, containing as
it does errors so many and so great, has been born of the union between faith
and false philosophy.
42. Would that they had but displayed less zeal and energy in propagating it!
But such is their activity and such their unwearying labor on behalf of their
cause, that one cannot but be pained to see them waste such energy in
endeavoring to ruin the Church when they might have been of such service to her
had their efforts been better directed. Their artifices 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 resource that can serve their
purpose. They recognize that the three chief difficulties which stand in their
way are the scholastic method of philosophy, the authority and tradition of the
Fathers, and the magisterium of the Church, and on these they wage unrelenting
war. Against scholastic philosophy and theology they use the weapons of 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
tending to Modernism than when he begins to show his dislike for the scholastic
method. Let the Modernists and their admirers remember the proposition condemned
by Pius IX: "The method and principles which have served the ancient doctors of
scholasticism when treating of theology no longer correspond with the exigencies
of our time or the progress of science."22 They exercise all their ingenuity
in an effort to weaken the force and falsify the character of tradition, so as
to rob it of all its weight and authority. But for Catholics nothing will remove
the authority of the second Council of Nicea, where it condemns those "who dare,
after the impious fashion of heretics, to deride the ecclesiastical traditions,
to invent novelties of some kind...or endeavor by malice or craft to overthrow
any one of the legitimate traditions of the Catholic Church"; nor that of the
declaration of the fourth Council of Constantinople: "We therefore profess to
preserve and guard the rules bequeathed to the Holy Catholic and Apostolic
Church, by the Holy and most illustrious Apostles, by the orthodox Councils,
both general and local, and by everyone 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 judgment on the holy Fathers of the Church even as they
do upon tradition. With consummate temerity they assure the public that the
Fathers, while personally most worthy of all veneration, 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 the entire band of Modernists may
be applied those words which Our predecessor sorrowfully wrote: "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.''23 This being so, Venerable Brethren, there is little
reason to wonder that the Modernists vent all their bitterness and hatred on
Catholics who zealously fight the battles of the Church. There is no species of
insult which they do not heap upon them, but their usual course is to charge
them with ignorance or obstinacy. When an adversary rises up against them with
an erudition and force that renders them redoubtable, they seek to make a
conspiracy of silence around him to nullify the effects of his attack. This
policy towards Catholics is the more invidious in that they belaud with
admiration which knows no bounds the writers who range themselves on their side,
hailing their works, exuding novelty in every page, with a chorus 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 disgust of good Catholics,
gather round him, loudly and publicly applaud him, and hold him up in veneration
as almost a martyr for truth. The young, excited and confused by all this clamor
of praise and abuse, some of them afraid of being branded as ignorant, others
ambitious to rank among the learned, and both classes goaded internally by
curiosity and pride, not infrequently 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 do they not make to win new recruits! They
seize upon professorships in the seminaries and universities, and gradually make
of them chairs of pestilence. In sermons from the pulpit they disseminate their
doctrines, although possibly in utterances which are veiled. In congresses they
express their teachings more openly. In their social gatherings they introduce
them and commend them to others. 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 multitude of Modernist writers. In short, with feverish activity
they leave nothing untried in act, speech, and writing. And with what result? We
have to deplore the spectacle of many young men, once full of promise and
capable of rendering great services to the Church, now gone astray. It is also a
subject of grief to Us that many others who, while they certainly do not go so
far as the former, have yet been so infected by breathing a poisoned atmosphere,
as to think, speak, and write with a degree of laxity which ill becomes a
Catholic. 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 communities If they treat of biblical questions, it is upon
Modernist principles; if they write history, they carefully, and with
ill-concealed satisfaction, drag into the light, on the plea of telling the
whole truth, everything that appears to cast a stain upon the Church. Under the
sway of certain a priori conceptions they destroy as far as they can the pious
traditions of the people, and bring into disrespect certain relics highly
venerable from their antiquity. They are possessed by the empty desire of having
their names upon the lips of the public, and they know they would never succeed
in this were they to say only what has always been said by all men. Meanwhile 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 in themselves than by the spirit in which they write, and by the
encouragement they thus give to the aims of the Modernists.
44. Against this host of grave errors, and its secret and open advance, Our
predecessor Leo Xlll, of happy memory, worked strenuously, both in his words and
his acts, especially as regards the study of the Bible. But, as we have seen,
the Modernists are not easily deterred by such weapons. With an affectation of
great submission and respect, they proceeded to twist the words of the Pontiff
to their own sense, while they described his action as directed against others
than themselves. Thus the evil has gone on increasing from day to day. We,
therefore, Venerable Brethren, have decided to suffer no longer delay, and to
adopt measures which are more efficacious. We exhort and conjure you to see to
it that in this most grave matter no one shall be in a position to say that you
have been in the slightest degree wanting in vigilance, zeal, or firmness. And
what We ask of you and expect of you, We ask and expect also of all other
pastors of souls, of all educators and professors of clerics, and in a very
special way of the superiors of religious communities.
45. In the first place, with regard to studies, We will and strictly ordain
that scholastic philosophy be made the basis of the sacred sciences. It goes
without saying that "if anything is met with among the scholastic doctors which
may be regarded as something investigated with an excess of subtlety, or taught
without sufficient consideration; anything which is not in keeping with the
certain results of later times; anything, in short, which is altogether
destitute of probability, We have no desire whatever to propose it for the
imitation of present generations."24 And let it be clearly understood above
all things that when We prescribe scholastic philosophy We understand chiefly
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
order that they shall be strictly observed by all. In seminaries where they have
been neglected it will be for the Bishops to exact and require their observance
in the future; and let this apply also to the superiors of religious orders.
Further, We admonish professors to bear well in mind that they cannot set aside
St. Thomas, especially in metaphysical questions, without grave disadvantage.
46. On this philosophical foundation the theological edifice is to be
carefully raised. Promote the study of theology, Venerable Brethren, by all
means in your power, so that your clerics on leaving the seminaries may carry
with them a deep admiration and love of it, and always find in it a source of
delight. For "in the vast and varied abundance of studies opening before the
mind desirous of truth, it is known to everyone that theology occupies such a
commanding place, that according to an ancient adage of the wise it is the duty
of the other arts and sciences to serve it, and to wait upon it after the manner
of handmaidens."25 We will add that We deem worthy of praise those who with
full respect for tradition, the Fathers, and the ecclesiastical magisterium,
endeavor, with well-balanced judgment, and guided by Catholic principles (which
is not always the case), to illustrate positive theology by throwing upon it the
light of true history. It is certainly necessary that positive theology should
be held in greater appreciation than it has been in the past, but this must be
done without detriment to scholastic theology; and those are to be disapproved
as Modernists who exalt positive theology in such a way as to seem to despise
the scholastic.
47. With regard to secular studies, let it suffice to recall here what our
predecessor has admirably said: ''Apply yourselves energetically to the study of
natural sciences: in which department the things that have been so brilliantly
discovered, and so usefully applied, to the admiration of the present age, will
be the object of praise and commendation to those who come after us."26 But
this is to be done without interfering with sacred studies, as Our same
predecessor prescribed in these most weighty words: "If you carefully search for
the cause of those errors you will find that it lies in the fact that in these
days when the natural sciences absorb so much study, the more severe and lofty
studies have been proportionately neglected -- some of them have almost passed
into oblivion, some of them are pursued in a half-hearted or superficial way,
and, sad to say, now that the splendor of the former estate is dimmed, they have
been disfigured by perverse doctrines and monstrous errors."27 We ordain,
therefore, that the study of natural sciences in the seminaries be carried out
according to this law.
48. All these prescriptions, both Our own and those of Our predecessor, are
to be kept in view whenever there is question of choosing directors and
professors for seminaries and Catholic Universities. Anyone who in any way is
found to be tainted with Modernism is to be excluded without compunction from
these offices, whether of government or of teaching, and those who already
occupy them are to be removed. The same policy is to be adopted towards those
who openly or secretly lend countenance to Modernism either by extolling the
Modernists and excusing their culpable conduct, or by carping at scholasticism,
and the Fathers, and the magisterium of the Church, or by refusing obedience to
ecclesiastical authority in any of its depositories; and towards those who show
a love of novelty in history, archaeology, biblical exegesis; and finally
towards those who neglect the sacred sciences or appear to prefer to them the
secular. In all this question of studies, Venerable Brethren, you cannot be too
watchful or too constant, but most of all in the choice of professors, for as a
rule the students are modeled after the pattern of their masters. Strong in the
consciousness of your duty, act always in this matter with prudence and with
vigor.
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
hateth the proud and the obstinate mind. For the future the doctorate of
theology and canon law must never be conferred on anyone who has not first of
all 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 nation.28 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.
50. It is also the duty of the Bishops to prevent writings of Modernists, or
whatever savors of Modernism or promotes it, from being read when they have been
published, and to hinder their publication when they have not. No books or
papers or periodicals whatever of this kind are to be permitted to seminarists
or university students. The injury to them would be not less than that which is
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 evilly disposed themselves, are
ill-instructed in theological studies and imbued with modern philosophy, and
strive to make this harmonize with the faith, and, as they say, to turn it to
the profit of the faith. The name and reputation of these authors cause them to
read without suspicion, and they are, therefore, all the more dangerous in
gradually preparing the way for Modernism.
51. To add some more general directions, Venerable Brethren, in a matter of
such moment, We order that 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 remove writings of this
kind, but their number has now grown to such an extent that it is hardly
possible to subject them all to censure. Hence it happens sometimes that the
remedy 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 clamor of evil men, shall, gently, by all means, but
firmly, do each his own part in this work, remembering the injunctions of Leo
XIII in the Apostolic Constitution Officiorum: "Let the Ordinaries, acting in
this also as Delegates of the Apostolic See, exert themselves to proscribe and
to put out of reach of the faithful injurious books or other writings printed or
circulated in their dioceses."29 In this passage the Bishops, it is true,
receive an authorization, but they have also a charge laid upon them. Let no
Bishop think that he fulfills his duty by denouncing to Us one or two books,
while a great many others of the same kind are being published and circulated.
Nor are you to be deterred by the fact that a book has obtained elsewhere the
permission which is commonly called the Imprimatur, both because this may be
merely simulated, and because it may have been granted through carelessness or
too much indulgence or excessive trust placed in the author, which last has
perhaps sometimes happened in the religious orders. Besides, just as the same
food does not agree with everyone, it may happen that a book, harmless in one
place, 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 give him ample
faculty for the purpose and We lay upon him the obligation of doing so. Let all
this be done in a fitting manner, and in certain cases it will suffice to
restrict the prohibition to the clergy; but in all cases it will be obligatory
on Catholic booksellers not to put on sale books condemned by the Bishop. And
while We are treating of this subject, We wish the Bishops to see to it that
booksellers do not, through desire for gain, engage in evil trade. It is certain
that in the catalogs of some of them the books of the Modernists are not
infrequently announced with no small praise. If they refuse obedience, let the
Bishops, after due admonition, have no hesitation in depriving them of the title
of Catholic booksellers. This applies, and with still more reason, to those who
have the title of Episcopal booksellers. If they have that of Pontifical
booksellers, let them be denounced to the Apostolic See. Finally, We remind all
of Article XXVI of the above-mentioned Constitution Officiorum: "All those who
have obtained an apostolic faculty to read and keep forbidden books, are not
thereby authorized to read and keep books and periodicals forbidden by the local
Ordinaries unless the apostolic faculty expressly concedes permission to read
and keep books condemned by anyone whomsoever."
52. It is not enough to hinder the reading and the sale of bad books -- it is
also necessary to prevent them from being published. Hence, let the Bishops use
the utmost strictness in granting permission to print. Under the rules of the
Constitution Officiorum, many publications require the authorization of the
Ordinary, and in certain dioceses (since the Bishop cannot personally make
himself acquainted with them all) it has been the custom to have a suitable
number of official censors for the examination of writings. We have the highest
esteem for this institution of censors, and We not only exhort, but We order
that it be extended to all dioceses. In all episcopal Curias, therefore, let
censors be appointed for the revision of works intended for publication, and let
the censors be chosen from both ranks of the clergy -- secular and regular --
men whose age, knowledge, and prudence will enable them to follow the safe and
golden means in their judgments. It shall be their office to examine everything
which requires permission for publication according to Articles XLI and XLII of
the above-mentioned Constitution. The censor shall give his verdict in writing.
If it be favorable, the Bishop will give the permission for publication by the
word Imprimatur, which must be preceded by the Nihil obstat and the name of the
censor. In the Roman Curia official censors shall be appointed in the same way
as elsewhere, and the duty of nominating them shall appertain to the Master of
the Sacred Palace, after they have been proposed to the Cardinal Vicar and have
been approved and accepted by the Sovereign Pontiff. It will also be the office
of the Master of the Sacred Palace 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 he
preceded by the Nihil obstat and the name of the censor. Only on a very rare and
exceptional occasion, and on the prudent decision of the Bishop, shall it be
possible to omit mention of the censor. The name of the censor shall never be
made known to the authors until he shall have given a favorable decision, so
that he may not have to suffer inconvenience either while he is engaged in the
examination of a writing or in case he should withhold his approval. Censors
shall never be chosen from the religious orders until the opinion of the
Provincial, or in Rome, of the General, has been privately obtained, and the
Provincial or the General must give a conscientious account of the character,
knowledge, and orthodoxy of the candidate. We admonish religious superiors of
their most solemn duty never to allow anything to be published by any of their
subjects without permission from themselves and from the Ordinary. Finally, We
affirm and declare that the title of censor with which a person may be honored
has no value whatever, and can never be adduced to give credit to the private
opinions of him who holds it.
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, according to which "it is forbidden to secular priests, without the
previous consent of the Ordinary, to undertake the editorship of papers or
periodicals." This permission shall be withdrawn from any priest who makes a
wrong use of it after having received an admonition thereupon. With regard to
priests who are correspondents or collaborators of periodicals, as it happens
not infrequently that they contribute matter infected with Modernism to their
papers or periodicals, let the Bishops see to it that they do not offend in this
manner; and if they do, let them warn the offenders and prevent them from
writing. We solemnly charge in like manner the superiors of religious orders
that they fulfill the same duty, and should they fail in it, let the Bishops
make due provision with authority from 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 as soon as possible. The Bishop shall have the same right even when
the censor has seen nothing objectionable in a publication.
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 resolutions or petitions be allowed that would imply a usurpation of
sacred authority, and that absolutely nothing be said in them which savors of
Modernism, presbyterianism, or laicism. At congresses of this kind, which can
only be held after permission in writing has been obtained in due time and for
each case it shall not be lawful for priests of other dioceses to be present
without the written permission of their Ordinary. 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 worthy of respect.''30
55. But of what avail, Venerable Brethren, will be all Our commands and
prescriptions if they be not dutifully and firmly carried out? In order that
this may be done it has seemed expedient to us to extend to all dioceses the
regulations which the Bishops of Umbria, with great wisdom, laid down for theirs
many years ago. "In order," they say, ''to extirpate the errors already
propagated and to prevent their further diffusion, and to remove those teachers
of impiety through whom the pernicious effects of such diffusion are being
perpetuated, this sacred Assembly, following the example of St. Charles Borromeo,
has decided to establish in each of the dioceses a Council consisting of
approved members of both branches of the clergy, which shall be charged with the
task of noting the existence of errors and the devices by which new ones are
introduced and propagated, and to inform the Bishop of the whole, so that he may
take counsel with them as to the best means for suppressing the evil at the
outset and preventing it spreading for the ruin of souls or, worse still,
gaining strength and growth."31 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 in the presence of the Bishop.
They shall be bound to secrecy as to their deliberations and decisions, and in
their functions shall be included the following: they shall watch most carefully
for every trace and sign of Modernism both in publications and in teaching, and
to preserve the clergy and the young from it they shall take all prudent,
prompt, and efficacious measures. Let them combat novelties of words,
remembering the admonitions of Leo XIII: "It is impossible to approve in
Catholic publications a style inspired by unsound novelty which seems to deride
the piety of the faithful and dwells on the introduction of a new order of
Christian life, on new directions of the Church, on new aspirations of the
modern soul, on a new social vocation of the clergy, on a new Christian
civilization, and many other things of the same kind."32 Language of the kind
here indicated is not to be tolerated either in books or in lectures. 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 journals or periodicals destined to foster piety, either with
expressions savoring of mockery or contempt, or by dogmatic pronouncements,
especially when, as is often the case, what is stated as a certainty either does
not pass the limits of probability or is based on prejudiced opinion. Concerning
sacred relics, let this be the rule: if Bishops, who alone are judges in such
matters, know for certain that a relic is not genuine, let them remove it at
once from the veneration of the faithful; if the authentications of a relic
happen to have been lost through civil disturbances, or in any other way, let it
not be exposed for public veneration until the Bishop has 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 superstitious." In passing judgment on pious traditions let it always
be borne in mind that in this matter the Church uses the greatest prudence, and
that she does not allow traditions of this kind to be narrated in books except
with the utmost caution and with the insertion of the declaration imposed by
Urban VIII; and even then she does not guarantee the truth of the fact narrated;
she simply does not forbid belief in things for which human evidence is not
wanting. On this matter the Sacred Congregation of Rites, thirty years ago,
decreed as follows: "These apparitions or revelations have neither been approved
nor condemned by the Holy See, which has simply allowed them to be believed on
purely human faith, on the tradition which they relate, corroborated by
testimony and documents worthy of credence."33 Anyone who follows this rule
has no cause to fear. For the devotion based on any apparition, in so far as it
regards the fact itself, that is to say, in so far as the devotion is relative,
always implies the condition of the fact being true; while in so far as it is
absolute, it is always based on the truth, seeing that its object is the persons
of the saints who are honored. The same is true of relics. Finally, We entrust
to the Councils of Vigilance the duty of overlooking assiduously and diligently
social institutions as well as writings on social questions so that they may
harbor no trace of Modernism, but obey the prescriptions of the Roman Pontiffs.
56. Lest what We have laid down thus far should pass 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 the things which have been decreed in this Our
Letter, and on the doctrines that find currency among the clergy, and especially
in the seminaries and other Catholic institutions, those not excepted which are
not subject to the Ordinary, and We impose the like obligation on the Generals
of religious orders with regard to those who are under them.
57. This, Venerable Brethren, is what We have thought it Our duty to write to
you for the salvation of all who believe. The adversaries of the Church will
doubtless abuse what We have said to refurbish the old calumny by which We are
traduced as the enemy of science and of the progress of humanity. As a fresh
answer to such accusations, which the history of the Christian religion refutes
by never-failing evidence, it is Our intention to establish by every means in
our power a special Institute in which, through the co-operation of those
Catholics who are most eminent for their learning, the advance of science and
every other department of knowledge may be promoted under the guidance and
teaching of Catholic truth. God grant that We may happily realize Our design
with the assistance of all those who bear a sincere love for the Church of
Christ. But of this We propose to speak on another occasion.
Meanwhile, Venerable Brethren, fully confident in your zeal and energy, We
beseech for you with Our whole heart the abundance of heavenly light, so that in
the midst of this great danger to souls from the insidious invasions of error
upon every hand, you may see clearly what ought to be done, and labor to do it
with all your strength and courage. May Jesus Christ, the author and finisher of
our faith, be with you in His power; and may the Immaculate Virgin, the
destroyer of all heresies, be with you by her prayers and aid. And We, as a
pledge of Our affection and of the Divine solace in adversity, most lovingly
grant to you, your clergy and people, the Apostolic Benediction.
58. Given at St. Peter's, Rome, September 8, 1907, in the fifth year of Our
Pontificate. PIUS X, POPE
REFERENCES
1. Acts 20:30.
2. Titus 1:10.
3. ii Tim. 3:13.
4. De Revelatione, can. 1.
5. Ibid., can. 2.
6. De Fide, can. 3. 7. De Revelatione, can. 3.
8. Gregory XVI, encyclical of June 25, 1834, Singulari Nos.
9. Brief to the Bishop of Breslau, June 15, 1857.
10. Gregory IX Epist. ad Magistros theol. paris. July 7, 1223.
11. Proposition 29, condemned by Leo X in the bull of May 16, 1520, Exsurge
Domine: Via nobis facta est enervandi auctoritatem Conciliorum et libere
contradicendi eorum gestis et iudicandi eorum decreta, at confidenter confitendi
quidquid verum videtur, sive probatum fuerit, sive reprobatum a quocumque
Concilio.
12. Sess. Vll, De Sacramentis in genere, can. 5.
13. Proposition 2: "Propositio, quae statuit, potestatem a Deo Datam
Ecclesiae ut communicaretur Pastoribus, qui sunt eius ministri pro salute
animarum; sic intellecta, ut a communitate fidelium in Pastores derivetur
ecclesiastici ministerii ac regiminis potestas: haeretica." Proposition 3: "Insuper,
quae .statuit Romanun Pontificem esse caput ministeriale; sic explicata ut
Romanus Pontifex non a Christo in persona beati Petri, sed ab Ecclesia
potestatem ministerii accipiat, qua velut Petri successor, verus Christi
vicarius ac totius Ecclesiae caput pollet in universa Ecclesia: haerectica."
14. Pius IX,encyclical of November 9, 1846, Qui pluribus.
15. Syllabus, Prop. 5.
16. Constitution Dei Filius, cap. 4.
17. Loc. cit.
18. Rom. 1:21-22.
19. Vatican Council, De Revelatione con. 2.
20. Epist. 28.
21. Gregory XVI, encyclical of June 25, 1834, Singulari Nos.
22. Syllabus, Prop. 13.
23. Motu Proprio of March 14, 1891, Ut mysticam.
24. Leo Xlll, encyclical of August 4, 1879, Aeterni Patris.
25. Leo Xlll, Apostolic letter of December 10, 1889, In magna.
26. Leo Xlll, allocution of March 7, 1880.
27. Loc. cit.
28. Cf. ASS, 29:359ff
29. Cf. ASS, 30:39ff.
30. Leo Xlll, encyclical of February 10, 1884, Nobilissima Gallorum.
31. Acts of the Congress of the Bishops of Umbria, November, 1849, tit. 2,
art. 6
32. Instruction of the Sacred Congregation of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical
Affairs, January 27, 1902.
33. Decree of May 2, 1877.
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