PASCENDI DOMINICI GREGIS, Pope St. Pius X on Modernists
Apostolicae Curae, On the Nullity of Anglican Orders, by Pope Leo XIII
HUMANI GENERIS, Concerning some false opinions, Pope Pius XII
Miranda Prorsus
Encyclical Letter of Pope Pius XII
The following is reprinted from
The
1958 National Catholic Almanac, Edited by Rev. Felician A. Foy, OFM; ©
1957.
(This encyclical, issued on Sept. 8, 1957, reflects the concern of the Holy
Father for the
proper use of radio, motion pictures and television. This summary is based
on the unofficial translation released by the Vatican Press Office and rued
here by courtesy of the NCWC News Service. )
“Those very remarkable technical
Inventions which are the boast of the men of our generation, though they spring
from human intelligence and industry, are nevertheless the gifts of God, our
Creator, from Whom all good gifts proceed. . . . “
Of the many inventions produced by modern technology, the Holy Father in
this present encyclical singles out the modern media of radio, motion pictures
and television because of the singular influence they exert on the lives of
individuals and nations by providing”... food for the mind, especially during
the hours of rest and recreation,” He insists that the Church has welcomed such
inventions - with joy In the advancement of man’s achievement, and with
solicitude to protect her children from the wrong use of such advances - which
“exercise very great influence on the manner of thinking and acting of
individuals and of every group of men.” Unless they are subjected to the “yoke
of Christ,” these inventions can be the occasion of great evil.
Noting the fundamental, God-given tendency for men to communicate with
other men, the Pope reminds them that”.., all Instruments of human
communication inevitably have as their aim the lofty purpose of revealing men
as in some way the assistants of God.”
Although the purpose of mass communication is noble, the Pontiff asks, “Why
do these same arts sometimes become the means and, as it were, the paths leading
to evil?” In reply, he states, “... only from the fact that man, endowed as he
is with free will, can abuse those gifts, namely, by committing and multiplying
evil,” True human liberty demands that men share these resources to strengthen and perfect
their nature.
… this is only the first several paragraphs of the actual article as
printed in The Four Marks.
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HUMANI GENERIS
ENCYCLICAL OF POPE PIUS XII CONCERNING SOME FALSE OPINIONS THREATENING TO UNDERMINE THE FOUNDATIONS OF CATHOLIC DOCTRINE AUGUST 12, 1950
To Our Venerable Brethren, Patriarchs,
Primates, Archbishops, Bishops and other local Ordinaries Enjoying Peace and
Communion with the Holy See.
Venerable Brethren, Greetings and
Apostolic Benediction
Disagreement and error among men on moral
and religious matters have always been a cause of profound sorrow to all good
men, but above all to the true and loyal sons of the Church, especially today,
when we see the principles of Christian culture being attacked on all sides.
2. It is not surprising that such discord
and error should always have existed outside the fold of Christ. For though,
absolutely speaking, human reason by its own natural force and light can arrive
at a true and certain knowledge of the one personal God, Who by His providence
watches over and governs the world, and also the natural law, which the Creator
has written in our hearts, still there are not a few obstacles to prevent
reason from making efficient and fruitful use of its natural ability. The
truths that have to do with God and the relations between God and men,
completely surpass the sensible order and demand self-surrender and
self-abnegation in order to be put into practice and to influence practical
life. Now the human intellect, in gaining the knowledge of such truths is
hampered both by the activity of the senses and the imagination, and by evil
passions arising from original sin. Hence men easily persuade themselves in
such matters that what they do not wish to believe is false or at least
doubtful.
3. It is for this reason that divine
revelation must be considered morally necessary so that those religious and
moral truths which are not of their nature beyond the reach of reason in the
present condition of the human race, may be known by all men readily with a
firm certainty and with freedom from all error.[1]
4. Furthermore the human intelligence
sometimes experiences difficulties in forming a judgment about the credibility
of the Catholic faith, notwithstanding the many wonderful external signs God
has given, which are sufficient to prove with certitude by the natural light of
reason alone the divine origin of the Christian religion. For man can, whether
from prejudice or passion or bad faith, refuse and resist not only the evidence
of the external proofs that are available, but also the impulses of actual
grace.
5. If anyone examines the state of
affairs outside the Christian fold, he will easily discover the principal
trends that not a few learned men are following. Some imprudently and
indiscreetly hold that evolution, which has not been fully proved even in the
domain of natural sciences, explains the origin of all this, and audaciously
support the monistic and pantheistic opinion that the world is in continual
evolution. Communists gladly subscribed to this opinion so that, when the souls
of men have been deprived of every idea of a personal God, they may the more
efficaciously defend and propagate their dialectical materialism.
6. Such fictitious tenets of evolution
which repudiate all that is absolute, firm and immutable, have paved the way for
the new erroneous philosophy which, rivaling idealism, immanentism and
pragmatism, has assumed the name of existentialism, since it concerns itself
only with existence of individual things and neglects all consideration of
their immutable essences.
7. There is also a certain historicism,
which attributing value only to the events of man's life, overthrows the
foundation of all truth and absolute law both on the level of philosophical
speculations and especially to Christian dogmas.
8. In all this confusion of opinion it is
consolation to Us to see former adherents of rationalism today frequently
desiring to return to the fountain of divinely communicated truth, and to
acknowledge and profess the word of God as contained in Sacred Scripture as the
foundation of religious teaching. But at the same time it is a matter of regret
that not a few of these, the more firmly they accept the word of God, so much
the more do they diminish the value of human reason, and the more they exalt
the authority of God the Revealer, the more severely do they spurn the teaching
office of the Church, which has been instituted by Christ, Our Lord, to
preserve and interpret divine revelation. This attitude is not only plainly at
variance with Holy Scripture, but is shown to be false by experience also. For
often those who disagree with the true Church complain openly of their
disagreement in matters of dogma and thus unwillingly bear witness to the
necessity of a living Teaching Authority.
9. Now Catholic theologians and philosophers,
whose grave duty it is to defend natural and supernatural truth and instill it
in the hearts of men, cannot afford to ignore or neglect these more or less
erroneous opinions. Rather they must come to understand these same theories
well, both because diseases are not properly treated unless they are rightly
diagnosed, and because sometimes even in these false theories a certain amount
of truth is contained, and, finally because these theories provoke more subtle
discussion and evaluation of philosophical and theological truths.
10. If philosophers and theologians
strive only to derive such profit from the careful examination of these
doctrines, there would be no reason for any intervention by the Teaching
Authority of the Church. However, although We know that Catholic teachers
generally avoid these errors, it is apparent, however, that some today, as in
apostolic times, desirous of novelty, and fearing to be considered ignorant of
recent scientific findings try to withdraw themselves from the sacred Teaching
Authority and are accordingly in danger of gradually departing from revealed
truth and of drawing others along with them into error.
11. Another danger is perceived which is
all the more serious because it is more concealed beneath the mask of virtue.
There are many who, deploring disagreement among men and intellectual
confusion, through an imprudent zeal for souls, are urged by a great and ardent
desire to do away with the barrier that divides good and honest men; these
advocate an "eirenism" according to which, by setting aside the
questions which divide men, they aim not only at joining forces to repel the
attacks of atheism, but also at reconciling things opposed to one another in
the field of dogma. And as in former times some questioned whether the
traditional apologetics of the Church did not constitute an obstacle rather
than a help to the winning of souls for Christ, so today some are presumptive
enough to question seriously whether theology and theological methods, such as
with the approval of ecclesiastical authority are found in our schools, should
not only be perfected, but also completely reformed, in order to promote the
more efficacious propagation of the kingdom of Christ everywhere throughout the
world among men of every culture and religious opinion.
12. Now if these only aimed at adapting
ecclesiastical teaching and methods to modern conditions and requirements,
through the introduction of some new explanations, there would be scarcely any
reason for alarm. But some through enthusiasm for an imprudent
"eirenism" seem to consider as an obstacle to the restoration of
fraternal union, things founded on the laws and principles given by Christ and
likewise on institutions founded by Him, or which are the defense and support of
the integrity of the faith, and the removal of which would bring about the
union of all, but only to their destruction.
13. These new opinions, whether they
originate from a reprehensible desire of novelty or from a laudable motive, are
not always advanced in the same degree, with equal clarity nor in the same
terms, nor always with unanimous agreement of their authors. Theories that
today are put forward rather covertly by some, not without cautions and
distinctions, tomorrow are openly and without moderation proclaimed by others
more audacious, causing scandal to many, especially among the young clergy and
to the detriment of ecclesiastical authority. Though they are usually more
cautious in their published works, they express themselves more openly in their
writings intended for private circulation and in conferences and lectures.
Moreover, these opinions are disseminated not only among members of the clergy
and in seminaries and religious institutions, but also among the laity, and
especially among those who are engaged in teaching youth.
14. In theology some want to reduce to a
minimum the meaning of dogmas; and to free dogma itself from terminology long
established in the Church and from philosophical concepts held by Catholic
teachers, to bring about a return in the explanation of Catholic doctrine to
the way of speaking used in Holy Scripture and by the Fathers of the Church.
They cherish the hope that when dogma is stripped of the elements which they
hold to be extrinsic to divine revelation, it will compare advantageously with
the dogmatic opinions of those who are separated from the unity of the Church
and that in this way they will gradually arrive at a mutual assimilation of
Catholic dogma with the tenets of the dissidents.
15. Moreover they assert that when
Catholic doctrine has been reduced to this condition, a way will be found to
satisfy modern needs, that will permit of dogma being expressed also by the
concepts of modern philosophy, whether of immanentism or idealism or
existentialism or any other system. Some more audacious affirm that this can
and must be done, because they hold that the mysteries of faith are never
expressed by truly adequate concepts but only by approximate and ever
changeable notions, in which the truth is to some extent expressed, but is
necessarily distorted. Wherefore they do not consider it absurd, but altogether
necessary, that theology should substitute new concepts in place of the old
ones in keeping with the various philosophies which in the course of time it
uses as its instruments, so that it should give human expression to divine
truths in various ways which are even somewhat opposed, but still equivalent,
as they say. They add that the history of dogmas consists in the reporting of
the various forms in which revealed truth has been clothed, forms that have
succeeded one another in accordance with the different teachings and opinions
that have arisen over the course of the centuries.
16. It is evident from what We have
already said, that such tentatives not only lead to what they call dogmatic
relativism, but that they actually contain it. The contempt of doctrine
commonly taught and of the terms in which it is expressed strongly favor it.
Everyone is aware that the terminology employed in the schools and even that
used by the Teaching Authority of the Church itself is capable of being
perfected and polished; and we know also that the Church itself has not always
used the same terms in the same way. It is also manifest that the Church cannot
be bound to every system of philosophy that has existed for a short space of
time. Nevertheless, the things that have been composed through common effort by
Catholic teachers over the course of the centuries to bring about some
understanding of dogma are certainly not based on any such weak foundation.
These things are based on principles and notions deduced from a true knowledge
of created things. In the process of deducing, this knowledge, like a star,
gave enlightenment to the human mind through the Church. Hence it is not
astonishing that some of these notions have not only been used by the
Oecumenical Councils, but even sanctioned by them, so that it is wrong to
depart from them.
17. Hence to neglect, or to reject, or to
devalue so many and such great resources which have been conceived, expressed
and perfected so often by the age-old work of men endowed with no common talent
and holiness, working under the vigilant supervision of the holy magisterium
and with the light and leadership of the Holy Ghost in order to state the
truths of the faith ever more accurately, to do this so that these things may
be replaced by conjectural notions and by some formless and unstable tenets of
a new philosophy, tenets which, like the flowers of the field, are in existence
today and die tomorrow; this is supreme imprudence and something that would
make dogma itself a reed shaken by the wind. The contempt for terms and notions
habitually used by scholastic theologians leads of itself to the weakening of
what they call speculative theology, a discipline which these men consider
devoid of true certitude because it is based on theological reasoning.
18. Unfortunately these advocates of
novelty easily pass from despising scholastic theology to the neglect of and
even contempt for the Teaching Authority of the Church itself, which gives such
authoritative approval to scholastic theology. This Teaching Authority is
represented by them as a hindrance to progress and an obstacle in the way of
science. Some non Catholics consider it as an unjust restraint preventing some
more qualified theologians from reforming their subject. And although this
sacred Office of Teacher in matters of faith and morals must be the proximate
and universal criterion of truth for all theologians, since to it has been
entrusted by Christ Our Lord the whole deposit of faith -- Sacred Scripture and
divine Tradition -- to be preserved, guarded and interpreted, still the duty
that is incumbent on the faithful to flee also those errors which more or less
approach heresy, and accordingly "to keep also the constitutions and
decrees by which such evil opinions are proscribed and forbidden by the Holy
See,"[2] is sometimes as little known as if it did not exist. What is
expounded in the Encyclical Letters of the Roman Pontiffs concerning the nature
and constitution of the Church, is deliberately and habitually neglected by
some with the idea of giving force to a certain vague notion which they profess
to have found in the ancient Fathers, especially the Greeks. The Popes, they
assert, do not wish to pass judgment on what is a matter of dispute among
theologians, so recourse must be had to the early sources, and the recent
constitutions and decrees of the Teaching Church must be explained from the
writings of the ancients.
19. Although these things seem well said,
still they are not free from error. It is true that Popes generally leave
theologians free in those matters which are disputed in various ways by men of
very high authority in this field; but history teaches that many matters that
formerly were open to discussion, no longer now admit of discussion.
20. Nor must it be thought that what is
expounded in Encyclical Letters does not of itself demand consent, since in
writing such Letters the Popes do not exercise the supreme power of their
Teaching Authority. For these matters are taught with the ordinary teaching
authority, of which it is true to say: "He who heareth you, heareth
me";[3] and generally what is expounded and inculcated in Encyclical
Letters already for other reasons appertains to Catholic doctrine. But if the
Supreme Pontiffs in their official documents purposely pass judgment on a
matter up to that time under dispute, it is obvious that that matter, according
to the mind and will of the same Pontiffs, cannot be any longer considered a
question open to discussion among theologians.
21. It is also true that theologians must
always return to the sources of divine revelation: for it belongs to them to
point out how the doctrine of the living Teaching Authority is to be found
either explicitly or implicitly in the Scriptures and in Tradition.[4] Besides,
each source of divinely revealed doctrine contains so many rich treasures of
truth, that they can really never be exhausted. Hence it is that theology
through the study of its sacred sources remains ever fresh; on the other hand,
speculation which neglects a deeper search into the deposit of faith, proves
sterile, as we know from experience. But for this reason even positive theology
cannot be on a par with merely historical science. For, together with the
sources of positive theology God has given to His Church a living Teaching
Authority to elucidate and explain what is contained in the deposit of faith
only obscurely and implicitly. This deposit of faith our Divine Redeemer has
given for authentic interpretation not to each of the faithful, not even to
theologians, but only to the Teaching Authority of the Church. But if the
Church does exercise this function of teaching, as she often has through the
centuries, either in the ordinary or extraordinary way, it is clear how false
is a procedure which would attempt to explain what is clear by means of what is
obscure. Indeed the very opposite procedure must be used. Hence Our Predecessor
of immortal memory, Pius IX, teaching that the most noble office of theology is
to show how a doctrine defined by the Church is contained in the sources of
revelation, added these words, and with very good reason: "in that sense
in which it has been defined by the Church."
22. To return, however, to the new opinions
mentioned above, a number of things are proposed or suggested by some even
against the divine authorship of Sacred Scripture. For some go so far as to
pervert the sense of the Vatican Council's definition that God is the author of
Holy Scripture, and they put forward again the opinion, already often
condemned, which asserts that immunity from error extends only to those parts
of the Bible that treat of God or of moral and religious matters. They even
wrongly speak of a human sense of the Scriptures, beneath which a divine sense,
which they say is the only infallible meaning, lies hidden. In interpreting
Scripture, they will take no account of the analogy of faith and the Tradition
of the Church. Thus they judge the doctrine of the Fathers and of the Teaching
Church by the norm of Holy Scripture, interpreted by the purely human reason of
exegetes, instead of explaining Holy Scripture according to the mind of the
Church which Christ Our Lord has appointed guardian and interpreter of the
whole deposit of divinely revealed truth.
23. Further, according to their
fictitious opinions, the literal sense of Holy Scripture and its explanation,
carefully worked out under the Church's vigilance by so many great exegetes,
should yield now to a new exegesis, which they are pleased to call symbolic or
spiritual. By means of this new exegesis the Old Testament, which today in the
Church is a sealed book, would finally be thrown open to all the faithful. By
this method, they say, all difficulties vanish, difficulties which hinder only
those who adhere to the literal meaning of the Scriptures.
24. Everyone sees how foreign all this is
to the principles and norms of interpretation rightly fixed by our predecessors
of happy memory, Leo XIII in his Encyclical "Providentissimus," and
Benedict XV in the Encyclical "Spiritus Paraclitus," as also by
Ourselves in the Encyclical "Divino Affflante Spiritu."
25. It is not surprising that novelties
of this kind have already borne their deadly fruit in almost all branches of
theology. It is now doubted that human reason, without divine revelation and
the help of divine grace, can, by arguments drawn from the created universe,
prove the existence of a personal God; it is denied that the world had a
beginning; it is argued that the creation of the world is necessary, since it
proceeds from the necessary liberality of divine love; it is denied that God
has eternal and infallible foreknowedge of the free actions of men -- all this
in contradiction to the decrees of the Vatican Council[5]
26. Some also question whether angels are
personal beings, and whether matter and spirit differ essentially. Others
destroy the gratuity of the supernatural order, since God, they say, cannot
create intellectual beings without ordering and calling them to the beatific
vision. Nor is this all. Disregarding the Council of Trent, some pervert the
very concept of original sin, along with the concept of sin in general as an
offense against God, as well as the idea of satisfaction performed for us by
Christ. Some even say that the doctrine of transubstantiation, based on an
antiquated philosophic notion of substance, should be so modified that the real
presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist be reduced to a kind of symbolism,
whereby the consecrated species would be merely efficacious signs of the
spiritual presence of Christ and of His intimate union with the faithful
members of His Mystical Body.
27. Some say they are not bound by the
doctrine, explained in Our Encyclical Letter of a few years ago, and based on
the sources of revelation, which teaches that the Mystical Body of Christ and
the Roman Catholic Church are one and the same thing.[6] Some reduce to a
meaningless formula the necessity of belonging to the true Church in order to
gain eternal salvation. Others finally belittle the reasonable character of the
credibility of Christian faith.
28. These and like errors, it is clear,
have crept in among certain of Our sons who are deceived by imprudent zeal for
souls or by false science. To them We are compelled with grief to repeat once
again truths already well known, and to point out with solicitude clear errors
and dangers of error.
29. It is well known how highly the
Church regards human reason, for it falls to reason to demonstrate with
certainty the existence of God, personal and one; to prove beyond doubt from
divine signs the very foundations of the Christian faith; to express properly
the law which the Creator has imprinted in the hearts of men; and finally to
attain to some notion, indeed a very fruitful notion, of mysteries[7] But
reason can perform these functions safely and well, only when properly trained,
that is, when imbued with that sound philosophy which has long been, as it
were, a patrimony handed down by earlier Christian ages, and which moreover
possesses an authority of even higher order, since the Teaching Authority of
the Church, in the light of divine revelation itself, has weighed its
fundamental tenets, which have been elaborated and defined little by little by
men of great genius. For this philosophy, acknowledged and accepted by the
Church, safeguards the genuine validity of human knowledge, the unshakable
metaphysical principles of sufficient reason, causality, and finality, and
finally the mind's ability to attain certain and unchangeable truth.
30. Of course this philosophy deals with
much that neither directly nor indirectly touches faith or morals, and which
consequently the Church leaves to the free discussion of experts. But this does
not hold for many other things, especially those principles and fundamental
tenets to which We have just referred. However, even in these fundamental
questions, we may clothe our philosophy in a more convenient and richer dress,
make it more vigorous with a more effective terminology, divest it of certain
scholastic aids found less useful, prudently enrich it with the fruits of
progress of the human mind. But never may we overthrow it, or contaminate it
with false principles, or regard it as a great, but obsolete, relic. For truth
and its philosophic expression cannot change from day to day, least of all
where there is question of self-evident principles of the human mind or of
those propositions which are supported by the wisdom of the ages and by divine
revelation. Whatever new truth the sincere human mind is able to find,
certainly cannot be opposed to truth already acquired, since God, the highest
Truth, has created and guides the human intellect, not that it may daily oppose
new truths to rightly established ones, but rather that, having eliminated
errors which may have crept in, it may build truth upon truth in the same order
and structure that exist in reality, the source of truth. Let no Christian
therefore, whether philosopher or theologian, embrace eagerly and lightly
whatever novelty happens to be thought up from day to day, but rather let him
weigh it with painstaking care and a balanced judgment, lest he lose or corrupt
the truth he already has, with grave danger and damage to his faith.
31. If one considers all this well, he
will easily see why the Church demands that future priests be instructed in
philosophy "according to the method, doctrine, and principles of the
Angelic Doctor,"[8] since, as we well know from the experience of
centuries, the method of Aquinas is singularly preeminent both for teaching
students and for bringing truth to light; his doctrine is in harmony with
divine revelation, and is most effective both for safeguarding the foundation
of the faith, and for reaping, safely and usefully, the fruits of sound
progress.[9]
32. How deplorable it is then that this
philosophy, received and honored by the Church, is scorned by some, who
shamelessly call it outmoded in form and rationalistic, as they say, in its
method of thought. They say that this philosophy upholds the erroneous notion
that there can be a metaphysic that is absolutely true; whereas in fact, they
say, reality, especially transcendent reality, cannot better be expressed than
by disparate teachings, which mutually complete each other, although they are
in a way mutually opposed. Our traditional philosophy, then, with its clear
exposition and solution of questions, its accurate definition of terms, its
clear-cut distinctions, can be, they concede, useful as a preparation for
scholastic theology, a preparation quite in accord with medieval mentality; but
this philosophy hardly offers a method of philosophizing suited to the needs of
our modern culture. They allege, finally, that our perennial philosophy is only
a philosophy of immutable essences, while the contemporary mind must look to
the existence of things and to life, which is ever in flux. While scorning our
philosophy, they extol other philosophies of all kinds, ancient and modern,
oriental and occidental, by which they seem to imply that any kind of philosophy
or theory, with a few additions and corrections if need be, can be reconciled
with Catholic dogma. No Catholic can doubt how false this is, especially where
there is question of those fictitious theories they call immanentism, or
idealism, or materialism, whether historic or dialectic, or even
existentialism, whether atheistic or simply the type that denies the validity
of the reason in the field of metaphysics.
33. Finally, they reproach this
philosophy taught in our schools for regarding only the intellect in the
process of cognition, while neglecting the function of the will and the
emotions. This is simply not true. Never has Christian philosophy denied the
usefulness and efficacy of good dispositions of soul for perceiving and
embracing moral and religious truths. In fact, it has always taught that the
lack of these dispositions of good will can be the reason why the intellect,
influenced by the passions and evil inclinations, can be so obscured that it
cannot see clearly. Indeed St. Thomas holds that the intellect can in some way
perceive higher goods of the moral order, whether natural or supernatural,
inasmuch as it experiences a certain "connaturality" with these
goods, whether this "connaturality" be purely natural, or the result
of grace;[10] and it is clear how much even this somewhat obscure perception
can help the reason in its investigations. However it is one thing to admit the
power of the dispositions of the will in helping reason to gain a more certain
and firm knowledge of moral truths; it is quite another thing to say, as these
innovators do, indiscriminately mingling cognition and act of will, that the
appetitive and affective faculties have a certain power of understanding, and
that man, since he cannot by using his reason decide with certainty what is
true and is to be accepted, turns to his will, by which he freely chooses among
opposite opinions.
34. It is not surprising that these new
opinions endanger the two philosophical sciences which by their very nature are
closely connected with the doctrine of faith, that is, theodicy and ethics;
they hold that the function of these two sciences is not to prove with
certitude anything about God or any other transcendental being, but rather to
show that the truths which faith teaches about a personal God and about His
precepts, are perfectly consistent with the necessities of life and are
therefore to be accepted by all, in order to avoid despair and to attain
eternal salvation. All these opinions and affirmations are openly contrary to
the documents of Our Predecessors Leo XIII and Pius X, and cannot be reconciled
with the decrees of the Vatican Council. It would indeed be unnecessary to
deplore these aberrations from the truth, if all, even in the field of
philosophy, directed their attention with the proper reverence to the Teaching
Authority of the Church, which by divine institution has the mission not only
to guard and interpret the deposit of divinely revealed truth, but also to keep
watch over the philosophical sciences themselves, in order that Catholic dogmas
may suffer no harm because of erroneous opinions.
35. It remains for Us now to speak about
those questions which, although they pertain to the positive sciences, are
nevertheless more or less connected with the truths of the Christian faith. In
fact, not a few insistently demand that the Catholic religion takes these
sciences into account as much as possible. This certainly would be praiseworthy
in the case of clearly proved facts; but caution must be used when there is
rather question of hypotheses, having some sort of scientific foundation, in
which the doctrine contained in Sacred Scripture or in Tradition is involved.
If such conjectural opinions are directly or indirectly opposed to the doctrine
revealed by God, then the demand that they be recognized can in no way be
admitted.
36. For these reasons the Teaching
Authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present
state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the
part of men experienced in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine
of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as
coming from pre-existent and living matter -- for the Catholic faith obliges us
to hold that souls are immediately created by God. However this must be done in
such a way that the reasons for both opinions, that is, those favorable and
those unfavorable to evolution, be weighed and judged with the necessary
seriousness, moderation and measure, and provided that all are prepared to
submit to the judgment of the Church, to whom Christ has given the mission of
interpreting authentically the Sacred Scriptures and of defending the dogmas of
faithful[11] Some however rashly transgress this liberty of discussion, when
they act as if the origin of the human body from preexisting and living matter
were already completely certain and proved by the facts which have been
discovered up to now and by reasoning on those facts, and as if there were
nothing in the sources of divine revelation which demands the greatest
moderation and caution in this question.
37. When, however, there is question of
another conjectural opinion, namely polygenism, the children of the Church by
no means enjoy such liberty. For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which
maintains either that after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did
not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first
parent of all or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now it
is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with that which the
sources of revealed truth and the documents of the Teaching Authority of the
Church propose with regard to original sin, which proceeds from a sin actually
committed by an individual Adam and which through generation is passed on to
all and is in everyone as his own.[12]
38. Just as in the biological and
anthropological sciences, so also in the historical sciences there are those
who boldly transgress the limits and safeguards established by the Church. In a
particular way must be deplored a certain too free interpretation of the
historical books of the Old Testament. Those who favor this system, in order to
defend their cause, wrongly refer to the Letter which was sent not long ago to
the Archbishop of Paris by the Pontifical Commission on Biblical Studies.[13]
This Letter, in fact, clearly points out that the first eleven chapters of
Genesis, although properly speaking not conforming to the historical method used
by the best Greek and Latin writers or by competent authors of our time, do
nevertheless pertain to history in a true sense, which however must be further
studied and determined by exegetes; the same chapters, (the Letter points out),
in simple and metaphorical language adapted to the mentality of a people but
little cultured, both state the principal truths which are fundamental for our
salvation, and also give a popular description of the origin of the human race
and the chosen people. If, however, the ancient sacred writers have taken
anything from popular narrations (and this may be conceded), it must never be
forgotten that they did so with the help of divine inspiration, through which
they were rendered immune from any error in selecting and evaluating those
documents.
39. Therefore, whatever of the popular
narrations have been inserted into the Sacred Scriptures must in no way be
considered on a par with myths or other such things, which are more the product
of an extravagant imagination than of that striving for truth and simplicity
which in the Sacred Books, also of the Old Testament, is so apparent that our
ancient sacred writers must be admitted to be clearly superior to the ancient
profane writers.
40. Truly, we are aware that the majority
of Catholic doctors, the fruit of whose studies is being gathered in
universities, in seminaries and in the colleges of religious, are far removed
from those errors which today, whether through a desire of novelty or through a
certain immoderate zeal for the apostolate, are being spread either openly or
covertly. But we know also that such new opinions can entice the incautious;
and therefore we prefer to withstand the very beginnings rather than to
administer the medicine after the disease has grown inveterate.
41. For this reason, after mature
reflection and consideration before God, that We may not be wanting in Our
sacred duty, We charge the Bishops and the Superiors General of Religious
Orders, binding them most seriously in conscience, to take most diligent care
that such opinions be not advanced in schools, in conferences or in writings of
any kind, and that they be not taught in any manner whatsoever to the clergy or
the faithful.
42. Let the teachers in ecclesiastical
institutions be aware that they cannot with tranquil conscience exercise the
office of teaching entrusted to them, unless in the instruction of their
students they religiously accept and exactly observe the norms which We have
ordained. That due reverence and submission which in their unceasing labor they
must profess towards the Teaching Authority of the Church, let them instill
also into the minds and hearts of their students.
43. Let them strive with every force and
effort to further the progress of the sciences which they teach; but let them
also be careful not to transgress the limits which We have established for the
protection of the truth of Catholic faith and doctrine. With regard to new
questions, which modern culture and progress have brought to the foreground,
let them engage in most careful research, but with the necessary prudence and
caution; finally, let them not think, indulging in a false "irenism,"
that the dissident and erring can happily be brought back to the bosom of the
Church, if the whole truth found in the Church is not sincerely taught to all
without corruption or diminution.
44. Relying on this hope, which will be
increased by your pastoral care, as a pledge of celestial gifts and a sign of
Our paternal benevolence, We impart with all Our heart to each and all of you,
Venerable Brethren, and to your clergy and people the Apostolic Benediction.
45. Given at Rome, at St. Peter's, August
12, 1950, the twelfth year of Our Pontificate.
ENDNOTES
·
1. Conc. Varic. D.B., 1876, Cont. De Fide cath., cap. 2, De revelatione.
·
2. C.l.C., can. 1324; cfr. Conc. Vat., D.B., 1820, Cont. De Fide cath.,
cap. 4, De Fide et ratione, post canones.
·
3. Luke, X, 16.
·
4. Pius IX, Inter gravissimas, 28 oct., 1870, Acta, vol. 1, p. 260.
·
5. Cfr. Conc. Vat., Const. De Fide cath., cap. 1, De Deo rerum omnium
creatore.
·
6. Cfr. Litt. Enc. Mystici Corporis Christi, A.A.S., vol. XXXV, p. 193
sq.
·
7. Cfr. Conc. Vat., D.B., 1796.
·
8. C.l.C. can. 1366, 2.
·
9. A.A.S., vol. XXXVIII, 1946, p. 387.
·
10. Cfr. S. Thom., Summa Theol., II-II, quaest. 1, art. 4 ad 3 et
quaest. 45, art. 2, in c.
·
11. Cfr. Allocut Pont. to the members of the Academy of Science,
November 30, 1941: A.A.S., Vol. XXXIII, p. 506.
·
12. Cfr. Rom., V, 12-19, Conc. Trid., sess, V, can. 1-4.
· 13. January 16, 1948: A.A.S., vol. XL, pp.
45-48.
PASCENDI DOMINICI
GREGIS
ENCYCLICAL OF
POPE PIUS X ON THE DOCTRINES OF THE MODERNISTS
To the Patriarchs, Primates, Archbishops, Bishops
and other Local Ordinaries in Peace
and Communion with the Apostolic See.
Venerable Brethren, Health and Apostolic Benediction.
The office divinely committed to Us of feeding the Lord’s flock has especially
this duty assigned to it by Christ, namely, to guard with the greatest
vigilance the deposit of the faith delivered to the saints, rejecting the
profane novelties of words and oppositions of knowledge falsely so called.
There has never been a time when this watchfulness of the supreme pastor was
not necessary to the Catholic body; for, owing to the efforts of the enemy of
the human race, there have never been lacking “men speaking perverse things”
(Acts xx. 30), “vain talkers and seducers” (Tit. i. 10), “erring and driving
into error” (2 Tim. iii. 13). Still it must be confessed that the number of the
enemies of the cross of Christ has in these last days increased exceedingly,
who are striving, by arts, entirely new and full of subtlety, to destroy the
vital energy of the Church, and, if they can, to overthrow utterly Christ’s
kingdom itself. Wherefore We may no longer be silent, lest We should seem to
fail in Our most sacred duty, and lest the kindness that, in the hope of wiser
counsels, We have hitherto shown them, should be attributed to forgetfulness of
Our office.
Gravity of the Situation
2. That We make no delay in this matter is rendered necessary especially by the
fact that the partisans of error are to be sought not only among the Church’s
open enemies; they lie hid, a thing to be deeply deplored and feared, in her
very bosom and heart, and are the more mischievous, the less conspicuously they
appear. We allude, Venerable Brethren, to many who belong to the Catholic
laity, nay, and this is far more lamentable, to the ranks of the priesthood
itself, who, feigning a love for the Church, lacking the firm protection of
philosophy and theology, nay more, thoroughly imbued with the poisonous
doctrines taught by the enemies of the Church, and lost to all sense of
modesty, vaunt themselves as reformers of the Church; and, forming more boldly
into line of attack, assail all that is most sacred in the work of Christ, not
sparing even the person of the Divine Redeemer, whom, with sacrilegious daring,
they reduce to a simple, mere man.
3. Though they express astonishment themselves, no one can justly be surprised
that We number such men among the enemies of the Church, if, leaving out of
consideration the internal disposition of soul, of which God alone is the
judge, he is acquainted with their tenets, their manner of speech, their
conduct. Nor indeed will he err in accounting them the most pernicious of all
the adversaries of the Church. For as We have said, they put their designs for
her ruin into operation not from without but from within; hence, the danger is
present almost in the very veins and heart of the Church, whose injury is the
more certain, the more intimate is their knowledge of her. Moreover they lay
the axe not to the branches and shoots, but to the very root, that is, to the
faith and its deepest fires. And having struck at this root of immortality, they
proceed to disseminate poison through the whole tree, so that there is no part
of Catholic truth from which they hold their hand, none that they do not strive
to corrupt. Further, none is more skilful, none more astute than they, in the
employment of a thousand noxious arts; for they double the parts of rationalist
and Catholic, and this so craftily that they easily lead the unwary into error;
and since audacity is their chief characteristic, there is no conclusion of any
kind from which they shrink or which they do not thrust forward with
pertinacity and assurance. To this must be added the fact, which indeed is well
calculated to deceive souls, that they lead a life of the greatest activity, of
assiduous and ardent application to every branch of learning, and that they
possess, as a rule, a reputation for the strictest morality. Finally, and this
almost destroys all hope of cure, their very doctrines have given such a bent
to their minds, that they disdain all authority and brook no restraint; and
relying upon a false conscience, they attempt to ascribe to a love of truth
that which is in reality the result of pride and obstinacy.
Once indeed We had hopes of recalling them to a better sense, and to this end
we first of all showed them kindness as Our children, then we treated them with
severity, and at last We have had recourse, though with great reluctance, to
public reproof. But you know, Venerable Brethren, how fruitless has been Our
action. They bowed their head for a moment, but it was soon uplifted more
arrogantly than ever. If it were a matter which concerned them alone, We might
perhaps have overlooked it: but the security of the Catholic name is at stake.
Wherefore, as to maintain it longer would be a crime, We must now break
silence, in order to expose before the whole Church in their true colours those
men who have assumed this bad disguise.
Division of the Encyclical
4. But since the Modernists (as they are commonly and rightly called) employ a
very clever artifice, namely, to present their doctrines without order and
systematic arrangement into one whole, scattered and disjointed one from
another, so as to appear to be in doubt and uncertainty, while they are in
reality firm and steadfast, it will be of advantage, Venerable Brethren, to
bring their teachings together here into one group, and to point out the
connexion between them, and thus to pass to an examination of the sources of
the errors, and to prescribe remedies for averting the evil.
ANALYSIS OF MODERNIST TEACHING
5. To proceed in an orderly manner in this recondite subject, it must first of
all be noted that every Modernist sustains and comprises within himself many
personalities; he is a philosopher, a believer, a theologian, an historian, a
critic, an apologist, a reformer. These roles must be clearly distinguished
from one another by all who would accurately know their system and thoroughly
comprehend the principles and the consequences of their doctrines.
Agnosticism its Philosophical Foundation
6. We begin, then, with the philosopher. Modernists place the foundation of
religious philosophy in that doctrine which is usually called Agnosticism.
According to this teaching human reason is confined entirely within the field
of phenomena, that is to say, to things that are perceptible to the senses, and
in the manner in which they are perceptible; it has no right and no power to
transgress these limits. Hence it is incapable of lifting itself up to God, and
of recognising His existence, even by means of visible things. From this it is
inferred that God can never be the direct object of science, and that, as
regards history, He must not be considered as an historical subject. Given
these premises, all will readily perceive what becomes of Natural Theology, of
the motives of credibility, of external revelation. The Modernists simply make
away with them altogether; they include them in Intellectualism, which they
call a ridiculous and long ago defunct system. Nor does the fact that the
Church has formally condemned these portentous errors exercise the slightest
restraint upon them. Yet the Vatican Council has defined, “If anyone says that
the one true God, our Creator and Lord, cannot be known with certainty by the
natural light of human reason by means of the things that are made, let him be
anathema” (De Revel., can. I); and also: “If anyone says that it is not
possible or not expedient that man be taught, through the medium of divine
revelation, about God and the worship to be paid Him, let him be anathema”
(Ibid., can. 2); and finally, “If anyone says that divine revelation cannot be
made credible by external signs, and that therefore men should be drawn to the
faith only by their personal internal experience or by private inspiration, let
him be anathema” (De Fide, can. 3). But how the Modernists make the transition
from Agnosticism, which is a state of pure nescience, to scientific and
historic Atheism, which is a doctrine of positive denial; and consequently, by
what legitimate process of reasoning, starting from ignorance as to whether God
has in fact intervened in the history of the human race or not, they proceed,
in their explanation of this history, to ignore God altogether, as if He really
had not intervened, let him answer who can. Yet it is a fixed and established
principle among them that both science and history must be atheistic: and
within their boundaries there is room for nothing but phenomena; God and all
that is divine are utterly excluded. We shall soon see clearly what, according
to this most absurd teaching, must be held touching the most sacred Person of
Christ, what concerning the mysteries of His life and death, and of His
Resurrection and Acension into heaven.
Vital Immanence
7. However, this Agnosticism is only the negative part of the system of the
Modernist: the positive side of it consists in what they call vital immanence.
This is how they advance from one to the other. Religion, whether natural or
supernatural, must, like every other fact, admit of some explanation. But when
Natural theology has been destroyed, the road to revelation closed through the
rejection of the arguments of credibility, and all external revelation
absolutely denied, it is clear that this explanation will be sought in vain
outside man himself. It must, therefore, be looked for in man; and since
religion is a form of life, the explanation must certainly be found in the life
of man. Hence the principle of religious immanence is formulated. Moreover, the
first actuation, so to say, of every vital phenomenon, and religion, as has
been said, belongs to this category, is due to a certain necessity or
impulsion; but it has its origin, speaking more particularly of life, in a
movement of the heart, which movement is called a sentiment. Therefore, since
God is the object of religion, we must conclude that faith, which is the basis
and the foundation of all religion, consists in a sentiment which originates
from a need of the divine. This need of the divine, which is experienced only
in special and favourable circumstances, cannot, of itself, appertain to the
domain of consciousness; it is at first latent within the consciousness, or, to
borrow a term from modern philosophy, in the subconsciousness, where also its
roots lies hidden and undetected.
Should anyone ask how it is that this need of the divine which man experiences
within himself grows up into a religion, the Modernists reply thus: Science and
history, they say, are confined within two limits, the one external, namely,
the visible world, the other internal, which is consciousness. When one or
other of these boundaries has been reached, there can be no further progress,
for beyond is the unknowable. In presence of this unknowable, whether it is
outside man and beyond the visible world of nature, or lies hidden within in
the subconsciousness, the need of the divine, according to the principles of
Fideism, excites in a soul with a propensity towards religion a certain special
sentiment, without any previous advertence of the mind: and this sentiment
possesses, implied within itself both as its own object and as its intrinsic
cause, the reality of the divine, and in a way unites man with God. It is this
sentiment to which Modernists give the name of faith, and this it is which they
consider the beginning of religion.
8. But we have not yet come to the end of their philosophy, or, to speak more
accurately, their folly. For Modernism finds in this sentiment not faith only,
but with and in faith, as they understand it, revelation, they say, abides. For
what more can one require for revelation? Is not that religious sentiment which
is perceptible in the consciousness revelation, or at least the beginning of
revelation? Nay, is not God Himself, as He manifests Himself to the soul,
indistinctly it is true, in this same religious sense, revelation? And they
add: Since God is both the object and the cause of faith, this revelation is at
the same time of God and from God; that is, God is both the revealer and the
revealed.
Hence, Venerable Brethren, springs that ridiculous proposition of the
Modernists, that every religion, according to the different aspect under which
it is viewed, must be considered as both natural and supernatural. Hence it is
that they make consciousness and revelation synonymous. Hence the law,
according to which religious consciousness is given as the universal rule, to
be put on an equal footing with revelation, and to which all must submit, even
the supreme authority of the Church, whether in its teaching capacity, or in
that of legislator in the province of sacred liturgy or discipline.
Deformation of Religious History the Consequence
9. However, in all this process, from which, according to the Modernists, faith
and revelation spring, one point is to be particularly noted, for it is of
capital importance on account of the historico-critical corollaries which are
deduced from it. - For the Unknowable they talk of does not present itself to
faith as something solitary and isolated; but rather in close conjunction with
some phenomenon, which, though it belongs to the realm of science and history
yet to some extent oversteps their bounds. Such a phenomenon may be an act of
nature containing within itself something mysterious; or it may be a man, whose
character, actions and words cannot, apparently, be reconciled with the ordinary
laws of history. Then faith, attracted by the Unknowable which is united with
the phenomenon, possesses itself of the whole phenomenon, and, as it were,
permeates it with its own life. From this two things follow. The first is a
sort of transfiguration of the phenomenon, by its elevation above its own true
conditions, by which it becomes more adapted to that form of the divine which
faith will infuse into it. The second is a kind of disfigurement, which springs
from the fact that faith, which has made the phenomenon independent of the
circumstances of place and time, attributes to it qualities which it has not;
and this is true particularly of the phenomena of the past, and the older they
are, the truer it is. From these two principles the Modernists deduce two laws,
which, when united with a third which they have already got from agnosticism,
constitute the foundation of historical criticism. We will take an illustration
from the Person of Christ. In the person of Christ, they say, science and
history encounter nothing that is not human. Therefore, in virtue of the first
canon deduced from agnosticism, whatever there is in His history suggestive of
the divine, must be rejected. Then, according to the second canon, the
historical Person of Christ was transfigured by faith; therefore everything
that raises it above historical conditions must be removed. Lately, the third
canon, which lays down that the person of Christ has been disfigured by faith,
requires that everything should be excluded, deeds and words and all else that
is not in keeping with His character, circumstances and education, and with the
place and time in which He lived. A strange style of reasoning, truly; but it
is Modernist criticism.
10. Therefore the religious sentiment, which through the agency of vital
immanence emerges from the lurking places of the subconsciousness, is the germ
of all religion, and the explanation of everything that has been or ever will
be in any religion. The sentiment, which was at first only rudimentary and
almost formless, gradually matured, under the influence of that mysterious
principle from which it originated, with the progress of human life, of which,
as has been said, it is a form. This, then, is the origin of all religion, even
supernatural religion; it is only a development of this religious sentiment.
Nor is the Catholic religion an exception; it is quite on a level with the
rest; for it was engendered, by the process of vital immanence, in the
consciousness of Christ, who was a man of the choicest nature, whose like has
never been, nor will be. - Those who hear these audacious, these sacrilegious
assertions, are simply shocked! And yet, Venerable Brethren, these are not
merely the foolish babblings of infidels. There are many Catholics, yea, and
priests too, who say these things openly; and they boast that they are going to
reform the Church by these ravings! There is no question now of the old error,
by which a sort of right to the supernatural order was claimed for the human
nature. We have gone far beyond that: we have reached the point when it is
affirmed that our most holy religion, in the man Christ as in us, emanated from
nature spontaneously and entirely. Than this there is surely nothing more
destructive of the whole supernatural order. Wherefore the Vatican Council most
justly decreed: “If anyone says that man cannot be raised by God to a knowledge
and perfection which surpasses nature, but that he can and should, by his own
efforts and by a constant development, attain finally to the possession of all
truth and good, let him be anathema” (De Revel., can. 3).
The Origin of Dogmas
11. So far, Venerable Brethren, there has been no mention of the intellect.
Still it also, according to the teaching of the Modernists, has its part in the
act of faith. And it is of importance to see how. - In that sentiment of which
We have frequently spoken, since sentiment is not knowledge, God indeed
presents Himself to man, but in a manner so confused and indistinct that He can
hardly be perceived by the believer. It is therefore necessary that a ray of
light should be cast upon this sentiment, so that God may be clearly
distinguished and set apart from it. This is the task of the intellect, whose
office it is to reflect and to analyse, and by means of which man first transforms
into mental pictures the vital phenomena which arise within him, and then
expresses them in words. Hence the common saying of Modernists: that the
religious man must ponder his faith. - The intellect, then, encountering this
sentiment directs itself upon it, and produces in it a work resembling that of
a painter who restores and gives new life to a picture that has perished with
age. The simile is that of one of the leaders of Modernism. The operation of
the intellect in this work is a double one: first by a natural and spontaneous
act it expresses its concept in a simple, ordinary statement; then, on
reflection and deeper consideration, or, as they say, by elaborating its
thought, it expresses the idea in secondary propositions, which are derived from
the first, but are more perfect and distinct. These secondary propositions, if
they finally receive the approval of the supreme magisterium of the Church,
constitute dogma.
12. Thus, We have reached one of the principal points in the Modernists’ system,
namely the origin and the nature of dogma. For they place the origin of dogma
in those primitive and simple formulae, which, under a certain aspect, are
necessary to faith; for revelation, to be truly such, requires the clear
manifestation of God in the consciousness. But dogma itself they apparently
hold, is contained in the secondary formulae.
To ascertain the nature of dogma, we must first find the relation which exists
between the religious formulas and the religious sentiment. This will be
readily perceived by him who realises that these formulas have no other purpose
than to furnish the believer with a means of giving an account of his faith to
himself. These formulas therefore stand midway between the believer and his
faith; in their relation to the faith, they are the inadequate expression of
its object, and are usually called symbols; in their relation to the believer,
they are mere instruments.
Its Evolution
13. Hence it is quite impossible to maintain that they express absolute truth:
for, in so far as they are symbols, they are the images of truth, and so must
be adapted to the religious sentiment in its relation to man; and as
instruments, they are the vehicles of truth, and must therefore in their turn
be adapted to man in his relation to the religious sentiment. But the object of
the religious sentiment, since it embraces that absolute, possesses an infinite
variety of aspects of which now one, now another, may present itself. In like
manner, he who believes may pass through different phases. Consequently, the
formulae too, which we call dogmas, must be subject to these vicissitudes, and
are, therefore, liable to change. Thus the way is open to the intrinsic
evolution of dogma. An immense collection of sophisms this, that ruins and
destroys all religion. Dogma is not only able, but ought to evolve and to be
changed. This is strongly affirmed by the Modernists, and as clearly flows from
their principles. For amongst the chief points of their teaching is this which
they deduce from the principle of vital immanence; that religious formulas, to
be really religious and not merely theological speculations, ought to be living
and to live the life of the religious sentiment. This is not to be understood
in the sense that these formulas, especially if merely imaginative, were to be
made for the religious sentiment; it has no more to do with their origin than
with number or quality; what is necessary is that the religious sentiment, with
some modification when necessary, should vitally assimilate them. In other
words, it is necessary that the primitive formula be accepted and sanctioned by
the heart; and similarly the subsequent work from which spring the secondary
formulas must proceed under the guidance of the heart. Hence it comes that
these formulas, to be living, should be, and should remain, adapted to the
faith and to him who believes. Wherefore if for any reason this adaptation
should cease to exist, they lose their first meaning and accordingly must be
changed. And since the character and lot of dogmatic formulas is so precarious,
there is no room for surprise that Modernists regard them so lightly and in
such open disrespect. And so they audaciously charge the Church both with
taking the wrong road from inability to distinguish the religious and moral
sense of formulas from their surface meaning, and with clinging tenaciously and
vainly to meaningless formulas whilst religion is allowed to go to ruin. Blind
that they are, and leaders of the blind, inflated with a boastful science, they
have reached that pitch of folly where they pervert the eternal concept of
truth and the true nature of the religious sentiment; with that new system of
theirs they are seen to be under the sway of a blind and unchecked passion for
novelty, thinking not at all of finding some solid foundation of truth, but
despising the holy and apostolic traditions, they embrace other vain, futile,
uncertain doctrines, condemned by the Church, on which, in the height of their
vanity, they think they can rest and maintain truth itself.
The Modernist as Believer:
Individual Experience and Religious Certitude
14. Thus far, Venerable Brethren, of the Modernist considered as Philosopher.
Now if we proceed to consider him as Believer, seeking to know how the
Believer, according to Modernism, is differentiated from the Philosopher, it
must be observed that although the Philosopher recognises as the object of
faith the divine reality, still this reality is not to be found but in the
heart of the Believer, as being an object of sentiment and affirmation; and
therefore confined within the sphere of phenomena; but as to whether it exists
outside that sentiment and affirmation is a matter which in no way concerns
this Philosopher. For the Modernist .Believer, on the contrary, it is an
established and certain fact that the divine reality does really exist in
itself and quite independently of the person who believes in it. If you ask on
what foundation this assertion of the Believer rests, they answer: In the
experience of the individual. On this head the Modernists differ from the
Rationalists only to fall into the opinion of the Protestants and
pseudo-mystics. This is their manner of putting the question: In the religious
sentiment one must recognise a kind of intuition of the heart which puts man in
immediate contact with the very reality of God, and infuses such a persuasion
of God’s existence and His action both within and without man as to excel
greatly any scientific conviction. They assert, therefore, the existence of a
real experience, and one of a kind that surpasses all rational experience. If
this experience is denied by some, like the rationalists, it arises from the
fact that such persons are unwilling to put themselves in the moral state which
is necessary to produce it. It is this experience which, when a person acquires
it, makes him properly and truly a believer.
How far off we are here from Catholic teaching we have already seen in the
decree of the Vatican Council. We shall see later how, with such theories,
added to the other errors already mentioned, the way is opened wide for
atheism. Here it is well to note at once that, given this doctrine of
experience united with the other doctrine of symbolism, every religion, even
that of paganism, must be held to be true. What is to prevent such experiences
from being met within every religion? In fact that they are to be found is
asserted by not a few. And with what right will Modernists deny the truth of an
experience affirmed by a follower of Islam? With what right can they claim true
experiences for Catholics alone? Indeed Modernists do not deny but actually
admit, some confusedly, others in the most open manner, that all religions are
true. That they cannot feel otherwise is clear. For on what ground, according
to their theories, could falsity be predicated of any religion whatsoever? It
must be certainly on one of these two: either on account of the falsity of the
religious sentiment or on account of the falsity of the formula pronounced by
the mind. Now the religious sentiment, although it may be more perfect or less
perfect, is always one and the same; and the intellectual formula, in order to
be true, has but to respond to the religious sentiment and to the Believer,
whatever be the intellectual capacity of the latter. In the conflict between
different religions, the most that Modernists can maintain is that the Catholic
has more truth because it is more living and that it deserves with more reason
the name of Christian because it corresponds more fully with the origins of
Christianity. That these consequences flow from the premises will not seem
unnatural to anybody. But what is amazing is that there are Catholics and
priests who, We would fain believe, abhor such enormities yet act as if they
fully approved of them. For they heap such praise and bestow such public honour
on the teachers of these errors as to give rise to the belief that their
admiration is not meant merely for the persons, who are perhaps not devoid of a
certain merit, but rather for the errors which these persons openly profess and
which they do all in their power to propagate.
Religious Experience and Tradition
15. But this doctrine of experience is also under another aspect entirely
contrary to Catholic truth. It is extended and applied to tradition, as
hitherto understood by the Church, and destroys it. By the Modernists,
tradition is understood as a communication to others, through preaching by
means of the intellectual formula, of an original experience. To this formula,
in addition to its representative value, they attribute a species of suggestive
efficacy which acts both in the person who believes, to stimulate the religious
sentiment should it happen to have grown sluggish and to renew the experience
once acquired, and in those who do not yet believe, to awake for the first time
the religious sentiment in them and to produce the experience. In this way is
religious experience propagated among the peoples; and not merely among
contemporaries by preaching, but among future generations both by books and by
oral transmission from one to another. Sometimes this communication of
religious experience takes root and thrives, at other times it withers at once
and dies. For the Modernists, to live is a proof of truth, since for them life
and truth are one and the same thing. Hence again it is given to us to infer
that all existing religions are equally true, for otherwise they would not
live.
Faith and Science
16. Having reached this point, Venerable Brethren, we have sufficient material
in hand to enable us to see the relations which Modernists establish between
faith and science, including history also under the name of science. And in the
first place it is to be held that the object of the one is quite extraneous to
and separate from the object of the other. For faith occupies itself solely
with something which science declares to be unknowable for it. Hence each has a
separate field assigned to it: science is entirely concerned with the reality
of phenomena, into which faith does not enter at all; faith on the contrary
concerns itself with the divine reality which is entirely unknown to science.
Thus the conclusion is reached that there can never be any dissension between
faith and science, for if each keeps on its own ground they can never meet and
therefore never be in contradiction. And if it be objected that in the visible
world there are some things which appertain to faith, such as the human life of
Christ, the Modernists reply by denying this. For though such things come
within the category of phenomena, still in as far as they are lived by faith
and in the way already described have been by faith transfigured and
disfigured, they have been removed from the world of sense and translated to
become material for the divine. Hence should it be further asked whether Christ
has wrought real miracles, and made real prophecies, whether He rose truly from
the dead and ascended into heaven, the answer of agnostic science will be in
the negative and the answer of faith in the affirmative - yet there will not
be, on that account, any conflict between them. For it will be denied by the
philosopher as philosopher, speaking to philosophers and considering Christ
only in His historical reality; and it will be affirmed by the speaker,
speaking to believers and considering the life of Christ as lived again by the
faith and in the faith.
Faith Subject to Science
17. Yet, it would be a great mistake to suppose that, given these theories, one
is authorised to believe that faith and science are independent of one another.
On the side of science the independence is indeed complete, but it is quite
different with regard to faith, which is subject to science not on one but on
three grounds. For in the first place it must be observed that in every
religious fact, when you take away the divine reality and the experience of it
which the believer possesses, everything else, and especially the religious
formulas of it, belongs to the sphere of phenomena and therefore falls under
the control of science. Let the believer leave the world if he will, but so
long as he remains in it he must continue, whether he like it or not, to be
subject to the laws, the observation, the judgments of science and of history.
Further, when it is said that God is the object of faith alone, the statement
refers only to the divine reality not to the idea of God. The latter also is
subject to science which while it philosophises in what is called the logical
order soars also to the absolute and the ideal. It is therefore the right of
philosophy and of science to form conclusions concerning the idea of God, to
direct it in its evolution and to purify it of any extraneous elements which
may become confused with it. Finally, man does not suffer a dualism to exist in
him, and the believer therefore feels within him an impelling need so to
harmonise faith with science, that it may never oppose the general conception
which science sets forth concerning the universe.
Thus it is evident that science is to be entirely independent of faith, while
on the other hand, and notwithstanding that they are supposed to be strangers
to each other, faith is made subject to science. All this, Venerable Brothers,
is in formal opposition with the teachings of Our Predecessor, Pius IX, where
he lays it down that: In matters of religion it is the duty of philosophy not
to command but to serve, but not to prescribe what is to be believed but to
embrace what is to be believed with reasonable obedience, not to scrutinise the
depths of the mysteries of God but to venerate them devoutly and humbly.
The Modernists completely invert the parts, and to them may be applied the
words of another Predecessor of Ours, Gregory IX., addressed to some
theologians of his time: Some among you, inflated like bladders with the spirit
of vanity strive by profane novelties to cross the boundaries fixed by the
Fathers, twisting the sense of the heavenly pages . . .to the philosophical
teaching of the rationals, not for the profit of their hearer but to make a
show of science . . . these, seduced by strange and eccentric doctrines, make
the head of the tail and force the queen to serve the servant.
The Methods of Modernists
18. This becomes still clearer to anybody who studies the conduct of
Modernists, which is in perfect harmony with their teachings. In the writings
and addresses they seem not unfrequently to advocate now one doctrine now
another so that one would be disposed to regard them as vague and doubtful. But
there is a reason for this, and it is to be found in their ideas as to the
mutual separation of science and faith. Hence in their books you find some
things which might well be expressed by a Catholic, but in the next page you
find other things which might have been dictated by a rationalist. When they
write history they make no mention of the divinity of Christ, but when they are
in the pulpit they profess it clearly; again, when they write history they pay
no heed to the Fathers and the Councils, but when they catechise the people,
they cite them respectfully. In the same way they draw their distinctions between
theological and pastoral exegesis and scientific and historical exegesis. So,
too, acting on the principle that science in no way depends upon faith, when
they treat of philosophy, history, criticism, feeling no horror at treading in
the footsteps of Luther, they are wont to display a certain contempt for
Catholic doctrines, or the Holy Fathers, for the Ecumenical Councils, for the
ecclesiastical magisterium; and should they be rebuked for this, they complain
that they are being deprived of their liberty. Lastly, guided by the theory
that faith must be subject to science, they continuously and openly criticise
the Church because of her sheer obstinacy in refusing to submit and accommodate
her dogmas to the opinions of philosophy; while they, on their side, after
having blotted out the old theology, endeavour to introduce a new theology
which shall follow the vagaries of their philosophers.
The Modernist as Theologian:
His Principles, Immanence and Symbolism
19. And thus, Venerable Brethren, the road is open for us to study the
Modernists in the theological arena - a difficult task, yet one that may be
disposed of briefly. The end to be attained is the conciliation of faith with
science, always, however, saving the primacy of science over faith. In this branch
the Modernist theologian avails himself of exactly the same principles which we
have seen employed by the Modernist philosopher, and applies them to the
believer: the principles of immanence and symbolism. The process is an
extremely simple one. The philosopher has declared: The principle of faith is
immanent; the believer has added: This principle is God; and the theologian
draws the conclusion: God is immanent in man. Thus we have theological
immanence. So too, the philosopher regards as certain that the representations
of the object of faith are merely symbolical; the believer has affirmed that
the object of faith is God in Himself; and the theologian proceeds to affirm
that: The representations of the divine reality are symbolical. And thus we
have theological symbolism. Truly enormous errors both, the pernicious
character of which will be seen clearly from an examination of their
consequences. For, to begin with symbolism, since symbols are but symbols in
regard to their objects and only instruments in regard to the believer, it is
necessary first of all, according to the teachings of the Modernists, that the
believer do not lay too much stress on the formula, but avail himself of it
only with the scope of uniting himself to the absolute truth which the formula
at once reveals and conceals, that is to say, endeavours to express but without
succeeding in doing so. They would also have the believer avail himself of the
formulas only in as far as they are useful to him, for they are given to be a
help and not a hindrance; with proper regard, however, for the social respect
due to formulas which the public magisterium has deemed suitable for expressing
the common consciousness until such time as the same magisterium provide
otherwise. Concerning immanence it is not easy to determine what Modernists
mean by it, for their own opinions on the subject vary. Some understand it in
the sense that God working in man is more intimately present in him than man is
in even himself, and this conception, if properly understood, is free from
reproach. Others hold that the divine action is one with the action of nature,
as the action of the first cause is one with the action of the secondary cause,
and this would destroy the supernatural order. Others, finally, explain it in a
way which savours of pantheism and this, in truth, is the sense which tallies
best with the rest of their doctrines.
20. With this principle of immanence is connected another which may be called
the principle of divine permanence. It differs from the first in much the same
way as the private experience differs from the experience transmitted by
tradition. An example will illustrate what is meant, and this example is
offered by the Church and the Sacraments. The Church and the Sacraments, they
say, are not to be regarded as having been instituted by Christ Himself. This
is forbidden by agnosticism, which sees in Christ nothing more than a man whose
religious consciousness has been, like that of all men, formed by degrees; it
is also forbidden by the law of immanence which rejects what they call external
application; it is further forbidden by the law of evolution which requires for
the development of the germs a certain time and a certain series of
circumstances; it is, finally, forbidden by history, which shows that such in
fact has been the course of things. Still it is to be held that both Church and
Sacraments have been founded mediately by Christ. But how? In this way: All
Christian consciences were, they affirm, in a manner virtually included in the
conscience of Christ as the plant is included in the seed. But as the shoots
live the life of the seed, so, too, all Christians are to be said to live the
life of Christ. But the life of Christ is according to faith, and so, too, is
the life of Christians. And since this life produced, in the courses of ages,
both the Church and the Sacraments, it is quite right to say that their origin
is from Christ and is divine. In the same way they prove that the Scriptures
and the dogmas are divine. And thus the Modernistic theology may be said to be
complete. No great thing, in truth, but more than enough for the theologian who
professes that the conclusions of science must always, and in all things, be
respected. The application of these theories to the other points We shall
proceed to expound, anybody may easily make for himself.
Dogma and the Sacraments
21. Thus far We have spoken of the origin and nature of faith. But as faith has
many shoots, and chief among them the Church, dogma, worship, the Books which
we call “Sacred,” of these also we must know what is taught by the Modernists.
To begin with dogma, we have already indicated its origin and nature. Dogma is
born of the species of impulse or necessity by virtue of which the believer is
constrained to elaborate his religious thought so as to render it clearer for
himself and others. This elaboration consists entirely in the process of
penetrating and refining the primitive formula, not indeed in itself and
according to logical development, but as required by circumstances, or vitally
as the Modernists more abstrusely put it. Hence it happens that around the
primitive formula secondary formulas gradually continue to be formed, and these
subsequently grouped into bodies of doctrine, or into doctrinal constructions as
they prefer to call them, and further sanctioned by the public magisterium as
responding to the common consciousness, are called dogma. Dogma is to be
carefully distinguished from the speculations of theologians which, although
not alive with the life of dogma, are not without their utility as serving to
harmonise religion with science and remove opposition between the two, in such
a way as to throw light from without on religion, and it may be even to prepare
the matter for future dogma. Concerning worship there would not be much to be
said, were it not that under this head are comprised the Sacraments, concerning
which the Modernists fall into the gravest errors. For them the Sacraments are
the resultant of a double need - for, as we have seen, everything in their
system is explained by inner impulses or necessities. In the present case, the
first need is that of giving some sensible manifestation to religion; the
second is that of propagating it, which could not be done without some sensible
form and consecrating acts, and these are called sacraments. But for the
Modernists the Sacraments are mere symbols or signs, though not devoid of a
certain efficacy - an efficacy, they tell us, like that of certain phrases
vulgarly described as having “caught on,” inasmuch as they have become the
vehicle for the diffusion of certain great ideas which strike the public mind.
What the phrases are to the ideas, that the Sacraments are to the religious
sentiment - that and nothing more. The Modernists would be speaking more
clearly were they to affirm that the Sacraments are instituted solely to foster
the faith - but this is condemned by the Council of Trent: If anyone say that
these sacraments are instituted solely to foster the faith, let him be
anathema.
The Holy Scriptures
22. We have already touched upon the nature and origin of the Sacred Books.
According to the principles of the Modernists they may be rightly described as
a collection of experiences, not indeed of the kind that may come to anybody,
but those extraordinary and striking ones which have happened in any religion.
And this is precisely what they teach about our books of the Old and New
Testament. But to suit their own theories they note with remarkable ingenuity
that, although experience is something belonging to the present, still it may
derive its material from the past and the future alike, inasmuch as the
believer by memory lives the past over again after the manner of the present,
and lives the future already by anticipation. This explains how it is that the
historical and apocalyptical books are included among the Sacred Writings. God
does indeed speak in these books - through the medium of the believer, but
only, according to Modernistic theology, by vital immanence and permanence. Do
we inquire concerning inspiration? Inspiration, they reply, is distinguished
only by its vehemence from that impulse which stimulates the believer to reveal
the faith that is in him by words or writing. It is something like what happens
in poetical inspiration, of which it has been said: There is God in us, and
when he stirreth he sets us afire. And it is precisely in this sense that God
is said to be the origin of the inspiration of the Sacred Books. The Modernists
affirm, too, that there is nothing in these books which is not inspired. In
this respect some might be disposed to consider them as more orthodox than
certain other moderns who somewhat restrict inspiration, as, for instance, in
what have been put forward as tacit citations. But it is all mere juggling of
words. For if we take the Bible, according to the tenets of agnosticism, to be
a human work, made by men for men, but allowing the theologian to proclaim that
it is divine by immanence, what room is there left in it for inspiration?
General inspiration in the Modernist sense it is easy to find, but of
inspiration in the Catholic sense there is not a trace.
The Church
23. A wider field for comment is opened when you come to treat of the vagaries
devised by the Modernist school concerning the Church. You must start with the
supposition that the Church has its birth in a double need, the need of the
individual believer, especially if he has had some original and special
experience, to communicate his faith to others, and the need of the mass, when
the faith has become common to many, to form itself into a society and to
guard, increase, and propagate the common good. What, then, is the Church? It
is the product of the collective conscience, that is to say of the society of
individual consciences which by virtue of the principle of vital permanence,
all depend on one first believer, who for Catholics is Christ. Now every
society needs a directing authority to guide its members towards the common
end, to conserve prudently the elements of cohesion which in a religious
society are doctrine and worship.
Hence the triple authority in the Catholic Church, disciplinary, dogmatic,
liturgical. The nature of this authority is to be gathered from its origin, and
its rights and duties from its nature. In past times it was a common error that
authority came to the Church from without, that is to say directly from God;
and it was then rightly held to be autocratic. But his conception had now grown
obsolete. For in the same way as the Church is a vital emanation of the
collectivity of consciences, so too authority emanates vitally from the Church
itself. Authority therefore, like the Church, has its origin in the religious
conscience, and, that being so, is subject to it. Should it disown this
dependence it becomes a tyranny. For we are living in an age when the sense of
liberty has reached its fullest development, and when the public conscience has
in the civil order introduced popular government. Now there are not two
consciences in man, any more than there are two lives. It is for the
ecclesiastical authority, therefore, to shape itself to democratic forms,
unless it wishes to provoke and foment an intestine conflict in the consciences
of mankind. The penalty of refusal is disaster. For it is madness to think that
the sentiment of liberty, as it is now spread abroad, can surrender. Were it
forcibly confined and held in bonds, terrible would be its outburst, sweeping
away at once both Church and religion. Such is the situation for the
Modernists, and their one great anxiety is, in consequence, to find a way of conciliation
between the authority of the Church and the liberty of believers.
The Relations Between Church and State
24. But it is not with its own members alone that the Church must come to an
amicable arrangement - besides its relations with those within, it has others
outside. The Church does not occupy the world all by itself; there are other
societies in the world, with which it must necessarily have contact and
relations. The rights and duties of the Church towards civil societies must,
therefore, be determined, and determined, of course, by its own nature as it
has been already described. The rules to be applied in this matter are those
which have been laid down for science and faith, though in the latter case the
question is one of objects while here we have one of ends. In the same way,
then, as faith and science are strangers to each other by reason of the
diversity of their objects, Church and State are strangers by reason of the
diversity of their ends, that of the Church being spiritual while that of the
State is temporal. Formerly it was possible to subordinate the temporal to the
spiritual and to speak of some questions as mixed, allowing to the Church the
position of queen and mistress in all such, because the Church was then
regarded as having been instituted immediately by God as the author of the
supernatural order. But his doctrine is today repudiated alike by philosophy
and history. The State must, therefore, be separated from the Church, and the
Catholic from the citizen. Every Catholic, from the fact that he is also a
citizen, has the right and the duty to work for the common good in the way he
thinks best, without troubling himself about the authority of the Church,
without paying any heed to its wishes, its counsels, its orders - nay, even in
spite of its reprimands. To trace out and prescribe for the citizen any line of
conduct, on any pretext whatsoever, is to be guilty of an abuse of
ecclesiastical authority, against which one is bound to act with all one’s
might. The principles from which these doctrines spring have been solemnly
condemned by our predecessor Pius VI. in his Constitution Auctorem fidei.
The Magisterium of the Church
25. But it is not enough for the Modernist school that the State should be
separated from the Church. For as faith is to be subordinated to science, as
far as phenomenal elements are concerned, so too in temporal matters the Church
must be subject to the State. They do not say this openly as yet - but they
will say it when they wish to be logical on this head. For given the principle
that in temporal matters the State possesses absolute mastery, it will follow
that when the believer, not fully satisfied with his merely internal acts of
religion, proceeds to external acts, such for instance as the administration or
reception of the sacraments, these will fall under the control of the State.
What will then become of ecclesiastical authority, which can only be exercised
by external acts? Obviously it will be completely under the dominion of the
State. It is this inevitable consequence which impels many among liberal
Protestants to reject all external worship, nay, all external religious
community, and makes them advocate what they call, individual religion. If the
Modernists have not yet reached this point, they do ask the Church in the
meanwhile to be good enough to follow spontaneously where they lead her and
adapt herself to the civil forms in vogue. Such are their ideas about
disciplinary authority. But far more advanced and far more pernicious are their
teachings on doctrinal and dogmatic authority. This is their conception of the
magisterium of the Church: No religious society, they say, can be a real unit
unless the religious conscience of its members be one, and one also the formula
which they adopt. But his double unity requires a kind of common mind whose
office is to find and determine the formula that corresponds best with the
common conscience, and it must have moreover an authority sufficient to enable
it to impose on the community the formula which has been decided upon. From the
combination and, as it were fusion of these two elements, the common mind which
draws up the formula and the authority which imposes it, arises, according to
the Modernists, the notion of the ecclesiastical magisterium. And as this
magisterium springs, in its last analysis, from the individual consciences and
possesses its mandate of public utility for their benefit, it follows that the
ecclesiastical magisterium must be subordinate to them, and should therefore
take democratic forms. To prevent individual consciences from revealing freely
and openly the impulses they feel, to hinder criticism from impelling dogmas
towards their necessary evolutions - this is not a legitimate use but an abuse
of a power given for the public utility. So too a due method and measure must
be observed in the exercise of authority. To condemn and prescribe a work
without the knowledge of the author, without hearing his explanations, without
discussion, assuredly savours of tyranny. And thus, here again a way must be
found to save the full rights of authority on the one hand and of liberty on
the other. In the meanwhile the proper course for the Catholic will be to
proclaim publicly his profound respect for authority - and continue to follow
his own bent. Their general directions for the Church may be put in this way:
Since the end of the Church is entirely spiritual, the religious authority
should strip itself of all that external pomp which adorns it in the eyes of
the public. And here they forget that while religion is essentially for the
soul, it is not exclusively for the soul, and that the honour paid to authority
is reflected back on Jesus Christ who instituted it.
The Evolution of Doctrine
26. To finish with this whole question of faith and its shoots, it remains to
be seen, Venerable Brethren, what the Modernists have to say about their
development. First of all they lay down the general principle that in a living
religion everything is subject to change, and must change, and in this way they
pass to what may be said to be, among the chief of their doctrines, that of
Evolution. To the laws of evolution everything is subject - dogma, Church,
worship, the Books we revere as sacred, even faith itself, and the penalty of
disobedience is death. The enunciation of this principle will not astonish
anybody who bears in mind what the Modernists have had to say about each of
these subjects. Having laid down this law of evolution, the Modernists
themselves teach us how it works out. And first with regard to faith. The
primitive form of faith, they tell us, was rudimentary and common to all men
alike, for it had its origin in human nature and human life. Vital evolution
brought with it progress, not by the accretion of new and purely adventitious
forms from without, but by an increasing penetration of the religious sentiment
in the conscience. This progress was of two kinds: negative, by the elimination
of all foreign elements, such, for example, as the sentiment of family or
nationality; and positive by the intellectual and moral refining of man, by
means of which the idea was enlarged and enlightened while the religious
sentiment became more elevated and more intense. For the progress of faith no
other causes are to be assigned than those which are adduced to explain its
origin. But to them must be added those religious geniuses whom we call
prophets, and of whom Christ was the greatest; both because in their lives and
their words there was something mysterious which faith attributed to the
divinity, and because it fell to their lot to have new and original experiences
fully in harmony with the needs of their time. The progress of dogma is due
chiefly to the obstacles which faith has to surmount, to the enemies it has to
vanquish, to the contradictions it has to repel. Add to this a perpetual
striving to penetrate ever more profoundly its own mysteries. Thus, to omit
other examples, has it happened in the case of Christ: in Him that divine
something which faith admitted in Him expanded in such a way that He was at
last held to be God. The chief stimulus of evolution in the domain of worship
consists in the need of adapting itself to the uses and customs of peoples, as
well as the need of availing itself of the value which certain acts have
acquired by long usage. Finally, evolution in the Church itself is fed by the
need of accommodating itself to historical conditions and of harmonising itself
with existing forms of society. Such is religious evolution in detail. And
here, before proceeding further, we would have you note well this whole theory
of necessities and needs, for it is at the root of the entire system of the
Modernists, and it is upon it that they will erect that famous method of theirs
called the historical.
27. Still continuing the consideration of the evolution of doctrine, it is to
be noted that Evolution is due no doubt to those stimulants styled needs, but,
if left to their action alone, it would run a great risk of bursting the bounds
of tradition, and thus, turned aside from its primitive vital principle, would
lead to ruin instead of progress. Hence, studying more closely the ideas of the
Modernists, evolution is described as resulting from the conflict of two
forces, one of them tending towards progress, the other towards conservation.
The conserving force in the Church is tradition, and tradition is represented
by religious authority, and this both by right and in fact; for by right it is
in the very nature of authority to protect tradition, and, in fact, for
authority, raised as it is above the contingencies of life, feels hardly, or
not at all, the spurs of progress. The progressive force, on the contrary,
which responds to the inner needs lies in the individual consciences and
ferments there - especially in such of them as are in most intimate contact
with life. Note here, Venerable Brethren, the appearance already of that most
pernicious doctrine which would make of the laity a factor of progress in the
Church. Now it is by a species of compromise between the forces of conservation
and of progress, that is to say between authority and individual consciences,
that changes and advances take place. The individual consciences of some of
them act on the collective conscience, which brings pressure to bear on the
depositaries of authority, until the latter consent to a compromise, and, the
pact being made, authority sees to its maintenance.
With all this in mind, one understands how it is that the Modernists express
astonishment when they are reprimanded or punished. What is imputed to them as
a fault they regard as a sacred duty. Being in intimate contact with
consciences they know better than anybody else, and certainly better than the
ecclesiastical authority, what needs exist - nay, they embody them, so to
speak, in themselves. Having a voice and a pen they use both publicly, for this
is their duty. Let authority rebuke them as much as it pleases - they have
their own conscience on their side and an intimate experience which tells them
with certainty that what they deserve is not blame but praise. Then they
reflect that, after all there is no progress without a battle and no battle
without its victim, and victims they are willing to be like the prophets and
Christ Himself. They have no bitterness in their hearts against the authority
which uses them roughly, for after all it is only doing its duty as authority.
Their sole grief is that it remains deaf to their warnings, because delay
multiplies the obstacles which impede the progress of souls, but the hour will
most surely come when there will be no further chance for tergiversation, for
if the laws of evolution may be checked for a while, they cannot be ultimately
destroyed. And so they go their way, reprimands and condemnations
notwithstanding, masking an incredible audacity under a mock semblance of
humility. While they make a show of bowing their heads, their hands and minds
are more intent than ever on carrying out their purposes. And this policy they
follow willingly and wittingly, both because it is part of their system that
authority is to be stimulated but not dethroned, and because it is necessary
for them to remain within the ranks of the Church in order that they may
gradually transform the collective conscience - thus unconsciously avowing that
the common conscience is not with them, and that they have no right to claim to
be its interpreters.
28. Thus then, Venerable Brethren, for the Modernists, both as authors and
propagandists, there is to be nothing stable, nothing immutable in the Church.
Nor indeed are they without precursors in their doctrines, for it was of these
that Our Predecessor Pius IX wrote: These enemies of divine revelation extol
human progress to the skies, and with rash and sacrilegious daring would have
it introduced into the Catholic religion as if this religion were not the work
of God but of man, or some kind of philosophical discovery susceptible of
perfection by human efforts. On the subject of revelation and dogma in
particular, the doctrine of the Modernists offers nothing new - we find it
condemned in the Syllabus of Pius IX., where it is enunciated in these terms:
Divine revelation is imperfect, and therefore subject to continual and
indefinite progress, corresponding with the progress of human reason; and
condemned still more solemnly in the Vatican Council: The doctrine of the faith
which God has revealed has not been proposed to human intelligences to be
perfected by them as if it were a philosophical system, but as a divine deposit
entrusted to the Spouse of Christ to be faithfully guarded and infallibly interpreted.
Hence the sense, too, of the sacred dogmas is that which our Holy Mother the
Church has once declared, nor is this sense ever to be abandoned on plea or
pretext of a more profound comprehension of the truth. Nor is the development
of our knowledge, even concerning the faith, impeded by this pronouncement - on
the contrary it is aided and promoted. For the same Council continues: Let
intelligence and science and wisdom, therefore, increase and progress
abundantly and vigorously in individuals and in the mass, in the believer and
in the whole Church, throughout the ages and the centuries - but only in its
own kind, that is, according to the same dogma, the same sense, the same
acceptation.
The Modernist as Historian and Critic
29. After having studied the Modernist as philosopher, believer and theologian,
it now remains for us to consider him as historian, critic, apologist,
reformer.
30. Some Modernists, devoted to historical studies, seem to be greatly afraid
of being taken for philosophers. About philosophy, they tell you, they know
nothing whatever - and in this they display remarkable astuteness, for they are
particularly anxious not to be suspected of being prejudiced in favour of
philosophical theories which would lay them open to the charge of not being
objective, to use the word in vogue. And yet the truth is that their history
and their criticism are saturated with their philosophy, and that their
historico-critical conclusions are the natural fruit of their philosophical
principles. This will be patent to anybody who reflects. Their three first laws
are contained in those three principles of their philosophy already dealt with:
the principle of agnosticism, the principle of the transfiguration of things by
faith, and the principle which We have called of disfiguration. Let us see what
consequences flow from each of them. Agnosticism tells us that history, like
ever other science, deals entirely with phenomena, and the consequence is that
God, and every intervention of God in human affairs, is to be relegated to the
domain of faith as belonging to it alone. In things where a double element, the
divine and the human, mingles, in Christ, for example, or the Church, or the
sacraments, or the many other objects of the same kind, a division must be made
and the human element assigned to history while the divine will go to faith.
Hence we have that distinction, so current among the Modernists, between the
Christ of history and the Christ of faith, between the sacraments of history
and the sacraments of faith, and so on. Next we find that the human element
itself, which the historian has to work on, as it appears in the documents, has
been by faith transfigured, that is to say raised above its historical
conditions. It becomes necessary, therefore, to eliminate also the accretions
which faith has added, to assign them to faith itself and to the history of
faith: thus, when treating of Christ, the historian must set aside all that
surpasses man in his natural condition, either according to the psychological
conception of him, or according to the place and period of his existence.
Finally, by virtue of the third principle, even those things which are not
outside the sphere of history they pass through the crucible, excluding from
history and relegating to faith everything which, in their judgment, is not in
harmony with what they call the logic of facts and in character with the
persons of whom they are predicated. Thus, they will not allow that Christ ever
uttered those things which do not seem to be within the capacity of the
multitudes that listened to Him. Hence they delete from His real history and
transfer to faith all the allegories found in His discourses. Do you inquire as
to the criterion they adopt to enable them to make these divisions? The reply is
that they argue from the character of the man, from his condition of life, from
his education, from the circumstances under which the facts took place - in
short, from criteria which, when one considers them well, are purely
subjective. Their method is to put themselves into the position and person of
Christ, and then to attribute to Him what they would have done under like
circumstances. In this way, absolutely a priori and acting on philosophical
principles which they admit they hold but which they affect to ignore, they
proclaim that Christ, according to what they call His real history, was not God
and never did anything divine, and that as man He did and said only what they,
judging from the time in which he lived, can admit Him to have said or done.
Criticism and its Principles
31. And as history receives its conclusions, ready-made, from philosophy, so
too criticism takes its own from history. The critic, on the data furnished him
by the historian, makes two parts of all his documents. Those that remain after
the triple elimination above described go to form the real history; the rest is
attributed to the history of the faith or as it is styled, to internal history.
For the Modernists distinguish very carefully between these two kinds of
history, and it is to be noted that they oppose the history of the faith to
real history precisely as real. Thus we have a double Christ: a real Christ,
and a Christ, the one of faith, who never really existed; a Christ who has
lived at a given time and in a given place, and a Christ who has never lived
outside the pious meditations of the believer - the Christ, for instance, whom
we find in the Gospel of St. John, which is pure contemplation from beginning
to end.
32. But the dominion of philosophy over history does not end here. Given that
division, of which We have spoken, of the documents into two parts, the
philosopher steps in again with his principle of vital immanence, and shows how
everything in the history of the Church is to be explained by vital emanation.
And since the cause or condition of every vital emanation whatsoever is to be
found in some need, it follows that no fact can ante-date the need which
produced it - historically the fact must be posterior to the need. See how the
historian works on this principle. He goes over his documents again, whether
they be found in the Sacred Books or elsewhere, draws up from them his list of
the successive needs of the Church, whether relating to dogma or liturgy or
other matters, and then he hands his list over to the critic. The critic takes
in hand the documents dealing with the history of faith and distributes them,
period by period, so that they correspond exactly with the lists of needs,
always guided by the principle that the narration must follow the facts, as the
facts follow the needs. It may at times happen that some parts of the Sacred
Scriptures, such as the Epistles, themselves constitute the fact created by the
need. Even so, the rule holds that the age of any document can only be
determined by the age in which each need had manifested itself in the Church.
Further, a distinction must be made between the beginning of a fact and its
development, for what is born one day requires time for growth. Hence the
critic must once more go over his documents, ranged as they are through the
different ages, and divide them again into two parts, and divide them into two
lots, separating those that regard the first stage of the facts from those that
deal with their development, and these he must again arrange according to their
periods.
33. Then the philosopher must come in again to impose on the historian the
obligation of following in all his studies the precepts and laws of evolution.
It is next for the historian to scrutinise his documents once more, to examine
carefully the circumstances and conditions affecting the Church during the
different periods, the conserving force she has put forth, the needs both
internal and external that have stimulated her to progress, the obstacles she
has had to encounter, in a word everything that helps to determine the manner
in which the laws of evolution have been fulfilled in her. This done, he
finishes his work by drawing up in its broad lines a history of the development
of the facts. The critic follows and fits in the rest of the documents with
this sketch; he takes up his pen, and soon the history is made complete. Now we
ask here: Who is the author of this history? The historian? The critic?
Assuredly, neither of these but the philosopher. From beginning to end
everything in it is a priori, and a priori in a way that reeks of heresy. These
men are certainly to be pitied, and of them the Apostle might well say: They
became vain in their thoughts. . . professing themselves to be wise they became
fools (Rom. i. 21, 22); but, at the same time, they excite just indignation
when they accuse the Church of torturing the texts, arranging and confusing
them after its own fashion, and for the needs of its cause. In this they are
accusing the Church of something for which their own conscience plainly
reproaches them.
How the Bible is Dealt With
34. The result of this dismembering of the Sacred Books and this partition of
them throughout the centuries is naturally that the Scriptures can no longer be
attributed to the authors whose names they bear. The Modernists have no
hesitation in affirming commonly that these books, and especially the
Pentateuch and the first three Gospels, have been gradually formed by additions
to a primitive brief narration - by interpolations of theological or allegorical
interpretation, by transitions, by joining different passages together. This
means, briefly, that in the Sacred Books we must admit a vital evolution,
springing from and corresponding with evolution of faith. The traces of this
evolution, they tell us, are so visible in the books that one might almost
write a history of them. Indeed this history they do actually write, and with
such an easy security that one might believe them to have with their own eyes
seen the writers at work through the ages amplifying the Sacred Books. To aid
them in this they call to their assistance that branch of criticism which they
call textual, and labour to show that such a fact or such a phrase is not in
its right place, and adducing other arguments of the same kind. They seem, in
fact, to have constructed for themselves certain types of narration and
discourses, upon which they base their decision as to whether a thing is out of
place or not. Judge if you can how men with such a system are fitted for
practising this kind of criticism. To hear them talk about their works on the
Sacred Books, in which they have been able to discover so much that is
defective, one would imagine that before them nobody ever even glanced through
the pages of Scripture, whereas the truth is that a whole multitude of Doctors,
infinitely superior to them in genius, in erudition, in sanctity, have sifted
the Sacred Books in every way, and so far from finding imperfections in them,
have thanked God more and more the deeper they have gone into them, for His
divine bounty in having vouchsafed to speak thus to men. Unfortunately, these
great Doctors did not enjoy the same aids to study that are possessed by the
Modernists for their guide and rule, - a philosophy borrowed from the negation
of God, and a criterion which consists of themselves.
We believe, then, that We have set forth with sufficient clearness the
historical method of the Modernists. The philosopher leads the way, the
historian follows, and then in due order come internal and textual criticism.
And since it is characteristic of the first cause to communicate its virtue to
secondary causes, it is quite clear that the criticism We are concerned with is
an agnostic, immanentist, and evolutionist criticism. Hence anybody who
embraces it and employs it, makes profession thereby of the errors contained in
it, and places himself in opposition to Catholic faith. This being so, one
cannot but be greatly surprised by the consideration which is attached to it by
certain Catholics. Two causes may be assigned for this: first, the close
alliance, independent of all differences of nationality or religion, which the
historians and critics of this school have formed among themselves; second, the
boundless effrontery of these men. Let one of them but open his mouth and the
others applaud him in chorus, proclaiming that science has made another step
forward; let an outsider but hint at a desire to inspect the new discovery with
his own eyes, and they are on him in a body; deny it - and you are an
ignoramus; embrace it and defend it - and there is no praise too warm for you.
In this way they win over any who, did they but realise what they are doing,
would shrink back with horror. The impudence and the domineering of some, and
the thoughtlessness and imprudence of others, have combined to generate a
pestilence in the air which penetrates everywhere and spreads the contagion.
But let us pass to the apologist.
The Modernist as Apologist
35. The Modernist apologist depends in two ways on the philosopher. First, indirectly,
inasmuch as his theme is history - history dictated, as we have seen, by the
philosopher; and, secondly, directly, inasmuch as he takes both his laws and
his principles from the philosopher. Hence that common precept of the Modernist
school that the new apologetics must be fed from psychological and historical
sources. The Modernist apologists, then, enter the arena by proclaiming to the
rationalists that though they are defending religion, they have no intention of
employing the data of the sacred books or the histories in current use in the
Church, and composed according to old methods, but real history written on
modern principles and according to rigorously modern methods. In all this they
are not using an argumentum ad hominem, but are stating the simple fact that
they hold, that the truth is to be found only in this kind of history. They
feel that it is not necessary for them to dwell on their own sincerity in their
writings - they are already known to and praised by the rationalists as fighting
under the same banner, and they not only plume themselves on these encomiums,
which are a kind of salary to them but would only provoke nausea in a real
Catholic, but use them as an offset to the reprimands of the Church.
But let us see how the Modernist conducts his apologetics. The aim he sets
before himself is to make the non-believer attain that experience of the
Catholic religion which, according to the system, is the basis of faith. There
are two ways open to him, the objective and the subjective. The first of them
proceeds from agnosticism. It tends to show that religion, and especially the
Catholic religion, is endowed with such vitality as to compel every
psychologist and historian of good faith to recognise that its history hides
some unknown element. To this end it is necessary to prove that this religion,
as it exists today, is that which was founded by Jesus Christ; that is to say,
that it is the product of the progressive development of the germ which He
brought into the world. Hence it is imperative first of all to establish what
this germ was, and this the Modernist claims to be able to do by the following
formula: Christ announced the coming of the kingdom of God, which was to be
realised within a brief lapse of time and of which He was to become the
Messiah, the divinely-given agent and ordainer. Then it must be shown how this
germ, always immanent and permanent in the bosom of the Church, has gone on
slowly developing in the course of history, adapting itself successively to the
different mediums through which it has passed, borrowing from them by vital
assimiliation all the dogmatic, cultural, ecclesiastical forms that served its
purpose; whilst, on the other hand , it surmounted all obstacles, vanquished
all enemies, and survived all assaults and all combats. Anybody who well and
duly considers this mass of obstacles, adversaries, attacks, combats, and the
vitality and fecundity which the Church has shown throughout them all, must
admit that if the laws of evolution are visible in her life they fail to
explain the whole of her history - the unknown rises forth from it and presents
itself before us. Thus do they argue, never suspecting that their determination
of the primitive germ is an a priori of agnostic and evolutionist philosophy,
and that the formula of it has been gratuitously invented for the sake of
buttressing their position.
36. But while they endeavour by this line of reasoning to secure access for the
Catholic religion into souls, these new apologists are quite ready to admit that
there are many distasteful things in it. Nay, they admit openly, and with
ill-concealed satisfaction, that they have found that even its dogma is not
exempt from errors and contradictions. They add also that this is not only
excusable but - curiously enough - even right and proper. In the Sacred Books
there are many passages referring to science or history where manifest errors
are to be found. But the subject of these books is not science or history but
religion and morals. In them history and science serve only as a species of
covering to enable the religious and moral experiences wrapped up in them to
penetrate more readily among the masses. The masses understood science and
history as they are expressed in these books, and it is clear that had science
and history been expressed in a more perfect form this would have proved rather
a hindrance than a help. Then, again, the Sacred Books being essentially
religious, are consequently necessarily living. Now life has its own truth and
its own logic, belonging as they do to a different order, viz., truth of
adaptation and of proportion both with the medium in which it exists and with
the end towards which it tends. Finally the Modernists, losing all sense of
control, go so far as to proclaim as true and legitimate everything that is
explained by life.
We, Venerable Brethren, for whom there is but one and only truth, and who hold
that the Sacred Books, written under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, have
God for their author (Conc. Vat., De Revel., c. 2) declare that this is
equivalent to attributing to God Himself the lie of utility or officious lie,
and We say with St. Augustine: In an authority so high, admit but one officious
lie, and there will not remain a single passage of those apparently difficult
to practise or to believe, which on the same most pernicious rule may not be
explained as a lie uttered by the author wilfully and to serve a purpose.
(Epist. 28). And thus it will come about, the holy Doctor continues, that
everybody will believe and refuse to believe what he likes or dislikes. But the
Modernists pursue their way gaily. They grant also that certain arguments
adduced in the Sacred Books, like those, for example, which are based on the
prophecies, have no rational foundation to rest on. But they will defend even
these as artifices of preaching, which are justified by life. Do they stop
here? No, indeed, for they are ready to admit, nay, to proclaim that Christ
Himself manifestly erred in determining the time when the coming of the Kingdom
of God was to take place, and they tell us that we must not be surprised at
this since even Christ was subject to the laws of life! After this what is to
become of the dogmas of the Church? The dogmas brim over with flagrant
contradictions, but what matter that since, apart from the fact that vital
logic accepts them, they are not repugnant to symbolical truth. Are we not
dealing with the infinite, and has not the infinite an infinite variety of
aspects? In short, to maintain and defend these theories they do not hesitate
to declare that the noblest homage that can be paid to the Infinite is to make
it the object of contradictory propositions! But when they justify even
contradiction, what is it that they will refuse to justify?
Subjective Arguments
37. But it is not solely by objective arguments that the non-believer may be
disposed to faith. There are also subjective ones at the disposal of the
Modernists, and for those they return to their doctrine of immanence. They
endeavour, in fact, to persuade their non-believer that down in the very deeps
of his nature and his life lie the need and the desire for religion, and this
not a religion of any kind, but the specific religion known as Catholicism,
which, they say, is absolutely postulated by the perfect development of life.
And here We cannot but deplore once more, and grievously, that there are
Catholics who, while rejecting immanence as a doctrine, employ it as a method
of apologetics, and who do this so imprudently that they seem to admit that
there is in human nature a true and rigorous necessity with regard to the
supernatural order - and not merely a capacity and a suitability for the
supernatural, order - and not merely a capacity and a suitability for the
supernatural, such as has at all times been emphasized by Catholic apologists.
Truth to tell it is only the moderate Modernists who make this appeal to an
exigency for the Catholic religion. As for the others, who might be called
intergralists, they would show to the non-believer, hidden away in the very depths
of his being, the very germ which Christ Himself bore in His conscience, and
which He bequeathed to the world. Such, Venerable Brethren, is a summary
description of the apologetic method of the Modernists, in perfect harmony, as
you may see, with their doctrines - methods and doctrines brimming over with
errors, made not for edification but for destruction, not for the formation of
Catholics but for the plunging of Catholics into heresy; methods and doctrines
that would be fatal to any religion.
The Modernist as Reformer
38. It remains for Us now to say a few words about the Modernist as reformer.
From all that has preceded, some idea may be gained of the reforming mania
which possesses them: in all Catholicism there is absolutely nothing on which
it does not fasten. Reform of philosophy, especially in the seminaries: the
scholastic philosophy is to be relegated to the history of philosophy among
obsolete systems, and the young men are to be taught modern philosophy which
alone is true and suited to the times in which we live. Reform of theology;
rational theology is to have modern philosophy for its foundation, and positive
theology is to be founded on the history of dogma. As for history, it must be
for the future written and taught only according to their modern methods and
principles. Dogmas and their evolution are to be harmonised with science and
history. In the Catechism no dogmas are to be inserted except those that have
been duly reformed and are within the capacity of the people. Regarding worship,
the number of external devotions is to be reduced, or at least steps must be
taken to prevent their further increase, though, indeed, some of the admirers
of symbolism are disposed to be more indulgent on this head. Ecclesiastical
government requires to be reformed in all its branches, but especially in its
disciplinary and dogmatic parts. Its spirit with the public conscience, which
is not wholly for democracy; a share in ecclesiastical government should
therefore be given to the lower ranks of the clergy, and even to the laity, and
authority should be decentralised. The Roman Congregations, and especially the
index and the Holy Office, are to be reformed. The ecclesiastical authority
must change its line of conduct in the social and political world; while
keeping outside political and social organization, it must adapt itself to
those which exist in order to penetrate them with its spirit. With regard to
morals, they adopt the principle of the Americanists, that the active virtues
are more important than the passive, both in the estimation in which they must
be held and in the exercise of them. The clergy are asked to return to their
ancient lowliness and poverty, and in their ideas and action to be guided by
the principles of Modernism; and there are some who, echoing the teaching of
their Protestant masters, would like the suppression of ecclesiastical
celibacy. What is there left in the Church which is not to be reformed
according to their principles?
Modernism and All the Heresies
39. It may be, Venerable Brethren, that some may think We have dwelt too long
on this exposition of the doctrines of the Modernists. But it was necessary,
both in order to refute their customary charge that We do not understand their
ideas, and to show that their system does not consist in scattered and
unconnected theories but in a perfectly organised body, all the parts of which
are solidly joined so that it is not possible to admit one without admitting
all. For this reason, too, We have had to give this exposition a somewhat
didactic form and not to shrink from employing certain uncouth terms in use
among the Modernists. And now, can anybody who takes a survey of the whole
system be surprised that We should define it as the synthesis of all heresies?
Were one to attempt the task of collecting together all the errors that have
been broached against the faith and to concentrate the sap and substance of
them all into one, he could not better succeed than the Modernists have done.
Nay, they have done more than this, for, as we have already intimated, their
system means the destruction not of the Catholic religion alone but of all
religion. With good reason do the rationalists applaud them, for the most
sincere and the frankest among the rationalists warmly welcome the modernists
as their most valuable allies.
For let us return for a moment, Venerable Brethren, to that most disastrous
doctrine of agnosticism. By it every avenue that leads the intellect to God is
barred, but the Modernists would seek to open others available for sentiment
and action. Vain efforts! For, after all, what is sentiment but the reaction of
the soul on the action of the intelligence or the senses. Take away the
intelligence, and man, already inclined to follow the senses, becomes their
slave. Vain, too, from another point of view, for all these fantasias on the
religious sentiment will never be able to destroy common sense, and common
sense tells us that emotion and everything that leads the heart captive proves
a hindrance instead of a help to the discovery of truth. We speak, of course,
of truth in itself - as for that other purely subjective truth, the fruit of
sentiment and action, if it serves its purpose for the jugglery of words, it is
of no use to the man who wants to know above all things whether outside himself
there is a God into whose hands he is one day to fall. True, the Modernists do
call in experience to eke out their system, but what does this experience add
to sentiment? Absolutely nothing beyond a certain intensity and a proportionate
deepening of the conviction of the reality of the object. But these two will
never make sentiment into anything but sentiment, nor deprive it of its
characteristic which is to cause deception when the intelligence is not there
to guide it; on the contrary, they but confirm and aggravate this
characteristic, for the more intense sentiment is the more it is sentimental.
In matters of religious sentiment and religious experience, you know, Venerable
Brethren, how necessary is prudence and how necessary, too, the science which
directs prudence. You know it from your own dealings with sounds, and
especially with souls in whom sentiment predominates; you know it also from
your reading of ascetical books - books for which the Modernists have but
little esteem, but which testify to a science and a solidity very different
from theirs, and to a refinement and subtlety of observation of which the
Modernists give no evidence. Is it not really folly, or at least sovereign
imprudence, to trust oneself without control to Modernist experiences? Let us
for a moment put the question: if experiences have so much value in their eyes,
why do they not attach equal weight to the experience that thousands upon
thousands of Catholics have that the Modernists are on the wrong road? It is,
perchance, that all experiences except those felt by the Modernists are false
and deceptive? The vast majority of mankind holds and always will hold firmly
that sentiment and experience alone, when not enlightened and guided by reason,
do not lead to the knowledge of God. What remains, then, but the annihilation
of all religion, - atheism? Certainly it is not the doctrine of symbolism -
will save us from this. For if all the intellectual elements, as they call
them, of religion are pure symbols, will not the very name of God or of divine
personality be also a symbol, and if this be admitted will not the personality
of God become a matter of doubt and the way opened to Pantheism? And to
Pantheism that other doctrine of the divine immanence leads directly. For does
it, We ask, leave God distinct from man or not? If yes, in what does it differ
from Catholic doctrine, and why reject external revelation? If no, we are at
once in Pantheism. Now the doctrine of immanence in the Modernist acceptation
holds and professes that every phenomenon of conscience proceeds from man as
man. The rigorous conclusion from this is the identity of man with God, which
means Pantheism. The same conclusion follows from the distinction Modernists
make between science and faith. The object of science they say is the reality
of the knowable; the object of faith, on the contrary, is the reality of the
unknowable. Now what makes the unknowable unknowable is its disproportion with
the intelligible - a disproportion which nothing whatever, even in the doctrine
of the Modernist, can suppress. Hence the unknowable remains and will eternally
remain unknowable to the believer as well as to the man of science. Therefore
if any religion at all is possible it can only be the religion of an unknowable
reality. And why this religion might not be that universal soul of the
universe, of which a rationalist speaks, is something We do see. Certainly this
suffices to show superabundantly by how many roads Modernism leads to the
annihilation of all religion. The first step in this direction was taken by
Protestantism; the second is made by Modernism; the next will plunge headlong
into atheism.
THE CAUSE OF MODERNISM
40. To penetrate still deeper into Modernism and to find a suitable remedy for
such a deep sore, it behoves Us, Venerable Brethren, to investigate the causes
which have engendered it and which foster its growth. That the proximate and
immediate cause consists in a perversion of the mind cannot be open to doubt.
The remote causes seem to us to be reduced to two: curiosity and pride.
Curiosity by itself, if not prudently regulated, suffices to explain all
errors. Such is the opinion of Our Predecessor, Gregory XVI., who wrote: A
lamentable spectacle is that presented by the aberrations of human reason when
it yields to the spirit of novelty, when against the warning of the Apostle it
seeks to know beyond what it is meant to know, and when relying too much on
itself it thinks it can find the fruit outside the Church wherein truth is
found without the slightest shadow of error (Ep. Encycl. Singulari nos, 7 Kal.
Jul. 1834).
But it is pride which exercises an incomparably greater sway over the soul to
blind it and plunge it into error, and pride sits in Modernism as in its own
house, finding sustenance everywhere in its doctrines and an occasion to flaunt
itself in all its aspects. It is pride which fills Modernists with that
confidence in themselves and leads them to hold themselves up as the rule for
all, pride which puffs them up with that vainglory which allows them to regard
themselves as the sole possessors of knowledge, and makes them say, inflated
with presumption, We are not as the rest of men, and which, to make them really
not as other men, leads them to embrace all kinds of the most absurd novelties;
it is pride which rouses in them the spirit of disobedience and causes them to
demand a compromise between authority and liberty; it is pride that makes of
them the reformers of others, while they forget to reform themselves, and which
begets their absolute want of respect for authority, not excepting the supreme
authority. No, truly, there is no road which leads so directly and so quickly
to Modernism as pride. When a Catholic laymen or a priest forgets that precept
of the Christian life which obliges us to renounce ourselves if we would follow
Jesus Christ and neglects to tear pride from his heart, ah! but he is a fully
ripe subject for the errors of Modernism. Hence, Venerable Brethren, it will be
your first duty to thwart such proud men, to employ them only in the lowest and
obscurest offices; the higher they try to rise, the lower let them be placed,
so that their lowly position may deprive them of the power of causing damage.
Sound your young clerics, too, most carefully, by yourselves and by the directors
of your seminaries, and when you find the spirit of pride among any of them
reject them without compunction from the priesthood. Would to God that this had
always been done with the proper vigilance and constancy.
41. If we pass from the moral to the intellectual causes of Modernism, the
first which presents itself, and the chief one, is ignorance. Yes, these very
Modernists who pose as Doctors of the Church, who puff out their cheeks when
they speak of modern philosophy, and show such contempt for scholasticism, have
embraced the one with all its false glamour because their ignorance of the
other has left them without the means of being able to recognise confusion of
thought, and to refute sophistry. Their whole system, with all its errors, has
been born of the alliance between faith and false philosophy.
Methods of Propagandism
42. If only they had displayed less zeal and energy in propagating it! But such
is their activity and such their unwearying capacity for work on behalf of
their cause, that one cannot but be pained to see them waste such labour in
endeavouring to ruin the Church when they might have been of such service to
her had their efforts been better employed. Their articles to delude men’s
minds are of two kinds, the first to remove obstacles from their path, the
second to devise and apply actively and patiently every instrument that can
serve their purpose. They recognise that the three chief difficulties for them
are scholastic philosophy, the authority of the fathers and tradition, and the
magisterium of the Church, and on these they wage unrelenting war. For
scholastic philosophy and theology they have only ridicule and contempt.
Whether it is ignorance or fear, or both, that inspires this conduct in them,
certain it is that the passion for novelty is always united in them with hatred
of scholasticism, and there is no surer sign that a man is on the way to
Modernism than when he begins to show his dislike for this system. Modernists
and their admirers should remember the proposition condemned by Pius IX: The
method and principles which have served the doctors of scholasticism when
treating of theology no longer correspond with the exigencies of our time or
the progress of science (Syll. Prop. 13). They exercise all their ingenuity in
diminishing the force and falsifying the character of tradition, so as to rob
it of all its weight. But for Catholics the second Council of Nicea will always
have the force of law, where it condemns those who dare, after the impious
fashion of heretics, to deride the ecclesiastical traditions, to invent
novelties of some kind . . . or endeavour by malice or craft to overthrow any
one of the legitimate traditions of the Catholic Church; and Catholics will
hold for law, also, the profession of the fourth Council of Constantinople: We
therefore profess to conserve and guard the rules bequeathed to the Holy
Catholic and Apostolic Church by the Holy and most illustrious Apostles, by the
orthodox Councils, both general and local, and by every one of those divine
interpreters the Fathers and Doctors of the Church. Wherefore the Roman
Pontiffs, Pius IV. and Pius IX., ordered the insertion in the profession of
faith of the following declaration: I most firmly admit and embrace the
apostolic and ecclesiastical traditions and other observances and constitutions
of the Church. The Modernists pass the same judgment on the most holy Fathers
of the Church as they pass on tradition; decreeing, with amazing effrontery
that, while personally most worthy of all veneration, they were entirely
ignorant of history and criticism, for which they are only excusable on account
of the time in which they lived. Finally, the Modernists try in every way to
diminish and weaken the authority of the ecclesiastical magisterium itself by
sacrilegiously falsifying its origin, character, and rights, and by freely
repeating the calumnies of its adversaries. To all the band of Modernists may
be applied those words which Our Predecessor wrote with such pain: To bring
contempt and odium on the mystic Spouse of Christ, who is the true light, the
children of darkness have been wont to cast in her face before the world a
stupid calumny, and perverting the meaning and force of things and words, to
depict her as the friend of darkness and ignorance, and the enemy of light,
science, and progress (Motu-proprio, Ut mysticum, 14 March, 1891). This being
so, Venerable Brethren, no wonder the Modernists vent all their gall and hatred
on Catholics who sturdily fight the battles of the Church. But of all the insults
they heap on them those of ignorance and obstinacy are the favourites. When an
adversary rises up against them with an erudition and force that render him
redoubtable, they try to make a conspiracy of silence around him to nullify the
effects of his attack, while in flagrant contrast with this policy towards
Catholics, they load with constant praise the writers who range themselves on
their side, hailing their works, excluding novelty in every page, with choruses
of applause; for them the scholarship of a writer is in direct proportion to
the recklessness of his attacks on antiquity, and of his efforts to undermine
tradition and the ecclesiastical magisterium; when one of their number falls
under the condemnations of the Church the rest of them, to the horror of good
Catholics, gather round him, heap public praise upon him, venerate him almost
as a martyr to truth. The young, excited and confused by all this glamour of
praise and abuse, some of them afraid of being branded as ignorant, others
ambitious to be considered learned, and both classes goaded internally by
curiosity and pride, often surrender and give themselves up to Modernism.
43. And here we have already some of the artifices employed by Modernists to
exploit their wares. What efforts they make to win new recruits! They seize
upon chairs in the seminaries and universities, and gradually make of them
chairs of pestilence. From these sacred chairs they scatter, though not always
openly, the seeds of their doctrines; they proclaim their teachings without
disguise in congresses; they introduce them and make them the vogue in social
institutions. Under their own names and under pseudonyms they publish numbers
of books, newspapers, reviews, and sometimes one and the same writer adopts a
variety of pseudonyms to trap the incautious reader into believing in a whole
multitude of Modernist writers - in short they leave nothing untried, in
action, discourses, writings, as though there were a frenzy of propaganda upon
them. And the results of all this? We have to lament at the sight of many young
men once full of promise and capable of rendering great services to the Church,
now gone astray. And there is another sight that saddens Us too: that of so
many other Catholics, who, while they certainly do not go so far as the former,
have yet grown into the habit, as though they had been breathing a poisoned
atmosphere, of thinking and speaking and writing with a liberty that ill
becomes Catholics. They are to be found among the laity, and in the ranks of
the clergy, and they are not wanting even in the last place where one might
expect to meet them, in religious institutes. If they treat of biblical
questions, it is upon Modernist principles; if they write history, it is to
search out with curiosity and to publish openly, on the pretext of telling the
whole truth and with a species of ill-concealed satisfaction, everything that
looks to them like a stain in the history of the Church. Under the sway of
certain a priori rules they destroy as far as they can the pious traditions of
the people, and bring ridicule on certain relics highly venerable from their
antiquity. They are possessed by the empty desire of being talked about, and
they know they would never succeed in this were they to say only what has been
always said. It may be that they have persuaded themselves that in all this
they are really serving God and the Church - in reality they only offend both,
less perhaps by their works themselves than by the spirit in which they write
and by the encouragement they are giving to the extravagances of the
Modernists.
REMEDIES
44. Against this host of grave errors, and its secret and open advance, Our
Predecessor Leo XIII., of happy memory, worked strenuously especially as
regards the Bible, both in his words and his acts. But, as we have seen, the
Modernists are not easily deterred by such weapons - with an affectation of
submission and respect, they proceeded to twist the words of the Pontiff to
their own sense, and his acts they described as directed against others than
themselves. And the evil has gone on increasing from day to day. We therefore,
Venerable Brethren, have determined to adopt at once the most efficacious
measures in Our power, and We beg and conjure you to see to it that in this
most grave matter nobody will ever be able to say that you have been in the
slightest degree wanting in vigilance, zeal or firmness. And what We ask of you
and expect of you, We ask and expect also of all other pastors of souls, of all
educators and professors of clerics, and in a very special way of the superiors
of religious institutions.
I. - The Study of Scholastic Philosophy
45. In the first place, with regard to studies, We will and ordain that
scholastic philosophy be made the basis of the sacred sciences. It goes without
saying that if anything is met with among the scholastic doctors which may be
regarded as an excess of subtlety, or which is altogether destitute of
probability, We have no desire whatever to propose it for the imitation of
present generations (Leo XIII. Enc. Aeterni Patris). And let it be clearly
understood above all things that the scholastic philosophy We prescribe is that
which the Angelic Doctor has bequeathed to us, and We, therefore, declare that
all the ordinances of Our Predecessor on this subject continue fully in force,
and, as far as may be necessary, We do decree anew, and confirm, and ordain
that they be by all strictly observed. In seminaries where they may have been
neglected let the Bishops impose them and require their observance, and let this
apply also to the Superiors of religious institutions. Further let Professors
remember that they cannot set St. Thomas aside, especially in metaphysical
questions, without grave detriment.
46. On this philosophical foundation the theological edifice is to be solidly
raised. Promote the study of theology, Venerable Brethren, by all means in your
power, so that your clerics on leaving the seminaries may admire and love it,
and always find their delight in it. For in the vast and varied abundance of
studies opening before the mind desirous of truth, everybody knows how the old
maxim describes theology as so far in front of all others that every science
and art should serve it and be to it as handmaidens (Leo XIII., Lett. ap. In
Magna, Dec. 10, 1889). We will add that We deem worthy of praise those who with
full respect for tradition, the Holy Fathers, and the ecclesiastical
magisterium, undertake, with well-balanced judgment and guided by Catholic
principles (which is not always the case), seek to illustrate positive theology
by throwing the light of true history upon it. Certainly more attention must be
paid to positive theology than in the past, but this must be done without
detriment to scholastic theology, and those are to be disapproved as of
Modernist tendencies who exalt positive theology in such a way as to seem to
despise the scholastic.
47. With regard to profane studies suffice it to recall here what Our
Predecessor has admirably said: Apply yourselves energetically to the study of
natural sciences: the brilliant discoveries and the bold and useful
applications of them made in our times which have won such applause by our
contemporaries will be an object of perpetual praise for those that come after
us (Leo XIII. Alloc., March 7, 1880). But this do without interfering with
sacred studies, as Our Predecessor in these most grave words prescribed: If you
carefully search for the cause of those errors you will find that it lies in
the fact that in these days when the natural sciences absorb so much study, the
more severe and lofty studies have been proportionately neglected - some of
them have almost passed into oblivion, some of them are pursued in a
half-hearted or superficial way, and, sad to say, now that they are fallen from
their old estate, they have been dis figured by perverse doctrines and
monstrous errors (loco cit.). We ordain, therefore, that the study of natural
science in the seminaries be carried on under this law.
II - Practical Application
48. All these prescriptions and those of Our Predecessor are to be borne in
mind whenever there is question of choosing directors and professors for
seminaries and Catholic Universities. Anybody who in any way is found to be
imbued with Modernism is to be excluded without compunction from these offices,
and those who already occupy them are to be withdrawn. The same policy is to be
adopted towards those who favour Modernism either by extolling the Modernists
or excusing their culpable conduct, by criticising scholasticism, the Holy
Father, or by refusing obedience to ecclesiastical authority in any of its
depositaries; and towards those who show a love of novelty in history,
archaeology, biblical exegesis, and finally towards those who neglect the
sacred sciences or appear to prefer to them the profane. In all this question
of studies, Venerable Brethren, you cannot be too watchful or too constant, but
most of all in the choice of professors, for as a rule the students are
modelled after the pattern of their masters. Strong in the consciousness of
your duty, act always prudently but vigorously.
49. Equal diligence and severity are to be used in examining and selecting
candidates for Holy Orders. Far, far from the clergy be the love of novelty!
God hates the proud and the obstinate. For the future the doctorate of theology
and canon law must never be conferred on anybody who has not made the regular
course of scholastic philosophy; if conferred it shall be held as null and
void. The rules laid down in 1896 by the Sacred Congregation of Bishops and
Regulars for the clerics, both secular and regular, of Italy concerning the
frequenting of the Universities, We now decree to be extended to all nations.
Clerics and priests inscribed in a Catholic Institute or University must not in
the future follow in civil Universities those courses for which there are
chairs in the Catholic Institutes to which they belong. If this has been
permitted anywhere in the past, We ordain that it be not allowed for the
future. Let the Bishops who form the Governing Board of such Catholic
Institutes or Universities watch with all care that these Our commands be
constantly observed.
III. - Episcopal Vigilance Over Publications
50. It is also the duty of the bishops to prevent writings infected with
Modernism or favourable to it from being read when they have been published,
and to hinder their publication when they have not. No book or paper or
periodical of this kind must ever be permitted to seminarists or university
students. The injury to them would be equal to that caused by immoral reading -
nay, it would be greater for such writings poison Christian life at its very
fount. The same decision is to be taken concerning the writings of some
Catholics, who, though not badly disposed themselves but ill-instructed in
theological studies and imbued with modern philosophy, strive to make this
harmonize with the faith, and, as they say, to turn it to the account of the
faith. The name and reputation of these authors cause them to be read without
suspicion, and they are, therefore, all the more dangerous in preparing the way
for Modernism.
51. To give you some more general directions, Venerable Brethren, in a matter
of such moment, We bid you do everything in your power to drive out of your
dioceses, even by solemn interdict, any pernicious books that may be in
circulation there. The Holy See neglects no means to put down writings of this
kind, but the number of them has now grown to such an extent that it is
impossible to censure them all. Hence it happens that the medicine sometimes
arrives too late, for the disease has taken root during the delay. We will,
therefore, that the Bishops, putting aside all fear and the prudence of the
flesh, despising the outcries of the wicked, gently by all means but
constantly, do each his own share of this work, remembering the injunctions of
Leo XIII. in the Apostolic Constitution Officiorum: Let the Ordinaries, acting
in this also as Delegates of the Apostolic See, exert themselves to prescribe
and to put out of reach of the faithful injurious books or other writings
printed or circulated in their dioceses. In this passage the Bishops, it is
true, receive a right, but they have also a duty imposed on them. Let no Bishop
think that he fulfils this duty by denouncing to us one or two books, while a
great many others of the same kind are being published and circulated. Nor are
you to be deterred by the fact that a book has obtained the Imprimatur
elsewhere, both because this may be merely simulated, and because it may have
been granted through carelessness or easiness or excessive confidence in the
author as may sometimes happen in religious Orders. Besides, just as the same
food does not agree equally with everybody, it may happen that a book harmless
in one may, on account of the different circumstances, be hurtful in another.
Should a Bishop, therefore, after having taken the advice of prudent persons,
deem it right to condemn any of such books in his diocese, We not only give him
ample faculty to do so but We impose it upon him as a duty to do so. Of course,
it is Our wish that in such action proper regard be used, and sometimes it will
suffice to restrict the prohibition to the clergy; but even in such cases it
will be obligatory on Catholic booksellers not to put on sale books condemned
by the Bishop. And while We are on this subject of booksellers, We wish the
Bishops to see to it that they do not, through desire for gain, put on sale
unsound books. It is certain that in the catalogues of some of them the books
of the Modernists are not unfrequently announced with no small praise. If they
refuse obedience let the Bishops have no hesitation in depriving them of the
title of Catholic booksellers; so too, and with more reason, if they have the
title of Episcopal booksellers, and if they have that of Pontifical, let them
be denounced to the Apostolic See. Finally, We remind all of the XXVI. article
of the abovementioned Constitution Officiorum: All those who have obtained an
apostolic faculty to read and keep forbidden books, are not thereby authorised
to read books and periodicals forbidden by the local Ordinaries, unless the
apostolic faculty expressly concedes permission to read and keep books
condemned by anybody.
IV. - Censorship
52. But it is not enough to hinder the reading and the sale of bad books - it
is also necessary to prevent them from being printed. Hence let the Bishops use
the utmost severity in granting permission to print. Under the rules of the
Constitution Officiorum, many publications require the authorisation of the
Ordinary, and in some dioceses it has been made the custom to have a suitable
number of official censors for the examination of writings. We have the highest
praise for this institution, and We not only exhort, but We order that it be
extended to all dioceses. In all episcopal Curias, therefore, let censors be
appointed for the revision of works intended for publication, and let the
censors be chosen from both ranks of the clergy - secular and regular - men of
age, knowledge and prudence who will know how to follow the golden mean in
their judgments. It shall be their office to examine everything which requires
permission for publication according to Articles XLI. and XLII. of the
above-mentioned Constitution. The Censor shall give his verdict in writing. If
it be favourable, the Bishop will give the permission for publication by the
word Imprimatur, which must always be preceded by the Nihil obstat and the name
of the Censor. In the Curia of Rome official censors shall be appointed just as
elsewhere, and the appointment of them shall appertain to the Master of the
Sacred Palaces, after they have been proposed to the Cardinal Vicar and
accepted by the Sovereign Pontiff. It will also be the office of the Master of
the Sacred Palaces to select the censor for each writing. Permission for publication
will be granted by him as well as by the Cardinal Vicar or his Vicegerent, and
this permission, as above prescribed, must always be preceded by the Nihil
obstat and the name of the Censor. Only on very rare and exceptional occasions,
and on the prudent decision of the bishop, shall it be possible to omit mention
of the Censor. The name of the Censor shall never be made known to the authors
until he shall have given a favourable decision, so that he may not have to
suffer annoyance either while he is engaged in the examination of a writing or
in case he should deny his approval. Censors shall never be chosen from the
religious orders until the opinion of the Provincial, or in Rome of the
General, has been privately obtained, and the Provincial or the General must
give a conscientious account of the character, knowledge and orthodoxy of the
candidate. We admonish religious superiors of their solemn duty never to allow
anything to be published by any of their subjects without permission from
themselves and from the Ordinary. Finally We affirm and declare that the title
of Censor has no value and can never be adduced to give credit to the private
opinions of the person who holds it.
Priests as Editors
53. Having said this much in general, We now ordain in particular a more
careful observance of Article XLII. of the above-mentioned Constitution
Officiorum. It is forbidden to secular priests, without the previous consent of
the Ordinary, to undertake the direction of papers or periodicals. This permission
shall be withdrawn from any priest who makes a wrong use of it after having
been admonished. With regard to priests who are correspondents or collaborators
of periodicals, as it happens not unfrequently that they write matter infected
with Modernism for their papers or periodicals, let the Bishops see to it that
this is not permitted to happen, and, should they fail in this duty, let the
Bishops make due provision with authority delegated by the Supreme Pontiff. Let
there be, as far as this is possible, a special Censor for newspapers and
periodicals written by Catholics. It shall be his office to read in due time
each number after it has been published, and if he find anything dangerous in
it let him order that it be corrected. The Bishop shall have the same right
even when the Censor has seen nothing objectionable in a publication.
V. - Congresses
54. We have already mentioned congresses and public gatherings as among the
means used by the Modernists to propagate and defend their opinions. In the
future Bishops shall not permit Congresses of priests except on very rare
occasions. When they do permit them it shall only be on condition that matters
appertaining to the Bishops or the Apostolic See be not treated in them, and
that no motions or postulates be allowed that would imply a usurpation of
sacred authority, and that no mention be made in them of Modernism,
presbyterianism, or laicism. At Congresses of this kind, which can only be held
after permission in writing has been obtained in due time and for each case, it
shall not be lawful for priests of other dioceses to take part without the
written permission of their Ordinary. Further no priest must lose sight of the
solemn recommendation of Leo XIII.: Let priests hold as sacred the authority of
their pastors, let them take it for certain that the sacerdotal ministry, if
not exercised under the guidance of the Bishops, can never be either holy, or
very fruitful or respectable (Lett. Encyc. Nobilissima Gallorum, 10 Feb.,
1884).
VI - Diocesan Watch Committees
55. But of what avail, Venerable Brethren, will be all Our commands and
prescriptions if they be not dutifully and firmly carried out? And, in order
that this may be done, it has seemed expedient to Us to extend to all dioceses
the regulations laid down with great wisdom many years ago by the Bishops of
Umbria for theirs.
”In order,” they say, “to extirpate the errors already propagated and to
prevent their further diffusion, and to remove those teachers of impiety
through whom the pernicious effects of such dif fusion are being perpetuated,
this sacred Assembly, following the example of St. Charles Borromeo, has
decided to establish in each of the dioceses a Council consisting of approved
members of both branches of the clergy, which shall be charged the task of
noting the existence of errors and the devices by which new ones are introduced
and propagated, and to inform the Bishop of the whole so that he may take
counsel with them as to the best means for nipping the evil in the bud and
preventing it spreading for the ruin of souls or, worse still, gaining strength
and growth” (Acts of the Congress of the Bishops of Umbria, Nov. 1849, tit 2,
art. 6). We decree, therefore, that in every diocese a council of this kind,
which We are pleased to name “the Council of Vigilance,” be instituted without
delay. The priests called to form part in it shall be chosen somewhat after the
manner above prescribed for the Censors, and they shall meet every two months
on an appointed day under the presidency of the Bishop. They shall be bound to
secrecy as to their deliberations and decisions, and their function shall be as
follows: They shall watch most carefully for every trace and sign of Modernism
both in publications and in teaching, and, to preserve from it the clergy and
the young, they shall take all prudent, prompt and efficacious measures. Let
them combat novelties of words remembering the admonitions of Leo XIII.
(Instruct. S.C. NN. EE. EE., 27 Jan., 1902): It is impossible to approve in
Catholic publications of a style inspired by unsound novelty which seems to
deride the piety of the faithful and dwells on the introduction of a new order
of Christian life, on new directions of the Church, on new aspirations of the
modern soul, on a new vocation of the clergy, on a new Christian civilisation.
Language of this kind is not to be tolerated either in books or from chairs of
learning. The Councils must not neglect the books treating of the pious
traditions of different places or of sacred relics. Let them not permit such
questions to be discussed in periodicals destined to stimulate piety, neither
with expressions savouring of mockery or contempt, nor by dogmatic
pronouncements, especially when, as is often the case, what is stated as a
certainty either does not pass the limits of probability or is merely based on
prejudiced opinion. Concerning sacred relics, let this be the rule: When
Bishops, who alone are judges in such matters, know for certain the a relic is
not genuine, let them remove it at once from the veneration of the faithful; if
the authentications of a relic happen to have been lost through civil
disturbances, or in any other way, let it not be exposed for public veneration
until the Bishop has verified it. The argument of prescription or well-founded
presumption is to have weight only when devotion to a relic is commendable by
reason of its antiquity, according to the sense of the Decree issued in 1896 by
the Congregation of Indulgences and Sacred Relics: Ancient relics are to retain
the veneration they have always enjoyed except when in individual instances
there are clear arguments that they are false or suppositions. In passing
judgment on pious traditions be it always borne in mind that in this matter the
Church uses the greatest prudence, and that she does not allow traditions of
this kind to be narrated in books except with the utmost caution and with the
insertion of the declaration imposed by Urban VIII, and even then she does not
guarantee the truth of the fact narrated; she simply does but forbid belief in
things for which human arguments are not wanting. On this matter the Sacred
Congregation of Rites, thirty years ago, decreed as follows: These apparitions
and revelations have neither been approved nor condemned by the Holy See, which
has simply allowed that they be believed on purely human faith, on the
tradition which they relate, corroborated by testimonies and documents worthy
of credence (Decree, May 2, 1877). Anybody who follows this rule has no cause
for fear. For the devotion based on any apparition, in as far as it regards the
fact itself, that is to say in as far as it is relative, always implies the
hypothesis of the truth of the fact; while in as far as it is absolute, it must
always be based on the truth, seeing that its object is the persons of the
saints who are honoured. The same is true of relics. Finally, We entrust to the
Councils of Vigilance the duty of overlooking assiduously and diligently social
institutions as well as writings on social questions so that they may harbour
no trace of Modernism, but obey the prescriptions of the Roman Pontiffs.
VII - Triennial Returns
56. Lest what We have laid down thus far should fall into oblivion, We will and
ordain that the Bishops of all dioceses, a year after the publication of these
letters and every three years thenceforward, furnish the Holy See with a
diligent and sworn report on all the prescriptions contained in them, and on
the doctrines that find currency among the clergy, and especially in the
seminaries and other Catholic institutions, and We impose the like obligation
on the Generals of Religious Orders with regard to those under them.
57. This, Venerable Brethren, is what we have thought it our duty to write to
you for the salvation of all who believe. The adversaries of the Church will
doubtless abuse what we have said to refurbish the old calumny by which we are
traduced as the enemy of science and of the progress of humanity. In order to
oppose a new answer to such accusations, which the history of the Christian
religion refutes by never failing arguments, it is Our intention to establish
and develop by every means in our power a special Institute in which, through
the co-operation of those Catholics who are most eminent for their learning,
the progress of science and other realms of knowledge may be promoted under the
guidance and teaching of Catholic truth. God grant that we may happily realise
our design with the ready assistance of all those who bear a sincere love for
the Church of Christ. But of this we will speak on another occasion.
58. Meanwhile, Venerable Brethren, fully confident in your zeal and work, we
beseech for you with our whole heart and soul the abundance of heavenly light,
so that in the midst of this great perturbation of men’s minds from the
insidious invasions of error from every side, you may see clearly what you
ought to do and may perform the task with all your strength and courage. May
Jesus Christ, the author and finisher of our faith, be with you by His power;
and may the Immaculate Virgin, the destroyer of all heresies, be with you by
her prayers and aid. And We, as a pledge of Our affection and of divine
assistance in adversity, grant most affectionately and with all Our heart to
you, your clergy and people the Apostolic Benediction.
Given at St. Peter’s, Rome, on the 8th day of September, 1907, the
fifth year of our Pontificate.
PIUS X
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