PART I
THE ERRORS OF THE MODERNISTS
CHAPTER I
THE RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY OF THE MODERNISTS
I. AGNOSTICISM
II. VITAL IMMANENCE
III. ORIGIN OF RELIGION IN GENERAL
IV. NOTION OF REVELATION
V. TRANSFIGURATION AND DISFIGURATION OF PHENOMENA THROUGH FAITH
VI. ORIGIN OF PARTICULAR RELIGIONS
Q. Is the religious sense, then, according to the Modernists, the real germ, and the entire explanation, of all religion?
A. ‘The religious sense, which through the agency of vital immanence emerges from the lurking-places of the subconsciousness, is the germ of all religion, and the explanation of everything that has been or ever will be in any religion.’
Q. How does this religious sense develop?
A. ‘This sense, which was at first only rudimentary and almost formless, under the influence of that mysterious principle from which it originated, gradually matured with the progress of human life, of which, as has been said, it is a certain form.’
Q. Do all religions, then, according to the Modernists, come from this?
A. ‘This is the origin of all.’
Q. Even of supernatural religion?
A. ‘Even of supernatural religion. For religions are mere developments of this religious sense?’
Q. But do they not make an exception for the Catholic religion?
A. ‘Nor is the Catholic religion an exception: it is quite on a level with the rest.’
Q. What consciousness, then, served as cradle for the Catholic religion?
A. ‘The consciousness of Christ,’ they say, ‘who was a Man of the choicest nature, whose like has never been, nor will be.’
Q. And from what principle do they dare to pretend it was engendered in the consciousness of Christ?
A. ‘It was engendered by the process of vital immanence, and by no other way.’
Q. Is it not a great audacity to say so, and a great blasphemy?
A. ‘In hearing these things, we shudder indeed at so great an audacity of assertion and so great a sacrilege.’
Q. But, Holy Father, surely it is only unbelievers who maintain such doctrines?
A. The Pope Badly replies: ‘These are not merely the foolish babblings of unbelievers. There are Catholics, yea, and priests too, who say these things
openly.’
Q. But what do these, Catholics, these priests, mean by all this?
A. ‘They boast that they are going to reform the Church by these ravings.’
Q. Does not this Modernism seem to be the ancient error of Pelagius?
A. ‘The question is no longer one of the old error which claimed for human nature a sort of right to the supernatural. It has gone far beyond that.’
Q. In what way?
A. ‘It has reached the point when it is affirmed that our most holy religion, in the man Christ as in us, emanated from nature spontaneously and of itself. Nothing assuredly could be more utterly destructive of the whole supernatural order.’
Q. What is, on these points, the doctrine of the Vatican Council?
A. ‘For this reason the Vatican Council most justly decreed: ” If anyone says that man cannot be raised by God to a knowledge and perfection which surpasses nature, but that he can and should, by his own efforts and by a constant development, attain finally to the possession of all truth and good, let him be anathema.”*
* De Bevel., can. 3.