PART I
THE ERRORS OF THE MODERNISTS
CHAPTER II
THE MODERNIST AS BELIEVER
I. RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
II. TRADITION
III. RELATION BETWEEN FAITH AND SCIENCE
Q. Can we now have some idea, of the relations which the Modernists establish between faith and science, including, under this latter term, history?
A. ‘We have proceeded sufficiently far to have before us enough, and more than enough, to enable us to see what are the relations which Modernists establish between faith and science including, as they are wont to do, under that name, history.’
Q. What difference do they make between the object of the one and of the other?
A. In the first place it is to be held that the object-matter of the one is quite extraneous to and separate from the object-matter of the other. For faith occupies itself solely with something which science declares to be for it unknowable. Hence each has a separate scope assigned to it: science is entirely
concerned with phenomena, into which faith does not at all enter; faith, on the contrary, concerns itself with the divine, which is entirely unknown to science.
Q. Then, according to them, no conflict is possible between faith and science?
A. ‘It is contended that there can never be any dissension between faith and science, for if each keeps on its own ground they can never meet, and therefore never can be in contradiction.’
Q. 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?
A. ‘The Modernists reply by denying this.’
Q. How can they deny it?
A. ‘They say: Though such things come within the category of phenomena, still, in as far as they are lived by faith, and in the way already described have been by faith transfigured and disfigured, they have been removed from the world of sense and transferred into material for the divine.
Q. 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, what do they answer?
A. The answer of agnostic science will be in the negative. The answer of faith in the affirmative.
Q. But is not that a flagrant contradiction between science and faith?
A. ‘There will not be, on that account, any conflict between them. For it will be denied by the philosopher as a philosopher speaking to philosophers and
considering Christ only in His historical reality; and it will be affirmed by the believer as a believer speaking to believers and considering the life of Christ as lived again by the faith and in the faith.’
Q. Faith and science acting thus in entirely separate fields, will there be, according to the Modernists, no subordination of the one to the other?
A. ‘It would be a great mistake to suppose that, according to these theories, one is allowed to believe that faith and science are entirely independent of each
other. On the side of science that is indeed quite true and correct, but it is quite otherwise with regard to faith, which is subject to science.’
Q. Faith subject to science! But on what ground?
A. ‘Not on one, but on three grounds.”
Q. According to the Modernists, what is the first ground?
A. ‘In the first place it must be observed that in every religious fact, when one takes away the divine reality and the experience of it which the believer
possesses, everything else, and especially the religious formulas, belongs to the sphere of phenomena, and therefore falls under the control of science. Let the believer go out of the world if he will, but so long as he remains in it, whether he like it or not, he cannot escape from the laws, the observation, the judgments of science and of history.’
Q. What is the second ground of the subordination of faith to science?
A. ‘Further, although it is contended that God is the object of faith alone, the statement refers only to the divine reality, not to the idea of God. The latter also is subject to science, which, while it philosophizes in what is called the logical order, soars also to the absolute and the ideal. It is, therefore, the right of
philosophy and of science to form its knowledge concerning the idea of God, to direct it in its evolution, and to purify it of any extraneous elements which may have entered into it. Hence we have the Modernist axiom that the religious evolution ought to be brought into accord with the moral and intellectual, or, as one whom they regard as their leader has expressed it, ought to be subject to it.’
Q. What is the third ground?
A. ‘Finally, man does not suffer a dualism to exist in himself, and the believer therefore feels within him an impelling need so to harmonize faith with science,
that it may never oppose the general conception which science sets forth concerning the universe.’
Q. Than, according to the Modernist doctrine, faith is in bondage to science?
A. Yes. ‘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.’
Q. How did Pius IX. and Gregory IX. stigmatize such doctrines ?
A. ‘All this is in formal opposition to the teaching of Our Predecessor, Pius IX., where he lays it down that : ” In matters of religion it is the duty of philosophy not to command, but to serve ; not to prescribe what is to be believed, but to embrace what is to be believed with reasonable obedience ; not to scrutinize the depths of the mysteries of God, but to venerate them devoutly and humbly.”*
The Modernists completely invert the parts; and to them may be applied the words which another of Our Predecessors, Gregory IX., addressed to some
theologians of his time: ” Some among you, puffed up like bladders with the spirit of vanity, strive by profane novelties to cross the boundaries fixed by the Fathers, twisting the meaning of the Sacred Text . . . to the philosophical teaching of the rationalists, not for the profit of their hearer, but to make a show of science. . . . These men, led away by various and strange doctrines, turn the head into the tail, and force the queen to serve the handmaid.”**
* Brief to the Bishop of Wratislau, June 15, 1857.
** Ep. ad Magistros theol. Paris, non. Jul., 1223.