PART I
THE ERRORS OF THE MODERNISTS
CHAPTER IV
THE RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY OF THE MODERNISTS
(Continued) BRANCHES OF THE FAITH
I. DOGMA
Q. Thus far We have touched upon the origin and nature of faith. But as faith has many branches, and chief among them the Church, dogma, worship, devotions, and the books which we call ” sacred,” it concerns us to know what do the Modernists teach concerning them ?
A. ‘To begin with dogma (We have already indicated its origin and nature), according to them, dogma is born of a sort of impulse or necessity by virtue of which the believer elaborates his thought so as to render it clearer to his own conscience* – and that of others.’
Q. In what does this elaboration consist?
A. ‘This elaboration consists entirely in the process of investigating and refining the primitive mental formula.’
Q. Is this elaboration a matter of reasoning and logic?
A. No, they reply; ‘not indeed in itself and according to any logical explanation, but according to circumstances, or vitally, as the Modernists somewhat less
intelligibly describe it.’
Q. ‘What is it that this elaboration produces, according to the Modernist theologians?’
A. ‘Around this primitive formula secondary formulas, as We have already indicated, gradually come to be formed, and these subsequently grouped
into one body, or one doctrinal construction, and further sanctioned by the public magisterium as responding to the common consciousness, are called dogma.’
Q. Do the Modernists distinguish dogma from theological speculations?
A. ‘Dogma is to be carefully distinguished from the speculations of theologians.’
Q. Of what use are these theological speculation?
A. ‘Although not alive with the life of dogma,’ these ‘are not without their utility as serving both to harmonize religion with science and to remove opposition between them, and to illumine and defend religion from without, and it may be even to prepare the matter for future dogma.’
*The Latin word conscientia denotes all kinds of consciousness, including that which is concerned with conduct, and is called conscience. Here, perhaps, the word had better be rendered consciousness. J. F.