PART I
THE ERRORS OF THE MODERNISTS
CHAPTER IV
THE RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY OF THE MODERNISTS
(Continued) BRANCHES OF THE FAITH
I. DOGMA
II. WORSHIP
III. SACRED SCRIPTURE INSPIRATION
IV. THE CHURCH: HER ORIGIN, HER NATURE, AND HER RIGHTS
V. CHURCH AND STATE
VI. EVOLUTION
VII. CAUSES OF EVOLUTION: CONSERVATIVE AND PROGRESSIVE FORCES IN THE CHURCH
VIII. PRACTICAL CONSEQUENCES
IX. CONDEMNATIONS
Q. What conclusion must we come to with regard to Modernist teaching ?
A. That for the Modernists, whether as authors or propagandists, there is to be nothing stable, nothing immutable, in the Church.
Q. Have they had any forerunners ?
A. Nor, indeed, are they without forerunners in their doctrines ; for it was of these that Our Predecessor, Pius IX., wrote : ” These enemies of divine revelation extol human progress to the skies, and with rash and sacrilegious daring would have it introduced into the Catholic religion, as if this religion were not the work of God but of man, or some kind of philosophical discovery susceptible of perfection by human efforts.”
Q. Do the Modernists offer us, on the subject of revelation and dogma, a really new doctrine ? Has it not already been condemned ?
A. 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 faith fully guarded and infallibly interpreted. Hence also that sense of the sacred dogmas is to be perpetually retained which our Holy Mother the Church has once declared ; nor is this sense ever to be abandoned on plea or pretext of a more profound comprehension of the truth.” ***
Q. Does the Church, deciding this, intend to oppose the development of our knowledge, even concerning the faith ?
A. Nor is the development of our knowledge, even concerning the faith, barred by this pronouncement ; on the contrary, it is supported and maintained. For the same Council continues : ” Let intelligence and science and wisdom, therefore, increase and progress abundantly and vigorously in individuals and in the mass, in the believer and in the whole Church, through out the ages and the centuries but only in its own kind, that is, according to the same dogma, the same sense, the same acceptation.” ****
* Eccycl. Qui Plurilus, Novtrubci 9, 1846. I ** Syll. Prop. 5, I *** Const., Dei Filius, cap. iv. I **** Loc. cit.