CATECHISM ON MODERNISM – PART I – THE RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY OF THE MODERNISTS – VI. EVOLUTION

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

Q. Have we considered the entire doctrine of the Modernist theologians ?

A. To conclude this whole question of faith and its various branches, we have still to consider what the Modernists have to say about the development of the one and the other.

Q. How do they pass to the principal point in their system ?

A. First of all, they lay down the general principle that in a living religion everything is subject to change, and must in fact be changed. In this way they pass to what is practically their principal doctrine, namely, evolution.

Q. According to the Modernists, what in theology is subject to evolution ?

A. To the laws of evolution everything is subject under penalty of death dogma, Church, worship, the Books we revere as Sacred, even faith itself.

Q. Is that the general principle ?

A. Yes; and the enunciation of this principle will not be a matter of surprise to anyone who bears in mind what the Modernists have had to say about each of these subjects.

Q. How do the Modernists apply the principle of evolution and put its laws into effect ? And first, with regard to faith, what was its primitive form ?

A. Having laid down this law of evolution, the Modernists themselves teach us how it operates. 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.

Q. How, according to the Modernists, did faith progress ?

A. Vital evolution brought with it progress, not by the accretion of new and purely adventitious forms from without, but by an increasing perfusion of the religious sense into the conscience.

Q. What kind of progress was there in faith ?

A. The progress was of two kinds : negative, by the elimination of all extraneous elements, such, for example, as those derived from the family or nationality; and positive, by that intellectual and moral refining of man, by means of which the idea of the divine became fuller and clearer, while the religious sense became more acute.

VII. CAUSES OF EVOLUTION: CONSERVATIVE AND PROGRESSIVE FORCES IN THE CHURCH

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