CATECHISM ON MODERNISM – PART I – THE MODERNIST AS HISTORIAN AND AS CRITIC – IV. TEXTUAL CRITICISM

PART I
THE ERRORS OF THE MODERNISTS

CHAPTER V

THE MODERNIST AS HISTORIAN AND AS CRITIC
I. APPLICATION OF THE PRINCIPLE OF AGNOSTICISM
II. APPLICATION OF THE PRINCIPLE OF VITAL IMMANENCE
III. APPLICATION OF THE PRINCIPLE OF EVOLUTION
IV. TEXTUAL CRITICISM

Q. If the Modernist historian arbitrarily distributes the documents throughout the centuries according to the pretended law of evolution, what follows with regard to the Sacred Scriptures ?

A. The result of this dismembering of the records, and this partition of them throughout the centuries, is naturally that the Scriptures can no longer be attributed to the authors whose names they bear.

Q. Do our Modernist historians, seeing this consequence, not draw back ?

A. The Modernists have no hesitation in affirming generally that these books, and especially the Pentateuch and the first three Gospels, have been gradually formed from a primitive brief narration, by additions, by interpolations of theological or allegorical interpretations, or parts introduced only for the purpose of joining different passages together.

Q. By what right, in order to explain the formation of our Sacred Scriptures, have they recourse to the hypothesis of successive additions made to a very brief primitive redaction ?

A. This means, to put it briefly and clearly, that in the Sacred Books we must admit a vital evolution, springing from and corresponding with the evolution of Faith.

Q. But where do they find any trace of this pretended vital evolution ?

A. The traces of this evolution, they tell us, are so visible in the books that one might almost write a history of it.

Q. Have they tried to write this history of the vital evolution which, according to them, has governed the successive additions made to the Sacred Scriptures ?

A. Indeed, this history they actually do write, and with such an easy assurance that one might believe them to have seen with their own eyes the writers at work through the ages amplifying the Sacred Books.

Q. To what means have they recourse to confirm this story of the formation of the Sacred Text ?

A. To aid them in this they call to their assistance that branch of criticism which they call textual, and labour to show that such a fact or such a phrase is not in its right place, adducing other arguments of the same kind.

Q. What is to be thought of the assurance with which our Modernists proceed in explaining the formation of Holy Writ ?

A. They seem, in fact, to have constructed for themselves certain types of narration and discourses, upon which they base their assured verdict as to whether a thing is or is not out of place.

Q. Do they push their ingenuousness and overweening conceit to the point of themselves informing us how far they are qualified in this way to make such distinctions ?

A. To hear them descant of their works on the Sacred Books, in which they have been able to discover so much that is defective, one would imagine that before them nobody ever even turned over the pages of Scripture. The truth is that a whole multitude of Doctors, far superior to them in genius, in erudition, in sanctity, have sifted the Sacred Books in every way.

Q. Was the treatment of the Holy Scriptures by the Doctors of old, who were infinitely superior to our Modernists, very different from theirs ?

A. Yes. These Doctors, so far from finding in them anything blameworthy, have thanked God more and more heartily the more deeply they have gone into them, for His divine bounty in having vouchsafed to speak thus to men.

Q. How do the Modernists explain to themselves (ironically] the respect of the Doctors of old for the Sacred Scriptures ?

A. Unfortunately, these great Doctors did not enjoy the same aids to study that are possessed by the Modernists.

Q. What are, in short, these aids to study which the Doctors of old did not possess, but which the Modernists do enjoy ?

A. They did not have for their rule and guide a philosophy borrowed from the negation of God, and a criterion which consists of themselves.

 

V. CONCLUSION

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