CATECHISM ON MODERNISM – PART I – THE MODERNIST AS APOLOGIST – I. PRINCIPLES AND ORIGINS

PART I
THE ERRORS OF THE MODERNISTS

CHAPTER VI

THE MODERNIST AS APOLOGIST
I. PRINCIPLES AND ORIGINS

Q. According to the Modernists, does the apologist also depend upon the philosopher, and on what grounds?

A. The Modernist apologist depends in two ways upon the philosopher. First, indirectly, inasmuch as his subject-matter is history –history dictated, as we have seen, by the philosopher; and, secondly, directly, inasmuch as he takes both his doctrines and his conclusions from the philosopher.

Q. What, consequently, do the Modernists affirm with regard to the new apologetics?

A. That common axiom of the Modernist school, that in the new apologetics controversies in religion must be determined by psychological and historical research.

Q. How do the Modernist apologists sacrifice to the rationalists the historical books in current use in the Church?

A. The Modernist apologists enter the arena proclaiming to the rationalists that, though they are defending religion, they have no intention of employing the data of the Sacred Books or the histories in current use in the Church and written upon the old lines, but real history composed on modern principles and according to the modern method.

Q. But can it be that they speak thus only as an argumentum ad hominem, and not from personal conviction?

A. In all this they assert that they are not using an argumentum ad hominem, because they are really of the opinion that the truth is to be found only in this kind of history.

Q. Do our Catholic Modernists find it necessary to reassure the rationalists as to the sincerity of their method?

A. They feel that it is not necessary for them to make profession of their own sincerity in their writings. They are already known to and praised by the rationalists as fighting under the same banner, and they plume themselves on these encomiums, which would only provoke disgust in a real Catholic.

Q. Does this praise that rationalists bestow not disgust these Modernists of ours?

A. Far from that, for they use them as a counter- compensation to the reprimands of the Church.

II. APPLICATION OF THE PRINCIPLE OF AGNOSTICISM

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