CATECHISM ON MODERNISM – PART I – THE MODERNIST AS APOLOGIST – III. APPLICATION OF APOLOGETIC PRINCIPLES

PART I
THE ERRORS OF THE MODERNISTS

CHAPTER VI

THE MODERNIST AS APOLOGIST
I. PRINCIPLES AND ORIGINS
II. APPLICATION OF THE PRINCIPLE OF AGNOSTICISM
III. APPLICATION OF APOLOGETIC PRINCIPLES

Q. In the facts they allege to prove the Catholic religion, do Modernist apologists meet only with things that are deserving of admiration?

A. While they endeavour by this line of reasoning to prove and plead for the Catholic religion, these new apologists are more than willing to grant and to recognize that there are in it many things which are repulsive.

Q. Is dogma at least, in their minds, free from reproach?

A. Nay, they admit openly, and with ill-concealed satisfaction, that they have found that even its dogma is not exempt from errors and contradictions.

Q. You say that they claim to have discovered in dogma errors and contradictions, and that they proclaim this with pleasure. But do they at least indignantly repudiate such errors?

A. Far from that, they add that this is not only excusable, but, curiously enough, that it is even right and proper.

Q. Do our Modernists discover any errors in our Sacred Books?

A. In the Sacred Books there are many passages referring to science or history where, according to them, manifest errors are to be found.

Q. Having found that in the Bible there are errors in science and in history, how do they seek to excuse Holy Writ?

A. They say: the subject of these books is not science or history, but only religion and morals. In them history and science serve only as a species of covering, to enable the religious and moral experiences wrapped up in them to penetrate more readily among the masses. The masses understood science and history as they are expressed in these books, and it is clear that the expression of science and history in a more perfect form would have proved not so much a help as a hindrance.

Q. What other excuse do they allege to justify the errors which they claim to discover in Holy Writ?

A. Moreover, they add, the Sacred Books, being essentially religious, are necessarily quick with life. Now life has its own truth and its own logic, quite different from rational truth and rational logic, belonging, as they do, to a different order–viz., truth of adaptation and of proportion, both with what they call the medium in which it lives and with the end for which it lives.

Q. But is not that as much as to say that errors become true and legitimate whenever they satisfy the necessities of vital adaptation?

A. Finally, the Modernists, losing all sense of control, go so far as to proclaim as true and legitimate whatever is explained by life.

Q. Can we admit such a legitimation of error in Holy Writ?

A. We, Venerable Brethren, for whom there is but one only truth, and who hold that the Sacred Books, written under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, have
God for their Author,* declare that this is equivalent to attributing to God Himself the lie of utility or officious lie; and we say with St. Augustine : ” In an authority so high, admit but one officious lie, and there will not remain a single passage of those apparently difficult to practice or to believe, which on the same pernicious rule may not be explained as a lie uttered by the author willfully and to serve a purpose.”** And thus it will come about, the holy Doctor continues, that “everybody will believe and refuse to believe what he likes or dislikes in them ” –namely, the Scriptures.’

Q. Do our Modernist apologists allow, themselves to be stopped by these condemnations of the Church?

A. No! The Modernists pursue their way eagerly.

Q. What other enormity do they advance with regard to the Sacred Scriptures?

A. They grant also that certain arguments adduced in the Sacred Books in proof of a given doctrine, like those, for example, which are based on the prophecies, have no rational foundation to rest on.

Q. Do they still essay some justification of such errors?

A. They defend even these as artifices of preaching which are justified by life.

Q. More than that?

A. They are ready to admit, nay, to proclaim, that Christ Himself manifestly erred in determining the time when the coming of the kingdom of God was to take place.

Q. They dare to say that Christ made a mistake! But is not that the height of impudence?

A. No! they answer; and they tell us that we must not be surprised at this, since even He Himself was subject to the laws of life.

Q. There we have Our Lord Jesus Christ convicted of error. After this, what is to become of the dogmas of the Church?

A. They say, the dogmas bristle with glaring contradictions.

Q. How do our Modernists claim to justify in dogma these flagrant contradictions?

A. But what does it matter, they say, since, apart from the fact that vital logic accepts them, they are not repugnant to symbolical truth. Are we not dealing with the Infinite, and has not the Infinite an infinite variety of aspects?

Q. But are the Modernists not ashamed so to justify contradictions?

A. On the contrary; to maintain and defend these theories they do not hesitate to declare that the noblest homage that can be paid to the Infinite is to make it the object of contradictory statements.

Q. What must we think of such excesses?

A. When they justify even contradictions, what is it that they will refuse to justify?

* Cone. Vat., De Bevel, can. 2.

** Epist. 28

IV. APPLICATION OF THE PRINCIPLE OF IMMANENCE

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