PART I
THE ERRORS OF THE MODERNISTS
CHAPTER VIII
CRITICISM OF THE MODERNIST SYSTEM THE RENDEZVOUS OF ALL THE HERESIES THE WAY TO ATHEISM
Q. Why have we set forth at such, length the Modernist doctrines?
A. It may, perhaps, seem to some that We have dwelt at too great length on this exposition of the doctrines of the Modernists, but it was necessary that We should do so.
Q. Why was so long an exposition necessary?
A. In order to meet their customary charge that We do not understand their ideas.
Q. And for what further motive?
A. To show that their system does not consist in scattered and unconnected theories, but, as it were, in a closely connected whole, so that it is not possible to admit one without admitting all.
Q. Do these two reasons not explain why we have given a didactic turn to our exposition of Modernism?
A. For this reason, too, We have had to give to this exposition a somewhat didactic form, and not to shrink from employing certain unwonted terms which the Modernists have brought into use.
Q. How can one, in one word, define Modernism?
A. Now, with Our eyes fixed upon the whole system, no one will be surprised that We should define it to be the synthesis* of all the heresies.
Q. Why do you define Modernism to be the rendezvous of all the heresies?
A. Undoubtedly, were anyone to attempt the task of collecting together all the errors that have been broached against the Faith, and to concentrate into one the sap and substance of them all, he could not succeed in doing so better than the Modernists have done.
Q. Is it enough to affirm that, by their multiplied errors, the Modernists would destroy the Catholic religion?
A. Nay, they have gone farther than this, for, as We have already intimated, their system means the destruction not of the Catholic religion alone, but of all religion.
Q. Must not the, rationalists, then, smile upon the Modernists?
A. The rationalists are not wanting in their applause, and the most frank and sincere amongst them congratulate themselves on having found in the Modernists the most valuable of all allies.
Q. How can you show us that the Modernists are the most powerful auxiliaries of the rationalists?
A. To do so, let us turn for a moment to that most disastrous doctrine of agnosticism.
Q. Having, by agnosticism, barred every avenue leading to God, how do the Modernists claim to approach Him?
A. By it every avenue to God on the side of the intellect is barred to man, while a better way is supposed to be opened from the side of a certain sense of the soul and action.
Q. Has such a contention any chance of succeeding?
A. Who does not see how mistaken is such a contention?
Q. Why?
A. For the sense of the soul is the response to the action of the thing which the intellect or the outward senses set before it.
Q. Since, in order to draw near to God, sentiment is led either by the intelligence or by the senses, what will inevitably follow if the Modernists take away the guidance of the intelligence?
A. Take away the intelligence, and man, already inclined to follow the senses, becomes their slave.
Q. Is not this attempt to approach God by agnostic sentiment idle also from another point of view?
A. It is doubly mistaken, from another point of view, for all these fantasies of the religious sense will never be able to destroy common sense, and common sense tells us that emotion and everything that leads the heart captive proves a hindrance instead of a help to the discovery of truth.
Q. Of what truth do you speak when you say that the emotions of the soul hinder the discovery of truth?
A. We speak of truth in itself.
Q. Is there not a simulacrum of truth, the discovery of which is facilitated by the emotions, and what is to be thought of it?
A. That other purely subjective truth, the fruit of the internal sense and action, if it serves its purpose for the play of words, is of no benefit to the man who wants above all things to know whether outside himself there is a God into whose hands he is one day to fall.
Q. With agnosticism for its starting-point, religious sentiment has no basis. Now, to what have the Modernists recourse to find it a basis?
A. The Modernists call in experience, to eke out their system.
Q. But what does this experience add to that sense of the soul?
A. Absolutely nothing beyond a certain intensity and a proportionate deepening of the conviction of the reality of the object. But these two will never make the sense of the soul into anything but sense, nor will they alter its nature, which is liable to deception when the intelligence is not there to guide it ; on the contrary, they but confirm and strengthen this nature, for the more intense the sense is, the more it is really sense.
Q. Is there not great need of prudence and of learning in this matter of religious sense and experience?
A. As we are here dealing with religious sense and the experience involved in it, it is known to you how necessary in such a matter is prudence, and the learning by which prudence is guided. You know it from your own dealings with souls, and especially with souls in whom sentiment predominates; you know it also from your reading of works of ascetical theology.
Q. But are these ascetical works good guides in such matters?
A. Yes; they are works for which the Modernists have but little esteem, but which testify to a science and a solidity far greater than theirs, and to a refinement and subtlety of observation far beyond any which the Modernists take credit to themselves for possessing.
Q. Have you, then, but a very poor opinion of the religious experiences of the Modernists?
A. It seems to Us nothing short of madness, or, at the least, consummate temerity, to accept for true, and without investigation, these incomplete experiences which are the vaunt of the Modernist.
Q. How can we frame an argumentum ad hominem against the Modernists, and turn against themselves the proof they claim to find in religious experience?
A. Let us for a moment put the question: If experiences have so much force and value in their estimation, why do they not attach equal weight to the experience that so many thousands of Catholics have that the Modernists are on the wrong path? Is it that the Catholic experiences are the only ones which are false and deceptive?
Q. Taking up again the thread of our argument, we ask, what does the majority of men think of this sense and this experience?
A. The vast majority of mankind holds and always will hold firmly that sense and experience alone, when not enlightened and guided by reason, cannot reach to the knowledge of God.
Q. What, then, remains?
A. Atheism and the absence of all religion.
Q. If the Modernists teaching on religious experience leads to Atheism, do they not find in their doctrine of symbolism something to avert that danger?
A. Certainly it is not the doctrine of symbolism that will save us from this. For if all the intellectual elements, as they call them, of religion are nothing more than mere symbols of God, will not the very name of God or of Divine personality be also a symbol, and if this be admitted, the personality of God will become a matter of doubt, and the gate will be opened to Pantheism.
Q. Is the Modernist doctrine of symbolism the only doctrine of theirs that leads to Pantheism?
A. To Pantheism pure and simple that other doctrine of the divine immanence leads directly.
Q. Can you show by some irrefutable argument how this consequence follows?
A. This is the question which We ask: Does or does not this immanence leave God distinct from man? If it does, in what does it differ from the Catholic doctrine, and why does it reject the doctrine of external revelation? If it does not, it is Pantheism. Now, the doctrine of immanence in the Modernist acceptation holds and professes that every phenomenon of conscience proceeds from man as man. The rigorous conclusion from this is the identity of man with God, which means Pantheism.
Q. Does this pantheistic conclusion follow from any other of the Modernist doctrines?
A. The distinction which Modernists make between science and faith leads to the same conclusion.
Q. Will you prove this to us by rigorous reasoning?
A. The object of science, they say, is the reality of the knowable; the object of faith, on the contrary, is the reality of the unknowable. Now, what makes the unknowable unknowable is the fact that there is no proportion between its object and the intellect a defect of proportion which nothing whatever, even in the doctrine of the Modernist, can suppress. Hence the unknowable remains, and will eternally remain, unknowable to the believer as well as to the philosopher. Therefore, if any religion at all is possible, it can only be the religion of an unknowable reality. And why this religion might not be that soul of the universe, of which certain rationalists speak, is something which certainly does not seem to Us apparent.
Q. What ultimate conclusion have we the right to come to?
A. These reasons suffice to show superabundantly by how many roads Modernism leads to Atheism and to the annihilation of all religion.
Q. What are the stages in this descent of the human mind towards the negation of all religion?
A. The error of Protestantism made the first step on this path ; that of Modernism makes the second ; Atheism will make the next.
* The Latin word is conlectus, and the translation were better, perhaps, as in the French, rendezvous. There is, indeed, a synthesis, but it is the Pope rather than the Modernists who makes it. J. F.