PART II
THE CAUSES OF MODERNISM

Q. The better to understand what Modernism is, and to find the fitting remedies for it, what must now be done?

A. To penetrate still deeper into the meaning of Modernism and to find a suitable remedy for so deep a sore, it behoves Us to investigate the causes which have engendered it, and which foster its growth.

CHAPTER I

I. MORAL CAUSES : CURIOSITY AND PRIDE

Q. What is the proximate and immediate cause of Modernism?

A. That the proximate and immediate cause consists in an error of the mind cannot be open to doubt.

Q. Whence, in its turn, comes this perversity of mind which is the proximate cause of Modernism, or, in other words, what are the remote causes of Modernism?

A. We recognize that the remote causes may be reduced to two curiosity and pride.

Q. Is curiosity really a cause of error?

A. Curiosity by itself, if not prudently regulated, suffices to account for all errors. Such is the opinion of Our Predecessor, Gregory XVI., who wrote: “A lamentable spectacle is that presented by the aberrations of human reason when it yields to the spirit of novelty, when against the warning of the Apostle it seeks to know beyond what it is meant to know, and when, relying too much on itself, it thinks it can find the truth outside the Catholic Church, wherein truth is found without the slightest shadow of error.”  (Ep. Encycl. Singulari nos, 1 Kal. Jul., 1834.)

Q. What evil is it that, even more than curiosity, Hinds the mind and precipitates into error?

A. It is pride which exercises an incomparably greater sway over the soul to blind it and lead it into error.

Q. Has pride really entered into the doctrines of the Modernists?

A. Pride sits in Modernism as in its own house, finding sustenance everywhere in its doctrines and lurking in its every aspect.

Q. Can you describe to us the different aspects of Modernism which betray its pride?

A. It is pride which fills Modernists with that self-assurance by which they consider themselves and pose as the rule for all. It is pride which puffs them up with that vainglory which allows them to regard themselves as the sole possessors of knowledge, and makes them say, elated and inflated with presumption, ” We are not as the rest of men,” and which, lest they should seem as other men, leads them to embrace and to devise novelties even of the most absurd kind. It is pride which arouses in them the spirit of disobedience, and causes them to demand a compromise between authority and liberty. It is owing to their pride that they seek to be the reformers of others while they forget to reform themselves, and that they are found to be utterly wanting in respect for authority, even for the supreme authority.

Q. Is there, then, no truer cause of Modernism than pride?

A. Truly there is no road which leads so directly and so quickly to Modernism as pride.

Q. Would a Catholic priest or layman, if overcome by pride, be inevitably a subject for Modernism?

A. When a Catholic layman or a priest forgets the precept of the Christian life which obliges us to renounce ourselves if we would follow Christ, and neglects to tear pride from his heart, then it is he who most of all is a fully ripe subject for the errors of Modernism.

Q. What duty is, therefore, incumbent on Bishops with regard to these priests full of pride?

A. For this reason, Venerable Brethren, it will be your first duty to resist such victims of pride, to employ them only in the lowest and obscurest offices. The higher they try to rise, the lower let them be placed, so that the lowliness of their position may limit their power of causing damage.

Q. Is it not also the duty of directors of seminaries to keep those seminarists from becoming priests who are infected with the spirit of pride?

A. Examine most carefully your young clerics by yourselves and by the directors of your seminaries, and when you find the spirit of pride amongst them, reject them without compunction from the priesthood.

Q. Up to the, present has this duty of keeping those infected with the spirit of pride from becoming priests been faithfully enough fulfilled?

A. Would to God that this had always been done with the vigilance and constancy which were required!

II. INTELLECTUAL CAUSES

BACK TO CONTENTS

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.

PART II – THE CAUSES OF MODERNISM

BACK TO CONTENTS

PART I
THE ERRORS OF THE MODERNISTS

CHAPTER VII

THE MODERNIST AS REFORMER

Q. What remains to be said in order fully to describe the Modernist?

A. It remains for Us now to say a few words about the Modernist as reformer.

Q. Cannot we already discover in the Modernists a marked mania for reform?

A. From all that has preceded, it is abundantly clear how great and how eager is the passion of such men for innovation.

Q. Does this mania for reform extend to many matters?

A. In all Catholicism there is absolutely nothing on which it does not fasten.

Q. What is the first reform the Modernists demand?

A. They wish philosophy to be reformed, especially in the ecclesiastical seminaries.

Q. What kind of reform in philosophy do they desire, especially in seminaries?

A. They wish the scholastic philosophy to be relegated to the history of philosophy and to be classed among obsolete systems, and the young men to be taught modern philosophy.

Q. Why do they wish that modern philosophy should be taught in seminaries?

A. Because they consider it alone is true and suited to the times in which we live.

Q. After this reform of philosophy, what other do they call for?

A. They desire the reform of theology.

Q. What kind of reform do they desire in theology?

A. Rational theology is to have modern philosophy for its foundation, and positive theology is to be founded on the history of dogma.

Q. And as for history, what reform do they demand?

A. As for history, it must be written and taught only according to their methods and modern principles.

Q. What reform in dogma do they want?

A. Dogmas and their evolution, they affirm, are to be harmonized with science and history.

Q. How is the Catechism to be reformed?

A. In the Catechism no dogmas are to be inserted except those that have been reformed and are within the capacity of the people.

Q. And what reform is to be effected in worship?

A. Regarding worship, they say, the number of external devotions is to be reduced, and steps must be taken to prevent their further increase.

Q. Are not certain Modernists more indulgent with regard to ceremonies?

A. Some of the admirers of symbolism are disposed to be more indulgent on this head.

Q. What more serious reforms do the Modernists call for in the government of the Church?

A. They cry out that ecclesiastical government requires to be reformed in all its branches, but especially in its disciplinary and dogmatic departments. They insist that both outwardly and inwardly it must be brought into harmony with the modern conscience, which now wholly tends towards democracy. A share in ecclesiastical government should, therefore, be given to the lower ranks of the clergy, and even to the laity, and authority, which is too much concentrated, should be decentralized.

Q. What further reform do they ask for?

A. The Roman Congregations, and especially the Index and the Holy Office, must be likewise modified.

Q. What reform do they demand in the exercise of ecclesiastical authority in the social and political world?

A. The ecclesiastical authority must alter its line of conduct in the social and political world; while keeping outside political organizations, it must adapt itself to them, in order to penetrate them with its spirit.

Q. And in morals?

A. With regard to morals, they adopt the principle of the Americanists –that the active virtues are more important than the passive, and are to be more encouraged in practice.

Q. What do they ask of the clergy?

A. They ask that the clergy should return to their primitive humility and poverty, and that in their ideas and action they should admit the principles of Modernism.

Q. If they desire to see so many virtues in the clergy, they exalt ecclesiastical celibacy, do they not?

A. There are some who, gladly listening to the teaching of their Protestant masters, would desire the suppression of the celibacy of the clergy.

Q. Seeing that all these reforms are demanded by the Modernists, what question rises naturally to one’s lips?

A. What is there left in the Church which is not to be reformed by them and according to their principles?

 

CRITICISM OF THE MODERNIST SYSTEM THE RENDEZVOUS OF ALL THE HERESIES THE WAY TO ATHEISM

BACK TO CONTENTS

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
IV. APPLICATION OF THE PRINCIPLE OF IMMANENCE

Q. We have just seen in what objective way Modernists hope to dispose the non-believer to faith; but is there not also another way, and do they not bring forward other arguments?

A. It is not solely by objective arguments that the non-believer may be disposed to faith. There are also those that are subjective?

Q. On what philosophical doctrine do the Modernists build up these subjective arguments?

A. For this purpose the Modernist apologists return to the doctrine of immanence. They endeavor, in fact, to persuade their non-believer that down in the very depths of his nature and his life lie hidden the need and the desire for some religion.

Q. Is it just of any religion at all that they believe they find in us the desire and the need?

A. Not a religion of any kind but the specific religion known as Catholicism.

Q. How, with the doctrine of immanence, do they claim to discover in us the need and the desire of a super natural religion like the Catholic religion?

A. This it is which, they say, is absolutely postulated by the perfect development of life.

Q. And here, in union with you, Holy Father, what must we deplore?

A. Here again We have grave reason to complain that there are Catholics who, while rejecting immanence as a doctrine, employ it as a method of apologetics.

Q. Do not these Catholic apologists attenuate the method of immanence, and do they desire to find anything else in man than a certain harmony with the supernatural order?

A. They employ the method of immanence so imprudently that they seem to admit, not merely a capacity and a suitability for the supernatural, such as has at all times been emphasized, within due limits, by Catholic apologists, but that there is in human nature a true and rigorous need for the supernatural order.

Q. Are these apologists Modernists in the fullest sense of the word?

A. Truth to tell, it is only the moderate Modernists who make this appeal to an exigency for the Catholic religion.

Q. The moderate ones! What more, then, can the others say?

A. As for the others, who might be called integralists, they would show to the non-believer, as hidden in his being, the very germ which Christ Himself had in His consciousness, and which He transmitted to mankind.

Q. If such is a summary description of the apologetic method of the Modernists, what is to be thought of it?

A. That it is  in perfect harmony with their doctrines.

Q. How may their doctrines be described?

A. Methods and doctrines replete with errors, made not for edification but for destruction, not for the making of Catholics but for the seduction of those who are Catholics into heresy; and tending to the utter subversion of all religion.

CHAPTER VII
THE MODERNIST AS REFORMER

 

BACK TO CONTENTS

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

BACK TO CONTENTS

PART I
THE ERRORS OF THE MODERNISTS

CHAPTER VI

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

Q. Let us see how the Modernist conducts his apologetics. What does he propose to do?

A. The aim he sets before himself is to make one. who is still without faith attain that experience of the Catholic religion.

Q. Why is he so anxious to produce this experience in the non-believer?

A. Because this, ‘according to their system, is the sole basis of faith.’

Q. How does a man acquire this personal experience of the Catholic religion?

A. There are two ways open to him, the objective and the subjective?

Q. Whence starts the first or objective way?

A. The first of them starts from agnosticism.

Q. What proof does this first way claim to establish?

A. It tends to show that religion, and especially the Catholic religion, is endowed with such vitality as to compel every psychologist and historian of good faith to recognize that its history hides some element of the unknown.

Q. To establish this proof, what needs first to be demonstrated?

A. To this end it is necessary to prove that the Catholic religion, as it exists to-day, is that which was founded by Jesus Christ–that is to say, that it is nothing else than the progressive development of the germ which He brought into the world.

Q. But if Christ brought into the world only the germ of the Catholic religion, what task is laid upon the Modernists with regard to it?

A. It is imperative first of all to establish what this germ was.

Q. By what formula do the Modernists claim to determine what this germ was?

A. This the Modernist claims to be able to do by the following formula: Christ announced the coming of the kingdom of God, which was to be realized within a brief lapse of time and of which He was to become the Messiah, the divinely-given Founder and Ruler.

Q. This germ being thus determined, what, according to our Modernist apologists, must be shown in the next place?

A. Then it must be shown how this germ, always immanent and permanent in the Catholic religion, has gone on slowly developing in the course of history, adapting itself successively to the different circumstances through which it has passed, borrowing from them by vital assimilation all the doctrinal, cultual, ecclesiastical forms that served its purpose; whilst, on the other hand, it surmounted all obstacles, vanquished all enemies, and survived all assaults and all combats.

Q. To what conclusion do our Modernist apologists claim that we must come through duly considering this mass of facts?

A. Anyone who well and duly considers this mass of obstacles, adversaries, attacks, combats, and the vitality and fecundity which the Church has shown throughout them all, must admit that if the laws of evolution are visible in her life, they fail to explain the whole of her history the unknown rises forth from it and presents itself before us.

Q. What is the radical defect of all these reasonings?

A. Thus do they argue, not perceiving that their determination of the primitive germ is only an a priori assumption of agnostic and evolutionist philosophy, and that the germ itself has been gratuitously defined so that it may fit in with their contention.

 

III. APPLICATION OF APOLOGETIC PRINCIPLES

BACK TO CONTENTS

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

BACK TO CONTENTS

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
V. CONCLUSION

Q. How, then, do you sum up the historical method of the Modernists ?

A. We believe that We have set forth with sufficient clearness the historical method of the Modernists. The philosopher leads the way, the historian follows, and then, in due order, come the internal and textual critics.

Q. Since a certain philosophy is the basis of this historical method of the Modernists, and is, as it were, its primal cause, how may we characterize their historical criticism ?

A. Since it is characteristic of the primary cause to communicate its virtue to causes which are secondary, it is quite clear that the criticism with which We are concerned is not any kind of criticism, but that which is rightly called agnostic, immanentist, and evolutionist criticism.

Q. May one, then, make use of such criticism without detriment to the Faith ?

A. Anyone who adopts it and employs it makes profession thereby of the errors contained in it, and places himself in opposition to Catholic teaching.

Q. This being so, what must we think of the praises that certain Catholics bestow on such criticism ?

A. It is much a matter for surprise that it should have found acceptance to such an extent amongst certain Catholics.

Q. Why do certain Catholics allow themselves to be drawn to think so highly of criticism contrary to their Faith ?

A. Two causes may be assigned for this : first, the close alliance which the historians and critics of this school have formed among themselves independent of all differences of nationality or religion ; second, their boundless effrontery.

Q. Do all the Modernists of different nationalities support one another ?

A. Yes. If one makes any utterance the others applaud him in chorus, proclaiming that science has made another step forward.

Q. And how do they league together against anyone who criticizes them ?

A. If an outsider should desire to inspect the new discovery for himself, they form a coalition against him.

Q. To sum the matter up, what tactics do they pursue with regard to such as defend or attack this or that novelty of theirs ?

A. He who denies it is decried as one who is ignorant, while he who embraces and defends it has all their praise.

Q. Is not the result of these Modernist tactics to make fresh recruits ?

A. In this way they entrap not a few who, did they but realize what they are doing, would shrink back with horror.

Q. What has come to pass as a consequence of the audacity of the Modernists and the imprudent thoughtlessness of those who allow themselves to be imposed upon thereby ?

A. The domineering overbearance of those who teach the errors, and the thoughtless compliance of the more shallow minds who assent to them, create a corrupted atmosphere which penetrates everywhere, and carries infection with it. But let Us pass to the apologist.

 

CHAPTER VI – THE MODERNIST AS APOLOGIST

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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

BACK TO CONTENTS

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

Q. After the classification of the documents according to the date of their origin arbitrarily determined upon, is there not another operation undertaken by the critic ? What distinction necessitates, in the, eyes of the Modernist critic, this new operation ?

A. Further, a distinction must be made between the beginning of a fact and its development, for what is born in one day requires time for growth.

Q. In virtue of this distinction between the origin of a fact and its development, what new partition does the Modernist critic make of his documents ?

A. The critic must once more go over his documents, ranged as they are through the different ages, and divide them again into two parts, separating those that regard the origin of the facts from those that deal with their development.

Q. What does he do with the documents that have reference to the development of a fact ?

A. These he must again arrange according to their periods.

Q. What principle will direct him in determining this arrangement ?

A. The philosopher must come in again.

Q. What is the purpose of the principle which, according to the Modernist philosopher, dominates and governs history ?

A. To enjoin upon the historian the obligation of following in all his studies the precepts and laws of evolution.

Q. How, then, will the Modernist historian, armed with the law of evolution, treat the history of the Church ?

A. It is next for the historian to scrutinize his documents once more, to examine carefully the circumstances and conditions affecting the Church during the different periods, the conserving force she has put forth, the needs both internal and external that have stimulated her to progress, the obstacles she has had to encounter.

Q. In a word, what does the Modernist historian seek for in the documents of the history of the Church ?

A. In a word, everything that helps to determine the manner in which the laws of evolution have been fulfilled in her.

Q. After this attentive examination to discover in the history of the Church the law of her evolution, what does the historian do ?

A. This done, he finishes his work by drawing up a history of the development in its broad lines.

Q. What is the final operation that of the Modernist critic once he has, traced out for him thus, this fantastic outline of the history of the Church ?

A. The critic follows and fits in the rest of the documents. He sets himself to write. The history is finished.

Q. Since the Modernist historian and critic allow themselves to be thus dominated by the principles of the philosopher, We ask here : Who is the author of this history ? The historian ? The critic ?

A. Assuredly neither of these, but the philosopher.

Q. Why the philosopher ?

A. Because from beginning to end everything in it is a priori.

Q. And what kind of a priori ?

A. An apriorism that reeks of heresy.

Q. Are such historians not to be pitied ?

A. These men are certainly to be pitied, of whom the Apostle might well say, ” They became vain in their thoughts . . . professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.”  (Rom 1: 21,22)

Q. But if these Modernist historians excite our pity, do they not also rouse us, and very justly, to indignation ?

A. At the same time they excite resentment when they accuse the Church of arranging and confusing the texts after her own fashion, and for the needs of her cause.

Q. What sentiment moves them to accuse the Church of torturing the texts ?

A. They are accusing the Church of something for which their own conscience plainly reproaches them.

 

IV. TEXTUAL CRITICISM

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