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

Q. Is the dominion of philosophy over history confined to prescribing to the critic the division of documents into two parts-documents serving for the history of Faith and documents serving for real history ?

A. The dominion of philosophy over history does not end here.

Q. After this division of documents into two lots, in the name of agnosticism, what other principle of Modernist philosophy makes a fresh appearance, to rule the critic ?

A. Given that division, of which We have spoken, of the documents into two parts, the philosopher steps in again with his dogma of vital immanence.

Q. What importance, for the Modernist critic, has this principle of vital immanence ?

A. It shows how everything in the history of the Church is to be explained by vital emanation?

Q. How, according to this principle, are facts which are but an emanation of life subordinated to the immanent need from which they emanate ?

A. Since the cause or condition of every vital emanation whatsoever is to be found in some need or want, it follows that no fact can be regarded as antecedent to the need which produced it historically the fact must be posterior to the need.

Q. What, then, does the historian in view of this principle ? How does the Modernist historian proceed in the history of the Church ?

A. He goes over his documents again, whether they be contained in the Sacred Books or elsewhere, draws up from them his list of the particular needs of the Church, whether relating to dogma, or liturgy, or other matters which are found in the Church thus related.

Q. Once this list has been drawn up, what does he do with it ?

A. Then he hands his list over to the critic.

Q. Aided by this list of the successive needs of the Church, what operation does the critic make the documents of the history of Faith undergo ?

A. The critic takes in hand the documents dealing with the history of Faith, and distributes them, period by period, so that they correspond exactly with the list of needs, always guided by the principle that the narration must follow the facts, as the facts follow the needs.

Q. Does it not happen at times that certain parts of the Sacred Scriptures, instead of simply revealing a need, are themselves the fact created by the need ?

A. It may at times happen that some parts of the Sacred Scriptures, such as the Epistles, themselves constitute the fact created by the need.

Q. But, whatever may be the case with regard to these exceptions, what, in a general way, is the rule which serves to determine the date of origin of the documents of ecclesiastical history ?

A. The rule holds that the age of any document can only be determined by the age in which each need has manifested itself in the Church.

 

III. APPLICATION OF THE PRINCIPLE OF EVOLUTION

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

Q. We have studied the Modernist as philosopher, believer, and theologian. What remains to be considered ?

A. It now remains for us to consider him as historian, critic, apologist, and reformer.

Q. What do certain Modernists, devoted to historical studies, seem to fear?

A. Some Modernists, devoted to historical studies, seem to be deeply anxious not to be taken for philosophers.

Q. What do they tell us as to their competence in philosophy?

A. About philosophy they profess to know nothing whatever.

Q. Is this profession of ignorance sincere?

A. No. In this they display remarkable astuteness.

Q. Why, then, do the Modernist historians pretend to be ignorant of philosophy?

A. They are particularly desirous not to be suspected of any prepossession in favour of philosophical theories which would lay them open to the charge of not being, as they call it, objective.

Q. Do the Modernist historians, in spite of their assertions to the contrary, really allow themselves to be influenced by philosophical systems?

A. The truth is that their history and their criticism are saturated with their philosophy, and that their historico-critical conclusions are the natural outcome of their philosophical principles. This will be patent to anyone who reflects.

Q. What are the three philosophical principles from which the Modernist historians deduce the three laws of history ?

A. Their three first laws are contained in those three principles of their philosophy already dealt with : the principle of agnosticism, the theorem of the transfiguration of things by faith, and that other which may be called the principle of disfiguration.

Q. According to the Modernists, what historical law follows from the philosophical principle of agnosticism ?

A. Agnosticism tells us that history, like science, deals entirely with phenomena.

Q. What conclusion directly follows from this first historical law deduced from agnosticism ?

A. The consequence is that God, and every intervention of God in human affairs, is to be relegated to the domain of faith as belonging to it alone.

Q. If in history are found things in which the divine and the human intermingle, what will be the Modernises manner of dealing with them ?

A. In things where there is combined a double element, the divine and the human as, for example, in Christ, or the Church, or the Sacraments, or the many other objects of the same kind a division and separation must be made, and the human element must be left to history while the divine will be assigned to faith.

Q. Must we, then, distinguish between two kinds of Christ, two kinds of Church, and so on ?

A. Yes. Hence we have that distinction, so current among the Modernists, between the Christ of history and the Christ of Faith ; the Church of history and the Church of Faith ; the Sacraments of history and the Sacraments of Faith ; and so in similar matters.

Q. Relatively to this human element, which is the only one agnosticism allows to be matter for history, what does the second philosophical principle tell us / mean the principle of transfiguration which is the inspiration of the Modernist historian ?

A. We find that the human element itself, which the historian has to work on, as it appears in the documents, is to be considered as having been transfigured by Faith that is to say, raised above its historical conditions.

Q. What, then, in virtue of this principle of transfiguration, is the second law that governs Modernist history ?

A. It becomes necessary, therefore, to eliminate also the accretions which Faith has added, to relegate them to Faith itself and to the history of Faith.

Q. Consequently, what are the things which a Modernist historian will eliminate from the history of Christ ?

A. Thus, when treating of Christ, the historian must set aside all that surpasses man in his natural condition, according to what psychology tells us of him, or according to what we gather from the place and period of his existence.

Q. What is the third law which the Modernist historian imposes upon himself in virtue of the philosophical principle catted disfiguration ?

A. Finally, they require, by virtue of the third principle, that even those things which are not outside the sphere of history should pass through the sieve, excluding all, and relegating to faith everything which, in their judgment, is not in harmony with what they call the logic of facts, or not in character with the persons of whom they are predicated.

Q. What conclusion do they deduce from this third law with regard to the words which the Evangelists attribute to our Divine Lord ?

A. They will not allow that Christ ever uttered those things which do not seem to be within the capacity of the multitudes that listened to Him. Hence they delete from His real history and transfer to faith all the allegories found in His discourses.

Q. We may, peradventure, inquire on what principles they make these divisions. Will they tell us ?

A. Their reply is that they argue from the character of the man, from his condition of life, from his education, from the complexus of the circumstances under which the facts took place.

Q. Is that an objective criterion and such as serious history demands ?

A. If We understand them aright, they argue on a principle which in the last analysis is merely subjective.

Q. Can you prove that that is a merely subjective criterion ?

A. It is proved by this. Their method is to put themselves into the position and person of Christ, and then to attribute to Him what they would have done under like circumstances.

Q. How, in virtue of the three philosophical principles which, according to them, govern history, do the Modernists treat Christ, Our Lord ?

A. Absolutely a priori, and acting on philosophical principles which they hold, but which they profess to ignore, they proclaim that Christ, according to what they call His real history, was not God, and never did anything divine.

Q. Having eliminated entirely the divine character of Christ from real history, do they at least leave intact Christ as Man ?

A. As Man He did and said only what they, judging from the time in which He lived, consider that He ought to have said or done.

Q. How, according to the Modernists, do philosophy, history, and criticism stand in relation to one another ?

A. As history takes its conclusions from philosophy, so, too, criticism takes its conclusions from history.

Q. How does the Modernist critic treat the documents on which he works ?

A. The critic, on the data furnished him by the historian, makes two parts of all his documents. Those that remain after the triple elimination above described go to form the real history ; the rest is attributed to the history of Faith, or, as it is styled, to internal history.

Q. Are there, then, according to the Modernists, two kinds of history : the history of Faith and real history ?

A. Yes. The Modernists distinguish very carefully between these two kinds of history.

Q. Then, is not the history of Faith, as the Modernists call it, true history according to them ?

A. It is to be noted that they oppose the history of Faith to real history precisely as real.

Q. If the history of Faith is not real history, what do the Modernists say on the subject of the twofold Christ mentioned above ?

A. As We have already said, we have a twofold Christ a real Christ, and a Christ, the one of Faith, who never really existed ; a Christ who has lived at a given time and in a given place, and a Christ who has never lived outside the pious meditations of the believer.

Q. Where is this Christ of Faith, this Christ who is not real according to the Modernists where especially is He portrayed ?

A. The Christ, for instance, whom we find in the Gospel of St. John.

Q. What, then, in the opinion of the Modernists, is the Gospel of St. John ?

A. Mere meditation from beginning to end.

 

II. APPLICATION OF THE PRINCIPLE OF VITAL IMMANENCE

BACK TO CONTENTS

PART I
THE ERRORS OF THE MODERNISTS

CHAPTER IV

THE RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY OF THE MODERNISTS
(Continued) BRANCHES OF THE FAITH
I. DOGMA
II. WORSHIP
III. SACRED SCRIPTURE INSPIRATION
IV. THE CHURCH: HER ORIGIN, HER NATURE, AND HER RIGHTS
V. CHURCH AND STATE
VI. EVOLUTION
VII. CAUSES OF EVOLUTION: CONSERVATIVE AND PROGRESSIVE FORCES IN THE CHURCH
VIII. PRACTICAL CONSEQUENCES
IX. CONDEMNATIONS

Q. What conclusion must we come to with regard to Modernist teaching ?

A. That for the Modernists, whether as authors or propagandists, there is to be nothing stable, nothing immutable, in the Church.

Q. Have they had any forerunners ?

A. Nor, indeed, are they without forerunners in their doctrines ; for it was of these that Our Predecessor, Pius IX., wrote : ” These enemies of divine revelation extol human progress to the skies, and with rash and sacrilegious daring would have it introduced into the Catholic religion, as if this religion were not the work of God but of man, or some kind of philosophical discovery susceptible of perfection by human efforts.”

Q. Do the Modernists offer us, on the subject of revelation and dogma, a really new doctrine ? Has it not already been condemned ?

A. On the subject of revelation and dogma in particular, the doctrine of the Modernists offers nothing new . We find it condemned in the syllabus of Pius IX ., where it is enunciated in these terms : ” Divine revelation is imperfect, and, therefore, subject to continual and indefinite progress, corresponding with the progress of human reason “;** and condemned still more solemnly in the Vatican Council : ” The doctrine of the faith which God has revealed has not been proposed to human intelligences to be perfected by them as if it were a philosophical system, but as a divine deposit entrusted to the Spouse of Christ, to be faith fully guarded and infallibly interpreted. Hence also that sense of the sacred dogmas is to be perpetually retained which our Holy Mother the Church has once declared ; nor is this sense ever to be abandoned on plea or pretext of a more profound comprehension of the truth.” ***

Q. Does the Church, deciding this, intend to oppose the development of our knowledge, even concerning the faith ?

A. Nor is the development of our knowledge, even concerning the faith, barred by this pronouncement ; on the contrary, it is supported and maintained. For the same Council continues : ” Let intelligence and science and wisdom, therefore, increase and progress abundantly and vigorously in individuals and in the mass, in the believer and in the whole Church, through out the ages and the centuries but only in its own kind, that is, according to the same dogma, the same sense, the same acceptation.” ****

* Eccycl. Qui Plurilus, Novtrubci 9, 1846. I ** Syll. Prop. 5, I *** Const., Dei Filius, cap. iv. I **** Loc. cit.

CHAPTER V – THE MODERNIST AS HISTORIAN AND AS CRITIC

BACK TO CONTENTS

PART I
THE ERRORS OF THE MODERNISTS

CHAPTER IV

THE RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY OF THE MODERNISTS
(Continued) BRANCHES OF THE FAITH
I. DOGMA
II. WORSHIP
III. SACRED SCRIPTURE INSPIRATION
IV. THE CHURCH: HER ORIGIN, HER NATURE, AND HER RIGHTS
V. CHURCH AND STATE
VI. EVOLUTION
VII. CAUSES OF EVOLUTION: CONSERVATIVE AND PROGRESSIVE FORCES IN THE CHURCH
VIII. PRACTICAL CONSEQUENCES

Q. What, then, must the Modernists think when they are reprimanded or punished by religious authority ?

A. With all this in mind, one understands how it is that the Modernists express astonishment when they are reprimanded or punished. What is imputed to them as a fault they regard as a sacred duty. They understand the needs of consciences better than any one else, since they come into closer touch with them than does the ecclesiastical authority nay, they embody them, so to speak, in themselves. Hence for them to speak and to write publicly is a bounden duty. Let authority rebuke them if it pleases they have their own conscience on their side, and an intimate experience which tells them with certainty that what they deserve is not blame, but praise.

Q. What attitude do Modernists adopt when punished by the Church ?

A. They reflect that, after all, there is no progress without a battle, and no battle without its victims ; and victims they are willing to be, like the prophets and Christ Himself. They have no bitterness in their hearts against the authority which uses them roughly, for, after all, they readily admit that it is only doing its duty as authority. Their sole grief is that it remains deaf to their warnings, for in this way it impedes the progress of souls.

Q. Have they any hope left ?

A. They assure us that the hour will most surely come when further delay will be impossible ; for if the laws of evolution may be checked for a while, they cannot be finally evaded.

Q. Do they at least pause in following out their plans ?

A. They go their way, reprimands and condemnations notwithstanding, masking an incredible audacity under a mock semblance of humility. While they make a pretence of bowing their heads, their minds and hands are more boldly intent than ever on carrying out their purposes.

Q. Why do the Modernists pretend to submit ? Why, like heretics, do they not leave the Church ?

A. This policy they follow willingly and wittingly, both because it is part of their system that authority is to be stimulated but not dethroned, and because it is necessary for them to remain within the ranks of the Church, in order that they may gradually transform the collective conscience.

Q. Transform the collective conscience ? But, according to their principles, ought they not to submit themselves to this collective conscience ?

A.  In saying this, they fail to perceive that they are avowing that the collective conscience is not with them, and that they have no right to claim to be its interpreters.

IX. CONDEMNATIONS

BACK TO CONTENTS

PART I
THE ERRORS OF THE MODERNISTS

CHAPTER IV

THE RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY OF THE MODERNISTS
(Continued) BRANCHES OF THE FAITH
I. DOGMA
II. WORSHIP
III. SACRED SCRIPTURE INSPIRATION
IV. THE CHURCH: HER ORIGIN, HER NATURE, AND HER RIGHTS
V. CHURCH AND STATE
VI. EVOLUTION
VII. CAUSES OF EVOLUTION: CONSERVATIVE AND PROGRESSIVE FORCES IN THE CHURCH

Q. To what causes must one have recourse to explain this progress of faith ?

A. For the progress of faith the same causes are to be assigned as those which are adduced above to explain its origin. But to them must be added those extraordinary men whom we call prophets, of whom Christ was the greatest.

Q. How, as Modernist theologians understand it, did these extraordinary men contribute to progress in faith ?

A. Both because in their lives and their words there was something mysterious which faith attributed to the Divinity, and because it fell to their lot to have new and original experiences fully in harmony with the religious needs of their time.

Q. To what especially do the Modernists attribute the progress of faith ?

A. The progress of dogma is due chiefly to the fact that obstacles to faith have to be surmounted, enemies have to be vanquished, and objections have to be refuted. Add to this a perpetual striving to penetrate ever more profoundly into those things which are contained in the mysteries of faith.

Q. Explain all this to us by an example how, according to the Modernists, did men come to proclaim the divinity of Christ ?

A. Thus, putting aside other examples, it is found to have happened in the case of Christ : in Him that divine something which faith recognized in Him was slowly and gradually expanded in such a way that He was at last held to be God.

Q. What has been the principal factor in the evolution of worship ?

A. The chief stimulus of the evolution of worship consists in the need of accommodation to the manners and customs of peoples, as well as the need of availing itself of the value which certain acts have acquired by usage.

Q. What has been the factor of evolution in the Church ?

A. Finally, evolution in the Church itself is fed by the need of adapting itself to historical conditions and of harmonizing itself with existing forms of Society.

Q. That is evolution in detail. What is, in the system of the Modernists, its essential basis ?

A. Such is their view with regard to each. And here, before proceeding further, We wish to draw attention to this whole theory of necessities or needs, for beyond all that We have seen, it is, as it were, the base and foundation of that famous method which they describe as historical.

Q. In this theory of needs have we the entire Modernist doctrine on evolution ?

A. Although evolution is urged on by needs or necessities, yet, if controlled by these alone, it would easily overstep the boundaries of tradition, and thus, separated from its primitive vital principle, would make for ruin instead of progress.

Q. What, then, must be added to render complete the idea of the Modernists ?

A. By those who study more closely the ideas of the Modernists, evolution is described as a resultant from the conflict of two forces, one of them tending towards progress, the other towards conservation.

Q. What, in the Church, is the conserving force ?

A. The conserving force exists in the Church, and is found in tradition ; tradition is represented by religious authority.

Q. How does religious authority represent this conserving force ?

A. It represents this ‘both by right and in fact. For by right it is in the very nature of authority to protect tradition ; and in fact, since authority, raised as it is above the contingencies of life, feels hardly, or not at all, the spurs of progress.

Q. Where is found the progressive force ?

A. The progressive force, on the contrary, which responds to the inner needs, lies in the individual consciences and works in them, especially in such of them as are in more close and intimate contact with life.

Q. Then, do Modernists place the progressive force outside the hierarchy ?

A. Undoubtedly they do. Already we observe the introduction of that most pernicious doctrine which would make of the laity the factor of progress in the Church.

Q. By what combination of the conservative and the progressive force are wrought, according to the Modernists, modifications and progress in the Church?

A. It is by a species of covenant and compromise between these two forces of conservation and progress that is to say, between authority and individual consciences that changes and advances take place. The individual consciences, or some of them, act on the collective conscience, which brings pressure to bear on the depositaries of authority to make terms and to keep to them.

VIII. PRACTICAL CONSEQUENCES

BACK TO CONTENTS

PART I
THE ERRORS OF THE MODERNISTS

CHAPTER IV

THE RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY OF THE MODERNISTS
(Continued) BRANCHES OF THE FAITH
I. DOGMA
II. WORSHIP
III. SACRED SCRIPTURE INSPIRATION
IV. THE CHURCH: HER ORIGIN, HER NATURE, AND HER RIGHTS
V. CHURCH AND STATE
VI. EVOLUTION

Q. Have we considered the entire doctrine of the Modernist theologians ?

A. To conclude this whole question of faith and its various branches, we have still to consider what the Modernists have to say about the development of the one and the other.

Q. How do they pass to the principal point in their system ?

A. First of all, they lay down the general principle that in a living religion everything is subject to change, and must in fact be changed. In this way they pass to what is practically their principal doctrine, namely, evolution.

Q. According to the Modernists, what in theology is subject to evolution ?

A. To the laws of evolution everything is subject under penalty of death dogma, Church, worship, the Books we revere as Sacred, even faith itself.

Q. Is that the general principle ?

A. Yes; and the enunciation of this principle will not be a matter of surprise to anyone who bears in mind what the Modernists have had to say about each of these subjects.

Q. How do the Modernists apply the principle of evolution and put its laws into effect ? And first, with regard to faith, what was its primitive form ?

A. Having laid down this law of evolution, the Modernists themselves teach us how it operates. And first with regard to faith. The primitive form of faith, they tell us, was rudimentary and common to all men alike, for it had its origin in human nature and human life.

Q. How, according to the Modernists, did faith progress ?

A. Vital evolution brought with it progress, not by the accretion of new and purely adventitious forms from without, but by an increasing perfusion of the religious sense into the conscience.

Q. What kind of progress was there in faith ?

A. The progress was of two kinds : negative, by the elimination of all extraneous elements, such, for example, as those derived from the family or nationality; and positive, by that intellectual and moral refining of man, by means of which the idea of the divine became fuller and clearer, while the religious sense became more acute.

VII. CAUSES OF EVOLUTION: CONSERVATIVE AND PROGRESSIVE FORCES IN THE CHURCH

BACK TO CONTENTS

PART I
THE ERRORS OF THE MODERNISTS

CHAPTER IV

THE RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY OF THE MODERNISTS
(Continued) BRANCHES OF THE FAITH
I. DOGMA
II. WORSHIP
III. SACRED SCRIPTURE INSPIRATION
IV. THE CHURCH: HER ORIGIN, HER NATURE, AND HER RIGHTS
V. CHURCH AND STATE

Q. Is not the Church in relation with civil societies?

A. It is not only within her own household that the Church must come to terms. Besides her relations with those within, she has others with those who are outside. The Church does not occupy the world all by herself ; there are other societies in the world, with which she must necessarily have dealings and contact.

Q. How, according to the Modernist theologians, are these relations to be determined ?

A. The rights and duties of the Church towards civil societies must be determined, and determined, of course, by her own nature that, to wit, which the Modernists have already described to us.

Q. What rules do they apply to the relations between Church and State ?

A. The rules to be applied in this matter are clearly those which have been laid down for science and faith, though in the latter case the question turned upon the object, while in the present case we have one of ends. In the same way, then, as faith and science are alien to each other by reason of the diversity of their objects, Church and State are strangers by reason of the diversity of their ends, that of the Church being spiritual, while that of the State is temporal.

Q. How is it, according to the Modernists, that power was formerly attributed to the Church which is refused her to-day ?

A. Formerly it was possible to subordinate the temporal to the spiritual, and to speak of some questions as mixed, conceding to the Church the posit, of queen and mistress in all such, because the Church was then regarded as having been instituted immediately by God as the author of the supernatural order. But this doctrine is to-day repudiated alike by philosophers and historians.

Q. Do they, then, demand the separation of Church and State ?

A. Yes. The State must be separated from the Church, and the Catholic from the citizen.

Q. In practice what, according to them, ought to be the attitude of the Catholic as a citizen ?

A. Every Catholic, from the fact that he is also a citizen, has the right and the duty to work for the common good in the way he thinks best, without troubling himself about the authority of the Church, without g paying any heed to its wishes, its counsels, its orders-nay, even in spite of its rebukes.

Q. Has the Church, then, no right to prescribe to the Catholic citizen any line of action ?

A. For the Church to trace out and prescribe for the citizen any line of action, on any pretext what so ever, is to be guilty of an abuse of authority.

Q. If the Church attempts to intervene, and, consequently, according to the Modernist doctrine, commits an abuse, what is to be done?

A. One is bound to protest with all one s might.

Q. Have, these principles not been already condemned by the Church ?

A. The principles from which these doctrines spring have been solemnly condemned by Our Predecessor, Pius VI., in his Apostolic Constitution, Auctorem Fidei*

Q. Is it enough for the Modernists to demand the separation of Church and State?

A. It is not enough for the Modernist school that the State should be separated from the Church. For as faith is to be subordinated to science as far as phenomenal elements are concerned, so, too, in temporal matters the Church must be subject to the State.

Q. Have they really the audacity to teach this ?

A. This, indeed, Modernists may not say openly, but they are forced by the logic of their position to admit it.

Q. How does such an enormity follow from the principles of the Modernists?

A. Granted the principle that in temporal matters
*PROP. 2. The proposition which maintains that power was given by God to the Church to be communicated to the Pastors who are her ministers for the salvation of souls understood in the sense that the Church s power of ministry and government is derived by the Pastors from the faithful in general-is heretical.
PROP. 3. Further, that which maintains that the Roman Pontiff is the ministerial Head- explained in the sense that the Roman Pontiff receives, not from Christ in the person of Blessed Peter, but from the Church, the ministerial power with which, as successor of Peter, true Vicar of Christ, and Head over the whole Church is invested throughout the Universal Church is heretical.

the State possesses the sole power, it will follow that when the believer, not satisfied with merely internal acts of religion, proceeds to external acts such, for instance, as the reception or administration of the Sacraments these will fall under the control of the State. What will then become of ecclesiastical authority, which can only be exercised by external acts ? Obviously it will be completely under the dominion of the State.

Q. But, then, does it not seem that to be free from this yoke of the State, there would be, if Modernists had their way, no longer any possibility of having external worship, or even any sort of religious fellowship ?

A. It is this inevitable consequence which urges many among liberal Protestants to reject all external worship nay, all external religious fellowship and leads them to advocate what they call individual religion.

Q. The Modernists have not yet got to that point; but how are they preparing men s minds for it, and what do they say about the Church s disciplinary authority?

A. If the Modernists have not yet openly proceeded so far, they ask the Church in the meanwhile to follow of her own accord in the direction in which they urge her, and to adapt herself to the forms of the State. Such are their ideas about disciplinary authority.

Q. And of what kind are their opinions on doctrinal authority ?

A. Much more evil and pernicious are their opinions on doctrinal and dogmatic authority.

Q. What is their conception of the magisterium of the Church ?

A. The following is their conception of the magisterium of the Church : No religious society, they say, can be a real unit unless the religious conscience of its members be one, and also the formula which they adopt. But this double unity requires a kind of common mind, whose office is to find and determine the formula that corresponds best with the common conscience ; and it must have, moreover, an authority sufficient to enable it to impose on the community the formula which has been decided upon. From the combination and, as it were, fusion of these two elements, the common mind which draws up the formula and the authority which imposes it, arises, according to the Modernists, the notion of the ecclesiastical magisterium.

Q. That is democracy pure and simple, is it not, and the subordination of the teaching authority to the judgment of the people ?

A. They avow it and say, ‘as this magisterium springs, in its last analysis, from the individual consciences, and possesses its mandate of public utility for their benefit, it necessarily follows that the ecclesiastical magisterium must be dependent upon them, and should therefore be made to bow to the popular ideals.

Q. Do the Modernist theologians, then, accuse the Church of abusing her magisterium ?

A. To prevent individual consciences from expressing freely and openly the impulses they feel, to hinder criticism from urging forward dogma in the path of its necessary evolution, they say, is not a legitimate use but an abuse of a power given for the public weal.

Q. Is the Church supreme in the exercise of the authority which the Modernists do concede to her ?

A. No. A due method and measure must be observed in the exercise of authority. To condemn and prescribe a work without the knowledge of the author, without hearing his explanations, without discussion, is something approaching to tyranny.

Q. In short, what must be done to please these Modernist theologians ?

A. Here again it is a question of finding a way of reconciling the full rights of authority on the one hand and those of liberty on the other.

Q. In the meantime what must the Catholic do, according to them ?

A. In the meantime the proper course for the Catholic will be to proclaim publicly his profound respect for authority, while never ceasing to follow his own judgment.

Q. In revolt as they are against the authority of the Church, do the Modernist theologians at least accord to the Church the right to a certain solemnity of worship and a certain exterior splendour ?

A. Their general direction for the Church is as follows : that the ecclesiastical authority, since its end is entirely spiritual, should strip itself of that external pomp which adorns it in the eyes of the public. In this they forget that, while religion is for the soul, it is not exclusively for the soul, and that the honour paid to authority is reflected back on Christ who instituted it.

VI. EVOLUTION

BACK TO CONTENTS

PART I
THE ERRORS OF THE MODERNISTS

CHAPTER IV

THE RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY OF THE MODERNISTS
(Continued) BRANCHES OF THE FAITH
I. DOGMA
II. WORSHIP
III. SACRED SCRIPTURE INSPIRATION
IV. THE CHURCH: HER ORIGIN, HER NATURE, AND HER RIGHTS

Q. A wider field for comment is opened when we come to what the Modernist school has imagined to be the nature of the Church. What, according to them, is the origin of the Church ?

A. They begin with the supposition that the Church has its birth in a double need : first, the need of the individual believer to communicate his faith to
others, especially if he has had some original and special experience ; and, secondly, when the faith has become common to many, the need of the collectivity to form itself into a society and to guard, promote, and propagate the common good.

Q. What, then, is the Church ?

A. It is the product of the collective conscience, that is to say. of the association of individual consciences which, by virtue of the principle of vital
permanence, depend all on one first believer, who for Catholics is Christ.

Q. Whence comes in the Catholic Church, according to the Modernist theologians, disciplinary, doctrinal, and liturgical authority ?

A. Every society needs a directing authority to guide its members towards the common end, to foster prudently the elements of cohesion, which in a religious society are doctrine and worship. Hence the triple authority in the Catholic Church, disciplinary, dogmatic, liturgical.

Q. Whence do they gather the nature and the rights and duties of this authority ?

A. The nature of this authority is to be gathered from its origin, and its rights and duties from its nature.

Q. What do the Modernist theologians say of the Church s authority in the past ?

A. In past times it was a common error that authority came to the Church from without, that is to say, directly from God ; and it was then rightly held to be autocratic.

Q. And what of the, Church’s authority to-day ?

A.  This conception has now grown obsolete; for in the same way as the Church is a vital emanation of the collectivity of consciences, so, too, authority
emanates vitally from the Church itself.

Q. Does the Church s authority, then, according to the Modernist theologians, depend on the collective conscience ?

A. Authority, like the Church, has its origin in the religious conscience, and, that being so, is subject to it.

Q. And if the Church denies this dependence, what does it become, according to this doctrine ?

A. Should it disown this dependence, it becomes a tyranny.

Q. But is not that equivalent to establishing popular government in the Church ?

A. We are living in an age when the sense of liberty has reached its highest development. In the civil order the public conscience has introduced popular government. Now, there is in man only one conscience, just as there is only one life. It is for the ecclesiastical authority, therefore, to adopt a democratic form, unless it wishes to provoke and foment an intestine conflict in the consciences of mankind.

Q. The Church not yielding to this Modernist doctrine, what will happen to the Church and religion alike ?

A. The penalty of refusal is disaster, they say. For it is madness to think that the sentiment of liberty, as it now obtains, can recede. Were it forcibly pent up and held in bonds, the more terrible would be its outburst, sweeping away at once both Church and religion.

Q. According to the ideas of the Modernists, what is, in short, their great anxiety ?

A. Such is the situation in the minds of the Modernists, and their one great anxiety is, in consequence, to find a way of conciliation between the authority of the Church and the liberty of the believers.

V. CHURCH AND STATE

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