The Encyclical

and Modernist Theology

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The Encyclical
and Modernist Theology

Κ7Γ LJERIS,
EOU /.*OI S. K'J'UOP
J. LEBRETON
(Professor at the Catholic Institute of Paris)

Translated by
ALBAN GOOD1ER, SJ.

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CATHOLIC

TRUTH

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London, SÆ.

1908

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SOCIETY

69 Southwark Bridge R^
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Guliei.mus V. Ali.anson, D.D.
Ccnsoi Deputatus

imprimatur
4« Peter, Bishop
April 20, 1908

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Preface
In a brief study such as the present, to
draw out the Modernist Theology in all its
completeness, to trace it to its sources, and
to define its bearing, would be obviously
impossible. For that a large work would be
required ; one, it may be hoped, which
others will undertake. My aim is more
moderate. It is to help Catholics to under
stand the words of the Pope, and to grasp
the nature and gravity of the questions that
gather round them. Modernism is no mere
lecture-room heresy with which only pro­
fessors need be occupied ; it is a new setting
of Christianity, at once undermining the
very foundations of the ancient structure of
the faith, and claiming to rebuild it after a
new design.
I am conscious that the sketch here given
j

6

PREFACE

has been rapidly drawn, and that long
dissertations would be required to put in
their full light the problems touched upon.
The urgency of the work must be my
excuse. In a time of keen conflict there
is no great need to make one’s work com­
plete ; if it be loyal and Christian, that
must suffice.
In explaining the Modernist teaching
special use has been made of the Programma
dei Modernisti, recently published in answer
to the Encyclical, and of the different
writings of Fr. Tyrrell. I might easily
have multiplied the evidence, and made
the points more clear, by passages from
other authors. But I have refrained from
further quotations, lest I should seem to
class as Modernists writers who have ac­
cepted the recent Encyclical. If among
their earlier writings there are passages
which bear trace of these tendencies, and
which on that account have been con­
demned, this would not justify citation
of what their authors themselves have
disavowed.

PREFACE"

7

A portion of this study appeared in the
Études (November 20, 1907) ; one or two
pages and some few quotations have been
taken from the theological chronicle in the
Revue pratique d'Apologétique.

Contents
Preface .........................................................

.

Introduction............................................................. j
Chapter I.—The Principles

of

Modernism

20

Autonomy of Conscience—-Autonomy of
Science — Independence of Science and
l· aith — Philosophical Criticism — Scientific
Criticism—Manifestations of Modernism
Chapter II.—The Theology of Modernism

44

Nature of Revelation — Its Truth-value—
Christian Dogma, its Origin and Progress—
The Formularies of Faith—The Rule of
Faith, Conscience, and the Church
Chapter III.—The Religious Consequences
of Modernism................................................78
The Religious Attitude of Modernists—Con­
sequences of Modernism for the Christian—
For the Church—Conclusion

Appendix.—The Mind
on Excommunication
9

of

St. Augustine
.... 104

The Encyclical
and Modernist Theology
Introduction
Among papal encyclicals few are of such
far-reaching importance as the Encyclical
Pascendi ; at the same time few are so diffi­
cult to understand. The number of com­
mentaries it has called forth on all sides
during the last few months is proof of the
interest it has aroused ; and the variety of
interpretations it has already received is
sufficient witness to its difficulty. If, then, I
endeavour, after so many others, to throw
some little light upon the matter, its all­
importance, combined with its obscurity,
must be my excuse.
In these few pages will be found no per­
sonal controversy ; they contain no more
than a discussion of ideas. Even with this

12 THE ENCYCLICAL AND MODERNISM

*

limitation the task is unpleasant enough ;
still,, it is some consolation that no love of
controversy has prompted the undertaking.
The questions in dispute affect the very life
of religion ; while the feeling that an illdirected blow may wound some sensitive
nature to the quick makes one hesitate the
more to venture on any discussion of them.
Nevertheless ; discuss them one must. The
problems in question have been proposed on
many sides in a way that cannot be ignored ;
the Pope has lately solved them ; it is for us
to understand, and to help others to under­
stand, both the matter in dispute and the
motives of the decree.
This duty is the more imperative, as
nothing but the extreme gravity of Jhe case
can account for the exceeding gravity of the
sentence. The Pope declares that the errors
he condemns are the compendium of all
heresies ; that they lead to pantheism and
atheism ; and against them he decrees re­
pressive and preservative measures, rigorous
in the extreme. If, then, these doctrines
were not in matter of fact destructive of the

INTRODUCTION

13

faith, this would be nothing less than an act
of injustice and an abuse of power.
Furthermore, it is important to make clear
an ambiguity which Modernists find it to
their purpose to create. In the manifesto
published by them in Italy1 they put them­
selves forward as the champions of science,
independent of every philosophical system,
led to the conclusions they defend by mere
anxiety for scientific truth. According to
them (p. 21), Modernism is the only method
of criticism. Then, in the exposition of
their tenets they are careful to place in the
first rank critical opinions which many
Catholics hold as well ; for example, that
which concerns the priority of St. Mark, and
that which regards the logia as the common
origin of St. Matthew and St. Luke.
So unfair an interpretation of the pontifi­
cal document as this implies cannot be
tolerated. Men on the one side or the other,
1 IIprogramma dei modernisa. Risposta allenciclùa di Pio X. “ Pascendi dominici gregis.'' Roma,
Società internazionale scientifico-religiosa editrice,
1908, 237 pp. in 8vo.

14 THE ENCYCLICAL AND MODERNISM

be they enemies or friends, must not be led to
believe that all sincere historical research
and exegesis are henceforth condemned by
the Pope. To destroy this false under­
standing one course only is open : that is, to
show what in matter of fact are the doctrines
which have been condemned.
But how are these doctrines to be known?
Modernists have written no manual of
theology for their use, in which one might
hope to find a true and authentic exposition
of their religious ideas. The Encyclical is,
perhaps, the first attempt at a synthesis of
their teaching ;1 the strength with which it
has been put together, as well as the exact­
ness and extent of information that it im­
plies, cannot but strike every impartial
observer. Nevertheless, to estimate its truth,
it is clear that we cannot, without begging
1 Some months ago, when reviewing Mr. Camp­
bell’s New Theology in the Hibbert Journal (July,
>9°7» P- 921), Mr. Rashdall remarked on the diffi­
culty of finding any book which explained to the
uninitiated, in any synthetic and intelligible form, the
bearing of the liberal theology. Mr. Campbell’s
book does no more than indicate extreme positions.

INTRODUCTION

15

the whole question, take it as our first source
of knowledge ; we must needs begin from
the works of the Modernists themselves.
Thus the difficulty reappears. In their
books and their articles an abundance of
statements and principles are to be found on
exegesis, philosophy, history; but has any­
one the right to organize them into a system?
The exegete makes a point of declaring his
independence of all philosophical theory ;
the philosopher pleads his incompetence in
all that concerns exegesis. Still one fact
must be apparent to the most casual observer.
It is that these philosophers and exegetes
alike are conscious of possessing ideas in
common, and understand one another by the
merest hint. For example the only philoso­
pher whom M. Loisy quotes in EÉvangile
et ΓÉglise is Mr. Edward Caird ; the same
whom we find later lending his support to
Il Rinnovamento. Or again, when Father
Tyrrell finds occasion to examine the origins
of Christian revelation, he relies for his
evidence on M. Wernle.
Another fact is still more significant.

16 THE ENCYCLICAL AND MODERNISM

Among the different branches of Protestant­
ism it is well known that there has arisen
during the last century an extreme left or
so-called Liberal party, whose tendencies and
methods are clear, intelligible to all, and
relatively easy to dissect. Now these Liberal
Protestants recognize in the Modernist move­
ment a manifestation of the spirit which
animates themselves. Whatever may be the
surface differences, they are conscious that
the same strong current which carries them
along, carries along with them the Liberal
philosophers and exegetes of the Roman
Communion. “ In all the Churches,” wrote
Mr. Campbell recently, “ those who believe
in the religion of the Spirit should recognize
one another as brothers.” 1
The same is the impression among Catholic
Modernists. “ A great spiritual crisis,” write
their Italian representatives, “ which did not
begin to-day, but has to-day reached its cul­
minating intensity, troubles all the religious
bodies of Europe—Catholicism, Lutheranism,
Anglicanism. For the most part it is due to
’ New Theology (London, 1907), p. 13.

INTRODUCTION

17

the new orientation of the public mind, which
is at variance with the traditional expressions
of the religious spirit ; it is due to the popu­
larized results of science, which diffuse an
instinctive distrust of those metaphysical
and historical titles on which the dogmatic
teaching of the Churches rests its claims.” 1
It is felt on both sides that agreement on
the fundamental point of the criticism of
dogma overrules all other disagreements.
Contradictions which have hitherto deter­
mined the opposition between one Church
and another in the symbols of their faith
now become no more than accidental differ­
ences ; - and, among Protestants, the dawn
' Il programma, p. 130; English translation,
p· 159.
’ “ Not only will the Churches still retain all their
functions as guardians of prophetic or revealed truth,
nd of a flexible doctrinal unity analogous to the unity
of rites and observances, but, liberated from all the
entanglements of an indefensible claim to scientific
accuracy—a claim as obsolete as that to temporal or
coercive jurisdiction—they will recover their sorely
compromised dignity and credit. Moreover their doc­
trinal divisions, the bitterest fruit of the dogmatic
fallacy, will cease to be regarded as differences of

18 THE ENCYCLICAL AND MODERNISM

of the day is hailed “when the Liberal
Catholic movement will have worked itself
consistently through into the Free Catholic
movement, in which Protestantism and
Romanism, carried up into a new religious
and undogmatic unity, will be there trans­
cended or reconciled.”1
We may, then, claim to be justified in
making use of what knowledge we possess
of “ Liberal ” Christianity in interpreting the
Modernist theology. At the same time we
aith when the prophetic nature of dogmatic truth is
more intelligently recognized” (G. Tyrrell, “The
Rights and Limits of Theology,” Quarterly Review,
October, 1905, p. 491). In reproducing this article
in Scylla and Charybdis, Fr. Tyrrell has corrected
“doctrinal divisions” to “merely theological divi­
sions” (p. 241). The expression is changed, the
sense remains the same, when we remember the mean­
ing which the author gives to the word “ theological.’
’ J. Lloyd Thomas, “The Free Catholic Ideal”
(Hibbert Journal, July, 1907, p. 801). Cf. J. Bruce
Wallace, “An Attempt to Realize Mr. Campbell’s
Proposal ” (ibid , pp. 903-05). Cf. also, in the
same sense, an article by Mr. Ménégoz on Fogazzaro’s “ Il Santo ” (Revue chrétienne, January 1, 1907,
pp. I sqq.). Some extracts are cited by M. Dudon
(Etudes, October 5, 1907, pp. 150-151).

INTRODUCTION

IQ

have no intention of attributing to Modernists
every Liberal proposition, nor even of declar­
ing Modernists themselves to be of the same
mind one with another. Modernism, like
Liberalism, is a method rather than a doc­
trine. Its range may be confined or ex­
panded more or less. We take it here in
its most fundamental form.1
This is what the Encyclical has had most
directly in view; in it, besides, the drift of
the whole movement can be most easily re­
cognized. I shall be careful to impute to no
single person any proposition but that which
he has himself enunciated ; the reader is re­
quested not to extend the imputation to
others. But the exposition of the question
is much facilitated by the Italian manifesto ;
in it the greater part of the Modernist pro­
positions are formulated with all the clearness
that could be desired.
’ I mean, in the most fundamental form which has
hitherto found favour among Catholics. I shall say
nothing of the pure pantheism such as is to be found,
for example, in the Nem Theology of Mr. Camp­
bell. To that, so far as I know, no Catholic has
hitherto subscribed.

CHAPTER I

The Principles of Modernism
To understand the bearing of the movement
it will be necessary to say something of its
origin. The Italian Modernists above quoted
accurately specify its two principal causes ;
they are, the attitude of the religious con­
sciousness, and philosophical and scientific
criticism.
In a conference on The Catholic Faith·,'
delivered and published under the patronage
of the Krausgesellschaft, Μ. K. Gebert keeps
repeating that faith resting upon authority is
the characteristic of man in the Middle Ages,
but is utterly repugnant to men of modern
times. The remark is true ; and in this
1 Katholischer Glaube und die Entwicklung des
Geisteslebens. Oeffentlicher Vortrag gehalten in
der Krausgesellschaft in München am io januar,
1905, von Dr. Karl Gebert, München, 1905. Selbstverlag der Krausgesellschaft.
20

THE PRINCIPLES OF MODERNISM

21

regard at least Modernists are thorough­
going men of their time. They claim entire
independence of conscience. They desire
to remain children of the Church, but
emancipated children.
“ Before her,” wrote Fr. Tyrrell recently,
“the Church of Rome will find neither
heresy nor schism, but a number of men,
bowing under excommunication, firmly be­
lieving in her just rights, but determined to
resist her extravagant pretensions—assisting
at her Masses, reciting her breviary, ob­
serving her abstinences, obeying her laws,
and, so far as they are allowed, sharing in
her life. And these excommunicated men,
in many cases, will of necessity be not only
the most intelligent and educated, but also
the most ardently sincere, the most dis­
interested of her children, the most assuredly
possessed of the spirit of religion and of the
Gospel. But— a thing which will cause
serious and persistent unrest in the Church
—-they will, nevertheless, speak out freely
and fearlessly, in the interests of the Church
herself ; they will demand and will exercise

22 THE ENCYCLICAL AND MODERNISM

the rights of voice and pen, monopolized
to-day by a band of ecclesiastical reaction­
aries.1 . . . The existence and continual
increase of this section of protesting Catho­
lics (whether excommunicated or ready to
become proselytes) is a problem of the near
future to which the Church of Rome, repre­
sented at least by her present rulers, must
be resigned until she shall have definitely
learnt that the day for juridicial and physical
coercion is gone for ever ; until she shall
have finally realized that the intellect can
only be controlled in proportion as its laws
and rights are respected; until she shall
have understood that love and obedience
must be free, or not exist at all ; until she
shall have recognized that spiritual victories
are to be gained by spiritual arms, not by the
sword of juridical and physical coercion.” 2
1 Fr. Tyrrell here cites the authority of St. Augus­
tine ; the same passage is quoted by the anonymous
authors of the Programma (p. 141) ; I shall discuss it
later in an appendix.
■ “ L’excommunication salutaire” {Grande Revue,
October 10, 1907, ρρ. 670-72). The editor of the
Review tells us in a note at the beginning of the
article (p. 661) that these pages were written by Fr.
Tyrrell—then Fr. Tyrrell, S.J.—on May 18, 1904.

THE PRINCIPLES OF MODERNISM

23

The Italians are less vehement, but not
less decided : “ Ecclesiastical authority,”
they write, “ brusquely arrests our pro­
gress and condemns our labours. Well,
we feel it is our duty to offer a loyal re­
sistance, and at any cost to defend that
Catholic tradition, whereof the Church is
guardian, in a way which for the moment
may merit the condemnation of authority,
but which, we are sure, will in the end
prevail to the Church’s advantage.”1
Before asserting this autonomy for religion
it had already been claimed for science ;
and, however illegitimate the claim, this
latter could still be made more specious,
and could be supported by more plausible
authority. For centuries, they said, men
had aimed at co-ordinating, or rather sub1 II programma, p. 132 (English translation, p. 162).
Cf. ibid. p. ii: “ Through a series of causes, into
which we need not here enter, Catholics seem to have
lost every elementary sense of responsibility and per­
sonal dignity. Instead of being met with a service 01
reasonable and therefore discerning obedience, the
acts of their supreme rulers are received with the
unconscious acquiescence of irresponsible livings ”
(English translation, p. 9).

24 THE ENCYCLICAL AND MODERNISM

ordinating, scientific truths to what were
called truths of revelation. This had resulted
in nothing but forced constraint, hampering
the resourcefulness of science while it com­
promized the honour of the faith.1 For the
future this aim was repudiated ; the believer
had not the right to impose this subjection,
nor had the scholar the right to accept it.
Loyal, sincere, scientific work demanded full
independence and liberty, without dogmatic
prejudice.
“ The first condition for scientific work,”
wrote M. Loisy, “is liberty. The first duty
of the scholar, whether Catholic or not,
is sincerity. The author of L'Évangile et
ΓÉglise had handled the beginnings of
Christianity in virtue of his rights as an
historian, and on his own responsibility.
He confesses that within his limited range
of knowledge he does not understand what
1 Mr. A. White’s book (A History of the Warfare
of Science with Theology in Christendom, London,
1896) is no more than an uncritical compilation;
still, it has made a great impression on some of its
readers, particularly on Fr. Tyrrell (Through Scylla
and Charybdis, p. 200).

THE PRINCIPLES OF MODERNISM

25

is meant by science ‘ with the approbation
of superiors.’” 1
Along with the exterior control of
ecclesiastical authority, the control also of
faith over science has been repudiated.
Men started by declaring that, on its own
avowal, faith would never be injured by the
truth ; what then was there to fear ? “ As
St. Thomas says (C. G. i. 7), faith and
reason cannot be in conflict. We should,
therefore, courageously apply our criticism to
the study of religion, confident that whatever
is destroyed by the process can in no way
belong to the substance of our religious
faith.”123
This argument, in spite bf the self­
satisfaction with which it is urged,3 is a
1 Autour d'tin petit livre, p. x.
2 II programma, p. 24 ; Eng. transi., p. 27.
3 “ Is it not a received theological axiom that faith
and science, as twt> rays from the same divine light,
cannot contradict one another ? This surely does not
mean that faith is in harmony merely with a science
expurgated ad usum Delphini. That would be an
insult to the divine veracity ” (ZZ programma, p. 108 ;
Eng. transi., p. 131)-

20 THE ENCYCLICAL AND MODERNISM

manifest fallacy, too manifest, one suspects,
to deceive even its authors. Whatever
esteem a man may have for science, he
cannot consider it to be infallible. We
know too well that the best intentions and
even the best of methods cannot always
guarantee us against error ; it follows that
conflicts between the truths of revelation
and the conclusions of science are possible.
Recourse is next had to an argument
which reaches yet farther than the first, and
aims at destroying the very possibility of
conflict. Faith is regarded as independent
of all intellectual concepts ; hence faith and
science occupy absolutely distinct planes.
“ Seeing that religion,” says M. Gebert, “ is
a form of the relations between feeling and
will, and consequently belongs to the practical
activity of the conscience, it can in no way
be affected by the results of research made
by free science ; for these are the products of
theoretic activity, whatever they may be
besides.”1
“ Modernists,” says the Italian manifesto,
■ Katholischer Glaube, p. 78.

THE PRINCIPLES OF MODERNISM

27

“in full agreement with contemporary
psychology, distinguish sharply between
science and faith. The spiritual sources
from which they proceed seem to us quite
distinct and independent. This, for us,
is a fundamental acquisition. The pretence
that we subjugate faith to science is simply
senseless.” 1 And a little later : “ We have
grown to a conviction that even the most
revolutionary pronouncements of science can
in no wise upset the affirmation of religious
faith, since the spiritual processes from
which faith and science result are inde­
pendent of one another and the laws of their
development wholly different.” ’
These are serious principles, for they
imply adherence to an entire philosophy of
religion, and extend its influence to all
future research. The authors of the
manifesto profess at the outset their com­
plete independence of all metaphysical
theories ; they claim to have undertaken
and pursued their scientific researches un1 II programma, p. 121 ; Eng. transi., p. 147.
- Ibid., p. 132 ; Èng. transi., p. 161.

28 THE ENCYCLICAL AND MODERNISM

biassed by any a priori conceptions ; the
philosophy of religion to which they
adhere has been the result of their labours,
not the equipment with which they have
begun. For all that, nothing is more evi­
dent than that their method of work is
entirely governed by philosophical postu­
lates.
This does but confirm what is evident
from other indications; that is, that philo­
sophic criticism has told with greater
effect on the Modernist movement than the
criticism in the direction of either exegesis
or history ; and that it is the philosophy of
religion which has given to exegetes and
historians the fundamental principles upon
which they have worked.
Auguste Sabatier, late dean of the
Faculty of Protestant theology in Paris,
who has done more than any other French
writer to propagate and win approval for
these principles in both Catholic and
Protestant circles, writes as follows in his
Esquisse : “ Thinking men may to-day be
divided into two classes : those who go

THE PRINCIPLES OF MODERNISM

29

back beyond Kant, and those who have
received, as it were, their philosophic initia­
tion and baptism from his Critique''1
Catholic Modernists do not repudiate
this initiation ; indeed, they openly avow it.2
But by doing so, on their own confession,
the old foundations of the faith are over­
turned. “The alleged bases of faith have
proved themselves rotten beyond cure.” 3
M. Ménégoz, professor in the Faculty of
Protestant theology in Paris, has told us
of the religious crisis through which he
passed when “ Kant succeeded in demolish­
ing his four sound proofs of the existence of
God, and in thus depriving him of all
religious certitude.”4 The same is the
experience of Catholics : “ We must recog­
nize, first of all, that the arguments for the
existence of God, drawn by scholastic
metaphysic from change and movement,
from the finite and contingent nature of
' Esquisse, p. 359.
2 Gebert, Katholischer Glaube, pp. 28 sqq.
3 II programma, p. 11 ; Eng. transi., p. 8.
4 Lefidéisme et la notion de la foi {Revue de Tkéol.
et des quest, relig., July, 1905), p. 48.

30 THE ENCYCLICAL AND MODERNISM

things, from the degrees of perfection, and
from the design and purpose of the world,
have lost all value nowadays. The concep­
tions in which these arguments rest have
now, owing to the post-Kantian criticism
both of abstract and empirical sciences and
of philosophical language, lost that character
of absoluteness which they possessed for the
mediaeval Aristotelians.” 1
In the crisis everything is jeopardized.
The whole plane and line of thought are
threatened. The old intellectual system
goes by the board ; for the Modernist it has
become unthinkable, and whoever continues
to abide by it cuts himself off from all con­
temporary thought. Henceforth he despairs
of ever attaining the absolute by any
intellectual process; but he believes it may
be reached by action and by life. “ Since our
life,” say the Italian Modernists, “is—for
each one of us—something absolute, nay, the
only absolute of our direct experience, all
that proceeds from it and returns to it, all
that feeds it and expands it more fruitfully,
1 IIprogramma, p. 98 ; Eng. transi , p. 118.

THE PRINCIPLES OF MODERNISM

31

has, in like manner, the value of something
absolute.”1
The application of this principle in the
Modernist theology will appear later on ; it is
enough here to indicate the general attitude
of the Modernist mind.2
Their exegesis and their history have
alike been conducted in subordination to
these principles. For example, under the
influence of these preconceived ideas they
1 II programma, p. 112 ; Eng. transi., p. 135.
2 At the same time it is well to notice at once how
precarious the subjectivism of Kant renders all
adherence to a religion of authority. See, for
example, the very just strictures upon this subject of
O. Pfleiderer, who recognizes in the Critique
Kant
the very root principle of Protestantism. “One can
understand,” he says, “ [mistrust of Kant] in a
Church which for fifteen centuries has rested upon
sacerdotal authority. But the Protestant Church,
which has shaken off the yoke of this authority,
which has vindicated the rights of the individual
conscience, which has accepted faith as its only
guide, that is, the gift of the heart to the will of God,
ought not this Church to recognize in the religion of
conscience, such as Kant has conceived it, the very
spirit of its own spirit?” (Geschichte det Religionsphilosophie, p. vi.).

32 THE ENCYCLICAL AND MODERNISM

have imagined the origin of Christianity “a
sort of religion originally formless and undogmatic.”1 Still more effectual in shaping
their conclusions has been the assumption, as
a first principle, of the mutual independence
of science and faith. Their exegesis, as we
have seen, has drawn its inspiration from
their philosophic theories ; but by an in­
evitable reaction it has in its turn extended
scope and bearing of the latter.
The ravages which a science so emanci­
pated was bound to effect could be easily
foreseen. Even had it remained impartial
it was liable to advance in a wrong direc­
tion, and shake the very foundations of
Christianity. But, as a matter of fact,
such neutrality was a name and no more.
As always happens in such cases, resent­
ment at subjection provoked a reaction.
Every traditional principle was held to be
suspect ; no bold venture but was thought
probable; and Christian writings, hitherto
the most venerated, were treated with a
1 II programma, p. 79, cf. p. 137; Eng. transi.,
p. 94.

THE PRINCIPLES OF MODERNISM

33

mistrust and suspicion which profane texts
never received.*
Works inspired with these prejudices, and
elaborated in detail according to this method,
were multiplied in every quarter, above all
in the Protestant Universities of Germany.
At first the uninitiated public paid little
attention to these dissertations and theories,
but in the end the united efforts of all these
workers, some of whom were men of excep­
tional erudition, piled up a mass of scientific
theories right in the way of traditional belief.
The meaning of the most fundamental dogmas
then came into question, and to the one and
the same problem science and faith seemed
to give contradictory solutions. Thus it
was, for example, in regard to the virgin
Conception of Christ, His Resurrection,
His pre-existence, His Divine nature. A
choice, insistent and harsh, arose there
upon between science and faith ; what for
‘ On this subject may well be read the protest
raised some years ago by Frederic Blass in the name
of philology against the Liberal theology and its
methods of criticism {Acta Apostolorum, Editio
philologica, Gottingen, 1895, Ρ· 3°·
3

34 THE ENCYCLICAL AND MODERNISM

many souls were the agonies of that struggle
God alone knows. At this juncture the
philosophy of religion which has been out­
lined above was produced as the liberating
solution. Without conscious self-deceit a
man could not give the lie to science ;
without destroying his very life he could
not deny his faith. To escape from the
dilemma it was enough to realize that after
all the faith was not chained to a fixed form
of creed, and that if a scholar were com­
pelled to surrender to criticism all the beliefs
of his childhood, he might all the same
maintain the integrity of his faith.1
1 “This conviction (that we are saved by faith,
independently of our beliefs) frees our conscience in
regard to certain scientific, historical, and philosophi­
cal assumptions which orthodoxy would set before us
as constituent parts of the Christian faith. And while
setting us at liberty in respect to those points which
belong to the secular order, it strengthens us in our
religious faith and gives us a peace and a joy in
strong contrast with that agonizing trouble produced
by doubt in a conscience under the sway of the prin­
ciples of orthodoxy. When I make these assertions I
speak from experience, for I have passed through this
agony and I know this joy. I would share my happi-

THE PRINCIPLES OF MODERNISM

35

This attitude of mind has shown itself,
first and foremost, within the Protestant
Churches. For some time past it has
struck all attentive observers, even those
who are least anxious about the interests
of orthodoxy.1 But it would take too long
to draw out here the history of Liberal Pro­
testantism ; besides, many of its different
schools have been elsewhere admirably
described.2
ness with all those who, as I have been before this,
are tormented with these doubts. . . .” (E. Ménégoz,
Une triple distinction théologique·, p. 22, Paris, 1907).
1 Goyau, U Irréligion de Iavenir, pp. xv. 131-56.
2 For Germany, M. Goyau’s book, VAllemagne
religieuse, le Protestantisme (Paris, 1898), gives
abundant and trustworthy evidence. This might
be supplemented by two recent dissertations by
Protestant theologians, the second of which in par­
ticular is of unusual interest—A. Arnal, La Personne
du Christ et le rationalisme allemand contemporain
(Paris, 1904) ; M. Goguel, Wilhelm Herrmann et le
Problème religieux actuel (Paris, 1905). The history
of French Liberal Protestantism has been summarized
by M. A. Bertrand, who himself is a member of that
school (La pensée religieuse au sein du protestantisme
libéral. Ses déficits actuels, son orientation prochaine,
Paris, 1903) ; its doctrines have been drawn out by

36 THE ENCYCLICAL AND MODERNISM

But even in the fold of the Catholic
Church has not Liberal Christianity made
recruits? It would have been a miracle,
indeed, had all access been closed to it.
Protestants had, it must be honestly allowed,
advanced far beyond us in many respects
during the course of the last century. For
the establishment and interpretation of the
Scripture text, for the theology of the Old
and New Testament, for the history of
Christian origins and the further developM. J. Réville (Le Protestantisme liberal, ses origines,
sa nature, sa mission, Paris, 1903). On the same
subject may be found an interesting discussion in
Libre pensée et Protestantisme libéral (Paris, 1903),
by F. Buisson and Ch. Wagner. Symbolofidéisme,
now closely allied to Liberalism, has been explained
and defended particularly by A. Sabatier (Esquisse
d’une philosophie de la religion d’après la psychologie
et Fhistoire, and Les Religions dautorité et la
Religion de Fesprit}, and E. Ménégoz (Publica­
tions diverses sur le Jidéisme et son application a
F enseignement chrétien traditionnel (Paris, 1900).
Among Protestant authors who have combated it
may be cited H. Bois (De la connaissance religieuse.
Essai critique sur les récentes discussions. Paris,
1894) et E. Doumergue (Les Étapes du fidéisme,
Paris, r.<Z.).

THE PRINCIPLES OF MODERNISM

37

ment of dogma, no one could, no one can
even yet, without presumption and without
loss, disregard their labours. But it was
difficult to make use of these without
coming under their influence, without
allowing oneself to be drawn by the
prestige of undisputed knowledge to favour
principles contrary to faith. Some minds
were more susceptible to the attraction of
the philosophy of religion, such, for in­
stance, as is elaborated in the works of
A. Sabatier. The idealistic conceptions
to which they inclined had predisposed
them to feel this influence, and they
fancied they could distinguish, beyond the
narrow horizon of dogmatic formulas, freed
from the theological trappings that weighed
them down, a faith that should be hence­
forward unfettered and serene.
It is not for us to condemn those whom
this mirage has led astray. We are not their
judge ; what is more, their writings bear trace
of too much suffering for us to be able to
read them without commiseration. We con­
fine ourselves simply to a description of their

■

38 THE ENCYCLICAL· AND MODERNISM

attitude, and to noticing the impression they
have produced even outside the Church.
The most advanced Liberals have recog­
nized their teaching, and have welcomed
with enthusiasm these new brothers in
arms, on whose support they had not
dared to reckon. One of the most ad­
vanced among English Liberals, the apostle
of the New Theology, Mr. Campbell, re­
cently wrote, speaking of the movement
which he strains every effort to promote :
“ There is no Church where this movement
is more marked at present than in the
venerable Church of Rome herself, the
mother-Church of Western Christendom.
The very same movement which in a
somewhat different form is represented in
this country by the New Theology is pro­
ceeding in Italy and elsewhere under
Roman Catholic influences and under
another name.”' Another writer found
occasion to remark that the movement
was deeper and more powerful than was
1 R. J. Campbell, “ The Aim of the New Theology
Movement” [Hibbert Journal, April, 1907, p. 489).

THE PRINCIPLES OF MODERNISM

39

appreciated by those who judged of it
only from its most obvious manifesta­
tions—that is, from the works of such as
Loisy, Fogazzaro, and Tyrrell. “ Roman
Catholics,” he says, “ are well trained and
disciplined. . . . The Liberals among them
have, we may suppose, some of the self­
restraint, the prudence, the diplomacy, and
even the subtlety with which we credit (or
discredit) their Church as a whole. That
they still find it discreet to write pseudony­
mously tells its own tale. The magnitude
and the power of the new movement can­
not, therefore, be estimated by what appears
on the surface. The current of its influence
runs deep and still.” 1
Along with this premature confidence—
ill-supported as it is by inaccurate observa­
tion and extremely exaggerated judgements
—there has not infrequently appeared a
certain surprise, and even scandal, that
Catholics should find it possible to reconcile
so radical a criticism of Christian dogmas
' J. Lloyd Thomas, “The Free Catholic Ideal”
{Hibbert Journal, July, 1907, p. 800).

40 THE ENCYCLICAL AND MODERNISM

with the submission they professed to their
Church.1 No one dreams of being aston­
ished that an Anglican canon, or a professor
of theology in a German Protestant Univer­
sity, should make it his aim to ruin tradi­
tional beliefs ; but the same licence cannot
be accorded to a Roman Catholic priest.
This conviction rendered implicit testimony
to the dogmatic strength of the Roman
Church ; and the Encyclical on which we
are here commenting has come to prove to
every one that they had not misjudged that
strength.
In the midst of this upheaval, which
threatens to shake Christianity itself, one
1 Mr. Campbell, after citing a long passage from
an article in the Rinnovamento signed by Μ. T.
Scotti, adds : “ This passage might have been
written by Auguste Sabatier himself, for it breathes
the very essence of the religion of the Spirit. . . .
How the author reconciles such a statement with the
duty of obedience to ecclesiastical authority is not
easy for an outsider to understand ” [Hibbert Journal,
April, 1907, p. 490). Cf. on M. Loisy, Sanday, The
Criticism of the Fourth Gospel, p. 28 (Oxford, 1905) ;
Mason, in Cambridge Theological Rssays, p. 455
(London, 1905).

THE PRINCIPLES OF MODERNISM

41

only voice has been able to command both
a hearing and respect ; that voice is the
voice of the Pope. Already more than
once he had uttered a warning ; but his last
pronouncement is so weighty and so solemn
that all else may be forgotten.
To many Christians it has revealed a
danger they never even suspected ; and the
account of the Modernist doctrines which it
has given has been for them a lesson more
eloquent than all censures. It was no
accusation, much less a travesty ; a Modernist
well qualified to judge has written : “ The
picture he draws of Modernism is so seduc­
tive to an educated mind, and the counter­
part he suggests so repellent, as to make the
Encyclical rather ‘ dangerous ’ reading for
the children of this world.”1
1 G. Tyrrell, in the Times of Sept. 30th, 1907.
M. Aulard pronounced the same judgement in an
article, otherwise by no means favourable, which he
has spread very liberally amongst several provincial
journals : “ The exposition of Modernism,” he says,
“ is detailed, interesting, altogether curious. ... It
is noteworthy, indeed a novelty, that the Encyclical
explains Modernism, not in caricature, but with a

42 THE ENCYCLICAL AND MODERNISM

I do not know what may be the impres­
sion of the “ children of this world,” but
that of the children of the Church is unmis­
takable : with all the vigour of their faith
they reject these poisonous doctrines.
To strengthen this impression and to
make it the more apparent, we propose to
set in opposition, in a few broad outlines,
the two contradictory conceptions of
Christianity presented by the Catholic and
the Modernist. But to touch on all the
questions to which they offer opposite
answers would be here impossible ; we pre­
fer to confine ourselves exclusively to the
certain detachment and with almost all its charm.
The ideas of those who seek to adapt Catholicism to
the present conditions of thought and to the present
needs of society, are seen there in all their fulness
and consistency. . . . All the innovating tendencies
of Catholics in matters of faith, exegesis, or in
politico-social questions are neatly summarized, some­
times expanded, in this elaborate Encyclical. All
are condemned as absurd, after having been described
with all their fascination, without any attempt at dis­
guising the sentence under the appearance of a
refutation ” {Progrès de Saône-et-Loire, September 27,
1907).

THE PRINCIPLES OF MODERNISM

43

one fundamental problem—the faith, con­
sidered in its origin, revelation ; in its ex­
pression, dogma ; and in its rule, the
authority of conscience and the authority
of the Church.

i
CHAPTER II

The Theology of Modernism
If a Catholic is asked, “What do you
believe, and why ? ” he replies in the words
of his act of faith : “ I believe whatever God
has revealed, and because He has revealed
it.” This is an answer common to all
believers ; but if it is urged, “ What do
you understand by ‘ Whatever God has re­
vealed ’ ? ”, then the Modernist no longer
gives the same answer as the Catholic.
When we say that God has made a reve­
lation we mean that God has spoken to man
to make known to him some truth, and that
man has recognized His voice.'
* By this we do not intend to reduce revelation to
a phenomenon perceptible by the senses ; it is by the
soul and within the soul that the voice of God is
heard. This interior voice is sometimes accompanied
with exterior signs, but the essence of revelation
consists in psychological enlightenment, and not in
bodily sight or hearing. This is the traditional teach­
ing of the Church ; cf. St. Thomas (II-II. clxiii. 2),

i

THE THEOLOGY OF MODERNISM

45

The prophetical books enable us to under­
stand by very clear examples what is the
meaning of Divine revelation. When the
prophets communicated to the Jews the
designs of God, they were conscious to
who cites St. Augustine. Our adversaries often mis­
understand this point and, in consequence, contend
with shadows ; for instance, Mr. J. M. Wilson
(** Revelation and Modern Knowledge,” in Cam­
bridge Theological Essays, p. 228, n., London, 1905)
thus opposes the traditional idea, which he calls
objective, to his own, which he terms subjective :
“ By the word ‘ objective,’ as applied to revelation, I
mean any communication of truth that comes to a mind
in and through the phenomenal world. By the word
‘ subjective,’ applied to revelation, I mean communi­
cation of truth in and through the world of personality.”
Mr. Sanday has very properly protested against this
misunderstanding (Joum. Theol. Studies, vii. 174,
1906).
“Who really thinks, or has ever really thought,
of the prophetic inspiration—the type of all inspira­
tion—as ‘ phenomenal ’ ? What is called the subjective
mode of revelation is no modern discovery, but goes
back almost as far as the correlated ideas of inspira­
tion and revelation of all. ‘ No prophecy ever came
by the will of man : but men spake from God,
being moved by the Holy Ghost * (2 l et. i. 21). ”
What process could be imagined more entirely sub­
jective ?

46 THE ENCYCLICAL AND MODERNISM

themselves of being no more than His
heralds : “ Thus saith the Lord,” was their
formula. At times, when discouraged and
alarmed by persecution, they endeavoured
to stifle the voice of God within them.
“ I am speaking now this long time,” says
Jeremias (xx. 8), “crying out against ini­
quity, and I often proclaim devastation :
and the word of the Lord is made a reproach
to me, and a derision all the day. Then I
said, I will not make mention of Him, nor
speak any more in His name : and there
came in my heart as a burning fire, shut up
in my bones, and I was wearied, not being
able to bear it.” But after this cry of pain
the prophet rouses himself, conscious of the
force of God with him : “ But the Lord is
with me as a strong warrior : therefore they
that persecute me shall fall.”
Passages like these are found in all the
prophets. We feel that an imperious power
drives them on against their own interests,
the deepest rooted national instincts, the
popular feeling stirred up around them and
condemning them ; and this power is no blind,

THE THEOLOGY OF MODERNISM

47

undetermined impulse, but a concept that
transcends all their own individual views,
bearing, it is true, in every case the stamp of
their character and their surroundings, but
at the same time being evolved with a unity
and a continuity which prove it to be divine.
For Modernists revelation has quite an­
other meaning. In their view every man
receives it immediately within his soul. It
is not precisely the divine manifestation of
a truth ; it is an emotion, an impulse of the
religious sentiment which, at times, so to
speak, bubbles up from the depths of sub­
conscious thought, and in which the believer
recognizes the touch of God.
This emotion arouses, by a spontaneous
reaction, an imaginative or intellectual re­
presentation which, in turn, sustains and
fosters it. The image or concept thus
formed is not immediately revealed by
God; it will, in consequence, possess no
sovereign or infallible significance. No
doubt it is aroused by the stirring and
awakening of God within the soul ; still it
owes its particular form to the mental

■

-

.i.:·..-·.'.;

■

■:·

..

:

48 THE ENCYCLICAL AND MODERNISM
habits of the individual. So with a man
asleep, a dream may be occasioned by any
exterior cause whatever, but its form and
character entirely depend upon the images
which occupy the brain.
The nature of the religious emotions expe­
rienced by the prophets, and the way they are
led to take for a divine revelation what is only
a spontaneous act of their own soul, is ex­
plained by Fr. Tyrrell in the following terms :
“ There is little doubt that an intense
feeling, passion, or emotion will in some
instances incorporate itself in congenial
imaginations and conceptions ; that from
the storehouse of the memory it will, as it
rushes onwards, snatch to itself by a sort
of magnetism such garments as may best set
it forth on the stage of thought. In respect
to such conceptions and visions the recipient
is almost as passive and determined as he
is in regard to the spiritual emotions so
embodied. Hence these presentments of
the supernatural world seem to be quite
specially inspired, to possess a higher autho­
rity and to come less indirectly from God

THE THEOLOGY OF MODERNISM

49

than those that are deliberately sought out
in explanation of the life of religion. Yet
in fact their only superiority is that they
may indicate a stronger, purer, deeper im­
pulse of the Divine spirit ; not that they are
any more directly representative of those
invisible realities known to us merely by the
blind gropings of love. All revelation, truly
such, is in some measure or other an expres­
sion of the Divine mind in man, of the spirit
of God ; but it is not necessarily a Divine
expression of that spirit ; for the expression
is but the reaction, spontaneous or reflex, of
the human mind to God’s touch felt within
the heart, and this reaction in characterized
wholly by the ideas, forms, and images
wherewith the mind is stocked in each
particular case.'
This explanation becomes more clear it
we compare the principal features of the
Catholic and the Modernist ideas of reve­
lation. For the Catholic the truths which
1 “ Rights and Limits of Theology ” [Quarterly
Review, October, 1905) ; Through Srylla and
Charybdis, p. 208.
4

SO THE ENCYCLICAL AND MODERNISM

God reveals to us are, in part at least,
outside our natural horizon ; if He had not
revealed them to us out of His gratuitous
bounty we could never have come to
know them. For the Modernist, on the
other hand, all religious truths are implicitly
contained in the conscience of man : “ Could
he read the needs of his own spirit and con­
science, he would need no teacher. But it
is only by groping, by trying this or that
suggestion of reason or tradition, that he
finds out what he really wants.”1
It follows that, for the Catholic, revelation
is essentially the communication of a truth ;
for the Modernist it is essentially the uplift­
ing or the awakening of the religious sense.
Hence the antitheses by which they are fond
of setting the two doctrines in contradistinc­
tion one to the other : “ Revelation belongs
1 Scylla and Charybdis, p. 277 : “ Because man is
part and parcel of the spiritual world and of the
supernatural order ; because in God he lives and
moves and has his being, the truth of religion is in
him implicitly, as surely as the truth of the whole
physical universe is involved in every part of it.”
(Then follows the passage above quoted.)

THE THEOLOGY OF MODERNISM^^2^lR<^

rather to the category of impressions than to
that of expression ” ;1 “ Revelation is not
statement, but experience ” ; * and in the
same sense a Protestant, Mr. Wilson, writes :
“ Revelation is education, not instruction.” 3
In short, for the Catholic, in revelation
God communicates a truth to man ; for the
Modernist, man speaks to himself : “ There
it is always and necessarily we ourselves who
speak to ourselves : who (aided, no doubt,
by the immanent God) work out truth for
ourselves.” 4
Out of these two fundamentally opposite
ideas of revelation held by Catholics and
Modernists flow of necessity two contra­
dictory estimates of its truth-value.
For the Catholic this truth is absolute,
seeing that it comes from God ; what is
more, it does not consist of the adaptation
of our belief to our religious needs, but of its
conformity with the Divine truth which is
" Scylla and Charybdis, p. 280.
’ Ibid., p. 285.
:
χ_3 Cambridge Theological Essaye, ^„237.. . - ' .
4 Scylla and Charybdis, p. 281. ,
italics are by
the author.
. .'
;

52 THE ENCYCLICAL AND MODERNISM

its object. “ The faith,” wrote St. Irenæus
long ago, “ rests on things which have a real
existence, and so we believe in a thing that
is, and in the manner that it is ; and because
we believe in a thing that is, in the manner
that it is, our certainty is complete.” 1
The Modernist cannot possess this
assurance. The divine action is not con­
fined to the communication of a truth, but
to the propagation of a life. The intellectual
concept, or the dogma, is the effect of a
purely human influence ; it is not, then,
directly guaranteed by God, and has not
further claim upon our reverence than its
connection with the religious emotion to
which it owes its being.’
1 Demonstration of Apostolic Preaching (Leipzig,
JW, iii· 3)·
* “In what sense,” writes Fr. Tyrrell, “are re­
ligious revelations divinely authorized ? What sort
of truth is guaranteed to them by the ‘ seal of ·
the spirit’? In accordance with what has been
already said we must answer—a truth which is
’ tlireetly* practical, preferential, approximative, and
only 'imticeiil/ speculative. What is immediately
approved, as it were experimentally, is a way of
’ living^ fueling,’φίξΐ opting with reference to the otl er

THE THEOLOGY OF MODERNISM

53

To sum up, we have here an inversion
of that · fundamental relation which is the
basis of the truth of faith. Revelation for
the Catholic is a supernatural communica­
tion which provides faith with its object ;
and faith in its turn is the rule of personal
devotion. For the Modernist, revelation
is a feeling which stirs up devotion,
and devotion in its turn engenders faith.1
world. The explanatory and justificatory conceptions
subsequently sought out by [or even forced spon­
taneously from] the mind as postulated by the ‘ way
of life,’ have no direct divine approval ; [they are
at best a purely natural reaction of man’s mind to
a supernatural stimulation of his heart]. Again, the
divine approval of the way and the life (and there­
fore indirectly of the explanatory truth) is mostly
preferential, it is a favouring of one alternative, not
as ideal and finally perfect, but as an approximation
to the ideal, as a * move in the right direction,’ ”
“The Rights and Limits of Theology” (Quarterly
Review, October, 1905. p. 467). In reproducing his
article in Scylla and Charybdis, p. 210, the author
has omitted the words here enclosed in square
brackets.
1 This is precisely what, in other words, Sabatier
teaches (Esquisse, p. 268) : “ The religious pheno­
menon has, then, but two constituent parts : objective
revelation as its cause, and subjective devotion as its

54 THE ENCYCLICAL AND MODERNISM

In the first case the truth of faith is
absolute, arising from its conformity with
its object ; in the second it is relative,
arising from its relation to the religious
sense. This is but an application of the
philosophic principle above quoted (p. 30) :
“ Since our own life is—for each one of us
—something absolute, nay, the only absolute
of our direct experience, all that proceeds
from it and returns to it, all that feeds it
and expands it more fruitfully, has, in like
manner, the value of something absolute.” 1
It is now an easy matter to grasp the
effect which these various principles must
have on the idea of Christian revelation, its
transmission, and the adherence w’hich we
owe to it.
The Catholic believes that all the truths of
faith which he possesses come to him from
Christ and the apostles. God, before the
effect. Thus there are three elements which in­
variably follow one another in the same order : the
■interior revelation from God, which produces in man
subjective devotion, which in turn gives rise to the
forms of religion as we find them. ”
1 IIpngramm», p. 112; English translation, p. 135.

THE THEOLOGY OF MODERNISM

55

coming of our Lord, had spoken many times
to men, particularly through the prophets.
But this supreme revelation was given to us
through His Son. Since then, it is true,
heaven has not been closed ; but the words of
God which find an echo deep down in our
hearts, however precious and dear they
may be to ourselves, do not reveal to us
new mysteries, and have not for us the in­
fallible certainty of public and authorized
revelation, which is the patrimony of every
Christian, and is transmitted to us by the
Church.
In saying this, w'e do not make the
mistake of ascribing to the first beginnings
of the Christian faith those doctrinal
formulas which the Church has since
gradually elaborated. We know that the
religious knowledge which proceeds im­
mediately from revelation has not the form
of a theology. In the first Christian docu­
ments we do not discover that reflex effort
of thought which co-ordinates axioms and
organizes them into a system ; on the con­
trary, they contain but the natural and

ί
Μ ' 'v'
,f
56 THE ENCYCLICAL AND MODERNISM

spontaneous expression of a creed, the in­
tellectual acceptance of a reality that is
revealed.
This original adherence to the divine
reality, this wholly concrete and living
perception, is the one and only source from
which all dogmas have been derived. For a
long time, it is true, many of them remained
latent in the abundance of this first revela­
tion, which has never ceased to provide
fresh food for the thought and life of the
Church. Little by little, when research has
become more keen and devotion more
lively, or often under stress of contradiction,
the Church, enlightened by the Holy Spirit,
has realized in fuller detail the truths which
she carried within her bosom. These in­
fallible utterances have never been recast ;
still less has any one ever been able to
correct the sense which had once been given
to them by the Church.1
In this vital progress there has been no
ncrease of revelation. It is only that the
’ Hinc sacrorum quoque dogmatum is sensus per­
petuo est retinendus, quem semel declaravit Sancta

THE THEOLOGY OF MODERNISM

57

Church has gradually acquired a more
conscious grasp of its content and has given
it a more clear-cut definition.1
On· these points Modernists find it im­
possible to come to an agreement with us.
To them Christian revelation at the outset,
like every other, was an impulse rather than
a light. The authors of the Programma thus
indicate the conclusions which they declare
Mater Ecclesia, nec unquam ab eo sensu, altioris
intelligentiae specie et nomine, recedendum (Concil.
Vatie.).
(Hence, too, that sense of sacred dogmas is always
to be retained which our Holy Mother the Church has
once defined, nor must it ever be discarded under the
pretext of a clearer understanding. )
1 “Crescat igitur et multum vehementerque pro­
ficiat, tam singulorum, quam omnium, tam unius
hominis, quam totius Ecclesiae, aetatum et saecu­
lorum gradibus, intelligentia, scientia, sapientia, sed
in suo dumtaxat genere, in eodem scilicet dogmate,
eodem sensu eademque sententia” (ibid.).
(Therefore let the understanding, the knowledge,
the wisdom of each and all, of every individual man
and of the universal Church, in every age and in every
generation, increase and go forward with abundant
fruit ; but let it none the less be consistent with itself,
adhering to the same dogma, and the same under­
standing and expression of that dogma.)

58 THE ENCYCLICAL AND MODERNISM

to be reached by the impartial researches of
history: “The conclusions of this method,
applied to the history of Catholicism, are
simply disastrous to the old theological
positions. Instead of finding from the first
the germs at least of those dogmatic affirma­
tions formulated by Church authority in the
course of ages, we have found a sort of
religion which was originally formless and
undogmatic, and which came gradually to
develop in the direction of definite forms of
thought and ritual owing to the requirements
of general intercourse and to the need of
giving abstract expression to the principles
which should shape the religious activity
of the faithful. And this was effected partly
by the efforts of Christian thinkers and
partly by the negation of the positions
adopted by heretics. The Gospel message
could never have lived and spread abroad in
its primitive spiritual simplicity.” *
To the same effect writes Fr. Tyrrell : “ In
its first form the Christian revelation was
altogether apocalyptic, prophetic, visionary
' Il programma, p. 79; Engl. Iran»!., p. 93.

THE THEOLOGY OF MODERNISM

59

in character. The ethical teaching of the
Gospel was not considered as part of it, or
as in any wise new. The kingdom of
heaven, its nature, the circumstances of its
advent—this was the ‘good news.”’1
Still, life and thought must go on. The
first Christian experience demanded inter­
pretation. This, for an example, is how the
authors of the Programma sketch for us
the successive adaptations which the first
conception of Christ was made to undergo :
“The Acts (ii. 22), echoing the primitive
Christian teaching, speak of Jesus as ‘A
man to whom God has borne witness by
miracles and wonders and signs wrought by
His means.’ He is the Messiah upon whom
an ignominious death has conferred heavenly
glory, and who must soon return to inaugu­
rate His kingdom. Such was the simple
and deep faith of the first disciples. But
Christ has called all the members of the
human family to be sons of God, and has
presented Himself as their archetype. He
■ ‘1 The Rights and I .imits of Theology ” ( Quarterly
Review, Oct. 1905) ; Scylla and Charybdis, p. 211.

6θ THE ENCYCLICAL AND MODERNISM

is, therefore, Himself pre-eminently the Son
of God, according to the prophetic tradition
which attributes that dignity to the Messiah.
. . . The translation of the Hebrew concep­
tion of the Messiah into the Platonic idea
of the Logos marks a culminating point
in the theological elaboration. Here the
Messiah dreamt of by souls anxiously
awaiting the redemption of Israel was
identified with the abstract notion, essen­
tially Hellenic, of a cosmic intermediary
between the world and the Supreme Being.
A Hebrew conception possessing certain
moral and religious values, but otherwise
unmeaning for the Hellenic mind, was
translated into Alexandrine terminology in
such a way as to retain those values in
another and a more metaphysical setting.” 1
A Christian whose faith is deep-rooted,
but who has not been inoculated with this
fugitive theology, will be somewhat discon1 II programma, pp. 81-3 ; Engl, transi., pp. 96-9.
The part omitted concerns the development of the
doctrine of the Holy Spirit. A few pages before is
an analogous explanation of the successive adapta­
tion of Christology.

THE THEOLOGY OF MODERNISM

61

certed by explanations such as these. He
would fain ask the authors : Of"all these
beliefs you have enumerated, which in
matter of fact is true? Is it the “ simple
and deep faith ” of the first disciples ? Is it
the Messianic belief of the Jews? Is it the
metaphysics of the Greeks? They would
answer that all are true, precisely on the
same ground, for all possess the same
“ moral and religious values.” Has the
inquirer so soon forgotten that “ for each
one of us our life is the only absolute, and
that all that feeds it and expands it more
fruitfully has, in like manner, the value of
something absolute”?
Thus, under this medley oi symbols, the
faith itself remains always one and the same.
There is no longer need, in consequence, to
speak of progress of dogma ; so that Modern­
ists flatter themselves that they are more
orthodox than their rivals, perhaps even
more than the Vatican Council itself.'
' Programma, p. 90 ; Engl, transi., pp. 108, 109.
Cf. G. Tyrrell, “ Théologisme ” (Revue pratique
d Apologétique, July 15, 1907, pp. 522, 523).

62 THE ENCYCLICAL AND MODERNISM

“Everything in the history of Christianity
has changed—doctrine, hierarchy, worship ;
but all these changes have been providential
means for the preservation of the Gospel­
spirit, which has remained unchanged
through the ages. Of course the scholastics
and the Fathers at Trent came into a much
richer theological heritage than the Christians
of the first century ; but the religious experi­
ence, that in virtue of which they were
Christians, was the same for them all.
And for us to-day it is likewise the same,
although it moves but slowly towards a
new self-formation, owing to the sway, no
longer intellectual but simply juridical, of
scholasticism, which has won the surely
anomalous position of an ‘ official ’ philo­
sophy. The formulations of the past and
of the future have been, and will be, equally
legitimate, provided they faithfully respect
the growing needs of evangelical piety, ever
eager to find in reflex thought a better
instrument for its own preservation and
utterance.”
Their respective ideas on the truth of

THE THEOLOGY OF MODERNISM

63

Christian dogma define the attitude of
Catholic and Modernist towards the sym­
bols of faith which the Church imposes
on her children. The Catholic knows that
the divine truths revealed to him infinitely
surpass his understanding. He knows that
the very formulas which the Church puts
before him are quite inadequate to their
object. Still, he adheres to them with all
his soul, knowing as he does that they
alone infallibly light up his course to God.
According as he advances he perceives that
he draws ever nearer to the light ; and this
Credo, so simple in itself, and to tfie un­
believer so jejune, appears to him every day
more full of truth and life. He does not
stop at the symbolic representations which
it includes ;1 neither does he fetter his faith
to the human systems which some of its
expressions suggest.2 He goes straight to
1 An expression of this kind is seen, for example,
in the descent into hell ; the Catholic is not bound to
believe that hell is beneath the earth, and that our
Lord went actually down to it.
2 For example, several definitions of Councils con­
cerning the sacraments have been given in terms of

64 THE ENCYCLICAL AND MODERNISM

the sense which the Church has given
once for all to her formulations, and
which her authorized teaching enables him
to know.
the theory of matter and form, ft» accepting these
definitions the Catholic does not commit himself to
accepting the physics of Aristotle. The principle
which should guide us in this matter is the regula­
tion formulated by the Christian Council given
above: “ . . . dogmatum is sensus perpetuo «st
retinendus, quem semel declaravit Sancta Mater
Ecclesia.” Now, it is certain that even when the
Church makes use of terms drawn from particular
philosophical or theological systems, she does not
employ them in all the strictness of their technical
sense, and in consequence does not bind our faith
to any philosophic system. Hence we find one such
as Franzelin [de Eucharistia, p. 293), after having
explained the theory of “accidents,” concludes his
proposition on the eucharistie species as follows :
“ Veritas theologica physicae realitatis specierum ab
hac aut quavis alia speciali explicatione philo­
sophica modi non pendet ; gratulabimur ergo ei, qui
modum aptiorem et probabiliorem nos docuerit, e
dummodo reipsa sit integrae veritatis theologicae
explicatio.” (The theological truth of the physical
reality of the species does not depend on this or any
other particular philosophical explanation of how it
happens ; we shall then be indebted to any one who
will give us a more apt and more likely theory, of

This adherence to dogma he looks upon
as of obligation, and therefore as necessary
for salvation. He does not, indeed, forget
that God, who wills the salvation of all,
exacts from no one more than he can give,
and that He excuses the invincible ignorance
of those who, through no fault of their own,
do not accept the truths of revelation. At
the same time he also knows that whoever
has once sufficiently grasped the meaning
and the proof of revelation, is bound to give
it his allegiance, for the withdrawal of which
he can never thenceforward have any legiti­
mate excuse.
For the 'Modernist, on the contrary, the
dogmatic formulas which the Church offers
to the faithful are not unchangeable decisions.
They are the more or less successful expres­
sion of the religious experience of Christians.
They contain both truth and error ; they are
a mine in which the gold is much mixed
long as it explains the whole theological tiuth.) On
this point, which needs careful examination, and
cannot be dismissed in a few lines, cf. two articles
in the Revue pratique tTApologitique, May 15, 1907,
PP- 194-971 JW IS. *9°7, pp· 527-35·
5

a

65

nui u

THE THEOLOGY OF MODERNISM

66 THE ENCYCLICAL AND MODERNISM

with dross, though perhaps the best we can
hope for in this world.1
They are good and beneficial to the soul,
in so far as they arouse and foster the religious
sentiment. Moreover, the most excellent of
them are in no case intellectual declarations,
which deceive us into thinking we under­
stand, but with which, once we have seen
through the delusion, the soul is soon weary;
they belong to the class of recognized symbols,
which, without pretending to fathom a
mystery, bring it home to the soul. “The
stories of the birth of Christ,” writes Sabatier,
“are only poetry; yet how much more
religious and more true is this podry than all
the definitions of the formula, Quicunque !” *
1 Cf. G. Tyrrell. A Much-abused Letter, p. 78 sq<|.
“ Esquisse, p. 270. Cf. Buisson, Libre pensée et
Protestantisme liberal, p. 33. “ In our eyes the
great value of the few words to which the authentic
teaching of Christ is reduced consists in their familiar
figures, allegories, parables, and metafihors which
speak to the heart and the imagination, but which
utterly refuse to admit of any dogmatic crystalization. God is a “Father,” men are His “children.”
How can a rigid theology be extracted from the
words “ father ” and “ child ” ? How can they even

THE THEOLOGY OF MODERNISM

67

Fr. Tyrrell thus describes the Credo that
he fashions for himself in imagination :
“ In an ideal state of things, to which we
may ever approximate, we ought to find a
living and growing creed or body of dogmas
and mysteries reflecting and embodying the
spiritual growth and development of the
community; one, not with the coherence of
a logical system, and according to the letter­
value of its statements and articles, but with
the coherence of divers manifestations of
one and the same spirit ; a living, flexible
creed that represents the present spiritual
needs of the average, the past needs of the
more progressive, the future needs of the
less progressive members of the Church.” 1
lie given a precise sense or a definition according to
rule? Nevertheless they are perfectly intelligible to
the feelings. . .
In the same sense Fr. Tyrrell,
when studying the expression of revelation, seems to
set “ pure imagery,” whose value is in great part
permanent, in opposition to the categories or intel­
lectual concepts which he considers untrustworthy.
(“Théologisme,” Revue pratique dApologitique,}^
15,1906, p. 510; reproduced in Scylla and Charybdis,
p. 328 : cf. Lex Credendi, p. 143, 144).
‘“The Rights and Limits of Theology ” (Quarterly

68 THE ENCYCLICAL AND MODERNISM

The Christian will respect these formu­
laries, and will make use of them, because,
besides the help he may find in them for his
spiritual life, he owes to them his union with
Christians of all nations and all times. Still,
it is all important that they should be a help
to him and not a burthen. It may happen,
and, according to many Modernists in matter
of fact it has happened, that the greater part
Review, p, 488 ; Through Scylla and Charybdis,
p. 237)· To appreciate fully the significance of this
doctrine, it should be compared with the following
judgement of a Protestant theologian : “ In the
Catholic sense of the word, dogma is an officially
defined belief, promulgated and imposed by a compe­
tent authority, that is, by the Church. It goes with­
out saying that such an idea could not be admitted
as it stands by Protestants. The very spirit of the
Reformation is in formal opposition to the idea of a
doctrine which can be imposed from without, no
matter by what authority. Protestant dogma should
be, as Lobstein says, the scientific expression and
affirmation of the Protestant faith, in a manner which
answers to the interests of a particular period and a
particular generation ” (M. Goguel, IV. Herrmann,
p. 283). Between these two ideas of dogma, so
rightly set in opposition one to another, it is not
difficult to see to which Fr. Tyrrell inclines.

THE THEOLOGY OF MODERNISM

69

of the Church’s formularies may to-day
become a dead letter. Hitherto they have
served to give life to faith because they have
been in harmony with the religious needs
and intellectual conditions of Christians of
other times. To-day, we are told, they have
lost all meaning for us ; we can no longer
think them nor live them. What, then,, can
the Christian do but, so far as it is in his
power, bring his influence to bear upon the
Church that she may tear from herself this
dead parasitic plant which is throttling
Christianity itself? If he cannot do that,
at least he will assert, for himself and for all
whom he can affect, full Christian liberty,
and snap the fetters which theology has the
audacity to impose upon him.1
This practical attitude, which is perfectly
in accord with the rest of the system, is the
very attitude of Protestants, and cannot be
mistaken. To make it the more evident, let
us recall once more the Catholic doctrine,
' Tyrrell, A Much-abused letter, pp. 87 sqq. ;
“ Rightsand LimitS of Theology ” (Quarterly Review,
p. 490 ; toned down in Scylla and Charybdis, p. 239).

/O THE ENCYCLICAL AND MODERNISM

and see what according to it is the relation
between the two rules of faith—the individual
conscience and the authority of the Church.
The duty of faith, like every other duty, is
made known to every man by his conscience.
If God has spoken, the obligation of
believing Him is obvious, no less than the
obligation of paying Him obedience and
love. But by what criterion are we able to
discern the word of God ? Is it conscience,
or is it an external authority ?
It is evident that a question such as this
can only occur to one who has already given
his adherence to an extërnal authority, in
which at the same time he acknowledges the
authority of God. If no such authority
exists for him, one only criterion of faith,
his conscience, remains ; to him is applicable
what St. Paul said of the pagans : “ Ipsi sibi
sunt lex.”' Should he hear mention of Christ
and of his Church, still his only means of
discerning the truth of their message will
be divine grace and his personal lights.
Authority cannot fix his choice ; it can only
1 They are a law unto themselves.

THE THEOLOGY OF MODERNISM

71

bring him in touch with Christian truth,
help him to grasp the claim she has upon
his belief, pray God to enlighten him, and
leave him in the hands of his own counsel.
But the moment he has acknowledged in
the Catholic Church the authorized inter­
preter of the word of God, by that very act
he submits his faith to all the doctrine she
offers him. It now becomes his duty to
accept many dogmas without being able to
fathom for himself their intrinsic truth, and
before feeling their beneficial influence upon
his life. His conscience is still a living voice
as before ; it still declares his obligation to
believe in the various Christian dogmas; but
it is now the echo of the voice of the
Church and no more, its rule is subjected
to a higher, the Church’s magisterium, in
which it venerates the authority of God
Himself. “ My brethren,” said Newman to
the Anglicans of Birmingham, “you will tell
me that, if all doubt is to cease when you
become Catholics, you ought to be very sure
that the Church is from God before you join
it. You speak truly ; no one should enter

72 THE ENCYCLICAL AND MODERNISM
the Church without a firm purpose of taking
her word in all matters of doctrine and
morals, and that, on the ground of her
coming directly from the God of Truth.
You must look the matter in the face and
count the cost. If you do not come in this
spirit, you may as well not come at all.” 1
The Modernist cannot admit this principle ;
the whole of his theology rejects it. Revela­
tion is for him, as we have seen, strictly in­
dividual, incommunicable. He cannot then
admit that an external authority, however
sacred, may come between himself and God,
to notify to him a revelation known only to
himself, or even to give it her interpretation.
“ The religious-minded Catholic, imbued with
modern culture, holds as true what the love
of God urges him to accept : he holds it as
true, not because God, considered as an
external authority, has said it, but because
1 Discourses to Mixed Congregations, XI. Faith
and Doubt. Some have thought they recognized in
the Modernist doctrine of “the primacy of the
conscience ” a consequence of Newman’s doctrine ;
this has been shown to be a misunderstanding (Revue
pratique <P Apologétique, March I,1907, pp. 667-75).

THE THEOLOGY OF MODERNISM

73

the voice is at the same time his own
voice, and he is in intimate union with
God.” »
’ Dogma in its turn is no more than an
intellectual representation aroused by reli­
gious emotion, and adapted to awaken that
emotion in other consciences. It is not
infallibly true; therefore it cannot be imposed
as of faith. And, as its usefulness is a
measure of its value, it should be used by
each one according to the needs of his con­
science. Hence the rule formulated by
Samuel Vincent, one of the precursors of
Liberal Protestantism in France: “Any dogma
which fails to stir an echo in the soul, which
makes it give back no sound, is not necessary
for salvation.”2 Fr. Tyrrell writes in the
same strain : “ Our religious experience,
being the sense of the dynamic relationship
obtaining betw een our spirit and the Universal
Spirit, affords us a practical criterion in virtue
of which we can set aside any theory incon1 Dr. K. Gebert, Katholischer Glaube, p. 76.
2 Quoted by A. N. Bertrand, La Pensée religieuse
au sein du Protestantisme libéral, p. 22.

74 THE ENCYCLICAL AND MODERNISM
sistent with such experience ” ;1 and to a
Catholic, who complained of being unable to
adhere to the official teaching of the Church,
he wrote: “If you can live on the undeveloped
germ, you may dispense with the develop­
ments, especially if they but puzzle and hinder
you.” 123 Not long ago, in the introduction to
his last book, he explained his teaching with
still greater precision : “ Deferential within
the limits of conscience and sincerity to the
official interpreters of [the Church’s] mind [the
pioneers of progress] must, nevertheless, inter­
pret such interpretations in accordance with
the still higher and highest canon of Catholic
truth—with the mind of Christ. It is He who
sends us to them ; not they who send us to
Him. He is our first and our highest authority.
Were they to forbid the appeal, their own'
dependent authority would be at an end.” 3
This appeal, from the Pope to Christ or to
the Holy Spirit, is too obviously Protestant
1 Quarterly Review, October, 1905, p. 483. Scylla
and Charybdis, p. 230.
2 A Much-abused Letter, p. 86.
3 Scylla and Charybdis, p. 19.

THE THEOLOGY OF MODERNISM

75

not to startle a Catholic mind. Trusting in
the promises of Christ, and obedient to His
commandments, the Catholic knows that in
hearkening to the teaching of the Pope he
hearkens to the teaching of Christ ; that in
despising the teaching of the Pope, he de­
spises also the teaching of Christ. He knows
that the Christian is taught by God, not only
individually and in the silence of his con­
science, but also collectively by the official
magisterium of his Church. And here before
all let it be observed that the Protestant
principle above deduced is the unavoidable
consequence of the whole system. If revela­
tion is immediately communicated to each
individual soul, if it is essentially no more
than a religious emotion, if dogma is only a
human conception, more or less intimately
bound up with this emotion, and more or
less advantageous to our life, if its formulary
is only a symbol and has none but a practical
value, there is no longer room or need for an
infallible dogmatic authority. In other words,
whoever adheres to a philosophy of religion,
such as Sabatier expounds in his Esquisse,

76 THE ENCYCLICAL AND MODERNISM

cannot refuse the alternative he offers be­
tween the religion of authority and the
religion of the spirit, nor can he come to
any but his conclusion.
Under these circumstances the Church
may still be regarded as a beneficial institu­
tion. She transmits to us the religious
experience of the past, and unites us one to
another by the profession of the same formu­
laries and by the celebration of the same
rites. With perfect justice she claims from
us an attitude of deference and respect for
her hierarchy and her definitions. In a word,
she still remains a government, and assumes
that we, even at the cost of some sacrifice,
will conform our actions to her regulations.
But she is no longer the Body of Christ, in
which and by which all grace is communi­
cated from the head to the members.
Hence the principle, unhappily laid down
of late by Fr. Tyrrell and the authors of
the Programma, of “Salutary Excommunica­
tion ” : “ Not only has excommunication been
stripped for the most part of the terrors it
possessed in the Middle Ages, terrors tem-

THE THEOLOGY OF MODERNISM

77

poral and spiritual, but what is more, when
reasons of conscience have occasioned it; the
sacrifice which it demands makes it in a
sense attractive for heroic hearts, and honour­
able in the eyes of a small number whose
judgement, after all, is the only one we care
for. It is a baptism of fire, a means of
sanctification for religious men. I will say
more : the circumstances in the midst of
which the Church is at present engaged are
such that to prefer to undergo excommunica­
tion rather than retract becomes a strict duty
for an increasing number of more intelligent
and sincere Catholics, to say nothing of the
considerable number of those who, while
disposed to become proselytes, yet admit,
with certain indispensable reservations, the
rights of the Roman Communion to their
entire submission.” 1
' Grande Revue, October 10, 1907, p. 666.

CHAPTER III

The Religious Consequences of
Modernism
From what has been already said a suffi­
ciently clear idea may be gathered of the
consequences of this system. Still it will
not be out of place to dwell somewhat
longer on them here ; Modernists proclaim
themselves mistrustful of logic, but are fond
of judging trees by their fruits. Quite
recently the authors of the Italian manifesto
invited us to apply this test ; profiting by
the anonymity which hid their modest
blushes they told us (p. 139) they were
“ conscious of being the most ardent cham­
pions of [the Church’s] universal honour,” 1
1 Engl, transi., p. 170.
7»

CONSEQUENCES OF MODERNISM

79

“its most devoted and loving sons,” the
representatives “ of the purest traditions of
Christianity.”
To carry the discussion along these lines
is a very difficult matter. Were it a question
of estimating the fundamental moral and
religious worth of the authors of the move­
ment, we should give up the task without
hesitation.
At the opening of his Encyclical, the
Pope has been careful to reserve to the
judgement of God the intentions of the
Modernists ; a like reserve is yet more incum­
bent upon us. Still there seems to remain
the right to criticize objective positions
freely ; we have a right to show, if we hold
it to be true, that the Modernist doctrines
make for the destruction of Christian
life.
And in the firs# place it comes as a surprise,
and that a painful one, how often the “ Non
sum sicut ceteri hominum ”1 occurs among
their writings. Modernists speak of them­
selves as “the most intelligent and best
1 I am nut as the rest of men.

8θ THE ENCYCLICAL AND MODERNISM

educated,” “ the most ardently sincere, the
most disinterested,” “ the most deeply re­
ligious,” “with the largest share of the
Gospel spirit,” &c.—expressions not usually
found on the lips of true Catholic reformers,
such as St. Bernard or St. Francis of
Assisi.
Still more astonishing than these some­
what ingenuous hymns of praise, is the spirit
of caste, the preference given to the judge­
ment of a small group of scholars rather than
to the decisions of the whole Christian
hierarchy, or to the sense of the faithful at
large. They tell us that the wider Catho­
licism—that of Erasmus 1—“ has always been
* I cannot refrain from remarking on this appeal to
Erasmus, so often on the lips of certain Modernists.
It is a sad thing to see the author of Hard Sayings
and Nwa et Vetera now claiming Erasmus and Colet as
the forefathers of his Christian lif^(cf. Times, October
I, I9°7) ! and
less sad to listen to his tone, hither­
to so truly and profoundly religious, becoming, under
the influence of Modernism, so bitter, so sarcastic,
and sometimes so violent. The change—and it is not
the only example—is a significant revelation to those
who wish to see the religious bearing of the move­
ment.

tomn····
CONSEQUENCES OF MODERNISM

8l

represented by a feeble and oppressed
minority, and branded with the disappro­
bation of the reigning average. The same
might be said of the prophets of Israel and
of the pioneers of progress in every depart­
ment of human life. They do not claim to
represent the average, or to speak in its
name. They claim to see more deeply into
the mind of the Church, and to understand
its implications more clearly, to foresee its
future developments more distinctly, and,
therefore, to be not less but more loyal than
the average to the spirit of Christ, of which"
she is the imperfect embodiment.”1 And
in another place : “ When it is clear that a
counter-belief is gaining ground in such a
way that it represents the ‘ consensus ’ of
the future ; when the same conclusion is
reached simultaneously and independently
by different thinkers, one may, and at
times one ought, to follow the belief
that lives in the spirit (however small
the number of its supporters) rather than
1 Tyrrell, Stylla and Charybdis, p. 19.
6

82 THE ENCYCLICAL AND MODERNISM
that which stagnates in the formula (how­
ever vast the multitude of its passive adhe­
rents).” 1
It is not difficult to see how deceptive is
this principle. When the same current
of philosophy draws men on all sides to the
same negations it need not surprise us that
“ the same conclusion is reached simul­
taneously and independently by different
thinkers ” ; but it is somewhat gratuitous to
see in this agreement a sign of the action of
the Holy Spirit and a presage of the faith
of to-morrow. As for this confidence in a
select body of thinkers and this mistrust of
the “average” of Christianity, it is un­
Catholic in spirit, and sounds like an echo
of that saying of the Pharisees preserved for
us in the Gospel : “Turba haec, quae non
novit legem, maledicti sunt.”’ The Catholic
is not so fastidious or scornful ; he recog­
nizes in this world two only assured rules of
faith, the decisions of doctrinal authority
1 Scylla ana Charybdis, p. 369.
• This multitude that knoweth not the law is
«accursed.

Ht;»;

CONSEQUENCES OF MODERNISM

k

8}

and the sense of the Christian people. He
repeats with St. Paulinus of Nola : “ De
omnium fidelium ore pendeamus, quia in
omnem fidelem spiritus Dei spirat.” 1
Modernists, again, reiterate that they alone
are loyal among Catholic scholars, they alone
sincere ; and certainly we are tired of listening
to these assertions of sincerity, hawked about
as they often are in clandestine publications,
or spread abroad in anonymous or pseudo­
nymous brochures. It may be worth our
while to go into this matter more deeply,
and see into what we are being drawn under
pretext of sincerity.
Their desire is, they tell us, to work with­
out any prejudice; and by that they mean
without dogmatic control, without concern
for the rule of faith. Hence it often comes
about that, thanks to the insufficiency of
historic exegetic data, or to the faultiness of
their methods, we are led to some conclusion
which faith cannot accept ; then, if we per' Epist. xxiii. 25 (P. L., Ixi. 281). (Let us depend
upon the voice of all the faithful, because into every
faithful soul the spirit of God is breathed. )

84 THE ENCYCLICAL AND MODERNISM

sist in our course, either faith must yield or
we can only preserve it by being illogical.
At the end of these proceedings, supposed
to be the only sincere and honest course, we
find ourselves caught in a situation of utter
insincerity, one in which the student must
deny in the name of science what as a
Christian he professes, and must labour to
misinterpret the Credo he repeats.
The conflict is too painful to last long.
Of the two opposing concepts, rising from
belief and science, one must of necessity
yield. If belief gives way, then what be­
comes of faith ? To this heartrending
question different answers are suggested by
Liberals of different creeds. Some would re­
serve certain privileged beliefs which alone
they consider essential to the faith. Thus
Mr. Rashdall, some few years ago, defined
the doctrinal position of the Broad Church
party in these words : “ In modern language,
I think we may say that we adhere to the
three great essentials of the Christian re­
ligion—belief in a personal God, in a per­
sonal immortality, and (while not limiting

CONSEQUENCES OF MODERNISM

85

the idea of revelation to the Old and New
Testaments) in a unique and paramount
revelation of God in the historic Christ.”1
This is almost verbatim the language of the
fundamental articles so dear to the old
reformers.
The majority of Liberals, however, repudi­
ate this position ; they accept outright the
logical consequences of their principles.
The Christian religion does not consist in
adherence to dogmas, but in the right
directing of the heart and conscience. Here
they join hands with fideists, who teach
“ salvation by faith independently of all be­
liefs,” and this certainly appears to be the
only attitude a Modernist can logically hold.
Have they not repeated again and again that
faith, being of a different order from science,
has nothing to fear from its conclusions,
whatever those conclusions might turn out to
be? Have they not told us that past and
future formularies have been and will be
equally legitimate, provided they faithfully
respect “ the needs of evangelical religion ” ?
' Christus in Ecdesta, p. 385.

86 THE ENCYCLICAL AND MODERNISM

Or, again, that “the main question is not,
What does a man believe ? but, How does
he believe ? ” 1
We would venture to urge them further.
We would ask, for example, whether it were
possible to remain a Christian while one
disbelieved even in the existence of Christ ?
The question is no mere supposition ; we
know that in the Lutheran Church pastors
have not shrunk from this denial. Quite
recently an American professor, Mr. W. B.
Smith, wrote a book to prove that Christ
never existed,2 and the learned professor,
M. Schmiedel, of Zurich, honoured it with
a preface of approval. Fideist Protestants,
again, do not shrink from such a result, but
extend even to this point their principle of
the mutual independence of science and
faith.3 How Catholic Modernists, if they
1 Gebert, Katholischer Glaube, p. 74.
’ Die VorchristlicheJesus uebst weiteren Vorstudien
zur Entstehungsgeschichte des Urchristentums (Gies­
sen, 1906).
3 “ Is faith reconcilable with absence of all belief in
Jesus Christ ? To put an extreme case, can a man
who believes that Christ never existed still possess

CONSEQUENCES OF MODERNISM

8/

would be logical and sincere, can avoid this
same conclusion it is difficult to see. But
further, whoever maintains this principle
should be logical to the end and call him­
self simply a freethinker ; at any rate he
should be sincere, and not allow his conduct
to support a belief he no longer shares.
Some four years ago M. F. Buisson wrote
to the readers of the Protestant: “If you
have not, and do not wish to have, either
Credo, or catechism, or Pope, or council, if
you do not believe in the infallibility of
either a man or a book, or in the immor­
tality of any doctrine or of any institution,
faith unto salvation ? M. Ménégoz dares to answer
* Yes ’ ; an answer which would certainly have
astonished St. Paul. According to this professor,
if a man who has given his heart to God has a mind
so distorted as to call into doubt the whole history of
Christ and His very existence, God will not condemn
him for this mental eccentricity. He adds, not with­
out a certain frivolity : In paradise this oddity would
see that he had been deceived, and would cast him­
self at the feet of the Lord ” (Babut, De la notion
biblique et de la notion symbolo-fideisle de la foi
justifiante, quoted by Doumergue, Les Etapes du
fidéisme, p. 16, note i).

88 THE ENCYCLICAL AND MODERNISM

have the courage of your convictions, and
call yourselves what you are—freethinkers.
It is possible for you to be religious free­
thinkers ; it is only to Catholic ears that
the words are contradictory. It will still be
true that you belong out-and-out to what
Sainte-Beuve called the great diocese of
common-sense. Be logical and admit it.
But it is more, much more, than logic that
obliges you to take your proper place ; com­
mon honesty urges you to it. The worst
danger which Liberal Protestantism incurs,
its only serious danger—but it is a deadly
one—is the charge of want of sincerity
just because it has failed in precision. There
is only one escape from this : that is, to put
an end to all equivocation by leaving the
ministry frankly and unmistakably.”1
No doubt this demand directly affects
Protestants and no more, but do not Catho­
lic progressives risk being caught in the like
illogicality ? Without considering what they
may become, we have the right to ask them
whether their conduct is in conformity with
1 Libre pensée et Protestantisme libéral^ p. 44.

CONSEQUENCES OF MODERNISM

89

their own principles. They maintain that
no dogmatic formulary, even if defined, is
infallibly true ; they allow to dogma no abso­
lute truth except in so far as it nourishes our
religious life. Nevertheless they profess the
greatest reverence for these dogmatic declara­
tions ; they hold them to be sacrosanct, and
worthy of all respect. But how do they
justify this attitude ? Whatever else may­
be said of it, a dogma is not a sacrament ; a
definition of the Church is not a simple rite ;
if they recognize no truth-value in the thing
itself, why do they repeat it ? Why do they
hold it to be holy ? We are told that dog­
matic formularies are beneficial and preser­
vative ; but how ? Not, surely, like magic
spells, by the mere pronunciation of the
words ; it comes, then, from the meaning
they bear, from the judgement they convey,
and if it is claimed that this intellectual
judgement contains no absolute and infallible
truth, by what right, pray, is the formularyimposed upon us ?
Words convey some sense ; I cannot be
made to repeat “Christ is God,” as I can

90 THE ENCYCLICAL AND MODERNISM

have prescribed for me baptismal ablution or
the breaking of bread, simply to develop my
religious life, and to unite it by a rite and an
exterior sign to the Christian Society.1 If
Christ is not really God, according to the
true and natural sense of the words, the
Church has neither the right to impose the
formulary upon me, nor have I the right to
repeat it; to do so w'ould be a tyranny on
one side, on the other a lie.
Still, let us assume that Modernists know
how always to maintain a right attitude
towards their beliefs, and that they never
repeat formularies which are not the sin­
cere and natural expression of their faith.
There still remains another question, and it
is the most momentous of all. What becomes
1 “Amongst them [the dogmas] some, like the
divinity of Christ, are fundamental in the sense that
certain rites (baptism, or the breaking of bread) are
fundamental, binding ages and nations together,
making a permanent core round which is clustered a
body of variable usages, and serving as an outward
and effectual sign of an all-pervading unity of the
inwardspirit” (G. Tyrrell, “The Rights and Limits of
Theology,” Quarterly Review, p. 486. Cf. Scylla
and Charybdis, p 234).

CONSEQUENCES OF MODERNISM

91

of faith and religious life under this new
system ?
On the critical day when for the first time
a soul accepts doctrinal Liberalism, it seems
to itself to have found therein salvation.
The struggle between science and faith has
been too great an agony for it not to
welcome an expedient which sets it free ;
and as the whole religious energies of the
soul forsake intellectual research in despair
and concentrate upon the affective life, it
sometimes happens that the religious senti­
ment thus takes on a colour, morbid beyond
question, but still for the moment more
resembling life. This impoverishment of
mind is a dangerous state. When the intellect
has ceased to believe, the soul soon finds
prayer impossible. To whom can one pray?
To Christ ? That demands belief in His
Divinity, or at least in His continued
existence? To God? For that we need
1 Μ. P. Stapfer endeavours to justify prayer to
Christ by the following “hypothesis” : “A likely
enough hypothesis, in favour in our time, considers
that life beyond the grave is not the natural and
universal condition of mankind, that this privilege

92 THE ENCYCLICAL AND MODERNISM

to believe that He is personal, and that
between Him and us there can be an
exchange of thought and love.1
Ixilongs only to chosen souls who have merited it
by triumphing, through effort of their own, over the
evil which reigns in this world, and over all the
obstacles that have opposed them, through their
command of matter and the dominion of the mind.
But by whom have the instincts of the lower nature
been more trampled upon than by the Divine Man
who came to preach to the world ‘the new birth,’
charity, love, and sacrifice ?... What sectarian and
pedantic rigorism, then, it is to call that prayer
idolatry which naturally rises in our hearts towards
Him I ” (“ La Crise des croyances religieuses,” in the
Bibliothèque universelle de Lausanne, July, 1905,
pp. 87, 88.)
1 M. F. Buisson, after discussing the teaching of
M. J. Réville (Le Protestantisme libéral., p. 58) on
the “ Living God,” thus concludes : “ The Credo
of Protestantism does not even include faith in a
personal God. And as for the relation lietween man
and God, which is the very object and foundation of
religion, M. Réville says expressly in a note (p. 59) :
‘ The absolute sovereignty of God, and the absolute
dependence of man upon God, is no more than what
is understood in modern science by the sovereignty of
the order of the universe. It is at that point that
faith and science meet.’ They meet, yes, but by an
equivocation, as our adversaries would say. But it is

CONSEQUENCES OF MODERNISM

93

What remains after this of Christianity
but a mere veneration, justified by nothing
but custom, for religious symbols which
hitherto have fostered the faith and which
remain rich in memories and no more ?
And this veneration itself, given to Christian
meiely in preference to Buddhistic symbols,
once faith no longer justifies it, will eke out
a precarious existence.1
not so : for there is no equivocation in a statement
which does not aim at mathematical precision, but
merely at an image, a kind of approximation, which
equally admits of two or more versions or different
explanations of the same fact ” {Libre pensée et
Protestantisme liberal, p. 36).
* 1 In 1869 M. F. Buisson wrote: “What is the
mission of liberal Protestantism? It is to bid men
to distinguish between the two elements of traditional
Christianity. All of you, men of science and reason
—naturalists, physicians, geologists, historians, critics
—who can no longer admit the theology and the
legends with which the Church has surrounded
Christ, refuse your allegiance, and you will be no
less lawful Christians. Throw* down this exterior
scaffolding ; the real building within these fragile
and makeshift constructions, when exposed to
view*, will be seen to be only the more beautiful.
Undermine, destroy, demolish all orthodoxy, you
will not have done thereby the least harm to the

94 THE ENCYCLICAL AND MODERNISM

Last year M. Schmiedel concluded an
address delivered before the Liberal Pro­
testants of Switzerland in these terms :
“ Let me add a word on the bearing of
the person of Christ upon personal devotion.
If in the full liberty of our researches we
true Christianity, the Christianity of the Gospel and
of Christ. For that Christianity is of a wholly moral
order ; it is built on the rock of conscience, and
not on the quicksand of any system whatsoever.”
When rewriting this passage some four years
ago in his pamphlet on Freethought (p. 53, note 1),
M. F. Buisson added : “ This passage clearly
contains, as far as words go, certain general
statements in favour of Christianity which I could
not now reassert without adding many reservations
forced upon me by the progress of religious criticism,
such as are expressly made by M. Sabatier and
M. Albert Réville, for example. The duty of
freethought, in religion as in philosophy, is to follow
the lead of science and to keep a mind open to
every fresh lesson that experience, study, or
reflection may supply.” This declaration does
honour to its writer, and cannot surprise any one
but one may suspect that the page written in 1869
—so like, unhappily, to what we hear to-day around
us—gave sufficient indication of the event, in spite of
its seemingly Christian fervour. Faith ill survives
the death of fixed beliefs.

ijBhnr
CONSEQUENCES OF MODERNISM

95

adhere, as I have done, to certain points
which others do not accept, this matters
nothing to our attitude of worship. For my
part, I would not even assert that Jesus
Christ is unique ; for this either says
nothing—every man is unique in some
respect—or it says too much. The real
core of my religious being would suffer
no injury were I to be persuaded to-day
that Christ never existed. It might be
that I should no longer be able to fix my
affection on Him as a real man ; but I
should know that all the devotion that
has long been mine would not be lost,
merely because I could no longer fix it on
Him. . . . But as an historian I can say
that this hypothesis is improbable. Neither
would my religious life be troubled if Christ
appeared to me to be no more than an
enthusiastic pretender to the title of Messiah,
or if I saw in Him some other feature which
could not receive my support. But as an
historian I hold as probable what I have
already explained. Nor, again, has my
devotion any need to see in Christ an

96 THE ENCYCLICAL AND MODERNISM

absolutely perfect model, and I should not
be disturbed did I discover another who
surpassed Him ; indeed, there can be no
doubt that in some respects He has been
surpassed. But hitherto no one has shown
me a man who has been greater than
Christ in that which makes His peculiar
worth.” ’
Once more this is the logical position ; but
whoever holds such views as these is no
longer a Christian.
The consequences of doctrinal Liberalism,
serious though they are for individuals who
profess it, are still more serious for the creeds
which tolerate it. A Church is practically an
assembly of believers, and it should Ire able
to express the faith of its members in a for­
mulary common to all ; what then will
become of it if it cannot guarantee among
either its members or its ministers any uni­
formity of beliefs ? M. Ménégoz thus presents
in his own fashion both the problem and his
answer : “ A Church without a creed, such
* Die Person Jesu bn streite der .Meinungen der
Gegenwart (Leipzig, 1906), p. 29.
x

CONSEQUENCES OF MODERNISM

97

as is dreamt of by certain Liberal idealists, is
a chimera, while a Church such as certain
champions of orthodoxy long for, whose
members could be held to the same beliefs,
would contain within itself the germs of dis­
solution. Only let our reformed brethren
preserve at the root of their respective eccle­
siastical organizations their historical creeds
—be they ancient or modern—let them
authorize their interpretation in the spirit of
faith and liberty which belonged to the
reformers, and they will have secured peace
within the Church, and lifted a weight from
many a conscience which oppresses men the
more, the more conscientious they are.” 1
M. Ménégoz then refers to the anguish
with which young clerics, above all the best
among them, subscribe to their confessions
of faith when they take service in the Church,
and he thinks that “ symbolo-fideism ” alone
can set free their consciences.
It must be confessed that this situation is
an extremely painful one, but who does not
1 “ Le Fidéisme et la Notion de la foi” (fievue de
théologie et des questions religieuses'' July, 1905, p. 74).

7

98 THE ENCYCLICAL AND MODERNISM
see that the remedy is worse than the disease ?
In the eyes of the waverer, to see the Churches
making professions of faith and trying to
evade their import, compelling their ministers
to subscribe to a solemn and public engage­
ment which they may afterwards interpret as
they please, is nothing short of a scandal.
Let me repeat here a criticism which I have
had occasion to cite elsewhere. Mr. Jacks,
the editor of the Hibbert Journal, writes : “ A
passion for vague engagements seems to have
possessed the intellect of the Churches. In
the sphere of religious belief men may pledge
themselves to all sorts of issues, without feel­
ing committed either to this or that. A
liberty of private interpretation is claimed for
solemn and public undertakings. Language,
when applied to the expression of religious
belief, seems to have a different set of values
from those carried in other departments of
.of thought. Elsewhere words are supposed
to convey something : here they may convey
almost anything. Not only has it become
impossible to say what a particular dogma
means, but highly difficult to say what it

CONSEQUENCES OF MODERNISM

99

does not mean ; for there is hardly a con­
ceivable meaning which ingenuity may not
contrive to fix on the words. What would
happen, we may well ask, if a witness in a
court of law were to indulge in the irrespon­
sible use of language which is now tolerated
in many of the high places of religion ? ” 1
Let us look well to it. If the Church were
to tolerate among her members, and above
all among her priests, this transient method
of interpreting her dogmas, she too would
come under the same severe yet well-deserved
condemnation. She has been denounced as
intolerant because the decree of the Holy
Office and the Encyclical itself have both
bidden supporters of Modernist doctrines
to be removed from professorships and the
exercise of sacred orders ; and those that
make this protest imagine they are advocating
sincerity. The authors of the Programma have
gone so far as to compare the Holy Father to
Julian the Apostate, banishing Christian
teachers from the schools (p. 128). They
• “ Church and World ” {HibbertJournal·, October,
1906, p. 14).

IOO THE ENCYCLICAL AND .MODERNISM

would do well to reflect and ask themselves
whether this kind of equivocal comparison
savours of sincerity. Every one is aware that
among the Modernists are men who reject
the virgin conception of Christ and His
resurrection, some even His divinity, rightly
and strictly understood ; and yet these men
would have us let them come forward as
ministers of the Church, and recite in an
official capacity her symbol : “ Deum de
Deo, lumen de lumine, Deum verum de Deo
vero ... Et incarnatus est de Spiritu sancto
ex Maria Virgine ... Et resurrexit tertia die,
secundum Scripturas. . . . ” ' And they
would have us commit to them the charge
of teaching and interpreting the same to the
faithful !
Let us also bear in mind that the faithful
have rights, and of these the first is that of
not being taught the faith by unbelievers. A
Protestant clergyman, M. Koenig, in a report
presented to the Free Evangelical Confer1 God of God, light of light, true God of true
God. . . . And He was made flesh by the Holy
Spirit of the Virgin Mary. . . . And He arose the
third day, according to the Scriptures.

- -

CONSEQUENCES OF MODERNISM

ΙΟΙ

»

ences of November, 1902, said: “We
pastors, when we gather the children to­
gether, the hope of future generations, the
nurseries of our Churches, are uneasy most
of the time in our teaching. We feel that
we walk on ground that is undermined, nay,
doubly undermined, and while we repeat the
old legends on which we were brought up,
the feeling is lively within us that we lack
sincerity and that the words we utter are not
the truth.” 1 It could not be otherwise in
Churches which tolerate among their pastors
and aspirants to holy orders freedom from all
beliefs. And yet, once again, that is the
ideal of the opponents of the Encyclical.
In his article of October ist, Fr. Tyrrell
wrote : “What he [the Modernist] will most
deeply regret is the loss of one of the
Church’s greatest opportunities of proving

4

1 "De la sincérité dans Γenseignement de Γhis­
toire sainte de ΓAncien Testament aux enfants" p. 4
(Paris, 1903). We should add that M. Koenig is un­
easy not only about the ston'cs.o» thç Ql<i Testaânent,
but also about his understanding, of HfeChrsùan revela-,
tion and his appreciation of the person of Christ, in
whom he sees no more .'hail ’1 the typical man” (p. 5).

102 THE ENCYCLICAL AND MODERNISM

herself the saviour of the nations. Rarely
in her history had the eyes of all been wait­
ing upon her more expectantly, in the hope
that she might have bread for the starving
millions, for those who are troubled by that
vague hunger for God on which the En­
cyclical pours such scorn. Protestantism, in
its best thinkers and representatives, had
grown dissatisfied with its rude antithesis to
Catholicism, and was beginning to wonder
whether Rome too had not grown dissatisfied
with her rigid medievalism. The ‘ Modern­
ist ’ movement had quickened a thousand
dim dreams of reunion into enthusiastic
hopes. When lo ! Pius X comes forward
with a stone in one hand and a scorpion in
the other.”
A Catholic, even if he overlooks the insult
offered in the concluding sentence, may easily
recognize in this whole passage narrow human
opinion sitting in judgement and condemn­
ing divine thought.
It is true that millions
of sdMis-_are dying .hunger and are fixing
their gaie "upon Rome; Sut what will satisfy
them'sfioif'of the wptdtoi God? On every

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CONSEQUENCES OF MODERNISM

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103

side theChurches are renouncing their claims
to teach, and are setting aside as rotten bar­
riers the creeds which have hitherto held
them apart. Some already hail the re-establishment of the great union of Christendom,
and call upon Rome to renounce, like the
rest, her intransigent attitude that she may
join the others. But Rome does not leave
her fastness. She remains upon her holy
mountain like a watch-tower raised among
the nations. She knows that she may not
desert her post, for she is the witness of God
and the light of the world.

APPENDIX

The Mind of St. Augustine on Ex­
communication
We notice, not without some astonishment,
that in the Grande Revue (October io, 1907,
p. 671), Fr. Tyrrell quotes the authority of
St. Augustine in confirmation of his doctrine
of “salutary excommunication.”
Probably
readers of the Grande Revue are but little
acquainted with the holy doctor; yet the
least familiarity with his writings proves that
no one more than he has ever preached the
unity of the Church and the union of the
hierarchy. Nevertheless Fr. Tyrrell’s argu­
ment has seemed so convincing to the Italian
Modernists that they have used it as the
peroration of their booklet. It may, then,
be worth our while to discuss it.
104

_____
APPENDIX

IOS

The text which they cite is the following
(our rendering does not quite correspond
with that of Fr. Tyrrell or his translator ; we
prefer to be more literal) :
“ Divine Providence often allows, owing to
seditions or disturbances stirred t$ by carnal
men, even good men to be driven out from
the assembly of Christians. When for the
peace of the Church such men endure this
insult and injustice with all patience, and do
not give their support to any novelty of
heresy or schism, they furnish a lesson to
mankind of the true affection and sincere
charity with which God should be served.
The aim of such men is either to resume
their voyage when the waves have grown
calmer, or if that is impossible, either because
the same storm continues, or because the
like or some worse would be roused if they
ventured to return, they keep at least the
will to help those to whose turbulent clamour
they have yielded, defending unto death, and
helping by their witness, without forming
factious groups, that faith which they know
to be found in the bosom of the Catholic

Ιθ6 THE ENCYCLICAL AND MODERNISM

Church. These the Father seeth in secret,
and in secret rewards. This kind of man
seems rare, but examples are not wanting;
indeed, there are more than may well be
credited.”^
After transcribing this passage Fr. Tyrrell
is careful to remark that St. Augustine never
retracted it. He might have added that
it is not the only passage of the kind in
1 Saepe etiam sinit divina providentia, per nonnullas
nimium turbulentas carnalium hominum seditiones,
expelli de congregatione Christiana, etiam bonos
viros. Quam contumeliam vel iniuriam suam cum
patientissime pro Ecclesiae pace tulerint, neque ullas
novitates vel schismatis vel haeresis moliti fuerint,
docebunt homines quam vero affectu et quanta sinceri­
tate caritatis Deo serviendum sit. Talium ergo
virorum propositum est, aut sedatis remeare tur­
binibus ; aut si id non sinantur, vel eadem tempestate
perseverante, vel ne suo reditu talis aut saevior oriatur,
tenent voluntatem consulendi etiam iis ipsis quorum
motibus perturbationibusque cesserunt, sine ulla con­
venticulorum segregatione usque ad mortem defend­
entes, et testimonio iuvantes eam fidem quam in
Ecclesia catholica praedicari sciunt. Hos coronat
in occulto Pater, in occulto videns. Rarum hoc
videtur genus, sed tamen exempla non desunt :
imo plura sunt quam credi potest ( De vera relig. 6, 11.
P. L., xxxiv. 128).

APPENDIX

IO/

his works :1 but how can he see in the atti­
tude here described that of 11 protesting
Catholics ” ? ·
The men of whom St. Augustine is
speaking are not, and have no desire to be,
defenders of novelties ; even when driven
1 In the De baptismo contra Donatistas (1, 17, 26,
P.L.,xliii. 123), St. Augustine, after having spoken of
the carnal men who are outside the Church, or who
are only united to it by some exterior bond, and not
by partaking in its life, goes on as follows : “De
nullo tamen desperandum est, sive qui intus talis ap­
paret, sive qui foris manifestius adversatur. Spirituales
autem sive ad hoc ipsum pio studio proficientes,
non eunt foras : quia et cum aliqua vel perversitate
vel necessitate hominum videntur expelli, ibi magis
probantur, quam si intus permaneant, cum adversus
Ecclesiam nullatenus eriguntur sed in solida unitatis
petra fortissimo caritatis robore radicantur.”
(Still we must despair of no one, whether he
appear to us to be within the fold, or is more clearly
without and opposed to us. But spiritual men, or
men who are making true and earnest effort to this
end, never leave the fold ; and if through some
perversity or compulsion on the part of men they
were to be driven out, this does but prove them more
than if they remained unmolested, seeing they never
rise against the Church, but remain fast bound by the
unbreakable bond of charity to the solid rock of unity.)

Ιθ8 THE ENCYCLICAL AND MODERNISM

from the assembly of Christians they still
bear witness to the faith which the Catholic
Church teaches. Does he follow their ex­
ample who, on his own acknowledgement,
has no other ambition than to promote a
new belief, or, to be still more accurate,
a “counter-belief,” in opposition to the
general belief of the Church ?1 Does he
bear witness to the faith which he knows to
be taught by the Church Catholic, who
represents it as a parasitic plant throttling
the tree of the Gospels?
For the rest, a slight knowledge of ecclesi­
astical history is enough to show us the
bearing of the doctrine of St. Augustine.
The De vera Religione is dated about 390,
the De Baptismo about 400. At these
dates, and for some fifty years previously,
a number of deplorable abuses of power had
taken place on the part of bishops, who
were often unworthy, and sometimes hereti­
cal. Many excommunications had been
pronounced against their own faithful sub­
jects or their colleagues by Arian or semi1 Through Scylla and Charybdis, p. 369.

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APPENDIX

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—

109

Arian bishops. At the close of the century
Origenism and anti-Origenism had become
the occasion of these disputes. In 394, St.
Jerome was persecuted by his bishop, John
of Jerusalem ; in 400, the priest Isidore and
the most revered of the monks of Egypt,
were excommunicated and banished by the
patriarch Theophilus of Alexandria, and even
St. Chrysostom had to yield to his intrigues.
In Africa abuses like these seem to have
been fairly common even without any
dogmatic pretext. We possess a letter of
St. Augustine (ep. 250) addressed to a
young bishop, Auxilius, who, to punish
a certain Classicianus for a misdemeanour
which he considered injurious to himself,
had anathematized him and all his family.
St. Augustine remarks on this occasion that
these wholesale condemnations are not with­
out precedent, but that in spite of all pre­
cedent he has never dared to pronounce
one himself.·
’ Audisti fortasse aliquos magni nominis sacerdotes
cum domo sua quempiam anathemasse peccantium ;
sed forte si essent interrogati, reperirentur idonei

I IO THE ENCYCLICAL AND MODERNISM

If, in the light of facts such as these, we
read the passage above quoted, it is not
difficult to grasp its significance. What
advice could the holy doctor have given
to the victims of these abuses of power, to
Classicianus, for example, and his family,
except to endure their trial with patience,
to set an example of charity, and to seek
reconciliation as soon as they were able, not
to form separate Churches, but to defend
the faith of the one Church, and to leave the
issue to God, who sees all in secret ?
Obviously there is no parallel between
these circumstances and the circumstances
of those “ protesting Catholics ” who have
been condemned by the Pope, because they
have revolted against a dogmatic decision
pronounced by the highest doctrinal autho­
rity, and which the entire Church has
accepted. If they would hear the opinion
of St. Augustine on their own attitude, they
reddere inde rationem. Ego autem, quoniam, si
quis ex me quaerat utrum recte fiat, quid ei respon­
deam non invenio, munquam enim hoc facere ausus
sum (P. L., xxxiii. 1066).

APPENDIX

II1

might read with advantage what he wrote to·
Julian of Eclana, who refused to submit
to Pope Innocent (Contra Julian, i. 13,
P. L., xliv. 648).
And if they would realize what St.
Augustine thought of the necessity under
which a Catholic lies to remain united with
the Church, they might read some such
texts as the following, chosen from among
many others.1 In a Synodal Letter, written
by him in the name of the bishops of
Africa, he says : “ Whoever is separated
from the Catholic Church, however other­
wise praiseworthy his life may seem to
himself to be, is dead, for the single crime
of being separated from the unity of
Christ, and the anger of God is upon
him” (P. L., xxxiii. 579). And again—
not to conclude this discussion in terms so
severe—in his homilies on St. John he
writes : “ We receive the Holy Spirit if we
jove the Church, if we are united by charity,
’ Cf. Th. Specht, Die Lehrc von der Kircke nach
dem hl. Augustin (Paderborn, 1892), pp. 294 sqq. ;
Portalié, art. Augustin (Did. de Thcol., i. 2409).

I 12 THE ENCYCLICAL AND MODERNISM

if we rejoice in the Catholic name and faith.
Brethren, let us believe that in so far as we
love the Church of Christ, in so far have we
the Holy Spirit.” “ Accipinius ergo et nos
Spiritum Sanctum, si amamus Ecclesiam, si
caritate compaginamur, si catholico nomine
et fide gaudemus. Credamus, fratres ; quan­
tum quisque amat Ecclesiam Christi, tantum
habet Spiritum Sanctum.”1
' In Io., Tract 32, 8 (Γ. L., xxxv. 1645).

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