THE HUMANI GENERIS AND ITS PREDECESSORS
On Dec. 8, 1864, Pope Pius IX issued his famous encyclical
Quanta cura, and sent it, together with his Errorum syllabus, a
listing of the doctrinal vagaries he had proscribed and condemned
in earliei- apostolic pronouncements, to the Catholic episcopate
throughout the world. After an interval of about forty-three years
another pontifical document, the encyclical Pascendi dombijci
gregis, was written by Pope Pius X to unmask and to destroy the
inaccurate teachings on the subject of religion that were current
at that time. Four months ago, again after the space of about
forty-three years, the present Floly Father signed his encyclical
Humani generis, a document in which several dangerous contem­
porary errors have been denounced and corrected.
\ Obviously the world of Catholic scholarship is very much in­
terested in the Humani generis, and its interest is far more than
merely academic. In this encyclical the Holy Father has charged
“the Bishops and the Superiors General of Communities, binding
them most seriously in conscience, to take most diligent care that
such opinions [as those condemned in this document] be not ad­
vanced in schools, in conference, or in writings of any kind, and
that they be not taught in any manner whatsoever to the clergy or
the faithful.”1 Fie has likewise warned “the teachers in ecclesiasti­
cal institutions” that they must “be aware that they cannot with
tranquil conscience exercise the office of teaching entrusted to
them, unless in the instruction of their students they religiously
accept and exactly observe” the norms set forth in this letter.2
The profound interest in the Humani generis manifested in our
land constitutes an indication that, the Holy Father’s commands
are being obeyed wholeheartedly. J
There is much to be learned about the content and the spirit of
the Humani generis by looking at it in the light or against the back­
ground of the Quanta cura and the Pascendi dominici gregis. The
three pontifical letters have certain common characteristics. Never­
theless each one of them is dominated by individual elements and
concerns, calculated to resolve the religious difficulties and errors
1 In the NCWC translation (Washington, 1950), n. 41.
* Ibid., n. 42.
452

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THE HUMANI CENERIS AXD ITS PREDECESSORS

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I prevalent in the particular situation towards which each has been
I directed. As a result, an examination of the Humani generis
I ■ against the background of the other two documents will serve to
I show that some of the errors deplored by the present Holy Father
I have been evils affecting Catholic thought and teaching over much
I of the century, while others are definitely the products of our own
I generation.
In the Quanta cura Pope Pius IX points to the fact that, during
the course of his reign as Sovereign Pontiff, he has followed the
example set by his illustrious predecessors and has many times
? ( “in several published letters, in consistorial allocutions, and in
many other communications condemned the outstanding errors of
our most unhappy age.”:>> lie describes the Quanta cura itself as
a document intended to stir up the vigilance of the Bishops “to
reprove other evil opinions that spring up from these same errors
as from their sources.”3
456 The references attached to the Syllabus
which accompanied this encyclical show that Pope Pius IX had
in mind no less than thirty-two of his own documents which were
devoted to the condemnation of errors current at that time. There
were no less than eighty propositions contained in the Syllabus.
They were divided under ten different headings.
There are some rather interesting parallels between the Syllabus
and the Humani generis. The present Holy Father denounces the
error of those who try to explain all things in terms of evolution,
while the Syllabus designates as condemned the proposition that
“divine revelation is imperfect and therefore subject to continuous
and indefinite progress, which should correspond to the progress
of human reason.”·3 The Humani generis attacks the notion that
the decrees of the visible ruler of the Church militant are opposed
to the free progress of science, a contention previously condemned
in the Syllabus? Both documents likewise discountenance the no­
tion that the method and the principles excogitated by the old
scholastic teachers are inadequate for the demands of our times
and for the progress of science.7 Both likewise reproved a broad
3 In the Libellus fidci, edited by Bernard Gaudeau. S.J. (Paris: Lethielleux,
1897), n. 618.
4 Gaudeau, n. 619; DB, 1688.
5 Syllabus, n. 5; DB, 1705.
6Humani generis, n. 18; Syllabus, n. 12, DB, 1712.
7 Humani generis, nn. 14 ff. ; Syllabus, n. 13, DB, 1713.

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and evasive interpretation of the teaching on the Church’.·· uece>sity for salvation,8 and both rejected the idea that Catholics arc
obligated to assent only to those propositions which ihe C hurch
has infallibly defined as dogmas, as truths revealed by Gwi a> a
part of Christian revelation and entrusted to the Church to be
guarded and taught infallibly always.9
The Quanta cura charges the men who are ί-preading natural­
ism, socialism, and communism, the three errors with which it w
principally concerned, with striving to bring about a .situation in
which the “salutary doctrine and force of the Catholic t hurch
should be entirely taken away from the training and the education
of youth.”10 ft asserts that these individuals are directing all thenplans, their efforts and their activities to the task of deceiving and
spiritually harming the young people. The Humani genens like­
wise contains an accusation that the erroneous teachings against
which it is directed tend to bring about spiritual harm especially
among the younger clergy.11 This same encyclical states that the
opinions it sets out to combat are actually being advanced, “either
openly or covertly,” and it credits these false teachings with a
power to “entice the incautious.”12 The present Holy Father’s
letter, however, contains no direct attack on the intentions of the
men who are engaged in spreading the false teachings the Humani
generis sets out to oppose. It merely asserts that these views arc
being spread abroad in our day “through a desire for novelty or
through a certain immoderate zeal for the apostolate."13 The Holy
Father takes cognizance of the fact that these false teachings have
been taught both openly and covertly, but he likewise, shows that,
in his opinion, these evils have not yet had sufficient time to become
deeply rooted in Catholic society.
On these points it is quite interesting to compare the Humani
generis with the Pascendi dominici gregis. One of the most strik­
ing paragraphs in the present Holy Father’s encyclical is the one in
which he accuses the teachers of the opinions reproved in t!ii> «locu­
ment of advocating their views in two different manners, nioders Syllabus, nn. 15 ft’.; DB, 1715, ft.; Humani generis, n. 27.
9 Cf. Syllabus, n. 22, DB, 1722; Humani generis, n. 18.
10 Gaudeau, n. 622.
11 Cf. n. 13.
12 Cf. n. 40.
13 Ibid.

THE HLWJ.V/ oEXLIPS AND ITS PREDECESSORS

455

atelv in their signed and pr.hkdied writings, and more boldly else­
where. These are his words.
.These new opinions, whether they' originate from a reprehensible desire
. of novelty or from a laudable motive, are not always advanced in the
same degree., tvith equal clarity nor in tlie >ame terms, nor always with
unanimous agreement <>î them authors. Theories that today are put
forward rather covertly by .-ome. not without cautions and distinctions,
tomorrow are openly and without moderation proclaimed by others
more audacious, causing scandal Io many, especially among the young
clergy and to the détriment of ecclesiastical authority. Though they
are usually more cautious in their published works, they express them­
selves more openly in their writings intended for private circulation and
in conferences and lectures.11

The corresponding passage in the Pascendi is much more de­
tailed and much more bitter. In describing the methods of the
Modernists, Pope Pius X adverted to the fact that “In sermons
from the pulpit they disseminate their doctrines, although possibly
in utterances which are veiled. In congresses they express their
teachings more openly. In their social gatherings they introduce
them and commend them to others.”14
15
It is in keeping with the spirit of the Hitinani- generis that the
present Holy Father omits any complete parallel to certain other
passages in the Pascendi, passages in which Pope Pius X spoke
of certain procedures adopted by the writers who upheld various
sections of Alodernistic teaching. Pope Pius X charged that the
Modernistic authors bitterly and unjustly attacked the writers who
opposed them, or else surrounded the persons and the works of
these men by a definite conspiracy of silence. He also claimed that
these men constituted a group that was perpetually engaged in
showering the highest praise upon its members and sympathizers,16’
It was his contention that, as a result of these manoeuvres, “The
young, excited and confused by all this clamor of praise and abuse,
some of them afraid of being branded as ignorant, others ambitious
to rank among the learned, and both classes goaded internally by'
14 Humani generis, n. 13.
15 Translation in The Doctrines of the Modernists (London: Catholic
Truth Society, 1937), p. 56.
16 Cf. ibid.

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curiosity and pride, not infrequently surrender and give themselves
up to Modernism.”1718
Some of that charge is actually reproduced in the Humani
generis. Pope Pius XII lists as one class guilty of teaching error
within the Church, certain men “desirous of novelty, and fearing
to be considered ignorant of recent scientific findings.''13 He
charges these individuals, not with becoming Modernists, but with
trying “to withdraw themseh’es from the sacred teaching author­
ity,”19 and declares that they “are accordingly in danger of grad­
ually departing from revealed truth and of drawing others along
4dth them into error.”20
h The situation in 1950, however, differed from that which existed
forty-three years previously in one very important respect. There
was nothing today to oblige the Holy Father to denounce anything
like the chorus of opposition towards their adversaries and the mu­
tual hymn of praise for their own lucubrations which Pope Pius X
noted and reproved among the Modernists during the first decade
of our century. The old Modernists were geniuses, if not in the
field of clerical studies, at least within the highly colorful province
of advertising. Subsequent history has had to record how powerful
their efforts were along this line, despite the earnest and repeated

warnings by Pope Pius X.
Although they were, of course, unable to pervert the Catholic
faith itself, the enterprising writers of the Modernistic school were
spectacularly successful in leaving a highly distorted and overoptimistic picture of themselves and of their movement in the
minds of many Catholics. Among the comparatively few reputable
Catholic writers who have dealt with the question of Modernism
during the past few decades, there has been manifest an over­
whelming sympathy with those members of the Church who were
in some way involved in or sympathetic to the Modernistic move­
ment, but who were never in any immediate danger of leaving or
of being expelled from the Church. And, whatever bitterness they
may have shown towards such as Loisy and Tyrrell, it has been
nothing in comparison with the contempt they have manifested
towards the men who criticized their conclusions in the Catholic
press before these teachings were condemned by the ecclesiastical
17 Ibid.
18 Humani generis, n. 10.

i» Ibid.
Ibid.

20

THE HlEU.l.X'I G P.X hi: IS AND ITS PREDECESSORS

45/

•authority. Thus, in sonic sections of Catholic writing, the works of
men like Benigni anti Fontaine, to mention only two of the anti­
Modernist group, have been con.dstciitly belittled or ignored, while
some rather pretentious efforts at Catholic scholarship still give
altogether undeserved attention to the statements of such as Loisy.
This attitude is mirrored in some epigram?· that improperlv com­
pare Modernism itself with Integralism, the name given <7r facto
= to the teachings of those men who w rote against the Modernists.
One such formula reads, “To preserve life, .Modernism sacrificed
: forms—to preserve forms, imegralism sacrifices lite."21
Not a few of the errors actualiy reproved in the Pascendi, and
in its companion-document, the decree Lamentabili sane exitu, are
also to he found among the false teachings stigmatized by the
present Holy Father in the Humani generis. It is interesting to
find that, on the subject of Holy Scripture, the ninth, the eleventh,
and the twelfth of the theses condemned in the Lamentabili are
also castigated in the recent encyclical.2-’ The sixty-second propo­
sition of the Lamentabili contains a clear expression of that dog­
matic relativism which Pope Pius Nil. opposes so powerfully in his
Own document.23 The sixty-fourth proposition condemned in the
Lamentabili maintains that “The progress of science demands that
the concepts of Christian doctrine concerning God, Creation, Rev■ elation, the Person of the Incarnate Word, and about the Redemp­
tion, be reformed.’’24 The Humani generis, on the other hand, re­
proves those who seek to reform or recast the concepts employed
in theology and even in dogma, on the grounds that such a process
might be useful in furthering the advance of the Church,25
Thus, in the Quanta cura, in the Pascendi dominici gregis, and
in the Humani generis, three Sovereign Pontiffs named Pius have
reproved errors current in the field of religion in their own times.
They have indicated the fact that these errors have been related
among themselves, that some of them followed logically from
others. All of them have pointed to the real and proximate danger
to the Catholic faith itself which would inevitably result from ac21 Cf. Growth or Decline (Smith Bend: hides, 1948), p. 51.
22 Cf. DB, 2009; 2011 f. ; Humani generis, nn. 22 f.
23 Cf. DB, 2062; Humani generis, nn. 14 ff.
24 DB, 2064.
Humani generis, nn. 11 ff.

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ceptance of these false teachings, and all of them have placed the
^satholic Bishops throughout the world on their guard against them,
k
The persistent recurrence of some errors, in the face of the opy ' position from and condemnation by the visible head of the Church
militant, is something disquieting. It is a factor which shows that
the Sovereign Pontiffs are pursuing an absolutely necessarv course
when they appeal to the episcopate and to the bodv of Catholic
teachers throughout the world to join in their efforts for the purity
of the Catholic faith. Obviously one of the disadvantages with
which the Church has had to contend during the past ceniiirv has
been the naive acceptance on the part of some of its own children
of the advertising propaganda put forward by purveyors of error
on their own behalf and in support of their own theses.
The desire or love of novelty, manifesting itself in an utterly il­
lusory hope on the part of some men, themselves mediocre or even
worse in their capacities as theologians, to blaze new trails in the
field of the sacred sciences, has been a persistent occasion of harm
to the children of the Church. With that desire there has gone a
fear in the hearts of others that fidelity to the traditional Catholic
teachings and methods would stamp them as outsiders in what
they fondly imagined to be the most select circles in the world of
scholarship. Now, as something added to this combination, the
present Holy Father has noticed and indicated a misplaced hope
and an indiscreet zeal for ecclesiastical unity, a tendency to seek
unity in the worship of God by means of the relaxation of Catholic

Answers to Questions
DANCING IN THE PARISH HALL
Question: In the July issue of The American Ecclesiastical Rc' view the view was proposed that it would not be contrary to the
decrees of the Holy See for Canada and the L'nited States if a
. priest allowed the use of the parish hall for a dance arranged by
the laity (at which he himself should not be present). Is not this
opinion contrary to the decision of the Consistorial Congregation
to the Bishop of St. Cloud: “Graviter admoneas parochos ut ob• servent praescripta saepius data circa choreas non promovendas in
locis parochialibus” ?
Answer: The decision which the questioner quotes, since it was
private, does not of itself impose any obligation on others besides
those for whom it was given. Nevertheless, since it refers to
“praescripta saepius data” it possesses, for practical purposes, the
force of a public response. However, the question remains whether
a priest can be said to promote a dance if he merely allows the
parish hall to be used for that purpose, while others make the ar' rangements. Beste answers in the affirmative (Introductio in Co­
dicem [Collegeville, Minn., 1944j, 192), asserting that the prohi;· bition to promote and.sponsor dances involves the obligation to
exclude them entirely from parish property. I would hesitate to
say that this conclusion must necessarily be drawn from the deci■ sions of the Holy See. It could be argued that the mere granting
of permission to a group of the laity to hold a dance in the parish
hall is not equivalent to promoting or sponsoring it. Certainly,
many priests in our country at the present day are following this
latter view. I do not think their attitude implies disregard for the
decisions of the Holy See, but is rather due to a desire to interpret
these decisions as liberally as possible, on the grounds that since
our young folks are going to dance anyway, it is better that they
do so in circumstances where good Catholic persons can supervise
and chaperon them than that they go to public dance halls, where
there is no such supervision. It is hardly necessary to add that
if the local Ordinary follows the former view and prohibits the
use of the parish buildings for dances, his ruling must be obeyed
by the priests and the faithful.

dogma.
All of these factors now constitute evils which the Catholic
body throughout the world must avoid and combat in order to
be faithful to the teachings and the faith of Jesus Christ.
Joseph Cliffokd Fenton

The Catholic University of Ain erica
Washington, D. C.

459

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