 Section 0 of Pechendi Dominici Greigis on the Errors of the Modernists, by Pope Saint Pius X, translated by Thomas E. Judge. Introduction A deplorable and dishonorable tendency, common enough in every age of the history of Christianity, but especially conspicuous at the present hour, leads certain minds to avow loudly their allegiance to the Catholic Church, and to parade their professions of loyalty to her in order that they may, the more effectively, rend her unity by heresy and schism. They may not all be equally conscious of the drift of their agitation, or of the depth and dangers of their treason, carried away by their enthusiasm for mistaken methods of reform, held in bondage by their subserviency to false systems of philosophy, viewing history and institutions in the warm glow of sentiment and emotion, instead of in the cold white light of intelligence. They are tossed about by every wind of doctrine, out having cast to the waves the guidance of reason, authority, and tradition. Their books and pamphlets are generally written in a captivating style, because most of their statements derive substance, form and colour from incandescent imaginations, and are confessely exempted from conforming to the laws either of inductive or deductive logic. It has been well said that while God, in the beginning, created men in his image, men now create him in their image, the modernist's conception of him, his attributes and their relations to him are a factitious product, a sort of stromata to borrow the title of one of Clement of Alexandria's works, formed out of the most heterogeneous philosophical theories. The idea of contingency, associated with the name of M. Bertrand, Herbert Spencer's Relativity, Newman's Principle of Development, Loisey's Carnotic Hypothesis, the pragmatism of Professor James and Blondel's Philosophy of Action, are blended together in a manner that recalls the ingredients of the cauldron by which the witches foretold the fortunes of Macbeth in the cave on the blasted heath. But the unifying, controlling, and organising principle of their system is to be sought in Kant's teaching concerning the limitations of our reason and the authority of conscience. The following passage, written more than four years ago by the reverend William Turner, STD, in his History of Philosophy, exactly describes the dependence of modernism on the critical philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Kant's influence on the development of thought in the nineteenth century can hardly be overestimated. This philosophy is, as it were, the watershed from which streams of thought flow down in various courses into modern idealism, agnosticism, and even materialism. To this source may also be traced some of the most noteworthy currents of contemporary religious thought, especially the movement toward non-dogmatic Christianity. For it is not difficult to see, in Kant's assertion of the supremacy of the moral law, the origin of the tendency to regard Christianity more as a system of ethics and less as a system of dogmatic truth. No other German, not even Goethe, has exercised such influence at home and abroad on a current of religious and metaphysical speculation since the publication of his three famous critiques of pure reason, of practical reason, and of judgment as the sage of Koenigsberg, endeavouring to reconcile the skepticism or pan-phenomenalism of Hume, who held that we know nothing except phenomena or our own feelings and states of consciousness. With the dogmatism of Wolff and Leibniz, who taught that there are necessary and immutable elements in our knowledge which transcend our subjective experience, he distinguished between the content and the forms of knowledge. The former he derives from objects which are otherwise declared to be unknown and unknowable. The latter are furnished by the senses and the mind. So far as our powers of reason extend, therefore, we never can know real things but only the modes in which they affect us or the impressions they make on us. We cannot argue from these impressions as effects to the objects that produce them as causes, because the very principle of causality is declared by Kant to be a mere mental form, a means our minds have of unifying and regulating experience, but not a principle constituting and organising the world of objects. What then becomes of religion and morality if we cannot know the existence of God and the freedom and immortality of the soul? They are postulates of the moral law that are guaranteed by the practical reason or by conscience. The starry heavens above and the moral law within, he tells us, always filled him with awe. His ethical system is sublime in its aim, but divorced from a rational and religious basis. It resembles a pyramid standing on its apex. The supremacy of the practical over the pure or speculative reason logically implies the superiority of action over knowledge. The latter is relegated to the position of hand-bade to the former. Furthermore, the moral law is an absolute or categorical imperative. It does not depend upon God or any other external authority. The human spirit is free, autonomous or self-coverny, not heteronomous or the slave of another's will. How flattering this conception is to human pride. The two theories of the superiority of action to knowledge and of the autonomy of the human spirit have been adopted and professed with little change by the modernists. Nay, more it is in order to compel Christianity to express itself in the forms and terms of Kant's system of philosophy that the modern ananiases control and distort the great truths of the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Resurrection of Christ, the efficacy of the sacraments, and the teaching authority of the Church. It has been said that St. Thomas of Aquinn successfully attempted a similar revolution in converting the mind of the Church to an acceptance of the Aristotelian philosophy. Between the two cases there is no parallelism whatever. The physical and metaphysical writings of the Stadgerite had been corrupted by Arabian commentators who had received them from Nasirians and Persians, among whom Athenian philosophers banished by Justinian in 529 had found refuge. Pantheists, like David of Dinot and Amourie of Chartres, deduced their wild systems of Pantheism from such perverted sources, and it was on account of these evil associations that Aristotle's writings were condemned at the Council of Paris in 1210. But about 1260, William of Merbeca, at the request of St. Thomas, and, as it appears, of Urban IV, translated the complete works of Aristotle into Latin. The Aristotle that was condemned was hostile. The Aristotle that was accepted was favourable to the great truth of Christianity, and it was the latter that St. Thomas made a pedagogue unto Christ, and whose system he employed for the purpose of elaborating a philosophy of the Christian religion, which left intact the substance of its dogmas, even as understood by the simplest of the faithful. What parallelism can be drawn then between so sane and conservative of reform and reconstruction of theological science and a revolutionary and anarchistic upheaval that denies the authority and infallibility of the church, the efficacy of the sacraments, reduces Christ to the mere category of noble men, and proclaims his resurrection, a hallucination of the fancy. The relation of modernists and pragmatists to the church is analogous to that of Protagoras to Plato. They are the modern sophists. They teach that man is the measure of all things, that motion and change are universal, that nothing known to the human mind is fixed, static, eternal. But the church proclaims the reality of immutable truth, the rights of the sovereignty of God over the mind and conscience, the supernatural vocation of man, in other words, not only the basic principles of all religion and morality, but the very conditions of right and consistent thinking. As the years pass and prejudices disappear, the encyclical of Pius X on the Errors of the Modernists will come to be regarded as one of the most important documents ever issued by the Holy See in the course of its sublime history. End of introduction. Section one of Pascendi Dominici Grieges on the Errors of the Modernists by Pope St. Pius X, translated by Thomas E. Judge. This Liby Vox recording is in the public domain. Encyclical letter Pascendi Dominici Grieges on the Errors of the Modernists. Part one. The encyclical of our Holy Father Pius X on the Errors of the Modernists to the patriarchs, primates, archbishops, bishops and other local ordinaries in peace and communion with the Apostolic See. The office, divinely committed to us, of feeding the Lord's flock, has especially this duty assigned to it by Christ, namely, to guard with the greatest vigilance the deposit of the faith delivered to the saints, rejecting the profane nobilities of words and oppositions of knowledge falsely so-called. There has never been a time when this watchfulness of the Supreme Pastor was not necessary to the Catholic body. For, owing to the efforts of the enemy of the human race, there have never been lacking men speaking perverse things. Acts. Chapter 20, Verse 30. Vain talkers and seduces. Titus. Chapter 1, Verse 10. Earring and driving into error. Second to Timothy. Chapter 3, Verse 13. Still it must be confessed that the number of the enemies of the cross of Christ has, in these last days, increased exceedingly, who are striving, by arts, entirely new and full of subtlety, to destroy the vital energy of the church, and, if they can, to overthrow utterly Christ's kingdom itself. Wherefore we may no longer be silent, lest we should seem to fail in our most sacred duty, and lest the kindness that, in the hope of wiser counsels, we have hitherto shown them, should be attributed to forgetfulness of our office. Gravity of the situation. That we make no delay in this matter is rendered necessary, especially by the fact that the partisans of error are to be sought not only among the church's open enemies. They lie hid, a thing to be deeply deplored and feared. In her very bosom and heart, and are the more mischievous, the less conspicuously they appear. We allude, venerable brethren, to many who belong to the Catholic laity, nay, and this is far more lamentable, to the ranks of the priesthood itself, who, fanning a love for the church, lacking the firm protection of philosophy and theology, nay, more, thoroughly imbued with the poisonous doctrines taught by the enemies of the church, and lost to all sense of modesty, fought themselves as reformers of the church, and, forming more boldly into line of attack, assail all that is most sacred in the work of Christ, not sparing even the person of the Divine Redeemer, whom, with sacrilegious daring, they reduce to a simple mere man. Though they express astonishment themselves, no one can justly be surprised that we number such men among the enemies of the church, if, leaving out of consideration the internal disposition of soul, of which God alone is the judge, he is acquainted with their tenets, their manner of speech, their conduct, nor indeed will he err in accounting them the most pernicious of all the adversaries of the church. For, as we have said, they put their designs for her ruin into operation, not from without, but from within. Hence, the danger is present almost in the very veins and heart of the church, whose injury is the more certain, the more intimate is their knowledge of her. Moreover, they lay the axe, not to the branches and shoots, but to the very root, that is, to the faith and its deepest fibres. And having struck this root of immortality, they proceed to disseminate poison through the whole tree, so that there is no part of Catholic truth from which they hold their hand, none that they do not strive to corrupt. Further, none is more skillful, none more astute than they in the employment of a thousand noxious arts. For they double the parts of rationalist and Catholic, and this so craftily that they easily lead the unwary into error. And since audacity is their chief characteristic, there is no conclusion of any kind from which they shrink or which they do not thrust forward with pertinacity and assurance. To this must be added the fact, which indeed is well calculated to deceive souls, that they lead a life of the greatest activity of assiduous and ardent application to every branch of learning, and that they possess, as a rule, a reputation for the strictest morality. Finally, and this almost destroys all hope of cure, their very doctrines have given such a bent to their minds that they disdain all authority and a brook no restraint, and relying upon a false conscience they attempt to ascribe to a love of truth that, which is in reality the result of pride and obstinacy. Once indeed we had hopes of recalling them to a better sense, and to this end we, first of all, showed them kindness as our children, then we treated them with severity, and at last we have had recourse, though with great reluctance, to public reproof. But you know, venerable brethren, how fruitless has been our action. They bowed their head for a moment, but it was soon uplifted more arrogantly than ever. If it were a matter which concerned them alone, we might perhaps have overlooked it. But the security of the Catholic name is at stake. Wherefore, as to maintain it longer would be a crime, we must now break silence in order to expose, before the whole church, in their true colours those men who assumed this bad disguise. Division of the Encyclical But since the modernists, as they are commonly and rightly called, employ a very subtle artifice, namely to present their doctrines without order and systematic arrangement into one whole, scattered and disjointed, one from another, so as to appear to be in doubt and uncertainty, while they are in reality firm and steadfast, it will be of advantage, venerable brethren, to bring their teachings together here into one group, and to point out the connection between them, and thus to pass to an examination of the sources of the errors, and to prescribe remedies for averting the evil. Part 1 Analysis of Modernist Teaching To proceed, in an orderly manner, in this Reckondite subject, it must first of all be noted that every modernist sustains and comprises within himself many personalities. He is a philosopher, a believer, a theologian, and historian, a critic, an apologist, a reformer. These roles must be clearly distinguished from one another by all who would accurately know their system, and thoroughly comprehend the principles and the consequences of their doctrines. Agnosticism It's Philosophical Foundation We begin then with the Philosopher. Modernists place the foundation of religious philosophy in that doctrine, which is usually called Agnosticism. According to this teaching, human reason is confined entirely within the field of phenomena, that is to say, to things that are perceptible to the senses, and in the manner in which they are perceptible. It has no right and no power to transgress these limits. Hence, it is incapable of lifting itself up to God, and of recognizing his existence, even by means of visible things. From this it is inferred that God can never be the direct object of science, and that, as regards history, he must not be considered as a historical subject. Given these premises, all will readily perceive what becomes of natural theology, of the motives of credibility, of external revelation. The modernists simply make a way with them altogether. They include them in intellectualism, which they call a ridiculous and long ago defunct system. Nor does the fact that the Church has formally condemned these portentous errors exercise the slightest restraint upon them. Yet the Vatican Council has defined, if anyone says that the One True God, our Creator and Lord, cannot be known with certainty by the natural light of human reason, by means of the things that are made, let him be anathema. On Revelation, canon one. And also, if anyone says that it is not possible, or not expedient, that man be taught to the medium of divine revelation about God and the worship to be paid him, let him be anathema. On Revelation, canon two. And finally, if anyone says that divine revelation cannot be made credible by external signs, and that therefore men should be drawn to the faith only by their personal internal experience, or by private inspiration, let him be anathema. On faith, canon three. But how the modernists make the transition from agnosticism, which is a state of pure nicheance, to scientific and historic atheism, which is a doctrine of positive denial, and consequently, by what legitimate process of reasoning, starting from ignorance as to whether God has in fact intervened in the history of the human race or not, they proceed, in their explanation of this history, to ignore God altogether, as if he really had not intervened, let him answer who can. Yet it is a fixed and established principle among them that both science and history must be atheistic, and within their boundaries there is room for nothing but phenomena. God, and all that is divine, are utterly excluded. We shall soon see clearly what, according to this most absurd teaching, must be held, touching the most sacred person of Christ, what concerning the mysteries of his life and death, and of his resurrection and ascension into heaven. Vital Imminence However, this agnosticism is only the negative part of the system of the modernists. The positive side of it consists in what they call vital imminence. This is how they advance from one to the other. Religion, whether natural or supernatural, must, like every other fact, admit of some explanation. But when natural theology has been destroyed, the road to revelation closed through the rejection of the arguments of credibility, and all external revelation absolutely denied, it is clear that this explanation will be sought in vain outside man himself. It must, therefore, be looked for in man, and since religion is a form of life, the explanation must certainly be found in the life of man. Hence, the principle of religious imminence is formulated. Moreover, the first actuation, so to say, a very vital phenomenon and religion, as has been said, belongs to this category, is due to a certain necessity or impulsion. But it has its origin, speaking more particularly of life, in a movement of the heart, which movement is called a sentiment. Therefore, since God is the object of religion, we must conclude that faith, which is the basis and the foundation of all religion, consists in a sentiment which originates from a need of the divine. This need of the divine, which is experienced only in special and favourable circumstances, cannot of itself appertain to the domain of consciousness. It is, at first, latent within the consciousness, or to borrow a term from modern philosophy, in the subconsciousness, where also its roots lie hidden and undetected. Should anyone ask how it is that this need of the divine, which man experiences within himself, grows up into a religion, the modernists reply thus. Science and history, they say, are confined within two limits, the one external, namely the visible world, the other internal, which is consciousness. When one or other of these boundaries has been reached, there can be no further progress, for beyond is the unknowable. In presence of this unknowable, whether it is outside man, and beyond the visible world of nature, all lies hidden within the subconsciousness, the need of the divine, according to the principles of fideism, excites in the soul with a propensity towards religion a certain special sentiment, without any previous advertence of the mind. This sentiment possesses, implied within itself both as its own object, and as its intrinsic cause, the reality of the divine, and, in a way, unites man with God. It is this sentiment to which modernists give the name of faith, and this it is which they consider the beginning of religion. But we have not yet come to the end of their philosophy, or, to speak more accurately, their folly. For modernism finds, in this sentiment, not faith only, but with and in faith, as they understand it, revelation, they say, abides. For what more can one require for revelation? Is not that religious sentiment, which is perceptible in the consciousness, revelation, or at least the beginning of revelation? Nay, is not God Himself, as He manifests Himself to the soul, indistinctly it is true, in this same religious sense, revelation? And they add, since God is both the object and the cause of faith, this revelation is, at the same time, of God and from God, that is, God is both the revealer and the revealed. Hence venerable brethren springs that ridiculous proposition of the modernists, that every religion, according to the different aspect under which it is viewed, must be considered as both natural and supernatural. Hence it is that they make consciousness and revelation synonymous. Hence the law, according to which religious consciousness is given as the universal rule, to be put on an equal footing with revelation, and to which all must submit, even the supreme authority of the church, whether in its teaching capacity, or in that of legislator, in the province of sacred liturgy or discipline. Defirmation of religious history, the consequence. However, in all this process, from which, according to the modernists, faith and revelation spring, one point is to be particularly noted, on account of the historical critical corollaries which are deduced from it. For they are knowable, they talk of, does not present itself to faith as something solitary and isolated, but rather in close conjunction with some phenomenon, which, though it belongs to the realm of science and history, yet to some extent oversteps their bounds. Such a phenomenon may be a fact of nature, containing within itself something mysterious, or it may be a man, whose character, actions and words cannot, apparently, be reconciled with the ordinary laws of history. Then faith, attracted by the unknowable, which is united with the phenomenon, possesses itself of the whole phenomenon, and, as it were, permeates it with its own life. From this, two things follow. The first is a sort of transfiguration of the phenomenon, by its elevation above its own true conditions, by which it becomes more adapted to that form of the divine, which faith will infuse into it. The second is a kind of disfigurement, which springs from the fact that faith, which has made the phenomenon independent of the circumstances of place and time, attributes to it qualities which it has not. And this is true particularly of the phenomena of the past, and the older they are, the truer it is. From these two principles the modernists deduce two laws, which, when united with the third, which they have already got from agnosticism, constitute the foundation of historical criticism. We will take an illustration from the person of Christ. In the person of Christ, they say, science and history encounter nothing that is not human. Therefore, in virtue of the first canon deduced from agnosticism, whatever there is in his history, suggestive of the divine, must be rejected. Then, according to the second canon, the historical person of Christ was transfigured by faith. Therefore, everything that raises it above historical conditions must be removed. Lastly, the third canon, which lays down that the person of Christ has been disfigured by faith, requires that everything should be excluded, deeds and words, and all else that is not in keeping with his character, circumstances, and education, and with the place and time in which he lived. A strange style of reasoning, truly, but it is modernist criticism. Therefore, the religious sentiment, which through the agency of vital immanence emerges from the lurking places of the subconsciousness, is the germ of all religion, and the explanation of everything that has been, or ever will be, in any religion. This sentiment, which was, at first, only rudimentary and almost formless, gradually matured under the influence of that mysterious principle from which it originated, with the progress of human life, of which, as has been said, it is a form. This, then, is the origin of all religion, even supernatural religion. It is only a development of this religious sentiment. Nor is the Catholic religion an exception. It is quite on the level with the rest, for it was engendered by the process of vital immanence, in the consciousness of Christ. It was a man of the choicest nature, whose like has never been, nor will be. Those who hear these audacious, these sacrilegious assertions are simply shocked. And yet, venerable brethren, these are not merely the foolish babblings of infidels. There are many Catholics, yea, and priests too, who say these things openly, and they boast that they are going to reform the church by these ravings. There is no question now of the old era by which a sort of right to the supernatural order was claimed for the human nature. We have gone far beyond that. We have reached the point when it is affirmed that our most holy religion, in the man Christ, as in us, emanated from nature spontaneously and entirely. Than this there is surely nothing more destructive of the whole supernatural order. Wherefore the Vatican Council most justly decreed. If anyone says that man cannot be raised by God to a knowledge and perfection which surpasses nature, but that he can and should, by his own efforts and by constant development, attain finally to the possession of all truth and all good, let him be anathema. On Revelation, canon three. The Origin of Dogmas So far, venerable brethren, there has been no mention of the intellect. Still, it also, according to the teaching of the modernists, has its part in the act of faith, and it is of importance to see how. In that sentiment, of which we have frequently spoken, since sentiment is not knowledge, God indeed presents himself to man, but in a manner so confused and indistinct that he can hardly be perceived by the believer. It is therefore necessary that a ray of light should be cast upon this sentiment, so that God may be clearly distinguished and set apart from it. This is the task of the intellect, his office it is, to reflect and to analyze, and by means of which man first transforms into mental pictures, the vital phenomena which arise within him, and then expresses them in words. Hence the common saying of modernists, that the religious man must think his faith. The intellect then, encountering this sentiment, directs itself upon it, and produces in it a work resembling that of a painter who restores and gives new life to a picture that is perished with age. The similarly is that of one of the leaders of modernism. The operation of the intellect in this work is a double one. First, by a natural and spontaneous act, it expresses its concept in a simple ordinary statement. Then, on reflection and deeper consideration, or as they say, by elaborating its thought, it expresses the idea in secondary propositions, which are derived from the first, but are more defined and distinct. These secondary propositions, if they finally receive the approval of the supreme magisterium of the church, constitute dogma. Thus we have reached one of the principal points in the modernist's system, namely the origin and nature of dogma. For they place the origin of dogma in as primitive and simple formulas, which, under a certain aspect, are necessary to faith. For revelation, to be truly such, requires the clear manifestation of God in the consciousness. But dogma itself, they apparently hold, is contained in the secondary formulas. To ascertain the nature of dogma, we must first find the relation which exists between the religious formulas and the religious sentiment. This will be readily perceived by him who realises that these formulas have no other purpose than to furnish the believer with the means of giving an account of his faith to himself. These formulas therefore stand midway between the believer and his faith. In their relation to the faith, they are the inadequate expression of its object and are usually called symbols. In their relation to the believer, they are mere instruments. It's evolution. Hence, it is quite impossible to maintain that they express absolute truth. For, in so far as they are symbols, they are images of truth, and so must be adapted to the religious sentiment in its relation to man. And, as instruments, they are the vehicles of truth, and must therefore, in their turn, be adapted to man in his relation to the religious sentiment. But the object of the religious sentiment, since it embraces the absolute, possesses an infinite variety of aspects, of which now one, now another, may present itself. In like manner, he who believes may pass through different phases. Consequently, the formulas too, which we call dogmas, must be subject to these vicissitudes and are therefore liable to change. Thus the way is open to the intrinsic evolution of dogma. An immense collection of sophisms, this, that ruins and destroys all religion. Dogma is not only able, but ought to evolve and to be changed. This is strongly affirmed by the modernists, and as clearly flows from their principles. For, amongst the chief points of their teaching, is this which they deduce from the principle of vital immanence, that religious formulas to be really religious are not merely intellectual speculations, ought to be living and to live the life of the religious sentiment. This is not to be understood in the sense that these formulas, especially if merely imaginative, were to be made for the religious sentiment. It has no more to do with their origin than with their number or quality. What is necessary is that the religious sentiment, some modification being introduced when needful, should vitally assimilate them. In other words, it is necessary that the primitive formula be accepted and sanctioned by the heart, and similarly the subsequent work from which spring the secondary formulas must proceed under the guidance of the heart. Hence it comes that these formulas, to be living, should be and should remain, adapted to the faith and to him who believes. Wherefore, if for any reason this adaptation should cease to exist, they lose their first meaning and accordingly must be changed. And since the character and lot of dogmatic formulas is so precarious, there is no room for surprise that modernists regard them so lightly and in such open disrespect. And so they audaciously charge the church, both with taking the wrong road from inability to distinguish the religious and moral sense of formulas from their surface meaning, and with clinging tenaciously and vainly to meaningless formulas whilst religion is allowed to go to ruin. Blind that they are and leaders of the blind, inflated with a boastful science, since they have reached that pitch of folly where they pervert the eternal concept of truth and the true nature of the religious sentiment. With that new system of theirs they are seen to be under the sway of a blind and unchecked passion for novelty, thinking not at all of finding some solid foundation of truth, but despising the holy and apostolic traditions, they embrace other vain, futile, uncertain doctrines condemned by the church, on which in the height of their vanity they think they can rest and maintain truth itself. The modernist as believer, individual experience and religious certitude. Thus far, venerable brethren, have the modernist considered as philosopher. Now, if we proceed to consider him as believer, seeking to know how the believer, according to modernism, is differentiated from the philosopher, it must be observed that although the philosopher recognises as the object of faith the divine reality, still this reality is not to be found but in the heart of the believer, as being an object of sentiment and affirmation, and therefore confined with a sphere of phenomena. But as to whether it exists outside that sentiment and affirmation is a matter which in no way concerns the philosopher. For the modernist believer, on the contrary, it is an established and certain fact that the divine reality does really exist in itself and quite independently of the person who believes in it. If you ask on what foundation this assertion of the believer rests, they answer, in the experience of the individual. On this head the modernists differ from the rationalists only to fall into the opinion of the Protestants and pseudo mystics. This is their manner of putting the question. In the religious sentiment one must recognise a kind of intuition of the heart which puts man in immediate contact with the very reality of God and infuses such a persuasion of God's existence and his action both within and without man, has to excel greatly any scientific conviction. They assert therefore the existence of a real experience and one of a kind that surpasses all rational experience. If this experience is denied by some, like the rationalists, it arises from the fact that such persons are unwilling to put themselves in the moral state which is necessary to produce it. It is this experience which, when a person acquires it, makes him properly and truly a believer. How far off we are here from Catholic teaching we have already seen in the decree of the Vatican Council. We shall see later how, with such theories added to the other eras already mentioned, the way is opened wide for atheism. Here it is well to note at once that, given this doctrine of experience, united with the other doctrine of symbolism, every religion, even that of paganism, must be held to be true. What is to prevent such experiences from being met with in every religion? In fact, the there to be found is asserted by not a few. And with what right will modernists deny the truth of an experience affirmed by a follower of Islam? With what right can they claim true experiences for Catholics alone? Indeed modernists do not deny, but actually admit, some confusedly, others in the most open manner that all religions are true, that they cannot feel otherwise, is clear. For on what ground, according to their theories, could falsity be predicated of any religion whatsoever? It must certainly be on one of these two, either on account of the falsity of the religious sentiment, or on account of the falsity of the formula pronounced by the mind. Now the religious sentiment, although it may be more perfect, or less perfect, is always one and the same. And the intellectual formula, in order to be true, has but to respond to the religious sentiment and to the believer, whatever be the intellectual capacity of the latter. In a conflict between different religions, the most that modernists can maintain, is that the Catholic has more truth because it is more living, and that it deserves, with more reason, the name of Christian, because it corresponds more fully with the origins of Christianity. That these consequences flow from the premises will not seem unnatural to anybody. But what is amazing is that there are Catholics, and priests, who, we would feign believe, are before such enormities, yet act as if they fully approved of them. For they heap such praise and bestow such public honour on the teachers of these errors, as to give rise to the belief that their admiration is not meant merely for the persons who are, perhaps, not devoid of a certain merit, but rather for the errors which these persons openly profess, which they do all in their power to propagate. Religious experience and tradition But this doctrine of experience is also under another aspect, entirely contrary to Catholic truth. It is extended and applied to tradition as hitherto understood by the church, and destroys it. By the modernists, tradition is understood as a communication to others through preaching by means of the intellectual formula of an original experience. To this formula, in addition to its representative value, the attributed species of suggestive efficacy, which acts both in the person who believes, to stimulate the religious sentiment, should it happen to have grown sluggish, and to renew the experience once acquired, and in those who do not yet believe, to awake for the first time the religious sentiment in them, and to produce the experience. In this way, is religious experience propagated among the peoples, and not merely among contemporaries by preaching, but among future generations, both by books and by oral transmission from one to another. Sometimes this communication of religious experience takes root and thrives. At other times it withers at once and dies. For the modernists to live is a proof of truth, since for them life and truth are one and the same thing. Hence again it is given to us to infer that all existing religions are equally true, for otherwise they would not live. Faith and Science Having reached this point, Venerable Brethren, we have sufficient material in hand to enable us to see the relations which modernists establish between faith and science, including history also under the name of science. And in the first place it is to be held that the object of the one is quite extraneous to and separate from the object of the other. For faith occupies itself solely with something which science declares to be unknowable for it. Hence each has a separate field assigned to it. Science is entirely concerned with the reality of phenomena into which faith does not enter at all. Faith, on the contrary, concerns itself with the divine reality which is entirely unknown to science. Thus the conclusion is reached that there can be never any dissension between faith and science, for if each keeps on its own ground they can never meet and therefore never be in contradiction. And if it be objected that in the visible world there are some things which appertain to faith, such as the human life of Christ, the modernists reply by denying this. For those such things come within the category of phenomena, still insofar as they are lived by faith and in the way already described have been by faith transfigured and disfigured, they have been removed from the world of sense and translated to become material for the divine. Hence should it be further asked whether Christ has wrought real miracles and made real prophecies whether he rose truly from the dead and ascended into heaven, the answer of agnostic science will be in the negative and the answer of faith in the affirmative, yet there will not be on that account any conflict between them, for it will be denied by the philosopher as philosopher, speaking to philosophers and considering Christ only in his historical reality, and it will be affirmed by the speaker, speaking to believers and considering the life of Christ as lived again by the faith and in the faith. Faith subject to science Yet it would be a great mistake to suppose that, given these theories, one is authorized to believe that faith and science are independent of one another. On the side of science the independence is indeed complete, but it is quite different with regard to faith, which is subject to science not on one, but on three grounds. For, in the first place, it must be observed that in every religious fact, when you take away the divine reality and the experience of it, which the believer possesses, everything else, and especially the religious formulas of it, belongs to the sphere of phenomena, and therefore falls under the control of science. Let the believer leave the world if he will, but so long as he remains in it he must continue, whether he like it or not, to be subject to the laws, the observation, the judgments of science, and of history. Further, when it is said that God is the object of faith alone, the statement refers only to the divine reality, not to the idea of God. The latter also is subject to science, which, while it philosophizes in what is called the logical order, soars also to the absolute and the ideal. It is therefore the writer philosophy and of science, the form of conclusions concerning the idea of God, to direct it in its evolution, and to purify it of any extraneous elements which may become confused with it. Finally, man does not suffer a dualism to exist in him, and the believer therefore feels, within him, an impelling need so to harmonize faith with science, that it may never oppose the general conception which science sets forth concerning the universe. Thus it is evident that science is to be entirely independent of faith, while on the other hand, and not with standing that they are supposed to be strangers to each other, faith is made subject to science. All this, venerable brothers, is informal opposition to the teachings of our predecessor, Pius IX, where he lays it down that, in matters of religion, it is the duty of philosophy not to command, but to serve, not to prescribe what is to be believed, but to embrace what is to be believed with reasonable obedience, not to scrutinize the depths of the mysteries of God, but to venerate them devoutly and humbly. The modernists completely invert the parts, and to them may be applied the words of another predecessor of ours, Gregory IX, addressed to some theologians of his time. Some among you, inflated like bladders with the spirit of vanity, strived by profane nobilities to cross the boundaries fixed by the fathers, twisting the sense of the heavenly pages. Through the philosophical teaching of the rationals, not for the profit of their hero, but to make a show of science, these, seduced by strange and eccentric doctrines, make the head of the tail and force the queen to serve the servant. The methods of modernists This becomes still clearer to anybody who studies the conduct of modernists, which is in perfect harmony with their teachings. In their writings and addresses, they seem not unfrequently to advocate now one doctrine, now another, so that one would be disposed to regard them as vague and doubtful. But there is a reason for this, and it is to be found in their ideas as to the mutual separation of science and faith. Hence, in their books, you will find some things which might well be expressed by a Catholic, but in the next page you will find other things which might have been dictated by a rationalist. When they write history, they make no mention of the divinity of Christ, but when they are in a pulpit, they profess it clearly. Again, when they write history, they pay no heed to the fathers and the councils, but when they cataclyse the people, they cite them respectfully. In the same way, they draw their distinctions between theological and pastoral exegesis and scientific and historical exegesis. So too, acting on the principle that science in no way depends upon faith, and when they treat of history, philosophy, criticism, feeling no horror atreading in the footsteps of Luther, they are wont to display a certain contempt for Catholic doctrines, for the Holy Fathers, for the Ecumenical Councils, for the ecclesiastical Magisterium. And should they be rebuked for this, they complain that they have been deprived of their liberty. Lastly, guided by the theory that faith must be subject to science, they continuously and openly criticise the Church because of her sheer obstinacy in refusing to submit and accommodate her dogmas to the opinions of philosophy, while they, on their side, are having blotted out the old theology endeavour to introduce a new theology which shall follow the vagaries of their philosophers. The modernist as theologian, his principles, immanence and symbolism. And thus, venerable brethren, the road is open for us to study the modernists in the theological arena, a difficult task yet one that may be disposed of briefly. The end to be attained is the conciliation of faith with science, always, however, saving the primacy of science over faith. And this branch, the modernist theologian, avails himself of exactly the same principles which we have seen employed by the modernist philosopher and applies them to the believer, the principles of immanence and symbolism. The process is an extremely simple one. The philosopher has declared the principle of faith is imminent. The believer has added this principle is God and the theologian draws the conclusion God is imminent in man. Thus we have theological immanence. So too the philosopher regards a certain that the representations of the object of faith are merely symbolical. The believer has affirmed that the object of faith is God in himself and the theologian proceeds to affirm that the representations of the divine reality are symbolical. And thus we have theological symbolism. Truly enormous errors both the pernicious character of which will be seen clearly from an examination of their consequences. For to begin with symbolism, since symbols are but symbols in regard to the objects and only instruments in regard to the believer, it is necessary for first of all according to the teachings of the modernists that the believer do not lay too much stress on the formula but avail himself of it only with the scope of uniting himself to the absolute truth which the formula at once reveals and conceals. That is to say endeavors to express but without succeeding in doing so. They would also have the believer avail himself of the formulas only insofar as they are useful to him, for they are given to be a help and not a hindrance. With proper regard however for the social respect due to formulas which the public magisterium is deemed suitable for expressing the common consciousness until such time as the same magisterium provide otherwise. Concerning imminence it is not easy to determine what modernists mean by it, for their own opinions on the subject vary. Some understand it in the sense that God working in man is more intimately present in him than man is in even himself and this conception, if properly understood, is free from reproach. Others hold that the divine action is one with the action of nature as the action of the first cause is one with the action of the secondary cause and this would destroy the supernatural order. Others finally explain it in a way which savers of pantheism and this in truth is the sense which tallies best with the rest of their doctrines. With this principle of imminence is connected another which may be called the principle of divine permanence. It differs from the first in much the same way as the private experience differs from the experience transmitted by tradition. An example will illustrate what is meant and this example is offered by the church and the sacraments. The church and the sacraments they say are not to be regarded as having been instituted by Christ himself. This is forbidden by agnosticism which sees in Christ nothing more than a man whose religious consciousness has been, like that of all men, formed by degrees. It is also forbidden by the law of imminence which rejects what they call external application. It is further forbidden by the law of evolution which requires for the development of the germs a certain time and a certain series of circumstances. It is finally forbidden by history which shows that such in fact has been the course of things. Still it is to be held that both church and sacraments have been founded immediately by Christ. But how? In this way all Christian consciences were, they affirm, in a manner virtually included in the conscience of Christ, as the plant is included in the seed. But as the shoots live the life of the seed, so too all Christians are said to live the life of Christ. For the life of Christ is according to faith and so too is the life of Christians. And since this life produced in the course of ages, both the church and the sacraments, it is quite right to say that their origin is from Christ and is divine. In the same way they prove that the scriptures and the dogmas are divine. And thus the modernistic theology may be said to be complete. No great thing in truth but more than enough for the theologian who professes that the conclusion of science must always and in all things be respected. The application of these theories to the other points we shall proceed to expound anyone may easily make for himself. Dogma and the sacraments Thus far we have spoken of the origin and nature of faith. But as faith has many shoots and chief among them, the church, dogma, worship, the books which we call sacred, of these also we must know what is taught by the modernists. To begin with dogma we have already indicated his origin and nature. Dogma is born to the species of impulse or necessity by virtue of which the believer is constrained to elaborate his religious thought so as to render it clearer for himself and others. This elaboration consists entirely in the process of penetrating and refining the primitive formula, not indeed in itself and according to logical development but as required by circumstances or vitally as the modernists more abstractly put it. Hence it happens that around the primitive formula secondary formulas gradually continue to be formed and these subsequently grouped into bodies of doctrine or into doctrinal constructions as they prefer to call them and further sanctioned by the public magisterium as responding to the common consciousness are called dogma. Dogma is to be carefully distinguished from the speculations of theologians which although not alive with the life of dogma are not without their utility as serving to harmonize religion with science and remove opposition between the two in such a way as to throw light from without on religion and it may be even to prepare the matter for future dogma. Concerning worship there would not be much to be said were it not that under this head are comprised the sacraments concerning which the modernists fall into the gravest errors for them the sacraments are the resultant of a double need for as we have seen everything in their system is explained by inner impulses or necessities in the present case the first need is that of giving some sensible manifestation to religion the second is that of propagating it which could not be done without some sensible form and consecrating acts and these are called sacraments but for the modernists the sacraments are mere symbols or signs they're not devoid of a certain efficacy an efficacy they tell us like that of certain phrases vulgarly described as having caught on in as much as they become the vehicle for the diffusion of certain great ideas which strike the public mind what the phrases are to the ideas that the sacraments are to the religious sentiment that and nothing more the modernists would be speaking more clearly were they to affirm that the sacraments are instituted solely to foster the faith but this is condemned by the council of Trent if anyone say that these sacraments are instituted solely to foster the faith let him be anathema the holy scriptures we have already touched upon the nature and origin of the sacred books according to the principles of the modernists they may be rightly described as a collection of experiences not indeed of the kind that may come to anybody but those extraordinary and striking ones which have happened in any religion and this is precisely what they teach about our books of the old and new testament but to suit their own theories they note was remarkable ingenuity that although experience is something belonging to the present still it may derive its material from the past and the future alike in as much as the believer by memory lives the past over again after the manner of the present and lives the future already by anticipation this explains how it is that the historical and apocalyptic books are included among the sacred writings God does indeed speak in these books through the medium of the believer but only according to modernistic theology by vital immanence and permanence do we inquire concerning inspiration inspiration they reply is distinguished only by its vehemence from that impulse which stimulates the believer to reveal the faith that is in him by words or writing it is something like what happens in poetical inspiration of which it has been said there is a god in us and when he stirreth he sets us a fire and it is precisely in this sense that God is said to be the origin of the inspiration of the sacred books the modernists affirm too that there is nothing in these books which is not inspired in this respect some might be disposed to consider them as more orthodox than certain other modernists who somewhat restrict inspirations as for instance in what have been put forward as tacit citations but it is all mere juggling of words for if we take the bible according to the tenets of agnosticism to be a human work made by men for men but allowing the theologian to proclaim that it is divine by immanence what room is there left in it for inspiration general inspiration in the modernist sense it is easy to find but of inspiration in the catholic sense there is not a trace end of part one of encyclical letter peshendi dominici gregis on the errors of the modernists