 Part 1 of Appendix to Encyclical Letter Pascendi Dominici Grieges on the Errors of the Modernists Agnosticism Epistemology is the theory of the value of our knowledge. Its scope is to deal with the question, What do we really know? When discussing the objects of knowledge there are two terms that should be accurately defined and carefully distinguished, numina and phenomena. In ancient and medieval psychology these words, when used at all, serve to mark the distinction between substances and accidents. The underlying and unchanging essence, or substance, is called numinon, because knowledge of it belonged especially to the noose or intellect. The changing accidents, such as color, taste and the rest, were called phenomena or appearances, because they were those aspects of the object which were impressed on the senses. By modern writers, since the time of Kant, the distinction contrasts the object as it is in itself, with the object as reflected in the mirror of our senses, or in the ideas formed of it by our intellect. The thing, as it is in itself, is called numinon. The reflections, images and symbols of it in our senses, or in our intellect, are called phenomena. Hence phenomena exist entirely in ourselves, but numina exist in themselves and are entirely independent about seeing them or thinking about them. Accidents, in the Aristotelian sense, as well as substance would be numina, according to this definition. Agnosticism restricts all our knowledge to phenomena in the subjective sense. Numina, or things in themselves, it declares to be unknown and unknowable. From this standpoint each of us is everlastingly imprisoned within the circle of his own subjective impressions. The world of objects, their nature and their relation to one another are separated from our minds by an impassable gulf. Hence agnosticism, as applied to theology, denies that God, as he really is in nature and attributes, can be known by human reason. God, in the language of modern philosophy, is generally called the absolute or unconditioned. Since the modernists derive many of their principles from the epistemological system of Kant, the student of the encyclical will find some knowledge of Kant's peculiar form of agnosticism and invaluable aid in interpreting the condemned errors. The sage of Koenigspeerek, as Kant has been called, distinguished between the pure or speculative reason and the practical reason. We may mention in passing that in the modernist system faith corresponds to the practical reason. Every idea is a unifying principle. All our inner experiences, our thoughts, emotions, desires, appetites, pains and pleasures are unified in the soul. This soul is the psychological idea. Objects that exist outside of us form one world. This unifying principle is called the cosmological idea. To reach a perfect unity, to unify our inner experience and the outer world of objects, the possible and the actual orders, we reduce or trace all things to God. This is the theological idea. If we maintain that our speculative reason can prove the existence of a reality corresponding to each of these three ideas, we are lodged, in spite of ourselves, according to Kant, in antinomies or contradictions. The existence of the soul, its freedom and immortality, the existence of a world of objects outside of us, and the existence of God are, of logical necessity, declared to be unknown and unknowable. Reason, being imminent, or indwelling, in each individual, cannot reach out to these objects, which are not contained in the phenomena or states of consciousness. It is well to note here that the modernist's theory of imminence is derived from Kant's view of the source of our knowledge of fundamental religious truths. But when we pass from knowledge to action, when we come to consider the moral law that should govern our conduct, and that issues from the depths of our own moral nature, we become absolutely certain of the freedom and immortality of the soul, and of the existence of God as necessary postulates of that law. Kant exalted action above knowledge, therefore pragmatism, which values knowledge only insofar as it enables us to act successfully and produce satisfactory results, is evidently an offshoot of Kant's teaching. Medieval theology and philosophy regarded knowledge for its own sake as supremely valuable, but in the new view all knowledge is degraded to the low position of being the tool of successful action. The modernists are all pragmatists. They even go so far as to teach that dogmas of Catholic faith are of little or no value, considered as standards of belief, and that their chief and primary significance is to be sought in their power to suggest attitudes or modes of moral conduct. Hence their system of philosophy is sometimes called the philosophy of action. The Catholic Church teaches on the subjects dealt with by agnosticism, A, that God's existence and attributes can be known by the light of reason, B, that he cannot be seen by us directly or to use the scriptural expression face to face as the ontologists teach with our natural powers. Until we attain the beatific vision, we can only know him as he is mirrored in the works of his hands. C, that no creature, even though his mind be irradiated by the light of glory, can comprehend, that is, perfectly know, God. D, that no word can be used or predicated in the same sense of God and finite things, but only in an analogical or modified sense. But we are able, by a formal or mental abstraction, to understand the difference between the term as applied to God and as applied to creatures, so that our knowledge of God, as far as it goes, is accurate and free from error. Intellectualism The word intellectualism has one meaning in psychology, another in aesthetics, and a third in philosophy. One, in psychology it is the theory that undertakes to explain all our emotions and desires as secondary phases, by-products, or epiphenomena of our knowledge, which is regarded as a fundamental psychological process. Two, in aesthetics, it is the theory which lays stress on the intellectual content of the aesthetic object as the great factor of aesthetic value, and not on the sensual element which excites passion and emotion. Three, in philosophy, intellectualism means that all reality may become an object of knowledge. Intellectualism, therefore, in a philosophical sense, is opposed to agnosticism, because the former holds that Númena may be known, while agnosticism proclaims that they are unknown and unknowable. It is in the philosophical and psychological senses that the modernists repudiated. There are certain truths which Catholic theologians call motives of credibility, with which we shall deal more fully later on. They hold that these truths may be known by the natural light of reason. They are the foundations of our faith, and by means of them, we render a rationabile obsequium, or we give irrational assent to the truths of revelation. Such motives of credibility are the existence of God, the fact of Christ's resurrection, the authenticity of the scriptures, etc. But the modernists strenuously deny the speculative reason is capable of demonstrating these truths. Imminence We have derived the modernist's theory of imminence from Kant's teaching of the impotency of the pure reason and the authority of the practical reason, or, to use a more popular term, of the conscience in the domain of religious belief. In order to understand what they mean by imminence, we must carefully distinguish three elements or factors of our religious faith. a. God b. The religious sentiment c. Our need of the divine Imminence, or the indwelling of God in man, may be so understood as not to exclude his transcendence. Catholic belief in the immensity of God implies imminence of this kind. The principle of the divine concourses, or immediate co-operation of the deity in all the acts of finite beings, signifies that every effect flows from two causes, the infinite, or first, and the finite, or secondary cause. Divine imminence is also used to mean that God is in us, identical with our nature and the sole principle or source of all our actions. Thus understood, imminence logically implies pantheism. The imminence theory in philosophy would reduce all reality to elements imminent or indwelling in consciousness. Both science and philosophy would thus be reduced to pure subjective experience. It is evident that the modernist's conception of religious experience was suggested by this philosophy of imminence, which has been elaborated by a group of recent German thinkers. By vital imminence modernists understand an experience in our own consciousness of the underplay, if I may so speak, of the three imminent elements, God, religious sentiment, and the need of the divine. The subconscious. The phrase, the threshold of consciousness, has obtained great vogue in modern psychology. We know that a stimulus applied to the sense of touch, for instance, at any part of the human body, must have a certain strength or intensity in order to produce a conscious sensation. When the feeling first comes into clear consciousness, does it suddenly spring up there, or has it been gradually and continuously gathering strength in the soul until it stands out vividly in our inner experience? The latter is of you favoured by modern psychologists. Hence, if, figuratively speaking, we assume a line of demarcation below which a mental state is not consciously felt, and above which it is, the term threshold of consciousness will be an appropriate name for it. Below the threshold of consciousness, therefore, is the region of our subconscious life, of vital processes that are intensely real, but which, so long as they remain thus, cannot be known and investigated by us. Another term used in this connection is subliminal, limin, being the Latin for threshold. As attention moves away, writes Professor Jay Ward in his essay on psychology, for a presentation, it is intensively diminished, and when the presentation is below the threshold of consciousness, its intensity is then subliminal, whatever that of the physical stimulus may be. Professor Angel in his psychology says, to the activity of the subconscious we are probably indebted for many of our unreasoned impressions and sentiments, for many of our unexpected ideas, for certain of our unreflective movements, especially those of the abituable variety. Not a few of our personal preferences and prejudices are probably referable to influences originating here, such phenomena as those of automatic writing with the planchette, where a person may write considerable numbers of words without any clear idea of what is being written, belong to the borderline of influences lying between the subconscious and the unconscious. Taken all in all, subconscious factors must go to make up a very respectable portion of our total personality, and, no doubt, are accountable for many of the characteristics which sometimes cause us to wonder at ourselves and question whether or not we really have the kind of character we supposed. Virtual intention, in the treatise on human acts, may, we think, be similarly explained. Faith in God arises, according to the modernist, from a stimulation of the religious sentiment, the stimulus being our need of the divine. The religious sentiment first slumbers in the subliminal or subconscious self. Its activity, when appropriately stimulated, rises above the threshold of consciousness, our religious experience begins, and although God, imminent in us, is unknown and unknowable by our reason, the religious sentiment, in some mystical manner, comprehends him with a conviction and certainty far greater if we are to accept the gratuitous assertion of the modernists, than that which is produced by scientific demonstration. The theory that the religious sentiment can directly and immediately, and not discursively, or by deductive reasoning, enjoy an intuition of God, is evidently borrowed from the system of the ontologists, who teach that we can see God face to face by our natural powers. Need of the Divine There are two diametrically opposed views of the nature of progress. According to one, which is the older, we advance because we have in our minds an idea, however vague, of some end, goal, or purpose which we want to reach. Life is believed to be a chain of means and ends under the control and direction of one's supreme purpose or goal, which gives value and direction to all intermediate activities. According to the other, which is the newer, we go forward because our present situation is disorganized, unsatisfactory, and painful to our feelings. In other words, because of some need which urges us to activity in order to overcome existing friction and reorganize the discordant elements imminent in our present consciousness. This view of progress has been derived from the theory of evolution, which repudiates teleology or design. Just as the advocates of evolution deny that God created finite things and determined their growth and development according to ideas pre- existing in the Divine Mind, prototypal ideas as they have been called, so also they reject the notion that social, economic, or scientific progress has been due to any definite ends or aims which men propose to themselves, and ascribe the onward march of humanity to an impulse of no noble character than that which urges a man to seek shelter from a storm, to seek food when he is hungry, or to lie down when he is fatigued. Hence, other factors being equal, where there is greater need, there will be greater activity and more marked progress. Natives of tropical countries who have few needs and find for these satisfaction at hand are static and indolent, while peoples of northern climes are sturdy and ambitious, ever discovering new methods of controlling the forces of nature. Because they have to maintain an inexorable struggle for existence amidst unfavorable conditions of soil and climate, the progress of dogma, according to modernists, has been due to the assaults of heresy. According to the evolutionary theory of progress, movement is a tergo, or from behind. According to the Christian view it is a fronte, or from an end, idea, purpose, or goal projected into the future and constantly alluring us onward and upward. In other words, we are pursuing an ideal, but ideals are abhorred by evolutionists. In the case of the individual, it seems to us that both factors of progress, the teleological, or ideal, and the evolutionary one of exigencies, or wants, play their part. It is a question to be solved by knowledge of character, which of the two factors predominates. The modernists attribute the origin and growth of religious experience, faith and revelation, to a vital need of the divine. The word vital signifies a growing, changing, imminent process. Consequently, our inner experience and faith in revelation are not different from our other vital processes, but are constantly developing by assimilation and elimination. The immutability, therefore, of dogma is a delusion from the modernist's standpoint. This theory is radically different from the development of dogma as explained by Newman and advocated by some of the greatest minds in the Catholic Church. They teach that the revelation given by God to man was completed in the apostolic age, but that the infallible Magisterium of the Church emphasizes now one part, now another, of the content of the deposit of faith, according to the necessity of the times. The modernist's theory must not be confounded with the dialectical or logical evolution of dogma, handed down from age to age by theologians, who, by analysis and reflection, are constantly bringing into explicit view aspects of Christian truth logically implied in previous formulas. Suggestion Suggestion is another word that modern psychology has made extremely popular. Every person is supposed to possess some degree of suggestibility or capacity to be influenced by others. Hypnotic suggestion is its extreme form. We distinctly feel the influence of suggestion whenever we associate with a strong personality. Its effect is to arrest the ordinary train of our ideas, to check and obstruct our habitual modes of action. Professor Baldwin distinguishes the following varieties of suggestion. Among the many distinguishable phases of suggestion, apart from hypnosis, which illustrates them all, are, one, sensory motor suggestion, movement due to a suggested sensation. Two, ideo motor suggestion, movement due to a suggested idea. Three, motor suggestion as such, direct suggestion of movement. Four, sensory suggestion, the suggestion of sensory experience. For example, that a red light is green. Five, ideal suggestion, suggestion of thoughts, beliefs, etc. Six, personality suggestion, the peculiar suggestive influence of persons as such. Seven, contrary suggestion, the production of effects, actions notably, the contrary of those properly due to what is suggested. Eight, negative suggestion, or suggestive inhibition, the removal of something from consciousness by suggestion. Nine, organic suggestion, the successful suggestion of organic effects. Ten, hysterical suggestion, the suggestive conditions of hysteria. Eleven, social suggestion, the normal acceptance of hints, or more than hints, from the social milieu. Twelve, imitative suggestion, suggestibility to models, and copies of all sorts of imitation. Modernists have recourse to suggestion to explain the twofold value of dogmas proclaimed orally, or in writing. By means of it, these awaken a religious experience, once actual, but now dormant in an individual, and also generate it for the first time in the soul of a person possessing the proper moral dispositions. The tendency to reduce things to ultimate principles, which are independent and opposed to each other, is called dualism. The tendency to find gradations between contraries, or to reduce them to a more fundamental principle in which their opposition and apparent contradiction become reconciled or unified, is called monism. At the present time, there is a strong bias in the world of thought against all forms of dualism. Like so many other features of the spirit of the age, monism received its influence from Kant. He appeared in the history of philosophy as mediator between a skepticism of Hume and the dogmatism of Leibniz and Wolf. No two systems could be more diametrically opposed, and yet the philosopher of Königsberg professed to have discovered a more profound principle which reconciled skepticism and dogmatism. Hence, since the days of Kant, the mediation of opposites may be said to have become a favourite philosophical method. The assumption that every error is a half-truth was modified into the assumption that opposing and contradictory theories, or hypotheses, can be conciliated by mediation. That is, by the discovery of a higher principle which advances beyond both and embodies the element of value contained in each of them. Hegel, carrying Kant's assumptions to what he conceived to be their inevitable logical conclusions, rejected the principle of contradiction, maintaining the identity of being and not being. How far the modernists have been influenced by this suicidal hypothesis of Hegel may be seen in their assertion that the greatest honour we can offer the deity is to ascribe contradictory attributes to him. There are various forms of dualism. A. Theological dualism appears in the Zoroastrian religion with its opposition of Ahriman, the evil one, and Ormutz, the good one. Zoroastrian dualism, in the Christian era, reappeared in the form of the Manichaean heresy. B. Anthropological dualism is the system which proclaims the body and soul to be essentially distinct in essence. C. Soteriological dualism explains the scheme of salvation by distinguishing between God as a principle transcending the universe, and man as his creature whom he, of his own free will, redeems. D. Sociological dualism is found in the distinction between the church and state, between the laity and the clergy, between absolute monarch and his subjects. E. Finally, the dualism between faith and science is especially an object of detestation to modernists. Although they proclaim that each has its own province, that faith deals with nirmana and science with phenomena, yet they hold that man cannot abide a dualism and insist on harmonizing the two. The method which they approve of as a lone satisfactory is to subject faith to the control of science. END OF PART ONE OF APENDICS TO INSICRICAL LETTER PESCENDI DOMINICI GREGIS, ON THE ERRORS OF THE MODANISTS Section V of Pesendi Dominici Gregis, ON THE ERRORS OF THE MODANISTS by Pope St. Pius X, translated by Thomas E. Judge. This will be Vox Recording as in the public domain. PART TWO OF APENDICS TO INSICRICAL LETTER PESCENDI DOMINICI GREGIS, ON THE ERRORS OF THE MODANISTS Pragmatism is a system of philosophy, or rather an attitude assumed towards the whole world of thought and reality, which values everything by its practical effects. All knowledge is related to action as means to end. Hence, the old ideal of pursuing knowledge for its own sake is derided as a mere will of the wisp, or mere phantom organa, the pursuit of which leads us far away from the true, the beautiful, and the good. Its test, or standard of the value of any principle or system, is the practical difference. Its acceptance, or non-acceptance, will involve for the individual and the race. No philosophical theory was ever more vague, and this very vagueness, while it commends it to many persons of conflicting philosophical and theological leanings, renders it also inane and useless. Not even the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity, which would seem to be of all others the most remote from our practical concerns, can be said to be without some practical effects. But the general disposition of the masses is to define the word practical in a very narrow sense, and restrict its application to secular concerns. The popularity of the theory is, in this country, especially unfortunate. Indeed, pragmatism may be said to be a philosophical statement of the predominant motives that have influenced the people of the United States in the course of their history, and especially of those that have shaped our present industrial organization. Pragmatism, as applied by the modernists, means an interpretation, or rather, evaluation of the truths of the Christian religion by their bearing on moral conduct. Stripped of its nebulous verbiage, and boldly viewed, it is identical with the principle that the end justifies the means. How opposed it is to the entire Christian scheme may be inferred from the emphasis which the Church has always laid on the distinction between things that are intrinsically good and things that are intrinsically bad. For instance, she is always taught that no motive or reason can excuse a lie, since, of its inmost character, a lie is opposed to the divine nature, which is truth itself. But no consistent pragmatist can refuse to endorse lying when the balance of results would be beneficial. Pragmatism, in any form, is clearly incompatible with belief in the existence of an absolutely perfect God, for an all-holy one is an unchangeable standard of truth and right. The results, therefore, of doctrine in its effect on human conduct are of secondary importance. Pragmatism, or the deification of success, or valuation by results, is opposed to a belief in the absolute and makes all things relative, like agnosticism and positivism. It is interesting to trace the connection between pragmatism and the theory of selective attention. It is beyond question that we merely attend to that which is of special interest and therefore, in some sense, a practical value to us. Under how many almost totally different aspects will the same objects be considered by persons with different interests? The flower, to the botanist, is a specimen that illustrates certain scientific principles of growth and classification. To the asthite it is an object of beauty. To the florist it is an article for sale. The same person will appeal to the lawyer merely as a client, to the politician as a voter, to the clergyman as a member of his congregation, to the tailor as a customer, etc. This theory of selective attention has been carried to such an extreme that some of its advocates hold that we not merely determined by selective attention what will dominate for the time our consciousness, but that we thereby, as it were, create reality. In other words, we make things exist by the process of directly attention to them. Of course, it is true that, practically speaking, only those things exist for us in which we have an interest and to which, consequently, we direct attention. But the assumption that our thinking gives objects reality is one of those wild and sophisticated speculations which serve the discredited philosophy in the eyes of thousands. The hypothesis underlying pragmatism is precisely the same as that underlying the extravagant theory of selective attention. Objects or truths are assumed to have no reality except that which they have for us. Consequently, the criterion of truth, goodness and beauty which pragmatism espouses is the following. Consider if, and how far, your interests are affected, and the answer will determine the whole value of the proposition under investigation. Dogma It will be interesting and instructive to examine in some detail how the modernists apply their principles in explaining the nature and development of dogma. In this part, I shall follow closely the lead of La Petonnière, who has published two excellent articles in the September and October numbers of Andaldes Philosophies Chrétiennes as part of a review of Monsieur Le Roy's well-known volume Dogme et Critique. A prejudice exists in the minds of many persons at the present time against dogmatic religion. Le Roy ascribes his origin to what he calls the intellectualist conception. The characteristic of intellectualism, which has been already explained, is that it regards a secondary, and derived, the moral and practical meaning of dogma, while it proclaims the intellectual or theoretical sense to be its essential or constitutive element. But dogma, thus viewed, is, according to modernists, of its very nature incapable of verification and unthinkable. Perhaps it may be said that, though intrinsically incapable of verification, it has extrinsic evidence in its favour and appeals effectually to the human mind in the name of authority. In this hypothesis it would enslave the human spirit, which imperiously demands freedom, independence, and autonomy. Neither religious doctrine nor moral obligation should be considered as having a transcendent origin or as coming to us from without, but as pollulating or springing from our own nature. The transcendent hypothesis, according to the modernists, would place an intolerable yoke upon the human mind. Le Roy proceeds to subject certain dogmas to critical examination in the light of the intellectualist conception. For the purpose of showing that, thus interpreted, they are a mere mirage that deceives our mental vision. Take, for example, the dogma of the Personality of God. If we interpret it according to ordinary intellectual standards, or, in other words, experience, we shall fall into anthropomorphism. For what is our notion of personality in last analysis? A man is said to be a person because he is sui urus, or self-conscious, and exercises control over his thoughts and volitions. But we cannot apply this concept, which is derived from our own psychological experience, to God without reducing him to the level of man. May we not say, however, that the Divine Personality is incomparable and transcendent, that no term can be predicated univerically but only analogically of God and finite beings. But Le Roy holds that any form of analogy consists in establishing a resemblance between God and creatures, in attributing the perfections of the finite to the infinite, in thinking of the deity in terms of human qualities and consequently cannot escape anthropomorphism. A dogma of a different type is the resurrection of Christ. From it especially, the modernists elaborate their theory of faith and religious knowledge. By the resurrection we mean that, having passed through the gates of death, our Saviour, Jesus Christ, returned to life on earth. But no Christian holds that he came back to life in the same form of existence that was his before his death. After his resurrection he had a glorified body. The word life, therefore, is applied to Christ in one sense before his death and in another after his resurrection. The two meanings are incommensurable. One comes within the scope of our experience. The other does not. How, then, can we say that the word life, in the second sense, has any meaning for pure reason? Footnote The assumption throughout is that our knowledge is entirely empirical. That we can only know what enters into our experience, namely phenomena. This principle they take from Kant's agnosticism. End footnote It is, says LaRoy, a metaphor inconvertible into definite ideas. We can only interpret it by introducing elements which belong to human life as we ordinarily experience it, and as Christ possessed it before his body was glorified. What distinguishes the dogma of the resurrection from others is that, instead of being expressed merely in symbolic language, behind which would lie concealed a reality unknowable and unthinkable by us, it purports to present a fact that occurred in space and time, that entered into the drama of historical events at a given moment and manifested itself to the sight, touch, and hearing of man. Must we not, therefore, consider it as an historical event, the reality of which has been historically demonstrated? But, says LaRoy, the resurrection, as a passage to a glorious life, is unthinkable, because it does not come within the range of experience. It should, therefore, be eliminated from the domain of thought, because it was eliminated from the domain of experience. In order that the resurrection could be an object of observation, like all other facts of experience, Christ should have resumed his former life by the reanimation of his dead body. But, says LaRoy, the resurrection, as an article of Catholic faith, is different from this. It means the entrance into glory and the transition to the supernatural order of existence, so that the body attributed to Christ after the resurrection had nothing in common with the bodies which constitute the world of our experience. What, then, can we understand by the reality of a glorified body? That is to say, of a body withdrawn from the system of space and time relations, which constitutes the very notion of physical reality. Hence it may be well to call attention to Ma'sure LaRoy's peculiar theory of the nature of body. He regards it not as an isolated portion of the world around us, a reality existing independently of others, but as a centre of coordination having physical continuity with the whole universe, so that the reality of a body is constituted by its bonds with the aggregate of material things. From the scientific standpoint, he argues that if the resurrection of Christ were a space and a time phenomenon, it would destroy the very conditions of the existence of the material universe. For since bodies have no reality, except through the bonds or ties that unite them to the whole, a break in their continuity or uniformity, the hypothesis that Christ's glorified body, which had no space and time relation, was identical with his original body, would leave only the disjective member of a world. The supernatural may indeed intervene in the world of physical reality, but grace does not act in the bosom of nature except by clothing itself in nature's own, and not in glorified or supernatural forms. LaRoy does not mean to deny the reality of the resurrection, but he relegates it to another and higher order than the phenomenal order of facts occurring in space and time. We ought, he says, to accept a dogma on the Word of God who has revealed it, and not because of its historical evidence. Modernists contend that the apparitions, even if we assume that they were not hallucinations pure and simple, should be regarded as the effect of the spiritual manifestation of Christ, giving evidence of his survival in glory, and should not be taken as a resumption of his terrestrial life. It is worthy of note that Christ appeared only to his disciples, and not to the general body of the Jews, from which LaRoy seems to infer, influenced probably by Ornance's theory, that it was the very anterior faith and love of the apostles which objectivised the image of Christ already enshrined in their imaginations and in their hearts. From the discrepancies in the Gospel narratives of the resurrection, LaRoy concludes that the narratives are legendary and imaginary, in conformity with the habits of thought that prevailed in their environment. The risen Christ is not, therefore, an outer experience, or rather, he is only an object of religious experience. If the apostles' vision of him be called perception, the term should be qualified so as to read, religious perception. What is historically true is that the apostles really believe that Christ had returned to life after having visited Hades. The reality, therefore, with which the New Testament deals, is psychological, but not extra-mental. The apparitions should be regarded as an evidence of faith, and not as an evidence of facts. LaRoy's criticism, therefore, comes to this. There exists only one order of knowledge in a speculative sense, while there are two orders of reality which, so far as we are concerned, are absolutely separated and incommensurable. The phenomenal order, which, coming within the range of our experience, is the object of our concepts and our theories, and the numinal order, which, being wholly foreign to our experience, note that LaRoy confounds the numinal and the supernatural orders, is also beyond the reach of thought and, consequently, theoretically unknowable. A dogma, therefore, is utterly unknowable, except in the practical sense as conveying a moral precept. Is LaRoy an agnostic? Against this charge he defends himself strenuously. He maintains that there exists a necessary relation between dogma and thought, and that it is, once, a right and a duty not to rest satisfied with blind faith. But what relation can there be between dogmas and thought, if the dogmas are unknowable? To answer this question, he distinguishes the believer as a believer and the believer as a philosopher. To this distinction corresponds two aspects of thought equally possible, equally legitimate, and even equally necessary. The one is essentially practical, and the other essentially speculative. This distinction runs through the entire system of LaRoy. The believer should not consider the dogmatic formula as literally expressing a reality, but as conveying what we should do, or how we should comport ourselves in dealing with this reality. The dogma, thus viewed, while remaining theoretically unknowable, in as much as it is transcendent reality, becomes practically thinkable under the form of conduct which it commands. In this way dogma enters into our experience, since we must live it, and the relations between the human mind and religious truth, which appear to be definitely broken off, are restored. We escape agnosticism without relapsing into intellectualism, which would create an invincible discord between science and dogma. According to this interpretation, dogma gives an orientation to all the modes of our activity. Pragmatism takes the places of agnosticism, and the Catholic is merely restricted by rules of conduct, and not by mere theories or ideas. Dogmas, says LaRoy, are not merely enigmatic and nebulous formulae, which God promulgated in order to check the pride of our spirit. They have a moral and practical sense. They have a vital meaning, more or less accessible, to us according to the degree of spirituality which we have attained. What, according to this view, are we to understand by the dogmas? God is personal. Jesus is risen. Something apparently very simple and within the reach of everybody. God is personal, conveys to us the practical command. In all your relations with God, act as you would in your relations with the human person. Similarly, Jesus is risen means, in your relations to him, shape your conduct as you would have shaped it before his death, as you would now shape it in dealing with one of your contemporaries. Thus we have come to understand and appreciate Christianity as a source and rule of life, a discipline of moral and religious action, instead of regarding it with the intellectualists as a system of speculative philosophy. Yet Leroy will not consent to be classified with those who hold the Christianity is a mere ethical system, however sublime. The positive dogmas it contains have primarily a practical meaning, and instead of deriving this from their theoretical interpretation, he derives the latter from the former. Dogma, he says, is a thought action, and it is in action, and in the measure in which we act, that we understand it. The most efficacious means of determining its significance is to compel one's self to live it. Faith in the resurrection was a point of departure, and the principle of the greatest achievements which the human soul has accomplished. It has accumulated during the career of its marvellous sway, an inexhaustible and abiding profundity. The apparitions were mental constructions, true hallucinations, if the expression be permissible. In the order of religion, as well as in the scientific order, that which establishes the value of a mental construction, that which distinguishes it from pathological hallucination, even though both be produced by the same mechanism and be accompanied by the same nervous changes, is intensity of life and the resistance which they offer to the corroding influences of time. Pathological hallucination, on the other hand, reveals a lowering of vitality and yields to the dissolving influences which it successively encounters. Viewed in this light, the apparitions of Jesus by the apostles have been an experience which faith itself established in the depths of the subliminal or subconscious self, and by which it entered into a genuine relation with the mysterious living reality corresponding to it. Themselves, the product of a previously existing faith, the apparitions reacted on this faith, strengthened, enriched, and developed it, and something corresponds to it in the absolute reality. By anterior faith, Monsieur Le Roy evidently understands a sort of implicit faith, the object of which the apparitions have been at once the means of finding and infinding of making explicit and definite. They were a mode of realising the resurrection relative and adapted to the capacity of the disciples, to their degree of culture, and to the prevailing conceptions of their time and environment. By reason of the mental condition of the period, they could not think of the resurrection, except by means of a certain theory of matter and life which today is obsolete. For them, the resurrection meant the reanimation of a corpse, and the reanimation implied apparitions. Thence they deduced that the corpse must have disappeared from the place where it was laid, and if, in reality, on inspection of the tomb, the body could not be discovered, we must recognise that its removal was providential in order that the evidence of the tomb should corroborate the apparitions. All this shows the contingent character of the apparitions. They served provisionally as a means of expressing the faith, and were destined to disappear, like other forms of the same kind, such as the descent into hell, and the ascension conceived as implying locations in space. In these today, the most conservative see only the husks of a faith which defines itself according to popular categories. But it is not the images and concepts by which the resurrection expresses itself that are important. It is the underlying spiritual reality which these images and concepts, symbolise, and which, thus comprehended, gave to human life an orientation that has transformed it. In this consists truly and essentially the dogma which claims our ascent. Therefore, in all cases the dogmatic formulae should be interpreted in terms of practical or moral action, and not in technical or speculative language. We must look, not for theories, but for directions. But this does not prevent us from having the right, and even the duty of constructing, as far as possible, theories or interpretations of the reality corresponding to dogma. We cannot avoid doing so, since speculative thought is part of our concrete life. Monsieur Le Roy says that faith cannot be radically separated even from theoretical thought, for it is destined to expand into the beatific vision of which it is an anticipation and germ, and not a heterogeneous form of exchange for the object which it purchases. Moreover, it is impossible for faith to keep clear of science and philosophy, because the human mind is one and abhors dualism. He even admits that dogmas have a philosophic value, and that one can regard them as speculative propositions. We must think and express our faith, and for that purpose we must have recourse to ideas and words. Faith, therefore, must think itself in terms of all the systems of philosophy with which it comes in contact, either to harmonize itself with them, or to detach itself from them. Otherwise there would be the necessity of maintaining a double consciousness. Thus arise theological systems, which must not be confounded with the experiences of faith. They have the same role as theories in science, namely to coordinate the results attained and to suggest new lines of research. Theology, therefore, is the philosophy of faith, which it aims at assimilating by means of speculative thought. Dogma is not merely an object for the contemplation of the mind, material offered to the mind statically. It is dynamic, and what we should consider in the images, and in the concepts, is this dynamic character, the movement which pervades them, and which carries the mind incessantly from an inadequate symbol to a better one. And as a movement is only thoroughly known in its progress, so to perceive the truth of a dogma, we must endeavor to live it. The dogma gives to the mind a speculative impulse in submitting to it a problem to be solved. Theological theories always have for their aim to clothe the data of faith with the forms of reason. Monsieur Leroy evidently means that at each epoch dogma should accommodate itself to the philosophy and science of that period. It does not draw its true value from such accommodation, but it should express itself theoretically in terms of contemporary philosophy and science. The believer is bound not to attack the essential element of faith, which is the attitude commanded by the dogma. With this reservation it is his right, and even his duty, to employ the science and the philosophy of his time in adapting the formula of the dogma to the intellectual spirit of the age. This intellectualization of dogma at a given moment, or its expression in terms of science and philosophy, is as variable as a scientific theory or philosophical system. In this way, Monsieur Leroy attempts to show us how one can give a philosophical thinkable idea of the resurrection in rejecting the reanimation of Christ's corpse. It is only a certain idea of the resurrection and not its reality, he says, that he rejects. He repudiates the mythical theory and also the symbolical theory, which would make of the resurrection a mere symbol of immortality. Christ not only survives in the memory of his followers and in the influence he exerts on their lives, but he lives by his presence in our midst. Between the resurrection and the Eucharistic presence there is a close connection. This presence cannot be phenomenal, that is, it does not belong to the sensible order. But how can it be real and yet not phenomenal? To answer this question, Leroy has recourse to a new theory of matter. He is an idealist. Matter, he holds, exists only in the mind and relatively to it. He distinguishes between pure matter, which is a need or exigency of the spirit, to reduce itself to a mechanism and contract habits, an actual matter which has an explicit and concrete reality. Actual matter is a product of the mind, of the group of mechanisms which it has created, and the system of habits which it has contracted, as a necessary condition of its action. Nevertheless, this matter is social and hereditary. It is a bond of the monads and a result of their collective action, and, far from being something subjective to each individual, is born in the midst of pre-existing matter, which truly limits and conditions it. But matter, for the most part, has fallen into unconsciousness and automatism. It is thus an obstacle to the liberty of the spirit, which, by right, should be sovereign, and human progress consists in gradually freeing the spirit from its trammels. This being so, we can easily understand what death means, or the cessation of practical activity and phenomenal disappearance. Death occurs when we abandon the point in which we are in contact with, and, as it were, embedded in matter. Then the mechanism which composed the body, having fallen off from the soul, dissolves, little by little, into the common mass of nameless things whose only function is inertia. But the soul is not thereby totally disembodied. It bears with it its own body, which is pure matter, which means that the soul retains the power of reconstituting mechanisms more or less similar to those it has lost, and, consequently, to play a new role in the sensible world. Thus it is explained how it can afterwards return to life. For this it is sufficient that the pure matter retained should realise itself, that its power should pass to act in order that it may resume life and reappear in the phenomenal order. This will be a resurrection in its own flesh. The body is the same after as before, because it has, as its principle, the same germ. Everything takes place as an ordinary vital phenomena of assimilation and elimination. For this would be merely a natural resurrection, a resumption of phenomenal life, and what we are endeavouring to conceive is a supernatural resurrection, which implies the assumption of a glorified body. The point of contact at which the soul comes into relationship with the whole universe is its body, which, in a sense, is the universe, if, in the natural state, a living body detaches itself from universal continuity. It is because, through automatism and unconsciousness, its practical power of direct action and reaction is localised at the point in which its life remains conscious and autonomous. For the most part it remains a mere potentiality, which slumbers, or acts, habitually, blindly, and mechanically. But when the conscious subject conquers the unconscious, when Liberty triumphs over automatism, then the appearances of limitation and disconnection vanish. The body ceases to be externally visible as an object among other objects. It exists in the fullness of its being, and that, which was before only slumbering potentiality, has become actuality and reality. There is no longer any frontier marking the spot to which this potentiality is confined. It is a centre of perception, an initiative everywhere. It has become a glorious body. It has realised the perfect unfolding of its potentiality. It has the entire universe for the scene of its immediate activity, and lives no longer in mechanical inertia and subliminal penumbra, but in light and Liberty. Behold how the presence of the living Christ can be sovereignly real without being apparent. It only ceases to be visible because it has become supremely real. The resurrection, thus conceived, is an animation of the entire universe by Christ, which necessarily implies a supernatural presence, a presence that is not included in the phenomenal order. A natural resurrection would have consisted in reproducing certain mechanisms, that is, in resuming the appearances of limitation and disconnection, which render an ordinary body perceptible as a distinct object of the phenomenal world. While the resurrection of Christ has been a victory over all that, a complete escape from automatism and unconsciousness in order to act in the fullness of light and liberty, by the solidarity which binds us and all nature to him, the resurrection has become for us and for all nature at once a pledge and a means of a similar triumph. In order that this seed of glory should develop and fructify, we have only to nourish our souls by participation more and more in the life of Christ through faith and the sacraments, especially the Holy Eucharist. The resurrection is a permanent fact dominating time and space, indissolubly bound to the Eucharist and the Church, and not a mere transitory fact of a particular place and a particular moment. Dogma, understood in its practical sense, is immediately within the reach of everybody. It is not necessary to be a scientist or a philosopher in order to assent to it. There is no danger of humanity becoming thereby divided into two castes, of which one would be charged with the duty of elaborating ideas which the others could only slavishly accept. Moreover, this view of dogma leaves intact the liberty of the Spirit and its undeniable right to reject every conception which would impose itself from without. Recourse to authority, totally objectionable in the order of thought, is permissible in the sphere of action. Liberty, having no place and a no role in the steps of discursive thought, authority could not affect that I should find an argument, solid or weak, that such or such a notion should convey a particular meaning to my mind. I do not say merely, says LaRoy, that it is not right, but that the process is radically impossible, for it is I who think and not authority that thinks for me. But in the practical order it is different. I am always free to take one attitude rather than another, but where liberty intervenes, authority can intervene. We can thus see also how the act of faith is free, as it should be. It is precisely because the dogma commands an act, that its value verifies itself only in action, or in living the dogma, that faith is free. But one sees also how the autonomy of the Spirit is safeguarded, since the dogmas, insofar as they are made known, present themselves as data for speculation, as matter for theories to be formed about and not as a theory already formed, what facts are to science, dogmas are to theological speculation. Autonomy of the Spirit is in perfect accord with the principle of submission to fact, and the most scrupulous and jealous autonomous cannot see any impediment to liberty of research in the necessity of admitting that facts judge theories, that which was repugnant in the intellectualist conception was that dogmas imposed solutions ready made, binding the Spirit from without, whilst in the present hypothesis they only present problems upon which the mind is called to exercise its activity freely. Thus understood they no longer hamper scientific or philosophical speculation, but they become themselves objects of speculation. This speculation consists always in intellectualising the dogma in terms of science and philosophy. It is variable and perfectible. The authority of the Church has no right to restrict it to this or that definite theory, but only to uphold the immutable element of dogma against the theories which misunderstand or misrepresent it. The Church is the guardian of the deposit of faith, and not of systems of philosophy and theology. By its dogmas, understood in the true sense, it is not obstructive of the movement of thought, but on the contrary stimulated by furnishing it with a new object. Has M. Leroy truly removed the reproach of heteronomy which modern philosophers have made against religion? The contradictions in which his theory abounds are too palpable to call for detailed exposure. Its exposition carries with it its own refutation. End of Part 2 of Appendix to Encyclical Letter Pascendi Dominici Grieges on the Errors of the Modernists. Section 6 of Pascendi Dominici Grieges on the Errors of the Modernists by Pope St. Pius X, translated by Thomas E. Judge. This will be Vox recording as in the public domain. Part 3 of Appendix to Encyclical Letter Pascendi Dominici Grieges on the Errors of the Modernists Kant and the Modernists. The Modernists, relying on Kant's subjective method, which they call the method of imminence, hold that the Christian religion is credible because it best corresponds to the exigencies of our souls. Everything is explained by saying that truth is not transcendent and is not measured by its conformity with its object, but depends on man himself and develops by adaptation to his various needs. According to Kant, the great and necessary truths of religion appeal to the will, not to the intellect. All religion springs from our need of the infinite. Kant admits necessary truths as such. The principles of mathematics he considers unchangeable because they formulate the laws of space and time, which are subjective forms of our own senses. Our pure reason also imposes laws on nature, and the external universe, considered as cosmos, or orderly, an organized whole, derives all its principles of organization from the human mind. Science, therefore, as such, or the general principles which we deduce from phenomena by means of the principle of causality, is a collection of laws imposed on the universe by our own minds, and a universality and force cannot be questioned by the skeptic, because we cannot consistently, with the constitution of our intellects, think the universe otherwise. Material bodies are a mere aggregation, or chaos. Similarly, the will imposes on the intellect principles that are necessary for life, necessary, that is, to regulate morality. They are free will, the immortality of the soul, and the existence of God. Kant also admits that religious faith may be accepted as an ideal solace, but he reduces it to myths and imaginary symbols. He recognizes nothing else in the Bible, and in the scriptural narrative of Jesus Christ himself, accept myths and symbols. By the word imminent was formerly meant a characteristic of vital actions which, of their own nature, are not terminated in an external effect, but remain in the subject himself, as his act and perfection. In the New School, imminence implies that from the subject is derived, either in whole, or for the most part, the determining reason of the various acts of which his nature is capable, and this is to be understood not merely of the order of knowledge, but of the order of reality, and of the supernatural as well as of the natural order. Hence there is imminent in us not only the capacity to receive supernatural gifts, but also the act of power corresponding to supernatural elevation to operate by means of them and even their determining reason, which is a natural need or exigency. This concept of imminence implies imminence of the higher forms and natures in the inferior, whence follows the natural evolution of one from the other. This philosophy of action and moral dogmatism is excellently refuted in a recent work by Rev. G. Mattiusi, S.I., Il veleno canziano, Nuova e antica critica della ragione. Eras of the modernists concerning the origin of Christianity. Contrary to the modernists' views, we Catholics hold that Christianity is not a subconscious and spontaneous evolution, that it is not an emanation from the religious consciousness of humanity, that it arises through a positive intervention of the regurgitus and miraculous condescension of God. It is constituted by the historical fact of the incarnation. It is, essentially, a supernatural gift, an interior gift of grace which nourishes the Christian life, an external gift of the teaching and precepts of Christ, which entrusted to the apostles is communicated to us by the church and its infallible head. To the thesis of efference, which would have it arise from below, from the depth of human nature and the bowels of humanity, we radically oppose the thesis of efference, which affirms the specifically supernatural character of the dogmas and virtues of Catholicism and the gratuitousness of the entire Christian order. Footnote. The words efference and efference, by which the modernists contrast their system and intellectualism, are borrowed from the names of the efferent, out-giving or motor, and the efferent, in-carrying or sensory, nerves. Afference implies that revelation comes to us from without, from a transcendent source, efference from an imminent source. End footnote. Nor is it true that the human soul, even inspired by secret impulses from God and actuated by grace from heaven, can arrive at a knowledge of dogma and of the whole supernatural order. For revelation alone can teach us that this order exists and what it is. We have an instinctive and profound abhorrence for the methods of those who try to establish harmony between philosophy and religion by minimizing and compromising. Motives of Credibility Innocent XI condemned the following proposition. The supernatural ascent of faith necessary for salvation is compatible with merely probable knowledge of revelation. Nay, even with doubt, whether God has spoken. Our faith must be a rattionabale obsequium, or reasonable service. We must have a rational certainty of the fact of revelation before we can give the ascent of faith, that is, ascent to a revealed doctrine based on the authority of God who has revealed it. The reasons which prove the fact of revelation, or that the proposition is really the word of God, are called motives of credibility. The whole attitude of the mind in an act of faith may be interpreted in the form of a syllogism. Whatever God says is true, but God has said that the church is infallible. Therefore it is true that the church is infallible. The motive that makes us ascent to the major premise is the motive of faith. The reason, or reasons that make us ascent to the minor premise, are motives of credibility. They establish the fact of revelation. The rationalists, among other things, deny that it is possible to be certain of the fact of revelation. The modernists, like some Protestants, substitute inward feelings or inward religious experience for external signs or proofs of the fact of revelation. The true Catholic position is easily understood from the following definition of the Vatican Council. In order that the submission of our faith might be in accordance with reason, God hath willed to give us, together with the internal assistance of the Holy Ghost, external proofs of his revelation, namely divine facts and, above all, miracles and prophecies, which, while they clearly manifest God's almighty power and infinite knowledge, are most certain divine signs of revelation adapted to the understanding of all men. Wherefore Moses, and all the prophets, and especially Christ our Lord himself, wrought and uttered many and most manifest miracles and prophecies, and, touching the apostles, we read, they, going forth, preached the word everywhere, the Lord working with all, and confirming the word with the signs that followed. And again, it is written, we have the more firm, prophetic word, whereunto you do well to attend, as to a light that shineth in a dark place. Second Peter, chapter 1, verse 19. But in order that we may fulfil the duty of embracing the true faith, and of persevering therein constantly, God, by means of his only begotten Son, hath instituted the church, and hath endowed her with plain marks whereby she may be recognised by all men, as the guardian and mistress of the revealed Word. For to the Catholic Church alone belong all the wonders which have been divinely arranged for the evident credibility of the Christian faith. Moreover, the Church herself, by her wonderful propagation, exalted sanctity and unbounded fertility in all that is good. By her Catholic unity and invincible stability is both an enduring motive of credibility, and an unimpeachable testimony of her divine mission. Whence it is that, like a standard set up unto the nations, Isaiah, chapter 11, verse 12, she called unto her them that have not yet believed, and maketh her children certain that the faith which they profess resteth on the surest foundation. The Catholic Church, therefore, recognises an internal factor of our scent to the fact of revelation, namely, the assistance of the Holy Ghost, and also external signs, namely, divine facts, especially miracles and prophecies. Consequently, the Church has been invested by Christ with plain notes or marks whereby she may be recognised by all men as the guardian and mistress of revelation. Catholics, therefore, recognise the value of inner experiences in begetting certainty of revelation. But they do not regard these inner experiences as the soul, or even the most important factors in producing this certainty, as the modernists do. For these inner experiences are subjective, that is, restricted to the person who feels them, and liable to illusion. While the faith is proposed by public authority and exacts public and universal obedience, it must, therefore, be supported by public and plain signs of its divine origin. The following quotation from Sheeben's Dogmatik, translated by Wilhelm and Scannell, is very instructive. Although, in theory, it would be conceivable that it was only the first promulgators of the faith who had their mission attested by divine signs, and that this fact should have been handed down to us in the same way as any other historical event, nevertheless, as a matter of fact, and this might be expected from the nature of faith and revelation, God has ordained that the signs or criteria of divine origin should uninterruptedly accompany the preaching of His doctrine. The fact of revelation is thereby brought home to us in a more lively, direct and effective manner. The question is of the greatest importance at the present time, when the divine mission of even Christ Himself is the object of so many attacks. When the divine mission of the Church was denied, and thereby the existence of a continual living testimony was rejected, faith in the divine mission of Christ, thenceforth rested upon merely historical evidence, and so became the prey of historical criticism. Besides, without a continuous divine approbation, Christ's mission become such an isolated fact that its full significance cannot be grasped. Some Catholic theologians, in their endeavours to defend Christianity and the Church on purely historical grounds, have not given enough prominence to the constant signs of divine approbation, which have accompanied the Church's preaching in all ages. The Vatican definition has therefore been most opportune. It is now of faith that the Church herself is an enduring motive of credibility and an unimpeachable testimony of her divine mission. Her wonderful propagation, in spite of the greatest moral and physical difficulties, not only in her early years, but even at the present day. Her imminent sanctity has manifested in her saints, combined with their miracles. Her inexhaustible fertility in every sort of good work. Her unity in faith, discipline and worship. Her invincible constancy in resisting the attacks of powerful enemies within and without for more than 18 centuries. All these are manifest signs that she is not the work of man, but the work of God. Tradition The entire Church is the mystical body of Christ, compacted by God, and directed and vivified by the Holy Spirit. The Church is, therefore, a unique society. Its judgment is the judgment of the Holy Spirit, and the truth of the testimony of which witnesses does not depend upon their number, but upon the office which they hold in the Church, and the prerogatives which are attached to that office by divine right. Ecclesiastical tradition, therefore, has a divine and a human element, and differs from all other kinds of tradition in the degree and character of the certainty that it produces. But we should not forget that owing to the human element there may be a break in the continuity and universality of the tradition and a temporary or partial eclipse of the truth. The great truth of Christianity have always been expressly taught in the Church, considered as a whole. Others of less fundamental character have been implicitly contained in those that were distinctly professed, and by reflection and the direction of the Holy Spirit could be easily deduced for universal acceptance. This logical or dialectical evolution of dogma is very different from the vital evolution advocated by modernists, who teach that the new dogmatic formulae are not contained in the old which have grown obsolete, but are substituted for them in the changing conditions of their environment, because new ones become necessary as being better adapted to the vital need of the believer. If a doctrine be defined by the Supreme Magisterium of the Church, it becomes a part of the universal ecclesiastical tradition, but even then the definition is always based on the fact that the tradition in question was universal for a long time. The ordinary channels of tradition are 1. The entire Church, Head and Members Unanimity of faith may be gathered from professions of faith universally accepted, from catechisms in general use, and from the general practice of the Church in her liturgy, discipline or morals, so far as these imply doctrinal truths. It is an old axiom, Legiem credendi statuart lex orandi. 2. The consent of the faithful, namely, the distinct universal and constant profession of a doctrine by the whole body of the simple faithful. Thus, before the definition of the immaculate conception, the profession and practice of the faithful were appealed to in favour of it. The late Dr Murray of Maynorth College, in his famous treatise, Day Ecclesia, has the following passage. As the blood flows from the heart to the body through the arteries, as the vital sap insinuates itself into the whole tree, into each bough and leaf and fibre, as water descends through a thousand channels from the mountaintop to the plain, so is Christ's pure and life-giving doctrine diffused, flowing into the whole body through a thousand organs from the ecclesia dorsens. 3. The testimony of all the bishops, because the episcopate is the chief organ of infallibility in the Church. 4. The perfect representative of tradition, the apostolic C. Moreover, as a consequence of the connection between the head of the Church and the Roman sea, there exists in the local Roman Church, apart from the authoritative decisions of the Pope, a certain actual and normal testimony, which must be considered as an expression of the habitual teaching of the Holy See. The faith professed in the Roman Church is the result of the constant teachings of the Popes, accepted by the laity, and taught by the clergy, especially by the College of Cardinals, who take part in the general government of the Church. The external channels are 1. The testimony of the Fathers. In the early days of the Church, when the teaching functions were almost exclusively exercised by the bishops, the extraordinary representatives of apostolic tradition were usually eminent members of the episcopate. They were called Fathers of the Church, because living as they did, in the infancy of the Church, when extraordinary means were needed for its preservation, they received a more abundant outpouring of the gifts of the Holy Ghost, and thus their doctrine represents his teaching in an eminent degree. 2. Doctors of the Church, distinguished for human learning and industry, which they applied to the development and fuller comprehension of doctrine, rather than to the fixing of its substance. Documentary tradition is the expression of the oral and living tradition, and the Holy Ghost assists in a production and preservation of such documents, so that they may present a more or less perfect representation of previous tradition. The writings of the Fathers constitute a written tradition equal in authority to the subsequent oral tradition, and are an objective rule of faith running side by side with oral tradition, but their authority is dependent on the Church. Official documents comprise decisions of the Popes and Councils, liturgical documents and monuments, such as liturgies, sacramentaries, ordines romani, pictures, symbols, inscriptions, vases, etc., connected with public worship. All these participate, more or less, in a supernatural character of the living tradition, of which they are the emanation and exponents. The Roman catacombs have acquired great importance as monuments of the earliest tradition. The tradition of a truth being once established, the Catholic has no further interest in the investigation of its continuity, except for the purpose of science and apologetics. Because he believes in the divine authority of tradition, and in dealing with Protestants, we may proceed in two ways, either to demonstrate the antiquity of the doctrine, or prove to them the Catholic principles of tradition. With certain limitations, the ordinary preaching of the Gospel in parish churches is an important channel of tradition. The fact that the pastor is left in undisturbed possession of his office, that he is in doctrinal communion with his bishop, and, by an apary argument, the bishop is in communion with the Holy Father, the Vicar of Christ, who is in communion with the Holy Spirit of Truth. End of Appendix to Encyclical Letter Pechendi Dominici Gregis On the Errors of the Modernists Section 7 of Pechendi Dominici Gregis On the Errors of the Modernists by Pope St. Pius X translated by Thomas E. Judge This Libyrox recording is in the public domain Popular Interpretation of the Encyclical For the sake of the general reader, we shall attempt to explain, in the language of the Catechism, the reasons that irresistibly impelled the Holy Father to condemn modernism. Catholics believe that Jesus Christ was both God and man, that, as God, He existed from all eternity, equal to the Father in splendor and power, that He assumed human nature in the womb of Mary, that He brought many stupendous miracles, that, after having been crucified, He rose again on Easter Sunday and carried His full humanity, after His ascension, into the presence of the Eternal Father. The Modernists distinguish between the Christ of history and the Christ of faith. The Christ, who really lived and died, they say was a mere man, the greatest man who ever lived indeed, but with all the limitations of human nature. His miracles, His resurrection and ascension never really occurred, but were credited to Him by enthusiastic disciples after His death. Thus the Modernists reject the divinity of Christ, which is the cornerstone of the Christian religion. Catholics believe that all the sacraments were instituted by Christ Himself. From God alone could they derive their efficacy. No creature could take bread and wine and convert them into the body and blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ. The Modernists, on the contrary, hold that the sacraments were originated by Christ's disciples. They, nevertheless, in words, maintain that Christ instituted them, because they say, this is an application of their principle of permanence, Christ lives on in His disciples, so that their acts may be attributed to Him. Their theory resembles, it seems to us, the positivist idea of the moral immortality of man. A good action influences others to imitate it. The actions of these likewise affect the conduct of others. Just as a stone dropped into a lake generates wavelets which excite others until ripple after ripple rises on the surface. The whole body of water being ultimately stirred, however feebly. As a man's life may thus be said to be perpetuated in the surviving influence of his conduct, so the life of Christ is permanent in the lives of his disciples and adherents. This interpretation is merely a base attempt to throw dust in the eyes of Catholics. What men do is men's work, not the personal act of Christ. But the Catholic doctrine is that Christ, in his own person, instituted the seven sacraments, and by his divine power constituted them infallible means of grace. The Church was founded by Christ's own personal act. He gave it its constitution, invested it with plenary authority, and solemnly commanded all men to enter its fold. But the modernists teach that Christians themselves, after Christ's death, voluntarily organised the Church to meet urgent needs of the hour. Just as Jean-Jacques Rousseau pictures the state springing into existence through a number of individuals pooling their wills and rights into a collectivity, so do these men represent the Church as originating in a voluntary compact entered into by the early Christians for the purpose of strengthening and defending their common religious interests. Ecclesiastical authority, disciplinary, dogmatic, and liturgical, is therefore derived from the people and answerable to them. The principles from which these doctrines spring were, as we are reminded in the encyclical solemnly condemned by Pius VI in the book Altorum Fidei. At various stages in history of Christianity, when heretics arose to deny some revealed doctrine, the Church solemnly proclaimed the truth and demanded that her children should accept it. Thus the Council of Nice defined that Christ is a God, the Council of Ephesus, that Mary is the mother of God, the Vatican Council that the Pope is infallible. All these doctrinal decrees are unchangeable, but the modernists treat them very lightly. Dogmas they maintain are merely symbols, useful in certain emergencies, but inevitably destined to become obsolete or ill-adapted to the religious needs of a more advanced progress. Thus the time may arrive, according to their ideas, when it will be inadvisable to believe in the divinity of Christ, or to accord to his blessed mother the honors to which she is entitled by reason of her great prerogative which the Council of Ephesus vindicated. The encyclical emphatically repudiates this perverted view of dogma and quotes the following constitution of the Vatican Council to show that it was already expressly condemned. The doctrine of the faith which God has revealed has not been proposed to human intelligences to be perfected by them as if it were a philosophical system, but as a divine deposit entrusted to the spouse of Christ to be faithfully guarded and infallibly interpreted. Hence the sense, too, of the sacred dogma is that which our Holy Mother the Church has once declared, nor is this sense ever to be abandoned on plea or pretext of a more profound comprehension of the truth. Catholics hold that the Bible is different from all other books because all its parts were written under the influence and direction of the Holy Spirit, so that it is literally, and not merely figuratively, the Word of God. Modernists, on the contrary, contend that it only embodies the religious experiences of its human authors. Every person has a similar religious experience, or sense of the divine, though not in the same degree. Consequently the modernists reject the divine authorship of the Scriptures in the true sense of the Word. The Bible was written by men under natural impulse, their mental faculties receiving no stimulus or guidance from any supernatural source. Milton's Paradise Lost, or Dante's Inferno, would possess as clear a claim as the Scriptures to be considered inspired according to the theory of the modernists. The modernists are agnostics, that is, they hold that we cannot know anything except appearances, or the impressions made on our senses. Consequently, they deny that we can acquire any knowledge, properly so called, of God. The mind is everlastingly imprisoned within the circle of its own states, feelings, and impressions. Objects that lie outside of us, our minds cannot reach. All our ideas of a Creator, Preserver, Governor of Man and the Universe are declared to be empty illusions, as far as knowledge is concerned. This principle, the modernists, evidently borrowed from the philosophical system of Kant. The encyclical reminds us that the Vatican Council has defined, if anyone says that the One True God, our Creator and Lord, cannot be known with certainty in the natural light of human reason, by means of the things that are made, let him be anathema. And also, if anyone says that it is not possible, or not expedient, that man be taught through the medium of divine revelation about God and the worship to be paid him, let him be anathema. End of Popular Interpretation of the Encyclical Letter Pascendi Dominici-Greges End of Pascendi Dominici-Greges on the Errors of the Modernists by Pope Saint Pius X. Translated by Thomas E. Judge. Recording by L. G. Pug.