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Pascendi
Dominici Gregis
(On The Doctrine Of The Modernists)
Pope Pius X Sept. 8, 1907
3477.
However, this Agnosticism is only the negative part of the
system of the Modernists: the positive part consists in what
they call vital immanence. Thus 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, and the road to revelation closed
by 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 of 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. In this way is formulated the principle
of religious immanence. Moreover, the first actuation, so
to speak, of every vital phenomenon -- and religion, as noted
above, belongs to this category -- is due to a certain need
or impulsion; but speaking more particularly of life, it has
its origin in a movement of the heart, which movement is called
a sense. Therefore, as God is the object of religion, we must
conclude that faith, which is the basis and foundation of
all religion, must consist in a certain interior sense, originating
in a need of the divine. This need of the divine, which is
experienced only in special and favorable circumstances. cannot
of itself appertain to the domain of consciousness, but is
first latent beneath consciousness, or, to borrow a term from
modern philosophy, in the subconsciousness, where also its
root lies hidden and undetected.
It may
perhaps be asked how it is that this need of the divine which
man experiences within himself resolves itself into religion?
To this question the Modernist reply would be as follows:
Science and history are confined within two boundaries, the
one external, namely, the visible world, the other internal,
which is consciousness. When one or other of these limits
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,
or lies hidden within the subconsciousness, the need of the
divine in a soul which is prone to religion excites -- according
to the principles of Fideism, without any previous advertence
of the mind -- a certain special sense, and this sense possesses,
implied within itself both as its own object and as its intrinsic
cause, the divine reality itself, and in a way unites man
with God. It is this sense to which Modernists give the name
of faith, and this is what they hold to be the beginning of
religion.
3478.
But we have not yet reached the end of their philosophizing,
or, to speak more accurately, of their folly. Modernists find
in this sense not only faith, but in and with faith, as they
understand it, they affirm that there is also to be found
revelation. For, indeed, what more is needed to constitute
a revelation? Is not that religious sense which is perceptible
in the conscience, revelation, or at least the beginning of
revelation? Nay, is it not God Himself manifesting Himself,
indistinctly, it is true, in this same religious sense, to
the soul? 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 to say, God is both the Revealer and
the Revealed.
From
this, Venerable Brethren, springs that most absurd tenet of
the Modernists, that every religion, according to the different
aspect under which it is viewed, must be considered as both
natural and supernatural. It is thus that they make consciousness
and revelation synonymous. From this they derive the law laid
down as the universal standard, according to which religious
consciousness is to be put on an equal footing with revelation,
and that to it all must submit, even the supreme authority
of the Church, whether in the capacity of teacher, or in that
of legislator in the province of sacred liturgy or discipline.
3479.
In all this process, from which, according to the Modernists,
faith and revelation spring, one point is to be particularly
noted, for it is of capital importance on account of the historico-critical
corollaries which they deduce from it. The unknowable they
speak of does not present itself to faith as something solitary
and isolated; hut on the contrary in close conjunction with
some phenomenon, which, though it belongs to the realms of
science or history, yet to some extent exceeds their limits.
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, seizes upon
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, an elevation by which it becomes
more adapted to clothe itself with the form of the divine
character which faith will bestow upon it. The second consequence
is a certain disfiguration -- so it may be called -- of the
same phenomenon, arising from the fact that faith attributes
to it, when stripped of the circumstances of place and time,
characteristics which it does not really possess; and this
takes place especially in the case of the phenomena of the
past, and the more fully in the measure of their antiquity.
From these two principles the Modernists deduce two laws,
which, when united with a third which they have already derived
from agnosticism, constitute the foundation of historic criticism.
An example may be sought in 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 strict keeping with
His character, condition, and education, and with the place
and time in which He lived. A method of reasoning which is
passing strange, but in it we have the Modernist criticism.
3481.
It is thus that the religious sense, 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 sense, which was at first only rudimentary and almost
formless, under the influence of that mysterious principle
from which it originated, gradually matured with the progress
of human life, of which, as has been said, it is a certain
form. This, then, is the origin of all. even of supernatural
religion. For religions are mere developments of this religious
sense. Nor is the Catholic religion an exception; it is quite
on a level with the rest; for it was engendered, by the process
of vital immanence, and by no other way, in the consciousness
of Christ, who was a man of the choicest nature, whose like
has never been, nor will be. In hearing these things we shudder
indeed at so great an audacity of assertion and so great a
sacrilege. And yet, Venerable Brethren, these are not merely
the foolish babblings of unbelievers. There are Catholics,
yea, and priests too, who say these things openly; and they
boast that they are going to reform the Church by these ravings!
The question is no longer one of the old error which claimed
for human nature a sort of right to the supernatural. It has
gone far beyond that, and has reached the point when it is
affirmed that our most holy religion, in the man Christ as
in us, emanated from nature spontaneously and of itself. Nothing
assuredly could be more utterly destructive of the whole supernatural
order. For this reason 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 a constant development,
attain finally to the possession of all truth and good, let
him be anathema."7
So far,
Venerable Brethren, there has been no mention of the intellect.
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 sense of which We have frequently spoken, since
sense is not knowledge, they say 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 certain light should be cast upon this sense so that
God may clearly stand out in relief and be set apart from
it. This is the task of the intellect, whose office it is
to reflect and to analyze; and by means of it, 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.
3482
The mind then, encountering this .sense, throws itself upon
it, and works in it after the manner of a painter who restores
to greater clearness the lines of a picture that have been
dimmed with age. The simile is that of one of the leaders
of Modernism. The operation of the mind in this work is a
double one: first, by a natural and spontaneous act it expresses
its concept in a simple, popular 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 precise and
distinct. These secondary propositions, if they finally receive
the approval of the supreme magisterium of the Church, constitute
dogma.
3483
We have thus reached one of the principal points in the Modernist's
system, namely, the origin and the nature of dogma. For they
place the origin of dogma in those primitive and simple formulas,
which, under a certain aspect, are necessary to faith; for
revelation, to be truly such, requires the clear knowledge
of God in the consciousness. But dogma itself, they apparently
hold, strictly consists 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 sense.
This will be readily perceived by anyone who holds that these
formulas have no other purpose than to furnish the believer
with a means of giving to himself an account of his faith.
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.
Hence
it is quite impossible to maintain that they absolutely contain
the truth: for, in so far as they are symbols, they are the
images of truth, and so must be adapted to the religious sense
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 sense. But the object of
the religious sense, as something contained in the absolute,
possesses an infinite variety of aspects, of which now one,
now another, may present itself. In like manner he who believes
can avail himself of varying conditions. Consequently, the
formulas which we call dogma must be subject to these vicissitudes,
and are, therefore, liable to change. Thus the way is open
to the intrinsic evolution of dogma. Here we have an immense
structure of sophisms which ruin and wreck all religion.
Dogma
is not only able, but ought to evolve and to be changed. This
is strongly affirmed by the Modernists, and clearly flows
from their principles. For among the chief points of their
teaching is the following, which they deduce from the principle
of vital immanence, namely, that religious formulas if they
are to be really religious and not merely intellectual speculations,
ought to be living and to live the life of the religious sense.
This is not to be understood to mean that these formulas,
especially if merely imaginative, were to be invented for
the religious sense. Their origin matters nothing, any more
than their number or quality. What is necessary is that the
religious sense -- with some modification 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 are brought
forth the .secondary formulas must proceed under the guidance
of the heart. Hence it comes that these formulas, in order
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 need to be changed. In view of the
fact that the character and lot of dogmatic formulas are so
unstable, it is no wonder that Modernists should regard them
so lightly and in such open disrespect, and have no consideration
or praise for anything but the religious sense and for the
religious life. In this way, with consummate audacity, they
criticize the Church, as having strayed from the true path
by failing to distinguish between the religious and moral
sense of formulas and their surface meaning, and by clinging
vainly and tenaciously to meaningless formulas, while religion
itself is allowed to go to ruin. "Blind'- they are, and
"leaders of the blind" puffed up with the proud
name of science, they have reached that pitch of folly at
which they pervert the eternal concept of truth and the true
meaning of religion; in introducing a new system in which
"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 and vain, futile, uncertain
doctrines, unapproved by the Church, on which, in the height
of their vanity, they think they can base and maintain truth
itself."8
3484
Thus far, Venerable Brethren, We have considered the Modernist
as a philosopher. Now if We proceed to consider him as a believer,
and seek to know how the believer, according to Modernism,
is marked off from the philosopher, it must be observed that,
although the philosopher recognizes the reality of the divine
as the object of faith, still this reality is not to be found
by him but in the heart of the believer, as an object of feeling
and affirmation, and therefore confined within the sphere
of phenomena; but the question as to whether in itself it
exists outside that feeling and affirmation is one which the
philosopher passes over and neglects. For the Modernist believer,
on the contrary, it is an established and certain fact that
the reality of the divine 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,
he answers: In the personal experience of the individual.
On this head the Modernists differ from the Rationalists only
to fall into the views of the Protestants and pseudo-mystics.
The following is their manner of stating the question: In
the religious sense one must recognize a kind of intuition
of the heart which puts man in immediate contact with the
reality of God, and infuses such a persuasion of God's existence
and His action both within and without man as far to exceed
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, they say that this arises from the
fact that such persons are unwilling to put themselves in
the moral state necessary to produce it. It is this experience
which makes the person who acquires it to be properly and
truly a believer.
How far
this position is removed from that of Catholic teaching! We
have already seen how its fallacies have been condemned by
the Vatican Council. Later on, we shall see how these errors,
combined with those which we have already mentioned, open
wide the way to Atheism. Here it is well to note at once that,
given this doctrine of experience united with that of symbolism,
every religion, even that of paganism, must be held to be
true. What is to prevent such experiences from being found
in any religion? In fact, that they are so is maintained by
not a few. On what grounds can Modernists deny the truth of
an experience affirmed by a follower of Islam? Will they claim
a monopoly of true experiences for Catholics alone? Indeed,
Modernists do not deny, but actually maintain, some confusedly,
others frankly, that all religions are true. That they cannot
feel otherwise is obvious. For on what ground, according to
their theories, could falsity be predicated of any religion
whatsoever? Certainly it would be either on account of the
falsity of the religious .sense or on account of the falsity
of the formula pronounced by the mind. Now the religious sense,
although it maybe 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 sense and to
the believer, whatever be the intellectual capacity of the
latter. In the conflict between different religions, the most
that Modernists can maintain is that the Catholic has more
truth because it is more vivid, and that it deserves with
more reason the name of Christian because it corresponds more
fully with the origins of Christianity. No one will find it
unreasonable that these consequences flow from the premises.
But what is most amazing is that there are Catholics and priests,
who, We would fain believe, abhor such enormities, and yet
act as if they fully approved of them. For they lavish such
praise and bestow such public honor on the teachers of these
errors as to convey 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 sake of the errors which
these persons openly profess and which they do all in their
power to propagate.
There
is yet another element in this part of their teaching which
is absolutely contrary to Catholic truth. For what is laid
down as to experience is also applied with destructive effect
to tradition, which has always been maintained by the Catholic
Church. Tradition, as understood by the Modernists, is a communication
with others of an original experience, through preaching by
means of the intellectual formula. To this formula, in addition
to its representative value they attribute a species of suggestive
efficacy which acts firstly in the believer by stimulating
the religious sense, should it happen to have grown sluggish,
and by renewing the experience once acquired, and secondly,
in those who do not yet believe by awakening in them for the
first time the religious sense and producing the experience.
In this way is religious experience spread abroad among the
nations; 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. Thus we are once more led to infer that all existing
religions are equally true, for otherwise they would not survive.
3485
We have proceeded sufficiently far, Venerable Brethren, to
have before us enough, and more than enough, to enable us
to see what are the relations which Modernists establish between
faith and science -- including, as they are wont to do under
that name, history. And in the first place it is to be held
that the object-matter of the one is quite extraneous to and
separate from the object-matter of the other. For faith occupies
itself solely with something which science declares to be
for it unknowable. Hence each has a separate scope assigned
to it: science is entirely concerned with phenomena, into
which faith does not at all enter; faith, on the contrary,
concerns itself with the divine, which is entirely unknown
to science. Thus it is contended that there can never be any
dissension between faith and science, for if each keeps on
its own ground they can never meet and therefore never can
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 though such things come within the category of phenomena,
still in as far 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 transferred
into 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 a philosopher speaking to
philosophers and considering Christ only in historical reality;
and it will be affirmed by the believer as a believer speaking
to believers and considering the life of Christ as lived again
by the faith and in the faith.
3486
It would be a great mistake, nevertheless, to suppose that,
according to these theories, one is allowed to believe that
faith and science are entirely independent of each other.
On the side of science that is indeed quite true and correct,
but it is quite otherwise 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
one takes away the divine reality and the experience of it
which the believer possesses, everything else, and especially
the religious formulas, belongs to the sphere of phenomena
and therefore falls under the control of science. Let the
believer go out of the world if he will, but so long as he
remains in it, whether he like it or not, he cannot escape
from the laws, the observation, the judgments of science and
of history. Further, although it is contended 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 right of philosophy and of science
to form its knowledge concerning the idea of God, to direct
it in its evolution and to purify it of any extraneous elements
which may have entered into it. Hence we have the Modernist
axiom that the religious evolution ought to be brought into
accord with the moral and intellectual, or as one whom they
regard as their leader has expressed it, ought to be subject
to it. Finally, man does not suffer a dualism to exist in
himself, 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 notwithstanding that they
are supposed to be strangers to each other, faith is made
subject to science. All this, Venerable Brethren, is in formal
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."9
The Modernists
completely invert the parts, and of them may be applied the
words which another of Our predecessors Gregory IX, addressed
to some theologians of his time: "Some among you, puffed
up like bladders with the spirit of vanity strive by profane
novelties to cross the boundaries fixed by the Fathers, twisting
the meaning of the sacred text...to the philosophical teaching
of the rationalists, not for the profit of their hearer but
to make a show of science...these men, led away by various
and strange doctrines, turn the head into the tail and force
the queen to serve the handmaid."10
Footnotes
7.
De Revelatione, can. 3.
8. Gregory XVI, encyclical
of June 25, 1834, Singulari Nos.
9. Brief to the Bishop of
Breslau, June 15, 1857.
10. Gregory IX Epist.
ad Magistros theol. paris. July 7, 1223.
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