Modernism - Michael Davies

I think perhaps we could start with the prayers having the Father Son Holy Ghost amen as we could see the out of the depth as it's November out of the depths I have cried the Oh Lord Lord hear my voice let thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplication if our Lord shall observe iniquities Lord who shall enjoy for thee there is merciful forgiveness and by reason of our law have waited for the Oh Lord my soul hath relied on his word my soul had hoped in the Lord from the morning what she mental night tis well hope in the Lord because with the Lord there is mercy and with him plentiful Redemption and he's redeem Israel from all his iniquities eternal rest grant unto them O Lord and let perpetual may they rest in peace o Lord hear my prayer the souls of the faithful departed the mercy of God rest in peace amen in the Father the Son Holy Ghost amen the subject of my talk this evening is modernism it's a word with which we'll all be familiar and which some of you will have used from time to time applying it no doubt to some priest or nun who has scandalized you with a statement or an action that has outraged your sense of Orthodoxy I'm sure that you will all know that the original modernists were active in a number of European countries at the end of the 19th century and that their movement was eventually crushed or at least Riven underground by Pope's and Pius the tenth but I wonder how many people here this evening are aware of the full extent of the threat to the faith posed by modernism the synthesis of all heresies as sin Pius the tenth described it modernism was not simply a threat to Catholicism it undermined the very basis of any form of religion which postulates belief in a supernatural world the basis of modernism involves the question as to whether God is transcendent or only imminent I'm sure that many of you know precisely what these team terms mean but some of you might like to have the terms clarified as I shall be using them frequently as Catholics we believe that God is transcendent this means that he exists independently of the universe if the material universe ceased to exist God would still be there he is the creator of the universe he existed before time began he not only created everything that exists spiritual and material visible and invisible he keeps it in existence in contrast to belief in a transcendent God we have pantheism or imminent ISM a belief which identifies God with the universe with material creation he is some kind of motivating force which informs the material universe which which has no existence independently of that universe obviously we all believe that God is imminent as well as transcendent he is everywhere he does inform the universe to use the technical term but he is not identified with the universe the problem can be simplified oversimplify perhaps by distinguishing between a God out there and a God in here a fifth or a funny interior feeling as Monsignor Ronald Knox used to put it G K Chesterton was very unimpressed by those whose God considered consisted of no more than a funny interior feeling he was not be just he was not disposed to be polite to those who worship the God within listen to what he wrote in orthodoxy of all horrible religions the most horrible is the worship of the God within anyone who knows anybody knows how it would work anyone who knows anyone from the higher thought center knows how it does work that Jones shall worship the God within him turns out ultimately to mean that Jones soul worship Jones let Jones worship the Sun or moon anything rather than the inner light let Jones worship cats or crocodiles if he can find any in his Street but not the God within Christianity came into the world firstly in order to assert that that a man has not only to look inwards but to look outwards to behold with astonishment and enthusiasm a divine company and divine captain the only fan of being a Christian was that a man was not left alone with the inner light but definitely recognized an outer light fear as the Sun clear as the moon terrible as an army with banners today the controversy as to whether God is transcendent or imminent is generally simplified to those two phrases which I have mentioned a god out there or God in here the inevitable logic of modernism is that there is no God out there only a god in here that is that God is not transcendent but imminent sin Pius the tenth disagreed and so he excommunicated the modernists that basically is what my talk is all about and that basically is all that I'm going to say so that anybody who like to spare themselves hearing it said over the next 40 minutes is welcome to go now so I have to warn you that I am descended from a long line of Welsh Baptists and we do find it very hard to speak briefly mustn't be fooled by my Somerset accent as my father came over to Wales from Wales to educate the people of Somerset I even yes I even joined the Somerset light infantry instead of the South Wales Borderers but probably by the end of forty or fifty minutes are up you'll you'll realize I do have the Celtic failing of going on a little too long that I shall try to control it as much as possible well obviously if the modernists presented a perverted concept of God their concept of the church must have been equally far from the truth if we are to grasp the error of modernism we must be clear about the nature of the church and so before taking up the subject of modernism I will try to present you with a brief as possible resume of the nature of the church in her most profound reality the Catholic Church is Christ himself we can thus understand the axiom that there is no salvation outside the church because there is no salvation outside Christ the Catholic Church is a perpetuation of the Incarnation throughout the nation's and the centuries the church is Christ's mystical body he is the head the Holy Ghost the soul and we are the members and the mission of Christ's mystical body is identical to that which our Lord undertook while living amongst us with a physical body received from our lady pope leo xiii teaches in his encyclical sartis cognitum that the mandate entrusted by christ to his church is I quote the same mandate which he had received from the father the one mission of Christ and of his church is the Pope tells us to save that which had perished that is to say not some nations of peoples but the whole human race without distinction of time and place because the church is a body she is visible she's united by visible bonds the first of these is visible government pope leo xiii explained in his encyclical an amine gracie sumus christianity is in fact incarnate in the catholic church it is to be identified with that perfect and spiritual society sovereign in its sphere which is the mystical body of Jesus Christ and has for its head the Roman pontiff successor of the Prince of the Apostles she is the continuation of the saviours mission the daughter of the redemption and it's heir she has spread the gospel and defended it with her life's blood and strong in the divine assistance and the immortality which had been promised her she never compromises with error she remains faithful to the mandate which she has received to bear the teaching of Jesus Christ to the world and to keep it inviolable in its integrity to the end of time the second bond by which the church is united is the faith the unity of the faith is two quotes artists cognitum again it should be so closely knit and so perfect amongst his followers that it might in some measure shadow forth a union between himself and his father I pray that they may all be one as though father in me and I in thee agreement and union of minds is the necessary foundation of this perfect Concord among men from which concurrence of will and similarity of actions are the natural results wherefore in His divine wisdom he ordained in his church unity of faith a virtue which is the first of those bonds which United mounted God and whence you receive the name of faithful one Lord one faith one baptism Christ instituted in the church a living authoritative and permanent Magisterium which by its own power he strengthened by the Spirit of Truth he taught and by miracles confirmed he willed and ordered under the gravest penalties that its teachings should be received as if they were his own end of the quote the word Magisterium is derived from the latin magister and refers as the quotation from popular 13th which I've just given you made clear to the living teaching authority in the church when the Magisterium teaches the entire church authoritative ly on a matter involving faith and morals we must hear and accept that teaching as if it came from all old Jesus Christ himself as indeed it does for the voice of the Magisterium is the voice of Christ teaching us today the Magisterium is represented by the Pope himself when he teaches in his capacity as the Vicar of Christ the Pope does not teach as a delegate of the universal Episcopal and his teaching does not derive its authority from their consent or the consent of the faithful at large the voice of the Magisterium is also represented by the universal Episcopal when all the bishops of the world are united on a point of doctrine among themselves and with the Bishop of Rome the Magisterium can be exercised in two ways ordinarily and extraordinarily the ordinary Magisterium is the day-to-day teaching of the Pope and the bishops United to him this teaching is binding in different degrees depending largely on the subject matter the manner of its promulgation and the extent to which it is a reiteration of previous pronouncements of the Magisterium when you read a papal encyclical you find great stress is laid in the whole series of footnotes referring to previous statements of popes on the same subject pope john paul ii has just issued an encyclical dealing with social questions including such topics as the role of trades unions while we are bound to examine his teaching with great respect we would be entitled to differ from him where perhaps he introduced a novel viewpoint on a matter not involving faith and morals but when the Pope reiterates some consistent point of Catholic belief that women are ineligible for the priesthood that contraception is intrinsically evil or that homosexuality is totally incompatible with Christianity then there is no room whatsoever for dissent such teaching can obtain infallible status simply from being consistent it taught by the ordinary Magisterium a pronouncement of the extraordinary Magisterium is usually made to settle once and for all a matter that has been the subject of controversy the extraordinary Magisterium is invoked when either the Pope alone or the Pope in union with the fathers of a General Counsel invokes the assistance of the Holy Ghost in proclaiming as divinely revealed a certain proposition to which the entire church is required to give the absolute assent of faith the most frequently cited examples of the exercise of the extraordinary Magisterium are the proclamation of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption of Our Lady much of the teaching of the Council of Trent and the first Vatican Council is guaranteed as infallible by the extraordinary Magisterium but not one document of Vatican 2 comes to us with this level of authority the council fathers at Vatican 2 deliberately refrained from investing the teaching of that council with the authority of the extraordinary Magisterium despite this much of its teaching is certainly infallible because it's a reiteration of previous infallible teaching or frequently reiterated teachings of the ordinary Magisterium in his encyclical Sardis cognitum pope leo xiii stressed not only that unity of faith is an essential prerequisite for membership of the one visible church founded by our lord but that the entire deposit of faith must be accepted by the deposit of faith we mean the stock or treasure of faith entrusted to the church which she must faithfully preserve and infallibly expound this original deposit is subject to development as the centuries progress but always under the guidance of the Magisterium and it must always remain consistent with a previous stage of development thus the doctrine of the Trinity is defined by the Council of Nicaea in 325 and Charles Eden in 451 cannot be found spelled out so exactly in the New Testament or the doctrine of those councils is compatible with the New Testament and a legitimate development of its teach the Protestant who claims that a developed Catholic teaching is incompatible with the gospel is like a man who looks at a mighty oak tree and denies that it can have developed from an acorn but leo xiii explains I quote all those things are to be believed by divine and Catholic faith which are contained in the written or unwritten Word of God and which are proposed by the church as divinely revealed either by solemn definition or in its ex as a or site or in the exercise of its ordinary and universal Magisterium quoting st. Augustine in 2 Corinthians the Pope rejects as totally unacceptable the possibility of membership that membership of the church is compatible with the rejection of even one doctrine proposed to us by the Magisterium as divinely revealed I quote he who descents even in one point from divinely revealed truth absolutely rejects all faith since he thereby refuses to honor God as the supreme truth and the formal motive of faith in the many things they are with me in a few things they are not with me but in those few things in which they are not with me the many things in which they are with me will not profit them and this indeed deservedly for they who take from Christian doctrine what they please lean on their own judgments not on faith and not bringing into captivity every understanding and the unto the obedience of Christ they more truly obey themselves than God you who believe what you like believe yourselves rather than the Gospels the end of the quote Cardinal Newman expressed the same point in very blunt terms you must accept the whole or reject the whole the literal meaning of the word heretic is of course one who chooses just as Satan the prince of this world did all that lay in his power to obstruct the mission of our Lord during his physical presence upon earth so he has strenuously attempted to nullify the mission of the mystical body of Christ the church Church is composed of two elements the human and the divine the church herself is without spot or wrinkle she is perfect but the individual members of the church have no such perfection our intellects and wills have been weakened by original sin though we wish to do what is right our inclination is to do what is wrong the problem confronting a Christian is to be in the world but not of the world he is simply a sojourner here his true home is in heaven his eyes should ever be fixed upon his heavenly destiny but frequently almost invariably they are not and living in the world the Christian is influenced by the world the temptation is always present to adopt his views to its views his standards to its standards in his short history of the church first published in 1939 Monsignor Philip Hughes perhaps the most scholarly an objective Catholic historian of this century noted that as early as the 2nd century a pattern had been established which has been with us ever since and I'll stress again this is what Monsignor Hughes says about the church by the end of the second century I quote we are seeing the appearances of types that will never cease to reappear throughout 2000 years Catholics who proposed to explain Catholicism by synthesis with the intellectual life of the time Catholics who look back from the difficulties of the moment to the happy time of a far-off Golden Age of primitive faith Catholics who turn from an official teaching that does not encourage this personal likings to an alleged private inspiration that sets them apart from ordinary discipline in one sense church history as a web where such threads as these do but cross and re-cross of all the dogmas proposed to us by the church the one that is most fundamental is the one of which I've already spoken to you that is the dogma of God's transcendence is God transcendent or imminent this is the question that will decide what we believe and how we live for those who answer that he is only imminent or saying in effect that he does not exist and we may believe what we like and live as we like the church teaches us that God is transcendent or as I've already explained he is a God out there let me repeat once more that this means that God the Creator is distinct from creation he exists independently of creation if the universe did not exist he would still be there there are innumerable forms of imminent ISM all basically forms of pantheism which as I've already explained as the belief that God is identified with the universe a Catholic then must believe in a transcendent God but the logical outcome of modernism is that God was merely imminent in other words no God at all since Pius the tenth summed this up perfectly in his encyclical push nd condemning modernism he warned by how many roads modernism leads to atheism and I quote the error of Protestantism made the first step on this path that of modernism makes the second atheism the next thus the Pope explained and I quote again the modernists lay the ax not to the branches and shoots but to the very root that is to the faith and its deepest fibers end of quote it is the most dangerous of all heresies not least because the modern is put into their plans that for the destruction of the church not from without as the Pope said but from within sin Pires the tent saw the origin of modernism in the Protestant heresy and he was correct there have been and are many conservative Protestants who are as opposed to modernism acent Pius the tenth the Protestant theologian Karl Barth who died in 1968 was among the most effective of all the opponents of modernism the transcendence of God was the foundation of his theology God is holy other is the way that he expressed it but modernism is a development of rationalism and rationalism with the inevitable outcome of the Protestant Reformation our word reason is derived from the Latin word rats yo rationalism when applied to religion is the practice of treating the human reason as the ultimate authority in religion as it is elsewhere today it's generally understood as an attitude which explains away the supernatural element in religion leaving only what can be explained by human reason the Protestant reformer certainly did not envisage the direction their break with Rome and ultimately take them when they replace the authority of the Living Magisterium of the church with that of the Bible they claim to be appealing from the authority of the church to the authority of inspired scriptures but who is to interpret the scriptures if there is no infallible teacher the Catholic Church teaches that the words of our Lord this is my body mean precisely that most of the Reformers taught that by these words our Lord meant this is the symbol of my body they claimed that this was the true meaning of the Bible but it was not the Bible which provided this meaning it was provided by the reason of the Reformers interpreting the Bible Cardinal Manning wrote the movement of the 16th century in its last analysis is the assertion that the reason of man is the critic and measure of all truth itself the Reformers would have been horrified by the claim of Rudolf Bultmann perhaps the most notorious of all the liberal Protestant theologians that I quote the resurrection itself so I'm sorry I'll rip start that again the resurrection is not itself a fact of history such an impossible Marvel could only spring from mythology the end of quote but the process which led Bultman to deny the resurrection was the same process which had led the Protestant reformers to deny the real presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament the Reformers and Bultman considered their own reason the ultimate authority for interpreting Scripture what right with the Reformers have had to deny Balkman what they accorded to themselves the inherent weakness of Protestantism is that the individual believer has no guarantee that anything is certainly true beyond his personal conviction that it is like car baths but even teach much that is true others like Bultman explain away the whole Gospel as Cardinal Heenan expressed it the 19th century rationalist and liberal Protestant historians and theologians had in the words of Joseph Renan forced Jesus to announce his divinity Renard himself formerly a Catholic priest and theologian did as much as anyone to destroy belief in Christ's divinity with his book Vida Jesu the life of Christ in this book he repudiated the supernatural element in Christ's life portraying him as a charming and amiable Galilean preacher Renault had a considerable influence upon the abbey alfred huazi the modernist who i shall examined most closely in this talk rationalist and liberal Protestant critics emptied Christianity of every supernatural element they claimed to have d mythologized the scriptures that is they had stripped away the myths which they claimed had been added by the early Christians to the life of the historical Jesus these myths were moral legendary and symbolic stories reflecting what the first Christians felt about Jesus they considered him unlike any other man who has ever lived and symbolized this belief by the myth of the virgin birth his influence upon the first Christians was so profound that it endured after his death hence the myth of the resurrection not all these critics had the same beliefs not all were equally radical some Express reservations that the extent to which others were going Renault himself felt that some critics of the liberal school had gone too far they make christ a professor of Christian morality he used to say there is no reason to suppose that these critics were not motivated by a sincere desire to reach the truth to show us the historical Jesus so that we could benefit from whatever lessons his life had to teach but whatever their intentions the person and teaching of Jesus were so completely demolished that one might ask if he really existed of Christian belief in inspiration and scripture nothing whatever remained Catholics living in a pluralistic society as I've already mentioned are bound to be affected by the predominant ideas of their time particularly if these Catholics happen to be scholars the higher criticism as it was called made a profound impact upon Catholic scholars who reacted in different ways the response advocated by Pope Leo the 13th was to Train scholars who would be the intellectual equals of the higher critics meet them on their own ground and vindicate Catholic teaching the Pope had consistently and correctly maintained that the church can have nothing to fear from the truth the hopes of Pope Leo were fulfilled by such brilliant scholars as father LaGrant and father to grow maize on and in the ecole protect each you'd be bleak directed by father lagrange's erisa l'm other Catholic scholars felt that the basic thesis of the higher critics was correct and that if the church wished to retain her credibility in the 20th century she must accept these conclusions and present the faith in a way that would be found acceptable to contemporary man these main were the modernists and their fundamental error they in twisting an alterable truth to coincide with contemporary thought the most influential of all the modernists was the abbe alfred huazi was he wrote that the avowed modernist form a fairly definite group of thinking men United in a common desire to adapt Catholicism to the intellectual moral and social needs of today other heresies had undermined particular dogmas modernism endangered all that constituted the church and was as I've already mentioned described by some pious the 10th as the synthesis of all heresies it was a theological Hydra appearing in different countries and receiving considerable support from liberal Protestant and rationalist scholars despite the fact that the modernists claimed to repute the theories of these movements they claimed that their principal concern was to defend the church against the rationalists and liberal Protestants but sin Pius the tenth would have none of this he wrote they are already no - and praised by the rationalists as fighting under the same banner modernism itself is not a particularly interesting topic its doctrines are so tortuous and destructive of the supernatural that it is depressing to examine them and yet rotes inspires the 10th these are not merely the foolish babblings of unbelievers there are Catholics yay and priests - who say these things openly and they boast that they are going to reform the church by these ravings but if modernism is not an interesting topic the modernists are there the stuff of which great novels can be written their stories could in some cases be termed tragedies in the strict Aristotelian sense of the term that is the fall of a not inherently wicked man from a position of greatness or importance through some misjudgment or defect of character we usually find the story of a good man going wrong more absorbing than that of a bad man becoming good some pyres the 10th tells us that the weakness that brought down the modernists was the sin that caused the fall of Satan and is the cause of so many other sins this is what he said about the modernists it is pride which fills the modernist with that self assurance by which they consider themselves and pose as the rule for all it is pride which puffs them up with that vain glory which allows them to regard themselves as the sole possessors of knowledge and makes them say elated and inflated with presumption we are not as the rest of man and which less they should seem as other men leaves them to embrace and to devise novelties even of the most absurd kind it is pride which rouses in them the spirit of disobedience and causes them to demand a compromise between authority and liberty it is owing to their pride that they seek to be the Reformers of others while they forget to reform themselves and that they are to be found utterly wanting in respect for authority even for the supreme authority truly there is no road which leads so directly and so quickly to modernism as pride looking at the modernists from the human interest standpoint the story of George Terrell would probably be the most absorbing Terrell was born to a Protestant family in Ireland in nineteen in 1861 his interest in the faith was aroused by the impression made upon him by a little girl called Anne Kelly a maid of all work employed by his mother although poorly educated she knew her faith and could stand up to his mother in any argument Terrell eventually moved to England and became a Catholic in 1879 he joined the Society of Jesus and was almost expelled before taking his vows his superior saw in him a violent self-will that made him unfit for the society but he was permitted to remain was ordained in 1891 and said Mass for 15 years in 1897 he was leading to modernism under the influence of the Baron von Hugo of whom I shall say more later in 1899 the Jesuit General in Rome condemned an article Terrell had written as unorthodox pressure mounted to secure his expulsion from the society but he continued writing under pseudonyms a favorite device of the modernists his personality was very pleasant it was said that no one who met him could dislike him but nonetheless he displayed a weakness of character he circulated privately what he had been forbidden to publish or else he published pseudonym it's a pseudonym Ennis Lee still can't get it right he prevaricated when faced with direct questions about his authorship he had no hesitation in employing the most blatant casuistry in defense of his guerrilla warfare with the censors father Tara was expelled from the society in 1906 and forbidden to say Mass but still permitted to receive the sacraments even this was forbidden to him after he attacked the encyclical push nd in 1907 and he was excommunicated in the same year his friend Baron von Hugo wrote a letter the to letter to The Times announcing that Terrell had not renounced his modernist beliefs before dying of Bright's disease Bishop Amiga of Southwark denied him a Catholic burial in consequence Carroll's posthumous book Christianity at the crossroads question whether Christianity was the final religion and held out hopes of a universal religion of which Christianity was but the germ Terrell had dreamt of reconciling science and faith his pleasant personality and literary grace enabled him to exert a considerable influence upon his times but he came somewhat late to the movement which meant that he was largely dependent upon French writers for his ideas his contribution to modernism was thus largely derivative he was an auxilary of the Continental modernists and it is for this reason that the movement will be studied through its most notable continental exponent the Abbe alfred was e rather than the tragic figure of father george terrell before examining the career of Luisi it's necessary to say something more of the Baron von Hugo who lived from 1852 until 1925 father John McKee is described von hue as the godfather and telephone exchange of the early modernist movement he was the son of an Austrian nobleman and a Scottish mother his home was in London but he made frequent trips to the continent particularly to France and to Italy he displayed considerable interest in philosophy and theology for little competence in either discipline he was familiar with the writings of the Continental modernists and met most of them some of the leading modernists knew each other only through correspondence but Vaughn who knew them personally visited them frequently and put them in touch with each other Tarot was a protege of on Hugo who had been responsible for leading him into modernism articles which Terrell had contributed to the month an English Jesuit journal had attracted the Barons attention he arranged a meeting and the outcome was disastrous he persuaded the young Jesuit to learn German so he could study contemporary German philosophy and also put him into touch with lazzy was he was also a particularly close friend of the baron and von hugo defended was in terrell with a courageous but much mistaken loyalty when they were censured ironically he escaped condemnation himself he always professed to be a devout son of the church was very pious and according to father joseph Creon SJ was utterly sincere in his bumbling and amateurish way the abbey alfred was he was born in 1857 and died in 1940 so he lived in the lifetime of most of us here he was remembered at his seminary for his exemplary piety and his private life was irreproachable he became an oriental linguist of outstanding skill and was capable of brilliant scholarship but he was also ambitious three years after his ordination in 1879 he wrote in his notebook that he was suffering from great fevers the fever for knowledge the fever for work but also the fever for glory his expression Bishan was to become a father of the church but he ended up as the father of modernism one of the most dangerous adversaries the church has ever encountered the young abbey worked in a parish for only a few years before being offered a professorship at the a statue católica in paris the most prestigious Institute of Catholic higher education in France was he had studied there under the abbe lui Duchesne the professor of church history and one of the most celebrated French scholars of the 19th century it was Duchene who invited huazhi one of his star pupils back to the anne statue as a professor I've described huasi as the father of modernism but this distinction might be more properly assigned to Duchesne even though he was never formally condemned as a modernist Duchene was particularly eminent in the field of christian archaeology and the history of the church his mind was skeptic sceptical and his disposition sarcastic he took great delight in demolishing or claiming to demolish pious beliefs connected with the saints such as the story that Mary Magdalene had visited France his attitude to biblical criticism had much in common with that of the rationalists and liberal Protestants he came under suspicion for his views and was suspended from his post at the Institute Duchene set to skepticism and sarcasm had its effect on his disciples but he escaped condemnation and disowned them when they eventually incurred the center of Rome in his memoirs was he mentioned that Jew Shane was I quote an excellent sailor he took in his sails when the storm grew wilder the sixteenth century philosopher Erasmus did not fall into formal heresy but there is a dictum that Luther merely hatched the egg-wich Erasmus had laid the same might be said of Jew Shannon huazi the answer to catalytic of Paris was eventually notorious as the chief center for of the French modernist movement there is no doubt for the abbe Duchenne must bear the prime responsibility was he formed the opinion that in order to retain her credibility in the approaching 20th century the church must make a radical revision in her traditional teaching in order to accommodate this teaching to the findings of modern scholarship his faith in traditional Catholicism had already become severely strained at the age of 28 he had attended the lectures of Rennell from 1882 to 1885 and eventually acknowledged him as the mentor of the French modernists Reynolds influence was apparent when was he wrote my attentive reading of the Gospels immediately destroy the idea I had been given of them faith told me that these writings were wholly divine reason showed me that they were wholly human in no way exempt from contradictions but at this period he still believed himself to be working in the true interests of the church and resolved not to leave her but to remain within striving to preserve her credibility by modernizing her teaching my ambition he once explained was to fit to defeat renown by his own weapons by means of the critical method I was learning in his school this was typical of the initial attitude of all the Ernests and there is no reason to suppose that they were not sincere at least in these initial stages but it is clear that the position of men like huazi who acted as official teachers of the church in public while questioning her teaching in private inevitably led to duplicity and hypocrisy was he was indeed the classic homo duplex was he no longer felt conscious of the supernatural character of religion but he had faith in the value of his personal theories while still a professor of the answer to cattle eek he founded a review : cinnamon be bleak a biblical teaching which was intended to help young priests who wished to complete the necessarily imperfect introduction to the subject which they have received in the seminaries as a result of the views expressed in his lectures and in this journal the superior of one seminary for bad his students to come to the Institute to attend glasses lectures it was he replied by delivering a lecture on the rights of critical thought this public controversy caused a sensation in Catholic circles with a result that huazi was eventually forbidden to lecture on the Bible and was restricted to teaching Hebrew Chaldean and Assyrian he replied with an explosive article in a non c'è naman publique insisting that the presence of error in the bible was manifest he was then asked to resign completely from the answer to cattle eat which he did taking up a humble post as chaplain to a girl school conducted by Dominican nuns he received encouragement from friends with modernist sympathies in a number of countries particularly from the Baron von Huebel in England they looked upon him as he looked upon himself as a courageous seeker of truth victimized by the forces of obscurantism while at this convent he continued his studies and the results of his research led him ever further from Catholic belief how much wiser the bishops would have been if they had kept me at my Hebrew grammar and cuneiform texts he wrote later during my five years at nuit my mind was in perpetual travail of a Catholic doctrine working to adapt it to the needs of the contemporary mind I suspect by how many of you are noticing how closely everything written here could apply to our present times and I think the parallels are so obvious that I'm not bothering to point them out it was in the year 1900 - that was he came to the forefront of the public eye he had already began to unsettle the younger clergy and alarm the bishops with a long series of articles which began to appear in 1898 under half a dozen pseudonyms but they were so alike in thought and style that no one doubted that they came from the same pen that of the abbe Alfred wozy Pope Leo the 13th himself was disturbed and in 1899 addressed affirmance firm encyclical dupuis ledger to the clergy of France but huazi was beyond recall we know from his memoirs that he had lost all his Catholic convictions by this time yet he not only determined to remain within the church but went so far as to seek appointment to two Episcopal sees that became vacant then in 1902 his book lavon's le legalese appeared the gospel in the church this brought the abbe to the center of public attention and made him the focus of an international controversy that involved Catholics Protestants and rationalists was he claimed that his book was a reply to the teaching of the German theologian Adolph Harnack who claimed in a book entitled the essence of Christianity that the kingdom of God preached by Jesus Christ was wholly interior existing in the heart of the individual believer it did not have involve the existence of a visible church Christ had found it no such church this action had been falsely attributed to him by his followers they had established the church and the church which they had established betrayed the teaching of Christ as Christ had founded no church he obviously had not instituted a sacramental system by which that church could mediate grace to mankind Harnack based these claims on what he maintained was the true teaching of the historic christ which he had discovered by purging the Gospels of the accretions opposed upon their basic historic core by the first Christians was his answer to harnack's soon became known due to its format as the little red book he explained that it is not designed to demonstrate the truth either of the gospel or of Catholic Christianity but simply to analyze and define the bonds that unite the two in history the English historian Maisie Ward has remarked that these words were literally true as the author did not believe either in the gospel or Catholic Christianity Rossi had already decided that a recasting of the whole Catholic system was essential applying his critical methods to the gospel is he purported to refute liberal Protestantism but his refutation was more destructive of Christianity than Harnett's attack Harnack was at least concerned with historic truth he claimed correctly that objective reality mattered but added incorrectly that the traditional interpretation of the Bible was not in accord with objective truth truth consists in the conformity of an idea with its object thus when I see before me what I believe to be a tree and it is in fact a tree then the idea I have conforms with objective reality I have attained truth when I believe that Columbus arrived in America in 1492 and it is a historical fact that he did so then once again my idea and reality correspond I have attained truth you may be surprised to learn that I'm sure Columbus did not actually discover America as it had already been discovered by Welsh monks who sail there in coracles hundreds of years before and as I am of Welsh descent and I know that we're a race characterized by courage imagination and resourcefulness also perhaps by liquidity and as I'm sure that this example of Welsh initiative truly happened it that is true for me probably no one else you tonight believes the story but as I say it's true for me and I derive much pleasure and pride in my race the thought of my hardy forebears crossing the Atlantic in their coracles and teaching the Indians to strum the harp and play rugby now was Ian the modernist made a distinction between faith and history and the Christ of faith and the Christ of history once this distinction is appreciated it will be clear that the little red book of huazi did present a greater danger to the church than the teachings of Harnack which it was intended to refute the true teaching of the church is as I explained earlier that our Lord founded the church by consecrating his apostles as bishops commanding them to teach the truth that he had taught them only those prepared to accept these dogmas could be baptized and their faith meant their acceptance of these dogmas as objective historical facts mozzies explanation was totally incompatible with the traditional Catholic position he claimed that the first Christians did not believe certain things to be true because they were taught them by the Apostles and their immediate successors but that the successors of the Apostles taught these things because they were what the people believed Dogma he claimed evolved as follows the early Christians reflected upon the life of Christ and a consensus arose among them as to who Krait what Christ was what he taught and what our response to his teaching should be this consensus of belief is often referred to as the common consciousness of the believers or as their collective conscience since Pius the tenth commented upon this in in push ND and he said the how the modernist taught that unity requires a kind of common mind whose office is to find and determine the formula that corresponds best with a common consciousness and it must have moreover an authority sufficient to enable it to impose on the community the formula which has been decided upon from the combination and as it were a fusion of these two elements the common mind which draws up the formula and the authority which imposes it arises according to the modernists the notion of the ecclesiastical Magisterium and as this Magisterium springs in its last analysis from the individual conscience ease and possesses its mandate of public utility for their benefit it necessarily follows that the ecclesiastical Magisterium must be dependent upon them and should therefore be made to bow to the popular ideals so basically what this means is that the Magisterium emerged from the faithful the faithful as we said reflected upon the mind of Christ they came to certain conclusions about him and then established their own authority to formulate these beliefs and see that people observe them so the Magisterium is subservient to the collective conscience of the faithful and its function is to interpret and formulate whatever is found by the collective conscience to be helpful to the life of the church at any given period thus the church the Magisterium and faith itself all originate in the people and their collective conscience and this collective conscience is the ultimate authority for what Christians should believe as we all know the collective conscience of people evolves considerably we see that for example in the gospel where remember in Holy Week on Palm Sunday the people cried Hosanna to our Lord and the same people on Good Friday shouted crucify him in this country before the Second World War and I'm sure afterwards the collective conscience of the British people would have been strongly opposed to abortion would have been thought of as horrifying but now there are definitely a majority opinion in this country is that abortion is acceptable and so for the modernists the function the Magisterium is to find out what the people think and if the people change their views then the Magisterium adapts the teaching sin pi is the tenth correctly warned that under this system as the Magisterium derives its mandate for the people it is subs of into the people and must bow to popular ideals the people do not submit themselves the Magisterium the Magisterium submits itself to the people this error is particularly prevalent today and would even be considered to be the majority view within the church in such countries as the USA Canada our country in Holland we are told that it is now the consensus of the faithful the consensus fidelium that contraception is compatible with Christianity and that the Magisterium should reformulate its teaching to conform to this consensus this is a completely false concept of the sensus fidelium which simply means that the faithful as a whole will never accept her ethically teaching sin pi is the tenth saw the full danger of this error and he said it represents I quote the introduction of that most pernicious doctrine which would make of the laity the factor of progress in the church modernism and the neo modernism today see the church is a democracy with a pope deriving his mandate from the people and being obliged to proclaim his Catholic teaching whatever a majority among them cares to believe as again we saw in this country we had the National pastoral Congress which pronounced itself in favor of contraception and of divorced people being allowed to receive Communion and so Cardinal human Archbishop warlock went to the Synod of Bishops in Rome and put forward those ideas as they were delegates of the National pastoral Congress whereas as you've seen from what I explained earlier about the nature of the Magisterium it's it is for our Cardinals and our bishops to teach us what the church requires us to believe but as you see this out there is nothing new in this idea it all goes right back to the original of original modernism such an attitude is not simply destructive of Catholicism Pettersen Pius the tenth explained in push nd I quote their system means the destruction not of the Catholic religion alone but of all religion this brings us to Lewis's distinct between the Christ of faith and the Christ of history Harnack had claimed that the historic Christ had not founded a church or instituted any sacraments huazi was prepared to concede that it couldn't be proved that he had the historic facts were not of paramount importance for him he considered that the essence of a dogma lies not in the fact that it is objectively true but in its ability to satisfy and express a momentary attitude or need of the religious feeling the first Christians believed in the physical resurrection of our Lord and so it was true for them just as the discovery of America by Welsh monks is true for me the modernists distinguish between true history and the history of faith they made the same distinction between the Christ of history and the Christ of faith since Pius the tenth noted that the two were opposed a quote from person D again we have a two-fold Christ a real Christ and a Christ the one of faith who never really existed a Christ who has lived at a given time and in a given place and a Christ who has never lived outside the pious meditations of the believer Dogma then Fawaz II was simply a simbop was simply symbolic a symbol of what Christians believe a symbol of their faith and by faith he meant something purely subjective not something which was an accurate expression of objective reality and if the Christ of faith is no more than it than an expression of our subjective beliefs why should and how could the god of faith have any objective or transcendent existence though individual modernists might make profession of belief in a transcendent God since Pius the tenth would not accept such a belief as compatible with their system for modernists God is not transcendent he is not out there he is not wholly other as Karl Barth expressed it he is in here in the human conscious God is in fact whatever we care to make him a symbol of the ethical precepts currently accepted by the collective conscience Pius the tenth explained in push nd that the modernist God was no more than a symbol and that the personality of God will become a matter of doubt and the gate will be open to pantheism for this is the question which we ask does or does not this imminence leave God distinct from man the Pope answer that it did not the doctrine of imminence in the modernist acceptation makes no distinction between God and man in the objective order the rigorous conclusion from this state of the Pope is the identity of man with God which means pantheism the logical outcome of modernism is then the objective that Satan had set himself the dethronement of God the logic of modernism is then that man has no God outside himself and if accepted it must certainly result in the destruction of all religion and ultimately in the destruction of civilization itself this is precisely what we are seeing in contemporary society above all in man's irrigation to himself of the divine prerogatives of life and death contraception and abortion of the means and the symbols of the godlike powers which man has now bestowed upon himself how long will it be before divine chastisement punishes this folly the errors of was his little red book were denounced by such Orthodox biblical scholars as father's father LeGrande modernists writers and sympathizers hastened to his defense and attacked his critics listen to the descriptions and pass the tenth gives of modernist methods and when you hear this you could really imagine what is happening today I know that those who've been in pro fede from the very beginning will remember all the criticism that was heaped upon us when we criticized the staff of Corpus Christi college and suggested that they had some modernist ideas and this could this could be a description of what took place then or it could be a description of the reaction to the Pope's condemnation of Hans küng the Pope said there is no wonder that the modernist spent all their bitterness and hatred on Catholics who zealously fight the battles of the church there is no species of insult which they do not heap upon them but their usual courses to charge them with ignorance or obstinacy when an adversary rises up against them with an air addition and force that render him redoubtable they seek to make a conspiracy of silence around him to nullify the effects of his attack this policy towards Catholics is the more invidious in that they belong with admiration which knows no bounds the writers who ranged themselves on their side hailing their works exceeding novelty in every page with a chorus of applause for them the scholarship of a writer is in direct proportion to the recklessness of his attacks on antiquity and of his efforts to undermine tradition and the ecclesiastical Magisterium when one of their number falls under the condemnation z' of the church the rest of them to the disgust of good Catholics gather around him loudly and publicly applaud him and hold him up in veneration as almost a martyr for truth the young excited and confused by all this clamor of praise and abuse some of them afraid of being branded as ignorant others ambitious to rank among the learn it and both classes goaded internally by curiosity and pride not unfrequently surrender and give themselves up to modernism some of you might remember that when Hans küng was that condemned the tablet wrote an editorial demanding the closure of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith they said for persecuting this noble thinker baron von hugo was Laszlo seized most prominent defender in England he undertook the role of apologist and advocate for huazi for the next 15 years the true and unedifying state of Louis's mind at this time is revealed by an entry in his journal this is what while von Hugo's as I said courageously of mistakenly defending him this is what was he wrote in his journal about him and it's very interesting because today the myth of these noble all selfless modernist still remains as a new book has just come out a huge two-volume book I say they have two sets of it in the Catholic Central Library is called Catholicism by a father Richard McBryan there was a very good review in Christian order well he is when I was a very good review I mean of course a very critical review but to this father McBryan he resurrects this myth about these noble seekers after truth and the wicked Pope Pius the tenth and this is what this nobleman was writing while von Hyuga was putting himself out on a limb to defend him Monsieur Vuong Hugo who defends me so bravely believes very differently from me in the divinity of Jesus Christ I do not believe in the divinity of Jesus any more than Harnick and I look upon the personal incarnation of God as a philosophic myth was his former mentor the abbe Duchesne wrote to him in typical fashion saying that he had better hope that his book would not be understood for if it was he would certainly be condemned but his book was understood and under pressure from Rome Cardinal Rashad the Archbishop of Paris condemned it as calculated to disturb to disturb the faith of Catholics particularly as regards and these were the particularly dangerous points in it and I think you'll find this very relevant today the authority of Scripture and tradition the divinity of Christ Christ's universal knowledge redemption through his death the Eucharist the divine institution of papacy in the Episcopal Posse it is hardly necessary to point out that these are precisely the dogmas being undermined today by the spiritual descendants of huazi the neo modernists of our own era the fact that modernism was defeated was due entirely or almost entirely to the efforts of popes and Pius the tenth he took as his motto in story omnia in Cristo to restore all things in Christ the Pope had no doubt at all that among the many dangers threatening the church in his pontificate that to the purity of doctrine was the greatest the primary mandate entrusted by Christ to his church was to preach the gospel message which he had entrusted to his apostles if that message once became corrupted then the gates of Hell would have prevailed against the church since Pius the tenth realized this and also realized that as Pope he had an obligation to act in defense of Orthodoxy he began his encyclical push nd exposing the errors of the modernists by stating that one of the primary a group one of the primary obligations assigned by Christ to the office divinely committed to us of feeding the Lord's flock is that of guarding with the greatest vigilance the deposit of faith delivered to the Saints rejecting the profane novelties of words and the gainsaying of knowledge falsely so called these latter days have witnessed a notable increase in the number of the enemies of the cross of Christ who by arts entirely new and full of deceit are striving to destroy the vital energy of the church and as far as in them lies utterly to subvert the very kingdom of God wherefore we may no longer keep silence lest we should seem to fail in our most sacred duty sin posed the tenth that five of wuzzies books placed upon the index in December nineteen hundred and three was he made a reluctant act of submission in 1904 but it was in no way sincere he went through the motions of submitting to his archbishop but without any sincerity or intention of amendment his true feelings were made clear when he published another little red book entitled ode toward and petty livre and not only defended the earlier book but put forward even more audacious theories the first condition of scientific work he wrote is freedom he claimed that in lavon's ela legalese he had dealt with the origin of Christianity in accordance with historians rights the appearance of the second little red book evoked a very vigorous kinda offensive by the defenders of Orthodoxy modernists throughout Europe rallied to lose his defense there was a ferment in the seminaries seminarians were passionately for or against wuzzy they used to carry the little red books with them on their warps and discuss them sentence by sentence was he then took the offensive once more with a book entitled a cat Remy von tiehl the fourth gospel in which he maintained that the Gospel of st. John was not reliable historic evidence but a piece of theological speculation it was not he claimed a foundation of the church upon which the early Christians based their faith but a product of the faith of the early Christians the initial success and rapid spread of modernism was due in no small way to an unfortunate lack of firmness on the part of Pope Leo the 13th he laid down the guidelines within which Catholic biblical scholars could work in his encyclical Provident usamos Deus but he failed to insist upon adequate disciplinary action when such modernist as huazi clearly overstepped these limits in the failing hands of the aged pontiff wrote father degrom a song the rain seemed to grow a little slack towards the end but in 1903 he was succeeded by Giuseppe Melchior Sato the patriarch of venice now venerated by assistant Pius the tenth by this time and the tenth for may May 1904 the huazi was able to write in his journal I remain in the church for reasons which are not of faith but of moral expediency writing in the dictionary of Catholic theology Father Joseph crane SJ states that it was he was certainly not sincere any longer thus in a letter to The Times Rossi wrote I was a Catholic I remain Catholic I was a critic I remain one in a letter to Cardinal Marie del Valle on the 24th of January 1904 he wrote I accept all the dogmas of the church he wrote this after consultation with the Baron von Hugo but his real thoughts were set down in his diary I have not been a Catholic in the official sense of the world for a long time Roman Catholicism as such is destined to perish and it will deserve no regrets and an entry dated the 12th of May 1904 he states Pius the tenth the head of the Catholic Church would excommunicate me most decidedly if he knew that I if he knew that I hold the virgin birth and the resurrection to be purely moral symbols and the entire Catholic system to be a tyranny which acts in the name of God in Christ against God himself and against the Gospels despite all the incontrovertible evidence which proves the insincerity of Wasi and the other modernists they still have many apologists today who depict them as sincere and selfless seekers after truth noble scholars who fell victim to an ignorant and unscrupulous clerical bureaucracy in the liberal Catholic mythology huazi is still a hero and sin Pius the tenth the villain before publishing his encyclical portion decent Pius the tenth had order the compilation of a syllabus of the principal errors of the modernists very much upon the lines of the celebrated syllabus of errors of Pope Pius the 9th the decree was eventually published by the Holy Office on the 3rd of July 1907 it condemned 65 propositions which were incompatible with the Catholic faith most were taken from the works of huazi a few from the writing of Terrell and a French modernist and Edward le roi who was still alive in 1954 when reading the condemned propositions of lamentably it is hard to believe that the decree was not addressed to the errors which have been circulating in the church since the Second Vatican Council it came as no surprise when just as Pope Pius the ninth that followed his syllabus with an encyclical quanta cura sin Pius the tenth followed his syllabus with encyclical / send egregious in both cases the authority of the encyclicals which are people acts considerably exceeds that of the syllabi the encyclical fell upon the modernists like a hammer blow the great majority of Catholics accepted it with unqualified obedience but in all the countries which had been infected with modernism attempts from a destroy opposition to the Pope and win support for the for the heresy in my book Pope John's Council I've included an appendix summarizing Cardinal Manning's description of the press reaction to the first Vatican Council there was a similar reaction to push nd which is not surprising as the forces which had vented their fury upon Pope Pius the ninth had become even more powerful by the turn of the century Cardinal Manning describes the support given to the opposition of the council in terms which were equally applicable to the support given to the modernists in a moment all the world rose up to meet them governments politicians newspapers his magical heretical infidel Jewish revolutionary as with one annoying in stat one unerring instinct United in extolling and setting forth the virtue learning science elegance nobleness heroism of this international opposition with an iteration truly hamrick certain epithets were perpetually linked to certain names all who were against Rome were written up all who were for Rome were written down there was certainly cooperation among the modernists in different countries and mounting their campaign against the encyclical a fact made clear by the speed with which their responses were translated into different language some of them denied recognizing their ideas in the encyclical an Italian modernist named WA nati claimed that the Pope had condemned a phantom heresy most of the modern is submitted but some prefer to leave the church rather than abandon their errors t'rul and was here among was he had already abandoned his priestly functions in 1906 he broke with the church after the publication of the encyclical and was formally excommunicated in 1908 having failed to change the church from within he then proceeded to attack her from without given the anti-catholic bias of the French state education system it is hardly surprising that it soon provided him with a prestigious teaching post professor of religions are the College de France a position which he occupied from 1909 and to 1930 he devoted the remainder of his life to justify modernism and documenting its history a sad and rather pathetic fate for the man who had aspired to the status of a father of the church in typically sarcastic fashion the abbe de Shan who had escaped condemnation wrote to his former Protege commenting your death will certainly be an irreparable loss for at least half a dozen people well he had been allowed to remain within the church spreading error under the guise of a Catholic theologian huazi had posed a great threat to the faith outside the church he was no longer a danger he could be seen for what he was and what he accused the church of being an enemy of Christ and His gospel before his death father Tyrell had realized that the battle had been lost but he still held out some hope for winning the war in a letter to an Italian friendly to the 24th of August 1908 he admitted sadly that when he looked around him he could only conclude that the wave of modernist resistance was at the end of its forces I had done all that it could for the moment but he hoped that the day would come when I quote thanks to a silent and secret preparation we shall have one a much greater proportion of the army of the church to the cause of Liberty if we stub substitute the word error for liberty it would appear that turell's dream has been fulfilled in the last two decades wozy was less optimistic in a review of turell's posthumous book Christianity at the crossroads he wrote his own book lavon's ele legalese contained a modest program of reforms that might be necessary but terral's book is a prophecy of revolution both of them can rest together in the graveyard of heresies sin Pius the tenth still felt that he had not adequately fulfilled his apostolic mandate even after placing the modernist books upon the index of proving the syllabus publishing his encyclical excommunicating the modernist leaders he realized that there were modernist sympathizers in influential positions who had escaped sanctions as their views had never been made public on the 1st of September 1910 he published the moto proprio sacrum and system which obliged every priest to sign an anti modernist howth oath sorry the form of which is extremely detailed no man of integrity holding modernist views could possibly have signed this oath and it meant that for some decades at least Catholic seminaries and universities were purged of proponents of the heresy the anti-modernist oath aroused as much if not more opposition and the encyclical itself it was particularly resented by academics especially in Germany Protestant faculties express solidarity with their Catholic colleagues in there are of trial but when all the shouting died down only about two dozen priests throughout Europe refused to sign the oath some of them joined Protestant sects others joined the old Catholics following the Second Vatican Council Pope Paul the sixth abolished both index of forbidden books and the anti-modernist oath when the furore aroused by the oath had subsided Sande Pius the tenth had succeeded in purging the Church of at least the external expression of the modernist heresy when all was said and done Roton we Daniel ROPS Pius the tenth had triumphed the reasons for the triumph of pass the tenth are easy to discover firstly he had a correct sense of priorities and he knew that as Pope his first duty was to preserve intact the deposit of faith secondly when the doctrine of the modernists became clearly heretical he condemned them at once but he did not stop a condemnation a condemnation which is not enforced is worthless furthermore the Pope not only took steps to excommunicate obdurate public modernists but to purged the Church of their clandestine counterparts or at least to compel them to submit had he not taken these forceful measures the heresy would have spread throughout the church with disastrous consequences but God sent us a saint to prevent this happening a saint who had as his motto to restore all things in Christ which was precisely what he did and thank you very much for listening so tolerantly

Channel: Sensus Fidelium

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Rating: 4.8917527 out of 5

Keywords: Catholic, Christianity, God, Jesus Christ, holiness, salvation, truth, trust, modernism, sin, error, Church, Mass, traditional, EWTN, Michael Davies, england, france, priests, pope pius x, saint, lord, warning, bible, gospel, history, ewtn, monk, heresy

Id: wvqbi5hrl3s

Length: 75min 8sec (4508 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 12 2017