The Etiology of Modernism

by Prof. Raymond B. Marcin

"Etiology" is a medical term. It is usually applied to diseases, and it connotes an investigation into the causes of a disease. Modernism, in addition to being a heresy — indeed, the synthesis of all heresies — is a disease, and as a disease, it has an etiology.

From Pope Pius IX's Syllabus of Errors, issued in 1846, through Pope Saint Pius X's Encyclical Pascendi dominici gregis in 1907 to Pope Paul VI's more contemporary post-Vatican II announcement that Modernism "is the most dangerous revolution the Church has ever had to face and it is still scourging her severely"(1 ), Modernism has been consistently condemned by the Magisterium as a heresy and as both a threat to and a perversion of the Catholic Faith.

It is difficult to get an exact handle on the content of Modernism in philosophy and theology, precisely because of what Modernism is. Igino Giordani, the biographer of Pope Saint Pius X, explains the Modernism of Pius X's day in these words: "Modernism . . . consisted principally in a state of mind and way of life that sought to make over Christianity, rationalistically explaining away its difficulties to make the religion acceptable to the thinking of the day."(2 ) Because Modernism seeks to make "the thinking of the day" the criterion of religious "truth", the content of modernist thought will vary with "the thinking of the day". Indeed, at base, there can be no fixed religious truth in modernist thought. Modernism "changes with the age to conform to the age."(3 ) It is what Cardinal Ratzinger was referring to when he cautioned against an unrestrained and unfiltered openness to the wisdom of the world ( 4) (which, according to God's holy word, is foolishness in God's sight)(5 ).

There is, however, a history and an etiology to the heresy of Modernism. Pope Paul VI has suggested that Modernism's origins can be found in the philosophical movement known as the Enlightenment and in the philosophies rampant around the time of the French Revolution.(6 ) No doubt the Church-bashing views of Rousseau, Voltaire, Diderot, and the other members of the Encyclopedist movement had their influence on the development of modernist thought within as well as without the Church. Pope Saint Pius X, however, was more specific about the genesis of modernism. He saw it in the epistemological system of the great Enlightenment philosopher, Immanuel Kant.(7 )

As those of us who struggled through college philosophy courses know, Immanuel Kant's philosophy is somewhat obtuse and difficult. But it has been enormously influential. Kant is one of those pivotal figures in the history of philosophy. Once he wrote his magna opera, philosophy was never the same again. All the main strains of modern philosophy, including even some strains of modern natural law philosophy, are filtered through the thought of Kant. And it is necessary, if we are to understand Modernism that we understand at least a little bit of Kant's philosophy.

At the heart of Immanuel Kant's theory of knowledge is the thesis that we do not "see" the world as it is, but rather as our minds restructure it for us. We can never know directly what Kant refers to as the thing-in-itself (the ding-an-sich). And Kant took this insight to great lengths, taking the position that many of the constituents of nature, such as time, space, and even causality, are found, not in the intrinsic nature of reality outside ourselves, but rather in the structure of our perceiving minds. We see things in time and space and we perceive things as adhering to the principle of cause and effect, not because the things and the events in themselves objectively impose time, space, and causality on our organs of perception and understanding, but because the structure of our organs of perception and understanding imposes time, space, and causality on the things and events being perceived. About things as they really are in themselves, according to Kant, we can know nothing.(8 ) That's a very hard concept to grasp, but it's at the heart of an understanding of modern Kantian theory.

If we cannot be sure of having a true perception of the things and events that inhabit reality outside ourselves — if the only reality that we can know is the version of "reality" that our mind restructures and presents to us — then it is not surprising that things and events that are not part of the physical world — things like the soul, or God — will similarly be seen as impositions of the structures of our minds. According to Kant, "[t]he existence of the soul, its freedom and immortality, the existence of a world of objects outside of us, and the existence of God, are, of logical necessity, declared to be unknown and unknowable."(9 ) It's not that the "world out there" and the soul and God don't exist; it's rather that we can't really know those things as they truly are in themselves — objectively. We can only know them subjectively, that is as re-creations in and of our own minds. Again, it's this thesis of Kant's that has become the foundation stone of modern philosophy and of the modernist heresy. It leads directly through the philosophy of Kant's disciple Hegel (10 ) to the various forms of Pragmatism which are dominating philosophical and political thought today. And it leads directly to the heart of the modernist heresy of Pope Saint Pius X's day and the neo- or post-modernist heresy of Pope Paul VI's and Pope John Paul II's day.

If Kant's philosophy is correct, operatively if not ontologically there can be no such thing as absolute, objective truth (11 ) "Truth" is dependent on the structure of our perceiving instrument, that is, our individual mind. Thus "truth" is individual, situational, and relative. There is no such thing operatively as fixed conformity with objective reality — at least not in the human context. There is actually something to recommend the Kantian skepticism regarding absolute truth in the human context. If there weren't, then after eons of philosophizing we would have reached some philosophical consensus on what is true and what is not. And yet after those eons of philosophizing we seem to be no closer to "truth" than when we started. But in transcendent terms, we know that there is such a thing as absolute truth. The word of God tells us that Jesus Christ is the Truth,(12 ) and that Jesus Christ came into the world to bear witness to the truth.(13 ) We also know that it was Pontius Pilate who took the Kantian position on the question of truth when he asked Jesus the skeptic's and the pragmatist's rhetorical question, "What is truth?".(14 )

The modernists of Pope Saint Pius X's day adopted this Kantian doctrine regarding the nonobjectivity of truth and referred to it as the principle of Vital Immanence — the notion that religious "truths" only exist in any meaningful sense in the structure of the mind. Kant's Immanence theory in philosophy reduces all reality operatively to elements indwelling or "immanent" in consciousness.(15 ) Its implications for modernist theology are identical, and in the words of Monsignor Ronald Knox, God Himself (in modernist thought) is reduced to an F.I.F. — a Funny Interior Feeling. (16 )

The "interior feeling", for the modernists, however, is not a purely personal, private thing (nor is it for Kant). It is seen by the modernists as a common or collective feeling. We are, after all, a Church. And it's this "collective feeling" — more often referred to by modernists as "the common consciousness" that defines the modernists' concept of the Church. In modernist thought, the Church originated "not as a visible hierarchical society founded by Christ, but simply as a product of the collective conscience of His followers."( 17)

Similarly, dogma is a product of the "collective conscience" of the "faithful".(18 ) Pope Saint Pius X stated that the main doctrine of the modernists was that of evolution (but he wasn't referring to Darwinian theory). He described the modernists as believing that "[t]o the laws of evolution, everything is subject under penalty of death — dogma, Church, worship, even faith itself."( 19) Since the "collective conscience" of the "faithful" evolves — obviously in line with the wisdom of the particular age — the meanings of dogmas also evolve, and understandings of the Church also evolve. The Church can change, in modernist thought, from a hierarchy to a democracy, as the times change. And beliefs — what we nonmodernists think of as truths — can change as well.

It's only a short step, of course, from a recognition that a "collective conscience" evolves, to a recognition that a collective conscience can be influenced to evolve in a particular direction. This explains why people of a modernist bent, who disagree fundamentally with many of the dogmas of the Catholic Church, adamantly refuse to leave the Church. Pope Saint Pius X said it almost a century ago. These are his words: "[I]t is necessary for (the modernists) to remain within the ranks of the Church in order that they may gradually transform the collective conscience."(20 )

One more ingredient is needed in order to understand both Kantian and Modernist thinking. Kant's curious epistemological system is contained in his book The Critique of Pure Reason. But Kant also wrote another magnum opus, entitled The Critique of Practical Reason. The latter work is the one in which Kant addressed the issue of human activity. When we pass from knowledge to activity we enter the sphere of morality. And it is here that Kant tries (some believe unsuccessfully ( 21)) to draw a connection between the perceiving mind and "reality out there". According to Kant, it is in the sphere of human activity where we eventually find certainty as to things like the freedom of the will, the immortality of the soul, and the existence of God. In Kant's thought,action is exalted above knowledge or intellect.(22 ) So too do the modernists value action over knowledge. According to one commentator,

[t]he modernists . . . go so far as to teach that dogmas of Catholic faith are of little or no value considered as standards of belief, and that their chief and primary significance is to be sought in their power to suggest attitudes or modes of moral conduct.(23 )

Cardinal Ratzinger has made the same point regarding today's neo-modernism:

[S]ome facile slogans are making the rounds, one of which asserts that all that really matters today is orthopraxis, hence "right conduct", love of neighbor. On the other hand, concern for orthodoxy, that is, for "right belief", according to the true meaning of Scripture, which is read within the living tradition of the Church, occupies a second rank, when it is not downright alienating.( 24)

Renee Casin, the French Catholic writer and teacher, put it this way:

The first misinterpretation on which (today's neo-modernists) have embarked is the following: To deal effectively with the chaos of the real world, its injustices, and the alienations of every kind which have multiplied, the first pressing need is action. No longer does union with God have the primacy. Rather social activism has displaced it; little matter that a supernatural sacramental life has always occupied first place in the life of all the Saints.(25 )

To suggest an example — I will venture to suggest that we've all heard the neo-modernist sermon on this very point of Christian action being more important than devotional efforts at union with God, and we've probably heard the sermon more than once. The text for the sermon is usually Matthew 22:36-39. You will remember that a doctor of the law asks Jesus:

"Master, which is the great commandment in the law?" Jesus said to him: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. And the second is like to this: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."

Beautiful words. The essence of what it is to be a true Christian. But the currently fashionable neo-modernist sermon usually goes something like this: Yes, we should love the Lord our God. But the Lord our God is a Spirit. How do we go about loving an invisible Spirit? We can't, at least not very easily. What we can do, however — and on a daily basis — is to love our neighbor. That's in fact exactly how we love God — by loving our neighbor.

At best, the sermon puts the two commandments on a par, whereas Jesus actually said that love of God is the greatest commandment. Also, in the minds of most hearers, the sermon subtly reverses the order of the two commandments — love your neighbor and thereby love God — whereas Jesus actually said that love of God is the first — the greatest and the first — commandment. And by the time the sermon is over, one is usually left with the mind set in which efforts at seeking union with God are really out of the picture entirely, and Christianity is reduced to a vague form of humanism. And Christianity as a vague form of humanism is the exact aim of the neo-modernist.

What's the true, orthodox understanding of the passage? I take the true, orthodox understanding from the writings of Saint Alphonsus Liguori, the great Eighteenth Century moral theologian who was named a Doctor of the Church in 1871, and who is the patron saint of moral theologians.(26 ) The truth is that our "neighbor" includes our enemy, as the Sermon on the Mount tells us. Most of the time it's hard enough to love our friends and neighbors. How can one truly love one's enemies in the first instance? The answer is in the very words Jesus used. One loves one's neighbor and one's enemy with God's love. That's what the words say. We first love God with our whole heart — all of it — and with our whole soul and with our whole mind — then and only then are we able to practice the second commandment, loving our neighbor and our enemy truly as our self. It's the love of God that's the enabling love — not the other way around.

Next — to move back to an earlier topic — as I've already suggested, the modernists and neo-modernists have an unusual understanding of Church dogma. For modernists (and neo-modernists), the dogmas of the Church are real, but only to the extent that they suggest modes of moral conduct. Thus a modernist, or a neo-modernist of today, can say with a perfectly clear sense of internal consistency that he or she accepts, say, the dogma of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ without actually believing that Jesus Christ physically rose from the dead in an objectively real historical event. Michael Davies explained it well:

Dogma . . . for (a modernist) was simply symbolic, a symbol of what Christians believe, a symbol of their faith, and by faith (the modernist) meant something purely subjective, not something which was an accurate expression of objective reality. Thus Jesus exerted such an influence on His followers that this influence remained long after His death, and was 'symbolized' by the story of the resurrection. Whether the story was objectively true was not important for (the modernist), what mattered was the truth that it was intended to convey — and this is a crucially important distinction, the distinction between orthodoxy and modernism.(27 )

The end result is that the modernist (or the neo-modernist of today) can in "good" conscience believe none of what an ordinary Catholic believes, objectively speaking — he may not believe that Jesus was born of a Virgin, that Jesus is God, that Jesus rose from the dead, etc., etc., and yet he may say, with interior consistency, that he accepts those dogmas, because he "accepts" them as symbols of some moral (not necessarily physical) event, like the influence of Jesus living on in the hearts or memories of His followers. Despite his nonbelief, he will remain a very active member of the Church, while all the time doing his best to subtly change the beliefs of the ordinary Catholic, again all in "good" conscience. Are you confused and discomforted by what's going on in the Catholic Church? Confused about what you should believe? About what the Church itself believes? If so, you're experiencing the effects of the neo-modernist's tampering with dogma.

In Pope Saint Pius X's day theological modernism was already calling into question some of the basic truths of the Catholic faith — truths concerning the nature of God, the historicity of the Gospels, the Real Presence, the divinity of Christ, the infallibility of the pope, the facticity of the Resurrection, the nature of the Church, and the reality of personal salvation.(28 ) Most, if not all, of those questions are with us today, almost a century later, better honed and more thoroughly informed by the tenets of today's popular modernist philosophies, such as pragmatism.

If we listen carefully in the theological and philosophical winds today we hear echoes of the Modernism so decisively and uncompromisingly condemned and anathematized by Pope Saint Pius X and his predecessors and successors. We hear today that the kingdom of God is not in the hereafter, but in the here and now (despite Jesus' own clear statement that His kingdom is not of this world (29 ). We are told that "salvation" today means liberation from social sin; personal sin, in the view of some in the Church, has ceased to be relevant, except insofar as it might have social implications. We are told that the true meaning of the Gospel is economic rather than spiritual. We are told that the Church is part of this world; it's a democracy. We are told that dogmas derive their force, indeed in a sense their "truth", not from their correspondence with the Word of God or even their objective historical facticity, but rather from their relevance to the human condition — no, to current understandings of the human condition.(30 )

In theological terms, we are perhaps all familiar with today's manifestations of the modernist heresy. They come from those who invoke what they usually call "the spirit of Vatican II" to suggest what the documents of Vatican II actually often denounce. The techniques of today's modernists have been so successful that Cardinal Ratzinger, the Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has lamented:

In a world at which, at bottom, many believers are gripped by skepticism, the conviction of the Church that there is one truth, and that this one truth can as such be recognized, expressed and also clearly defined within certain bounds, appears scandalous. It is also experienced as offensive by many Catholics who have lost sight of the essence of the Church.(31 )

There can be very little doubt but that, despite the papacy's vigorous opposition over the past century and a half, the heresy of Modernism — what Pope Saint Pius X called "the synthesis of all heresies"( 32) — has not been stamped out. Indeed, today it seems stronger than ever. Paul H. Hallett, introducing Michael Davies' book Partisans of Error, has an explanation:

Of one thing we can be certain: Modernism is too closely bound up with perverse human will ever to die. Its peculiar genius, which is to appear Christian and Catholic while evading the demands of a transcendent faith, is too well adjusted to the mentality of fallen man ever to become outdated. It will always survive in one form or another until the Day of Judgment.(33 )

Pope Saint Pius X, however, has his own explanation for the success of the modernist movement — an explanation that seems especially relevant today. It has to do with the tactics used by modernists.

Let one of them [the modernists] but open his mouth and the others applaud him in chorus, proclaiming that science has made another step forward; let an outsider but hint at a desire to inspect the new discovery with his own eyes, and they are on him in a body; deny it — and you are an ignoramus; embrace it and defend it — and there is no praise too warm for you. . . .

When an adversary rises up against them with an erudition and force that render him redoubtable, they try to make a conspiracy of silence around him to nullify the effects of his attack, while in flagrant contrast with this policy towards Catholics, they load with constant praise the writers who range themselves on their side, hailing their works, exuding novelty on every page, with choruses 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 . . .. 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 be considered learned, and both classes goaded internally by curiosity and pride, often surrender and give themselves up to Modernism.(34 )

Where do we see these techniques of ostracization and intimidation today? Stand up for the right to life of pre-born babies? At first you will be ignored. If you persist, you are labeled a sexist, an oppressor of women, and told by the Surgeon General of the United States to get over your love affair with the fetus. Adhere to the Bible's unequivocal condemnation of homosexual conduct as mortally sinful? Again, at first you are ignored. Persist and you are labeled a homophobe. Put that biblical position in print, and you are labeled a "bigot", in print. Indeed, stand firm on any de fide doctrine of the Catholic Church, and you will be called "insensitive", "judgmental", or "divisive". I don't think I have to multiply the examples to raise the suggestion that the techniques unmasked and condemned by Pope Saint Pius X way back in 1907 are today the techniques of what's been called the "political correctness" movement, in both religion and politics. Take a conservative or traditionalist position in either religion or politics, and you are shunned as an ignoramus. Persist in it and you are branded a racist, sexist, homophobic bigot.(35 )

It's an effective technique. It works. But it also discomforts us. At least it should discomfort us. It's an ad hominem technique. It depends for its effectiveness not on truth-force — recall in the modernist mind set operatively there is no truth — but rather it depends on intimidation. It is undoubtedly a part of what Pope Paul VI had in mind when he cautioned that today, in our time, "[t]he tail of the devil is functioning in the disintegration of the Catholic world."(36 )

These are distressing and confusing times for the nonmodernist Catholic, and sometimes it seems as if there is no solace, except in prayer. And prayer is a great solace and a great solution for problems, and it should never be neglected. But lest we forget, there is also Cardinal Ratzinger's challenge: "It is time to find again the courage of nonconformism,the capacity to oppose many of the trends of the surrounding culture."

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Footnotes

(1)Quoted in TED and MAUREEN FLYNN, THE THUNDER OF JUSTICE 222 (1993) (emphasis added). Earlier, in 1972, Pope Paul VI had this candid assessment of the aftermath of the Vatican II Council:

It was believed that after the Second Vatican Council there would be a day of sunshine in the history of the Church. There came instead a day of clouds, storms and darkness, of search and uncertainty. By means of some fissure the smoke of Satan has entered the Temple of God.

Quoted by James Likoudis in Preface, RENEE CASIN, SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS, ORTHODOXY, AND NEO-MODERNISM IN THE CHURCH (1977). In light of Pope Paul VI's condemnation of modernism as "the most dangerous revolution the Church has ever had to face," and his acknowledgement that modernism "is still scourging (the Church) severely", there seems little doubt as to his view of the cause of the fissure whereby the smoke of Satan has entered the Church.

(2) IGINO GIORDANI, PIUS X : A COUNTRY PRIEST 153 (1954).

(3) Supra note 1.
(4) JOSEPH CARDINAL RATZINGER with VITTORIO MESSORI, THE RATZINGER REPORT: AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW ON THE STATE OF THE CHURCH 36-37 (1985).
(5)1 Corinthians 3:19.
(6)Supra note 1.
(7)THOMAS E. JUDGE, THE ENCYCLICAL OF HIS HOLINESS PIUS X ON THE DOCTRINES OF THE MODERNISTS 103.
(8)See Raymond B. Marcin, Schopenhauer's Theory of Justice, 43 CATHOLIC UNIV. L. REV. 813, 821 (1994).
(9)Supra note 7, at 104.
(10)Hegel recognized the dilemma Kant's theory had created for metaphysics and epistemology. His (Hegel's) resolution of that dilemma is summarized in his famous statement: "The Real is the Rational and the Rational is the Real. GEORG W. F. HEGEL, HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF RIGHT 10 (T. M. Knox trans. 1967). In other words, the rationality that our perceiving minds superimposes on things and events is the only "reality" we can ever deal with; in that sense it is reality for us. See Marcin, supra note 8, at 824.
(11)When philosophical pragmatists declare, as they often do, that there is no absolute truth, the immediate (and quite logical) response of the nonpragmatist is invariably, "Well, then that statement that you have just made cannot be absolutely true."
(12)John 14:6.
(13)John 18:37.
(14)John 18:38.
(15)Supra note 7, at 106.
(16)MICHAEL DAVIES, PARTISANS OF ERROR : ST. PIUS X AGAINST THE MODERNISTS 27 (1983)
(17)Id. at 48.
(18)Id.
(19)Quoted in Davies, supra note 16, at 53.
(20)Id. at 70.
(21)Arthur Schopenhauer unmasked the flaw in the Kantian reasoning on this point. See Marcin, supra note 8, at 827-828. (22)Supra note 7, at 104.
(23)Id. Conventional Catholicism, of course, tends to view dogmas both as standards of belief and as helps toward moral conduct. See CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH 28 (1994).
(24)Supra note 4, at 23.
(25)RENEE CASIN, SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS, ORTHODOXY, AND NEO-MODERNISM IN THE CHURCH xviii (trans. and ed. James Likoudis, 1977).
(26)See, e.g., SAINT ALPHONSUS LIGUORI, THE SERMONS OF SAINT ALPHONSUS LIGUORI 224-233 and 345-353 (1982); and LOVE IS PRAYER PRAYER IS LOVE: SELECTED WRITINGS OF SAINT ALPHONSUS (adapted by John Steingraeber, C.SS.R., 1973) passim, esp. pp. 53-69.
(27)Supra note 16, at 62-63.
(28)Supra note 1, at 227.
(29)John 18:36.
(30)See, e.g., supra note 1, at 226, 227.
(31)Supra note 24, at 24.
(32)POPE SAINT PIUS X, PASCENDI DOMINICI GREGIS para. 39 (1907).
(33)Paul H. Hallett, Introduction to MICHAEL DAVIES, PARTISANS OF ERROR : SAINT PIUS X AGAINST THE MODERNISTS xx (1983).
(34)Quoted in THOMAS E. JUDGE, THE ENCYCLICAL OF HIS HOLINESS PIUS X ON THE DOCTRINES OF THE MODERNISTS 80, 91.
(35)In the words of Michael Davies, "Modernism . . . will usually be presented to us under the guise of 'new insights,' 'contemporary biblical scholarship,' or 'the findings of modern theologians.' Those who oppose it will be portrayed as ignorant, bigoted, or uncharitable — probably all three." MICHAEL DAVIES, supra note 16, at 2.
(35)Supra note 1.
(36)Supra note 4.t for the sermon is usually Matthew 22:36-39

Traditional Catholic Reflections

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