 |
PASCENDI DOMINICI GREGIS
Encyclical of Pope Pius X on the Doctrines of the
Modernists
8th day of September, 1907,
To the Patriarchs, Primates, Archbishops, Bishops
and other Local Ordinaries in Peace and Communion
with the Apostolic See. Venerable Brethren,
Health and Apostolic Benediction.
The office divinely committed to Us of feeding
the Lord's flock has especially this duty
assigned to it by Christ, namely, to guard with
the greatest vigilance the deposit of the faith
delivered to the saints, rejecting the profane
novelties of words and oppositions of knowledge
falsely so called. There has never been a time
when this watchfulness of the supreme pastor was
not necessary to the Catholic body; for, owing to
the efforts of the enemy of the human race, there
have never been lacking "men speaking perverse
things" (Acts xx. 30), "vain talkers and
seducers" (Tit. i. 10), "erring and driving into
error" (2 Tim. iii. 13). Still it must be
confessed that the number of the enemies of the
cross of Christ has in these last days increased
exceedingly, who are striving, by arts, entirely
new and full of subtlety, to destroy the vital
energy of the Church, and, if they can, to
overthrow utterly Christ's kingdom itself.
Wherefore We may no longer be silent, lest We
should seem to fail in Our most sacred duty, and
lest the kindness that, in the hope of wiser
counsels, We have hitherto shown them, should be
attributed to forgetfulness of Our office.
Gravity of the Situation
2. That We make no delay in this matter is
rendered necessary especially by the fact that
the partisans of error are to be sought not only
among the Church's open enemies; they lie hid, a
thing to be deeply deplored and feared, in her
very bosom and heart, and are the more
mischievous, the less conspicuously they appear.
We allude, Venerable Brethren, to many who belong
to the Catholic laity, nay, and this is far more
lamentable, to the ranks of the priesthood
itself, who, feigning a love for the Church,
lacking the firm protection of philosophy and
theology, nay more, thoroughly imbued with the
poisonous doctrines taught by the enemies of the
Church, and lost to all sense of modesty, vaunt
themselves as reformers of the Church; and,
forming more boldly into line of attack, assail
all that is most sacred in the work of Christ,
not sparing even the person of the Divine
Redeemer, whom, with sacrilegious daring, they
reduce to a simple, mere man.
3. Though they express astonishment themselves,
no one can justly be surprised that We number
such men among the enemies of the Church, if,
leaving out of consideration the internal
disposition of soul, of which God alone is the
judge, he is acquainted with their tenets, their
manner of speech, their conduct. Nor indeed will
he err in accounting them the most pernicious of
all the adversaries of the Church. For as We have
said, they put their designs for her ruin into
operation not from without but from within;
hence, the danger is present almost in the very
veins and heart of the Church, whose injury is
the more certain, the more intimate is their
knowledge of her. Moreover they lay the axe not
to the branches and shoots, but to the very root,
that is, to the faith and its deepest fires. And
having struck at this root of immortality, they
proceed to disseminate poison through the whole
tree, so that there is no part of Catholic truth
from which they hold their hand, none that they
do not strive to corrupt. Further, none is more
skilful, none more astute than they, in the
employment of a thousand noxious arts; for they
double the parts of rationalist and Catholic, and
this so craftily that they easily lead the unwary
into error; and since audacity is their chief
characteristic, there is no conclusion of any
kind from which they shrink or which they do not
thrust forward with pertinacity and assurance. To
this must be added the fact, which indeed is well
calculated to deceive souls, that they lead a
life of the greatest activity, of assiduous and
ardent application to every branch of learning,
and that they possess, as a rule, a reputation
for the strictest morality. Finally, and this
almost destroys all hope of cure, their very
doctrines have given such a bent to their minds,
that they disdain all authority and brook no
restraint; and relying upon a false conscience,
they attempt to ascribe to a love of truth that
which is in reality the result of pride and
obstinacy.
Once indeed We had hopes of recalling them to a
better sense, and to this end we first of all
showed them kindness as Our children, then we
treated them with severity, and at last We have
had recourse, though with great reluctance, to
public reproof. But you know, Venerable Brethren,
how fruitless has been Our action. They bowed
their head for a moment, but it was soon uplifted
more arrogantly than ever. If it were a matter
which concerned them alone, We might perhaps have
overlooked it: but the security of the Catholic
name is at stake. Wherefore, as to maintain it
longer would be a crime, We must now break
silence, in order to expose before the whole
Church in their true colours those men who have
assumed this bad disguise.
Division of the Encyclical
4. But since the Modernists (as they are commonly
and rightly called) employ a very clever
artifice, namely, to present their doctrines
without order and systematic arrangement into one
whole, scattered and disjointed one from another,
so as to appear to be in doubt and uncertainty,
while they are in reality firm and steadfast, it
will be of advantage, Venerable Brethren, to
bring their teachings together here into one
group, and to point out the connexion between
them, and thus to pass to an examination of the
sources of the errors, and to prescribe remedies
for averting the evil.
ANALYSIS OF MODERNIST TEACHING
5. To proceed in an orderly manner in this
recondite subject, it must first of all be noted
that every Modernist sustains and comprises
within himself many personalities; he is a
philosopher, a believer, a theologian, an
historian, a critic, an apologist, a reformer.
These roles must be clearly distinguished from
one another by all who would accurately know
their system and thoroughly comprehend the
principles and the consequences of their
doctrines.
Agnosticism its Philosophical Foundation
6. We begin, then, with the philosopher.
Modernists place the foundation of religious
philosophy in that doctrine which is usually
called Agnosticism. According to this teaching
human reason is confined entirely within the
field of phenomena, that is to say, to things
that are perceptible to the senses, and in the
manner in which they are perceptible; it has no
right and no power to transgress these limits.
Hence it is incapable of lifting itself up to
God, and of recognising His existence, even by
means of visible things. From this it is inferred
that God can never be the direct object of
science, and that, as regards history, He must
not be considered as an historical subject. Given
these premises, all will readily perceive what
becomes of Natural Theology, of the motives of
credibility, of external revelation. The
Modernists simply make away with them altogether;
they include them in Intellectualism, which they
call a ridiculous and long ago defunct system.
Nor does the fact that the Church has formally
condemned these portentous errors exercise the
slightest restraint upon them. Yet the Vatican
Council has defined, "If anyone says that the one
true God, our Creator and Lord, cannot be known
with certainty by the natural light of human
reason by means of the things that are made, let
him be anathema" (De Revel., can. I); and also:
"If anyone says that it is not possible or not
expedient that man be taught, through the medium
of divine revelation, about God and the worship
to be paid Him, let him be anathema" (Ibid., can.
2); and finally, "If anyone says that divine
revelation cannot be made credible by external
signs, and that therefore men should be drawn to
the faith only by their personal internal
experience or by private inspiration, let him be
anathema" (De Fide, can. 3). But how the
Modernists make the transition from Agnosticism,
which is a state of pure nescience, to scientific
and historic Atheism, which is a doctrine of
positive denial; and consequently, by what
legitimate process of reasoning, starting from
ignorance as to whether God has in fact
intervened in the history of the human race or
not, they proceed, in their explanation of this
history, to ignore God altogether, as if He
really had not intervened, let him answer who
can. Yet it is a fixed and established principle
among them that both science and history must be
atheistic: and within their boundaries there is
room for nothing but phenomena; God and all that
is divine are utterly excluded. We shall soon see
clearly what, according to this most absurd
teaching, must be held touching the most sacred
Person of Christ, what concerning the mysteries
of His life and death, and of His Resurrection
and Acension into heaven.
Vital Immanence
7. However, this Agnosticism is only the negative
part of the system of the Modernist: the positive
side of it consists in what they call vital
immanence. This is how they advance from one to
the other. Religion, whether natural or
supernatural, must, like every other fact, admit
of some explanation. But when Natural theology
has been destroyed, the road to revelation closed
through the rejection of the arguments of
credibility, and all external revelation
absolutely denied, it is clear that this
explanation will be sought in vain outside man
himself. It must, therefore, be looked for in
man; and since religion is a form of life, the
explanation must certainly be found in the life
of man. Hence the principle of religious
immanence is formulated. Moreover, the first
actuation, so to say, of every vital phenomenon,
and religion, as has been said, belongs to this
category, is due to a certain necessity or
impulsion; but it has its origin, speaking more
particularly of life, in a movement of the heart,
which movement is called a sentiment. Therefore,
since God is the object of religion, we must
conclude that faith, which is the basis and the
foundation of all religion, consists in a
sentiment which originates from a need of the
divine. This need of the divine, which is
experienced only in special and favourable
circumstances, cannot, of itself, appertain to
the domain of consciousness; it is at first
latent within the consciousness, or, to borrow a
term from modern philosophy, in the
subconsciousness, where also its roots lies
hidden and undetected.
Should anyone ask how it is that this need of the
divine which man experiences within himself grows
up into a religion, the Modernists reply thus:
Science and history, they say, are confined
within two limits, the one external, namely, the
visible world, the other internal, which is
consciousness. When one or other of these
boundaries has been reached, there can be no
further progress, for beyond is the unknowable.
In presence of this unknowable, whether it is
outside man and beyond the visible world of
nature, or lies hidden within in the
subconsciousness, the need of the divine,
according to the principles of Fideism, excites
in a soul with a propensity towards religion a
certain special sentiment, without any previous
advertence of the mind: and this sentiment
possesses, implied within itself both as its own
object and as its intrinsic cause, the reality of
the divine, and in a way unites man with God. It
is this sentiment to which Modernists give the
name of faith, and this it is which they consider
the beginning of religion. 8. But we have not yet
come to the end of their philosophy, or, to speak
more accurately, their folly. For Modernism finds
in this sentiment not faith only, but with and in
faith, as they understand it, revelation, they
say, abides. For what more can one require for
revelation? Is not that religious sentiment which
is perceptible in the consciousness revelation,
or at least the beginning of revelation? Nay, is
not God Himself, as He manifests Himself to the
soul, indistinctly it is true, in this same
religious sense, revelation? And they add: Since
God is both the object and the cause of faith,
this revelation is at the same time of God and
from God; that is, God is both the revealer and
the revealed.
Hence, Venerable Brethren, springs that
ridiculous proposition of the Modernists, that
every religion, according to the different aspect
under which it is viewed, must be considered as
both natural and supernatural. Hence it is that
they make consciousness and revelation
synonymous. Hence the law, according to which
religious consciousness is given as the universal
rule, to be put on an equal footing with
revelation, and to which all must submit, even
the supreme authority of the Church, whether in
its teaching capacity, or in that of legislator
in the province of sacred liturgy or discipline.
Deformation of Religious History the Consequence
9. However, in all this process, from which,
according to the Modernists, faith and revelation
spring, one point is to be particularly noted,
for it is of capital importance on account of the
historico-critical corollaries which are deduced
from it. - For the Unknowable they talk of does
not present itself to faith as something solitary
and isolated; but rather in close conjunction
with some phenomenon, which, though it belongs to
the realm of science and history yet to some
extent oversteps their bounds. Such a phenomenon
may be an act of nature containing within itself
something mysterious; or it may be a man, whose
character, actions and words cannot, apparently,
be reconciled with the ordinary laws of history.
Then faith, attracted by the Unknowable which is
united with the phenomenon, possesses itself of
the whole phenomenon, and, as it were, permeates
it with its own life. From this two things
follow. The first is a sort of transfiguration of
the phenomenon, by its elevation above its own
true conditions, by which it becomes more adapted
to that form of the divine which faith will
infuse into it. The second is a kind of
disfigurement, which springs from the fact that
faith, which has made the phenomenon independent
of the circumstances of place and time,
attributes to it qualities which it has not; and
this is true particularly of the phenomena of the
past, and the older they are, the truer it is.
From these two principles the Modernists deduce
two laws, which, when united with a third which
they have already got from agnosticism,
constitute the foundation of historical
criticism. We will take an illustration from the
Person of Christ. In the person of Christ, they
say, science and history encounter nothing that
is not human. Therefore, in virtue of the first
canon deduced from agnosticism, whatever there is
in His history suggestive of the divine, must be
rejected. Then, according to the second canon,
the historical Person of Christ was transfigured
by faith; therefore everything that raises it
above historical conditions must be removed.
Lately, the third canon, which lays down that the
person of Christ has been disfigured by faith,
requires that everything should be excluded,
deeds and words and all else that is not in
keeping with His character, circumstances and
education, and with the place and time in which
He lived. A strange style of reasoning, truly;
but it is Modernist criticism.
10. Therefore the religious sentiment, which
through the agency of vital immanence emerges
from the lurking places of the subconsciousness,
is the germ of all religion, and the explanation
of everything that has been or ever will be in
any religion. The sentiment, which was at first
only rudimentary and almost formless, gradually
matured, under the influence of that mysterious
principle from which it originated, with the
progress of human life, of which, as has been
said, it is a form. This, then, is the origin of
all religion, even supernatural religion; it is
only a development of this religious sentiment.
Nor is the Catholic religion an exception; it is
quite on a level with the rest; for it was
engendered, by the process of vital immanence, in
the consciousness of Christ, who was a man of the
choicest nature, whose like has never been, nor
will be. - Those who hear these audacious, these
sacrilegious assertions, are simply shocked! And
yet, Venerable Brethren, these are not merely the
foolish babblings of infidels. There are many
Catholics, yea, and priests too, who say these
things openly; and they boast that they are going
to reform the Church by these ravings! There is
no question now of the old error, by which a sort
of right to the supernatural order was claimed
for the human nature. We have gone far beyond
that: we have reached the point when it is
affirmed that our most holy religion, in the man
Christ as in us, emanated from nature
spontaneously and entirely. Than this there is
surely nothing more destructive of the whole
supernatural order. Wherefore the Vatican Council
most justly decreed: "If anyone says that man
cannot be raised by God to a knowledge and
perfection which surpasses nature, but that he
can and should, by his own efforts and by a
constant development, attain finally to the
possession of all truth and good, let him be
anathema" (De Revel., can. 3).
The Origin of Dogmas
11. So far, Venerable Brethren, there has been no
mention of the intellect. Still it also,
according to the teaching of the Modernists, has
its part in the act of faith. And it is of
importance to see how. - In that sentiment of
which We have frequently spoken, since sentiment
is not knowledge, God indeed presents Himself to
man, but in a manner so confused and indistinct
that He can hardly be perceived by the believer.
It is therefore necessary that a ray of light
should be cast upon this sentiment, so that God
may be clearly distinguished and set apart from
it. This is the task of the intellect, whose
office it is to reflect and to analyse, and by
means of which man first transforms into mental
pictures the vital phenomena which arise within
him, and then expresses them in words. Hence the
common saying of Modernists: that the religious
man must ponder his faith. - The intellect, then,
encountering this sentiment directs itself upon
it, and produces in it a work resembling that of
a painter who restores and gives new life to a
picture that has perished with age. The simile is
that of one of the leaders of Modernism. The
operation of the intellect in this work is a
double one: first by a natural and spontaneous
act it expresses its concept in a simple,
ordinary statement; then, on reflection and
deeper consideration, or, as they say, by
elaborating its thought, it expresses the idea in
secondary propositions, which are derived from
the first, but are more perfect and distinct.
These secondary propositions, if they finally
receive the approval of the supreme magisterium
of the Church, constitute dogma.
12. Thus, We have reached one of the principal
points in the Modernists' system, namely the
origin and the nature of dogma. For they place
the origin of dogma in those primitive and simple
formulae, which, under a certain aspect, are
necessary to faith; for revelation, to be truly
such, requires the clear manifestation of God in
the consciousness. But dogma itself they
apparently hold, is contained in the secondary
formulae.
To ascertain the nature of dogma, we must first
find the relation which exists between the
religious formulas and the religious sentiment.
This will be readily perceived by him who
realises that these formulas have no other
purpose than to furnish the believer with a means
of giving an account of his faith to himself.
These formulas therefore stand midway between the
believer and his faith; in their relation to the
faith, they are the inadequate expression of its
object, and are usually called symbols; in their
relation to the believer, they are mere
instruments.
Its Evolution
13. Hence it is quite impossible to maintain that
they express absolute truth: for, in so far as
they are symbols, they are the images of truth,
and so must be adapted to the religious sentiment
in its relation to man; and as instruments, they
are the vehicles of truth, and must therefore in
their turn be adapted to man in his relation to
the religious sentiment. But the object of the
religious sentiment, since it embraces that
absolute, possesses an infinite variety of
aspects of which now one, now another, may
present itself. In like manner, he who believes
may pass through different phases. Consequently,
the formulae too, which we call dogmas, must be
subject to these vicissitudes, and are,
therefore, liable to change. Thus the way is open
to the intrinsic evolution of dogma. An immense
collection of sophisms this, that ruins and
destroys all religion. Dogma is not only able,
but ought to evolve and to be changed. This is
strongly affirmed by the Modernists, and as
clearly flows from their principles. For amongst
the chief points of their teaching is this which
they deduce from the principle of vital
immanence; that religious formulas, to be really
religious and not merely theological
speculations, ought to be living and to live the
life of the religious sentiment. This is not to
be understood in the sense that these formulas,
especially if merely imaginative, were to be made
for the religious sentiment; it has no more to do
with their origin than with number or quality;
what is necessary is that the religious
sentiment, with some modification when necessary,
should vitally assimilate them. In other words,
it is necessary that the primitive formula be
accepted and sanctioned by the heart; and
similarly the subsequent work from which spring
the secondary formulas must proceed under the
guidance of the heart. Hence it comes that these
formulas, to be living, should be, and should
remain, adapted to the faith and to him who
believes. Wherefore if for any reason this
adaptation should cease to exist, they lose their
first meaning and accordingly must be changed.
And since the character and lot of dogmatic
formulas is so precarious, there is no room for
surprise that Modernists regard them so lightly
and in such open disrespect. And so they
audaciously charge the Church both with taking
the wrong road from inability to distinguish the
religious and moral sense of formulas from their
surface meaning, and with clinging tenaciously
and vainly to meaningless formulas whilst
religion is allowed to go to ruin. Blind that
they are, and leaders of the blind, inflated with
a boastful science, they have reached that pitch
of folly where they pervert the eternal concept
of truth and the true nature of the religious
sentiment; with that new system of theirs they
are seen to be under the sway of a blind and
unchecked passion for novelty, thinking not at
all of finding some solid foundation of truth,
but despising the holy and apostolic traditions,
they embrace other vain, futile, uncertain
doctrines, condemned by the Church, on which, in
the height of their vanity, they think they can
rest and maintain truth itself.
The Modernist as Believer: Individual Experience
and Religious Certitude
14. Thus far, Venerable Brethren, of the
Modernist considered as Philosopher. Now if we
proceed to consider him as Believer, seeking to
know how the Believer, according to Modernism, is
differentiated from the Philosopher, it must be
observed that although the Philosopher recognises
as the object of faith the divine reality, still
this reality is not to be found but in the heart
of the Believer, as being an object of sentiment
and affirmation; and therefore confined within
the sphere of phenomena; but as to whether it
exists outside that sentiment and affirmation is
a matter which in no way concerns this
Philosopher. For the Modernist .Believer, on the
contrary, it is an established and certain fact
that the divine reality does really exist in
itself and quite independently of the person who
believes in it. If you ask on what foundation
this assertion of the Believer rests, they
answer: In the experience of the individual. On
this head the Modernists differ from the
Rationalists only to fall into the opinion of the
Protestants and pseudo-mystics. This is their
manner of putting the question: In the religious
sentiment one must recognise a kind of intuition
of the heart which puts man in immediate contact
with the very reality of God, and infuses such a
persuasion of God's existence and His action both
within and without man as to excel greatly any
scientific conviction. They assert, therefore,
the existence of a real experience, and one of a
kind that surpasses all rational experience. If
this experience is denied by some, like the
rationalists, it arises from the fact that such
persons are unwilling to put themselves in the
moral state which is necessary to produce it. It
is this experience which, when a person acquires
it, makes him properly and truly a believer.
How far off we are here from Catholic teaching we
have already seen in the decree of the Vatican
Council. We shall see later how, with such
theories, added to the other errors already
mentioned, the way is opened wide for atheism.
Here it is well to note at once that, given this
doctrine of experience united with the other
doctrine of symbolism, every religion, even that
of paganism, must be held to be true. What is to
prevent such experiences from being met within
every religion? In fact that they are to be found
is asserted by not a few. And with what right
will Modernists deny the truth of an experience
affirmed by a follower of Islam? With what right
can they claim true experiences for Catholics
alone? Indeed Modernists do not deny but actually
admit, some confusedly, others in the most open
manner, that all religions are true. That they
cannot feel otherwise is clear. For on what
ground, according to their theories, could
falsity be predicated of any religion whatsoever?
It must be certainly on one of these two: either
on account of the falsity of the religious
sentiment or on account of the falsity of the
formula pronounced by the mind. Now the religious
sentiment, although it may be more perfect or
less perfect, is always one and the same; and the
intellectual formula, in order to be true, has
but to respond to the religious sentiment and to
the Believer, whatever be the intellectual
capacity of the latter. In the conflict between
different religions, the most that Modernists can
maintain is that the Catholic has more truth
because it is more living and that it deserves
with more reason the name of Christian because it
corresponds more fully with the origins of
Christianity. That these consequences flow from
the premises will not seem unnatural to anybody.
But what is amazing is that there are Catholics
and priests who, We would fain believe, abhor
such enormities yet act as if they fully approved
of them. For they heap such praise and bestow
such public honour on the teachers of these
errors as to give rise to the belief that their
admiration is not meant merely for the persons,
who are perhaps not devoid of a certain merit,
but rather for the errors which these persons
openly profess and which they do all in their
power to propagate.
Religious Experience and Tradition
15. But this doctrine of experience is also under
another aspect entirely contrary to Catholic
truth. It is extended and applied to tradition,
as hitherto understood by the Church, and
destroys it. By the Modernists, tradition is
understood as a communication to others, through
preaching by means of the intellectual formula,
of an original experience. To this formula, in
addition to its representative value, they
attribute a species of suggestive efficacy which
acts both in the person who believes, to
stimulate the religious sentiment should it
happen to have grown sluggish and to renew the
experience once acquired, and in those who do not
yet believe, to awake for the first time the
religious sentiment in them and to produce the
experience. In this way is religious experience
propagated among the peoples; and not merely
among contemporaries by preaching, but among
future generations both by books and by oral
transmission from one to another. Sometimes this
communication of religious experience takes root
and thrives, at other times it withers at once
and dies. For the Modernists, to live is a proof
of truth, since for them life and truth are one
and the same thing. Hence again it is given to us
to infer that all existing religions are equally
true, for otherwise they would not live.
Faith and Science
16. Having reached this point, Venerable
Brethren, we have sufficient material in hand to
enable us to see the relations which Modernists
establish between faith and science, including
history also under the name of science. And in
the first place it is to be held that the object
of the one is quite extraneous to and separate
from the object of the other. For faith occupies
itself solely with something which science
declares to be unknowable for it. Hence each has
a separate field assigned to it: science is
entirely concerned with the reality of phenomena,
into which faith does not enter at all; faith on
the contrary concerns itself with the divine
reality which is entirely unknown to science.
Thus the conclusion is reached that there can
never be any dissension between faith and
science, for if each keeps on its own ground they
can never meet and therefore never be in
contradiction. And if it be objected that in the
visible world there are some things which
appertain to faith, such as the human life of
Christ, the Modernists reply by denying this. For
though such things come within the category of
phenomena, still in as far as they are lived by
faith and in the way already described have been
by faith transfigured and disfigured, they have
been removed from the world of sense and
translated to become material for the divine.
Hence should it be further asked whether Christ
has wrought real miracles, and made real
prophecies, whether He rose truly from the dead
and ascended into heaven, the answer of agnostic
science will be in the negative and the answer of
faith in the affirmative - yet there will not be,
on that account, any conflict between them. For
it will be denied by the philosopher as
philosopher, speaking to philosophers and
considering Christ only in His historical
reality; and it will be affirmed by the speaker,
speaking to believers and considering the life of
Christ as lived again by the faith and in the
faith.
Faith Subject to Science
17. Yet, it would be a great mistake to suppose
that, given these theories, one is authorised to
believe that faith and science are independent of
one another. On the side of science the
independence is indeed complete, but it is quite
different with regard to faith, which is subject
to science not on one but on three grounds. For
in the first place it must be observed that in
every religious fact, when you take away the
divine reality and the experience of it which the
believer possesses, everything else, and
especially the religious formulas of it, belongs
to the sphere of phenomena and therefore falls
under the control of science. Let the believer
leave the world if he will, but so long as he
remains in it he must continue, whether he like
it or not, to be subject to the laws, the
observation, the judgments of science and of
history. Further, when it is said that God is the
object of faith alone, the statement refers only
to the divine reality not to the idea of God. The
latter also is subject to science which while it
philosophises in what is called the logical order
soars also to the absolute and the ideal. It is
therefore the right of philosophy and of science
to form conclusions concerning the idea of God,
to direct it in its evolution and to purify it of
any extraneous elements which may become confused
with it. Finally, man does not suffer a dualism
to exist in him, and the believer therefore feels
within him an impelling need so to harmonise
faith with science, that it may never oppose the
general conception which science sets forth
concerning the universe.
Thus it is evident that science is to be entirely
independent of faith, while on the other hand,
and notwithstanding that they are supposed to be
strangers to each other, faith is made subject to
science. All this, Venerable Brothers, is in
formal opposition with the teachings of Our
Predecessor, Pius IX, where he lays it down that:
In matters of religion it is the duty of
philosophy not to command but to serve, but not
to prescribe what is to be believed but to
embrace what is to be believed with reasonable
obedience, not to scrutinise the depths of the
mysteries of God but to venerate them devoutly
and humbly.
The Modernists completely invert the parts, and
to them may be applied the words of another
Predecessor of Ours, Gregory IX., addressed to
some theologians of his time: Some among you,
inflated like bladders with the spirit of vanity
strive by profane novelties to cross the
boundaries fixed by the Fathers, twisting the
sense of the heavenly pages . . .to the
philosophical teaching of the rationals, not for
the profit of their hearer but to make a show of
science . . . these, seduced by strange and
eccentric doctrines, make the head of the tail
and force the queen to serve the servant.
The Methods of Modernists
18. This becomes still clearer to anybody who
studies the conduct of Modernists, which is in
perfect harmony with their teachings. In the
writings and addresses they seem not unfrequently
to advocate now one doctrine now another so that
one would be disposed to regard them as vague and
doubtful. But there is a reason for this, and it
is to be found in their ideas as to the mutual
separation of science and faith. Hence in their
books you find some things which might well be
expressed by a Catholic, but in the next page you
find other things which might have been dictated
by a rationalist. When they write history they
make no mention of the divinity of Christ, but
when they are in the pulpit they profess it
clearly; again, when they write history they pay
no heed to the Fathers and the Councils, but when
they catechise the people, they cite them
respectfully. In the same way they draw their
distinctions between theological and pastoral
exegesis and scientific and historical exegesis.
So, too, acting on the principle that science in
no way depends upon faith, when they treat of
philosophy, history, criticism, feeling no horror
at treading in the footsteps of Luther, they are
wont to display a certain contempt for Catholic
doctrines, or the Holy Fathers, for the
Ecumenical Councils, for the ecclesiastical
magisterium; and should they be rebuked for this,
they complain that they are being deprived of
their liberty. Lastly, guided by the theory that
faith must be subject to science, they
continuously and openly criticise the Church
because of her sheer obstinacy in refusing to
submit and accommodate her dogmas to the opinions
of philosophy; while they, on their side, after
having blotted out the old theology, endeavour to
introduce a new theology which shall follow the
vagaries of their philosophers.
The Modernist as Theologian: His Principles,
Immanence and Symbolism
19. And thus, Venerable Brethren, the road is
open for us to study the Modernists in the
theological arena - a difficult task, yet one
that may be disposed of briefly. The end to be
attained is the conciliation of faith with
science, always, however, saving the primacy of
science over faith. In this branch the Modernist
theologian avails himself of exactly the same
principles which we have seen employed by the
Modernist philosopher, and applies them to the
believer: the principles of immanence and
symbolism. The process is an extremely simple
one. The philosopher has declared: The principle
of faith is immanent; the believer has added:
This principle is God; and the theologian draws
the conclusion: God is immanent in man. Thus we
have theological immanence. So too, the
philosopher regards as certain that the
representations of the object of faith are merely
symbolical; the believer has affirmed that the
object of faith is God in Himself; and the
theologian proceeds to affirm that: The
representations of the divine reality are
symbolical. And thus we have theological
symbolism. Truly enormous errors both, the
pernicious character of which will be seen
clearly from an examination of their
consequences. For, to begin with symbolism, since
symbols are but symbols in regard to their
objects and only instruments in regard to the
believer, it is necessary first of all, according
to the teachings of the Modernists, that the
believer do not lay too much stress on the
formula, but avail himself of it only with the
scope of uniting himself to the absolute truth
which the formula at once reveals and conceals,
that is to say, endeavours to express but without
succeeding in doing so. They would also have the
believer avail himself of the formulas only in as
far as they are useful to him, for they are given
to be a help and not a hindrance; with proper
regard, however, for the social respect due to
formulas which the public magisterium has deemed
suitable for expressing the common consciousness
until such time as the same magisterium provide
otherwise. Concerning immanence it is not easy to
determine what Modernists mean by it, for their
own opinions on the subject vary. Some understand
it in the sense that God working in man is more
intimately present in him than man is in even
himself, and this conception, if properly
understood, is free from reproach. Others hold
that the divine action is one with the action of
nature, as the action of the first cause is one
with the action of the secondary cause, and this
would destroy the supernatural order. Others,
finally, explain it in a way which savours of
pantheism and this, in truth, is the sense which
tallies best with the rest of their doctrines.
20. With this principle of immanence is connected
another which may be called the principle of
divine permanence. It differs from the first in
much the same way as the private experience
differs from the experience transmitted by
tradition. An example will illustrate what is
meant, and this example is offered by the Church
and the Sacraments. The Church and the
Sacraments, they say, are not to be regarded as
having been instituted by Christ Himself. This is
forbidden by agnosticism, which sees in Christ
nothing more than a man whose religious
consciousness has been, like that of all men,
formed by degrees; it is also forbidden by the
law of immanence which rejects what they call
external application; it is further forbidden by
the law of evolution which requires for the
development of the germs a certain time and a
certain series of circumstances; it is, finally,
forbidden by history, which shows that such in
fact has been the course of things. Still it is
to be held that both Church and Sacraments have
been founded mediately by Christ. But how? In
this way: All Christian consciences were, they
affirm, in a manner virtually included in the
conscience of Christ as the plant is included in
the seed. But as the shoots live the life of the
seed, so, too, all Christians are to be said to
live the life of Christ. But the life of Christ
is according to faith, and so, too, is the life
of Christians. And since this life produced, in
the courses of ages, both the Church and the
Sacraments, it is quite right to say that their
origin is from Christ and is divine. In the same
way they prove that the Scriptures and the dogmas
are divine. And thus the Modernistic theology may
be said to be complete. No great thing, in truth,
but more than enough for the theologian who
professes that the conclusions of science must
always, and in all things, be respected. The
application of these theories to the other points
We shall proceed to expound, anybody may easily
make for himself.
Dogma and the Sacraments
21. Thus far We have spoken of the origin and
nature of faith. But as faith has many shoots,
and chief among them the Church, dogma, worship,
the Books which we call "Sacred," of these also
we must know what is taught by the Modernists. To
begin with dogma, we have already indicated its
origin and nature. Dogma is born of the species
of impulse or necessity by virtue of which the
believer is constrained to elaborate his
religious thought so as to render it clearer for
himself and others. This elaboration consists
entirely in the process of penetrating and
refining the primitive formula, not indeed in
itself and according to logical development, but
as required by circumstances, or vitally as the
Modernists more abstrusely put it. Hence it
happens that around the primitive formula
secondary formulas gradually continue to be
formed, and these subsequently grouped into
bodies of doctrine, or into doctrinal
constructions as they prefer to call them, and
further sanctioned by the public magisterium as
responding to the common consciousness, are
called dogma. Dogma is to be carefully
distinguished from the speculations of
theologians which, although not alive with the
life of dogma, are not without their utility as
serving to harmonise religion with science and
remove opposition between the two, in such a way
as to throw light from without on religion, and
it may be even to prepare the matter for future
dogma. Concerning worship there would not be much
to be said, were it not that under this head are
comprised the Sacraments, concerning which the
Modernists fall into the gravest errors. For them
the Sacraments are the resultant of a double need
- for, as we have seen, everything in their
system is explained by inner impulses or
necessities. In the present case, the first need
is that of giving some sensible manifestation to
religion; the second is that of propagating it,
which could not be done without some sensible
form and consecrating acts, and these are called
sacraments. But for the Modernists the Sacraments
are mere symbols or signs, though not devoid of a
certain efficacy - an efficacy, they tell us,
like that of certain phrases vulgarly described
as having "caught on," inasmuch as they have
become the vehicle for the diffusion of certain
great ideas which strike the public mind. What
the phrases are to the ideas, that the Sacraments
are to the religious sentiment - that and nothing
more. The Modernists would be speaking more
clearly were they to affirm that the Sacraments
are instituted solely to foster the faith - but
this is condemned by the Council of Trent: If
anyone say that these sacraments are instituted
solely to foster the faith, let him be anathema.
The Holy Scriptures
22. We have already touched upon the nature and
origin of the Sacred Books. According to the
principles of the Modernists they may be rightly
described as a collection of experiences, not
indeed of the kind that may come to anybody, but
those extraordinary and striking ones which have
happened in any religion. And this is precisely
what they teach about our books of the Old and
New Testament. But to suit their own theories
they note with remarkable ingenuity that,
although experience is something belonging to the
present, still it may derive its material from
the past and the future alike, inasmuch as the
believer by memory lives the past over again
after the manner of the present, and lives the
future already by anticipation. This explains how
it is that the historical and apocalyptical books
are included among the Sacred Writings. God does
indeed speak in these books - through the medium
of the believer, but only, according to
Modernistic theology, by vital immanence and
permanence. Do we inquire concerning inspiration?
Inspiration, they reply, is distinguished only by
its vehemence from that impulse which stimulates
the believer to reveal the faith that is in him
by words or writing. It is something like what
happens in poetical inspiration, of which it has
been said: There is God in us, and when he
stirreth he sets us afire. And it is precisely in
this sense that God is said to be the origin of
the inspiration of the Sacred Books. The
Modernists affirm, too, that there is nothing in
these books which is not inspired. In this
respect some might be disposed to consider them
as more orthodox than certain other moderns who
somewhat restrict inspiration, as, for instance,
in what have been put forward as tacit citations.
But it is all mere juggling of words. For if we
take the Bible, according to the tenets of
agnosticism, to be a human work, made by men for
men, but allowing the theologian to proclaim that
it is divine by immanence, what room is there
left in it for inspiration? General inspiration
in the Modernist sense it is easy to find, but of
inspiration in the Catholic sense there is not a
trace.
The Church
23. A wider field for comment is opened when you
come to treat of the vagaries devised by the
Modernist school concerning the Church. You must
start with the supposition that the Church has
its birth in a double need, the need of the
individual believer, especially if he has had
some original and special experience, to
communicate his faith to others, and the need of
the mass, when the faith has become common to
many, to form itself into a society and to guard,
increase, and propagate the common good. What,
then, is the Church? It is the product of the
collective conscience, that is to say of the
society of individual consciences which by virtue
of the principle of vital permanence, all depend
on one first believer, who for Catholics is
Christ. Now every society needs a directing
authority to guide its members towards the common
end, to conserve prudently the elements of
cohesion which in a religious society are
doctrine and worship.
Hence the triple authority in the Catholic
Church, disciplinary, dogmatic, liturgical. The
nature of this authority is to be gathered from
its origin, and its rights and duties from its
nature. In past times it was a common error that
authority came to the Church from without, that
is to say directly from God; and it was then
rightly held to be autocratic. But his conception
had now grown obsolete. For in the same way as
the Church is a vital emanation of the
collectivity of consciences, so too authority
emanates vitally from the Church itself.
Authority therefore, like the Church, has its
origin in the religious conscience, and, that
being so, is subject to it. Should it disown this
dependence it becomes a tyranny. For we are
living in an age when the sense of liberty has
reached its fullest development, and when the
public conscience has in the civil order
introduced popular government. Now there are not
two consciences in man, any more than there are
two lives. It is for the ecclesiastical
authority, therefore, to shape itself to
democratic forms, unless it wishes to provoke and
foment an intestine conflict in the consciences
of mankind. The penalty of refusal is disaster.
For it is madness to think that the sentiment of
liberty, as it is now spread abroad, can
surrender. Were it forcibly confined and held in
bonds, terrible would be its outburst, sweeping
away at once both Church and religion. Such is
the situation for the Modernists, and their one
great anxiety is, in consequence, to find a way
of conciliation between the authority of the
Church and the liberty of believers.
The Relations Between Church and State
24. But it is not with its own members alone that
the Church must come to an amicable arrangement -
besides its relations with those within, it has
others outside. The Church does not occupy the
world all by itself; there are other societies in
the world, with which it must necessarily have
contact and relations. The rights and duties of
the Church towards civil societies must,
therefore, be determined, and determined, of
course, by its own nature as it has been already
described. The rules to be applied in this matter
are those which have been laid down for science
and faith, though in the latter case the question
is one of objects while here we have one of ends.
In the same way, then, as faith and science are
strangers to each other by reason of the
diversity of their objects, Church and State are
strangers by reason of the diversity of their
ends, that of the Church being spiritual while
that of the State is temporal. Formerly it was
possible to subordinate the temporal to the
spiritual and to speak of some questions as
mixed, allowing to the Church the position of
queen and mistress in all such, because the
Church was then regarded as having been
instituted immediately by God as the author of
the supernatural order. But his doctrine is today
repudiated alike by philosophy and history. The
State must, therefore, be separated from the
Church, and the Catholic from the citizen. Every
Catholic, from the fact that he is also a
citizen, has the right and the duty to work for
the common good in the way he thinks best,
without troubling himself about the authority of
the Church, without paying any heed to its
wishes, its counsels, its orders - nay, even in
spite of its reprimands. To trace out and
prescribe for the citizen any line of conduct, on
any pretext whatsoever, is to be guilty of an
abuse of ecclesiastical authority, against which
one is bound to act with all one's might. The
principles from which these doctrines spring have
been solemnly condemned by our predecessor Pius
VI. in his Constitution Auctorem fidei.
The Magisterium of the Church
25. But it is not enough for the Modernist school
that the State should be separated from the
Church. For as faith is to be subordinated to
science, as far as phenomenal elements are
concerned, so too in temporal matters the Church
must be subject to the State. They do not say
this openly as yet - but they will say it when
they wish to be logical on this head. For given
the principle that in temporal matters the State
possesses absolute mastery, it will follow that
when the believer, not fully satisfied with his
merely internal acts of religion, proceeds to
external acts, such for instance as the
administration or reception of the sacraments,
these will fall under the control of the State.
What will then become of ecclesiastical
authority, which can only be exercised by
external acts? Obviously it will be completely
under the dominion of the State. It is this
inevitable consequence which impels many among
liberal Protestants to reject all external
worship, nay, all external religious community,
and makes them advocate what they call,
individual religion. If the Modernists have not
yet reached this point, they do ask the Church in
the meanwhile to be good enough to follow
spontaneously where they lead her and adapt
herself to the civil forms in vogue. Such are
their ideas about disciplinary authority. But far
more advanced and far more pernicious are their
teachings on doctrinal and dogmatic authority.
This is their conception of the magisterium of
the Church: No religious society, they say, can
be a real unit unless the religious conscience of
its members be one, and one also the formula
which they adopt. But his double unity requires a
kind of common mind whose office is to find and
determine the formula that corresponds best with
the common conscience, 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 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 consciences and
possesses its mandate of public utility for their
benefit, it follows that the ecclesiastical
magisterium must be subordinate to them, and
should therefore take democratic forms. To
prevent individual consciences from revealing
freely and openly the impulses they feel, to
hinder criticism from impelling dogmas towards
their necessary evolutions - this is not a
legitimate use but an abuse of a power given for
the public utility. So too a due method and
measure must be observed in the exercise of
authority. To condemn and prescribe a work
without the knowledge of the author, without
hearing his explanations, without discussion,
assuredly savours of tyranny. And thus, here
again a way must be found to save the full rights
of authority on the one hand and of liberty on
the other. In the meanwhile the proper course for
the Catholic will be to proclaim publicly his
profound respect for authority - and continue to
follow his own bent. Their general directions for
the Church may be put in this way: Since the end
of the Church is entirely spiritual, the
religious authority should strip itself of all
that external pomp which adorns it in the eyes of
the public. And here they forget that while
religion is essentially for the soul, it is not
exclusively for the soul, and that the honour
paid to authority is reflected back on Jesus
Christ who instituted it.
The Evolution of Doctrine
26. To finish with this whole question of faith
and its shoots, it remains to be seen, Venerable
Brethren, what the Modernists have to say about
their development. First of all they lay down the
general principle that in a living religion
everything is subject to change, and must change,
and in this way they pass to what may be said to
be, among the chief of their doctrines, that of
Evolution. To the laws of evolution everything is
subject - dogma, Church, worship, the Books we
revere as sacred, even faith itself, and the
penalty of disobedience is death. The enunciation
of this principle will not astonish anybody who
bears in mind what the Modernists have had to say
about each of these subjects. Having laid down
this law of evolution, the Modernists themselves
teach us how it works out. And first with regard
to faith. The primitive form of faith, they tell
us, was rudimentary and common to all men alike,
for it had its origin in human nature and human
life. Vital evolution brought with it progress,
not by the accretion of new and purely
adventitious forms from without, but by an
increasing penetration of the religious sentiment
in the conscience. This progress was of two
kinds: negative, by the elimination of all
foreign elements, such, for example, as the
sentiment of family or nationality; and positive
by the intellectual and moral refining of man, by
means of which the idea was enlarged and
enlightened while the religious sentiment became
more elevated and more intense. For the progress
of faith no other causes are to be assigned than
those which are adduced to explain its origin.
But to them must be added those religious
geniuses whom we call prophets, and of whom
Christ was the greatest; both because in their
lives and their words there was something
mysterious which faith attributed to the
divinity, and because it fell to their lot to
have new and original experiences fully in
harmony with the needs of their time. The
progress of dogma is due chiefly to the obstacles
which faith has to surmount, to the enemies it
has to vanquish, to the contradictions it has to
repel. Add to this a perpetual striving to
penetrate ever more profoundly its own mysteries.
Thus, to omit other examples, has it happened in
the case of Christ: in Him that divine something
which faith admitted in Him expanded in such a
way that He was at last held to be God. The chief
stimulus of evolution in the domain of worship
consists in the need of adapting itself to the
uses and customs of peoples, as well as the need
of availing itself of the value which certain
acts have acquired by long usage. Finally,
evolution in the Church itself is fed by the need
of accommodating itself to historical conditions
and of harmonising itself with existing forms of
society. Such is religious evolution in detail.
And here, before proceeding further, we would
have you note well this whole theory of
necessities and needs, for it is at the root of
the entire system of the Modernists, and it is
upon it that they will erect that famous method
of theirs called the historical.
27. Still continuing the consideration of the
evolution of doctrine, it is to be noted that
Evolution is due no doubt to those stimulants
styled needs, but, if left to their action alone,
it would run a great risk of bursting the bounds
of tradition, and thus, turned aside from its
primitive vital principle, would lead to ruin
instead of progress. Hence, studying more closely
the ideas of the Modernists, evolution is
described as resulting from the conflict of two
forces, one of them tending towards progress, the
other towards conservation. The conserving force
in the Church is tradition, and tradition is
represented by religious authority, and this both
by right and in fact; for by right it is in the
very nature of authority to protect tradition,
and, in fact, for authority, raised as it is
above the contingencies of life, feels hardly, or
not at all, the spurs of progress. The
progressive force, on the contrary, which
responds to the inner needs lies in the
individual consciences and ferments there -
especially in such of them as are in most
intimate contact with life. Note here, Venerable
Brethren, the appearance already of that most
pernicious doctrine which would make of the laity
a factor of progress in the Church. Now it is by
a species of compromise between the forces of
conservation and of progress, that is to say
between authority and individual consciences,
that changes and advances take place. The
individual consciences of some of them act on the
collective conscience, which brings pressure to
bear on the depositaries of authority, until the
latter consent to a compromise, and, the pact
being made, authority sees to its maintenance.
With all this in mind, one understands how it is
that the Modernists express astonishment when
they are reprimanded or punished. What is imputed
to them as a fault they regard as a sacred duty.
Being in intimate contact with consciences they
know better than anybody else, and certainly
better than the ecclesiastical authority, what
needs exist - nay, they embody them, so to speak,
in themselves. Having a voice and a pen they use
both publicly, for this is their duty. Let
authority rebuke them as much as it pleases -
they have their own conscience on their side and
an intimate experience which tells them with
certainty that what they deserve is not blame but
praise. Then they reflect that, after all there
is no progress without a battle and no battle
without its victim, and victims they are willing
to be like the prophets and Christ Himself. They
have no bitterness in their hearts against the
authority which uses them roughly, for after all
it is only doing its duty as authority. Their
sole grief is that it remains deaf to their
warnings, because delay multiplies the obstacles
which impede the progress of souls, but the hour
will most surely come when there will be no
further chance for tergiversation, for if the
laws of evolution may be checked for a while,
they cannot be ultimately destroyed. And so they
go their way, reprimands and condemnations
notwithstanding, masking an incredible audacity
under a mock semblance of humility. While they
make a show of bowing their heads, their hands
and minds are more intent than ever on carrying
out their purposes. And this policy they follow
willingly and wittingly, both because it is part
of their system that authority is to be
stimulated but not dethroned, and because it is
necessary for them to remain within the ranks of
the Church in order that they may gradually
transform the collective conscience - thus
unconsciously avowing that the common conscience
is not with them, and that they have no right to
claim to be its interpreters.
28. Thus then, Venerable Brethren, for the
Modernists, both as authors and propagandists,
there is to be nothing stable, nothing immutable
in the Church. Nor indeed are they without
precursors in their doctrines, for it was of
these that Our Predecessor Pius IX wrote: These
enemies of divine revelation extol human progress
to the skies, and with rash and sacrilegious
daring would have it introduced into the Catholic
religion as if this religion were not the work of
God but of man, or some kind of philosophical
discovery susceptible of perfection by human
efforts. On the subject of revelation and dogma
in particular, the doctrine of the Modernists
offers nothing new - we find it condemned in the
Syllabus of Pius IX., where it is enunciated in
these terms: Divine revelation is imperfect, and
therefore subject to continual and indefinite
progress, corresponding with the progress of
human reason; and condemned still more solemnly
in the Vatican Council: The doctrine of the faith
which God has revealed has not been proposed to
human intelligences to be perfected by them as if
it were a philosophical system, but as a divine
deposit entrusted to the Spouse of Christ to be
faithfully guarded and infallibly interpreted.
Hence the sense, too, of the sacred dogmas is
that which our Holy Mother the Church has once
declared, nor is this sense ever to be abandoned
on plea or pretext of a more profound
comprehension of the truth. Nor is the
development of our knowledge, even concerning the
faith, impeded by this pronouncement - on the
contrary it is aided and promoted. For the same
Council continues: Let intelligence and science
and wisdom, therefore, increase and progress
abundantly and vigorously in individuals and in
the mass, in the believer and in the whole
Church, throughout the ages and the centuries -
but only in its own kind, that is, according to
the same dogma, the same sense, the same
acceptation.
The Modernist as Historian and Critic
29. After having studied the Modernist as
philosopher, believer and theologian, it now
remains for us to consider him as historian,
critic, apologist, reformer.
30. Some Modernists, devoted to historical
studies, seem to be greatly afraid of being taken
for philosophers. About philosophy, they tell
you, they know nothing whatever - and in this
they display remarkable astuteness, for they are
particularly anxious not to be suspected of being
prejudiced in favour of philosophical theories
which would lay them open to the charge of not
being objective, to use the word in vogue. And
yet the truth is that their history and their
criticism are saturated with their philosophy,
and that their historico-critical conclusions are
the natural fruit of their philosophical
principles. This will be patent to anybody who
reflects. Their three first laws are contained in
those three principles of their philosophy
already dealt with: the principle of agnosticism,
the principle of the transfiguration of things by
faith, and the principle which We have called of
disfiguration. Let us see what consequences flow
from each of them. Agnosticism tells us that
history, like ever other science, deals entirely
with phenomena, and the consequence is that God,
and every intervention of God in human affairs,
is to be relegated to the domain of faith as
belonging to it alone. In things where a double
element, the divine and the human, mingles, in
Christ, for example, or the Church, or the
sacraments, or the many other objects of the same
kind, a division must be made and the human
element assigned to history while the divine will
go to faith. Hence we have that distinction, so
current among the Modernists, between the Christ
of history and the Christ of faith, between the
sacraments of history and the sacraments of
faith, and so on. Next we find that the human
element itself, which the historian has to work
on, as it appears in the documents, has been by
faith transfigured, that is to say raised above
its historical conditions. It becomes necessary,
therefore, to eliminate also the accretions which
faith has added, to assign them to faith itself
and to the history of faith: thus, when treating
of Christ, the historian must set aside all that
surpasses man in his natural condition, either
according to the psychological conception of him,
or according to the place and period of his
existence. Finally, by virtue of the third
principle, even those things which are not
outside the sphere of history they pass through
the crucible, excluding from history and
relegating to faith everything which, in their
judgment, is not in harmony with what they call
the logic of facts and in character with the
persons of whom they are predicated. Thus, they
will not allow that Christ ever uttered those
things which do not seem to be within the
capacity of the multitudes that listened to Him.
Hence they delete from His real history and
transfer to faith all the allegories found in His
discourses. Do you inquire as to the criterion
they adopt to enable them to make these
divisions? The reply is that they argue from the
character of the man, from his condition of life,
from his education, from the circumstances under
which the facts took place - in short, from
criteria which, when one considers them well, are
purely subjective. Their method is to put
themselves into the position and person of
Christ, and then to attribute to Him what they
would have done under like circumstances. In this
way, absolutely a priori and acting on
philosophical principles which they admit they
hold but which they affect to ignore, they
proclaim that Christ, according to what they call
His real history, was not God and never did
anything divine, and that as man He did and said
only what they, judging from the time in which he
lived, can admit Him to have said or done.
Criticism and its Principles
31. And as history receives its conclusions,
ready-made, from philosophy, so too criticism
takes its own from history. The critic, on the
data furnished him by the historian, makes two
parts of all his documents. Those that remain
after the triple elimination above described go
to form the real history; the rest is attributed
to the history of the faith or as it is styled,
to internal history. For the Modernists
distinguish very carefully between these two
kinds of history, and it is to be noted that they
oppose the history of the faith to real history
precisely as real. Thus we have a double 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 - the Christ, for
instance, whom we find in the Gospel of St. John,
which is pure contemplation from beginning to
end.
32. But the dominion of philosophy over history
does not end here. Given that division, of which
We have spoken, of the documents into two parts,
the philosopher steps in again with his principle
of vital immanence, and shows how everything in
the history of the Church is to be explained by
vital emanation. And since the cause or condition
of every vital emanation whatsoever is to be
found in some need, it follows that no fact can
ante-date the need which produced it -
historically the fact must be posterior to the
need. See how the historian works on this
principle. He goes over his documents again,
whether they be found in the Sacred Books or
elsewhere, draws up from them his list of the
successive needs of the Church, whether relating
to dogma or liturgy or other matters, and then he
hands his list over to the critic. The critic
takes in hand the documents dealing with the
history of faith and distributes them, period by
period, so that they correspond exactly with the
lists of needs, always guided by the principle
that the narration must follow the facts, as the
facts follow the needs. It may at times happen
that some parts of the Sacred Scriptures, such as
the Epistles, themselves constitute the fact
created by the need. Even so, the rule holds that
the age of any document can only be determined by
the age in which each need had manifested itself
in the Church. Further, a distinction must be
made between the beginning of a fact and its
development, for what is born one day requires
time for growth. Hence the critic must once more
go over his documents, ranged as they are through
the different ages, and divide them again into
two parts, and divide them into two lots,
separating those that regard the first stage of
the facts from those that deal with their
development, and these he must again arrange
according to their periods.
33. Then the philosopher must come in again to
impose on the historian the obligation of
following in all his studies the precepts and
laws of evolution. It is next for the historian
to scrutinise his documents once more, to examine
carefully the circumstances and conditions
affecting the Church during the different
periods, the conserving force she has put forth,
the needs both internal and external that have
stimulated her to progress, the obstacles she has
had to encounter, in a word everything that helps
to determine the manner in which the laws of
evolution have been fulfilled in her. This done,
he finishes his work by drawing up in its broad
lines a history of the development of the facts.
The critic follows and fits in the rest of the
documents with this sketch; he takes up his pen,
and soon the history is made complete. Now we ask
here: Who is the author of this history? The
historian? The critic? Assuredly, neither of
these but the philosopher. From beginning to end
everything in it is a priori, and a priori in a
way that reeks of heresy. These men are certainly
to be pitied, and of them the Apostle might well
say: They became vain in their thoughts. . .
professing themselves to be wise they became
fools (Rom. i. 21, 22); but, at the same time,
they excite just indignation when they accuse the
Church of torturing the texts, arranging and
confusing them after its own fashion, and for the
needs of its cause. In this they are accusing the
Church of something for which their own
conscience plainly reproaches them.
How the Bible is Dealt With
34. The result of this dismembering of the Sacred
Books and this partition of them throughout the
centuries is naturally that the Scriptures can no
longer be attributed to the authors whose names
they bear. The Modernists have no hesitation in
affirming commonly that these books, and
especially the Pentateuch and the first three
Gospels, have been gradually formed by additions
to a primitive brief narration - by
interpolations of theological or allegorical
interpretation, by transitions, by joining
different passages together. This means, briefly,
that in the Sacred Books we must admit a vital
evolution, springing from and corresponding with
evolution of faith. The traces of this evolution,
they tell us, are so visible in the books that
one might almost write a history of them. Indeed
this history they do actually write, and with
such an easy security that one might believe them
to have with their own eyes seen the writers at
work through the ages amplifying the Sacred
Books. To aid them in this they call to their
assistance that branch of criticism which they
call textual, and labour to show that such a fact
or such a phrase is not in its right place, and
adducing other arguments of the same kind. They
seem, in fact, to have constructed for themselves
certain types of narration and discourses, upon
which they base their decision as to whether a
thing is out of place or not. Judge if you can
how men with such a system are fitted for
practising this kind of criticism. To hear them
talk about their works on the Sacred Books, in
which they have been able to discover so much
that is defective, one would imagine that before
them nobody ever even glanced through the pages
of Scripture, whereas the truth is that a whole
multitude of Doctors, infinitely superior to them
in genius, in erudition, in sanctity, have sifted
the Sacred Books in every way, and so far from
finding imperfections in them, have thanked God
more and more the deeper they have gone into
them, for His divine bounty in having vouchsafed
to speak thus to men. Unfortunately, these great
Doctors did not enjoy the same aids to study that
are possessed by the Modernists for their guide
and rule, - a philosophy borrowed from the
negation of God, and a criterion which consists
of themselves.
We believe, then, that We have set forth with
sufficient clearness the historical method of the
Modernists. The philosopher leads the way, the
historian follows, and then in due order come
internal and textual criticism. And since it is
characteristic of the first cause to communicate
its virtue to secondary causes, it is quite clear
that the criticism We are concerned with is an
agnostic, immanentist, and evolutionist
criticism. Hence anybody who embraces it and
employs it, makes profession thereby of the
errors contained in it, and places himself in
opposition to Catholic faith. This being so, one
cannot but be greatly surprised by the
consideration which is attached to it by certain
Catholics. Two causes may be assigned for this:
first, the close alliance, independent of all
differences of nationality or religion, which the
historians and critics of this school have formed
among themselves; second, the boundless
effrontery of these men. Let one of them 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. In this way
they win over any who, did they but realise what
they are doing, would shrink back with horror.
The impudence and the domineering of some, and
the thoughtlessness and imprudence of others,
have combined to generate a pestilence in the air
which penetrates everywhere and spreads the
contagion. But let us pass to the apologist.
The Modernist as Apologist
35. The Modernist apologist depends in two ways
on the philosopher. First, indirectly, inasmuch
as his theme is history - history dictated, as we
have seen, by the philosopher; and, secondly,
directly, inasmuch as he takes both his laws and
his principles from the philosopher. Hence that
common precept of the Modernist school that the
new apologetics must be fed from psychological
and historical sources. The Modernist apologists,
then, enter the arena by proclaiming to the
rationalists that though they are defending
religion, they have no intention of employing the
data of the sacred books or the histories in
current use in the Church, and composed according
to old methods, but real history written on
modern principles and according to rigorously
modern methods. In all this they are not using an
argumentum ad hominem, but are stating the simple
fact that they hold, that the truth is to be
found only in this kind of history. They feel
that it is not necessary for them to dwell on
their own sincerity in their writings - they are
already known to and praised by the rationalists
as fighting under the same banner, and they not
only plume themselves on these encomiums, which
are a kind of salary to them but would only
provoke nausea in a real Catholic, but use them
as an offset to the reprimands of the Church.
But let us see how the Modernist conducts his
apologetics. The aim he sets before himself is to
make the non-believer attain that experience of
the Catholic religion which, according to the
system, is the basis of faith. There are two ways
open to him, the objective and the subjective.
The first of them proceeds from agnosticism. It
tends to show that religion, and especially the
Catholic religion, is endowed with such vitality
as to compel every psychologist and historian of
good faith to recognise that its history hides
some unknown element. To this end it is necessary
to prove that this religion, as it exists today,
is that which was founded by Jesus Christ; that
is to say, that it is the product of the
progressive development of the germ which He
brought into the world. Hence it is imperative
first of all to establish what this germ was, and
this the Modernist claims to be able to do by the
following formula: Christ announced the coming of
the kingdom of God, which was to be realised
within a brief lapse of time and of which He was
to become the Messiah, the divinely-given agent
and ordainer. Then it must be shown how this
germ, always immanent and permanent in the bosom
of the Church, has gone on slowly developing in
the course of history, adapting itself
successively to the different mediums through
which it has passed, borrowing from them by vital
assimiliation all the dogmatic, cultural,
ecclesiastical forms that served its purpose;
whilst, on the other hand , it surmounted all
obstacles, vanquished all enemies, and survived
all assaults and all combats. Anybody who well
and duly considers this mass of obstacles,
adversaries, attacks, combats, and the vitality
and fecundity which the Church has shown
throughout them all, must admit that if the laws
of evolution are visible in her life they fail to
explain the whole of her history - the unknown
rises forth from it and presents itself before
us. Thus do they argue, never suspecting that
their determination of the primitive germ is an a
priori of agnostic and evolutionist philosophy,
and that the formula of it has been gratuitously
invented for the sake of buttressing their
position.
36. But while they endeavour by this line of
reasoning to secure access for the Catholic
religion into souls, these new apologists are
quite ready to admit that there are many
distasteful things in it. Nay, they admit openly,
and with ill-concealed satisfaction, that they
have found that even its dogma is not exempt from
errors and contradictions. They add also that
this is not only excusable but - curiously enough
- even right and proper. In the Sacred Books
there are many passages referring to science or
history where manifest errors are to be found.
But the subject of these books is not science or
history but religion and morals. In them history
and science serve only as a species of covering
to enable the religious and moral experiences
wrapped up in them to penetrate more readily
among the masses. The masses understood science
and history as they are expressed in these books,
and it is clear that had science and history been
expressed in a more perfect form this would have
proved rather a hindrance than a help. Then,
again, the Sacred Books being essentially
religious, are consequently necessarily living.
Now life has its own truth and its own logic,
belonging as they do to a different order, viz.,
truth of adaptation and of proportion both with
the medium in which it exists and with the end
towards which it tends. Finally the Modernists,
losing all sense of control, go so far as to
proclaim as true and legitimate everything that
is explained by life.
We, Venerable Brethren, for whom there is but one
and only truth, and who hold that the Sacred
Books, written under the inspiration of the Holy
Ghost, have God for their author (Conc. Vat., De
Revel., c. 2) declare that this is equivalent to
attributing to God Himself the lie of utility or
officious lie, and We say with St. Augustine: In
an authority so high, admit but one officious
lie, and there will not remain a single passage
of those apparently difficult to practise or to
believe, which on the same most pernicious rule
may not be explained as a lie uttered by the
author wilfully and to serve a purpose. (Epist.
28). And thus it will come about, the holy Doctor
continues, that everybody will believe and refuse
to believe what he likes or dislikes. But the
Modernists pursue their way gaily. They grant
also that certain arguments adduced in the Sacred
Books, like those, for example, which are based
on the prophecies, have no rational foundation to
rest on. But they will defend even these as
artifices of preaching, which are justified by
life. Do they stop here? No, indeed, for they are
ready to admit, nay, to proclaim that Christ
Himself manifestly erred in determining the time
when the coming of the Kingdom of God was to take
place, and they tell us that we must not be
surprised at this since even Christ was subject
to the laws of life! After this what is to become
of the dogmas of the Church? The dogmas brim over
with flagrant contradictions, but what matter
that since, apart from the fact that vital logic
accepts them, they are not repugnant to
symbolical truth. Are we not dealing with the
infinite, and has not the infinite an infinite
variety of aspects? In short, to maintain and
defend these theories they do not hesitate to
declare that the noblest homage that can be paid
to the Infinite is to make it the object of
contradictory propositions! But when they justify
even contradiction, what is it that they will
refuse to justify?
Subjective Arguments
37. But it is not solely by objective arguments
that the non-believer may be disposed to faith.
There are also subjective ones at the disposal of
the Modernists, and for those they return to
their doctrine of immanence. They endeavour, in
fact, to persuade their non-believer that down in
the very deeps of his nature and his life lie the
need and the desire for religion, and this not a
religion of any kind, but the specific religion
known as Catholicism, which, they say, is
absolutely postulated by the perfect development
of life. And here We cannot but deplore once
more, and grievously, that there are Catholics
who, while rejecting immanence as a doctrine,
employ it as a method of apologetics, and who do
this so imprudently that they seem to admit that
there is in human nature a true and rigorous
necessity with regard to the supernatural order -
and not merely a capacity and a suitability for
the supernatural, order - and not merely a
capacity and a suitability for the supernatural,
such as has at all times been emphasized by
Catholic apologists. Truth to tell it is only the
moderate Modernists who make this appeal to an
exigency for the Catholic religion. As for the
others, who might be called intergralists, they
would show to the non-believer, hidden away in
the very depths of his being, the very germ which
Christ Himself bore in His conscience, and which
He bequeathed to the world. Such, Venerable
Brethren, is a summary description of the
apologetic method of the Modernists, in perfect
harmony, as you may see, with their doctrines -
methods and doctrines brimming over with errors,
made not for edification but for destruction, not
for the formation of Catholics but for the
plunging of Catholics into heresy; methods and
doctrines that would be fatal to any religion.
The Modernist as Reformer
38. It remains for Us now to say a few words
about the Modernist as reformer. From all that
has preceded, some idea may be gained of the
reforming mania which possesses them: in all
Catholicism there is absolutely nothing on which
it does not fasten. Reform of philosophy,
especially in the seminaries: the scholastic
philosophy is to be relegated to the history of
philosophy among obsolete systems, and the young
men are to be taught modern philosophy which
alone is true and suited to the times in which we
live. Reform of theology; rational theology is to
have modern philosophy for its foundation, and
positive theology is to be founded on the history
of dogma. As for history, it must be for the
future written and taught only according to their
modern methods and principles. Dogmas and their
evolution are to be harmonised with science and
history. In the Catechism no dogmas are to be
inserted except those that have been duly
reformed and are within the capacity of the
people. Regarding worship, the number of external
devotions is to be reduced, or at least steps
must be taken to prevent their further increase,
though, indeed, some of the admirers of symbolism
are disposed to be more indulgent on this head.
Ecclesiastical government requires to be reformed
in all its branches, but especially in its
disciplinary and dogmatic parts. Its spirit with
the public conscience, which is not wholly for
democracy; a share in ecclesiastical government
should therefore be given to the lower ranks of
the clergy, and even to the laity, and authority
should be decentralised. The Roman Congregations,
and especially the index and the Holy Office, are
to be reformed. The ecclesiastical authority must
change its line of conduct in the social and
political world; while keeping outside political
and social organization, it must adapt itself to
those which exist in order to penetrate them with
its spirit. With regard to morals, they adopt the
principle of the Americanists, that the active
virtues are more important than the passive, both
in the estimation in which they must be held and
in the exercise of them. The clergy are asked to
return to their ancient lowliness and poverty,
and in their ideas and action to be guided by the
principles of Modernism; and there are some who,
echoing the teaching of their Protestant masters,
would like the suppression of ecclesiastical
celibacy. What is there left in the Church which
is not to be reformed according to their
principles?
Modernism and All the Heresies
39. It may be, Venerable Brethren, that some may
think We have dwelt too long on this exposition
of the doctrines of the Modernists. But it was
necessary, both in order to refute their
customary charge that We do not understand their
ideas, and to show that their system does not
consist in scattered and unconnected theories but
in a perfectly organised body, all the parts of
which are solidly joined so that it is not
possible to admit one without admitting all. For
this reason, too, We have had to give this
exposition a somewhat didactic form and not to
shrink from employing certain uncouth terms in
use among the Modernists. And now, can anybody
who takes a survey of the whole system be
surprised that We should define it as the
synthesis of all heresies? Were one to attempt
the task of collecting together all the errors
that have been broached against the faith and to
concentrate the sap and substance of them all
into one, he could not better succeed than the
Modernists have done. Nay, they have done more
than this, for, as we have already intimated,
their system means the destruction not of the
Catholic religion alone but of all religion. With
good reason do the rationalists applaud them, for
the most sincere and the frankest among the
rationalists warmly welcome the modernists as
their most valuable allies.
For let us return for a moment, Venerable
Brethren, to that most disastrous doctrine of
agnosticism. By it every avenue that leads the
intellect to God is barred, but the Modernists
would seek to open others available for sentiment
and action. Vain efforts! For, after all, what is
sentiment but the reaction of the soul on the
action of the intelligence or the senses. Take
away the intelligence, and man, already inclined
to follow the senses, becomes their slave. Vain,
too, from another point of view, for all these
fantasias on the religious sentiment will never
be able to destroy common sense, and common sense
tells us that emotion and everything that leads
the heart captive proves a hindrance instead of a
help to the discovery of truth. We speak, of
course, of truth in itself - as for that other
purely subjective truth, the fruit of sentiment
and action, if it serves its purpose for the
jugglery of words, it is of no use to the man who
wants to know above all things whether outside
himself there is a God into whose hands he is one
day to fall. True, the Modernists do call in
experience to eke out their system, but what does
this experience add to sentiment? Absolutely
nothing beyond a certain intensity and a
proportionate deepening of the conviction of the
reality of the object. But these two will never
make sentiment into anything but sentiment, nor
deprive it of its characteristic which is to
cause deception when the intelligence is not
there to guide it; on the contrary, they but
confirm and aggravate this characteristic, for
the more intense sentiment is the more it is
sentimental. In matters of religious sentiment
and religious experience, you know, Venerable
Brethren, how necessary is prudence and how
necessary, too, the science which directs
prudence. You know it from your own dealings with
sounds, and especially with souls in whom
sentiment predominates; you know it also from
your reading of ascetical books - books for which
the Modernists have but little esteem, but which
testify to a science and a solidity very
different from theirs, and to a refinement and
subtlety of observation of which the Modernists
give no evidence. Is it not really folly, or at
least sovereign imprudence, to trust oneself
without control to Modernist experiences? Let us
for a moment put the question: if experiences
have so much value in their eyes, why do they not
attach equal weight to the experience that
thousands upon thousands of Catholics have that
the Modernists are on the wrong road? It is,
perchance, that all experiences except those felt
by the Modernists are false and deceptive? The
vast majority of mankind holds and always will
hold firmly that sentiment and experience alone,
when not enlightened and guided by reason, do not
lead to the knowledge of God. What remains, then,
but the annihilation of all religion, - atheism?
Certainly it is not the doctrine of symbolism -
will save us from this. For if all the
intellectual elements, as they call them, of
religion are pure symbols, will not the very name
of God or of divine personality be also a symbol,
and if this be admitted will not the personality
of God become a matter of doubt and the way
opened to Pantheism? And to Pantheism that other
doctrine of the divine immanence leads directly.
For does it, We ask, leave God distinct from man
or not? If yes, in what does it differ from
Catholic doctrine, and why reject external
revelation? If no, we are at once in Pantheism.
Now the doctrine of immanence in the Modernist
acceptation holds and professes that every
phenomenon of conscience proceeds from man as
man. The rigorous conclusion from this is the
identity of man with God, which means Pantheism.
The same conclusion follows from the distinction
Modernists make between science and faith. The
object of science they say is the reality of the
knowable; the object of faith, on the contrary,
is the reality of the unknowable. Now what makes
the unknowable unknowable is its disproportion
with the intelligible - a disproportion which
nothing whatever, even in the doctrine of the
Modernist, can suppress. Hence the unknowable
remains and will eternally remain unknowable to
the believer as well as to the man of science.
Therefore if any religion at all is possible it
can only be the religion of an unknowable
reality. And why this religion might not be that
universal soul of the universe, of which a
rationalist speaks, is something We do see.
Certainly this suffices to show superabundantly
by how many roads Modernism leads to the
annihilation of all religion. The first step in
this direction was taken by Protestantism; the
second is made by Modernism; the next will plunge
headlong into atheism.
THE CAUSE OF MODERNISM
40. To penetrate still deeper into Modernism and
to find a suitable remedy for such a deep sore,
it behoves Us, Venerable Brethren, to investigate
the causes which have engendered it and which
foster its growth. That the proximate and
immediate cause consists in a perversion of the
mind cannot be open to doubt. The remote causes
seem to us to be reduced to two: curiosity and
pride. Curiosity by itself, if not prudently
regulated, suffices to explain all errors. Such
is the opinion of Our Predecessor, Gregory XVI.,
who wrote: A lamentable spectacle is that
presented by the aberrations of human reason when
it yields to the spirit of novelty, when against
the warning of the Apostle it seeks to know
beyond what it is meant to know, and when relying
too much on itself it thinks it can find the
fruit outside the Church wherein truth is found
without the slightest shadow of error (Ep.
Encycl. Singulari nos, 7 Kal. Jul. 1834).
But it is pride which exercises an incomparably
greater sway over the soul to blind it and plunge
it into error, and pride sits in Modernism as in
its own house, finding sustenance everywhere in
its doctrines and an occasion to flaunt itself in
all its aspects. It is pride which fills
Modernists with that confidence in themselves and
leads them to hold themselves up as the rule for
all, pride which puffs them up with that
vainglory which allows them to regard themselves
as the sole possessors of knowledge, and makes
them say, inflated with presumption, We are not
as the rest of men, and which, to make them
really not as other men, leads them to embrace
all kinds of the most absurd novelties; it is
pride which rouses in them the spirit of
disobedience and causes them to demand a
compromise between authority and liberty; it is
pride that makes of them the reformers of others,
while they forget to reform themselves, and which
begets their absolute want of respect for
authority, not excepting the supreme authority.
No, truly, there is no road which leads so
directly and so quickly to Modernism as pride.
When a Catholic laymen or a priest forgets that
precept of the Christian life which obliges us to
renounce ourselves if we would follow Jesus
Christ and neglects to tear pride from his heart,
ah! but he is a fully ripe subject for the errors
of Modernism. Hence, Venerable Brethren, it will
be your first duty to thwart such proud men, to
employ them only in the lowest and obscurest
offices; the higher they try to rise, the lower
let them be placed, so that their lowly position
may deprive them of the power of causing damage.
Sound your young clerics, too, most carefully, by
yourselves and by the directors of your
seminaries, and when you find the spirit of pride
among any of them reject them without compunction
from the priesthood. Would to God that this had
always been done with the proper vigilance and
constancy.
41. If we pass from the moral to the intellectual
causes of Modernism, the first which presents
itself, and the chief one, is ignorance. Yes,
these very Modernists who pose as Doctors of the
Church, who puff out their cheeks when they speak
of modern philosophy, and show such contempt for
scholasticism, have embraced the one with all its
false glamour because their ignorance of the
other has left them without the means of being
able to recognise confusion of thought, and to
refute sophistry. Their whole system, with all
its errors, has been born of the alliance between
faith and false philosophy.
Methods of Propagandism
42. If only they had displayed less zeal and
energy in propagating it! But such is their
activity and such their unwearying capacity for
work on behalf of their cause, that one cannot
but be pained to see them waste such labour in
endeavouring to ruin the Church when they might
have been of such service to her had their
efforts been better employed. Their articles to
delude men's minds are of two kinds, the first to
remove obstacles from their path, the second to
devise and apply actively and patiently every
instrument that can serve their purpose. They
recognise that the three chief difficulties for
them are scholastic philosophy, the authority of
the fathers and tradition, and the magisterium of
the Church, and on these they wage unrelenting
war. For scholastic philosophy and theology they
have only ridicule and contempt. Whether it is
ignorance or fear, or both, that inspires this
conduct in them, certain it is that the passion
for novelty is always united in them with hatred
of scholasticism, and there is no surer sign that
a man is on the way to Modernism than when he
begins to show his dislike for this system.
Modernists and their admirers should remember the
proposition condemned by Pius IX: The method and
principles which have served the doctors of
scholasticism when treating of theology no longer
correspond with the exigencies of our time or the
progress of science (Syll. Prop. 13). They
exercise all their ingenuity in diminishing the
force and falsifying the character of tradition,
so as to rob it of all its weight. But for
Catholics the second Council of Nicea will always
have the force of law, where it condemns those
who dare, after the impious fashion of heretics,
to deride the ecclesiastical traditions, to
invent novelties of some kind . . . or endeavour
by malice or craft to overthrow any one of the
legitimate traditions of the Catholic Church; and
Catholics will hold for law, also, the profession
of the fourth Council of Constantinople: We
therefore profess to conserve and guard the rules
bequeathed to the Holy Catholic and Apostolic
Church by the Holy and most illustrious Apostles,
by the orthodox Councils, both general and local,
and by every one of those divine interpreters the
Fathers and Doctors of the Church. Wherefore the
Roman Pontiffs, Pius IV. and Pius IX., ordered
the insertion in the profession of faith of the
following declaration: I most firmly admit and
embrace the apostolic and ecclesiastical
traditions and other observances and
constitutions of the Church. The Modernists pass
the same judgment on the most holy Fathers of the
Church as they pass on tradition; decreeing, with
amazing effrontery that, while personally most
worthy of all veneration, they were entirely
ignorant of history and criticism, for which they
are only excusable on account of the time in
which they lived. Finally, the Modernists try in
every way to diminish and weaken the authority of
the ecclesiastical magisterium itself by
sacrilegiously falsifying its origin, character,
and rights, and by freely repeating the calumnies
of its adversaries. To all the band of Modernists
may be applied those words which Our Predecessor
wrote with such pain: To bring contempt and odium
on the mystic Spouse of Christ, who is the true
light, the children of darkness have been wont to
cast in her face before the world a stupid
calumny, and perverting the meaning and force of
things and words, to depict her as the friend of
darkness and ignorance, and the enemy of light,
science, and progress (Motu-proprio, Ut mysticum,
14 March, 1891). This being so, Venerable
Brethren, no wonder the Modernists vent all their
gall and hatred on Catholics who sturdily fight
the battles of the Church. But of all the insults
they heap on them those of ignorance and
obstinacy are the favourites. 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,
excluding novelty in 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; when one of their number falls under
the condemnations of the Church the rest of them,
to the horror of good Catholics, gather round
him, heap public praise upon him, venerate him
almost as a martyr to truth. The young, excited
and confused by all this glamour 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.
43. And here we have already some of the
artifices employed by Modernists to exploit their
wares. What efforts they make to win new
recruits! They seize upon chairs in the
seminaries and universities, and gradually make
of them chairs of pestilence. From these sacred
chairs they scatter, though not always openly,
the seeds of their doctrines; they proclaim their
teachings without disguise in congresses; they
introduce them and make them the vogue in social
institutions. Under their own names and under
pseudonyms they publish numbers of books,
newspapers, reviews, and sometimes one and the
same writer adopts a variety of pseudonyms to
trap the incautious reader into believing in a
whole multitude of Modernist writers - in short
they leave nothing untried, in action,
discourses, writings, as though there were a
frenzy of propaganda upon them. And the results
of all this? We have to lament at the sight of
many young men once full of promise and capable
of rendering great services to the Church, now
gone astray. And there is another sight that
saddens Us too: that of so many other Catholics,
who, while they certainly do not go so far as the
former, have yet grown into the habit, as though
they had been breathing a poisoned atmosphere, of
thinking and speaking and writing with a liberty
that ill becomes Catholics. They are to be found
among the laity, and in the ranks of the clergy,
and they are not wanting even in the last place
where one might expect to meet them, in religious
institutes. If they treat of biblical questions,
it is upon Modernist principles; if they write
history, it is to search out with curiosity and
to publish openly, on the pretext of telling the
whole truth and with a species of ill-concealed
satisfaction, everything that looks to them like
a stain in the history of the Church. Under the
sway of certain a priori rules they destroy as
far as they can the pious traditions of the
people, and bring ridicule on certain relics
highly venerable from their antiquity. They are
possessed by the empty desire of being talked
about, and they know they would never succeed in
this were they to say only what has been always
said. It may be that they have persuaded
themselves that in all this they are really
serving God and the Church - in reality they only
offend both, less perhaps by their works
themselves than by the spirit in which they write
and by the encouragement they are giving to the
extravagances of the Modernists.
REMEDIES
44. Against this host of grave errors, and its
secret and open advance, Our Predecessor Leo
XIII., of happy memory, worked strenuously
especially as regards the Bible, both in his
words and his acts. But, as we have seen, the
Modernists are not easily deterred by such
weapons - with an affectation of submission and
respect, they proceeded to twist the words of the
Pontiff to their own sense, and his acts they
described as directed against others than
themselves. And the evil has gone on increasing
from day to day. We therefore, Venerable
Brethren, have determined to adopt at once the
most efficacious measures in Our power, and We
beg and conjure you to see to it that in this
most grave matter nobody will ever be able to say
that you have been in the slightest degree
wanting in vigilance, zeal or firmness. And what
We ask of you and expect of you, We ask and
expect also of all other pastors of souls, of all
educators and professors of clerics, and in a
very special way of the superiors of religious
institutions.
I. - The Study of Scholastic Philosophy
45. In the first place, with regard to studies,
We will and ordain that scholastic philosophy be
made the basis of the sacred sciences. It goes
without saying that if anything is met with among
the scholastic doctors which may be regarded as
an excess of subtlety, or which is altogether
destitute of probability, We have no desire
whatever to propose it for the imitation of
present generations (Leo XIII. Enc. Aeterni
Patris). And let it be clearly understood above
all things that the scholastic philosophy We
prescribe is that which the Angelic Doctor has
bequeathed to us, and We, therefore, declare that
all the ordinances of Our Predecessor on this
subject continue fully in force, and, as far as
may be necessary, We do decree anew, and confirm,
and ordain that they be by all strictly observed.
In seminaries where they may have been neglected
let the Bishops impose them and require their
observance, and let this apply also to the
Superiors of religious institutions. Further let
Professors remember that they cannot set St.
Thomas aside, especially in metaphysical
questions, without grave detriment.
46. On this philosophical foundation the
theological edifice is to be solidly raised.
Promote the study of theology, Venerable
Brethren, by all means in your power, so that
your clerics on leaving the seminaries may admire
and love it, and always find their delight in it.
For in the vast and varied abundance of studies
opening before the mind desirous of truth,
everybody knows how the old maxim describes
theology as so far in front of all others that
every science and art should serve it and be to
it as handmaidens (Leo XIII., Lett. ap. In Magna,
Dec. 10, 1889). We will add that We deem worthy
of praise those who with full respect for
tradition, the Holy Fathers, and the
ecclesiastical magisterium, undertake, with
well-balanced judgment and guided by Catholic
principles (which is not always the case), seek
to illustrate positive theology by throwing the
light of true history upon it. Certainly more
attention must be paid to positive theology than
in the past, but this must be done without
detriment to scholastic theology, and those are
to be disapproved as of Modernist tendencies who
exalt positive theology in such a way as to seem
to despise the scholastic.
47. With regard to profane studies suffice it to
recall here what Our Predecessor has admirably
said: Apply yourselves energetically to the study
of natural sciences: the brilliant discoveries
and the bold and useful applications of them made
in our times which have won such applause by our
contemporaries will be an object of perpetual
praise for those that come after us (Leo XIII.
Alloc., March 7, 1880). But this do without
interfering with sacred studies, as Our
Predecessor in these most grave words prescribed:
If you carefully search for the cause of those
errors you will find that it lies in the fact
that in these days when the natural sciences
absorb so much study, the more severe and lofty
studies have been proportionately neglected -
some of them have almost passed into oblivion,
some of them are pursued in a half-hearted or
superficial way, and, sad to say, now that they
are fallen from their old estate, they have been
dis figured by perverse doctrines and monstrous
errors (loco cit.). We ordain, therefore, that
the study of natural science in the seminaries be
carried on under this law.
II - Practical Application
48. All these prescriptions and those of Our
Predecessor are to be borne in mind whenever
there is question of choosing directors and
professors for seminaries and Catholic
Universities. Anybody who in any way is found to
be imbued with Modernism is to be excluded
without compunction from these offices, and those
who already occupy them are to be withdrawn. The
same policy is to be adopted towards those who
favour Modernism either by extolling the
Modernists or excusing their culpable conduct, by
criticising scholasticism, the Holy Father, or by
refusing obedience to ecclesiastical authority in
any of its depositaries; and towards those who
show a love of novelty in history, archaeology,
biblical exegesis, and finally towards those who
neglect the sacred sciences or appear to prefer
to them the profane. In all this question of
studies, Venerable Brethren, you cannot be too
watchful or too constant, but most of all in the
choice of professors, for as a rule the students
are modelled after the pattern of their masters.
Strong in the consciousness of your duty, act
always prudently but vigorously.
49. Equal diligence and severity are to be used
in examining and selecting candidates for Holy
Orders. Far, far from the clergy be the love of
novelty! God hates the proud and the obstinate.
For the future the doctorate of theology and
canon law must never be conferred on anybody who
has not made the regular course of scholastic
philosophy; if conferred it shall be held as null
and void. The rules laid down in 1896 by the
Sacred Congregation of Bishops and Regulars for
the clerics, both secular and regular, of Italy
concerning the frequenting of the Universities,
We now decree to be extended to all nations.
Clerics and priests inscribed in a Catholic
Institute or University must not in the future
follow in civil Universities those courses for
which there are chairs in the Catholic Institutes
to which they belong. If this has been permitted
anywhere in the past, We ordain that it be not
allowed for the future. Let the Bishops who form
the Governing Board of such Catholic Institutes
or Universities watch with all care that these
Our commands be constantly observed.
III. - Episcopal Vigilance Over Publications
50. It is also the duty of the bishops to prevent
writings infected with Modernism or favourable to
it from being read when they have been published,
and to hinder their publication when they have
not. No book or paper or periodical of this kind
must ever be permitted to seminarists or
university students. The injury to them would be
equal to that caused by immoral reading - nay, it
would be greater for such writings poison
Christian life at its very fount. The same
decision is to be taken concerning the writings
of some Catholics, who, though not badly disposed
themselves but ill-instructed in theological
studies and imbued with modern philosophy, strive
to make this harmonize with the faith, and, as
they say, to turn it to the account of the faith.
The name and reputation of these authors cause
them to be read without suspicion, and they are,
therefore, all the more dangerous in preparing
the way for Modernism.
51. To give you some more general directions,
Venerable Brethren, in a matter of such moment,
We bid you do everything in your power to drive
out of your dioceses, even by solemn interdict,
any pernicious books that may be in circulation
there. The Holy See neglects no means to put down
writings of this kind, but the number of them has
now grown to such an extent that it is impossible
to censure them all. Hence it happens that the
medicine sometimes arrives too late, for the
disease has taken root during the delay. We will,
therefore, that the Bishops, putting aside all
fear and the prudence of the flesh, despising the
outcries of the wicked, gently by all means but
constantly, do each his own share of this work,
remembering the injunctions of Leo XIII. in the
Apostolic Constitution Officiorum: Let the
Ordinaries, acting in this also as Delegates of
the Apostolic See, exert themselves to prescribe
and to put out of reach of the faithful injurious
books or other writings printed or circulated in
their dioceses. In this passage the Bishops, it
is true, receive a right, but they have also a
duty imposed on them. Let no Bishop think that he
fulfils this duty by denouncing to us one or two
books, while a great many others of the same kind
are being published and circulated. Nor are you
to be deterred by the fact that a book has
obtained the Imprimatur elsewhere, both because
this may be merely simulated, and because it may
have been granted through carelessness or
easiness or excessive confidence in the author as
may sometimes happen in religious Orders.
Besides, just as the same food does not agree
equally with everybody, it may happen that a book
harmless in one may, on account of the different
circumstances, be hurtful in another. Should a
Bishop, therefore, after having taken the advice
of prudent persons, deem it right to condemn any
of such books in his diocese, We not only give
him ample faculty to do so but We impose it upon
him as a duty to do so. Of course, it is Our wish
that in such action proper regard be used, and
sometimes it will suffice to restrict the
prohibition to the clergy; but even in such cases
it will be obligatory on Catholic booksellers not
to put on sale books condemned by the Bishop. And
while We are on this subject of booksellers, We
wish the Bishops to see to it that they do not,
through desire for gain, put on sale unsound
books. It is certain that in the catalogues of
some of them the books of the Modernists are not
unfrequently announced with no small praise. If
they refuse obedience let the Bishops have no
hesitation in depriving them of the title of
Catholic booksellers; so too, and with more
reason, if they have the title of Episcopal
booksellers, and if they have that of Pontifical,
let them be denounced to the Apostolic See.
Finally, We remind all of the XXVI. article of
the abovementioned Constitution Officiorum: All
those who have obtained an apostolic faculty to
read and keep forbidden books, are not thereby
authorised to read books and periodicals
forbidden by the local Ordinaries, unless the
apostolic faculty expressly concedes permission
to read and keep books condemned by anybody.
IV. - Censorship
52. But it is not enough to hinder the reading
and the sale of bad books - it is also necessary
to prevent them from being printed. Hence let the
Bishops use the utmost severity in granting
permission to print. Under the rules of the
Constitution Officiorum, many publications
require the authorisation of the Ordinary, and in
some dioceses it has been made the custom to have
a suitable number of official censors for the
examination of writings. We have the highest
praise for this institution, and We not only
exhort, but We order that it be extended to all
dioceses. In all episcopal Curias, therefore, let
censors be appointed for the revision of works
intended for publication, and let the censors be
chosen from both ranks of the clergy - secular
and regular - men of age, knowledge and prudence
who will know how to follow the golden mean in
their judgments. It shall be their office to
examine everything which requires permission for
publication according to Articles XLI. and XLII.
of the above-mentioned Constitution. The Censor
shall give his verdict in writing. If it be
favourable, the Bishop will give the permission
for publication by the word Imprimatur, which
must always be preceded by the Nihil obstat and
the name of the Censor. In the Curia of Rome
official censors shall be appointed just as
elsewhere, and the appointment of them shall
appertain to the Master of the Sacred Palaces,
after they have been proposed to the Cardinal
Vicar and accepted by the Sovereign Pontiff. It
will also be the office of the Master of the
Sacred Palaces to select the censor for each
writing. Permission for publication will be
granted by him as well as by the Cardinal Vicar
or his Vicegerent, and this permission, as above
prescribed, must always be preceded by the Nihil
obstat and the name of the Censor. Only on very
rare and exceptional occasions, and on the
prudent decision of the bishop, shall it be
possible to omit mention of the Censor. The name
of the Censor shall never be made known to the
authors until he shall have given a favourable
decision, so that he may not have to suffer
annoyance either while he is engaged in the
examination of a writing or in case he should
deny his approval. Censors shall never be chosen
from the religious orders until the opinion of
the Provincial, or in Rome of the General, has
been privately obtained, and the Provincial or
the General must give a conscientious account of
the character, knowledge and orthodoxy of the
candidate. We admonish religious superiors of
their solemn duty never to allow anything to be
published by any of their subjects without
permission from themselves and from the Ordinary.
Finally We affirm and declare that the title of
Censor has no value and can never be adduced to
give credit to the private opinions of the person
who holds it.
Priests as Editors
53. Having said this much in general, We now
ordain in particular a more careful observance of
Article XLII. of the above-mentioned Constitution
Officiorum. It is forbidden to secular priests,
without the previous consent of the Ordinary, to
undertake the direction of papers or periodicals.
This permission shall be withdrawn from any
priest who makes a wrong use of it after having
been admonished. With regard to priests who are
correspondents or collaborators of periodicals,
as it happens not unfrequently that they write
matter infected with Modernism for their papers
or periodicals, let the Bishops see to it that
this is not permitted to happen, and, should they
fail in this duty, let the Bishops make due
provision with authority delegated by the Supreme
Pontiff. Let there be, as far as this is
possible, a special Censor for newspapers and
periodicals written by Catholics. It shall be his
office to read in due time each number after it
has been published, and if he find anything
dangerous in it let him order that it be
corrected. The Bishop shall have the same right
even when the Censor has seen nothing
objectionable in a publication.
V. - Congresses
54. We have already mentioned congresses and
public gatherings as among the means used by the
Modernists to propagate and defend their
opinions. In the future Bishops shall not permit
Congresses of priests except on very rare
occasions. When they do permit them it shall only
be on condition that matters appertaining to the
Bishops or the Apostolic See be not treated in
them, and that no motions or postulates be
allowed that would imply a usurpation of sacred
authority, and that no mention be made in them of
Modernism, presbyterianism, or laicism. At
Congresses of this kind, which can only be held
after permission in writing has been obtained in
due time and for each case, it shall not be
lawful for priests of other dioceses to take part
without the written permission of their Ordinary.
Further no priest must lose sight of the solemn
recommendation of Leo XIII.: Let priests hold as
sacred the authority of their pastors, let them
take it for certain that the sacerdotal ministry,
if not exercised under the guidance of the
Bishops, can never be either holy, or very
fruitful or respectable (Lett. Encyc. Nobilissima
Gallorum, 10 Feb., 1884).
VI - Diocesan Watch Committees
55. But of what avail, Venerable Brethren, will
be all Our commands and prescriptions if they be
not dutifully and firmly carried out? And, in
order that this may be done, it has seemed
expedient to Us to extend to all dioceses the
regulations laid down with great wisdom many
years ago by the Bishops of Umbria for theirs.
"In order," they say, "to extirpate the errors
already propagated and to prevent their further
diffusion, and to remove those teachers of
impiety through whom the pernicious effects of
such dif fusion are being perpetuated, this
sacred Assembly, following the example of St.
Charles Borromeo, has decided to establish in
each of the dioceses a Council consisting of
approved members of both branches of the clergy,
which shall be charged the task of noting the
existence of errors and the devices by which new
ones are introduced and propagated, and to inform
the Bishop of the whole so that he may take
counsel with them as to the best means for
nipping the evil in the bud and preventing it
spreading for the ruin of souls or, worse still,
gaining strength and growth" (Acts of the
Congress of the Bishops of Umbria, Nov. 1849, tit
2, art. 6). We decree, therefore, that in every
diocese a council of this kind, which We are
pleased to name "the Council of Vigilance," be
instituted without delay. The priests called to
form part in it shall be chosen somewhat after
the manner above prescribed for the Censors, and
they shall meet every two months on an appointed
day under the presidency of the Bishop. They
shall be bound to secrecy as to their
deliberations and decisions, and their function
shall be as follows: They shall watch most
carefully for every trace and sign of Modernism
both in publications and in teaching, and, to
preserve from it the clergy and the young, they
shall take all prudent, prompt and efficacious
measures. Let them combat novelties of words
remembering the admonitions of Leo XIII.
(Instruct. S.C. NN. EE. EE., 27 Jan., 1902): It
is impossible to approve in Catholic publications
of a style inspired by unsound novelty which
seems to deride the piety of the faithful and
dwells on the introduction of a new order of
Christian life, on new directions of the Church,
on new aspirations of the modern soul, on a new
vocation of the clergy, on a new Christian
civilisation. Language of this kind is not to be
tolerated either in books or from chairs of
learning. The Councils must not neglect the books
treating of the pious traditions of different
places or of sacred relics. Let them not permit
such questions to be discussed in periodicals
destined to stimulate piety, neither with
expressions savouring of mockery or contempt, nor
by dogmatic pronouncements, especially when, as
is often the case, what is stated as a certainty
either does not pass the limits of probability or
is merely based on prejudiced opinion. Concerning
sacred relics, let this be the rule: When
Bishops, who alone are judges in such matters,
know for certain the a relic is not genuine, let
them remove it at once from the veneration of the
faithful; if the authentications of a relic
happen to have been lost through civil
disturbances, or in any other way, let it not be
exposed for public veneration until the Bishop
has verified it. The argument of prescription or
well-founded presumption is to have weight only
when devotion to a relic is commendable by reason
of its antiquity, according to the sense of the
Decree issued in 1896 by the Congregation of
Indulgences and Sacred Relics: Ancient relics are
to retain the veneration they have always enjoyed
except when in individual instances there are
clear arguments that they are false or
suppositions. In passing judgment on pious
traditions be it always borne in mind that in
this matter the Church uses the greatest
prudence, and that she does not allow traditions
of this kind to be narrated in books except with
the utmost caution and with the insertion of the
declaration imposed by Urban VIII, and even then
she does not guarantee the truth of the fact
narrated; she simply does but forbid belief in
things for which human arguments are not wanting.
On this matter the Sacred Congregation of Rites,
thirty years ago, decreed as follows: These
apparitions and revelations have neither been
approved nor condemned by the Holy See, which has
simply allowed that they be believed on purely
human faith, on the tradition which they relate,
corroborated by testimonies and documents worthy
of credence (Decree, May 2, 1877). Anybody who
follows this rule has no cause for fear. For the
devotion based on any apparition, in as far as it
regards the fact itself, that is to say in as far
as it is relative, always implies the hypothesis
of the truth of the fact; while in as far as it
is absolute, it must always be based on the
truth, seeing that its object is the persons of
the saints who are honoured. The same is true of
relics. Finally, We entrust to the Councils of
Vigilance the duty of overlooking assiduously and
diligently social institutions as well as
writings on social questions so that they may
harbour no trace of Modernism, but obey the
prescriptions of the Roman Pontiffs.
VII - Triennial Returns
56. Lest what We have laid down thus far should
fall into oblivion, We will and ordain that the
Bishops of all dioceses, a year after the
publication of these letters and every three
years thenceforward, furnish the Holy See with a
diligent and sworn report on all the
prescriptions contained in them, and on the
doctrines that find currency among the clergy,
and especially in the seminaries and other
Catholic institutions, and We impose the like
obligation on the Generals of Religious Orders
with regard to those under them.
57. This, Venerable Brethren, is what we have
thought it our duty to write to you for the
salvation of all who believe. The adversaries of
the Church will doubtless abuse what we have said
to refurbish the old calumny by which we are
traduced as the enemy of science and of the
progress of humanity. In order to oppose a new
answer to such accusations, which the history of
the Christian religion refutes by never failing
arguments, it is Our intention to establish and
develop by every means in our power a special
Institute in which, through the co-operation of
those Catholics who are most eminent for their
learning, the progress of science and other
realms of knowledge may be promoted under the
guidance and teaching of Catholic truth. God
grant that we may happily realise our design with
the ready assistance of all those who bear a
sincere love for the Church of Christ. But of
this we will speak on another occasion.
58. Meanwhile, Venerable Brethren, fully
confident in your zeal and work, we beseech for
you with our whole heart and soul the abundance
of heavenly light, so that in the midst of this
great perturbation of men's minds from the
insidious invasions of error from every side, you
may see clearly what you ought to do and may
perform the task with all your strength and
courage.
May Jesus Christ, the author and finisher of our
faith, be with you by His power; and may the
Immaculate Virgin, the destroyer of all heresies,
be with you by her prayers and aid. And We, as a
pledge of Our affection and of divine assistance
in adversity, grant most affectionately and with
all Our heart to you, your clergy and people the
Apostolic Benediction.
Given at St. Peter's, Rome, on the 8th day of
September, 1907, the fifth year of our
Pontificate. PIUS X
Freemasonry must die, or liberty must die." -- Charles G. Finney
FREEMASONRY IS KABBALISTIC, NOT CHRISTIAN!
VISIT
TALMUDUNMASKED.COM FOR MORE INFORMATION.
THOSE WHO WILL NOT BE RULED BY CHRIST WILL BE RULED BY ANTI-CHRIST.
"Those who sin are slaves, and slaves have no rights."
-- Jesus Christ, John 8:34
"Qabalah is the heart of the
Western Hermetic tradition; it is the foundation upon which the art
of Western magic rests." -- Sandra and Chic Cicero, the authors of "The
Essencial Golden Dawn: An Introduction to High Magic",
page 96. Llewlellyn Publications
"For by thy sorceries were all nations decieved." Rev. 18:23
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on
this website are those of the
individual posters and do not necessarily
represent the opinions of N.O.S.
or Craig Heimbichner or
their associates. All materials posted herein
are protected by copyright law and the exemption for
fair use of copyrighted works. Neither this site nor its
content has been
authorized by Craig Heimbichner,
in whose honor the site
is dedicated.
"THOSE WHO WILL NOT BE GOVERNED BY GOD WILL BE RULED BY TYRANTS."
-- Thomas Penn
NO KING BUT JESUS!
| HOME
| MISSION
| BIBLE
| AUDIO
| VIDEO
| ALERT
|
|
Prepared & presented by the N.O.S.,
Loveland, Colorado, USA
|
|
[HTML Generated by PALMTREE Copyright (c) John Paul Jones, 2004]
| |
"Join me in battle, little children,
against the black beast, Masonry..."
Mother Mary [source: Father Gobbi,
Evolution & Freemasonry]
"THEIR GOD IS THE DEVIL.
THEIR LAW IS UNTRUTH.
THEIR CULT IS TURPITUDE."
Pope Pius IX, speaking of
Freemasonry
"Yea, ye took up the tabernacle of
Moloch,
and the star of your god
Remphan,
figures which ye make to worship
them; and I will carry you away
beyond Babylon." Acts 7:43 KJV
Wherefore come out from among
them, and be ye separate,
saith the Lord, and touch not
the unclean thing.." (II
Corinthians 6:18 KJV)
Joan of Arc on
the Bohemians
|
|
HOME 
