The Gift of Faith, Conclusion
Michael Davies
We come now to one of the Modernist theories which was most destructive to authentic Christianity. This is Loisy's distinction between "the Christ of faith" and "the Christ of history." Harnack had claimed that the historic Christ had not founded a church or instituted any sacraments. Loisy was prepared to concede that it could not be proved that He had. The historic facts were not of paramount importance. Loisy considered that the essence of a dogma lies not in the fact that it is objectively true, but in its ability to satisfy and express a momentary attitude or need of the religious feeling.
This was precisely the Modernist attitude even to such fundamental dogmas as the Virgin Birth or the physical Resurrection of Our Lord. Such beliefs, Loisy maintained, belonged not to true history but to the history of faith. Perhaps they were true, perhaps they were not. It didn't really matter. If some Christians found them helpful, well, good luck to them. What, he maintained, was totally unacceptable was any attempt to impose such beliefs as historically true upon all believers as a condition of membership of the Church. And what of the Christ of faith, distinguished by the Modernists from the Christ of history, did He really exist? St. Pius X had no doubts about the implications of this Modernist thesis: "We have a twofold 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" (Pascendi, p. 38).
Dogma, then, for Loisy was simply symbolic, a symbol of what Christians believe, a symbol of their faith, and by faith he meant something purely subjective, not something which was an accurate expression of objective reality. Thus Jesus exerted such an influence on His followers that this influence remained long after His death, and was "symbolized" by the story of the Resurrection. Whether the story was objectively true was not important for him, what mattered was the truth that it was intended to convey—and this is a crucially important distinction, the distinction between orthodoxy and Modernism.
The Dethronement of God
The logic of the Modernist thesis is inexorable. If the "Christ of faith" is no more than a symbol of our subjective beliefs, why should, and how could, the "God of faith" have an objective or transcendent existence? Though individual Modernists might make profession of belief in a transcendent God, St. Pius X would not accept such a belief as compatible with their system. For Modernists, God is not transcendent; He is not "out there" not "wholly other" as Karl Barth expressed it. He is in here, in the human conscience. God is, in fact, whatever we care to make Him, a symbol of the ethical precepts currently accepted in the collective conscience. St. Pius X explained in Pascendi that the Modernist God was no more than a symbol and that "the personality of God will become a matter of doubt and the gate will be opened to Pantheism....For this is the question which We ask: Does or does not this immanence leave God distinct from man?" The Pope answered that it did not; the doctrine of immanence in the Modernist acceptation makes no distinction between God and Man in the objective order. "The rigorous conclusion from this," stated the Pope, "is the identity of man with God, which means Pantheism." The logical outcome of Modernism, then, is the objective that Satan had set himself—the dethronement of God. The logic of Modernism is that man has no God outside himself—if accepted it must certainly result in the destruction of all religion and ultimately in the destruction of civilization itself. This is precisely what we are seeing in contemporary society, above all in man's arrogation to himself of the divine prerogatives of life and death—contraception and abortion are the means and the symbols of the God-like powers which man has bestowed upon himself. How long will it be before a divine chastisement punishes this folly?
The errors of Loisy's "little red book" were denounced by orthodox biblical scholars. Modernist writers and sympathizers hastened to his defense, and attacked his critics. Listen to the description St. Pius X gives of Modernist methods:
There is little reason to wonder that the Modernists vent all their bitterness and hatred on Catholics who zealously fight the battles of the Church. There is no species of insult which they do not heap upon them, but their usual course is to charge them with ignorance or obstinacy. When an adversary rises up against them with an erudition and force that render him redoubtable, they seek to make a conspiracy of silence around him to nullify the effects of his attack. This policy towards Catholics is the more invidious in that they belaud with admiration which knows no bounds the writers who range themselves on their side, hailing their works, exuding novelty in every page, with a chorus of applause. For them the scholarship of a writer is in direct proportion to the recklessness of his attacks on antiquity, and of his efforts to undermine tradition and the ecclesiastical magisterium.
The words of St. Pius X could be applied to our present situation without requiring any modification—let anyone who doubts this study the reaction to public criticism of Hans Küng, Edward Schillebeecks, Charles Curran, Raymond Brown, or Richard McBrien. The most prominent defender of the Modernists in Britain was the Baron von Hugel, son of a Scottish mother and an Austrian nobleman. He undertook the role of apologist and advocate for Loisy for the next fifteen years. Baron von Hugel was a pious and sincere man who, somehow, managed to escape condemnation himself. The true (and unedifying) state of Loisy's mind at this time is revealed by an entry in his journal:
"Monsieur von Hugel who defends me so bravely believes very differently from me in the divinity of Jesus Christ....I do not believe in the divinity of Jesus any more than Harnack...and I look upon the personal incarnation of God as a philosophic myth."
St. Pius X Intervenes
The initial success and rapid spread of Modernism was due in no small way to an unfortunate lack of firmness on the part of Pope Leo XIII. In his Encyclical Providentissimus Deus, he laid down the guidelines within which Catholic biblical scholars could work, but he failed to insist upon adequate disciplinary action when such Modernists as Loisy clearly overstepped these limits. "In the failing hands of the aged Pontiff," wrote Father de Grandmaison, "the reins grew a little slack towards the end." But in 1903 he was succeeded by Giuseppe Melchior Sarto, the Patriarch of Venice, venerated as a saint during his lifetime, and now canonized as Pope St. Pius X. He took as his motto: "Instaurare omnia in Christo"—"To restore all things in Christ." The Pope had no doubt that among the many dangers threatening the Church during his pontificate, that to the purity of doctrine was the greatest. The primary mandate entrusted by Christ to His Church was to preach the Gospel-message which He had delivered to His Apostles. If that message once became corrupted, then the gates of hell would have prevailed against the Church. St. Pius X realized this, and also realized that as Pope he had an obligation to act in defense of orthodoxy. He began his Encyclical Pascendi, exposing the errors of the Modernists by stating that:
One of the primary obligations assigned by Christ to the office divinely committed to Us of feeding the Lord's flock is that of guarding with the greatest vigilance the deposit of the faith delivered to the saints, rejecting the profane novelties of words and the gainsaying of knowledge falsely so called...these latter days have witnessed a notable increase in the number of the enemies of the Cross of Christ, who, by arts entirely new and full of deceit, are striving to destroy the vital energy of the Church, and, as far as in them lies, utterly to subvert the very Kingdom of Christ. Wherefore We may no longer keep silence, lest We should seem to fail in Our most sacred duty.
St. Pius X had five of Loisy's books placed upon the Index in December 1903. Loisy made a reluctant act of submission in 1904: "I remain in the Church for reasons which are not of faith but of moral expedience." St. Pius X noted this in Pascendi when he wrote:
While they make a pretense of bowing their heads, their minds and hands are more boldly 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 (p. 34).
Writing in A Dictionary of Catholic Theology, Father Joseph Crehan, S.J., states that Loisy was certainly not sincere any longer. Thus, in a letter to The Times, he wrote: "I was a Catholic, I remain a Catholic. I was a critic, I remain one." In a letter to Cardinal Merry del Val on 24 January 1904, Loisy stated: "I accept all the dogmas of the Church." He wrote this after consultation with Baron von Hugel, but his real thoughts were set down in his diary: "I have not been a Catholic in the official sense of the word for a long time....Roman Catholicism as such is destined to perish, and it will deserve no regrets." In an entry dated 12 May 1904, he states: "Pius X, the head of the Catholic Church, would excommunicate me most decidedly if he knew that I hold...the virgin birth and the resurrection to be purely moral symbols, and the entire Catholic system to be a tyranny which acts in the name of God and Christ against God Himself and against the Gospel." Despite all the incontrovertible evidence which proves the insincerity of Loisy and other Modernists, they still have apologists today who depict them as sincere and selfless seekers after truth, noble scholars who fell victim to an ignorant and unscrupulous clerical bureaucracy. In the Liberal-Catholic mythology, Loisy is still the hero and St. Pius X the villain.
Before publishing his Encyclical Pascendi, St. Pius X had ordered the compilation of a syllabus of the principal errors of the Modernists, very much upon the lines of the celebrated Syllabus of Errors of Pope Pius IX. The decree was eventually published by the Holy Office on 3 July 1907. It condemned sixty-five propositions which were incompatible with the Catholic Faith. Most were taken from the works of Loisy, a few from the writing of George Tyrrell, an English Jesuit, and a French Modernist named Edouard Le Roy, who was still alive in 1954. When reading the condemned propositions of Lamentabili it is hard to believe that the decree was not addressed to the errors which have been circulating in the Church since the Second Vatican Council.
St. Pius X followed his Syllabus with the Encyclical Pascendi gregis which was published in September 1907. It fell upon the Modernists like a hammer blow. In all the countries which had been affected by Modernism attempts were made to stir up opposition to the Pope and win support for the heresy.
There was certainly cooperation among the Modernists in different countries in mounting their campaign against the Encyclical, a fact made clear by the speed with which their responses were translated into different languages. Some of them denied recognizing their ideas in the Encyclical. An Italian Modernist named Buonatti claimed that "the Pope had condemned a phantom heresy."
Most of the Modernists submitted, but some preferred to leave the Church rather than retract their errors: Loisy was among them. He had already abandoned his priestly functions in 1906. He broke with the Church after the publication of the Encyclical, and was formally excommunicated in 1908. Having failed to change the Church from within, he then proceeded to attack her from without. Given the anti-Catholic bias of the French state-education system, it is hardly surprising that it soon provided him with a prestigious teaching post, Professor of Religions at the College de France, a position which he occupied from 1909 until 1930. He devoted the remainder of his life to justifying Modernism and documenting its history, a sad and rather pathetic fate for a man who had aspired to the status of a Father of the Church. While he had been allowed to remain within the Church, spreading error under the guise of a Catholic theologian, Loisy had posed a great threat to the Faith. Outside the Church, he was no longer a danger; he could be seen for what he was, and that was what he accused the Church of being: an enemy of Christ and His Gospel.
St. Pius X felt that he had still not adequately fulfilled his apostolic mandate even after placing Modernist books upon the Index, approving the Syllabus, publishing his Encyclical, and excommunicating the Modernist leaders. He realized that there were Modernist sympathizers in influential positions who had escaped sanctions as their views had never been made public. On 1 September 1910 he published a Motu Proprio entitled Sacrarum antistum, which obliged every priest to sign an anti-Modernist oath, the form of which is extremely detailed. No man of integrity holding Modernist views could possibly have signed this oath, and it meant that for some decades at least Catholic seminaries and universities were purged of proponents of the heresy. The anti-Modernist oath aroused as much, if not more, opposition than the Encyclical itself. It was particularly resented by academics, especially in Germany. Protestant faculties expressed solidarity with their Catholic colleagues in their hour of trial. But when all the shouting had died down only about two dozen priests throughout Europe refused to sign the oath; some of them joined Protestant sects, others joined the Old Catholics. Following the Second Vatican Council, Pope Paul VI abolished both the Index of Forbidden Books and the anti-Modernist Oath.
When the furor aroused by the oath had subsided, St. Pius X had succeeded in purging the Church of at least the external expression of the Modernist heresy. "When all was said and done," wrote Henri Daniel-Rops, "Pius X had triumphed." The reasons for the triumph of St. Pius X are easy to discover. Firstly, he had a correct sense of priorities, and he knew that as Pope his first duty was to preserve intact the Deposit of Faith. Secondly, when the doctrine of the Modernists became clearly heretical he condemned them at once—but he did not stop at condemnation. A condemnation which is not enforced is worthless. Furthermore, the Pope not only took steps to excommunicate obdurate public Modernists, but to purge the Church of their clandestine counterparts, or at least to compel them to submit. Had he not taken these forceful measures the heresy would have spread throughout the Church with disastrous consequences. But God sent us a saint to prevent this happening, a saint who had as his motto: "To restore all things in Christ," which is precisely what he did!
Partisans of Error
I will conclude this study with a rather long quotation from the beginning of Pascendi. In this passage St. Pius X exposes the evil and the danger of Modernism. Every word of this quotation is applicable to the Church today. The longer the poison of Modernism is allowed to spread through the veins of the Mystical Body, the harder it will be to eradicate.
The partisans of error are to be sought not only among the Church's open enemies; but, what is to be most dreaded and deplored, in her very bosom, and are the more mischievous the less they keep in the open. We allude, Venerable Brethren, to many who belong to the Catholic laity, and, what is much more sad, to the ranks of the priesthood itself, who, animated by a false zeal for the Church, lacking the solid safeguards 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, put themselves forward 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 audacity, they degrade to the condition of a simple and ordinary man.
Although they express their astonishment that We should number them amongst the enemies of the Church, no one will be reasonably surprised that we should do so, if leaving out of account the internal disposition of the soul, of which God alone is the Judge, he considers their tenents, their manner of speech, and their action. Nor indeed would he be wrong in regarding them as the most pernicious of all the adversaries of the Church. For, as We have said, they put into operation their designs for her undoing, 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 from the very fact that their knowledge of her is more intimate. Moreover, they lay the axe not to the branches and shoots, but to the very root, that is, to the faith and its deepest fibres. And once having struck at this root of immortality, they proceed to diffuse poison through the whole tree, so that there is no part of Catholic truth which they leave untouched, none that they do not strive to corrupt.
Current Issue
