This conclusion can be arrived at only by pushing aside all rules of scientific interpretation. What progress is this, with what civilization can the Papacy not be reconciled? The progress of modern liberalism. The heading of the paragraph containing this proposition states expressly that “errors of modern liberalism” are to be condemned. This becomes clear by the Allocution “Jamdudum cernimus”of March 18, 1861, from which this condemnation is taken. There it is stated: “It is asked that the Pope of Rome reconcile himself with progress, to liberalism as they call it, to the new civilization, and compromise with them.... But now we ask of those inviting us to be reconciled with modern civilization, whether the facts be such as to tempt the Vicar of Christ on earth ... to connect himself with the civilization of to-day without the greatest injury to this conscience ... a civilization that has caused the dissemination of numerous despicable opinions, errors, and principles in conflict with the Catholic religion and its doctrines.” Of course a civilization cut off from any true Christianity by education and science, by family life and political life, a progress, trying to stop the activity of the Church in every sphere and attacking her in their speech, in newspapers, and in schools, [pg 165]cannot demand of the Papacy to join hands with them. No Christian, whether Catholic or Protestant, can profess this “progress.” We have here at the same time a specimen of how they proceed in interpreting the propositions of the Syllabus in order to discover in them all possible absurdities. Many propositions are short sentences taken from the work of an author, or from previous Papal declarations. Hence they must be understood in the sense of those sources. Furthermore, attention must be paid to what is specially emphasized. Then, again, we must remember that by repudiating a proposition only the contradictory is asserted, but not the contrary; to conclude this would be to conclude too much. For instance, the seventy-seventh condemned proposition reads: “In our times it is no longer to any purpose that the Catholic religion should be the sole religion of the state to the exclusion of all other confessions.” According to some, e.g., Frins, the contradictory is thus formulated: “In our times also it is still to the purpose....” According to others, however, e.g., Hoensbroeeh and Goetz: “In our times also it is beneficial....” Thus while Hoensbroechand Goetz make the ecclesiastical doctrine appear to read that it would be beneficial to hold fast to the Catholic as the sole religion of the state under all circumstances even to-day, the actual opposite is the doctrine, that this may be yet to the purpose under certain circumstances. While no reasonable man could object to the latter, the former is eagerly exploited against the Church (Heiner, Der Syllabus, 1905, p. 31, seq.; cf. Frins, Kirchenlex, 2d ed., XI, 1031; Hoensbroech, l. c. 25; Goetz, Der Ultramontanismus, 1905, 148).
Of course it may be taken for granted that the Syllabus is distasteful to modern liberalism, which is branded there as one of the errors of the day. Yet the Church cannot be censured for not becoming unfaithful to her vocation of preserving the patrimony of Christianity to mankind, or for acting as the invincible defender of the Christian religion in the universal struggle between truth and error, even though the latter pose with great assurance.
The Condemnation of Modernism.
The great excitement caused in intellectual circles by the Syllabus of Pius IX. was aroused again, though not with the same intensity, when some years ago the news of another Syllabus was circulated through the world, and the excitement increased when the rumour was followed by the publication of the encyclical “Pascendi Dominici gregis.” Indeed, the new event was not very unlike the former: in the 60's Rome's sentence was [pg 166] directed against the Modernism of that period, which called itself liberalism. The excitement caused by its condemnation was more intense, because it struck directly at the principles governing the liberal politics against the Church, which principles were claimed to be the foundation of the modern state. Now the Modernism repudiated by the Church's voice was nothing more than the old humanistic, fundamental, errors of liberalism, but put in the form of a religious and philosophical view of the world, and in Catholic garb: it meant man detached from everything supernatural, and dependent alone on himself in his intellectual life, more especially in his religious life.
Now, as then, similar charges were raised: The Church is the irreconcilable foe of modern achievements and the opponent of them; “the encyclical aims at modern intellectual life in all its phases and forms” (XX. Jahrh., 1908, 568). Now, as then, we have the same ambiguity of the terms “modern” and “progress.”
What was condemned by the Church? The document “Lamentabili sane exitu,” issued by the teaching authority of the Church on July 3, 1907, is entitled “A Decree of the Holy Congregation of the Roman and General Inquisition or the Holy Office,” which has to watch over the unadulterated preservation of the faith. The decree soon was christened the “New Syllabus,” because of its similarity with the Syllabus of Pius IX. In a similar way it condemns sixty-five propositions against the inspiration and the historical character of Holy Scripture, against the divine origin of revelation and of faith, against the divinity of Christ, His Resurrection and His atoning death, against the Sacraments, and against the Church. These are component parts of the philosophical religious system of thought which soon after was set forth and condemned by the encyclical “Pascendi,” of September 8, 1907.
Modernism is essentially philosophy, combining modern agnostic-autonomous subjectivism with evolutionism, and applied to the Christian religion, which thereby becomes disfigured beyond recognition. Its chain of thought, excellently stated by the encyclical, starts with the proposition that the supernatural is beyond the knowledge of man, and hence man [pg 167] cannot know anything of God. The faith which unites us to God is nothing but a feeling, born of a blind impulse, which may be considered a divine revelation. If this religious feeling is expressed in forms, the result is “doctrines of faith”; for Christian “dogmas” are this and nothing more, images and symbols of the noble and divine, hence they are of human origin and are changeable according to the disposition and the degree of learning of the individual, as well as of the times. There is no dogmatic Christianity, in the sense of an immutable religious doctrine, nor is there any absolutely true religion, for religion is but a variable feeling, that has nothing to do with cognition and knowledge. For this reason they never can come in conflict. The Christian religion originally was nothing else but the religious experience of Christ, who was not God but a man; in the course of time it has undergone changes which are reflected in the shaping of Christian dogma. Holy Scripture is, similarly, the expression of the religious experience of its human authors; the Sacraments are symbols, arousing religious sentiments; the Church is not founded by God, and only has the task of regulating the development of Christianity, and of sanctioning at any time whatever religious experiences the changeable spirit of progressive civilization may produce.
This is Modernism, as represented chiefly in France, Italy, and to an extent also in England; in Germany it did not appear as a system, but even there its spirit became quite apparent. Thus, Modernism is nothing else but the systematic arrangement of those ideas which we have hitherto met, in various places, as the fundamental principles of modern religious thought opposed to Christianity. It is subjectivism with its autonomy of the human subject, its agnosticism, its relativism of truth, sailing under the name of “historical method of thought” and “progress,” and, finally, with its freedom of thought and conscience which rejects all authority. It is Kant in the robe of a Catholic theologian. Ultimately it is nothing else but the shocking negation of everything supernatural, hence complete apostasy. “The salient point is recognized,” says Troeltsch, “the enemy is the modern historical method of thought, the [pg 168] concept of evolution, the theory of inner experience and relativism as applied to religion, the negation of supernaturalism as taught by the old Church” (l. c. 22). Hence, was it not manifest that the Church had to take measures against this positive denial of Christianity as a whole, the more so as the uneducated could be easily deceived by it? Every organism will throw off excrescences, the more energetically the stronger it is. Any religion lacking this strength is doomed. That the Papal declaration aroused such opposition must not be wondered at; it hit once more the central idea of the anti-Christian view of the world. The judgment was not passed against modern intellectual life, but only against the grave errors inherent in it; the Church did not condemn progress, nor the increase and deepening of knowledge of the truth; not the enrichment of the life of the mind, of feeling, and the will, but only pretended progress; she did not condemn the historical method nor the idea of evolution, but their false application, which dissolved anything and everything in growth, purely natural growth at that, without acknowledging a revelation of absolute truths.
Orthodox Protestants have openly praised this bold deed of the Pope as highly meritorious for the preservation of the Christian faith. Thus the South African Church Quarterly Review (Episcopal) of January, 1908, said: “The Syllabus and Encyclical of Pius X. against Modernism are deserving of the respectful consideration of all Christians.... At the present stage of history the opposing factors are driving with great speed towards a fierce and resolute struggle between Christ and anti-Christ. All who sincerely love Christ, our Lord, must rally under one flag.... Narrow-minded hostility towards the Pope must give way to the desire to be united with the great community which is fighting so valiantly for the old faith of our fathers.... One must be blind, to misjudge the tremendous influence exerted by the last deed of the Pope in favour of the faith.”
Even the Evangelical “Kirchenzeitung” admitted that the encyclical is “directed chiefly against the more or less unchristian modern views of the world ... which we must combat.... Undoubtedly it is not only the Pope's right to lay bare the unchristian tendency of these ideas and their incompatibility with the Christian faith, but it is also his duty and his merit” (November 29, 1908, n. 48).