Poison to the Branches
I’m taking a Church history course on Modernism and read the 1907 encyclical of Pope Pius X, Pascendi doninici gregis. It helped me understand the division of science and faith in modern culture and how that division affected the division of Church and State. It all started with the rejection of Divine Revelation as objective, external truth. Pope Piux X called it “the synthesis of all heresies” and a poison. “And having struck at this root of immortality, they proceed to disseminate poison through the whole tree.” The reasoning goes like this.
Truth resides in the individual consciousness as sentiment or experience, something subjective. Divine Truth is reduced to whatever an individual believes God is telling him.
That single false assertion is responsible for the perceived separation of science and faith. Science is limited to the external physical world, while faith is limited to individual internal sentiments. The two, therefore, are necessarily unconnected, strangers to each other. Since science is an evolving discipline that changes as scientists develop new theories, dogma is also expected to change with the times, and it therefore becomes subordinated to science if the two are ever to be reconciled.
The encyclical says that the Church, queen in all matters and instituted by God, has an obligation and duty towards civil societies because truth sets man free. Modernism repudiates that doctrine and holds that since the State is temporal and all religions are spiritual matters, the Church and State have nothing to do with each other, and subordinates the Church to the State just as faith is subjected to science. The Catholic, unfortunately, is separated from the citizen. According to Modernist thinking, Catholics have the right to do what they think is best for the common good without troubling themselves about the authority of the Church. Sound familiar? Pope Pius X explicitly called this an “abuse of ecclesiastical authority.”
A century later, here we are. As predicted, the State is telling the Church to reform or be punished. It also seems the solution to this heavy problem is the same as it always has been – pray, hope, and evangelize. Now that I understand why rejecting objective truth logically leads people and societies to reject God, I know to be even more vigilant in defending it with strength and courage, to proclaim publicly a profound respect for Church authority without compromise. That’s the antidote to counteract the poison. Live your faith boldly, because if faith isn’t everything, it’s nothing.
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Thanks for putting this into words. We are being coerced into keeping our faith private and subjective. Unfortunately, I think the libertarians, whom I still rather respect (I sort of like Ron Paul, but am wary of his followers), are fully on board with marginalizing religion to the realm of subjectivity.
Many years ago, there used to be a slogan “subjectivity is truth.” Which of course is ridiculous. It meant that any old crackpot idea was as true as any other one. Person A can say: “hey I believe X” and Person B can say: “hey I believe not-X” and Person C can say: “I think you’re both right, X and not-X is true.” Which of course is a complete obliteration of Aristotle’s perfectly fine principle of non-contradiction.
Subjectivity is truth? I wondered if it came as a weird mis-translation from a statement of Kierkegaard that “truth is subjectivity” — a very different proposal!
The truth of a marriage isn’t the legal paper trail it leaves behind. The birth certificates, the birthday party receipts, etc. The public, “official” record is not truth. Truth is the loyalty and devotion the husband and wife have for each other. The truth of the marriage is not the public display. It is the things not uttered. They are more real than the paper trail.
That’s what Kierkegaard meant.
Yes, truth is subjectivity.
But subjectivity is not truth.
God have mercy on the modern age.
But this begs the question: How do we know that the Catholic Church’s representation of Divine Revelation is in fact true?
Thanks Jeff,
Funny you mention Libertarians. I never could get on board with the idea of it.
Your other comment reminded me of something else I read. J.R.R. Tolkien wrote, “Just as a word is an invention about an object or an idea, so a story can be an invention about Truth.”
This course is going to be interesting. Pope Pius X wrote so lucidly, it is amazing how what he predicted came to be.
Thanks for explaining these things. I’m listening and learning!
Rob T,
In a Word — Christ.
And if you seek knowledge of the ways and reasons we know that Divine Revelation as guarded by the Church is true, and you have a sincere will to love Truth, to love God, who made you to know Him, it’s there to be seen.
And say your prayers!
“And if you seek knowledge of the ways and reasons we know that Divine Revelation as guarded by the Church is true, and you have a sincere will to love Truth, to love God, who made you to know Him, it’s there to be seen.”
That pushes the question back one step further: How do we know that this statement is true?
Rob T,
You have to decide, using the faculty of your intellect and your will.
The objective truth is there. You study it, ask if it makes sense. Real truth will make itself known. The truth is also easy to grasp, but you also have to have the will to have faith.
For me, the will came first. I wanted to know more. The more I learned the more I loved – like a relationship with a friend. The more I loved, the more I wanted to learn. God is the author of all truth. But you have free will.
It’s like walking into the light. You realize you can’t see all the light, but you want to see more and more. A little light is better than no light at all.
I could say 2,000 years and billions of people, could point out how the early Church grew and martyrs full of grace died before they denied what they had embraced, could point out all the prophecies that were fulfilled in Christ, could point out the moral miracle that is the Church, could point out how Christ changed the world — but until someone is sincerely interested in considering whether something is true or not, it’s only an exercise in futility.
You have to ask yourself every step of the way, “Is this true?”
“Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.” – Gilbert K. Chesterson