What Did Pope Pius X Lament?
This enthusiastic Catholic convert is taking a graduate theology course this semester on Modernism. The more I read about what happened in the late 1800′s and early 1900′s as theologians tried “modernize” the Magisterium, the more I understand why tradition had to be defended, and still has to be defended.
Modernism is very much alive, and it is muddled and misleading. Pope Pius X addressed and condemned – and lamented indeed – the propositions of Modernism in 1907. As I read through them, I thought, “Wow, I’ve heard that before!” It is lamentable how some of these ideas over time confused so many people. Reading this document helped me understand a little better why things are the way they are now.
I’m certain some readers are very familiar with Lamentabili sane, the syllabus condemning the errors of Modernism promulgated by Pope Pius X on July 3, 1907, so forgive patiently please my ever-opening eyes just now learning about these things; other readers may not be familiar either. Hopefully you’ll both join me in exploring this part of Church history – either as an educator or a curious questioner.
It should be noted that the Modernists objected to the definitions of their propositions, but they also admitted that these propositions were taken from their own writings. There were 65 propositions in the encyclical. Here are some of them, edited for brevity and with some [reactions and questions]. The whole encyclical can be found here. Note particularly, the Modernist views on the relationship of science and faith. Some others left my jaw dropped.
These Modernist propositions were condemned:
#2. The Church’s interpretation of the Sacred Books…is subject to the more accurate judgment and correction of the exegetes. [Well, that's pretty arrogant.]
#3. From the ecclesiastical judgments and censures passed against free and more scientific exegesis, one can conclude that the Faith the Church proposes contradicts history and that Catholic teaching cannot really be reconciled with the true origins of the Christian religion. [What? Faith contradicts history?]
#4. Even by dogmatic definitions the Church’s magisterium cannot determine the genuine sense of the Sacred Scriptures. [In other words, anyone can make up what it means then.]
#5. Since the deposit of Faith contains only revealed truths, the Church has no right to pass judgment on the assertions of the human sciences. [Wow, that sounds familiar!]
#8. They are free from all blame who treat lightly the condemnations passed by the Sacred Congregation of the Index or by the Roman Congregations. [Because they were so right?]
#9. They display excessive simplicity or ignorance who believe that God is really the author of the Sacred Scriptures. [Well, I've never been told I was simple for being religious.]
#11. Divine inspiration does not extend to all of Sacred Scriptures… [Noooo.]
#14. In many narrations the Evangelists recorded…things…false…. [False?]
#16. The narrations of John are not properly history… [Did they have something against John?]
#17. The fourth Gospel exaggerated miracles… [Oh boy!]
#19. Heterodox exegetes have expressed the true sense of the Scriptures more faithfully than Catholic exegetes. [But of course.]
#20. Revelation could be nothing else than the consciousness man acquired of his revelation to God.
#21. Revelation, constituting the object of the Catholic faith, was not completed with the Apostles.
#22. The dogmas the Church holds out as revealed are not truths which have fallen from heaven.
#23. Thus the critic may reject as false facts the Church holds as most certain.
#25. The assent of faith ultimately rests on a mass of probabilities. [??? What does that mean?]
#27. The divinity of Jesus Christ is not proved from the Gospels. [The old catch word, "prove."]
#31. The doctrine concerning Christ taught by Paul, John, and the Councils of Nicea, Ephesus and Chalcedon is not that which Jesus taught but that which the Christian conscience conceived concerning Jesus. [Clearly, because of their "excessive simplicity."]
#33 Everyone who is not led by preconceived opinions can readily see that either Jesus professed an error… [I'm not the brightest brain in the world, but this sounds like really childish reasoning.]
#34. The critics can ascribe to Christ a knowledge without limits…which is repugnant to the moral sense.
#35. Christ did not always possess the consciousness of His Messianic dignity. [That doesn't make any sense.]
#36. The Resurrection of the Savior is not properly a fact of the historical order. [It only happened supernaturally.]
#39. The opinions concerning the origin of the Sacraments which the Fathers of Trent held…are very different from those which now rightly exist among historians who examine Christianity .
#42. The Christian community imposed the necessity of Baptism…
#43. The practice of administering Baptism to infants was a disciplinary evolution…
#45. Not everything which Paul narrates concerning the institution of the Eucharist (I Cor. 11:23-25) is to be taken historically. [So, are they calling Paul a liar?]
#49. When the Christian supper gradually assumed the nature of a liturgical action those who customarily presided over the supper acquired the sacerdotal character. [Is this where some progressive ideas about women started?]
#51. It is impossible that Matrimony could have become a Sacrament of the new law until later in the Church…
#52. It was far from the mind of Christ to found a Church as a society which would continue on earth for a long course of centuries. [So they knew the mind of Christ better than the Fathers? Got it.]
#53. The organic constitution of the Church is not immutable. Like human society, Christian society is subject to a perpetual evolution. [They liked Darwin.]
#54. Dogmas, Sacraments and hierarchy, both their notion and reality, are only interpretations and evolutions of the Christian intelligence… [Sounds a lot like Dawkins' memetics today.]
#55. Simon Peter never even suspected that Christ entrusted the primacy in the Church to him. [Are they calling Peter a simpleton too?]
#56. The Roman Church became the head of all the churches…merely through political conditions.
#57. The Church has shown that she is hostile to the progress of the natural and theological sciences. [Never heard that before.]
#58. Truth is no more immutable than man himself, since it evolved with him, in him, and through him. [Like I said, they liked evolution.]
#60. Christian Doctrine was originally Judaic. Through successive evolutions it became first Pauline, then Joannine, finally Hellenic and universal. [Yet they call it into question? Did I miss something?]
#62. The chief articles of the Apostles’ Creed did not have the same sense for the Christians of the first ages as they have for the Christians of our time. [It seems like they are taking the word "sense" and making it mean whatever they want it to mean, a typical liberal tactic.]
#63. The Church shows that she is incapable of effectively maintaining evangelical ethics since she obstinately clings to immutable doctrines which cannot be reconciled with modern progress. [Uh huh, that sounds like today's progressive arguments.]
#64. Scientific progress demands that the concepts of Christian doctrine concerning God, creation, revelation, the Person of the Incarnate Word, and Redemption be re-adjusted. [Because why? They googled it? Oh wait.]
#65. Modern Catholicism can be reconciled with true science only if it is transformed into a non-dogmatic Christianity; that is to say, into a broad and liberal Protestantism. [There you go. That one, I think, pretty much sums up Modernism.]
No related posts.
Everything old is new again…
I have a question about one of these lamentations.
“#5. Since the deposit of Faith contains only revealed truths, the Church has no right to pass judgment on the assertions of the human sciences. ”
Does this mean that, at least until recently, the Catholic Church taught that ideas like Gould’s Non-Opposing Magesteria (NOMA) were heretical? Does the Catholic Church still think it is heresy to accept Gould’s framework?
In case you or other readers don’t know what Gould’s idea, NOMA, is, here is a sentence-long summary:
There is a clear separation between scientific ideas and religious ideas, and one can’t deal with the other.
Hi Paul,
Heresy refers to doctrine, so it would not be heresy, it is just wrong. It’s illogical to think that science and religion are separate. God is the creator of everything, so the truths of faith and the truths discovered in the physical world that God created cannot contradict each other. Science is a *chip off the ol’ block* so to speak, it’s part of all truth but not all truth itself, so the chip can’t be pitted against the block.
Or — truth cannot contradict truth.
It is true however that science and theology have their own methods and must retain their autonomy as disciplines, but they work together to seek ultimate answers. Gould, who was an agnostic Jew, believed that over here religion could make up all its dogma and teach it, and over there science could have its own magisterium and teach its “dogma.” But if that were true, then it would mean that there is no ultimate unified truth, and we just make up individual bodies of knowledge that are all unrelated – because we can or something. NOMA destroys the whole idea of metaphysics and ultimate truth.
I always thought Gould’s real point for taking about NOMA was to appear to be friendly to religion, whilst really kicking it to the curb for convenience. “Good doggy, religion, now leave us smart scientists alone. Shoo, go away and play over there.”
**NOMA stands for “non-overlapping magisteria.”
JoAnna,
“Everything old is new again…” Yep.
Stacy,
Thanks for the correction. NOMA is non-overlapping magisteria.
I am very attracted to Gould’s view (and will probably make a post about it, sometimes soon). It is what I generally accept about science and religion. Except that I interpret the consequences differently.
It is a very strong intuition shared by many that there is a single real world, and science and religion are exploring this same world. I think this is the case, although I may be mistaken. Maybe, though, reality is an exceptionally subtle and beautiful structure with a complexity and richness to it we have only begun to explore, and with an overwhelming underlying simplicity the like of which we cannot yet imagine. In that case, maybe religion and science are both tendrils extending from this now dark and amorphous structure of the unknown, and into the dim light. What we see of them astounds us. We attempt to compare them, and find what seem to be terrifying contradictions and absurdities. We can’t put the puzzle together. We can either surrender and deny both (as a postmodernist might do), and say, as you seem to, that there is no one picture of truth, because the pieces don’t fit. Or we can simply close our minds off to one or the other, and accept the edge of reality that we know as science, and throw out religion, or accept the religious answers, and discard science.
Or we can dare, as St. Thomas Aquinas dared, as Aristotle and Plato dared before him, to continue to search for that unified truth. I just believe that so little has been accomplished in both science and religion that it is too early to find any comparison between the two. They are completely non-overlapping at this time. Once humanity discovers more, tracking out the worthy paths of religion and science both, we might find that the paths converge. There have been signs of this convergence. False trails such as geocentrism, creationism, intelligent design, uncritical histories of the church and bible, the bizarre pseudo-aristotelian science of the Muslims, Hinduism and cyclic universes, among many others, have been discovered, explored, found to be false, and abandoned. Some, discouraged by these false trails, surrender the quest and settle, either in the warm and wild embrace of religious faith, or in the icy regularity and illusory stability of scientism.
Many continue the journey. I am confident that trying to join religion and science at this point will result in complete nonsense (just look at the attempts in our century alone!). But I am hopeful that, someday, when more of religion is understood and more of the material world is discovered, there will be found bridges. And then, I agree with you, we will have found that there is a single deep reality, and will no longer have to contend with pieces that do not overlap.
Yet it seems to be this very view that Pope Pius X condemns. Why? And does the Church condemn it still?
Hi Stacy! I’m over here from Leila’s blog. I became interested in St. Pope Pius X – and believe it or not, had never heard of him – until I found last year what I am pretty sure is a 2nd class relic of his that has been in my family since before he was canonized, i.e., the relic is labeled as “Blessed Pope Pius X.”
I did a little research on him and realized, from what little I read, he was 100% correct in his predictions. In addition to the encyclical you mentioned, I suggest that you read (if you haven’t already), Pope St. Pius X’s encyclical Pascendi Dominici in which he talked about the dangers of modernism from WITHIN the Church:
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_x/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-x_enc_19070908_pascendi-dominici-gregis_en.html
He nailed it. And here we are.
Apologies for any typos, but there’s no preview function.
Hey Girl from NY! Thanks for stopping over from Leila’s place. Welcome!!!
Wow, cool about the relic. We are studying Pascendi as well, but I haven’t read the whole thing yet. That’s interesting about the predictions. Thank you. I think most of the course I’m taking will focus on these two documents so I’d love to hear more of your thoughts in the future. Thanks again!
Paul, thanks for that comment. I’m trying to sum up a response.
“Once humanity discovers more, tracking out the worthy paths of religion and science both, we might find that the paths converge. There have been signs of this convergence.”
My main concern right now is that it seems when scientists (who reject faith) see their data leading to a convergence with Christianity, they close their eyes and start looking somewhere – ANYWHERE – else but to admit that. Rick has shown ample evidence of this.
I saw it too as a scientist. Not so much avoiding God, but everything scientists try to do requires them to study the great natural world and try to model and predict it, to explain it. It’s like the big elephant in the chem lab (a post I’m working on) that no one says, “Hey, did it ever strike you as awesome that we have to study Creation to be able to do anything?”
Also I saw how easy it is for science to be perverted by agendas, politics, funding, and publishing, and in the corporate world by marketing and selling and making a profit. Above all, ABOVE ALL, a scientist must be brutally and unflinchingly honest. I’ve lost faith that many scientists today, especially the ones who don’t believe in God, are actually honest enough to do real science. Hard indictment I know.
Update: I was speaking generally too, I should quickly add, not directly to you. Yikes, it sounded like I called you dishonest when I re-read this comment. That’s not what I meant.
Stacy, #25 is really interesting. It’s a rebuke of modern empiricism which claims that true assent to a proposition is gained only by amassing sufficient inductive evidence that the probabilities converge to 1.0. Of course, this principle means in practice that outside the realm of deductive sciences like mathematics, there can be no certainty, only nearness to the truth. It seemed to me the empiricists sort of wanted it both ways; they would relish the fact that nobody could “prove” the truths of faith, yet they could still prop up their settled science as founded on the amassing of scientific facts. Quite a feat.
So #25 denies the empiricist framework, and asserts on the contrary that we Catholics can assent to the truths of faith with confidence and certainty.
Blessed John Henry Newman wrote a beautiful book called An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, in which he clarifies the subtle distinctions between the various acts of cognition such as inference, apprehension, and assent. He shows that one can be led to a reasonable apprehension of the truths of religion by converging evidence (such as the reliability of the Gospel traditions, the holiness of the Church, the credibility of witnesses, and so on). But that assenting to the truths we apprehend is not an act of the intellect, it’s an act of the will. We give ourselves to these truths through our personal love of God and our desire for truth.
I suppose an example is, you could list the objective evidence that your wife loves you, you can apprehend it, and find it plausible, but you can attain certainty of it and assent to her love as an incontrovertible fact when you look into her eyes and you melt.
The act of assent to the truths of faith is an act of the whole person, not reason alone.
Jeff,
Thank you. It is strange that they spoke in those terms. I get it, I think.
What you wrote about Blessed John Henry Newman is just like something I read yesterday, “faith is an act of the intellect made under the sway of the will.” (from Vermeersch in the Catholic Encyclopedia article on Modernism)
I love that example about marital melting. It makes the perfect point, so clearly. The more you love, the more you want to know, the more you know, the more you love. I heard it explained like that about marriage and about our relationship with Christ. It’s something everyone knows.
Thanks for your explanation. You are helping me with my coursework.
Oooooooo! Lamentabili!
Stacy, I once wondered what would happen if I were to select some of the less obscure propositions from Lamentabili and put them in the form of a questionnaire for religious ed teachers.
I thought about it, and decided the results would be too depressing.
They would probably select more than half as “what the Church teaches”.
All of the propositions were condemned by the way, which means they all represent, precisely, objective statements of heresy.
That is what the propositions were for- to precisely set forth propositions that were formally heretical.
So, Paul, NOMA is precisely set forth as a condemned proposition: an heresy.
It could not possibly be anything else, since it explicitly denies what is, even a century and more later, reaffirmed in the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
159 Faith and science: “Though faith is above reason, there can never be any real discrepancy between faith and reason. Since the same God who reveals mysteries and infuses faith has bestowed the light of reason on the human mind, God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever contradict truth.”37 “Consequently, methodical research in all branches of knowledge, provided it is carried out in a truly scientific manner and does not override moral laws, can never conflict with the faith, because the things of the world and the things of faith derive from the same God. The humble and persevering investigator of the secrets of nature is being led, as it were, by the hand of God in spite of himself, for it is God, the conserver of all things, who made them what they are.”38
That is the authentic teaching of the Church.
Faith is above reason, since of course reason does not have access to the fullness of revealed Truth (we can never reason our way to the Trinity- we can only know it because God tells us He is Triune), but reason can never contradict Faith, unless it arrogates to itself powers it does not in fact possess.
The operational methodology of science is worldview neutral.
Light bulbs work for Hindus, atheists, and Catholic alike.
The metaphysical interpretations of scientific observations are a matter strictly falling under the guidance of revelation, since otherwise we might be deluded into imagining that because somebody has an equation that has an equals sign in the middle, therefore there exists an infinity of multiverses, self-emerging out of nothing which contains something, forever and ever amen.
Science goes crazy when it jumps the fence and substitutes for its working hypotheses and mathematical terms, invented metaphysical entitities which are asserted to be real, in the absence of the slightest actual scientific (observational, worldview-neutral) demonstration.
Science has really gone crazy this time:
http://magisterialfundies.blogspot.com/2012/02/marys-bones-iv-when-science-jumps-fence.html
You might enjoy another syllabus, if you know enough Latin to read it:
Index in Stephani Tempier condempnationes de dominica letare a D 1276/77
http://petitlien.fr/tempier