Modernist Heresy

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New_Arcadian

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Hey,
I was considering a couple of things tonight and began wondering what the hallmarks of the modernist heresy are, and where I can find which popes may have talked about it. Thanks in advance for your help
 
Pope St. Pius X, and Blessed Pope Pius IX in the late 19th and early 20th century.

The Hallmark of modernism? Liberalism: The Constant revision of the faith to “Modern” standards: Subjugation of revelation to scientific findings. Basically the tendency to reformulate the faith in terms that are in conformity to “Modern” sensibilities. (i.e. heresies).
 
I imagine somewhere in the documents of the VI and VII councils.
 
Gregory_I said:
Pope St. Pius X, and Blessed Pope Pius IX in the late 19th and early 20th century.

The Hallmark of modernism? Liberalism: The Constant revision of the faith to “Modern” standards: Subjugation of revelation to scientific findings. Basically the tendency to reformulate the faith in terms that are in conformity to “Modern” sensibilities. (i.e. heresies).
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Some modernism has to necessarily take place given new scientific discoveries. How do you draw the line?
 
momor said:
Some modernism has to necessarily take place given new scientific discoveries. How do you draw the line?
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Modernism & modernizing (i.e. finetuning) aren’t synonymous. Modernism is a mindset, indeed, an ideology. What Galileo effected was modernizing, not Modernism, whereas what the so-called Higher Criticism wrought was Modernism.
 
New_Arcadian said:
what the hallmarks of the modernist heresy are…
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Code: 
    [papalencyclicals.net/Pius10/p10pasce.htm](http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius10/p10pasce.htm)
Special characteristics of Modernist belief as singled out in Pascendi Dominici gregis:

a. Belief in the ongoing reform of the Church. Modernists, lacking the firm protection of Scholastic philosophy and theology, vaunt themselves as ongoing reformers of the Church (cf. Pascendi, no. 2)

b. Belief that faith is merely a feeling. Modernists hold that the existence of God is not knowable to modern scientific man. Hence, they say, faith is merely a subjective feeling that arises from the subconscious of men, from which also arises what is called “divine revelation” (cf. Pascendi, no. 7).

c. Belief in the evolution of dogma. Modernists believe that everything that is said about Jesus in the Gospels that is suggestive of the divine or of the supernatural is to be deleted and that what the Church calls “dogmas” are subject to ongoing change, since their purpose is only to enable the believer to give an account of his faith to himself (cf. Pascendi, no. 13).

d. Belief in a certain “divine reality.” Modernists say that they believe in the existence of a “divine reality” that exists outside of the believer but can be known only by the direct intuition of each individual believer and does not pertain to scientific knowledge (cf. Pascendi, no. 14).

e. Belief that life is truth. For the Modernist, life and truth are one and the same thing. What faith believes cannot conflict with what science knows, because the two are in different universes of discourse (cf. Pascendi, no. 16). But, they say, religious formulas are subject to the scrutiny of science and of philosophy and must conform themselves to what science knows (cf. Pascendi, no. 17).

f. Belief that God is immanent (only internal) in man. Modernists maintain that dogmas of the Church are only symbolic representations of a God who does not fully exist outside of the believer, and that the Sacred Scriptures are just a collection of past subjective experiences that are to be lived over again by contemporary believers in their own way (Pascendi, nos. 20-22).

g. Belief in the “laws of evolution.” Modernists believe that everything in religion is subject to the “laws of evolution,” so that contemporary lived experiences of believers should be able to react against and change what is merely past and traditional in the Church (cf. Pascendi, nos. 25-27).

h. Belief in historical criticism. Belief in the method of historical criticism is a logical conclusion based upon Modernist principles, such as that there have been no real interventions of God in human history and that the Jesus of history has been elevated and embellished by Christian believers to the Christ of faith in keeping with the needs that these believers felt for a super naturalized founder (cf. Pascendi, nos. 32-33).

i. Belief in the evolution of the Bible. Modernists affirm that the books of the Bible, and especially the Pentateuch and the first three Gospels, were gradually formed by additions to a primitive brief narration as effects of “a vital evolution, springing from and corresponding with the evolution of faith” (cf. Pascendi, no. 36).

j. Rejection of Scholastic philosophy and of the teaching of the Fathers. Modernists maintain that Scholastic philosophy is to be thrown out as an obsolete system of thought, that the dogmas of the Church are to be harmonized with science and history, and that the number of external devotions is to be reduced (cf. Pascendi, no. 38). They also maintain that the Fathers of the Church “were entirely ignorant of history and criticism, for which they are only excusable on account of the time in which they lived” (cf. Pascendi, no. 42).

k. A poisoned atmosphere. Pope Pius X was also saddened at the sight 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. . . . ] If they treat biblical questions, it is upon Modernist principles. If they write his tory, 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 on the history of the Church” (Pascendi, no. 43).
 
1sicht said:
Modernism & modernizing (i.e. finetuning) aren’t synonymous. Modernism is a mindset, indeed, an ideology. What Galileo effected was modernizing, not Modernism, whereas what the so-called Higher Criticism wrought was Modernism.
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The modernism as an ideology against the teaching of the Church is the denial in the divine in the Scripture, in the Tradition, in the world and in the social life. The religious modernism is the same as the religious liberalism, progressivism.

It has nothing to do, with the aggiornamento, except that like the science in the 19th Cnetury was abused by them, so is the aggiornamento in the second half of the 20th Century.and today.
 
The interpretation of scripture in the “light” of modern science is a big part of it.
 
Seamus_L said:
The interpretation of scripture in the “light” of modern science is a big part of it.
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I find “modern interpretation” of certain Scripture passages on CAF; but not always attributed to science. Unless one considers that the original proponents of the “symbolism of some kind of theological truth” interpretation were influenced by science. Fortunately, there are posters who defend Catholic teachings.

Blessings,
granny

The human person is worthy of profound respect from the moment of conception.
 
St. Pius X called modernism the “synthesis of all heresies” in his 1907 encyclical Pascendi dominici gregis, to which somebody has already linked. It’s tough to get a handle on modernism because, as St. Pius X pointed out, it seems so vague and inconsistent (though this apparent vagueness and inconsistency is purposeful); and also because it has become so pervasive that it affects the thinking even of devout Catholics who strive to be orthodox.

If I had to sum up modernism in one sentence, it would be this: modernism seeks to discredit the supernatural and the objectivity of truth. Some clues as to the presence of modernism:

– The echoing of Pontius Pilate’s question, “What is truth?” and its variants, including, “Well, that may be true for you, but this other thing here is true for me.”

– Attempts to reduce the supernatural down to the purely natural. For example, a classic modernist tactic is to take a miracle recounted in Scripture, come up with a purely natural explanation for it, and then hold that it was merely exaggerated in importance by devout people trying to fit it into their religious world view. Examples: the feeding of the five thousand was merely a “miracle of sharing”; or the crossing of the Red Sea was merely a strong wind blowing over a marshy “river” until it dried out enough for the Israelites to cross.

– The idea that reality consist only in that which is mundane, common, pedestrian, squalid or flat-footed, and that anything that is not any of these things is not worthy of belief.

– The glorification of ugliness and the denigration of beauty.

– The idea that you can’t have true science without discounting God.

Unfortunately, modernism has penetrated so deeply into the Church over such a long period of time that it will take an awful lot of prayer and penance and study to root it out.
 
New_Arcadian said:
Hey,
I was considering a couple of things tonight and began wondering what the hallmarks of the modernist heresy are, and where I can find which popes may have talked about it. Thanks in advance for your help
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Here is the list of condemned modernist propositions set forth in Lamentabili Sane set forth by the Holy Office (now the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) in 1907, with the approval of Pius X:
  1. The ecclesiastical law which prescribes that books concerning the Divine Scriptures are subject to previous examination does not apply to critical scholars and students of scientific exegesis of the Old and New Testament.
  2. The Church’s interpretation of the Sacred Books is by no means to be rejected; nevertheless, it is subject to the more accurate judgment and correction of the exegetes.
  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.
  4. Even by dogmatic definitions the Church’s magisterium cannot determine the genuine sense of the Sacred Scriptures.
  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.
  6. The “Church learning” and the “Church teaching” collaborate in such a way in defining truths that it only remains for the “Church teaching” to sanction the opinions of the “Church learning.”
  7. In proscribing errors, the Church cannot demand any internal assent from the faithful by which the judgments she issues are to be embraced.
  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.
  9. They display excessive simplicity or ignorance who believe that God is really the author of the Sacred Scriptures.
  10. The inspiration of the books of the Old Testament consists in this: The Israelite writers handed down religious doctrines under a peculiar aspect which was either little or not at all known to the Gentiles.
  11. Divine inspiration does not extend to all of Sacred Scriptures so that it renders its parts, each and every one, free from every error.
  12. If he wishes to apply himself usefully to Biblical studies, the exegete must first put aside all preconceived opinions about the supernatural origin of Sacred Scripture and interpret it the same as any other merely human document.
  13. The Evangelists themselves, as well as the Christians of the second and third generation, artificially arranged the evangelical parables. In such a way they explained the scanty fruit of the preaching of Christ among the Jews.
  14. In many narrations the Evangelists recorded, not so much things that are true, as things which, even though false, they judged to be more profitable for their readers.
  15. Until the time the canon was defined and constituted, the Gospels were increased by additions and corrections. Therefore there remained in them only a faint and uncertain trace of the doctrine of Christ.
  16. The narrations of John are not properly history, but a mystical contemplation of the Gospel. The discourses contained in his Gospel are theological meditations, lacking historical truth concerning the mystery of salvation.
  17. The fourth Gospel exaggerated miracles not only in order that the extraordinary might stand out but also in order that it might become more suitable for showing forth the work and glory of the Word lncarnate.
  18. John claims for himself the quality of witness concerning Christ. In reality, however, he is only a distinguished witness of the Christian life, or of the life of Christ in the Church at the close of the first century.
  19. Heterodox exegetes have expressed the true sense of the Scriptures more faithfully than Catholic exegetes.
  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. They are an interpretation of religious facts which the human mind has acquired by laborious effort.
  23. Opposition may, and actually does, exist between the facts narrated in Sacred Scripture and the Church’s dogmas which rest on them. Thus the critic may reject as false facts the Church holds as most certain.
  24. The exegete who constructs premises from which it follows that dogmas are historically false or doubtful is not to be reproved as long as he does not directly deny the dogmas themselves .
  25. The assent of faith ultimately rests on a mass of probabilities .
  26. The dogmas of the Faith are to be held only according to their practical sense; that is to say, as preceptive norms of conduct and not as norms of believing.
  27. The divinity of Jesus Christ is not proved from the Gospels. It is a dogma which the Christian conscience has derived from the notion of the Messias.
  28. While He was exercising His ministry, Jesus did not speak with the object of teaching He was the Messias, nor did His miracles tend to prove it.
  29. It is permissible to grant that the Christ of history is far inferior to the Christ Who is the object of faith.
    30 In all the evangelical texts the name "Son of God’’ is equivalent only to that of “Messias.” It does not in the least way signify that Christ is the true and natural Son of God. [CONTINUED IN NEXT POST]
 
30 In all the evangelical texts the name "Son of God’’ is equivalent only to that of “Messias.” It does not in the least way signify that Christ is the true and natural Son of God.
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.
32. It is impossible to reconcile the natural sense of the Gospel texts with the sense taught by our theologians concerning the conscience and the infallible knowledge of Jesus Christ.
33 Everyone who is not led by preconceived opinions can readily see that either Jesus professed an error concerning the immediate Messianic coming or the greater part of His doctrine as contained in the Gospels is destitute of authenticity.
34. The critics can ascribe to Christ a knowledge without limits only on a hypothesis which cannot be historically conceived and which is repugnant to the moral sense. That hypothesis is that Christ as man possessed the knowledge of God and yet was unwilling to communicate the knowledge of a great many things to His disciples and posterity.
35. Christ did not always possess the consciousness of His Messianic dignity.
36. The Resurrection of the Savior is not properly a fact of the historical order. It is a fact of merely the supernatural order (neither demonstrated nor demonstrable) which the Christian conscience gradually derived from other facts.
37. In the beginning, faith in the Resurrection of Christ was not so much in the fact itself of the Resurrection as in the immortal life of Christ with God.
38. The doctrine of the expiatory death of Christ is Pauline and not evangelical.
39. The opinions concerning the origin of the Sacraments which the Fathers of Trent held and which certainly influenced their dogmatic canons are very different from those which now rightly exist among historians who examine Christianity .
40. The Sacraments have their origin in the fact that the Apostles and their successors, swayed and moved by circumstances and events, interpreted some idea and intention of Christ.
41. The Sacraments are intended merely to recall to man’s mind the ever-beneficent presence of the Creator.
42. The Christian community imposed the necessity of Baptism, adopted it as a necessary rite, and added to it the obligation of the Christian profession.
43. The practice of administering Baptism to infants was a disciplinary evolution, which became one of the causes why the Sacrament was divided into two, namely, Baptism and Penance.
44. There is nothing to prove that the rite of the Sacrament of Confirmation was employed by the Apostles. The formal distinction of the two Sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation does not pertain to the history of primitive Christianity.
45. Not everything which Paul narrates concerning the institution of the Eucharist (I Cor. 11:23-25) is to be taken historically.
46. In the primitive Church the concept of the Christian sinner reconciled by the authority of the Church did not exist. Only very slowly did the Church accustom herself to this concept. As a matter of fact, even after Penance was recognized as an institution of the Church, it was not called a Sacrament since it would be held as a disgraceful Sacrament.
47. The words of the Lord, "Receive the Holy Spirit; whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained’’ (John 20:22-23), in no way refer to the Sacrament of Penance, in spite of what it pleased the Fathers of Trent to say. [CONTINUED IN NEXT POST]
 
  1. In his Epistle (Ch. 5:14-15) James did not intend to promulgate a Sacrament of Christ but only commend a pious custom. If in this custom he happens to distinguish a means of grace, it is not in that rigorous manner in which it was taken by the theologians who laid down the notion and number of the Sacraments.
  2. When the Christian supper gradually assumed the nature of a liturgical action those who customarily presided over the supper acquired the sacerdotal character.
  3. The elders who fulfilled the office of watching over the gatherings of the faithful were instituted by the Apostles as priests or bishops to provide for the necessary ordering of the increasing communities and not properly for the perpetuation of the Apostolic mission and power.
  4. It is impossible that Matrimony could have become a Sacrament of the new law until later in the Church since it was necessary that a full theological explication of the doctrine of grace and the Sacraments should first take place before Matrimony should be held as a Sacrament.
  5. 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. On the contrary, in the mind of Christ the kingdom of heaven together with the end of the world was about to come immediately.
  6. The organic constitution of the Church is not immutable. Like human society, Christian society is subject to a perpetual evolution.
  7. Dogmas, Sacraments and hierarchy, both their notion and reality, are only interpretations and evolutions of the Christian intelligence which have increased and perfected by an external series of additions the little germ latent in the Gospel.
  8. Simon Peter never even suspected that Christ entrusted the primacy in the Church to him.
  9. The Roman Church became the head of all the churches, not through the ordinance of Divine Providence, but merely through political conditions.
  10. The Church has shown that she is hostile to the progress of the natural and theological sciences.
  11. Truth is no more immutable than man himself, since it evolved with him, in him, and through him.
  12. Christ did not teach a determined body of doctrine applicable to all times and all men, but rather inaugurated a religious movement adapted or to be adapted to different times and places.
  13. Christian Doctrine was originally Judaic. Through successive evolutions it became first Pauline, then Joannine, finally Hellenic and universal.
  14. It may be said without paradox that there is no chapter of Scripture, from the first of Genesis to the last of the Apocalypse, which contains a doctrine absolutely identical with that which the Church teaches on the same matter. For the same reason, therefore, no chapter of Scripture has the same sense for the critic and the theologian.
  15. 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.
  16. 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.
  17. Scientific progress demands that the concepts of Christian doctrine concerning God, creation, revelation, the Person of the Incarnate Word, and Redemption be re-adjusted.
  18. 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.
 
In the views of some people, any changes after Pius X are “Heresies”. They tend to believe that everything that he ever said or wrote, had the complete voice of God behind it, and nothing he supported could ever be changed by anyone.

These folks tend to reject Vatican II, and all of the fruits of that Council.

I believe that the Holy Spirit guides the Church, and that he would NOT allow a Council of the Church to lead it astray. I believe that to venerate the past to the degree that some do, is nothing short of apostacy.
 
I’m sure its been addressed and discussed in the documents of the council. Does it have anything to do with using a computer,watching television and the commercials that see in our times? This seems like a heresy that can be healed and cured. :coffee: :shamrock2: Because the Church was always able to address and resolve its particular problems through Apologetics and Reasoning with a Dogmatic approach.
 
The_Old_Medic said:
In the views of some people, any changes after Pius X are “Heresies”. They tend to believe that everything that he ever said or wrote, had the complete voice of God behind it, and nothing he supported could ever be changed by anyone.

These folks tend to reject Vatican II, and all of the fruits of that Council.

I believe that the Holy Spirit guides the Church, and that he would NOT allow a Council of the Church to lead it astray. I believe that to venerate the past to the degree that some do, is nothing short of apostacy.
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Not to mention the denigrating comments that fly here frequently about the Novus Ordo. It takes some real chutzpah to criticise an approved liturgy.
 
The_Old_Medic said:
In the views of some people, any changes after Pius X are “Heresies”. They tend to believe that everything that he ever said or wrote, had the complete voice of God behind it, and nothing he supported could ever be changed by anyone.
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Can you come up with anything St. Pius X said that was erroneous?
 
Most criticisms of the novus ordo are of its junk english translation (finally being corrected), THe irreverence of many “celebrants” and the all out banality and use of “profane” musical styles and instruments (Profane means outside the temple, irreligious, not-sacred), and the Fact that it is not celebrated Ad Orientim.

Many of these things are AMericanisms, some are universals, and NOne pertain to the iturgy in itself. I once was at a Novus ordo liturgy I thought was the Tridentine mass, until a few things tipped me off…
 
Victorious said:
Can you come up with anything St. Pius X said that was erroneous?
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Ordering the construction of the Canon Law of 1917 based on the that time already obsoleted beneficiary system

Concentrating on the fight for the restoration of the papal state, and letting the media completely taken over by anti-church owners.

Probably the forced complete rewriting of the psalter for the Roman Breviary was mistake too, as helped the sentiment that the liturgy may be changed by papal order.

St Pius X was saint, and Christ stood behind his decisions, but at least some decisions were not the best one for the long term interest of the Church. God has to deal with the human errancy.
 
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