Modernism: The Synthesis of All Heresies
Robert J. Siscoe
In
the encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis, Pope St. Pius X condemned the errors
of the Modernists, whom he prophetically referred to as “the most pernicious of
all the adversaries of the Church”. In condemning this vast system, which he
rightly termed “the synthesis of all heresies”, he explained that the Modernist
assumes the various personalities of “a philosopher, a believer, a theologian,
an historian, a critic, an apologist, a reformer,” and then proceeded to
expound the errors of each personality in systematic fashion. In this article,
we will consider the errors of the Modernist as a philosopher, who “lays the ax
not to the branches and shoots, but to the very root, that is, to the faith and
its deepest fibers” (1). Since the errors of Modernism are subtle and often
difficult to discern, we will begin by reviewing what the Church teaches
regarding faith, by distinguishing between the object of faith, the virtue of
faith, and the act of faith. By having these clear distinctions fresh in our
mind, we will more easily perceive the errors of this most crafty enemy.
The
Object:
The
Deposit of Faith consists of the complete Revelation of Jesus Christ, and is
contained within the two sources of revelation, namely, Scripture and
Tradition. “Christ Our Lord entrusted the truth which He had brought from
heaven to the Apostles, and through them to their successors”. (2) This
Revelation, which contains the doctrines that make up the Catholic Faith, “has
been committed as a Divine deposit to the spouse of Christ, to be faithfully
guarded and infallibly interpreted by her”. (3) Over the course of centuries
doctrines contained within the Deposit are clarified and defined by the
ecclesia docens (the magisterum), but nothing new can be added that is not
contained, at least implicitly, in the Deposit of Faith, for public revelation
ceased with the death of the last apostle. (4)
The
Virtue:
The
virtue of faith is a supernatural virtue that dwells within the intellect, the
purpose of which is to help us believe the truths God has revealed. Quoting the
First Vatican Council, Pope Leo XIII wrote: “Faith, as the Church teaches, is
‘that supernatural virtue by which, through the help of God and through the
assistance of His grace, we believe what he has revealed to be true, not on
account of the intrinsic truth perceived by the natural light of reason, but
because of the authority of God Himself, the Revealer, who can neither deceive
nor be deceived’ (First Vatican Council, Sess. iii., cap. 3).” (5) The virtue
of faith has been called the pupil of the intellect (6) (which is the eye of
the soul), since it provides a supernatural light to the mind which enables the
one who possesses it to see the truth in the teachings Christ has revealed.
The
Act:
When
the Church proposes a doctrine for belief, as being divinely revealed, Catholics must give the assent of divine and Catholic faith to this truth. “All those things are to be
believed by divine and Catholic faith which are contained in the written or
unwritten word of God, and which are proposed by the Church as divinely
revealed, either by a solemn definition or in the exercise of its ordinary and
universal Magisterium”. (First Vatican Council) The formal object of Faith is
God revealing; the material object is the individual doctrine proposed, as
well as the entire Deposit as a whole. The act of faith takes place when man,
moved by the virtue of faith and grace, accepts and embraces a truth that is
contained within the Deposit and proposed for belief by the Church. “This faith
is an act of the intellect made under the sway of the will. By it we hold
firmly what God has revealed and what the Church proposes to us to believe”.
(7)
To
summarize, the dogmas of the Faith have been revealed by God and
passed down as an objective body of doctrines, which is called The Deposit
of Faith. The virtue of faith resides within the intellect and helps us to
believe the truths God has revealed to man. The act of faith takes place when man adheres, with his intellect and will, to the doctrines
contained within the Deposit and proposed for belief by the Church. With all
this in mind, we will now consider the errors of Modernism regarding faith,
revelation, and dogma.
Modernism:
Modernism,
which is founded on the philosophical error of agnosticism, rejects the idea
that God has revealed Himself to man through public revelation. Hence, “all
external revelation [is] absolutely denied.” (8) Consequently, they reject the
Deposit of Faith, and the immutable truth of the doctrines contained within it.
Having rejecting external public revelation, which is the foundation of the
true religion, Modernists claim that religion originates from within man – from
a divine principle which they call vital immanence. This “divine within”, as
understood by the Modernists, is not to be confused with actual grace, by which
God enlightens the mind to a truth, and moves the will to the good; nor is it
to be confused with sanctifying grace, a completely gratuitous gift, distinct
from the nature of man, that God infuses into the soul at baptism, and which
remains as a permanent superadded quality of the soul, unless it is forfeited
by man through sin. On the contrary, for a Modernist, vital immanence is a part
of man’s nature, a divine seminal principle that belongs to man as a conscious
being. They claim that this “divine within” is the well-spring, the font, “the
germ of all religion”. (9)
This
divine principle within man first manifests itself, and is perceived, as a
“need for the divine”. This need for the divine produces a sentimental movement
of the heart – a “religious sense”, and “it is this sense to which Modernists
give the name faith” (10). Faith, for a Modernist, is nothing but “a sentiment
which originates from a need of the divine”. (11)
In
the Modernist system, vital immanence takes the place of God, and is at once
“the revealer and the revealed”, manifest as a “religious sense” which is a
sentiment of the heart. This religious sense, which springs from the “divine
with”, takes the place of the virtue of faith. As we saw earlier, the virtue of
faith dwells within the intellect and helps us to believe the truths that God
has revealed to man through public external revelation. The religious sense on
the other hand, dwells in the heart, and helps man to discover the truth
“revealed” by the divine principle within man; for as Pius X explains, not only
is this sense of the heart considered “faith”, but it contains within it
“revelation”. He wrote: “But we have not yet reached the end of their philosophizing,
or, to speak more accurately, of their folly. Modernists find in this sense not
only faith, but in and with faith, as they understand it, they affirm that
there is also to be found revelation”. (12)
We
can see that for the Modernists, revelation does not constitute objective truth
revealed by God to man, but is something that man discovers within himself.
This pretended “revelation” springs forth from a divine principle within man,
and is discerned in the “consciousness”, which, for a Modernist, is itself
identical with revelation. “Hence it is” wrote St. Pius X, “that they make
consciousness and revelation synonymous”. (13) For the Modernist, “Revelation
is not a doctrine received from God, but on the contrary the subjective fruit
of the concept of God which springs forth … from the depth of our conscience or
consciousness”. (14) This revelation springing from the “divine within”, which
is discerned in the individual consciousness, is manifested externally by the
“general consciousness” of the multitude. Which brings us to the next error of
Modernism: The origin of dogma.
Origin
of Dogma:
Up
to this point everything we have discussed has taken place within the heart,
the origin and well-spring of Modernist’ “revelation”; but we have now reached
the point where the intellect is engaged. The purpose of the intellect,
according to Modernism, is to give formal expression to the “revelation” that
originates in the heart, is perceived by the individual consciousness, and
finally manifested by the “general consciousness”. This formulation of “dogma”
takes place in two phases: first there is an initial simple formula, which
attempts to give expression to the general consciousness, but which is not
always precise. This is then followed by a secondary formula, a proposition
that is more perfect and precise than the first, and which, if sanctioned by the
magisterium, becomes dogma; for according to the Modernists, the purpose of the
magisterium is merely to sanction what has been “revealed” internally to man,
manifested externally by the “general consciousness”, and sufficiently
formulated by the theologians. Pius X explained it this way:
“So
far, Venerable Brethren, there has been no mention of the intellect. Still it
also, according to the teaching of the Modernists, has its part in the act of
faith. And it is of importance to see how. In that sentiment of which We have
frequently spoken, since sentiment is not knowledge, God indeed presents
Himself to man, but in a manner so confused and indistinct that He can hardly
be perceived by the believer. It is therefore necessary that a ray of light
should be cast upon this sentiment, so that God may be clearly distinguished
and set apart from it. This is the task of the intellect, whose office it is to
reflect and to analyse, and by means of which man first transforms into mental
pictures the vital phenomena which arise within him, and then expresses them in
words. Hence the common saying of Modernists: that the religious man must
ponder his faith. – The intellect, then, encountering this sentiment directs
itself upon it, and produces in it a work resembling that of a painter who
restores and gives new life to a picture that has perished with age. The simile
is that of one of the leaders of Modernism. The operation of the intellect in
this work is a double one: first by a natural and spontaneous act it expresses
its concept in a simple, ordinary statement; then, on reflection and deeper
consideration, or, as they say, ‘by elaborating its thought’, it expresses the
idea in secondary propositions, which are derived from the first, but are more
perfect and distinct. These secondary propositions, if they finally receive the
approval of the supreme magisterium of the Church, constitute dogma”. (15)
While
it is true that dogmatic definitions are formulated into propositions by the
Church, these propositions do not give expression to the “general
consciousness” of the multitude; but rather articulate, in a precise manner, a
particular truth contained within the Deposit of Faith. For a Modernist, dogma
is not a truth revealed by God and defined by the Church; it is a truth
revealed within man, and sanctioned by the Church. They completely invert the
order by making man, not God, the principle of revealed truth, and the source
of all religion.
All
Religions are True:
According
to Modernism, religion is nothing more than man attempting to give external
expression to the religious sense that he “experiences” within. Hence, for a
Modernist, all religions are true, since they all spring from the same divine
principle within man. “Indeed Modernists do not deny but actually admit”, wrote
St. Pius X, “that all religions are true. That they cannot feel otherwise is
clear. For on what ground, according to their theories, could falsity be
predicated of any religion whatsoever? … In the conflict between different
religions, the most that Modernists can maintain is that the Catholic has more
truth because it is more living and that it deserves with more reason the name
of Christian because it corresponds more fully with the origins of
Christianity”. (16) A Modernist may believe that one religion is more true than
another, insofar as it more “fully” expresses the divine within, but all are
true to a degree. Hence a Modernists is, by necessity, ecumenical, and will
logically show “profound respect” for “the great religions of the world” (17) –
not simply for individuals who might belong to these religions, but respect for
the false religions themselves – since they too, according to the Modernist,
spring from the same divine principle.
Evolution:
According
to the Modernists, everything is in a continual process of evolution. Man began
as a lower form of life, and eventually reached the level of a conscious being.
This evolutionary process will continue until man finally becomes conscious
that he himself is God. Jesus, according to a Modernist, is not God who became
man through the Incarnation, in order to satisfy the justice of God and thereby
redeem man from sin, but simply a man who became “aware” that he was God.
According to them “the divinity of Jesus was his own awareness of it”. (18)
Jesus was simple a more highly evolved man, who “came to reveal man to himself”
– that is, to reveal to man that he is also God!
Now,
since the Modernists believe that “revelation and consciousness are
synonymous”, and since they believe man’s consciousness is in a constant state
of evolution, it follows that revelation itself will advance through the course
of time, in correspondence with the ever-evolving consciousness of man. This
explains how a Modernist can reject, without a scruple, what has been taught by
the Church since the beginning. After all, if man is continuously evolving to a
higher “consciousness”, and if revelation is nothing more than the “general
consciousness” of man at a particular phase of the evolutionary process; and if
he believes that modern man is more evolved than those who preceded him, why
would he not accept a new “truth” – a new revelation – that corresponds to the
more advanced reason he imagines himself to possess? An “enlightened” Modernist
will naturally consider himself superior to those who preceded him, and to
those less evolved men of his own time who still hold to the religious
teachings of antiquity. This explains why the Modernists in the hierarchy will
show great tolerance for a man such Hans Kung, who may simply be ahead of his
time, while at the same time these same Modernist prelates will react with
disgust toward someone like Archbishop Lefebvre, who refused to abandon the
perennial teaching of the Church and the dogmatic decrees of the councils. This
also explains why a Modernist would shy away from the idea of objective
immutable truth, and from holding firmly to any dogma, lest in so doing he risk
the danger of not progressing to the next evolutionary phase of “higher
consciousness”.
Life
= Truth:
Since
Modernists reject the idea of a public external revelation as the foundation of
the true religion, and instead hold that religion emanates from a divine
principle within man, how will he know if a religion is “authentic”? For the
Modernists, if something is alive they consider it evidence that it is true.
“For the Modernists” wrote Pius X, “to live is a proof of truth, since for them
life and truth are one and the same thing”. (19) Now, since Modernists believe
that all living things are evolving, and since evolution involves change, for
something to be alive it must continually change; that which is not changing is
not alive, and therefore not true. Hence, according to Modernism, for religion
to remain true, it must be subject to continuous change – to an ongoing
“aggiornamento” – and this change will not be limited to the external Rites,
but to truth itself! Which brings us to the next error: Evolution of Dogma.
Evolution
of Dogma:
According
to the Modernists, a dogmatic definition does not express absolute immutable
truth, but is merely a useful tool – a symbol – used to express the “truth” of
a particular time – a “truth” that is manifest by the “general consciousness”
of the people. As man evolves to a higher consciousness, truth itself, and the
dogmas that express it, will need to be updated and changed. “Hence”, wrote St.
Pius X, according to the Modernists “it is quite impossible to maintain that
[dogmas] express absolute truth: for, in so far as they are symbols, they are
the images of truth, and so must be adapted to the religious sentiment in its
relation to man… Consequently, the formulae too, which we call dogmas, must be
subject to these vicissitudes, and are, therefore, liable to change. Thus the
way is open to the intrinsic evolution of dogma. An immense collection of
sophisms that ruin and destroy all religion. Dogma is not only able, but ought
to evolve and to be changed. This is strongly affirmed by the Modernists, and clearly
flows from their principles”. (20)
Evolution
of dogma may be one of the greatest traps for Catholics today. By claiming that
dogmas evolve and change from one meaning to another, Catholics are led by the
Modernists to reject what the Church has always taught in favor of new
teachings. The truth is that not only are dogmas infallibly articulated
expressions of immutable truth, but the understanding of them is immutable as
well. In other words, not only is the dogmatic formula infallible, but the way
in which the formula is understood is itself fixed. It is never permitted to
depart from what the Church has taught under the pretext of a “deeper
understanding”, as the First Vatican Council teaches:
“The
doctrine of the faith which God revealed has not been handed down as a
philosophic invention to the human mind to be perfected, but has been entrusted
as a divine Deposit to the Spouse of Christ, to be faithfully guarded and
infallibly interpreted. Hence, also, that understanding of its sacred dogmas
must be perpetually retained, which Holy Mother Church has once declared; and
there must never be recession from that meaning under the specious name of a
deeper understanding”. (21)
And
again…
“If
anyone shall have said that it is possible that to the dogmas declared by the
Church a meaning must sometimes be attributed according to the progress of
science, different from that which the Church has understood and understands:
let him be anathema”. (22)
One
of the tactics employed by the Modernists to promote the evolution of dogma, is
to refer to it as “development of doctrine”. True development of doctrine,
which differs substantially from the heresy of evolution of dogma, can be
understood in two ways: it can refer to a greater clarity in the manner of
expressing a truth that has always been believed, or it can be understood as
defining explicitly a doctrine that has always been believed implicitly.
Regarding the latter, Bishop Tissier de Mallerais explained that through the
centuries, there is an increase in the number of propositions, but no new
Revelation. He wrote:
“In
the New Testament there is an increase in the propositions by the organs of
Tradition, especially the Magisterium, and hence a passage from the implicit to
the explicit…. There is then a development, not in the articles of the Faith
but in the explanation of the truths of the revealed deposit. … It is a
development like a bud which blossoms… like a bud which opens up very
beautifully, but remains the same bud. There is an unfolding, but without
alteration; a displaying of all that which had been contained within from the
outset. One calls this homogeneous because there is no mutation. It is the same
living species, the same plant, it is a development without mutation, it is the
same reality unfolding itself and making explicit all its details, but it is
the same reality.” (23)
True
doctrinal development never departs from the original understanding, but only
adds greater clarity to what was always believed, at least implicitly.
Evolution of dogma, on the other hand, results in a substantial change in the
meaning of the doctrine. Sometimes evolution of dogma will manifest itself in
an explicit denial of the dogmatic formula itself. For example, when extra
ecclesiam nulla salus is brought up, it is not uncommon to hear a Modernist say
“we don’t believe that anymore”. Some of the more “conservative” Modernists
will begrudgingly accept the proposition, but then water it down to such an
extent that it becomes, as Pius XII wrote, “a meaningless formula” (24). No
Salvation Outside of theChurch is a dogma completely incompatible with Modernism,
and therefore must be eliminated to make way for what John Paul II called the
“invincible guarantee of universal salvation”. (25) Some of the more crafty
Modernists will retain the traditional terminology, yet infuse into it a
completely different meaning. For example, they will use the word
“transubstantiation”, yet their understanding and explanation of the word will
be identical to the Lutheran heresy of consubstantiation (26); or they might
retain the phrase ‘resurrection of the body’, but then argue that it means “not
to the resurrection of physical bodies, but of persons”. (27)
Whichever
tactic is employed, whether it be an outright rejection of a dogma, or treating
the proposition as “a meaningless formula”, or infusing an altogether new
meaning into the traditional terminology, the end result is one and the same,
namely, a corruption of the Deposit of Faith through the corruption of the
articles of faith contained within it – and this applies to each and every
article of the faith, “for there is no part of Catholic truth that they leave
untouched, none that they do not strive to corrupt” (28)
To
counteract this destructive error, Pope St. Pius X included the following
phrase in his Oath Against Modernism, which he required all priests,
seminarians, and seminary professors to take annually, and which remained in
force until the New Springtime arrived in July, 1967. The section reads:
“Fourthly,
I sincerely hold that the doctrine of faith was handed down to us from the
apostles through the orthodox Fathers in exactly the same meaning and always in
the same purport. Therefore, I entirely reject the heretical misrepresentation
that dogmas evolve and change from one meaning to another different from the
one which the Church held previously. I also condemn every error according to
which, in place of the divine deposit which has been given to the spouse of
Christ to be carefully guarded by her, there is put a philosophical figment or
product of a human conscience that has gradually been developed by human effort
and will continue to develop indefinitely”.
Cause
of Modernism:
St.
Pius X lists three causes of Modernism, namely, pride, curiosity and ignorance.
He wrote: “It is pride which puffs them up with that vainglory which allows
them to regard themselves as the sole possessors of knowledge, and makes them
say, elated and inflated with presumption, ‘We are not as the rest of men’.” He
said that curiosity, if not regulated by prudence “suffices to account for all
errors”, and leads to the “spirit of novelty”, which has always been the mark
of heresy. But the proximate cause of Modernism, according to the Pope,
“consists in a perversion of the mind” and ignorance.
“[T]he
intellectual cause of Modernism … and the chief one, is ignorance. Yes, these
very Modernists who seek to be esteemed as Doctors of the Church, who speak so
loftily of modern philosophy and show such contempt for scholasticism, have
embraced the one with all its false glamour, precisely because their ignorance
of the other has left them without the means of being able to recognize
confusion of thought and to refute sophistry. Their whole system, containing as
it does errors so many and so great, has been born of the union between faith
and false philosophy”. (29)
Conclusion:
Modernism
is more than a heresy. Heresy denies one or more dogmas of the Catholic Faith.
Modernism undermines all dogma by denying the immutable nature of truth itself. In Modernism,
vital immanence – “the divine within” – puts man in the place of God; the
“religious sense”, which is produced by the “divine within”, replaces the
virtue of faith; while the ever-evolving “general consciousness” takes the place of the unchanging deposit of faith. With Modernism, everything is
turned upside down: God did not become man through the Incarnation; instead,
man is becoming God through the process of evolution. In the end, God is rejected, and all things are “ordained to man as to
their center and summit”. May the good God preserve us from these monstrous
errors, “which ought not to seduce clear thinking minds.” Amen.
Footnotes:
1)
Pascendi, 3
2) Pius
XII Allocution Si Diligis, 1954
3) First
Vatican Council
4)
Lamentabali # 21
5) Satis
Cognitum
6) "I reply to thee, they have it in seeing My goodness in themselves, and in the knowledge of My Truth, which knowledge, the intellect (which is the eye of the soul) illuminated in Me, possesses. This eye has the pupil of the most holy faith, which light of faith enables the soul to discern, to know, and to follow the way and the doctrine of My Truth — the Word Incarnate; and without this pupil of faith she would not see, except as a man who has the form of the eye, but who has covered the pupil (which causes the eye to see) with a cloth. So the pupil of the intellect is faith, and if the soul has covered it with the cloth of infidelity, drawn over it by self-love, she does not see, but only has the form of the eye without the light, because she has hidden it." (Dialogue of Catherin of Siena, London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. 1907, p. 126). Also see pp., 142, 201, 209, 235, 237, 243, 261, 265.
7)
Catholic Encyclopedia
8)
Pascendi, 7
9) Ibid,
10
10) Ibid,
7
11) Ibid,
7
12) Ibid,
8
13) Ibid,
8
14) 100
years of Modernism pg. 85
15)
Pascendi, 11
16) Ibid,
14
17) John
Paul II, Angelus Address, Oct. 12, 1986:
18) 100
years of Modernism pg. 85
19)
Pascendi, 15
20) Ibid,
13
21) First
Vatican Council
22) Ibid
23) The
true notion of Tradition, January 1997 issue of Si Si No No
24) “Some
reduce to a meaningless formula the necessity of belonging to the true Church
in order to gain eternal salvation”. (Humani Generis)
25)
www.waragainstbeing.com/parti-article6
26)
Message to the Abbes of the Order of the Most Holy Redeemer, September 21, 2002
27) “It
now becomes clear that the real heart of faith in the resurrection does not
consist at all in the idea of the restoration of bodies, to which we have
reduced it in our thinking ( …) One thing at any rate may be fairly clear: Both
John (6:63), and Paul (1 Cor. 15:50) state with all possible emphasis that the
‘resurrection of the flesh’, the ‘resurrection of the body’, is not a
resurrection of the physical bodies… To recapitulate, Paul teaches, not the
resurrection of eternal physical bodies, but the resurrection of persons, and
this not in the return of the ‘flesh body’, that is, the biological structure…”
(Introduction to Christianity by Fr. Joseph Ratzinger, pgs 349, 357-58)
28)
Pascendi, 3
29) Ibid,
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