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MODERNISM
ITS FAILURE AND ITS FRUITS

MODERNISM ITS FAILURE AND ITS FRUITS

BY

M. D. PETRE

LONDON : T. C. & E. C. JACK, LTD.
35 PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C.
AND EDINBURGH

TO
GEORGE TYRRELL.
I dedicate this study of a cause -w-hich has
been declared hopeless to the memory of
one of its leaders, from whom I learned
that life may be well spent in sowing
what we shaU not reap, and that it is
enough to see the Promised Land from
afar though it be not given us to enter
therein.

' By thy mercy, 0 God, may we be freed from
the dead hand of the past, and enter into ne-w
life and holiness.' — (Prayer in the Roman Missal
for Tuesday in Holy Week.) -*
• Twa no» mitericordia, Deus, et ah omni svhrep-
timu vetustalia expurgat, et eapaces sanetae novitatis
efflciat.

FOREWORD
MODERNISM AND THE WAE
'T^HIS is a pre-war book ; finished and set in type
A in 1914. Although, as I write these lines, we
seem no nearer the end of our great probation than in
those first months when so much was laid aside to
await ' the end of the war,' yet there are signs, in the
reading world, that normal and abiding subjects of
interest are coming into their own once more ; that
it is possible to go on with the duties that our
present condition imposes, and yet to think of
other things besides.
Furthermore — the scaffolding of social recon
struction is being erected at home even while the
work of material destruction continues abroad, and
religious reconstruction is, for some of us, an essential
element of all social reconstruction. We are begin
ning to realise that it is time to live and think once
more even while men fight abroad, or endure at home,
for the right to live and think in their own way.
The author of this little volume is among those
to whom these very reflections may be addressed,
even while uttering them. To a great extent my

viii Modernism

ordinary life has been suspended during the last
three years. In France and in England, time and
strength, even more the latter than the former, have
been expended on work new and strange to me ;
work not easUy combined with intellectual effort.
And now I realise that the war, which seems to have
lasted a day, seems also to have lasted many years
— that some remnants of youth have been carried
away on its tide, that life is on the descendent, and
that it is time to do the little bit of work which, as
contained in one's own head and heart, only oneself
can do. Perhaps some of one's inteUectual fresh
ness is gone for ever — but many other and greater
things are gone than one's personal possessions ;
and if the pen works more slowly it is a price to be
gladly paid for the privilege of having turned a few
piUows and cheered a few dreary nights with cups
of tiUeul or tea.
So I took up my revised proof, feeling Mke a ghost-
returning to scenes of past activity. What was my
surprise, therefore, to find that the subject was not
only alive — that was no matter for astonishment,
for such subjects cannot die — ^but that it was brim
fuU of immediate actuality ; that Modernism was
not only a religious movement, important to those
interested in religion, but that it was also a
movement deeply representative of the conflicting

Foreword ix

aims of this very world war ; that the Modernist
leaders were men inspired, in religious questions,
with the same ideals for which we are fighting
in national fife ; that Modernism was, in fact, a
spiritual struggle between the principles of 'self-
determination ' and human democracy, and those of
unrepresentative authority and unsympathetic rule.
If we are now battling that ' the world may be made
safe for democracy,' that national and pohtical in
stitutions may be brought into accordance with
human needs and aspirations, so the Modernist was
fighting to make the Churches safe for democracy, to
bring the mechanism of religious life into accordance
with the free spontaneous life of heart and head in
the believer.
The Modernist, then, was out for the Uberation of
religious hfe from the exaggerated claims of reUgious
form ; his ruling text was that the Sabbath was
made for man, and not man for the Sabbath, which
he would have interpreted as the Church being made
for mankind and not mankind for the Church ; he
was out for the just demands of the faithful to a
right share in fashioning the reUgious home in which
their souls were to dwell ; he was out, in fine, to
obtain fresh breathing-space for the mind, fresh
warmth for the heart, in that great Institution which
belonged to him as he to it.

Modernism

His claims were answered by an invitation to
carry himself elsewhere ; to go where his opinions
were welcome, or to go where he could uphold them
all to himself. He was told, by those in rehgious
authority, that his position was unreasonable and
inconsistent, as well as objectionable, for that he had
no right to stay in a church which did not recognise
his principles. It was natural that his religious
rulers should hold this view, since it was precisely
the point on which the Modernist broke with them.
He was told the same thing by others standing out
side the Church and outside the movement ; and
this was not so natural, for many of them ought to
have understood better than they did.
To blame Modernism for this attitude of combined
revolt and attachment is to blame it for being itself
— a form of criticism that is not true criticism. It is
of the very essence of Modernism to maintain the
need of both hfe and form ; to uphold the primary
necessity for the former, but also the secondary neces
sity for the latter. He asks for self-determination,
but not at the cost of going out of his own land into
a desert to exercise it. He asks to be respected,
hstened to and represented in the administration of
his Church ; he does not ask to pull down or abandon
the building which was his home. The Modernist
sets forth, in things rehgious, the claim which we are

Foreword xi

making in things political ; the claim of a people
to live on its own soil, but to Uve there in peace and
freedom. And the Modernist has also proved himself a fight
ing man by deeming his cause worthy of his Ufe ; he
has not died by the material sword, for his contest
was not ' with flesh and blood,' but he has died in
another sense, by suffering deprivation of his own
share in the life he strove to promote. The soil of
France covers the bones of those who will not enjoy
the new world for which they bled ; the exiled grave
of the Modernist covers the ashes of one who re
nounced the spiritual privileges which he endea
voured to secure to the modern mind. In his own
way he died on the field, and died without beholding
the issue of the contest, without tasting the after
joys of peace.
It is a frequent matter of discussion whether the
war has made the world more rehgious, or not. Per
sonally I tend to agree with M. Loisy, that it has
made the rehgious-minded more so, that it has in
spired respectful tolerance in places where the
opposite prevailed, but that, for the rest, it has left
reUgion as it was.
Indeed, I am not quite sure whether, as the crisis
is prolonged, we can even say as much as that ;
whether the continuous exercise of brute strength

xii Modernism

and the sense of its ruthlessness do not, on the whole,
tend to a weakening of spiritual faith. We begin to
feel hke puppets in a vast show ; and to feel hke a
puppet is not to feel like an immortal soul. On the
whole, and from what I have seen of soldier life, I
should be incUned to think that war tends to in
crease the spirit of fatalism as against that of
faith. But, on the other hand, if ever the need of reUgion
was apparent, it is so now. When was the world in
greater want of a spiritual and eternal setting to its
sufferings and endeavours than now, when those
advanced in life can hardly hope to Uve down the
sad memory of the turmoil, when the young can
never regain the lost years of youth, when it has
fallen on aU of us to pay the price for goods we shaU
not Uve to enjoy ?
Furthermore, the very ideals for which we strive
are, if we reaUy mean what we say, spiritual and
ultra-worldly. We aim at the construction of a
world in which material strength shal Inot pre
dominate, in which the instincts of egoism shaU be
controlled ; such a world supposes a spiritual and
eternal beyond in which, Uke the Platonic ideas, our
own ideals have a true and permanent existence.
If this world is to be ' made safe for democracy,*
there is also another world in which it must find a

Foreword xiii

safe home ; a world in which its noblest ideals can
be ultimately reaUsed.
I feel then that my subject has a very pronounced
appUcation to present conditions ; that in the
Modernist movement we find, in some measure, a
spiritual type of the great world struggle.
Of the chief personaUties with which this work
deals one, of course, had left us long before the
great tragedy began. Of the others we may make
particular mention of M. Loisy, in whom the love of
country has bloomed into a great human reUgion
which he has set forth in a work of which I have
treated elsewhere. In La Religion, M. Loisy— who
had already taken leave of the Church which re
jected him — ^proposes a reUgion of Humanity, closely
alUed to the Positivist reUgion of Auguste Comte,
but with a far deeper sense of the spiritual Beyond.
A world without reUgious faith is not, for him, a
world worthy of the sacrifices we have made for it.
The chief opponent of Modernism, Pius x., is no
more, and circumstances 4iave been such that it ia
not possible fuUy to estimate what the action of the
present Pope would have been in quieter times.
Certain vexatious measures have been arrested;
but the anti-modernist oath is stUl exacted.
To one, whose name appears in this book by

xiv Modernism

reason of quotations from a work addressed to him,
I would here offer a tribute of respect, sympathy
and homage — such a tribute as the author of
Medievalism would have been the first to offer him.
Cardinal Mercier has become the representative figure
of a country that has bled and suffered for us. The
writer of this work would Uke to teU him, through
these pages, that the rooms in her house where
Father TyrreU Uved and died, rooms which had been
set apart and used for no other purpose, became the
home, for years, of exiled Belgian peasants ; that
members of his own diocesan flock found shelter
therein ; and that one of his own priests has blessed
his exiled countrymen in the room where Father
TyrreU spent his last days.
CmBK Extension Hospital,
March 1918.

CONTENTS

CHAr. I. ^VHAT MODERNISM IS . . .
II. UNCONSCIOTTS MODERNISM .
III. CONSCIOUS MODERNISM
IV. HISTOET AND CHRISTOLOGY
V. CATHOLIC AND PEOTESIANT MODERNISM
VI. THE OFFICIAL CHUECH AND MODERNISM
VII. MODERNISM AND AUTHORITY
Vlll. THE FAILURE OF MODERNISM .
IX. THE TRIUMPH OF ANTI-MODERNISM .
X. THE FUTURE OF CATHOLICISM .

PASS 1

26
73
101
113132 155
188199

APPENDICES : —
1. Some works on Modernism .
II. Slighting of Episcopal Authority
III. Monsieur A. Houtin
IV. D. Salvatore Minocchi .

223234236238

vi Modernism

V. Statement made by M. Marc Sangnier to
the Temps on the occasion of the con
demnation of the ' SiUon ' . .239
VI. From the Motu Proprio 'Sacrorum
Antistitum,' in which are given
directions for the extirpation of
Modernism and the text of the Anti-
Modernist Oath . . . 241

(1,98«)

MODERNISM CHAPTER I
WHAT MODERNISM IS
HOW are we to define the very positive, and yet
elusive, movement -with which these pages are
to deal 1 It is a movement in the Church, but not a
Church movement ; and it is a movement not in one
Church only, but in aU. It is a religious movement,
yet the official representatives of religion repudiate
it ; it is a deeply human movement, yet the larger
section of humanity cares nothing for it. It is a
leamed movement, yet learning regards it more
frequently with pity than -with respect ; it is an
unlearned movement, yet the simple and unlearned
look on it "with, fear and suspicion rather than love.
It is a persecuted movement, but its martyrs get
Uttie honour or sympathy ; it is a defeated move
ment, yet it is stiU dreaded and reviled.
George TyrreU defined the modernist as a chwrch-
man of any sort who believes in the possibility of a
synthesis between the essential truth of his religion and
the essential truth of modernity.
Modernism is, then, essentiaUy, a religious move
ment, though, as we shall see later on, certain non-
(1.986) A

Modernism

religious elements have made common cause with
it ; and it is also a religious movement within the
Churches, though its human sympathies spread
beyond them. We may, therefore, add to the
above definition a certain conception, special to
modernism, of the relation of the Church to re
ligion, and of religion to the Church. In this way
the modernist becomes one who beUeves not only
in the possibility of a synthesis between modernity
and reUgion, but also in the possibiUty of a synthesis
between modern religion and the Church.
For many centuries the Church (I speak of the
Church as one, since, in some sense, we aU agree as
to her unity) had been regarded as the sole guardian
of religion, and just as, in the Middle Ages, having
first claimed the right to evangeUse the whole world,
she then claimed the right to rule the whole world,
so, yet more easUy, has she passed on from regard
ing herself as the chief guardian of reUgion to
regarding reUgion as her o-wn pecuUar possession.
By a further advance, not conscious, but due to
the unconscious logic of life, she has not only taken
possession of religion, but has made it subordinate
as the possessed is subordinate to the possessor.
Not that she has professed to be the end to which
religion is the means ; to make such profession
would be to proclaim her own deviation, and to
proclaim it would be to -wish and intend to correct
it. But in so far as reUgion which, if anything at
all, is universal as humanity itself, is represented

What Modernism is

as exclusively dependent on the Church, which
reaUy exists for its maintenance, the relations are
inverted, and reUgion becomes the means instead
of the end. In this way the Church has grown
greater and religion has grown less ; the handmaid
has become the mistress.
Modernism, besides endeavouring to mediate be-'
tween science and faith, has also attempted to arrest
this process ; to make reUgion paramount and the
Church secondary ; to restore the Church to her
position of guardian, but not mistress, of religious
faith and Ufe.
This is what explains both the reason and the
unreason of modernism ; its persistent attachment
to a Church by which it is rejected, its persevering
appeal to a world by which it is slighted. It can
find a home in neither because it beUeves in both.
It is, in fact, one of two things. It is either the last
explosive movement of vitality ui institutions
doomed to proximate extinction, at least in so far
as they can be considered of world-wide importance,
or it is the beginning of a new condition of things,
in which the Church shaU be subservient to the
religious and spiritual needs of humanity ; shaU
preserve the truth committed to her guardianship,
but shaU not refuse to leam that which mankind can
teach her ; shaU guide and command, but also foUow
and obey.
In the former case modernism wiU interest
posterity as the stage m a process ; it wUl be

Modernism

as a scientific or critical hypothesis, which was
eventuaUy proved false, but without which the
truth might never have been discovered. In the
second case it wiU eventuaUy be reckoned as at least
one of the forces in a great movement of religious
transformation and revival.
It is no duty of the present writer to pronounce
between the two alternatives. I may, or I may not,
have found the answer so far as my own faith is
concemed, but I cannot make that answer the
matter for argument. My task is the less assuming
one of seeking to lay bare the most intimate char
acteristics of the movement ; of describing its chief
manifestations ; of explaining its difficulties and
acknowledging its faUures ; of indicating its aims
and justifying its hopes.
The object, then, of this work is not a history,
but a study of modernism.^ A history of modernism
might easily become a history of religion, or a history
of heresy ; a history of authority, or a history of
rebeUion ; a history of tyranny or a history of
liberty ; it could as easUy become a history of the
Church as of a particular movement in the Church.
We might begin with the Vatican CouncU, or we
might begm with the Council of Trent ; we might
even go back to the very Gospels or the Acts of the
Apostles to find the first modernists ; and any scheme
' An exoellant documentary history of the movement ig to be
found in the work of M. Albert Houtin, Hittoire du Moderniamt
CathoUque, to be obtained of the author (18 rue Cu-vier, Paris).

What Modernism is

of history which one elected to foUow would be de
pendent on the particular definition one had laid
down of the subject.
Furthermore, the question would arise whether
such history was to cover the vicissitudes of the
movement in the Roman Catholic Church only, or in
aU Christian Churches and even in Jewish and other
non-Christian Churches. Again, it would be asked
whether we should deal with it in every country, or
in one or two only ; for it is known in Europe and
ia America, and it is not aU unknown in Asia.
History is one thing and reflection is another;
we are deaUng, in this place, with something that is
yet before our eyes, even if there are those who de
clare that it is but a corpse awaiting burial. Many,
indeed most, of those who took part in the move
ment are yet living, whether they continue to take
an active part in it or not. The repressive measures
invoked against it are stiU in fuU action ; its sup
posed votaries are stiU objects of pious horror to the
orthodox ; to deny and repudiate it is stiU a means
of advancement to the ecclesiastic who would make
his way ; it is stUl a spectre of undefined shape, of
lurid colour and colossal dimensions, to the simple
believer. We wiU take it, then, just as we find it,
and seek, not its remote, but its quite immediate
origin ; we wiU study its character and its meaning ;
its strength and its weakness ; its honesty and its
dishonesty ; its courage and its faUure ; its death
and its chances of resurrection.

Modernism

We wiU consider it chiefly in the Roman Catholic
Church, because therein it has found its classic mani
festation ; but we wUl not forget that it has played
a part elsewhere as well.
We wiU seek its characteristics in the places where
they are most readUy to be found, not presuming,
on this account, that the same characteristics might
not be found in as great force elsewhere.
To put it shortly, we wiU study that movement
caUed Modernism which arose in the CathoUc Church
in the last years of the last century, and which was
condemned by Pius x. in the SyUabus Lamentabili
of July 1907, and the Encyclical Pascendi of Sth
September 1907. That movement was represented
by Catholic priests and laymen in France, Italy,
England, Germany, as weU as other countries, who,
being ui touch with science and history and criticism,
sought to defend the CathoUc faith by methods of
apologetic which did not demand, for their use, a
type of mind and thought peculiar to the traditional
CathoUc believer.
Some of these men were historians or critics, some
were phUosophers, some were social reformers, some
were mainly apostles. They began cautiously and
went on more boldly ; they were accorded, for a
time, a certain measure of suspicious toleration on
the part of their official superiors ; they excited a
good deal of attention, sympathetic or adverse, in
the outside world; they attracted foUowers who
rightly belonged to them, and foUowers who had
little in common with them ; they were regarded by

What Modernism is

some as the saviours, by others as the destroyers of
their people.
Then came the thunderbolt, not whoUy unex
pected. In a syUabus, foUowed by an encyclical
letter of somewhat special and pecuUar character,
the movement was crushed and condemned en bloc,
and its leaders, unnamed, but described, held up to
obloquy, as the enemies of reUgion.
This general condemnation was succeeded by
various special ones, and a reign of repression set
in which has not yet reached its close. Some of
those affected by the pronouncements of authority
left the Church ; others bowed to the storm and
abandoned, at least in part, aU attempt at further
activity ; others, again, adopted what has been
named ' the doorstep policy,' and maintained their
adhesion to the Church in spite of her adverse
attitude. Thus matters stand at present as we proceed to
our analysis of the movement. Some may assist at
such an analysis with as much calm and detachment
as though they were spectators of the mere dis
section of an inanimate organism. For them the
tragedy is played ; it was foolish, or it was heroic,
but it was, in either case, desperate, and nothing
but dead bones is left to remind us of it. Such
are not, however, the sentiments of the -writer who
diffidently undertakes the task, and to whom the
work is so much more one of vivisection than of
dissection that every page is instinct -with living
pain and fear, love and hope.

CHAPTER II
UNCONSCIOUS MODERNISM
IN a novel which, if not professedly, yet actually,
contained a review of the modernist movement,
from the standpoint of one who regarded it with
very qualified approval, the sister of the modernist
leader, exasperated by the lack of sympathy which
her brother encounters in Rome, exclaims :
They go out to preach to the heathen, to make some
silly beggar woman go to confession, and they trample
on a great soul and a great heart.^
Elsewhere another chief personage in the story
remarks :
/ do not say that I am in love uoith all the officials.
I am not. But I do think that the width and the wisdom
and the sense of spiritual values here are enormous. I
know that there is a danger in being more keen about
two additional missionaries to the Indians than the
founding of a chair of philosophy ; but I think that
St. Paul would have been in the same danger.^
These passages convey the suggestion that the
Roman authorities have neglected or repressed the
needs of learning by reason of their too great con-
» Out of Due Time, by Mrs. Wilfrid Ward, p. 292.
* /dcm., p. 281. I

Unconscious Modernism 9
centration on the needs of the unlearned ; the beggar
women and the Indians have so blocked the horizon
that the phUosopher and the historian have been,
perforce, disregarded.
In The Church and the Future Father George
TyrreU, then a member of the Society of Jesus,
wrote :
/ do not suppose that any ' official,' from the
Cardinal Secretary downwards, nor any theologian,
would care to dispute the proposition that the Church
is before all else a school of sanctity and charity ; that
her sole raison d'etre is to reproduce the pattern of
Christ as exactly as possible, in as many as possible ;
that this simple end is professedly the ultimate justifica
tion of all her institutions, her hierarchy, her sacra
mental system, her dogmatic system ; of all her battlings
and diplomacy in defence of the temporal power ; of
all the pomp and parade of the Court of Bome in its
palmiest days ; of all the ceremonial, the purple and
scarlet, and fine-twined linen, of bishops and prelates
and cardinals ; of all that is mere worldliness if not
sanctified by that end — and mere fraud and hypocrisy
if it only pretends to be so sanctified. Pass through
the courts and halls of the Vatican Palace, amidst the
outward semblances of earthly vanity and secular
power, and ask yourself the ultimate Why and Where
fore of all that you see and hear going on around you ;
or ask the first Monsignore or Cardinal who will deign
to notice you, and he will have to answer you as gravely
as he can .• ' Our sole thought and aim is that men

10 Modernism

may love God and love one another as much as possible
in the Spirit of Christ. We do not care about temporal
power for its own sake, or for money, nor even for
spiritual power over men's minds and wills ; nor for
our ovm dignity and position ; nor for the system and
institution which we defend ; bvi we desire purely and
simply to make men holy and Christlike, and we are
convinced that these are lawful and expeditious means
to that end.' ^
In the first of these quotations, -with its unhesitat
ing confidence in the good uitentions and disinter
ested policy of ecclesiastical rulers ; and in the
second, with its ideal of what those intentions and
that policy should be, and its suggestion of what
they are not, we have two contrary presentations
of the Church and modernism, in their respective
relations to the needs of the unlearned.
According to the former of these two views
modernism is a purely inteUectual crisis, in which
the claims of the scholar come into conffict with the
traditional teachhig of the Church ; and the Church
is here represented as resisting those claims chiefly
in the interest of her little ones. She is protecting
the unlearned against the leamed, and resisting the
stream of knowledge lest it flood an inhabited land
before a bed has been prepared for it.
Now there are many who accept this presentation
» Op. cit., p. 71. This work was published after its author's
death by the Priory Press, Hampstead : in the first instaaoe it
waa printed under a pseudonym for private circulation only.

Unconscious Modernism ii

of the case, though they do not consequently justify
the action of ecclesiastical authority ; nor admit that
it is right to repress truth lest it should distress the
ignorant ; nor exonerate official rulers from being
influenced also by other, and less worthy, motives.
They admit the plea that modernism is hostUe to the
peace of mind of the simple believer, but they main
tain that a movement cannot be arrested for such
a reason. They argue that what the people are
ignorant of to-day wiU be commonplace knowledge
to-morrow, that their temporary trouble -wiU be their
eventual gain, and that truth must at last prevaU,
whUe aU attempts to check it wiU eventuaUy redound
to the dishonour of those who have made them.
They -wiU urge, furthermore, that the Church has
a duty to the great as well as to the small, to the
rich as weU as to the poor, to the few as weU as to
the many ; that the learned may be scandalised as
weU as the ignorant, whUe they too have souls to
save which cannot be saved by means of intellectual
dishonesty. AU this may be said -without questioning the
primary assumption that modernism is whoUy a
leamed movement.
But in TyrreU we find a contrary suggestion, and
he was indeed the chief, though not the only, mod
ernist whose attention was concentrated as much
on the needs of the unlearned as of the learned be-^
liever. There were fundamental necessities of every
soul that had stirred him to a certain form of

12 Modernism

modernism long before the name had been given,
long before the thing had been condemned, long
before he himself had come into fuU contact with
modernism in its critical and historical form.
The unlearned are speechless, except to those who
have care of their souls ; it was as spiritual guide
and apostle that Father TyrreU had reaUsed their
unspoken needs. As there was to be a form of
social modernism which, accepting the principles of
modern society, endeavoured to render Christianity
acceptable to the people, and the people acceptable
to the Church, so there was a form of spiritual
modernism directed to the needs of the spiritual
democracy, of the simple faithful and their inarti
culate wants.
The Church has, indeed, often sought to protect
her chUdren from the proud science of the world
that would blind and destroy them, but she has also,
not unfrequently, bewUdered them with her own
leaming, and it was in the interests of the humble
and simple that George TyrreU first raised his voice
against the great tyranny of the modern Church, sc. the
theological schools.^
In an early article,* which he always regarded as
containing the nucleus of his whole contribution to
religious thought, he dealt ex professo -with the dis-
' The Church and the Future, p. 31.
• 'The Belation of Theology to Devotion,' published in the
Month of November 1899, republished in The Faith of the
Millions, and Through Scylla and Oharyhdia.

Unconscious Modernism 13

tress caused to the souls of the unlearned by the
learning of the theologian.
Roughly speaking, he writes, the difference between
the philosophical and the vulgar way of conceiving and
speaking about things is that the former is abstract,
orderly, and artificial ; the latter concrete, disorderly,
and natural. . . .
Now, who will deny that a natural history museum
does truly represent Nature ? that under a certain
aspect one who has studied Nature there knows more
about her than he who has lived all his life in the woods ?
But only under a certain aspect is this trv,e. For such
a presentation of Nature is abstract and negatively
unreal. Beetles do not march the fields in such
logically ordered phalanxes ; nor do they wear pins
thrust through their middles ; nor are birds' eyes made
of glass, or their viscera of sawdust, or their muscles of
wire . . . on the whole, the backwoodsman has a truer
knowledge of Nature than a mere acquaintance vnth a
science-manual could ever impart.
Thus the use of philosophy lies in its insistence on the
inadequacy of the vulgar statement ; its abuse in for
getting the inadequacy of its ovm, and thereby falling
into a far more grievous error than that which it vxndd
correct. He goes on to apply these principles to theology,
and maintains that the duty of the Church is 'to
preserve, not to develop ' the ideas which the simple
language of the Gospel ' conveyed to its first hearers.'

14 Modernism

Rational theology, he continues, is in some sense
an attempt to look at things back-before, in a non-
human, non-natural way ; and it is justified in this
endeavour only so far as it tends to cure vs of our
terrestrial ' provincialism ' ; but it is not wonderful
that to vs things so viewed should seem distorted and
unreal, the moment we forget that its use is mainly
corrective — that it is medicine and not food.
He proceeds to an almost passionate indictment
of the abstract learning that serves only to crush the
mind and cramp the heart ; of the metaphysical
theology that rather starves than nourishes the
spiritual life. He defends the right of the simple
soul to such statements and explanations of its faith
as it can, itself, make use of ; and denounces the
habit of such teachers as delight in disconcerting the
mind of others by a display of rare and esoteric know
ledge, especially of such knowledge as owes its rarity
to its abstraction and its remoteness from the whole
some concrete reality of things, and which offers, to
minds more acute than deep, a quicker road to dis
tinction than the laborious and humbling path of
general education. But, after all, destructive vxyrk
does not demand much genius, nor does it need more
than the merest smattering of bad logic and worse
metaphysics to be able to represent the beliefs of simple
devotion in a ridiculous light.
I have more than once, he exclaims bitterly, known
all the joy and reality taken out of a life that fed on
devotion to the Sacramental Presence by such a flash

Unconscious Modernism 15

of theological illumination ; and have seen Magdalens
left weeping at empty tombs and crying, 'They have
taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have
laid Him.'
Now George TyrreU was regarded by ecclesiastical
authority as one of the chief and most dangerous of
modernists ; and he himself said later of the article
from which I have quoted :
/ am amazed to see how little I have really advanced
since I wrote it ; how I have simply eddied round and
round the same point.^
If this be true, and I think those closely acquainted
with TjrrreU's apologetic -writings will not deny it,
then it was not for the rights of a restricted and
learned class that TyrreU became a modernist, but
for the human rights of all ; it was with what he
regarded as a false learning, and not with the apostolic
desire to protect the little ones, that his quarrel lay.
If we tum next to another great leader of the move
ment, who started from a different standpoint, and
arrived at a different end, who was more exclusively
absorbed in the labours of a scholar and savant, and
less occupied with pastoral cares, we shall stUl find
that, in his modernism, there was a certain regard for
the needs of the ordinary beUever ; not so much for
his devotional as for his inteUectual needs ; for the
reason, knowledge, and commonsense of the plain
man, who is also a Christian and a Catholic.
What distresses the mind of the faithful, writes the
* Through Scylla and Charybdis, p. 85.

i6 Modernism
then Abbe Loisy in his introduction to ' Autour d'un
petit li-vnre,' in regard to the Scripture is the impos
sibility in which a man, using ordinary common sense,
finds himself of reconciling what he sees the Bible to be,
as a book, with what theologians seem to affirm of its
absolute, universal truth.
What distresses the mind of the faithful in regard to
tradition is the impossibility of reconciling the historical
evolution of Christian doctrine with what our theologians
seem to affirm of its unchangeableness. What distresses
the mind of the faithful in regard to the Divinity of Christ
and His ' infallible knowledge ' is the impossibility
of reconciling the natural sense of the most certain
Gospel texts with what our theologians teach, or seem
to teach, regarding the consciousness and knowledge of
Jesus. What distresses the mind of the faithful in
regard to the redemption operated by the death of Christ
is the impossibility of accepting as an adequate theory
of the economy of salvation one that is founded on
ignorance of the history of mankind, and of the religion
of mankind. What distresses the mind of the faithful
in regard to the resurrection of Christ is the simple
reading of the Gospels as contrasted with the assurance
of our apologists, who declare them to contain an absolute
agreement amongst the witnesses, and historical cer
tainty both in character and fact. What distresses the
mind of the faithful in regard to the Eucharist, and the
institution of the papacy and the episcopacy, is the effort
they would have to make, and can no longer make, to
find in the Gospel text a full and complete definition of

Unconscious Modernism 17

these things as they are to be found in the present
ecclesiastical teaching.^
This is a plea for the rights of ordinary, and not
of special, knowledge ; M. Loisy is not referring to
the rare attainments of the scholar, who can, after
aU, take care of himself, but to the common educa
tion and everyday wits of the simple faithful. In
their case there is no justification for the old and
much-worn charge of inteUectual self-sufficiency ;
their minds are not be-wUdered by too much know
ledge, but by the conflict between two forms of in
struction, to both of which they have to submit.
They must go to school, and they must go to church ;
they have, indeed, no -wish to renounce either. Nor
is it, here, the leaming of the critic which oppresses
them, but the learning of the theologian. As the
subtleties of Eucharistic theology, forced upon them
by preacher or teacher, have sometimes quenched
their devotion, so the historical and scientiflc asser
tions of theology have troubled their faith. And
whereas they need only accept so much of criticism
as con-vinces their inteUigence, they are asked to
accept the science that theology offers them even
in despite of it.
It is, of course, unquestionably true that science
and history have often disturbed the faith of the
uneducated, and we shaU see, later on, that modem-
ism was an attempt to put faith beyond the reach
of such dangers. But whereas the faithful have no
• Op. cit., pp. xxxiii-xixiv.
(l,»8e) B

i8 Modernism

right to expect spiritual help from science, they have
a right to expect it from theology, whUe they, un
fortunately, sometimes experience the contrary, and
find that a road which they had deemed passable,
though rugged, as science had left it, is beset with
pitfaUs which are the work of theology.
Then, too, if Biblical criticism has raised diffi
culties in the believing mind, kt us not forget that
it has also solved a few. Have we not aU of us, who
were brought up in Christian homes, suffered in our
time from that white-washing of Old Testament
immorality, which was regarded as a necessary part
of our religious instruction ? Deeds of murder and
cruelty were justified, not as the inevitable product
of their day, but as carried out by the command of
God. The Bible was not a history of the progressive
religious education of man, but, in every part, a
revelation of the highest reUgious truth. The
morality of the Bible was representative of the
absolute moraUty of aU times ; and if the God of the
ancient patriarchs seemed, to the mind of the
Christian chUd, far less honest and pure and merciful
than the least worthy of his U-ving acquaintances,
he had stiU to beUeve that this was the same God
whom he worshipped, though, -with the advent of
Christianity, the divine methods had been altered.
What many minds have suffered during this process
wUl perhaps never be fully reaUsed, nor the reUef
with which they grasped at a conception of the
Bible which made it reflect the moral and Intel-

Unconscious Modernism 19
lectual shortcomings of its writers and their people,
as weU as the action and guidance of God in their
history. The parents and teachers who felt these difficulties,
and struggled, in what way soever, to cope -with them,
were, in their measure, unconscious modernists.
In his Question Biblique au XIX' Siecle, pubUshed
in 1902, the Abb6 Albert Houtin dealt admirably
with this difficulty. Speaking of the Scriptural
teaching in CathoUc schools, he says :
While these debates were raging amongst theologians,
exegetists, geologists, apologists, what was the ecclesias
tical teaching in regard to the deluge ?
In primary teaching, and in the popular explana
tion of the catechism, this cataclysm was represented
as having been physically and absolutely universal.
In secondary teaching it was restricted to the earth
inhabited by men.
In higher teaching, complete liberty of opinion was
allowed. Thus those who received the education of the wealthy
. . . enjoyed the instruction best fitted to save them
from loss of faith later on. The more numerous and
less fortunate children, whose faith would eventually
be threatened by materialism and anti-clericalism,
were taught their religion in the way most difficult to
preserve it.^
Religious instruction ui France has been, for a long
» La Question Biblique chez lea CathoUques de France, Albert
Houtin, p. 198.

20 Modernism

time, very rigorously organised by the clergy ;
amongst Catholics in England, except the very poor,
the parents have exercised their o-wn judgment and
taken a larger share in the duty. Hence the
difficulty here has been a more personal one. The
mother has been perplexed, in her very first lessons
to her Uttie ones, by the sense of future danger ;
is she to give them temporary or permanent ideas ?
is she, as a woman of ordinary education, to take
count of her own knowledge of the ascertained facts
of science and history, or is she to leave her chUdren
to find them out for themselves, and get over the
difficulties, whose seed she has implanted in them, as
best they can, whenever they become aware of them ?
Furthermore, is she to impart instruction in a form
in which she herself could not accept it, or is she to
say only what she can say in perfect sincerity ?
In thus submitting the problem I am not suggest
ing the answer. It may be that many an enUghtened
mother wiU decide, in aU rectitude, to teach her
chUdren just as she herself was taught ; or, if she
cannot do it herself, -wiU leave the task to those who
can. But in whatever way she may decide the
question, a question it has been to her, and in so far
as she has apprehended it she has apprehended one
of the difficulties with which modernism has had to
deal. In yet another way modernism has responded to
a need of the unlearned. The Church has ever
declared it to be her mission to guard her chUdren

Unconscious Modernism 21
from superstition as well as unbeUef ; to check
creduUty as weU as infideUty. Yet it must be
admitted that authority has been much less active
in the repression of dangerous beliefs than in that
of dangerous unbeUefs. Amongst many it has
almost become a maxim of orthodoxy that it matters
little whether we beUeve too much, provided only
that we believe enough. It is not -wise to assume
that such a doctrine is prima facie repeUent to aU
right-minded people ; this would be to ignore the
mass of sloth and indolence that weighs on our poor
humanity. It is true that faith is difficult, but it
is true also that creduUty is easy ; it is true that it
needs an effort to worship ' in spirit and in truth,'
but it is true also that it needs but little effort to
worship with the senses and the imagination. In
so far, then, as the people are not urged or encouraged
by their reUgious teachers to produce, in their
spiritual life, the highest and not the lowest, the
least and not the most material conceptions of
which they are capable, they are suffermg from a
form of injustice, and are being prepared for the
loss of faith when they find higher ideals outside
the Church than they have found within it.
Now, to say that the Catholic Church contams
a certain element of paganism is to say that she
contains every element of humanity, and the ruth
less repression of aU kinds of material devotions
would be, in its way. a form of tyranny. But it
is one thing to tolerate a belief or devotion which

22 Modernism
is, to those who hold it, their best means of grasping
spiritual truth, and it is another thing to foster this
particular line of development, or even tolerate it,
when it can serve no purpose of edification.
A classic instance of the non-repression of super
stition is to be found in the ' Diana Vaughan ' mystifi
cation, foisted on a CathoUc public by M. Leo TaxU.
As M. Loisy remarked :
This propaganda of lies and folly was produced
and perpetuated without a single word of public re
probation from the Bishops of France. The diocesans
of the Cardinal Archbishop of Paris are forbidden to
read L'Evangile et I'EgUse, but are now, as always,
authorised to seek edification in the Catholic works of
Lio Taxil.^
This disedifying affair ministered to no spiritual
need ; it was not a devotion permitted to the weak
ness of the uneducated. It was, once more, the
principle of tolerating'the ' too much ' provided only
there were not ' too little.' Yet ' too much ' of the
letter is inevitably productive, in the long run, of
* too little ' of the spirit.
AU these difficulties existed before the appearance
of any definite form of modernism, and they con
tinue to exist in spite of its condemnation ; they
constitute what we may call unlearned, or uncon
scious modernism.
Learned modernism came forward with its ex
plicit demands, thrusting under the eyes of Church
' Autour d'un petit livre, p. xxx.

Unconscious Modernism 23

rulers certain definitely acquired facts, or non-
negUgible hypotheses ; but unlearned modernism
had also its inarticulate demands, to be made, in
whispers and sighs, to those who could and would
listen. It is true that the simple beUever has suffered
from an inroad of knowledge for which he was not
prepared. Perhaps no wisdom or foresight on the
part of his rulers could have averted this crisis,
though perhaps, on the other hand, it could. Yet
apart from the problems which science cast in his
way, he suffered, before the advent of conscious
modernism, from the subtleties of theology, which
disturbed his devotional life ; from the literal
and unspiritual interpretation of Scripture, which
shocked his moral sense ; from the encouragement
of low and material forms of devotion, which
weakened his spiritual Ufe ; from a system of
education, and a general treatment of faith diffi
culties, which exposed him, sooner or later, to the
ruin of his faith.
He suffered, during the modernist crisis, because
he was left to bear the brunt of difficulties which his
superiors had declined to face ; he suffered also
because he cannot bear authority to be in the -wrong,
and had, therefore, when necessary, to close his eyes
to things he saw lest he should have to admit that
it was in the -wrong ; he suffered, again, because he
was commanded to curse those who had guided and
blessed him, and to refuse the food which had

24 Modernism

nourished him. He suffers now whenever, and in
so far as, he is aware that the Church is accumulat
ing debts which must eventuaUy be paid, and that
religion is being guarded at the cost of perfect truth
and sincerity.
Modernism is not, then, simply the result of a
clash between faith and leaming, but rather of a clash
between two forms of learning.
What is commonly miscalled the conflict between
faith and science, -wrote George Tj^reU, is in truth a
conflict between theology and secular knowledge ; ^ it
is, in fact, a conflict between leaming and leaming,
the learning of the day and the leaming of the past ;
the learning that is laboriously forcing its way
through new facts and the learning that is enthroned
on ancient axioms ; the leaming of humanity and
the leaming of theology.
The unlearned have their interest in the contest,
because they have also their needs ; the need of
inteUectual guidance on the one hand, and of
spiritual guidance on the other. They do not want
their ignorance preserved and defended, but only
that knowledge, unconscious perhaps, but real,
which they often possess in a fuUer measure than the
better instructed. They may suffer from the learn
ing of the scholar, but they have suffered also from
the learning of the theologian. They do not want
their prima facie view of reaUty turned into a
philosophy ; they do not want the value of their
• The Churoh and the Future, p. 105.

Unconscious Modernism 25
own simple perceptions falsified by exaggeration.
As George Tyrrell wrote, in an unpublished article :
The common-sense mind, which is the plain man's
mind, is mainly utilitarian and materialistic. . . .
We may trust the first impressions, the intuitions and
the universal experiences of the plain man ; but we
should profoundly distrust his philosophy, his reflection,
his analysis.^
The ' plain man,' in fact, finds his true friends
amongst those who neither despise nor fiatter him ;
who are in touch with his needs, in agreement with
his perceptions, in sympathy with his aspirations,
and not in love with his limitations.
' Revelation and Experience — A reply to Hakluyt Egerton.

CHAPTER III
CONSCIOUS MODERNISM
WE have seen that amongst the faithful at
large, who took no defined part in the
recent religious movement, there was nevertheless
at work a certain unconscious preparation for
modernism, in their sense of unanswered difficulties
and unfulfiUed needs. We have now to study the
more conscious beginnings of the movement in its
inteUectual, spiritual and social forms.
Our object is to note the chief characteristics and
main constituents of this movement, and for this
purpose it wUl not be necessary to name aU who took
part in it, nor even to describe every particular line
of work or thought which contributed to the total
result. But we may distinguish four main aspects
of its activity, in each of which we can learn what we
most need to know from one or two of its leading
representatives. Once more we shaU find that the conflict is not
between science and faith, the world and the spirit,
but between two kinds of thought, two kinds of
leaming, two kinds of philosophy, two conceptions
of society.
There has been, indeed, in the past, and there

Conscious Modernism 27

may yet be found, though rarely, m the present,
a form of science which makes open and unceasmg
warfare on every kmd of spiritual belief, and which
beUttles any idea incapable of strict syUogistic
proof. In her battles -with such scientUic material
ism, or rationalistic phUosophy, the Church has
reasonably claimed a certam delimitation of fron^
tiers ; she maintains that her own teaching should
not be criticised by methods foreign to its nature,
whUe she professes to aUow, in return, aU freedom
to science, exercised according to its own methods
and in its own domain.
Thus we stiU hear theologians plead, as against
the charge of dogmatic intolerance, that the Church
leaves her chUdren perfectly free in matters of pure
science or history ; that they may, as a critic of
modernism has said, visit their friends in aeroplanes,
or flash messages through the air, with her fuU
permission and blessing.^
The concession, as here made, is somewhat faUa-
cious, for the aeroplane and the Marconigram are not
science, but products of science ; and the question
is not whether we may use the material advantages
which science provides, but whether we may con
sider ourselves unhampered by any theological con
sideration in our scientific investigations.
But, furthermore, the argument is, on the whole,
cheap and out of date, for the reason that both
'¦ See article by Mgr. Moyes in Nineteenth Century Magazine,
December 1907.

28 Modernism

science and phUosophy have gro-wn less and less
materialistic, and have come to recognise, some
times more fuUy than theology itself, that * there
are more things in heaven and earth than this world
dreams of.' It is a man of science who exclaims
in the words of Mr. H, G. WeUs :
/ want research, and the spirit of research . . . and
that still, silent room of mine again, that room, as
quiet as a cell, and the toil that led to light. Oh ! the
coming of that light, the uprvsh of discovery, the solemn
joy as the generalisation rises like a sun upon the facts
— floods them with a common meaning. . . . The
practical trouble . . . is the trouble between faith and
realisation. You demand the outcome. Oh ! and I
hate to turn aside and realise. . . . Men of my sort
want to understand. We want to understand, and you
ask us to make. We want to understand atoms, ions,
molecules, refractions. You ask us to make rubber
and diamonds. . . . Finally, I vxirn you, we will
make rubber unnecessary and diamonds valvMess.^
But if science has thus been gropiag after such a
fulffiment of its own dim guesses as may lead it
to the very threshold of religious truth, theology
has not always advanced in the same process of
spirituaUsation, nor recognised the change that was
taking place in the scientific world and gone forth
to meet it. Thus the ground has been prepared
for a conflict of a totaUy new order between the two ;
in which that sense of mystery, of great secrets and
» Marriage, H. G. Wells, pp. 602-527.

Conscious Modernism 29
forces not to be wholly grasped by the inteUigence
of man, is more keenly developed in the mind of
the scientific investigator than in that of the theo
logian. It had been supposed that the wisdom of
the world was proud and earthly, whUe the wisdom
of the Church (for it was assumed that the -wisdom
of the Cross was hers) was meek and spiritual.
But some CathoUc phUosophers and scholars have
come to see that the pride and earthly-mindedness
are not aU on one side, and that the increasing
modesty of natural science would be more fittingly
met by a corresponding diffidence on the part of
reUgious science, or theology. Section 1
Philosophy and Faith
' The more a man is united within himself and
becometh inwardly simple, so much the more and
higher things doth he understand without labour ;
for that he receiveth inteUectual light from above.'
The author of the Imitation had evidently a good
many opportunities for observing the dangers of
theological leaming and self-sufficiency ; in our
own days a school of CathoUc phUosophy has arisen
in which the principles of Christian asceticism are
brought to bear on the work of Christian apology,
and it is shown that humUity and self-abnegation
are an element of faith as weU as conduct. We
had been told that vui;ue was a matter of continual

30 Modernism

effort, and that not to go forward was to go back ;
we had not been so clearly warned that our posses
sion of religious truth was equaUy dependent on
continuous effort.
In M. Maurice Blondel's great work L' Action, we
get the foundations of this new CathoUc apologetic,
which has been caUed the ' phUosophy of action,'
or the ' new phUosophy ' ; but whereas this work
has found comparatively few readers, its principles
have received not only explanation, but creative
interpretation from others, more directly kno-wn to
the general reader.
In his answer to Certain Objections Addressed to
tive New Philosophy, M. Edouard Le Roy gives the
following account of it :
Taking things in the gross, in spite of certain
divergencies which I esteem secondary, this (new
phUosophy) inspires many thinkers who, being verbally
opposed, are not aware of their mutual kinship. This
philosophy is distinguished by a respectful and sym
pathetic study of special sciences (specificitSs), by an
attempt to view things directly, by an effort after life
and reality. If this were the time and place it would
not be difficult to show that this ' renaissance,' far from
being restricted to philosophy, understood even in the
widest sense, tends to become universal, and that its
animating spirit is gradually penetrating every field
of mental activity, from pure mathematics to history
and religious exegesis. . . . Perhaps we have here the
beginning of an era in which philosophy, definitely

Conscious Modernism 31
assuming her proper character, vnll renounce any claim
to be a separate science, but vnll affirm a right of uni
versal jurisdiction. . . .
As a philosophy of ' becoming ' the new philosophy
recognises Heraclitus as a remote ancestor, and it has
been further prepared by contemporary evolutionism,
which it deepens and perfects. . . . As a philosophy
of liberty, the new philosophy is the culmination of
a vast dialectic of systems. . . .
As a philosophy of pure experience it responds to
the empirical tendencies of the last three centuries, it
not only continues, but also completes and defines an
ancient tradition, if it be true that a return to what is
most immediate has ever been the deepest desire of the
metaphysician. As an anti-intellectuaUst philosophy, affirming the
primacy of action and of life, it can claim as precursors
Duns Scotus and Pascal, it is a continuation of the
great line of mystics, it is the definite entrance of the
Christian spirit into the domain of pure speculation,
it opens the only way through which the criticism of
the nineteenth century can pass without threatening
reason with bankruptcy, it raises a defence against
scepticism by the foundation of a new positivism, the
positivism of the mind.
This ' new phUosophy,' M. Le Roy further main
tains, has always existed, and yet it possesses certain
characteristics which constitute its newness and
originaUty, for it is not a philosophy of sentiment,
nor a philosophy of the will ; it is truly a philosophy

32 Modernism

of action. Now action implies certainly both sentiment
and will ; but it implies also something else, which is
reason. . . . Light and truth must be finally sought
in the unifying action of the soul.
Hence this phUosophy is not exclusive of the in
teUect, but of inteUectuaUsm, for :
The intellectualist installs himself in a centre of
light, and thence endeavours to cast on the surrounding
obscurity some flashes of discursive reflection . . .
reason, for him, is a thing made . . . activity . , .
is a confused and provisional datum to be resolved
into explicit ideas. . . .
The new philosophy repudiates this rationalism , . .
which it regards as the very negation of the spirit. . . .
Why prefer light to movement, when the spirit is a
power of movement rather than a source of light ? ^
As another, and perhaps the most distinguished.
Catholic phUosopher of that school has said :
For ideas to be our own, and for them to be really
ideas, we must live them. Otherwise they are but
empty frames.^
As a reUgious apologetic the main principle of
the phUosophy of action lies, then, in its regarding
faith as an adhesion of the whole being, and not of
the inteUect alone, to religious truth. To beUeve,
in the reUgious sense, is not merely to hold that
' Extrait de la Betme de Mitaphysique el de Morale (Armand
Colin). > Essais de Philosophie Religieuse, L. Laberthoimiire, p. 46
(P. Lethielleuz).

Conscious Modernism 33
certain doctrines are true, but to turn to them with
heart, wiU, and inteUigence, as containing what is
needful to the very Ufe of the soul ; whUe to doubt
or deny is to exclude, those truths, not only intel-
lectuaUy, but morally and actively. Hence the
term of ' moral dogmatism,' which was adopted to
denote the joint theoretical and practical, abstract
and concrete value of revealed truth.
The characteristic of moral dogmatism is its maxim
that we cannot attain truth save by a living movement
of the whole self. It has nothing in common vnth what
is called voluntarism, or dogmatism of the heart.^
Thus conduct and thought become inextricably
interwoven in the religious process ; it is with our
whole being that we believe and love, and the one
cannot exist in its reaUty without the other. Faith
is no mere acceptance of certain doctrines, it is our
total attitude towards them. God is the author of
the entire being, which is attuned to Him by faith,
and closed to Him by scepticism. To reach Him
we must go out from the narrow confines of egoism ;
to deny Him we need only remain within them.
We cannot receive spiritual truth from any teacher
without active response on our own part ; faith
demands, not only mental docUity, but moral self-
donation. Corresponding to this idea of faith is the con
ception of scepticism which we find in the phUosophy
of action. It was perhaps for the first time that
» Essais, etc., L. Laberthonnifere, p. 126.
(1,988) 0

34 Modernism

fundamental scepticism was understood by the
Catholic apologist, and therefore, to some extent,
met and answered, though a beginning had been
made in Newman's Grammar of Assent. The sceptic
had been reasoned with often enough before ; he
had been pitied or scolded ; declared mad or bad ;
'refuted,' in the scholastic term, or ridiculed; but
he had not been answered. Nor could he be answered
on those lines, for to a fundamental inteUectual doubt
there is no fundamental inteUectual answer.
The Catholic apologist had faUed to reaUse, first,
that nothing whoUy absurd can persistently or
recurringly exist ; and next, that in every inteUigent,
believing soul there stiU lies hid at least some
possible, if not some actual, grain of scepticism.
Even were this not so, even if there were in the whole
world but one sound-minded sceptic, his arguments
would need serious consideration, as proving, at
least, that the proofs he resisted were not absolutely
convincing. Much more do his difficulties deserve
attention when we find that the most devout be
liever is not whoUy, nor always, free from them.
According to the methods of ' moral dogmatism '
the sceptic is not therefore commended to the care
of the lunacy commissioners, nor is he condemned
as bad in the sense of wUfuUy denying reUgious truth
for some unworthy motive. It is not for his beUef,
or for his unbelief, that he is to be judged, but for
that moral attitude which results in pure scepticism,
and whose root vice is selfishness. The sceptic is

Conscious Modernism 35
culpable, not as an unbeUever, but as a colossal
egoist. He cannot find his end in God, because he
has sought it in himself. The cure is to be found,
not in argument, but in asceticism and self-renuncia
tion ; the highest faith impUes the highest love, and :
To love is not to take possession but to give}
And again :
God is, at once, the beginning and the end, the alpha
and the omega. And He cannot be the one without
being the other. Hence we cannot recognise Him as
our Cause vnthout choosing Him as our End.^
Elsewhere Pere Laberthonniere remarks that :
True criticism ever disposes us to doubt and mis
trust ourselves, lest self should be an obstacle to the
recognition of truth ; whereas false criticism doubts
everything, mistrusts everything except self. The
former is comparable to the examination of conscience
of the publican ; the latter to that of the Pharisee.*
But the analysis of scepticism, and the discovery
of its fundamental egotism, were part of a general
conception of faith which removed it a long way from
mere inteUectual assurance. The sceptic has a com
panion as imcongenial to himself as he is uncongenial
to that companion, viz. the purely intellectual
dogmatist, who affirms truth from his own sole
point of view just as the sceptic denies it. They
may seem strange bedfellows, but they are such;
and just because they are victims of the same
faUacy they can do nothing to help one another.
1 EasaU, etc., p. 68. • Idem., p. 67. ' Idem., p. 39,

36 Modernism

The minds of both are closed to what surpasses
their o-wn dimensions.
According to the sceptic, to believe in being, or to
affirm it, is to be the dupe of an illusion. . . . The
wise man asserts nothing, and thus avoids conflict with
himself or others. In such an attitude is to be found
what may be called egotistic dogmatism. . . . Such men
are like those reactionaries who obstinately regard the
earth as the centre of the solar system. . . . But it
is interesting to note, just here, that the scepticism of
the esprit fort and the ' Boeotian ' dogmatism of narrow,
fanatical minds have their root in the same interior
disposition, that is to say, self-satisfaction, the avowed
or secret, but ever dominant conviction of being oneself
at the centre of all things and possessing all the truth
that can be possessed.^
The lost man, according to this phUosophy, is not
the fighter, or the sufferer, but the arrivi, satisfied
with what he has and seeking nothing more.
If we profess, -writes M. Blondel, to be contented with
the partial knowledge we have attained ; if we take
advantage of the little light we have to close our eyes to
further light and new demands, then we are allounng
inadequate conceptions to master our minds and per
vert our sincerity. . . .
We cannot make too great efforts to rouse those pre^
sumptuous {dogmatists), who stand still themselves and
stop others on the road which we must ever tread, nor
flatter ourselves that we have arrived.^
1 Eaaaia, etc., pp. 34-39. • L'Action, p. 476,

Conscious Modernism 37
Such principles were disturbing to those for whom
faith signified nothing else than the final, immovable
and settled possession of reUgious truth ; a possession
which, once acquired, needed no further effort for
its preservation. Yet such a conception of the
CathoUc dogmatic system was becoming daUy more
foreign to the minds of those -within as weU as without
the Church. In AprU 1905 M. Edouard Le Roy
published in the Quinzaine an article whose title was
a question, ' Qu'est-ce qu'un dogme ? ' In it he stated
the difficulties which such an inteUectuaUstic con
ception of dogma, as had come to prevaU, placed in
the way of beUef ; whUe he nevertheless loyaUy
maintained the spiritual and moral value of a
dogmatic system.
In a phrase that has become classic he remarked,
first of aU, that :
The time of partial heresies has gone by. . . . We
no longer deny one dogma rather than another. . . .
It is the idea of dogma itself that raises opposition and
objections.^ The reasons which he sets forth for this alienation
of the modern mind from dogma are, in substance,
that we no longer accept any statements funda-
mentaUy unprovable ; nor do we recognise any
department of knowledge which caimot be assimi
lated -with the rest. For :
• This article was republished, with others eonoerning the same
controversy, in a, volume entitled Dogme et Critique, from which
I quote (Bloud et Cie, Paris, 1907).

38 Modernism

Reality is not made of distinct, adjacent pieces ;
everything is within everything ; in the least detail of
nature or science analysis discovers all nature and all
science.^ Now these difficulties are, as M. Le Roy maintains,
unanswerable according to the ' inteUectualist ' con
ception of dogma, and he suggests that, in the intel
lectual order, dogmas have but a negative signification,
whUe their positive value is moral and practical.
Thus in regard to certain articles of faith :
' God is personal ' means ' behave in your dealings
with Him as with a human person,' ' Jesus rose from
the dead ' signifies ' Be in your relations vnth Him as
you would have been before His death, as you are
actually with a living person.' ^
We may observe here that the writer makes no
distinction between these two kinds of dogma, of
which the first regards a whoUy supra-sensible truth,
the second a truth of mixed supra-sensible and
sensible order.
M. Loisy, -writing to the author, 9th May 1907,
remarks :
/ must admit that the critical portion of your work
satisfies me better than its positive part. . . . The
moral significance of most of the Christian dogmas,
which is what we and our contemporaries care about,
is so distant from their original signification and their
theological import, that I ask myself if there is much
good in suggesting a metaphysical system to serve as
1 Dogme et Critique, p. 9. » Idem., p. 26.

Conscious Modernism 39
intermediary between old symbols and actual rules of
conduct . . . and whether the religious teaching which
is to prevail will not be infinitely more simple in its
method and organisation than our dreams of an
intelligent and living Catholicism.^
In these words we have a criticism of the new
phUosophy in its dealings with the historic pro
blem ; the point on which certain of its apologists
feU short, as some of us dare to think, of a
complete and courageous application of its own
principles. There had been, perhaps, from the
outset, a tendency to separate too completely the
domain of science from that of philosophy ; and the
same mistake was made later in regard to history.
Thus M. Maurice Blondel writes :
There is no more resemblance between scientific
formulas and philosophical conceptions than there is
between the qualities perceived by the senses and the
calculations of the learned on these same perceptions.
If heat, as we feel it in our organs, is heterogeneous
in relation to the degrees marked by the thermometer
or the theories of thermo-dynamics, so are physical
hypothesis and metaphysical explanations hetero
geneous. We cannot pass from the one to the other.
. . . It is as impossible to have agreement or conflict
between science and metaphysics as it is impossible
for two lines to meet that are traced on different planes.^
* Quelques Lettres aur dea questions aciuelles, pp. 75, 76.
' Lettre sur les exigences de la pensie contemporaine, p. 6
(Saint Dizier — Imprimerie G. St. Aubin, etc., 1896).

40 Modernism
Yet, on the other hand, their hostiUty to the
cloisons inches, or what we caU in this country
' water-tight compartments ' system of knowledge,
led these phUosophers to overlook the existence of
certain undeniable barriers that separate one science
from another, and to refuse to each one its legitimate
autonomy in its own domain.
Thus M. Blondel -writes elsewhere :
No one of the special sciences is absolute master in
its own home. . . . (The historian) must keep his
researches in perpetual dependence on ulterior ques
tions which he is not capable of deciding alone or of
deciding at all}
In a chapter on ' L'histoire, son insuffisance,' we
find P^re Laberthonniere treatiag the historic
problem in like manner.
First of aU he shows us, with irresistible force and
justice, that our faith, as Christians, cannot rest on
a basis of purely historical truth. Yet, when he
goes on to teU us that in the Gospel, as in the teach
ing of the Church, Christ does not offer Himself to
us as a past fact, of whose reality we should have to
assure ourselves . . . but as a present reality, which
is for us the way, the truth, and the life^ we feel
that two orders of knowledge are being inadequately
distinguished ; that, unless we may depend on the
brutal historical value of certain facts, Jesus of
1 ' Histoire et Dogme,' from the Quinzair^, 16th January to
16th February 1904.
* Le Rialisme Chritien et Vidialieme Orec, pp. 122-123.

Conscious Modernism 41
Nazareth cannot be for us ' the way, the truth, and
the life.' We need not personaUy verify aU those
facts, yet confidence we do require in their actual
historic happening.
Later on we are told that :
The existence of Alexander or of Ccesar is simply
a matter of historical certitude . . . whereas the
divine quality of Christ is the object of faith.^
Yet it is from history we learn those facts on
which we base, not indeed our theological or our
spiritual conception of Christ, but the knowledge
from which we pass on to our faith in His Divinity.
It is from history we learn ' what manner of man
He was.'
Holding, as they did, to the unique spiritual value of
the Gospel records and facts, these Catholic apologists
were tempted to restrain history in its dealings with
them. But they could not escape the inevitable
alternative — was history to be carried out on its own
principles, or not ? was it autonomous, or was it not ?
Christ Uves in history or He does not. If He does
Uve in history, then history must, so far, treat Him
as it treats other historical personages.
Admirers of Bonaparte might claim that his Ufe
also could only be understood by those in sympathy
with his character; but, whUe granting this, we
could not aUow that the facts of his history were
to be qualified or uiterpreted in accordance -with
the views of his admirers.
» Le Bialiame Chritien et I'idialiame Oreo, p. 124.

42 Modernism

The phUosophy of action was wholly admirable
in its application of asceticism to faith ; in its treat
ment of scepticism ; in its sense of the unity of the
spiritual life, and of its unceasing activity, if it be
life at aU ; in its denunciation of the evils of in
teUectuaUsm and the vices of a certain form of ortho
doxy. It had only to apply its own principles to
the end in order to recognise that the self -detachment
needed for the apprehension of spiritual truth is
needed also for that of scientific or historic truth.
These deeply Catholic apologists were right when
they showed us that history neither proves nor ex
plains the spiritual signification of a fact ; they were
wrong when they restricted history in its dealings
with the fact itself.
Section 2
History and Faith
In the Preface to what I wUl venture to caU the
most important of his contributions to the modernist
movement, M. Loisy writes :
Once for all it must be said that the position of a
priest occupied with the scientific study and teaching
of Biblical exegesis fifteen or twenty years ago was a
terrible one, if he were open-minded and truthful. He
beheld an enormous field of study which had not been
hinted at in his previous instruction, namely, the un
finished but extensive work accomplished by Protestant
and Rationalist exegesis ; the confused, but ever more

Conscious Modernism 43
definite outlines of the great history of Christian origins,
a history as unknown and little understood to past ages,
from the strictly historical point of view, as that of the
earliest Eastern, Greek, and Roman antiquities. He
was faced by the necessity under which Catholics lay
of contributing to this, as to every other development of
human science, under pain of intellectual excommunica
tion, and because they would otherwise abandon the
future of Christian faith to such a crisis as it had not
undergone since its first existence.
The more enlightened men ofthe preceding generation,
perceiving the difficulty of the task, had confined them
selves to a few timid efforts. Some, it would seem, had
actually despaired of the future of Catholicism in our
country, and had chosen to die, honourably and peace
fully, in positions which they knew to be untenable.
One difficulty paralysed them. The venerable word
tradition, almost synonymous with Catholic faith,
appeared to them to cover, as with an impenetrable
shield, the whole inheritance of the past ; and they
knew, too, that the leaders of ecclesiastical opinion (I
do not say the rulers of the Church) were not disposed
to take count of the exigencies of an intellectual evolu
tion which in no way touched them. What had been
the fate of the representatives of political liberalism ?
What had been the reception accorded to intellectual
liberalism ? It was, indeed, no longer a question of
theoretical liberalism ; but of the practice of liberty,
and the recognition of truth. But is not everything
regarded, as liberalism and concession to error by those

44 Modernism

who cannot, or will not, learn anything outside their
supposed tradition, nor understand anything that does
not fiatter their insatiable appetite for domination ?
In spite of everything and everybody, a movement
arose on several sides, at the same time ; and as it was
imperatively demanded by circumstances, it lasted and
grew in spite of every opposition. All the questions
were raised, one after the other ; first that of Biblical
inspiration ; then those of the origin of the Pentateuch,
of the character of the historic books of the Old Testa
ment, of the origin and character of the Gospels, par
ticularly that of St. John ; lastly, the question of
dogma, its origin and development, of the relations of
the Church and the Gospel, and of the general philo
sophy of religion}
In the position, as here so graphicaUy described,
we may note, first, the undeniable existence of this
crisis, a crisis which was bound, eventuaUy, to be
absorbed by Christianity, or to absorb it, but which
coiUd, by no possibiUty, leave it untouched and
uftaffected ; secondly, the utter unconsciousness of
the imminence of this crisis on the part of the rulers
of the Church and the mass of the faithful. To the
unbeUeving critic this ignorance could be matter of
indifference or amusement ; to the CathoUc apologist
it could be nothing less than appalling. That the
simple and uneducated should be guarded from
danger untU the difficulties had been laid, was in
every sense desirable ; but that the danger should
' Autour d'un petit livre, pp. xv-xviii.

Conscious Modernism 45

be supposed to be annuUed by denying it, and that
those who had, ex professo, to deal with it should be
regarded as mere noxious innovators, was a symptom
fraught with anxiety. To face the danger and stUl
not to fear it would be a sign of faith and no sign of
ignorance ; to deny the danger and therefore not to
fear it was a sign of ignorance and no sign of faith.
Historical modernism was grounded on the belief, or
at least inspired by the hope, that CathoUc Christi
anity could accept aU the ascertained truths of history,
and yet keep its own ; those who condemned and
rejected it thereby impUed that such a reconcihation
was impossible. It was not a question of the cer
tainty or uncertainty of particular statements and
positions ; of the sound judgment, good wiU, and
personal dispositions of individual critics ; aU these
were secondary considerations. The true question
was simply as to the acceptance, or non-acceptance,
of strictly scientific and historical methods in the
study of the Bible, of dogma, of the Church, of
Christian origins, and of aU such subjects, regarded
from the historical standpoint, in their strictly
human aspect. Was there, in fact, to be such a
thing — ^not as Catholic exegesis, which is, in itself,
a contradictory expression — but as a CathoUc exe-
getist ? A protected history, or a protected criticism,
was a mere plaything ; was the real article to exist
within the bounds of the CathoUc Church ?
M. Loisy has related to us ^ the sufferings he under-
* Ohoiee Paaaies, Fascio. I.

46 Modernism

went during his course of theology at the Seminary
of Chalons-sur-Marne. His difficulties were not
primarUy phUosophical, or theological, or social,
or spiritual ; he could have Uved harmoniously
his twofold life as a CathoUc priest and a scholar,
if he had not been asked to be positively untrue to
his conscience in the latter capacity. He was to
leam from his ecclesiastical superiors, and not from
his own heart, that the two positions were in
compatible. This point is one of importance, and explains not
only M. Loisy's earlier hopes of working a recon
cUiation between the Church and modem thought,
but also the eventual abandonment of those hopes.
Had his first difficulties arisen from the perception
of certain vices of Church govemment, those vices
would not, later on, have constituted a reason for
despairing of the Church. The starting-point of his
modernism was different from that of the phUoso
phical school of which we have just spoken, as it
was different from that of TyrreU, of whom we shaU
presently speak. He did not, like them, begin with
an effort to revivify reUgious thought -within the
Church, and thus open her gates to the fresh know
ledge and ideas of the day ; he began where they
ended, and went on where they began. He was first
a savant, though, at the same time, a devout Catholic
priest ; and it was when he found that his con
victions as a savant raised difficulties against his
faith as a Catholic that he sought some way to

Conscious Modernism 47
reconcUe the exigencies of both positions. It was
in this endeavour that he was baulked by those
elements of the traditional Catholic teaching which
it was the aim of the ' phUosophy of action ' to
spirituaUse and transform.
This is not the place in which to estimate the
value of M. Loisy's purely critical work ; it is his
contribution to the modernist controversy -with
which we are concemed.
First of aU, we find him inexorable as to the rights
of history in its o-wn domaui. ProbabUity is pro
babiUty, and certainty is certainty ; the hypotheses
of science can be accepted with their measure of
probabUity, the facts of science must be accepted
with their measure of certainty. A text, however
precious to theology, that is proved to be an in
terpolation, or that is discovered to hold a different
sense from that which has been traditionaUy
ascribed to it, must be frankly acknowledged to be
an interpolation, or to possess that ascertained
meaning, whatever the consequent inconvenience to
the theologian ; while another text must be taken
m aU its Uteral signification, if such signification be
its true one. Thus he points out that theology is
on a false track when it would demonstrate the
doctrine of the Trinity by the word of Genesis, ' let
us make rnan to our image and likeness,' etc., whUe,
on the other hand, it is equaUy misleading when
perfectly clear texts, such as the complaints of Job
and of the psalmists on the annihilation of man by

48 Modernism

death, the assertions of our Saviour and the apostles
on ihe coming end of the world, the Johannine word of
Christ, ' The Father is greater than I,' are not supposed
to establish what they naturally signify}
As he says in his Introduction to the work from
which we quote :
The Gospel exists independently of us ; let vs
endeavour to understand it in itself, without regard
to owr needs and preferences.^
In a letter to Mgr. le Camus, Bishop of La RocheUe,
he remarks :
You display a kind of coquetry, Monseigneur, in
pointing out certain contradictions of the Evangelists,
and you cast little darts at theologians who are too
rigid on the doctrine of biblical inspiration. When
one takes up criticism one cannot take too much of
it ; and perhaps it would be wiser to leave it alone
than to take so little.*
Next we find in M. Loisy, -with aU his radical
criticism, a strong element of conservatism, which
often brings his reading of Scripture remarkably
close to that of the simple, untaught mind. This
conservatism is evinced, not in his maintaining texts
to be genuine because they have long been regarded
as genuine, but in his attributing to them, in certain
cases, their simplest and most evrident meaning ; in
his acceptance of facts in their prima facie appear
ance, without that veU of mystery and interpreta-
> L'Svangih et VSglise, p. 169. • Idem., p. 14.
' Autour d'un petit livre, p. 70.

Conscious Modernism 49
tion which had been cast over them. In this way
many deeds of the Old Testament are stripped of
the veneer -with which the moraUsations of religious
teachers had invested them, while Gospel events
stand out in a simple every-day character of which
theology had often robbed them. In this, of course,
M. Loisy was not unique, but presented the re
action of modern criticism to simpler and whole-
somer methods ; yet it distinguishes him, not only
from the traditional Christian apologist, but also
from some of his feUow critics, who had certain pre
suppositions to justify.
A third characteristic of M. Loisy's modernism is
its profoundly CathoUc character.
As M. Harnack has remarked, he -writes in ' L'Evan-
gUe et L'Eglise,' the history of Western Christianity,
from, the fifth century, is made up of the relations which
existed between two factors ; the spirit of piety, which
would make of religion a personal affair, and the spirit
of government, which would make of it an official
matter, regulated in all things by the sovereign authority
of the Roman Pontiff. The extreme issue of the first
tendency is religious individualism ; of the second,
ecclesiastical absolutism. From their mutual balance
results the life of Christianity, which would promptly
disappear if either of these tendencies ceased to counter
act the other. Protestantism subsisting, as a religion,
on the remains of hierarchical and traditional organisa
tion, Catholicism drawing its life from the ardour of
interior piety at least as much as from the solidity of
(1,986) D

50 Modernism

the hierarchical order or the rigour of central administra
tion} An interpretation of the Gospel in the interests of
Liberal Protestantism was as unhistorical as that of
Catholic traditional theology.
Fourthly, whUe there was nothing in M. Loisy's
conception of history to disagree with the funda
mental principles of the ' phUosophy of action,' whose
proper domain lay beyond aU questions of history
and was untouched by them, he was not in sympathy
with its treatment of the historic problem in itseff,
or in its relation to dogma.
In fact, history, as such, needed no explanation,
since it dealt with events and not with theories ;
whUe any interpretation of dogma that fitted itseU
to the exigencies of the moment could be but a
temporary paUiative. This was what Newman, too,
had seen, though not -with the knowledge of the
subject that M. Loisy possessed. Hence with the
ruthlessness of science, which, as the reflection of
nature, possesses some of her characteristics, he
pressed home what he beUeved to be the certainly
acquired positions of criticism, whatever their effect
on theology ; Jesus Christ did not formaUy institute
the Church, nor her theology, nor her cult ; nor
did He teach the CathoUc doctrine as to His own
Divinity ; and so forth in regard to other truths.
Furthermore, dogma itseff has a history, and this
history must be studied like any other history. Re-
» Op. cit., pp. 149-150.

Conscious Modernism 51
ligion is a fact of which the meaning is its own, but
of which the outer happenings and ascertainable
origins belong to the domain of history. Hence it
is not only the Gospel records that are, in their
historical aspect, the material for criticism, but the
process of reUgion and theology from the Gospel
onwards. Thus historical criticism foUows on the steps of
history, whithersoever history has a right to enter,
and history can claim to deal with every visible
event that has taken place upon the earth ; every
scene, every word, every conflict ; every human
action that has been recorded in what way soever,
and can be ascertained from those records. There
is a history of thought, as there is a history of action.
If M. Loisy had stopped here ; had set forth the
claims of history in relation to theology, and had
done no more, he would not have been a modernist,
because he would not have touched the problem of
the consequent relations of fai^ and^riticism. But
he did not stop here, and it was because he main
tained and defended the realities of revelation, as
weU as the truths of history, that his career as a
CathoUc apologist came to an end.
M. Loisy's method of apologetic was not by way
of reconciliation, the term usuaUy adopted in such
cases ; he did not aim at a reinterpretation either of
dogma or of history. His method consisted rather
in rigourously depriving each factor of the elements
which did not belong to it, and restoring them to

52 Modernism

their rightful o-wner ; in this way the innermost
reaUties of faith were not interfered -with by the
critic, whUe the facts of history were not coloured
by the theologian. Furthermore, if history has been,
of late, a disturbing element to Christian beUef, it
has also been, in some respects, its confirmation and
support. For if it has made plain a process of change,
it has also shown a process of development that is a
manifestation of Ufe ; the history of reUgion remains
the history of a fact, and a fact whose significance
history does not attempt to understand or to lessen.
Thus: The impartial critic vnll find that the history of the
Israelite nation consists in a series of events ordinary
in the life of nations, and in the action of religious men
of character much more than ordinary ; the whole,
events and men, converging in a work greater than
themselves, that is to say, in the monotheistic religion}
This is no mean result of criticism, in the reUgious
any more than in the historic order.
But what we aUow to the past we must aUow also
to the present ; and as the Israelites saw, in the
religion they professed, something narrower and less
spiritual than that which it was to become, so may
present-day Christians not guess the glory that is
yet to be revealed.
For any who have followed the movement of Christian
thought from its origins it is evident that neither the
Christological dogma, nor that of grace, nor that of the
' Autour d'un petit livre, p. 43.

Conscious Modernism 53

Church are to be taken as doctrinal summits, beyond
which the believer neither perceives nor ever unll per
ceive anything but the blinding perspective of infinite
mystery. . . . The conceptions that the Church
presents as revealed dogmas are not truths fallen from
Heaven, and preserved by religious tradition in the
exact form in which they first appeared. The historian
sees in them an interpretation of religious facts, acquired
by a laborious effort of religious thought. If they are
divine in origin and substance, they are human in
structure and composition. It is inconceivable that
their future should not correspond to their past}
And again :
Dogmatic formulas are in the same case as the words
of our Saviour, and we have not proved that they relate
to no object because we find, at a given moment, that the
reality goes beyond them.^
May we not hope, when we behold the transforma
tion that has taken place in the apparent sense of
formulas, that the theology of the future will suggest a
still more spiritual notion of their contents.*
As M. Loisy himself remarked to one of his corre
spondents, his apology might be incomplete, but at
any rate it was an effort, not only to explain the
Catholic cult, but to find its foundation in the most
indisputable reality of the Gospel, and in the most
intimate necessities of religion.*
1 L'&vangile et I'^glise, pp. 158-159.
» Idem., p. 167. ' Idem., p. 165.
* Autour d'un petit Uvre, pp. 258-259.

54 Modernism

But this defence of reUgious faith was rejected by
the official rulers of the Church to whom it was
offered, and M. Loisy has now cast away the key
which he forged with so much zeal and judgment and
sincerity, and under the stress of so much pain.
Some may be tempted to pick it up and try it,
though its o-wner has spumed it ; the more so as
the counter remedy, offered by the theologian to
the believer, was not a solution, but a denial of the
problem. Anyhow, two significant points of this apologetic
are established for aU time ; first of all, the recogni
tion, by history and criticism, of the Christian re
Ugion as a fact, whose course, as kno-wn to history,
is marked by strong and persistent -vitality, and
whose inner meaning is no way disproved by any,
even the most destructive, achievements of criticism ;
secondly, the lesson that no religion, be we as cer
tain, by faith, of the divinity of its origin, as we are
certain, by our senses, of the rising of the sun, can
touch history, or use history, or depend on history,
without, in so far, becoming subject to the laws of
history. Section 3
Theology and Faith
George TyrreU differed from the CathoUc apolo
gists of whom we have been speaking in that he
himself had at one time succumbed to the difficulties
with which he dealt ; he had been an agnostic before

Conscious Modernism 55

he became a Catholic. He had not, indeed, in his
pre-Catholic days, acquired any great famUiarity
with the work of modern criticism, but his mind
would have as readUy accepted the difficulties it
raised against traditional reUgious teaching as any
others. Yet religion was the ruling passion of his life ;
the one thing which gave it, in his eyes, dignity,
meaning, and any kind of joy. Hence, when the
force of spiritual realities began to make itself felt
in despite of all his sceptical tendencies, he sought
the Church, not as an end, but as a means ; not as,
in herself, the great world of spiritual reality, but as
the entrance to that world.
In the same way he embraced her theology, and
even her phUosophy, from the outset, as weapons of
apologetic ; as means whereby the arguments of
anti-reUgious phUosophy and science might be met
and conquered. Hence the first years of his life
as a CathoUc were devoted to the assiduous and
hopeful study of scholastic phUosophy and dogmatic
theology ; St. Thomas Aquinas being his chief master
and teacher.
He has himself related the disappointment he
experienced in the course of his scholastic training,^
but he nevertheless became a theological expert,
and preserved, to the end, his beUef in the value of
a sound theology. Hence his work in the religious
movement of the day was largely directed to the
' See vol. i. of Autobiography and Life of George Tyrrell.

56 Modernism

readjustment of its claims and the statement of its
Umits. The characteristics of his teaching are, first, a
very strong sense of the transcendental character of
reUgion ; secondly, a definitely CathoUc, as opposed
to an individuaUstic outlook ; thirdly, as in the
' PhUosophy of Action,' a firmly anti-inteUectuaUst
temper ; fourthly, a fuU, at times almost too fuU,
recognition of the part played by the -wUl in an act
of faith ; fifthly, a deep sense of the supremacy of
conscience and of the sense of righteousness, as the
basis of religion ; sixthly, a profound spirit of
mysticism ; seventhly, a perception of the needs
and rights of the ordinary mind, and of the duty of
religious teachers to minister to those needs and
respect those rights.
At the basis of his religion we find, not a creed,
but that which it is the object of a creed to ex
press, a sense of the spirit world, the will-world, that
is real to us beyond every other. In it our soul lives
its inmost life, and finds its deepest rest or unrest
according as it succeeds or fails in adjusting itself to
its laws}
And it is not by knowing, but by -vdUing, that we
apprehend that spirit-world.
We are, each of us, a single ' willing.' . . . Through
that world to which our body belongs, and of which our
senses, memory, and understanding take account, we
are made aware of other wills. . . . It is in our fell
' Lex Orandi, p. 11.

Conscious Modernism 57
relation to these other wills that our spiritual life and
reality consists. . . . Wherever we find another will
accordant with our oum in any particular, we ex
perience a sense of re-enforcement and expansion of
our spiritual life and being. . . . On the other hand,
there is a sense of spiritual impoverishment and con
traction whoever we recognise a will-force in opposi
tion to our own}
Yet, We cannot take mere will-union as an end in itself, or
as a decisive motive of action. We may not seek rest
in agreement, without asking ' Best in what ? ' ' Agree
ment with what ? ' Throughout the whole universe of
will-attitudes the difference of evil and good, false and
true, fair and foul, passes like a two-edged sword.
' Bight ' is a rule of choice clearly higher than the
blind and impotent rule of love, which would pull us
in every direction at once, and lead us in none. . . .
We may err and falter in our judgment as to what is
true, fair, or right ; we may turn away from our duty
when we know it ; but we can never falter in our convic
tion as to the absolute and imperative character of these
will-attitudes ; we can never doubt that we ought to be
in sympathy with men of good-will and out of sympathy
vnth the insincere, the selfish, the low-minded. Now
this imperative character of the Absolute is simply the
force of that supreme, eternal, eventually irresistible
Will, which we call God— that Will to which the
whole will-world must be subordinate, and in union
1 Lex Orandi, pp. 12-13.

58 Modernism

or agreement with which each created will is saved
and realised.
Love is, after all, the very substance of our spiritual
life . . . and is to the will-world what gravitation is
to the physical. But above all wills there is the will of
God ; and above all loves there is the love of God ; and
in this the life of religion consists}
The Church was then, for him, the visible and
in-visible society of wUls, tending ever to a more
perfect adjustment of their attitude to one another
and the Supreme WUl ; and her teaching was the
guide and the expression of Iffe, but not life itself.
As we live our natural Ufe before we discover or
formulate its laws, so we live our spiritual life be
fore it expresses itseU for us in the creed ; and as
there is ever something in nature which is better
known by those who feel the beatings of her heart
than by those who describe and analyse her laws,
so there is something in the spiritual Iffe better
known to those who love and practise it than to
those who talk and reason about it. Theology has
the uses and the hmitations of science, though she
has also limitations of her o-wn, being science only
in a relative sense.
In religion it is the impulse of the spirit — of the
religious sense — that drives us to action and experiment,
and enables us thereby to build up a system of religious
doctrine for our practical guidance. . . . The Christ
' Lex Orandi, pp. 14-15

Conscious Modernism 59

of the Gospel betrays no direct interest in doctrinal
speculation for its own sake ; but solely in those
spiritual instincts of Eternal Life whose theoretical ex
pressions and justifications are of altogether subordinate
interest} Theology has, then, a subordinate, and not a
primary use and end ; it subserves the Ufe of prayer
and devotion, which, in its fuU and true sense, is
the Ufe of spiritual action.
But Christianity is not only religion, it is also a
revealed religion, and it is the fact and the contents
of revelation around which modem difficulties have
chiefly clustered. But those difficulties, in Father
TyrreU's estimation, were only insuperable so long
as revelation was taken to mean a revealed theology ;
that is to say, not an infusion of divine experience,
but a set of dogmatic propositions. The mistake
was easUy made, because dogma foUows on spiritual
experience as surely as science foUows on natural
experience, and to resist aU formulation of such
experience would be to cut ourselves off from the
knowledge of the fuUest manifestations of spiritual
life that man has known, and hence from participa
tion in those experiences.
Yet it must ever be remembered that revelation
is an experience, and not a dogmatic treatise :
Revelations are but the epoch-making super-normal
experiences of God-inspired souls, by which some un
explored tract of the Beyond is laid open ;^ and all
• The Church and the Future, p. 43. ' Lex Orandi, p. 69.

6o Modernism

revelation : so far as it is from God's inspiration, is
a word to the heart and not to the head}
To tum to his unpubUshed essay on the sub
ject :
Thus the creeds of the Church are directly the
creation of her collective human mind, but guided by
her collective religious experience — by the spirit of
Christ that is immanent in all her members. This, no
doubt, modifies the truth-value of our Creeds. They
are not divine statements, but human statements in
spired by divine experience. Inspiration does not mean
infallible, absolute, final truth. A true hypothesis does
not exclude a truer. A useful symbol leaves room for
a more useful.^
The fuUest of aU the revelations of God to man was
made through Christ, but the records of that revela
tion are precious, every word of them, as preserving
for us, not the theology, but the spirit of Christ.
Hence those records have an absolute and abiding
value as the history of a supreme divine experience,
whUe the dogmas in which they are encrusted have
but a relative one.
The Gospel shoivs us Christ as teaching indeed unth
authority, but not from authorities as the Scribes ; as
one inspired unth the prophetic spirit like those prophets
whose sepulchres were built up in scholastic com
mentaries that guarded the bones of their teaching, but
could not enshrine its spirit. . . . It is He who says :
• Lex Orandi, p. 60.
• From Revelation and Experience, an unpublished article.

Conscious Modernism 6i

' Learn of me,' not ' to be,' but ' because I am meek
and lowly of heart.' ^
Yet if creeds and dogmas are but relative to some
thing more U-ving, neither are they mere accessories
of reUgion.
In regarding the ' institutionising ' of Christianity
as a corruption ; in vainly hoping to perpetuate and
generalise the ' inspirational ' phase. Protestantism
seems to me to ignore universal and natural laws.^
For the spiritual Ufe is something greater than
even aU of us together can whoUy apprehend ; and
so much the more do we therefore need that co
operation which depends on common knowledge and
a common creed.
It is one thing to admit, as I do, that our religious
experience involves the whole truth of the supernatural
and divine order ; that an infinite mind could, as it
were, deduce all that truth from its analysis. It is
another thing to say, as I do not, that our minds are
equal to that task, or can ever apprehend that truth
otherwise than in symbols and anthropomorphic
hypotheses? It was, then, the usurpations of theology which
were, in TyrreU's -view, largely accountable for the
difficulties of the simple faithful, in so far as theology
thus interfered -with the natural and direct expression
of their faith by subtleties which rendered that
' The Church and the Future, pp. 43-44.
' Idem., p. 60.
* Revelation and Experience.

62 Modernism

faith unreal ; and it was, again, theology which was
responsible for the difficulties of the scholar, when
it forced its way into the realm of scientific knowledge
and claimed to be a science with, or over, other
sciences, whereas, in its scientific character, it
possessed but relative truth. It was the very
transcendency of the spiritual world over every other
kind of reaUty that robbed theology, which was but
its stammering expression, of any right to transcend
other sciences, since it could never adequately
formulate its own object. Yet given this relativity,
theology answered to a spiritual as weU as an in
teUectual need ; it was a formulation of di-vine
truth by means of which the experience of the whole
Church could become, in greater or less measure,
the experience of each one, and by means of
which that experience could be preserved and
developed. The plain man, he wrote, is not un-ong when he
treats the creed as practically and equivalently the word
of God ; when he guides his life and action by it, and
so realises a rich inward experience. He is wrong
when he ceases to be a ' plain man ' and tries to be, a
theologian ; when he deduces conclusions from the
articles of the creed, considered as divine statements,
and imposes their categories on the whole realm of
human knowledge in the name of God}
TyrreU's aim, therefore, was not to defend theology
from the difficulties raised by science or criticism,
' Revelation and Experience.

Conscious Modernism 63

but to show that the realities underlying the state
ments of theology and its dogmatic formiUaries were
independent of the vicissitudes of theology. It was
not man who had made those reaUties ; it was not
man who had revealed them ; but it was man,
though under the guidance of God, who had made
the forms in which the revelation of those realities
was expressed. Theology, as a science, could grow
in clearness and perfection, revelation was something
given and not made.
We forget, he writes at the close of ' Lex Orandi,'
that the issue is not directly between faith and know
ledge, but between theology, which is one part of the
field of knowledge, and the rest of the same field. Faith
were imperilled if theology were an exact, necessary and
adequate intellectual expression or embodiment of faith,
and if, as such, it came into demonstrable confiict with
the indubitable data of history or science or philosophy.
. . . The Church cannot be a child again ; yet her
progress is ever towards a more deeply intelligent and
deliberate appropriation of that infused simplicity of
aim, spirit, and method that characterised her childhood.
To this end it was needful that the flrst simple forms
of thought and life in which her spirit was manifested
should give place to an organic complexity in which the
unity of that spirit was seemingly lost, to be eventually
fotind and recognised as persisting unbroken under all
these diverse manifestations of its inexhaustible poten
tiality ; that ever and again she should learn through
solicitude about many things the sovereign value of the

64 Modernism

one thing needful, of that best part which shall not be
taken from her}
George TyrreU's apologetic, like that of M. Loisy,
found no favour with the rulers and teachers of the
Church in whose interests he made it.
Section 4
Social Ideals and Faith
The Church has ever professed her indifference to
pure poUtics, her acceptance of aU forms of govem
ment, her interest in the poor rather than the rich.
In the days of slavery, ff she did not absolutely
condemn the system, she prepared the way for its
extinction, and obviated its essential vices, by her
persistent maintenance of certain inaUenable rights
of every man, whether slave or master. She re
pudiated, before the world had done so, the principle
that any class of men existed for the sake of another ;
and ff, in spite of her efforts, justice feU short in the
fulfilment of its duty, she brought in charity to make
good its defects, and gathered the oppressed under
her wing when human society offered them no refuge.
Her works of mercy were exercised in the days when
works of mercy were not, as now, a fashion and a
glory. But long continued patronage is demoraUsmg to
the benefactor as weU as the benefited ; it is a form
of power which those who wield it are not in a hurry
• Lex Orandi, pp. 207, 215.

Conscious Modernism 65

to relinquish. They forget that it is a far greater
work to enable a man to take up his bed and walk,
than to support or carry him. But it is also a; work
of greater seff-detachment, for, as power passes from
the giver to the receiver, the latter becomes inde
pendent of the former in proportion to his acquired
strength. How far humanity has been guided and
inspired by the Church in the process of civUisation
and of an ever-increasing respect for the rights of
each one, and how far it might have foUowed the
same line of progress without her, is a question which
need not be treated in this place. The fact remains
that society has advanced in these respects, and that
the needs of the poor and of the working classes are
no longer the same as in the Middle Ages.
The result of this change of circumstances has been,
and is even now, a certain suspiciousness on the part
of the people in regard to a power which stiU en
deavours to protect when protection is not needed ;
a suspiciousness akin to the sensitiveness of young
men and women whose parents try to lock them
into the schoolroom when they are grown up. The
people have grown somewhat resentful of charity,
now that they have leamed to demand much more
in the name of justice ; and they would rather find
in the Church sympathy with their new rights and
aspirations than pity for their past helplessness.
For a time this democratic sensitiveness mamf ested
itself in a form of violent anti-clericalism, not to say
anti-reUgiousness ; this was something in the nature
(i.esfl) Q

66 Modernism

of the aggressiveness of a boy in his first school suit
of clothes. But as independence became assured,
and the prejudiced character of the anti-reUgious
movement became apparent to the common sense
of the average man, he found that he stUl needed
religion after aU ; only the need must be satisfied
without the compromise of a Uberty which he also
needed. In fact, the people saw that the Church
could stUl find room for them and that they stiU
had need of her.
This was a crucial moment, and the question was
how far the Church was prepared for it. She had
ever declared her sympathy for leaming, but had
also, at times, repressed it when it snapped her
leading-strings ; was she ready now to serve the
people in its new character, a people that stUl
needed Ught and guidance, perhaps, indeed, more
than ever, but that would not repudiate its poUtical
creed in order to obtain them ?
It was in an effort to meet this crisis that the
Church begot, within herself, the forces of social
modernism. But we have here to distinguish between two
movements, of which the second was not strictly
a reUgious movement at all, though it has sometimes
been mistakenly coupled with the one that was.
The first of these movements was an endeavour to
christianise the rising democracy ; to inspire their
social aims and ambitions with a reUgious ideal ;
to find for the working classes, no longer oppressed,

Conscious Modernism 67
but now emancipated and conscious of their own
dignity, a place and a home in the Church which had
been formerly their refuge in necessity.
This movement had for its leader in Italy a
Catholic priest, Dom. Romolo Murri, and in France
a CathoUc layman, M. Marc Sangnier. In England
it has been led by members of the AngUcan Church,
lay or cleric.
The second movement had other aims and methods.
Its object was not to christianise the people, or find
place in the Church for their social needs, but to use
Christianity and the Church as means of social
progress ; to adapt the organisation and ideals,
which had been directed to other-world ends, to the
furthering of objects immediate to our present ex
istence. This movement claimed Gospel precedent
for its action, but was not prepared ' to suffer the
loss of the whole world to save its own soul.'
In the Lettere d'un prete modernista, whose author
was the chief writer and instigator of the Italian
periodical Nova et Vetera, we have the best state
ment of the programme of this movement :
We have not, he -writes, two religions in our soul
. . . so that if our confidence in a better future . . .
is directed to the ideals proposed by humanitarianism,
there is no room in us for another religious faith in
that spiritual future which dogmatic Catholicism pro
mises us in Paradise. Hence if the young clergy be
gin to cherish democratic ideals, to interest themselves
with profound sympathy in the struggle of labour and

68 Modernism

the improvement of the condition of the proletariate,
to aspire for that great economic revolution which vnll
follow the progressive socialisation of production and
the distribution of riches, I believe that so much faith
and so much enthusiasm are withdravm from the sterile
hopes of ascetic Catholicism and monastic abnegation
in the pallid ideals that lie beyond the grave}
Farther on he says :
We, neo-Catholics . . . refuse every inheritance of
medieval asceticism and proclaim the unrepressible
rights of life. . . . This is why we aim at a return to
early Christianity. . . . Jesus proclaimed the ideal
of the progress of the world.^
This conception of early Christianity, and of the
message of Jesus, was not quite in harmony -with the
latest critical positions.
Jesus made no profession of science, writes M. Loisy,
and the apostles were uncultivated men ; the New
Testament is not a treatise of social economy, and the
Apocalypse was not written to improve the condition
of the proletariate.*
Elsewhere he writes :
The Gospel contains no formal declaration for or
against the constitution of human society in time. The
necessity of human right is not to be deduced from the
Gospel any more than the foundation of that right ;
both exist independently of the Gospel, which is not
> Op. cit., p. 67 (Libreria Editrioe Eomana), 1908.
• Idem., p. 124.
' Autour d'un petit livre, p. 146.

Conscious Modernism 69
required to create them and can only infiuence their
spirit . . . the Gospel rather abstracted from the
question of human right and political and social economy
than it endeavoured to regenerate them}
In so far, then, as modernism was a religious
movement, this form of socialism cannot be reckoned
to belong to it ; yet, by a strange irony, its upholders
have not been so rigorously condemned as those for
whom reUgion was the main motive of their social
efforts. The Christian democratic movement, which is
reaUy, and not falsely, to be reckoned as an element
of modernism, was, in its way, a form of apologetic,
though of practical rather than theoretical order.
The problems -with which it dealt were those sug
gested by the political transformations of the day,
regarding such questions as property and its rights ;
class distinctions and their possible disappearance ;
the future of sociaUsm ; and, above aU, the respective
value of this-world and other-world ideals.
From the strictly modernist and reUgious stand
point it was not a question of whether sociaUsm was
the best form of government, or whether democratic
institutions were in themselves preferable to any
others, but of whether both democracy and sociaUsm
could find a place in the Church ; whether, that is
to say, she not only recognised the existing social
forms and distinctions which had prevaUed durmg
the greater part of her history, but whether she
t L']^vangile et VSglise, pp. 32-33.

70 Modernism

regarded those forms as essential to her own ex
istence. It was not uncommonly supposed that she
did ; and that, ff democracy were eventuaUy to
prevaU, her history must come to an end ; she had
no place for democracy, nor democracy any use for
her. This was the conception of the Church against which
the Christian democratic movement was directed.
Its leaders maintained that the Church belonged to
the people and that the people needed the Church.
They saw the public danger of absorption in material
objects, yet they were firmly convinced that social
amelioration was not incompatible with spiritual
growth. They believed, many of them, in the future
of socialism, but they believed also in the future of
Christianity ; hence they could see no issue -without
some fusion of the two.
Furthermore, they knew that men care for a thing
in proportion to the labour they devote to it and
the sacrifices they make for it ; hence some form
of lay activity within the Church was necessary ff
the laity were to be interested in her. Yet such
activity could not, given the modern democratic
views, be carried on in absolute subordination,
without any element of seU-govemment. Hence,
whUe not interfering -with the hierarchic order, they
maintained the need of lay activity, and invited the
working class to show that they cared for their
religion by domg somethmg to promote and serve it.
The answer which they received from the official

Conscious Modernism 71
rulers of their Church was that their adversaries
were right and they were -wrong. In a motu proprio
of 18th December 1903, which gave a ' Fundamental
Rule for popular Christian action,' Pius x. told the
ItaUan group that it was in conformity unth the order
established by God that there should be, in human
society, princes and subjects, patrons and proletariat,
rich and poor, learned and ignorant, nobles and
plebeians; whUe any concerted Catholic action,
independent Of ecclesiastical authority, was, by
various regulations, rendered Ulegitimate.
The French social movement, entitled the ' SiUon,'
under the leadership of M. Marc Sangnier, was con
demned in a letter of 25th August 1910, addressed by
Pius X. to the French bishops. Having first rebuked
the movement for its evadence of the guidance and
authority of the bishops, which would alone have
been a grievous breach of CathoUc discipUne, the
letter goes on to point out the positive errors into
which it had further been precipitated :
The Sillon proposes to itself the raising and re
generation of the working classes. Now in this matter
the principles of Catholic doctrine are established, and
the history of Christian civilisation is sufficient to prove
their beneficial results. Our predecessor, of happy
memory, recalled them in certain classic pages, which
those Catholics who are occupied with social questions
should always study and keep before their eyes. He
taught, in particular, that a Christian democracy
' should maintain that distinction of classes which is

72 Modernism

proper to a well-constituted city, and should seek, for
human society, the character that God, its author, has
given it.'
Thus such an ideal of human brotherhood as should
result in an ideal of social equaUty was set aside,
not on grounds of impracticabUity, but of theoretical
iniquity ; and it was declared, in the name of the
Church, that the actual condition of human society
was nearer to the ideal of God for mankind than any
possible condition that would obUterate class dis
tinctions. M. Marc Sangnier determined on submission as
M. Murri had determined on resistance. Some of
the associations were dissolved ; others placed them
selves under episcopal direction. The work was at
an end.

CHAPTER IV
HISTORY AND CHRISTOLOGY
MODERNISM is not a science, but a move
ment ; it is not one apologetic, but many
streams of apologetic ; it is not a solution of diffi
culties and problems, but a recognition of their
existence, and an endeavour to meet them.
On the whole, problems are seldom, if ever, solved ;
they are rather left behind, and eventuaUy regarded
as one of the constituents of acquired truth. The
puzzle of to-day is an element of the knowledge of
to-morrow ; it is not answered, but assimUated. It
seemed like a rock across our path, it was reaUy a
step in the ascent ; we did not cUmb it to come down
on the other side and walk round it, we cUmbed it
to find ourselves at a higher level. Our temporary
perplexity was a stage in our progress ; it was the
denial of that perplexity which would have been
a prejudice to our advance in truth.
Among the many reUgious problems which have
recently been agitated two have been specially con
spicuous, and remain yet as insistent as ever. They
have been grappled with from this side and from that ;
sometimes it is plain that the apologist is at grips with
the problem, at others we are at least dimly aware
73

74 Modernism

that an element of sophism has crept into the debate.
In the former case the struggle, ff not final, -wiU in
any case be fruitful, in the latter it wiU be compara
tively barren of results ; yet in either case something
more wUl be achieved than ff the difficulty had been
simply ignored.
Those two unsolved problems of modernism have
arisen from the rapid development of the historical
and critical spirit, and its relation to revealed re
Ugion. First of aU we have the difficulty which
arises from the very connection of history with any
form of revelation ; next we have a development
of this problem in the difficulty which arises from
the relation of Christ, as an object of history, to
Christ as an object of faith.

History
In an unpubUshed paper ,^ read by Baron Friedrich
von Hiigel to a learned society, he thus states the
former of these two problems :
On the one hand, he says, every theology, which is
not content with a piecemeal illuminism, or with
moving in an obvious circle, finds itself const/rained to
appeal to the witness of historical documents of various
kinds, to invite the historical and critical examination
of their contents and evidence ; and to admit that,
» 'The Place and Function of the Historical Element in
Religion.' L.S.S.R., 1906.

History and Christology 75
should there be no cogent historical proof for, still more
should there be conclusive historical proof against, the
phenomenal factualness of a certain central nucleus of
events {for at this stage there is as yet no question as
to the spiritual substance and meaning of these events),
then its faith would either have to go altogether, or to find
its immediate occasion and material in another set of
phenomenal happenings.
But, on the other hand, the average practice of every
theology tends to appeal to historical criticism, as long
as criticism supports it, or attacks one of its rivals ;
and to ignore or oppose criticism, of precisely the same
type and cogency, as soon as the criticism concludes
against the phenomenal factualness assumed to underlie,
of necessity, this or that doctrine of this theology.
We have seen three schools of apology at work
on this question. M. Loisy defends Christian truth
by a stiU fuUer infusion of the historical spirit ; by
showing that theology as weU as revelation are, on
one side, in history, as they are, on another side,
independent of it, and that it is only in so far as
they are within the domain of history that they are
affected by its discoveries. Father TyrreU meets
it by his general treatment of theology ; and the
' phUosophy of action ' suggests a spiritual solution.
In the foUowing passage from The Mystical Ele
ment of Religion we have Baron F. von Hugel's
answer to the problem :
We take it then that mankind has, after endless

76 Modernism

testings and experiences, reached the following con
clusions. We encounter everywhere, both within us
and without, both in the physical and mental world,
in the first instance, a whole network of phenomena ;
and these phenomena are everywhere found to fall under
certain laws, and to be penetrable by certain methods
of research, these laws and methods varying indeed in
character and definiteness according to the subject-matter
to which they apply, but in each case affording to man
simply indefinite scope for discovery without, and for
self-discipline within.
And all this preliminary work and knowledge does
not directly require religion nor does it directly lead to
it ; indeed we shall spoil both the knowledge itself, and
its effect upon our souls and upon religion, if religion
is here directly introduced. The phenomena of Astro
nomy and Geology, of Botany and Zoology, of human
Physiology and Psychology, of Philology and History
are and ought to be, in the first instance, the same for
all men, whether the said men do or do not eventually
give them a raison d'etre and formal rational interest,
by discovering the metaphysical and religious con
victions and conclusions which underlie and alone give
true unity to them, and furnish a living link between
the mind observing and the things observed. Various
as are these phenomena, according to the department
of human knowledge to which they severally belong, yet
they each and all have to be, in the first instance, dis
covered and treated according to principles and methods
immanent and special to that department.

History and Christology 77
And the more rigorously this is accomplished, both
by carrying out these principles and methods to their
fullest extent, and by conscientiously respecting their
limits of applicability and their precise degree of truth
and of range in the larger schemes of human activity
and conviction, the more will such science achieve three
deeply ethical, spiritually helpful results.
1. Such science unll help to discipline, humble,
purify the natural eagerness and wilfulness, the cruder
forms of anthropomorphism, of the human mind and
heart. This turning to the visible will thvs largely
take the place of that former turning away from it.
For only since the visible has been taken to represent
laws, and, provisionally at least, rigorously mechanical
laws characteristic of itself, can it be thus looked upon
as a- means of spiritual purification.
2. Sueh science again will help to stimulate those
other, deeper activities of human nature, which have
made possible, and have all along preceded and accom
panied, these more superficial ones ; and this, although
such science will doubtless tend to do the very opposite,
if the whole nature be allowed to become exclusively
engrossed in this one phenomenal direction. Still,
it remains true that perhaps never has man turned to
the living God more happily and humbly, than when
coming straight away from such rigorous, disinterested
phenomenal analysis, as long as such analysis is felt
to be both other than, and preliminary and secondary
to, the deepest depths ofthe soul's life and of all ultimate
Reality.

78 Modernism

3. And finally, such science will correspondingly
help to give depth and mystery, drama and pathos, a
rich spirituality, to the whole experience and conception
of the soul and of life, of the world and of God. Instead
of a more or less abstract picture, where all is much on
the same plane, where all is either flxed and frozen,
or all is in a state of feverish flux, we get an outlook,
with foreground, middle distances, and background,
each contrasting unth, each partially obscuring, partially
revealing, the other ; but each doing so, with any fresh
ness and fulness, only in and through the strongly
uniting, the fully active and gladly suffering, the pray
ing, aspiring, and energising spiritual Personality,
which thus both gives and gets its oum true self ever
more entirely and more deeply.
In such a conception of the place of science, we have
permanently to take science, throughout life, in a double
sense and way. In the first instance, science is self-
sufficing, its own end and its oum law. In the second
instance, which alone is ever flnal, science is but a part
of a whole, but a function, a necessary yet preliminary
function, of the whole of man ; and it is but part, a
necessary yet preliminary part, of his outlook. Crush
out, or in any way mutilate or deautonomise, this part,
and all the rest will suffer. Sacrifice the rest to this
part, either by starvation or attempted suppression, or
by an impatient assimilation of this immense remainder
to that smaller and more superficial part, and the whole
man suffers again, and much more seriously.

History and Christology 79
And the danger in both directions — let us have the
frankness to admit the fact — is constant and profound :
even to see it continuously is difficult ; to guard against
it with effect, most difficult indeed. For to starve or
to suspect, to cramp or to crush this phenomenal appre
hension and investigation, in the supposed interest of
the ulterior truths, must ever be a besettirhg temptation
and weakness for the religious instinct, wherever this
instinct is strong and fixed, and has not yet itself been
put in the way of purification.
For religion is ever, qua religion, authoritative and
absolute. What constitutes religion is not simply to
hold a view and to try to live a life, with respect to the
Unseen and the Deity, as possibly or even certainly
beautiful or true or good : but precisely that which is
over and above this — the holding this view and this life
to proceed somehow from God Himself, so as to bind my
innermost mind and conscience to unhesitating assent.
Not simply that I think it, but that, in addition, I feel
bound to think it, transforms a thought about God into
a religious act.
Now this at onee brings with it a dovble and most
difficult problem. For religion thus becomes, by its
very genius and in exact proportion to its reality, some
thing so entirely sui generis, so claimful and supreme,
that it at once exacts a two-fold submission, the one
simultaneous, the other successive ; the first as it were
in space, the second in time. The first regards the
relations of religion to things non-religious. It might
be parodied by saying : ' Since religion is true and

8o Modernism

supreme, religion is all we require ; all things else must
be bent or broken to her sway.' She has, at the very
least, the right to the primacy not of honour only, but
of direct jurisdiction, over and within all activities and
things. The second regards the form and concept of
religion itself. Since religion always appears both in
a particular form at a particular time and place, and
as divine and hence authoritative and eternal ; and
since the very strength and passion of religion depend
upon the vigorous presence and close union of these two
elements ; religion will ever tend either really to oppose
all change within itself, or else to explain away its
existence. Religion would thus appear doomed to be
either vague and inoperative, or obscurantist and
insincere. And it is equally clear that the other parts of man's
nature and of his outlook cannot simply accept such a
claim, nor could religion itself flourish at all if they
could and did accept it. They cannot accept the claim
of religion to be immediately and simply all, for they
are fully aware of being themselves something also.
They cannot accept her claim to dictate to them their
own domestic laws, for they are fully aware that they
each, to live truly at all, require their own laws, and
their own, at least relative, autonomy. However much
man may be supremely and finally a religious animal,
he is not only that ; but he is a physical and sexual,
a fighting and artistic, a domestic and social, a political
and philosophical animal as well. Nor can man, even
simply qua religious man, consent to a simple finality

History and Christology 8i
in the experience and explication, in the apprehension
and application of religion, either in looking back into
the past ; or in believing and loving, suffering and acting
in the present ; or in forecasting the future, either of
the race or of himself alone. For the here and now,
the concrete ' immediacy,' the unique individuality of
the religious experience for me, in this room, on this
very day, its freshness, is as true and necessary a
quality of living religion as any other whatsoever. And
if all life sustains itself only by constant, costing
renovation and adaptation of itself to its environment,
the religious life, as the most intense and extensive of
all lives, must somehow be richest in such nevmecs in
oldness, such renovative, adaptive, assimilative power}
Those are the words of one as profoundly CathoUc
in his faith as sincere in his scientific and phUo
sophical attitude.
A common argument, raised by the orthodox
apologist against any such attempt to meet historic
difficulties frankly and honestly, is based on the
ob-vious fluctuations of criticism ; its forward and
backward and sideway movements ; its alternations
of destructive and constructive achievement. ' Let
us wait,' says the theologian, * tiU the critic has done ;
tUl he knows himself what to think ; by that time
we, on our side, shaU be ready -with our answer.'
To this it must, unfortunately, be replied, first,
that the day for which we are to wait is a day that
1 Op. cit., vol. i. pp. 44-47. I have to thank Baron F. von
Hiigel and Mr. J. M. Dent for the use of this long quotation.
(1,986) F

82 Modernism

wUl never da-vvn. Science, -with its fiuctuations, wiU
come to an end only when man comes to an end.
The difficulties of to-day wUl not be the difficulties
of to-morrow ; but the difficulties of to-morrow wiU
be as surely the difficulties of to-morrow as the diffi
culties of to-day are those of to-day. MeanwhUe
there is but little comfort in the assurance that
posterity -wUl possess the answer to our difficulties ;
nor is a pain proved non-existent because it changes
its place.
Such a form of argumentation is inspired rather
by the wish to confound the outsider than to help
the beUever. If critics make many mistakes they
also make many genuine discoveries ; and though
the orthodox apologist may claim his right to deny
the latter in virtue of the former, the plain beUever,
who is seeking no mere controversial triumph, wiU
not be reUeved, in this way, of his perplexity.
But there is another faUacy concealed in the same
argument. It is therein suggested that the Christian
believer need take no count of scientific theories
that are as yet but theories ; more or less probable,
it may be admitted, but not demonstrable or certain,
even in the opinion of those who support them.
Yet this, surely, is to forget that it is as much a
law of the mind to admit as probable what it sees
to be probable as to acknowledge the certainty of
what it sees to be certain. If I have not made up
my mind on some question I may stiU see how far
more likely is one solution than its opposite ; I

History and Christology 83
cannot blind myself to this likelihood, nor repudiate
any opinion which has, in my mind, many chances
of being true. I have, in fact, to acknowledge what
is probable as being probable, just as I have to accept
what is certain as being certain.
Hence at no stage of a scientific process can a mind
famUiar -with it be whoUy unmoved by its vicissi
tudes. The reasonable hypotheses of the speciaUst
must be, in some measure, the reasonable hypotheses
of aU those who know what he is about. We need
not be more convinced than his proofs warrant us
in being, but we have to admit so much probabUity
as they possess. II
Christology
To the modernist the Christological problem is the
culminating point of the historical problem. There
are indeed men who have, even lately, sought a
refuge from ecclesiastical abuses in a return to the
Gospel, pure and simple ; but they cannot be caUed
modernists. It is of the very essence of modernism
to unite, with the beUef in Christianity, a recognition
of the main actual data of science and history, and
the latter element is lacking to those who believe
that in going ' back to Christ ' we can go back to
certain unchanged and unassaUable positions. As
things are at present, the ecclesiastical problem is
light in comparison with the Christological question.
It wiU be easier to estimate our present position if we

84 Modernism

take a glance at the past, and make a rough summary
of certain points of Christian theology, which were
never questioned untU the results of criticism made
themselves felt, and which are even now unquestioned
by many, in the very face of those results.
First of aU, the historical fact of the Resurrection
was not only an article of our Oeed, but was also
a main proof and support of it. In such sense was
interpreted the text of St. Paul : ' If Christ be not
risen our preaching is vain, and your faith Uke-wise
is vain.' These words were taken to signify that, ff
we could not be sure that the dead body of Christ
actuaUy rose from the tomb, the very foundation of
our faith was insecure.
Secondly, we were taught that Christ definitely
affirmed His own Divinity. Indeed the very fact
of His making this profession was used as an argu
ment against unbeUevers, for He was certainly no
impostor, which He would have been had He falsely
proclaimed Himseff God.
Thirdly, in virtue of the Hjrpostatic Union, He
possessed, even as man, a certain omniscience.
Not only did He know then aU that we know now,
but He knew immensely more. He knew aU that we
possibly could know, and far more besides. He,
consequently, of course, knew aU that would happen
to Himself in the course of His Iffe ; any kind of
disappointment or disiUusion was out of the question.
AU this was not only theologicaUy true, but was to
be found in the Gospel ; for aU our theology about

History and Christology 85

Christ was merely the explication of Gospel history.
If He spoke, in those records, as though He only
possessed the knowledge of His o-wn time, that was
in no way because only such knowledge was present
to His mind, but because He had to speak to men
in their o-wn language.
Fourthly, the Church was His direct foundation ;
her hierarchy and her sacraments were His direct
institution; every one of her definitions was, ex
pUcitly or impUcitly, included in His teaching.
The existence of many schools and countless
volumes of theology is a proof that, even without the
work of criticism, there were many possible points
of view in regard to these as to other doctrines, and
it is not to be supposed that the work of theology
had been brought to a close. But as criticism made,
at last, its way -within the CathoUc Church, such
was the position which it encountered.
Let us now see how this teaching is affected by
the corresponding critical assumptions. Those
assumptions are not, indeed, in all respects final ;
critics differ amongst themselves ; and M. Loisy,
from whom I am about to quote, has his scientific
as weU as his theological opponents. Yet, in spite
of certain varieties, it is impossible to deny the
existence of a general harmony on some points, and
Christian apologetic cannot afford to wait, in the
hope of critics making a few more mistakes.
M. Loisy, whether impregnable or not in aU his
views (a matter beyond the judgment of the present

86 Modernism

-writer) is the most valuable exponent of the critical
position from the Catholic point of view, for the
reason that he is acquainted -with both sides and
conscious of their impact.
The Easter message, he writes, that is to say, the dis
covery of the empty tomb and the apparitions of Jesus
to His disciples, in so far as such facts are taken as
physical proofs of the Resurrection, is not an indis
putable argument, from which the historian draws
entire certitude that our Saviour was bodily resuscitated.
The given case allowed of no complete proof. The
risen Christ belongs no more to the order of -present life,
which is that of sensible experience, and consequently
the Resurrection is not a fact which could have been
directly and formally ascertained. . . . The empty
tomb is an indirect and not a decisive argument, since
the disappearance of the body, the only fact ascertained,
admits of other explanations than the Resurrection.
The apparitions are an argument direct, but uncertain
in its signification. . . . The risen Jesus appeared
and disappeared in the manner of spirits ; during
the apparition He was visible, palpable and audible as
a man in his natural state. Can such a mixture of
qualities inspire entire confidence in the historian who
approaches the question unthout preliminary faith ?
Evidently not. He will reserve his adhesion because
the objective reality of the apparitions does not define
itself with sufficient precision. The critical examina
tion of the accounts will confirm him in his doubts. . . .
The fact of the apparitions will appear to him incon-

History and Christology 87
testable, but he unll not be able to estimate exactly their
nature and bearing. Regarded independently of the
faith of the apostles, the testimony of the New Testament
offers only a limited probability. . . . But is it not
inevitable that any natural proof of a supernatural fact
should be incomplete and defective ? ^
In his ' Letter to an Archbishop on the Divinity
of Christ,' he says :
Jesus himself lived on earth in the consciousness of
His humanity, and He spoke according to that con
sciousness ; He lived in the consciousness of His
Messianic vocation, and He spoke according to the
consciousness He had of that vocation. . . . The
Divinity of Christ is a dogma which has grown in the
Christian consciousness, but which was not expressly
formulated in the Gospel ; it existed only in germ in
the notion of the Messias, son of God. No principle
of theology, no definition of the Church oblige us to
admit that Jesus made any formal declaration of it to
His disciples before His death. It is, on the contrary,
very conformable to the spirit of Catholic tradition to
suppose that this revelation was gradually affirmed.
The revelation of the Messianic secret was really
made by the Spirit who acted on the community of the
first faithful. . . . The many heresies on this subject
could not have existed unthout some cause. If the
belief had been clear from the first it would not have made
its way with so much difficulty. For the historian the
» L'ivangile et I'^gliie, pp. 74-76.

88 Modernism

work of Christian tradition is a continuation of that
of the writers of the New Testament. The whole re
presents the continued effort of faith to lay firmer hold
of an object that surpasses it. This effort moves grop
ingly ; it does not at once attain its term ; one may say
that, in a sense, it has not attained it yet, but it follows
ever the same line, placing Jesus ever higher, and giving
a more comprehensive idea of His mission in proportion
as a larger aspect of the world and of humanity opens
itself out to the eyes of a more intelligent faith}
As to the knowledge of Christ, speaking at once
as critic and Christian apologist, M. Loisy says in
the same letter :
But can it be, theologians object, that Christ ignored
His own future and the future of His work to the point
of believing in the near end of the world, and telling
His disciples that they would behold it ? Did Jesus not
penetrate the secret of things past and future ; knowing
all that God knows, unth the exception of possibilities
that were never to be realised ? This unlimited know
ledge of Christ is not a fact of history, nor is it even a
certain datum of patristic tradition. The critic only
knows this thesis in the history of theology. Where,
indeed, should he seek the thought of Jesus save in His
authentic teaching ? He could only ascribe unlimited
science to Him on the historically and morally incon
ceivable and disconcerting hypothesis that Christ, as
man, had God's knowledge, and deliberately abandoned
His disciples and posterity to ignorance and error re-
' Autour d'un petit livre, pp. 116-120.

History and Christology 89
garding countless matters that He could have revealed
vnthout the least inconvenience}
As to the relations of the Church to the Gospel :
The former is a continuation of the latter, and if the
Gospel message be substantially true, the Church,
which has the care of it, is the organ of truth. But some
ask for a more formal institution, they would wish to
find express declarations of Christ in reference to the
ecclesiastical organism, its government and its cult.
They seek the traces of such institution in the Gospel,
but only find very questionable ones in which criticism
perceives the infiuence of the Christian on the strictly
Evangelical tradition. They do not seem to see that
the divine institution of the Church is a matter of
faith without historic proof, and that the apostolic
tradition, rightly understood, supposes that the Church
ivas founded on Jesvs rather than by Him.^
Now it is impossible to deny the fact that all this
was a severe shock to those who had received their
religious education on the old lines. It was not
merely their inteUectual convictions that were dis
turbed, the change affected their devotional attitude
as weU.
Nor has the shock spent itseff, for the problem
has not, as yet, grown less acute. I thmk we may
even say that our former beUefs have been disturbed
to a greater extent than the assured results of criti
cism would warrant, for we are affected, not only by
1 Auiour d'un petit livre, pp. 138-139.
» Idem., p. 161.

90 Modernism

what has been done, but by our apprehension of
what may yet be done. We have been asking our
selves where the work of demolition -wiU end ; and
though not only the existence of Jesus Christ, but
the leading facts of His Iffe and characteristics of His
teaching have emerged with greater, and not less,
certainty from the unfettered researches of criticism,
it is not surprising ff those who are not themselves
critics have sometimes wondered if anything at aU
would remain.
In his Uttie work, Jesvs et la Tradition Evangelique,
in which M. Loisy resumes the state of the question,
he mentions this negative apprehension, though to
show that it is based on an exclusively Uteral exercise
of criticism. True historic criticism, he maintains,
has regard not only to texts, but to those things
which the texts signffy.^
The doubt, then, of which we speak, has not a
strictly scientific basis, yet there is nothing in its
existence to cause us surprise.
Many and various have been the theories and
solutions proposed during this time of crisis. Pro
minent among them is that one which rests on the
distinction between Jesus, as an historical figure,
and Christ as an object of faith.
The existence of the Church, -writes Professor Percy
Gardner, has from the first depended on the possibility
of bringing the two sets of facts into relation with one
another. The Church is the Church of Jesus-Christ ;
> Op. cit., pp. 28-29.

History and Christology 91
and a lover of paradox might say that it is built upon
a hyphen.^ The cardinal importance of this distinction is
maintained by two schools, of which the one lays
more stress on the connection which exists between
the ' Etemal Christ ' and his manffestation in the
Jesus of history ; whUe the other interprets the idea
of Christ in an almost purely mystical sense, -with
Uttie or no relation to the historic records.
The latter of these two theories, insisting as it does
on the conception of Christ as soul of the Church,
lends itseff to further development in an impersonal
sense ; Christ becomes the soul of the Church in
such sense that He is nothing else but her soul, and
Christianity is made independent of Christ.
The theory which Professor Josiah Royce sets
forth in his Problem of Christianity is a radical
reconstruction of Christianity, such as might logi
cally succeed to this purely mystical doctrine of the
' Eternal Christ.'
The literal and historical fact, he -writes, has always
been this, that in some fashion and degree those who have
thus believed in the being whom they called Christ were
united in a community of the faithful, were in love with
that community, were hopefully and practically devoted
to the cause of the still invisible, but perfectly real and
divine Universal Community, and were saved by the
faith and the life which they thus expressed.^
• ' Jesus or Christ,' Hibbert Journal Supplement, 1909.
» The Problem of Christianity, p. 425.

92 Modernism

Others maintained that aU we need look for in
Christ is a certain unique manffestation of the love
of God, and the love of man, which would make of
him the Supreme Mediator ; whUe others, again,
declare that it is precisely this notion of uniqueness
that has to be eliminated, that what we leam from
Christ is not the doctrine of His o-wn Di-vinity, but
that of ' the veritable unity of the divine and human
nature.' ^
And meanwhUe, with whatever qualifications, the
Eschatological view of the Gospel was daUy gaining
ground, and ff it placed new difficulties in the way
of the old forms of beUef , it also fumished one more
amongst the many solutions offered of the vital
problem. For to some it has seemed that in this
latest reading of the Gospel history we complete the
circle, and come back to the earUest and simplest
and most obvious interpretation of the words of
Christ, and the significance of His Ufe. We rub our
eyes as we find that, while we were torturing texts
into some strange meaning, it is in their plain sense
that we find what Christ really said and intended.
As M. Loisy has said in regard to the parables :
Though tradition has understood them otherwise,
they are, in fact, in no sense profound allegories ;
they are fables with a moral application, whose mean
ing does not outrun their apparent signification.^
* See article of Professor Henry Jones, Hibbert Supplement,
1909. ' Jisua et la Tradition ilvangUique, p. 170.

History and Christology 93
The same, according to the Eschatological -view,
is true of many other sayings of Christ, and the re
sult has been, to some minds, a picture more human
and Uving in its historic aspect, and not, for this,
less susceptible of di-vine significance in its reUgious
aspect. And yet, whatever may be the lUtimate readjust
ment of Christian beUef in accordance -wdth sound
and abiding human knowledge, modernism has had
the courage to recognise that the lesson is not yet
ended. Even, it may be said, were a final answer
to our difficiUties at hand, it is not in the nature of
things that we should be able completely to appre
hend that answer. For those who simply rule aU
forms of traditional Christian belief out of court, the
problem does not, of course, any longer exist ; for
those who rule aU the inconvenient facts of historic
criticism out of court, it never has existed ; for
the modernist, who maintains that neither of the
contending forces is to be ruled out of court, judg
ment has necessarUy to be suspended. For, as I
have said, even were aU the elements to hand from
which judgment might be drawn, the mind is not
in a condition to rest in that judgment. For the
appeasement of a mental, as of a physical, crisis,
time must intervene. We not only beUeved, but,
what is far more vital, we prayed according to a
certain conception of the object of our faith and
prayer ; that conception has been troubled and
altered, and even ff it be destined to rebu-th in a

94 Modernism

form as noble and spiritual as before, we ourselves
are bruised in the process. Our minds can no more
be instantly cured, even by the removal of the
difficulty, than a wound could be at once healed
by the extraction of the buUet.
But it may also be said that the elements of a
sound judgment are not aU to hand as yet, and that
our salvation lies in recognising this fact. The
transformation that Christianity has to undergo is,
indeed, of a very fundamental nature ; that trans
formation which is undergone by every form of
science and every form of faith whenever the
Ptolemaic is supplanted by the Copemican theory.
God is first worshipped by His people because they
believe Him to be their o-wn God, and not the God
of any others ; He is next worshipped by His people
because they see that their God is not only their
own, but the God of the whole universe. This
change from monolatry to monotheism is the change
of a reUgion from the Ptolemaic to the Copemican
conception. Christianity is undergoing that change.
We have not, eventuaUy, found the world any
smaUer because it forms part of a larger system ;
Christianity wiU not prove less important because
it is not only religion but also a religion, with a
particular as weU as an universal character. The
first result of this perception is a sense of confusion ;
the second result may be the discovery that a
mistake as to our proportions lay at the very root
of our difficulty, which could not be removed save

History and Christology 95
by a rectification of that mistake. It is God whom
we seek in Christ ; and it is in the Ufe of Jesus of
Nazareth that, for us, the primary, classic and
supreme revelation of God has been made. This
is a fact that criticism has never questioned and
never wUl question. Our difficulties begin when
Jesus Christ must not only be to us the chief mani
festation of the Divinity, but must be it in such a
way that those who are without Him are without
any such revelation. The mystical Christ of the
Church is God, and God belongs to aU men, and
is revealed in a greater or less degree in every re
ligion. The connection between that mystical
Christ, who is God, and the Jesus Christ of history,
is the special faith of Christianity ; the connection
between the mystical Christ, by whatever name He
may be known, and the Divinity itseff, is a faith
that reappears in many other reUgions. Chris
tianity wUl be better understood in proportion as
we understand those other reUgions ; nor wiU it
be a smaUer thing because it belongs to a larger
whole. To be, writes George Tyrrell, as it were ' possessed '
by Jesus is to be possessed by the Spirit of God}
Again :
What are the categories and concepts of Jesus to us ?
Are we to frame our minds to that of a first century
Jewish carpenter, for whom more than half the world
and nearly the whole of its history did not exist; to
1 Christianity at the Croaa-Roada, p. 267.

96 Modernism

whom the stellar universe was unknown ; who cared
nothing for art or science or history or politics or
nine-tenths of the interests of humanity, but solely for
the Kingdom of God and His righteousness. And even
in regard to this supreme interest is it His religious
ideas. His apocalyptic imagery, that we are to take
over, and not rather the spirit of which they were the
inadequate embodiment. . . . Would the military
genius of the past tie us down to his weapons and
methods of warfare ? Would he not have desired and
hoped that every generation should, while retaining his
spirit, improve on his methods ? And would not such
improvements be the work of his oum spirit ?
There is no special difficulty in admitting that the
dawn of a new epoch should be associated with the
name of some individual who, however much the pro
duct of his time and sensitive to its spirit and needs,
creates a new synthesis of all he has received, with
some new and original contributions of his own. . . .
There come periods when a change of direction or of
level is the condition of progress, and such new epochs
are associated . . . with the name of some individual
who, conscious of the impasse, discovers a way out
and draws the whole world after him. It is no scandal
to us that only those who come within the sphere of
that man's infiuence enjoy the advantages thereof.
But it seems intolerable that only those who have
heard the name and the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth

History and Christology 97
should attain eternal life ; that two-thirds of present
humanity, and nine-tenths or far more of past humanity,
should fail of salvation.
Yet this would follow were the personality that spoke
in Jesus that of a man, and not that of the Spirit
which speaks to every man in the mysterious whisper
ings of conscience}
And yet to recognise that Christianity shares
something that is common to aU religions is not
to attenuate or efface its particular character. To
do this would be, not to readjust our conception
of the old thing, but to substitute for it a new one.
Thus, to take one instance, Christianity without
Christ is not a new Christianity, but a new social
ideal. So, too, Christiamty with a mystical but no
historic Christ, is not a new Christianity but another
reUgion, whether a new one or the revival of an old
one. Again, Christianity with an historic Christ
serving as pattern and moral ideal, but no mystical
or divine Christ as object of worship, is not a new
Christianity, but an adaptation of Christian teach
ing to other religious or moral systems. The person
of Christ, the history of Christ and the worship of
Christ are essential elements of the Christian re
ligion as it has always been understood ; even ff
the word Christianity has been used in a looser sense.
Its central object is not a mythical figure that has
been divinised, nor a mystical figure that can be
whoUy detached from its historic connection, nor
* Christianity at the Cross-Roads, pp. 270-272.
(1.986) a

98 Modernism

an historical figure that is regarded as teacher and
prophet. Its central figure is one that truly entered
into the realm of history, and that has truly become
an object of worship. Jesus Christ lived and worked
and spoke and died, or Christianity is robbed of its
essential historic element ; Jesus Christ is stUl, in
some sense, our Teacher, our Master and our God,
or Christianity loses its essential religious element.
In so far then as we are thinking, not of (Chris
tianity in the vague, undefined sense, but of the
Christian reUgion with aU that it necessarUy involves,
it is better to face the altemative frankly, and to
recognise that certain changes are not properly
changes at aU, but are the substitution of one thing
for another. Some have shrunk from this altema
tive because they felt that they could not do -with
out Christianity, and they feared that this would
be the consequence of an attempt to present it in
its old form. But, in fact, (Dhristianity has a better
chance of survival in its old than in any of its new
forms, pro-vided only that its historic element be
honestly treated as history, so that it is not always
under the necessity of covering a rotten place with
a cloak of ignorance. Or even did the more sub
versive alternative impose itseff on some minds,
did they feel that Christianity, as a religion, must
go, it may be that precisely through letting it go
they would find out that it could and must remain ;
in the empty place it had left they would leam its
true proportions.

History and Christology 99
For it is perhaps, after aU, as I have ventured to
suggest, largely a question of proportions. That
' spirit of immobUity ' which, as Fogazzaro's ' Saint '
declared, infests the Catholic Church, and, indeed,
aU Churches, is ever roused to opposition by the
suggestion that our world is moving round the sun ;
that our scheme of Iffe, or knowledge, or faith must
carry us round within a yet wider scheme of things.
Yet this is the direction in which knowledge ever
moves ; and ff faith is other than knowledge, faith
and knowledge are, nevertheless, inseparable com
panions ; neither can go on living without the other.
Theology has a new task in a new age ; and if it had
no task then it would have no further reason for
existence. The theological work of the first Christian centuries,
wrote Abb6 Loisy, was, in its measure, a criticism,
so far as criticism then existed, but it was a true criti
cism exercised on religious tradition and on the science
of the time. Now that a more reflective and methodical
criticism has become necessary, unless we suppose that
the Catholic Church has lost the gift of faith and in
telligence that permitted her to construct the religion
of past centuries, we have a right to believe that she will
succeed, by the same means, in building up the religion
of the future, and safeguarding and explaining its
fundamental principle, which is the dovble revelation
of God in the world and in man, the religious notion
of the living God and of the Christ God}
' Autour d'un petit livre, p. 154.

TOO Modernism

Theology has not yet fuUy entered into her task
— ^but the task awaits her. Mankind is not less in
terested in its o-wn world since it found out the sub
ordinate position of that world in relation to the
universe. The Christian Church has to accept the
same experience, to learn the same lesson, and to
find, we may trust, that its meaning is not thereby
lessened ; that spiritual values grow greater by
participation. Ecco chi crescerd i nostri amori ! (Par. v.).

CHAPTER V
CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT MODERNISM
QUITE recently, in regard to the Kikuyu con
troversy, a letter appeared in the Times
repudiating the term Modernism as appUed
to the Uberal movement in the English Church.
As a matter of terminology, wrote the Rev. Alfred
Fawkes, is it too late to protest against the use of the
word ' Modernism ' to describe the position of English
Liberal Churchmen ? In theology, as in other de
partments of knowledge, science is the same for us
all, but ' Modernism ' is historically a Latin movement,
represented by men of Latin race, in the Latin or Roman
Church. It suggests M. Loisy and the Vatican as
unmistakably as the ' New Theology ' suggests Mr.
E. J. Campbell and the City Temple. Suum cuique.
Suggestion counts for much in such matters ; from a
corifusion of names it is easy to pass to a confusion of
thought and things}
These words are not -written in a spirit of hostiUty
to the CathoUc modernist position, yet they do
actuaUy repudiate, not only the term, but the thing
itseff, as differing in some essential manner from any
apparently kindred position amongst Anglicans.
After our consideration of the questions in the
> Times, 19th February 1914. 101

102 Modernism

last two chapters, questions essentiaUy constituent
of the modernist movement, it is almost difficult
to appreciate the reason for this rigorous distinc
tion between the CathoUc and the Protestant, or
the Anglican, movement. The crucial problems of
modernism are so obviously problems of the Christian
faith itseff, and not of any particular form of it,
that it is hard to understand how it can be regarded
purely as a product of Romanism.
But if we tum again to the same writer, and to
one other, we shall find that their chief motive for
insisting on this distinction is their profound dis
belief in any possible future of Roman CathoUcism,
and their conviction that the CathoUc modernist
movement was essentiaUy a struggle between Ught
and darkness, liberty and t5Tanny, modem thought
and a hopelessly antiquated and effete conception
of authority. In fact, modernism is pecuUar to the
Roman CathoUc Church just because it had no
business there ; its main characteristic is, in a sense,
its very incongruity and hopelessness.
Thus Mr. Fawkes says elsewhere :
.4* a movement. Modernism was a product of the
Interims-Pontifikat of Leo XIII.
He (the modernist) recognised the modem mind as a
factor of the situation with which he had to deal. His
mistake lay in thinking he could change its direction ;
he found that he had harnessed the chariot of the Sun.

Catholic and Protestant Modernism 103
(But) the divergence between the Catholic and the
modernist position is fundamental. In every age a
modernist school has faced the Papacy with a ' thus
far and no further ' / in every age the protest has
been brushed aside by the logic of ideas and of events.
......
For there is no arguing vnth a theocracy}
Further on he continues :
The days of an institution which can no longer
adapt itself to its environment are numbered. This is
overlooked by those who stop short at the contention that
it was impossible for the Church to come to terms
with modernism. It may have been so. But, in
this case, the inference is inevitable : the Church is
near its end.
A Church, however, may stand for one of two things :
its polity, or the men and women who compose it. In
the former sense, Bome, it may be, will go the way of
Alexandria and Antioch. . . . But the religious
future of Latin Christendom — of the 250 millions who
now look to Rome for guidance — is another matter.
For, whatever may be the case with its local and tem
porary forms, there is no reason to think that Chris
tianity is incapable of adapting itself to the changed
and changing life of the world. In the reformed
Churches, because of their more elastic structure, the
transition from the letter to the spirit is easier than in
the unreformed.^
» Studies in Modernism, by the Rev. Alfred Fawkes, pp.
vii-viii. ' Idem., pp. ix-x.

104 Modernism

In the Dean of St. Paul's we have another and
more bitter representative of the same view. He
has not the sympathy of Mr. Fawkes for the efforts
of Catholic modernists ; he has, furthermore, some
quarrel with their opinions as weU as their position ;
but his chief indictment of them is for the absurdity
and inconsequence of their action in endeavouring
to buttress a rotten structure, and to remain members
of a Church governed according to despotic prin
ciples while they pretend to liberal views. In the
Church of Rome there is no possibiUty of accom
modation to the growth of modem knowledge.
The exigencies of despotic government, he writes,
supply the key to the whole policy and history of the
Papacy ; Rome has finished her life. . . . A more
vital question for those, at least, who are Christians
but not Roman Catholics, is in what shape the Chris
tian religion unll emerge from the assaults upon
traditional beliefs which science and criticism are
pressing home}
That the -writer goes on to repudiate certain
critical positions, and to state, subjectively rather
than objectively, what he holds tenable and un
tenable, does not concern us here.^ The substance
' See article on 'The Meaning of Modernism,' by Dr. Inge,
Quarterly Review, April 1909.
' Thus he adds : In the first place we do not feel that we are
required by sane criticism to surrender nearly aU that M. Loisy
has surrendered. (But what if, in its further process, sane
criticism showed that we had got to surrender all that M. Loisy
surrenders ?) We beUeve that the Kingdom of Ood which Christ

Catholic and Protestant Modernism 105
of his criticism is that the Pascendi is a natural and
lawful development of Roman Catholic teaching,
whUe modernism is an Ulogical and unlawful effort
to combine contradictory things ; it is an effort as
unjust to science as it is iUegitimate from the
ecclesiastical point of view ; and it is, furthermore,
a mischievous attempt to prolong the Iffe of a useless
institution. To the CathoUc modernist these are strange accusa
tions. If the problems we have considered are not
as vital to Reformed as to Catholic Christianity ; if
the relation of Christianity to its historic origin, the
connection of Christ, the object of worship, with the
Jesus Christ of history, be not questions as vital to
Protestant as to Catholic Christianity, in what then
does Protestant Christianity, as a faith, consist ?
We are not pronouncing an opinion on the solution
of these problems, but on their existence ; and is
not their existence as grave a consideration to the
English as to the Roman CathoUc Church ?
preached was something much more than a patriotic dream. We
believe that He did speak as never man spake, so that those who
heard Him were convinced tliat He was more than man. We believe,
in short, that the object of our worship waa a historical figure.
Nothing has yet come to light, or is likely to come to light, which
prevents us from identifying the Christ of history with the Christ
of faith, or the Christ of experience. Those who have followed
M. Loisy's writings closely will see that Dr. Inge has somewhat
missed their signification. The points he raises are just those
with which M. Loisy dealt in his apologetic — Oiriat, for him,
was, according to that apologetic, an object both of faith and of
history.

io6 Modernism

It has been said of Protestantism that it is the
only religion, at least of the West, in which one can
become an Atheist unthout noticing it, and without
doing oneself the least violence}
Would there not be some truth in this judgment
if, for instance, the Christological problem did not
affect its whole constitution as profoundly as it
affects that of the CathoUc Church ?
Yet there is a certain amount of truth in the
contentions of the -writers from whom we have
quoted, for it is, indeed, in the Catholic Church
that modernism has had its classical manffestation ;
there it has exhibited itseff tn its most acute form,
and there it has reaped the most acute consequences ;
there it has been most passionate and eager, and
there it has been most vigorously opposed. From
the recognition of this truth we may draw one of two
conclusions, either, on the one hand, -with Mr. Fawkes,
that modernism has no future in the CathoUc Church,
and, with Dr. Inge, that its existence therein is pre
posterous ; or, on the other hand, that, just because
of the intensity of its character, it is more properly
alive in that place than in any other.
According to the second of these alternatives,
modernism does not exist in the Reformed Churches
only in the sense that it is not to be found there
with aU its virtue, or aU its maUgnity, according
to the favourable or unfavourable view that may
be taken of it.
' L'Irriligion de I'avenir, p. 131. M. Quyau.

Catholic and Protestant Modernism 107
Protestantism is not so highly organised as Cathol
icism ; it is, in a sense, a headless body, whose Iffe
is equaUy diffused through aU its parts ; it leads,
therefore, a less fuUy conscious existence, and is
not always aware of the vital changes it is under
going. If it is not possible for it, as Guyau suggested,
to survive -without a God, it is nevertheless conceiv
able that it might survive without a Christ ; though
it would then be as Protestantism, and not as
Christianity, that it would survive. In this sense
Protestantism and Christianity are two, whereas
Catholicism and Christianity are one.
For Catholicism, on the contrary, is an organism
-with a single brain, wherever that brain may be
situated, and it has, consequently, coUective as weU
as individual sensation. It is aware of aU that takes
place in any part of itseff, and is proportionately
capable of action and reaction. It is not disturbed
in one place without being disturbed in the whole ;
its crises assume at once an universal character.
The CathoUc Church possesses, furthermore, a
great variety of levels, and though these levels are
differently affected by any new influence, the sensa
tion of each one is, to some extent, the sensation
of aU.
There 's no bottom to the Catholic Church, writes
one of our novelists ; everything that 's in stays in}
Yet through her brain centres she feels ui every
one of those parts. It is not only her learned, but
1 Illumination, Harold Frederic.

io8 Modernism

also her unlearned, who are affected by the new
breath of knowledge ; it is not only her devout,
but also her indifferent. It is possible to be orthodox
within her fold, and know nothing about it, because
we are thus in complete and automatic harmony
with the whole of her being ; it is not possible to
be unorthodox without knowing aU about it.
If, then, it be part of the process of knowledge
not only to change, but to know that we are chang
ing, this highly developed consciousness -wUl be a
factor in the process of truth. The very hindrance
offered to its advance -wUl serve some purpose, for
we shaU not pass so easUy from one position to
another as to leave things behind that ought to
have gone with us and wUl have to be fetched again
afterwards. If it be asked, then, why a man remains in prison,
and keeps on shaking his chains and tugging at his
bars, it can be replied that there is at any rate this
advantage in the chains and the bars, that they
make us clearly aware of the fact that we are
striving to move ; and the pain of the Uberating
process may be weU repaid by the definiteness of
this knowledge. When there is no positive external
restraint on our professions and opinions we may,
-with an agreeable, but inexact vagueness, wander
a good way from our post, and think we are stiU
beside it.
Hence, though modernism be as much a Christian
as a CathoUc movement, it has attained its most

Catholic and Protestant Modernism 109
definite manffestation in the CathoUc Church, even
apart from the fact that some of its chief leaders
have been Roman Catholics.
The EngUsh Church and other Protestant
Churches have not been without representative
men to recognise this truth. But perhaps none
have done so with a greater fulness of understand
ing and sympathy than Archdeacon LUley, formerly
Vicar of Paddington.^ He is among those who have
unfalteringly met the tide of criticism fuU face ;
and ff he turned with special sympathy to the study
of Catholic Modernism, it was not from lack of
attachment to his own Church, but because he felt
that the problems which every Church had to con
front were being faced and felt in the Roman Church
with such special force and insistency, that there,
more than anywhere else, could one estimate the
strength of the problems in themselves, and their
effect on the Christian faith.
Thus he writes in the Introduction to his collected
essays : ' Modernism, a Record and a Review ' :
Most of the papers which are here collected have
appeared during the last five years in various magazines
and reviews as occasional notices of its progress.
They were ivritten to call the attention of members
of my own Communion to a theological movement
which seemed to me, both by the freedom of its method
and the boldness of its conclusions, to have more promise
• Now Canon of Hereford Cathedral and Archdeacon of
Ludlow.

IIO Modernism

of religious fruitfulness than any which had found
clear and articulate expression within our own borders.
I knew indeed how many among ourselves, and especi
ally among our younger men, were feeling their way
to an application of the same apologetic method ; and
I hoped that an example of courage and faithfulness
in the pursuit of truth which had been an inspiration
and encouragement to myself might encourage and
inspire them also.
The modernist movement has introduced a new note
into the Roman Communion. Among vast numbers
of the clergy of France and Italy especially, the life
of study has become the natural pendant to the life of
prayer. In no other communion of the Christian
world is there such a ferment of thought about the
things of religion, or such an earnest and serious pur
suit of positive knowledge. Even Protestant Germany,
which has so honestly laboured in the interests of
theological progress for a whole century, is turning
with astonishment and admiration to this veritable
renaissance in Rome. It remembers that it at least
enjoyed the freedom of the University chair in attempt
ing the work of theological renewal. But here are men
who have to work under the jealous and uninterrupted
surveUlance of reactionary Orders, or in some petty
seminary professorship, or amid conditions of solitude
and poverty which would daunt all but the bravest
and most enthusiastic spirits. And yet they have
never compromised their vision of truth nor minimised

Catholic and Protestant Modernism iii
the conclusions which the ascertained facts forced upon
them. They are sustained by a simple and passionate
love of truth, and by a certainty which fills them with
a kind of despotic inspiration that all truth is of God.
For them the results of positive theology seem to blend
almost naturally and without effort with the immediate
certainties of mystical religion. They possess that
peculiar chemistry of the spirit which men seem to
acquire in crises of enthusiastic faith, and which
harmonises the most conflicting elements of their know
ledge in a generous and satisfying unity. It is on
this account that they have not only succeeded in dis
covering the religious value of the new learning for
themselves, but are undoubtedly destined to be its
spiritual sponsors with every communion in Chris
tendom. ......
One thing only can be prophesied of this movement,
but that may be prophesied with certainty. The track
which it is clearing for theology is the only one which
theology can safely follow in the coming days. And
in clearing that track, it is preparing a mutual in
telligence between the sundered branches of Christen
dom which is possible on no other terms. Protestant
theology, which was scholastic to the core, separated
from the main body of Christian tradition in refusing
adhesion to certain dogmas as intellectually false, as
out of accord with the revelation given in Scripture
intellectually conceived and interpreted. Protestantism
indeed, as a religious movement, had gone deeper than

112 Modernism

its apologetics admitted. It had really denied certain
dogmas because religious experience seemed to prove
them valueless and even injurious to the life of religion.
But modernism holds that life may be trusted to slough
its old skin, and that when it does so in obedience to
the needs of nature it may flnd that every expression
of the old life needs to repeat itself in some worthier
and more developed form in the new. With the sense
of the absoluteness of God's self-revelation in life, of
the supremacy of the life and Spirit of Jesus Christ
as the norm of that revelation, and of the relative value
of all its various forms as it expresses itself through
the religious life and thought of humanity, all motives
to schism will have vanished. In proportion as these
conceptions gain ground, and they cannot by their very
nature gain ground in one Christian community vnth
out affecting all, the reunion of Christendom will
pass from the stage of a vague sentimental desire to
that of a rational and highly practical aim}

» Op. cit., pp. 4, 17-18, 22-23.

CHAPTER VI
THE OFFICIAL CHURCH AND MODERNISM
IF there could possibly have been any doubt before
the year 1907 as to which Church would exhibit
the modernist crisis in its acutest form, there could
be none after that date. On 3rd July 1907, and
again on Sth September of the same year, Rome
pronounced distinct and emphatic judgment on the
work of her own chUdren. The Decree of July,
Lamentabili sane, contains a list of errors, dra-wn,
accurately and inaccurately, from the works of some
of the chief modernist writers, above aU from those
of M. Loisy ; the EncycUcal, Pascendi gregis, of
September, which first gives the official title of
Modernism to the entire movement, consecrates
many pages to the exposition and refutation of
what it treats throughout as a coherent system,
brings various charges against the personal char
acter and motives of its promoters, and announces
the poUcy -with which it is henceforth to be met.
The Decree is objective in tone, the Encyclical per
sonal ; the Decree is a statement of doctrine, the
EncycUcal is also a manffestation of temper and
spirit, but in both documents certain main positions
are definitely set forth, and an attitude of distinct
(1,986) JJ 113

114 Modernism

and uncompromising opposition is declared, not
only to some or many special points of the recent
apologetic, not only to its critical or its phUoso
phical or its theological resiUts, but to the whole
of it, en bloc, and to every manffestation and detaU
ofit. The first question that may arise in the minds of
those who read these words, unless they are already
closely acquainted with the documents in question,
is how it was possible to strike, with one blow, so
many different things ; that is to say, how it was
possible to blend in one condemnation the very
distinct schools of work and thought which we have
been considering. How could they even be classed
under one appeUation ?
The proceeding was, indeed, unscientific ; an
accusation which its authors, in their sUght estima
tion of science, would have no desire to repel ; yet
it was not reaUy uninteUigent. In the Pascendi
modernism is termed, not a heresy, but a ' com
pendium of heresies,' and the modernists are re
proached with ' laying the axe, not to the branches
and shoots, but to the very root, that is to faith
and its deepest fibres.'
Now it would be impossible for any impartial
student of the Decree and EncycUcal on the one hand,
and the works of those who are condemned in them
on the other hand, not to perceive that the Decree,
in particular, is extraordinarUy elusive, the clauses
often containing some particle that casts uncertainty

The Official Church and Modernism 115
over their f uU meaning ; and that both documents
faU conspicuously in giving a fair account of the
writings to which they tacitly refer.^ Therefore,
for acquaintance with the works of the phUosophical,
critical, and theological schools, of which we have
already spoken, it is not to those pronouncements
that we should go. Yet in its apprehension of the
recent religious movement in its totaUty, the mind
of the official Church was not altogether unjust.
For it is, indeed, at the very foundations of faith
that modernism has expended its labours, just as
it is at the very foundations of human science and
truth that the engines of the Church are directed
in its condemnation. It has been given to us, in our
day, to -witness some intermingling of the roots of
human and divine knowledge ; an experience as
fuU of awe-struck joy to those for whom aU know
ledge is, at its deepest, a form of reUgion, as it is
distressing to those for whom religion is a thing
apart, with dominion over human knowledge in
general, but no kinship with it. Modernism was
the recognition of this intermingling, an inter
mingling that could not be effected without some
perturbation of the soU ; the Decree and Encyclical
are the denunciation, not of the intermingling
in itseff, of which they do not take accoimt
• On this matter consult Simples Riflexions, etc., of M. Loisy,
The Programme of Modernism, translated from the Italian with
introduction by A. Leslie Lilley (Fisher Unwin), and two letters
in the Times of 3(Wi September and lst_October 1907 by George
Tyrrell.

ii6 Modernism

either to deny or affirm it, but of the recognition
accorded by some members of the Church to its
occurrence. To have gone on in complete unconsciousness of
the change that was taking place would have be
tokened, in the ruling element of the Church, a
startling lack of Ufe and perception ; for, as we have
already noticed, the Roman Catholic (Siurch is an
orgamsm with brain centres and dependent organs.
To have seen what was happening, to have met it
with the open arms of recognition and sympathy,
to have made this movement her own by accepting
and enduring as weU as guiding its action, would
have been, on the part of the Church, a line of con
duct surpassing the elevation and force of the human
elements of which she is composed.
We have aU felt, in times of crisis, that had we,
in the past, lived steadUy up to the best that was
in us, we should have more Ught and strength for
meeting our emergency than we actuaUy possess.
The same is to be said of any coUective body. The
Church carries with her the burden of her own past,
with aU that it contains of evU and weakness as
well as good and strength ; in the hour of danger
she can only act according to her character as she
has made it ; every fault that has crept into her
system must teU ; God cannot be expected to over
rule her own human elements.
Thus it was ine-vitable that the rulers of the
Church should perceive what was happening ; and

The Official Church and Modernism 117
it was also inevitable that, even had they been
endowed with immeasurably more wisdom and dis
interestedness than they actuaUy possessed, they
should have, to some extent, recoUed from the
changes that were going forward. And when we
add to this the further motives for resistance drawn
from vices and abuses accumulated during centuries
of government, their action can hardly surprise,
nor, in every respect, distress us.
In the first place, the Church had never acknow
ledged the complete autonomy of science and history,
even in their own domains. For it cannot be said
that such autonomy is recognised when the science
in question can be caUed to order at any instant
if, even whUe deaUng strictly on its own lines with
some part of its own subject, it touches on a point
in which the teaching of the Church is likewise
interested. Thus one of the condemned propositions of the
Lamentabili is the foUo-wing :
As it is only revealed truths that are contained in
the deposit of faith it appertains in no respect to the
Church to pass judgment on the assertions of human
science, and this view is greatly enforced through
out the Pascendi, where, also, the words of Pius ix.
are quoted, that ' it is the duty of phUosophy not
to command, but to serve.'
The modernist attitude in this matter was so
incomprehensible to Rome that their respect for
the rights of science was taken to imply, not only

ii8 Modernism

that science was independent of faith, but that faith
was dependent on science. Thus the Pascendi main
tains that, according to the modernist, science is to
be entirely independent of faith, while, on the other
hand, and notwithstanding that they are supposed to
be strangers to each other, faith is made subject to
science. In this way the modernist is also charged -with
robbing faith of the support and proof it can find
in natural science :
It is a fixed and established principle among them
that both science and history must be atheistic, and
that within their boundaries there is room for nothing
but phenomena ; God and all that is divine are utterly
excluded. And again :
When they write history they make no mention of
the Divinity of Christ, but when they are in the pulpit
they profess it clearly ; again, when they write history
they pay no heed to the Fathers and the Councils,
but when they catechise the people they cite them
respectfully. It is impossible, in the face of these documents, to
maintain that a CathoUc historian, or critic, or man
of science is in the same position as one who is not
a member of that Church ; for it is not enough to
have the chance, with good luck, of never drawing
any conclusions that the Church may condemn, it
is the whole conception of his metier that must be
different in one who accepts this rule of conduct.

The Official Church and Modernism 119
An historian may afford to be sUent and not say
what he sees ; he cannot afford to be blind and not
see it. He can afford to keep his faith under diffi
culties, and believe that, in deeper faith and -wider
knowledge, contraries wiU be reconcUed ; he cannot
afford to say that no difficulties exist. He can, in
aU honesty, admit the limitations of the human
inteUigence, the insecurity of many scientific hypo
theses, the possibUity, indeed the certainty, of much
readjustment and change in aU branches of know
ledge, but he cannot refuse to assent to what is
probable as being probable, any more than he can
refuse his assent to what is evident as being evident.
Hence, in the principle of subordination here set
forth, we have an impasse between science and the
authority of the Church ; an impasse which, as
Catholics, we had always been taught could not
exist. As M. Loisy remarks :
The question is always as to the rights of criticism ;
rights that the Church contests in regard to the Bible,
rights that the critic, having acquired them, will never

renounce

1

WhUe the Church thus limited the independence
of science, she asserted the strict scientific and in
teUectual character of dogma, and aUowed of no
relative, or moral, or spiritual, or symbolic concep
tion of its value. From this foUowed a condemna
tion of any theory of vital evolution ; a condemna-
* Simples Reflexions, p. 33.

120 Modernism

tion which, in the mind of most students of the two
documents, affected the teaching of Newman as
weU as that of more recent apologists. Thus the
Pascendi cites, amongst modernist errors, the theory
that :
The progress of dogma is due chiefiy to the obstacles
which faith has to surmount, to the enemies it has to
vanquish, the contradictions it has to repel. Add to
this a perpetual striving to penetrate ever more pro
foundly its oum mysteries.
Along with the doctrine of evolution is condemned
the notion of the whole body of the faithful having
an active share in the Iffe and growth of the Church.
As it is said in the Pascendi :
Note here. Venerable Brethren, the appearance
already of that most pernicious doctrine which would
make of the laity a factor of progress in the Church.
So, too, any form of apology that would begin its
work with the individual conscience, that would
open the way to God by showing the soul its o-wn
need of Him, is brushed aside :
They endeavour, in fact, to persuade the non-believer
that down in the very depths of his nature and his life
lie the need and the desire for religion, and this not
a religion of any kind, but the specific religion known
as Catholicism, which, they say, is absolutely postu
lated by the perfect development of life}
Indeed, the attempt to convert the mind through
the heart is a pernicious method, for everything that
^ Pascendi.

The Official Church and Modernism 121
leads the heart captive proves a hindrance instead of
a help to the discovery of truth.
One inconvenience of modernist doctrine, in the
official view, is that it suggests the possibUity of
true spiritual experiences being met vnth in every
religion. . . . With what right can modernists claim
true experiences for Catholics alone ? Indeed, they do
not deny, but actually admit, some confusedly, others
in the most open manner, that all religions are true.
In the conflict between different religions, the most that
the modernists can maintain is that the Catholic has
more truth because it is more living, and that it deserves
unth more reason the name of Christian because it
corresponds more fully with the origins of Christianity}
The last of the detaUed charges brought against
the modernist is his desire for certain reforms in
the Church. Those reforms are thus summarised
in the Pascendi :
Their general directions for the Church may be put
in this way : Since the end of the Church is entirely
spiritual, the religious authority should strip itself of
all that external pomp which adorns it in the eyes of
the public. And here they forget that while religion
is essentially for the soul, it is not exclusively for the
soul, and that the honour paid to authority is reflected
back to Jesus Christ who instituted it.
At the conclusion of his Simples Reflexions on these
two documents, M. Loisy thus expresses himself :
* Pascendi.

122 Modernism

The Pope says truly that he could not keep silence
without betraying the deposit of traditional doctrine.
At the point at which things have arrived his silence
would have been an immense concession, the implicit
recognition of the fundamental principle Cff modernism ;
i.e. the possibility, the necessity, the legitimacy of
evolution in the manner of understanding ecclesiastical
dogmas, the papal infallibility and authority included
as well as the conditions of their exercise. Now the
respective positions have been fixed ; the Roman
Church, supported by the notion of an absolute re
velation, which gives divine authority to her constitu
tion, her belief, and her practices, refuses any con
cession to the modern spirit, to modern science and to
modern society, which, on thair side, cannot recognise
the absolute character of this revelation, nor the abso
lutism of ecclesiastical infallibility and authority.
The divorce is complete. Science had already realised
it for herself, and society tended more and more to the
same attitude. The Church has now proclaimed it
officially by the voice of her Chief.
For the moment it is impossible to see when and how
the thought and society of our days may become recon
ciled with the faith and constitution of Catholicism.
Nor is it the time to examine their reciprocal wrongs
— which are not all on the same side — and which
have brought about the separation which the supreme
Pontiff has now definitely sanctioned. Time is a
great master, vnthout whom no truth bears fruit in
this world. But it is not to those who have their

The Official Church and Modernism 123
backs turned to one another that a treaty can profitably
be suggested.
These are sad words, though not whoUy devoid
of hope. They were the words of one who had
ended his task as a Catholic apologist and was
about to dedicate the rest of his life to purely
scientific labours.
More passionate and tense was the protest that
came from another quarter. It was to the cause
of reUgion and of Catholicism that George TyrreU
had consecrated his Iffe ; the Catholic Church had
been, to him, the great bulwark against infideUty,
and his anger was in proportion to his early hopes.
Nor did he regard the action of the Holy See as so
inevitable as it was in the eyes of M. Loisy. In two
letters to the Times, of 30th September and 1st Octo
ber 1907, he set forth his reply, and as the Encyclical
had stated that the enemies of the Church, against
whom it was directed, were her own chUdren, so'
he declared that they were her own rulers.
He remarks, at the beginning of his second letter,
that his words are the utterances of one who feels
no particular pride in claiming to know the scholastic
system inside as well as out ; who has passed his ad
gradum in scholastic divinity ; and who once suffered
a good deal of harrassing for what was considered his
excessive zeal for the Thomistic revival of Leo XIII.,
and received in consequence the condolence and moral
support of Cardinal Mazzella, of Father Billot, S.J. —
then, as now, the light of the Roman College — and of

124 Modernism

many other coryphcei of militant neo-scholasticism ;
of one, finally, who only abandoned the system because
he found in it principles that carried it beyond itself to
something wider and better. Anyhow, the Encyclical
is there for every one to read and study.
In his first letter he thus summarises the character,
spirit, and contents of the Pascendi :
With a touch of not the fairest special pleading, the
root-principle of this ' compendium of all heresies ' is
called ' agnosticism ' and even ' atheism' which latter
term is rarely, if at all, qvalified by the prefix ' scien
tific ' that would rob it of its sting. This so-called
' agnosticism ' by no means denies that the divine
and the real are knowable ; but merely that they can
be knoum by the scientific faculty, the Verstand of
Kant, the ratio and inteUectus of the schoolmen, as
distinct from the reason and higher spiritual powers.
Modernists deny that mere science can get beyond the
y phenomenal or attain to the essence and substance of
reality. . . . They pretend to reach God by higher
modes of cognition ; but, since there are none such in
the philosophy of the school, it is plain that modernists
are, because they ought to be, agnostics and atheists.
Let us now glance briefly at some of the positions
asserted or denied by the Encyclical. It condemns the
doctrine that religion originates in man's soul, or
otherwise than from outside, i.e. through the deductions
of the intellect from natural or ' supernatural ' phe
nomena ; that it derives from * a certain movement of

The Official Church and Modernism 125
the heart ' or from a sense of God, immanent in the
soul, such as mystics and mystical philosophers talk
of ; that beyond the bounds of outward and inward
experience accessible to science and history there is a
Reality ' unknowable ' for science, but given to the
higher consciousness ' prior to any judgment of the
mind, and appealing to a certain sense.' This inward
sense of God, this ' life of religion,' is for modernists''
a faculty which it is the purpose of religion and re
velation to cultivate. This is described as ' philoso
phical raving,' for it implies that God can be reached
otherwise than through the argument from causality ¦
applied to natural and supernatural phenomena. The
notion that God reveals himself in and through such
subjective experiences, and even in the voice of con
science, is called ' most absurd ' ; for St. Augustine's
doctrine that all Divine impulses, in the present order,
are ' supernatural,' and are elevated to the dignity of
graces, is ignored. To admit it would favour the
modernist heresy which views ' the religious conscience
as a universal law, on a par with revelation, to whom
all, even the head of the Church, should be subject,
whether in matters of doctrine or discipline ' ; and
which, as Neuoman says, drinks first to conscience and ¦
then to the Pope. We may not hold that religious
systems and revelations ' are mere explanations of
man's religious sense.' Nor, again, that faith, co-
apprehending certain phenomenal facts and person
alities along with and under their Divine significance
{which is its proper object), idealises and rearranges the

126 Modernism

said phenomena so as to bring out their significance
still more ; and that, thus transformed, they are outside
the competence of science, which needs to discriminate
between their idealised and their original form. Thus,
it is not that faith flrst sees the divinity of Christ and
then unconsciously rearranges the Gospel-history to
bring out this truth ; but that reason starts from the
miracles of the Gospel-history and so argues to the
divinity of Christ. The notion that Christ's religion
or revelation was the expression of His own inward
experience of ' a process of immanent life,' and was
not derived from some almost locally extemal source,
is curiously anathematised as ' stupendous and sacri
legious audacity.' Apparently, what is in man is
necessarily of men, and therefore God cannot be in man
as co-factor of his spiritual life. If so, the usual
doctrine of grace is dangerously near to ' modernism.'
The doctrine that dogmas, primary or secondary {as
Newman classes them), in which the mind formulates
the Divine objective of religious experience, are ' in
adequate notions thereof ' ; that they ' do not contain
absolute truth ' ; that, as such, they may vary and
develop — all this theory, based on St. Thomas's
V doctrine of analogy, mvM go overboard as a ' vast
mountain of sophistries, destructive of all religion.'
That religious formulas * sliould be vital, and should
live with the life of the religious sense,' that they should
follow and not lead in the process of spiritual develop
ment, is mere insanity. In believing in a certain ' in
tuition of the heart,' in ' a sort of experience higher

The Official Church and Modernism 127
than any rational experience,' modernists ' only differ
from rationalists in order to agree with Protestants and
pseudo-mystics.' One cannot help wondering where
St. John ofthe Cross, St. Teresa, and a host of canonised '
contemplatives differ from pseudo-mystics. Yet to pre
tend to get at God except through the argument from
causality is ' to pave the way to atheism.' With their
symbolism and their inner experience, modernists have
no right to deny truth to any religion, even to Paganism.
' For how can they deny the religious experiences
which a Turk might claim, or show that true experiences
are the monopoly of Catholics ? Indeed, they do not
deny it, but more or less openly claim truth for every
religion,' ' and can only contend that Catholicism is
more true because more vital.' The heaviest adjectives
and adverbs are brought to bear on such suppositions ;
as also on the theory that spiritual fruitfulness can,,
under certain conditions, be a test of doctrinal truth ;
or that way, truth, and life are one and the same in
the spiritual order.
Coming to theology proper, the opinion that religious
formula is ' inadequate,' that it ' at once reveals and
conceals a truth which it strives to compass but never
succeeds in compassing ' is repudiated as ' manifestly
the greatest of errors.' The Church and the Sacra
ments were immediately instituted by Christ visible
on earth, and not merely by Christ abiding invisibly
in the Christian community. The extremest Augus
tinian form of Biblical inspiration is reaffirmed. God

128 Modernism

is the author, nay, the director, of the sacred Scriptures,
in which there can therefore be no scientiflc or historical
errors ; and to say that He accommodated His scien
tiflc utterances to the ideas and ignorance of His hearers
is ' to attribute convenient and serviceable lying to
God himself' — a notion peculiarly shocking to the
scholastic mind, unth its fastidious sense of veracity.
Then we are told that ' Church authority comes iito
the Church from God outside,' and not immediately
from the Holy Spirit immanent in the Church, or from
the ' collective religious conscience ' to which the whole
Church should be subject, as to God, and which 'it
is tyranny for its rulers to spurn.' ' Not content with
separating Church from State, modernists, though they
do not say so, must, from their principles, think that,
as the phenomenal aspect of faith is subject to science,
so the Church on its temporal side is subject to the
State.' The alternative, that both should be subject
to something higher than either, is not faced. The
individual mind of the Pope, not the collective mind of
the Church, is, of course, the sole immediate subject
of Divine guidance and ihe ultimate source of dogmatic
authority. There is no need of 'finding some middle
vxiy of reconciling the full rights of liberty and authority.'
It is untrue that ' the end of ecclesiastical power is
simply the good of souls, and that therefore extemal
pomp should be abolished. Religion looks to souls,
but not only to souls ; and the honour paid to authority
redounds to the honour of Christ.' Is this Pius X.
who speaks, or some purple ' dignitary ' ? All vital,

The Official Church and Modernism 129
as opposed to merely mechanical, evolution of dogmas,
Christology, Papacy, sacraments, cultus, and Scrip
tures, is roundly denied. Laymen do not, by their
learning, modify the collective mind of the Church, and
so help {as Newman supposed) in the imaginary ' de
velopment ' of dogma ; nor do they understand their
own intellectual exigencies better than the Pope does
— pretensions that are deluged at great length with
satire and ridicule, strangely out of place in a Papal
Encyclical. The taunt of ' apriorism ' is turned back
against the historical critics, who are not, as they pre
tend, forced to the evolution hypothesis by the pressure
of evidence ; but wantonly start with the hypothesis
and then invent or doctor the evidence. The sacred'
books were all loritten by the traditional authors. The
Pentateuch and the Synoptics did not gradually grow
to their present form. The arguments of later Biblical
writers, drawn from the Prophets and earlier writers,
are always objectively valid, and do not rest on false
readings and mistranslations. The ancient doctors of
the Church excelled the modern Biblical critics in
genius, learning, and sanctity, and approached the
Scriptures in a believing, not in an atheistical, spirit.
• • • • • •
The need of reform in seminary studies ; of hinder
ing the multiplication of new devotions ; of giving
to laity and priests a share in Church management;
of decentralisation ; of reforming the Index and other
Roman Congregations ; of insisting more on ' active '
than on ' passive ' virtues, or more simplicity and
(1,986) I

130 Modernism

poverty on the part of ecclesiastics ; of abolishing or
modifying enforced clerical celibacy ; of criticising
legends and relics — all this is ruthlessly condemned.
For the supposition of such reforming tendencies is
that the Church can and ought to develop; that the
institutions, teachings and principles of the apostolic
age were not final and sufficient for all time ; that more
ia needed than an ' instauratio omnium ' — a going
back to the old lines.
One more protest of importance came from an
ItaUan group, and was entitled the Programma
dei Modernisti} It was scientific and phUosophical
in character ; it dealt ably -with various misunder
standings and misrepresentations in the ecclesiastical
documents, above aU -with the charge of modernism
being a system invented to support certain phUo
sophical presuppositions ; it also set forth the irre
sistible facts with which the movement had had to
deal in its new apologetic.
This is not a detaUed history of modernism,
therefore many subsequent events wUl need no
mention. It may be said in brief that the blow,
to aU appearances, went home. Condemnation
foUowed condemnation on the part of rulers, whUe
submission foUowed submission or rebeUion succeeded
to rebeUion on the part of subjects. The action of
the Pope was a good deal applauded in certain anti-
Catholic or atheistic quarters, as weU as by a section
* The Programme of Modernism, published by Messrs. Fisher
Unwin, with a preface by the Rev. A. L. Lilley.

The Official Church and Modernism 131
of the Church itseff ; whUe many outsiders asked
why these modernist maniacs tried to combine ele
ments that were fataUy antagonistic. The policy
of the Pascendi was cro-wned by the imposition of
the celebrated anti-modernist oath,^ which aU priests
with the care of souls are now forced to pronounce,
save in places where the civU authority has raised
formidable objections. The general verdict has been
that Rome triumphed and modernism succumbed.
This is the question which wUl occupy the remain
ing chapters of this work. But there is first one
other subject, of vital moment, to be considered.
* See later chapter and Appendix VI.

CHAPTER VII
MODERNISM AND AUTHORITY
IN that article on ' The Meaning of Modernism,' ^
to which we have already referred, Dr. Inge
having said, in one place, that ' the exigencies of
despotic govemment supply the key to the whole ^
policy and history of the Papacy,' adds, later on,
that ' Rome has finished her Ufe,' and that the
modernist question possesses vital importance only
for those who are Christians, but not Roman
Catholics. If I return to this aspect of the question it is, this
time, from another point of -view, in order to see
how far the conception of authority, that has pre
vaUed in the Roman CathoUc Church, renders the
modernist attitude Ulogical, inconsistent, or even
dishonest. Shortly after the appearance of the EncycUcal
Pascendi a CathoUc prelate wrote a justification of
it in the Nineteenth Century Magazine,* and therein
treated, in particular, of the question of ' spiritual
• Quarterly Magazine, April 1909.
• The itahcs are mine, M. D. P.
• December 1907. The article is that one by Mgr. Moyes to
which reference has already been made. 1S2

Modernism and Authority 133
democracy,' pleading that the opposition of the
Church to the principles of democracy, as applied to
her own constitution, and directed to the admission
of the general body of the faithful to any active
share in her teaching and govemment, in no sense
impUed her aversion for democratic forms of govern
ment in purely poUtical matters. He maintained
that there was an irreducible difference between the
two things, a difference begotten, in the first place, of
the diversity of object and end with which spiritual
and temporal governments were concerned ; and,
in the second place, of the widely different sources
from which they emanated.
To the Catholic Church, he wrote, the founding and
the commissioning of the Church was the personal
work of Christ, who not only laid her foundations in
the Apostles and charged her to teach the nations, but
sent down upon her His Holy Spirit for the purpose.
Her powers are thus derived from Christ and His
Apostles, and her constitution in the matter of teaching,
ministry, and government, is necessarily Christocratic
and Apostolic, and the theory of her being a spiritual
democracy, or a fold in which the sheep ultimately
commission, teach, and control the shepherds, would
be to her a complete perversion and inversion of the
divine order.
In civil government the end to be attained, the
temporal welfare of society, is one within the lines of
the natural order, and therefore quite within the rational

134 Modernism

reach and competence of men themselves to attain it.
Nothing is more natural than that in such a sphere
the powers of government should be given by God in
their natural endowment to the people, and through
them to their rulers, and every citizen may be said to
carry in his brain and in his right arm his eligibility,
if not his claim, to the suffrage. But in the spiritual
domain, by the very nature of things, the position is
reversed. The end to be attained — the soul's salvation
— is supernatural and beyond the reach of our natural
capacity, since Christ alone can effect it. In the
society established for the purpose it was just as logical
that the constituent and controlling powers should come
downwards from Christ and His Apostles to its rulers
for the people, as it was that in the State they should
come upwards from the people to the rulers.
The doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings is here
abandoned in deference to modem ideas, and
CathoUcs may hold what -view they please as to the
source of civil govemment, pro-vided they eschew
any democratic conception of ecclesiastical authority.
Yet St. Paul taught that ' aU power is from God,'
that aU governors are the ' ministers of God,' and
did not suggest the difference here taken for granted.
And ff it be true, as it surely is, that a certain in
terpretation of the Divine Right of rulers is as
compatible with a repubUcan as with a monarchical
form of government, is not this by reason of the dis
tinction which has to be made between authority,
spiritually conceived, as representative of God's WiU

Modernism and Authority 135
and Good, and hence of the general -wiU and good,
and authority formaUy conceived, as the king or
assembly, in which external power is vested and by
which it is exercised 1 Yet the same distinction
has to be made, -with quite as much force, in regard
to ecclesiastical as to civU authority ; in both cases
it possesses an official and accidental as weU as a
spiritual and essential character. Putting aside aU
critical and historical difficulties as to the founda
tion of the Church, and the Gospel origin of the
ecclesiastical hierarchy, this unqualified assertion
of the Divine character of ecclesiastical government
contains its own inconsistencies. Father TyrreU,
who was properly the theologian of CathoUc modem-
ism, had pointed out this faUacy long before the
article in question was written :
It may be well, just here, he -writes, to remember
what that official theory is. Christ and His Apostles
are held to have delivered the complete Depositum
fidei (i.e. the dogmas, sacraments, and other essential
institutions of Catholicism as now existing) to St.
Linus and the episcopate united with him ; who in
turn have transmitted it infallibly to their successors,
without substantial increment but only more fully
' explicated,' illustrated, systematised. As Christ stood
outside, over and above His disciples {as a shepherd
over his fiock, who is not himself part of the fiock), and
as they were purely passive and receptive c>f His teach
ing and guidance, so it is maintained that the teaching
Church (the Pope and episcopate) is related to the

136 Modernism

Church taught. It is not the whole Church which is
the adequate Christi Vicarius and Pastor ovium, but
only a part of it. The organ of the spirit is not the
collective mind of both sections, which is gathered up,
formulated and imposed by the episcopate ; for this
would be to make the episcopate only the organic head
or principal member of the Church ; it would be to
make the whole Church, and not only the episcopate,
the ' principium quod ' (e.g. /, who think, am the
' principium quod ' of my thinking ; my mind, which
thinks, is the ' principium quo ' of my thinking) of
ecclesiastical teaching, and the episcopate merely the
' principium quo ' ; it would be to allow that the
religious thought of the laity had an independent value
as something more than a mere reflex and record of
episcopal teaching ; it would be to conceive the Church
as being fundamentally {with a sort of logical priority),
though not formally, a democracy — much as Suarez
holds all forms of civil polity, however originating, to
be democratic in their juridical root. So far historical
criticism points to the conclusion that ecclesiastical
polity has de facto developed from a loose federation
of loosely organised communities, of a strongly de
mocratic type, into the present highly centralised
ecclesiastical empire, in which all the teaching power
has been vested in the Pope, and practically taken away
from the episcopate and the Ecumenical Council. No
other development was perhaps logically possible as
soon as the bishop came to be regarded as teaching like
a prophet or apostle, from his oum mind, in virtue of

Modernism and Authority 137
a supernatural charisma, and not merely as gathering
up, formulating and, in virtue of his official authority,
imposing on individuals the divinely guided mind of
the whole community. The somewhat analogous re
lation of the Pope to the universal community of bishops
was bound to be interpreted in the same way ; and from
being merely the divinely appointed and assisted
principium quo of their collective authority, whose
function was to gather up, formulate and impose on
individuals the mind of the collective episcopate, and
therefore of the whole clergy and laity, he became a sort
of apostle or prophet, an external head in regard to
whose functions the Church is not co-operative {as is
a body with its organic head, the two making but one
principium quod), but passive and receptive. True,
he does not claim to be, like prophet or apostle, a fount
of new revelation ; but he does claim to hold and de
clare that depositum fidei whose adequate receptacle
was formerly thought to be only the collective mind of
the episcopate, if not of the whole clergy and laity.
L'EgUse c'est moi expresses the whole tendency of this
development, and exaggerates the achievements rather
than the aspirations of the Vatican Council. To-day,
therefore, Catholics are to look to Rome, not because
Bome thinks what the Orbis Terrarum thinks, and
feels the pulse of the world, but because the Orbis
Terrarum must shape its thought to the heal thought
of Rome, and because the brain of the Church is not
considered to be diffused over the flve continents, but
to be concentrated in the Vatican.

138 Modernism

In practical working, however, it is not the Pope
personally who governs Catholic thought and opinion,
but the various congregations and commissions whom
he ' consults ' and whose decisions he may adopt or
reject. According to ' officialism ' Christ instituted the
Church so as to secure for future ages and all nations
the same privileges in the way of doctrinal guidance
enjoyed by His flrst disciples. They quote : ' Lo, I
am unth you always, even to the end of the world,'
and ' As the Father hath sent me, so I send you,' etc.
We must flrst notice that the officials themselves are
forced to admit that these texts prove too much, and have
to grant a qualification which robs them of all their
prima facie force. For they were addressed to men
inspired to reveal new doctrines, and the power which
they received was Christ's oum wonder-working power.
Now these powers of revelation and wonder-working are
not claimed for the Pope and the episcopate even by
the extremest ' official ' theologians.
If, then, the Pope to-day were to arrogate to himself
absolutely all that was said to St. Peter and the Apostles
he should consistently arrogate inspiration and wonder
working. We should have a right to ask him — What
sign showest thou ? Can you heal the sick, cleanse
the lepers, raise the dead ? We should have a right
to demand apostolic sanctity in his life.

Modernism and Authority 139
It is then only in some remote, ambiguous, secondary
sense that such words can be referred to the Pope
or the Church of to-day. 80 applied, they are more
misleading than enlightening}
If this be a just estimate of ecclesiastical authority,
then there is a Divine Right of Popes as truly as
there is a Divine Right of Kings ; as truly, but not
more truly. There is a Divine Right of ecclesiasti
cal govemment as truly as there is a Divine Right
of republican govemment ; as truly, but not more
truly. But Monsignor Moyes has told us that it is not
only by reason of its divine source and sanction
that the govemment of the Church can admit of
no democratic element, but also because of the end
for which it exists, which is beyond the natural
powers of man to attain. Anybody is eligible for
a vote in the poUtical order, because every one knows
what he wants and can use means to obtain it ;
but no one, save by the merits of Christ, can work
the salvation of his own soul.
There is a curious confusion of ideas on this point.
It is not as being himseff God that the Pope can help
us to save our souls, but only just in so far as he is
the representative of God. It is, absolutely, more
within our power to save our soul than to save our
Ufe or property, for no outside force can hinder us
from doing the first, whUe superior strength can
hinder us from doing the second. In so far as
> The Church and the Future, pp. 29-31, 50-53.

140 Modernism

spiritual salvation is beyond our natural powers,
it is because a divine end can only be obtained by
divine help ; yet the Church, in her official character,
is but a means for the imparting of that divine help.
We absolutely need God's assistance in the work
of salvation ; we only relatively need that of the
Church. Again, it is not because men are in need of
authority that they have no right to influence it,
but rather just the contrary. In proportion to the
width and depth of our human sympathies do we
desire association with our feUow-beings, which
entaUs some form of social consensus or authority ;
in proportion to the width and depth of our reUgious
sympathies do we need association with those who
are reUgious, and consequently some form of re
ligious authority.
The more we consider this question the more it
would appear as though it had been the funda
mental one in the whole recent controversy ; that
it was, indeed, that conception of Church authority,
which was criticised by Father TyrreU and supported
by Mgr. Moyes, which checked the modernist efforts
to meet new difficulties by a more Uving apologetic ;
which guided the pens of those who -wrote the
Pascendi and inspired its measures of repression.
And yet it must not be supposed that this pro
blem is only a Church problem ; it is, in some sense,
an universal one; though precisely by reason of
the highly organised constitution of the CathoUc

Modernism and Authority 141
Church it becomes, therein, more acute. It would,
perhaps, be more profitable to society at large, and
to other Christian Churches, to recognise this fact,
and study the question of authority as it works
itseff out for good and for evil in the Roman Church,
than to put the subject aside as though it were her
o-wn pecuUar difficulty derived from her own
absolutist form of government. It is far too cheaply
and readUy assumed that the evUs of authority
are remedied by changing its seat. The problem
exists in one form at St. Petersburg, and in another
form at New York ; it exists in one form in a
monarchy, and in another form in a Trades Union.
And so, too, it exists in one form in the Roman
Church, and in another form in any kind of Church
whatsoever. Yet in the Roman Church, in despite of all that
its official world may declare, it does most assuredly
exist ; it is the root problem of the whole modernist
controversy ; and it is a problem which the govern
ing element cannot solve, because it is the rights
of the governing element that are in question.
We have only to recognise the fuU force of this
problem, and its influence in late events, to perceive
the inconsistency of that charge of unreason and in
sincerity which has been levelled against modernism.
' If the modernist does not want to obey,' say
' orthodox ' CathoUcs, certain Protestants, and most
unbelievers, ' why does he not leave the Church ? '
The answer is that he does want to obey, but in

142 Modernism

the right, and not in the wrong, way. He not only
accepts the principle of authority, but knows and
declares his need of it. He wants neither to be the
Pope, nor to remove, nor, as many orthodox theo
logians do, to make use of the Pope. He wants
to obey the Pope, but to obey him in just measure ;
to render him a reasonable and spiritual service.
The Pope is, to him, a means and not an end ; God
could rule His Church in some other way, but whether
He wUl ever do so is a question not vital to the
problem. MeanwhUe the Pope is there, and it is
not his person or his office that constitutes the
difficulty, but the idolatry which is offered to the
first and the abuse which is made of the second.
To over-estimate the dignity of his person is to
lower the dignity of the Church ; to exaggerate the
rights of his office is to weaken the principle of
authority itseff.
Now even in our own Uves, and day by day, the
growth of this twofold abuse has been perceptible.
The authority of the Pope has been strained to the
point of destroying its o-wn sanction, for subordinate
authority has been set at naught in its interest,
which means that the element of seff--wiU has been
aUowed to prevaU in high places, and we know that
self-wiU is destructive of authority. The examples
are many and to hand ; the action of the Holy See
in France at the time of the separation was one
of the most marked instances, but the daUy and
growing pressure of the hand of Rome on the

Modernism and Authority 143
Catholic world, through her close regulation of epis
copal action, is a fact of which the bishops them
selves could give abundant testimony ff they would.^
The result has been what Father TyrreU pointed
out in some celebrated letters to an EngUsh Catholic
paper. He there described the Church as a train,
of which :
All the motive power, so far as the doctrinal move
ment of the Church is concerned, resides in the Pope.
It is only as united with him that the bishops can be
roughly compared to the carriages of a train in which
the faithful are borne along to their destination.^ ._.
Some years later he wrote, yet more uncom
promisingly, in ' MedievaUsm ' :
// there is still an episcopate, it is not the fault of
the Curialists, or their new theology.
......
Why must I trouble about the bishops at all, if I
must first find out whether they agree with the Pope ?
Is it not as though a Protestant were to say that his
supreme rule of faith was the episcopate so far as in
agreement unth the Bible ? Do you not see that this
is equivalent to saying that the Bible, and the Bible
only, is his rule of faith ? Do you not see that your
own expression * means that the Pope, and the Pope
1 See Appendix II.
• Weekly Register, 24th May 1901. See Autobiography and
Life of George Tyrrell, vol. ii. chap. vii.
» This book is addressed throughout to Cardinal Mercier, and
refers to the words the latter had employed in his Lenten Pastoral
of 1908 against Modernism.

144 Modernism

only, is the rule of Faith ? that we must sit in judgment
on our bishops and test their orthodoxy by this rule ?
But the new theology drags the bishops into the
formula to comical the fact that the whole constitution
of the Church has been turned upside doum by this
new-fashioned individualistic interpretation of the
papacy. Your bishops are simply on parade at a papal
ceremony. You may caU them ' co-judges ' and ' co-
definers ' ; but they are not. . . . If they teach by
transmitting what they learn from the Pope, so does
every simple priest and every lay catechist. Let vs
not pay ourselves with words. The episcopate singly
and collectively has passed over to the Ecclesia discens
and the Pope alone is the Ecclesia docens. ' La
tradizione son io.' ^
Yet once more it must be noted that it is not the
Papal Office itseff which is at fault, but the inter
pretation that has gro-wn up of its meaning and
prerogatives. Time and again there has been a
disposition, even in the outside world, to look to
the papacy as a power that might be of value to
the cause of humanity at large ; and this surely
because, in its ideal conception, it should represent
authority in its purest and most disinterested form.
The Pope is the oiUy monarch who has called himseff
the Servus servorum Dei ; and ff the office has not
been true to the name, that is because the office
has not been true to itseff.
« Op. cit., pp. 56-57.

Modernism and Authority 145
In his letter on the foundation of the Church,
M. Loisy writes :
/ said (in ' L'EvangUe et I'EgUse') that Christ did
not found a hierarchy of domination but a hierarchy
of devotion and service. It never occurred to me that
this assertion could startle some minds. Remembering
what Jesus was during His ministry, and that He said
He had come not to be served but to serve ; giving
credence to the title ' servant of the servants of God,'
which the Roman Pontiff has retained ; knowing the
nature of every kind of actual human society that is
conscious of the rights of humanity ; I forgot the in
genious theory according to which Christ chose a cross
for Himself and reserved a throne for His vicar}
But why, it may be asked, is it that the gro-wing
claims of official authority have been thus unchecked
in their development in the CathoUc Church, whUe
in aU other forms of society they have been opposed
by the counter-claims of the people ?
Some wiU again reply that it is because absolutism
is ingrained in the Roman Church, which would die
of a moderate interpretation of her authority. But
there is another answer, based on that -view of her
constitution which we have already suggested. It
is because of her immense variety of levels, and
the complexity of Ufe which she includes, that the
evU can grow, for a long time, without absolutely
demanding a remedy. In the AngUcan Church the
level is more even and sustained than in the Roman
' Autour d'un petit livre, p. 178.
(1,986) 2

146 Modernism

Church ; in political society the wants are more
plain and defined ; in the Roman CathoUc Church
we have mankind in every stage of development,
and their requirements are proportionately different.
The savage needs liberty, but not in the same form
as civUised humanity needs it ; the ignorant need
light, but not in the same way as the educated ;
the weak have rights, but cannot exercise them
as do the strong. And so, in reverse order, the
civiUsed, the educated, the strong, need authority,
but in a more enUghtened form than their simpler
brethren. It has been too often the mistake of reformers
to insist on giving to everybody what they want
themselves. Liberty and independence consist in
the free use of one's own limbs and not in measur
ing one's strides by those of the taUest man.
As I have said elsewhere :
There is an obedience inspired by genuine love of
the ideal ; by the desire for self-donation in a cause
higher than that of individual self-interest . . . and
no criticism of authority unll be solid and useful that
fails to take count of this tendency to obey — this turn-
fold tendency — one springing from the natural sloth
and dependence of many characters ; the other from an
ideal of self-devotion.'^
If authority seek its own ends, and not the good
of those for whom it exists, it does wrong. Yet
those who obey may not always be the worse for
• See Hibbert Journal, January 1914.

Modernism and Authority 147
doing so. To them that authority may stand for
a wider life than they could attain without it.
Hence the submission, and even, in some cases, the
puzzled and doubting submission which has been
rendered by the mass of the faithful to the decrees
which we considered in the last chapter, need no
more imply that authority was right than that they
are -viTong. In so far as those decrees were directed
against facts or truths, however certain, with which
they had no acquaintance, the act of authority could
be accepted without inteUectual or spiritual loss.
Even had they enough knowledge to cause them
some anxiety of mind, they might stUl feel, in aU
sincerity, more sure of the Church, which, for them,
is also the official Church, than of anything else.
They have not to bear the burden of a resistance
for which they are not fitted.
This consideration is at once comforting and sad
dening. For ff it is good for the people that they
should not suffer from the mistakes of authority,
it is bad for the whole body that the unquestioning
loyalty and obedience of the simple should serve a
false end ; that they should be led to reject truth,
beUeving it to be a Ue ; stUl more that they should
be ordered to condemn those whom their best
instincts teU them to venerate.
Worse stiU is it ff this obedience be exploited
from motives of worldliness ; ff it be not only the
mistakes of authority which the ignorant are serv
ing, but also its ambition. Yet this is sometimes

148 Modernism

the price that they, in aU innocence and uncon
sciousness, pay for their peace of mind.
Hence it may be said that there is, in every form
of society, a class for whom the problem of the
Umits of authority is non-existent. Yet there is
also, in every form of society, a class for whom it
does exist ; and there are times of crisis in which
it makes itself speciaUy felt. And in every case
the same question arises : when, ff ever, may the
members of any society resist the authority that is
duly constituted over that society 1 The answer
surely is : whensoever the said authority is seen to
be false to its own principles, so that obedience
would defeat the end for which the society exists.
If I must here again quote my o-wn words, it is
because I caimot weU say differently what I have
recently said. The object of reUgious obedience
is to unite us with one another, and to unite us all,
individually and collectively, with the Divine Will.
Hence its aim is the destruction of self-seeking and
self-interest, and the absorption of our narrower life
into a wider and more universal one. In so far,
then, as we follow this aim purely and disinterestedly,
we shall know when authority is fulfilling its duty in
our regard, and when, on the contrary, it is guiding us
to a false issue. That it should demand the sacrifice
of our private interest is of the very reason for its exist
ence ; that it should demand the sacrifice of our universal
interests is to contradict every motive for obedience}
• See Hibbert Journal, January 1914.

Modernism and Authority 149
As M. Loisy has said :
Jesus served His apostles ; the apostles and their
suAicessors should be the servants of the faithful.
Thanks to the Gospel, modern nations begin to under
stand that the only raison d'etre of authority, in
human society, is the good of the collectivity, that ia
to say, of all those who form part of the society. The
government is for the service of the governed. A nation
does not exist for the good of its government, but the
government exists for the good of the nation. It would
be strange if the Church, through whom this truth
has penetrated the world, should deny it in her own
case, and claim for her hierarchy a right that is other
than a duty or a service to the community. Is it not
the needs of ihe latter that have justified the develop
ment of the former ? And are not those needs the
supreme law of any further evolution of ecclesiastical
power ?
• •••••
Some minds, endeavouring to penetrate the secrets of
the future, are asking themselves if the Catholic Church,
having expanded the principle of authority to its ex
treme limits, will not soon become less political and
more Christian in character, and, while keeping its
unity and its constitution, follow the general line of
progress of civilised humanity}
These words were written before the appearance
of the EncycUcal Pascendi, which was so direct a
move in the opposite direction. Yet it was never
1 Autour d'un petit Uvre, pp. 179-181.

150 Modernism

to be expected of authority that it would fix its
own limits, nor, indeed, would such limitation serve
great purpose, since what authority could loosen,
authority could likewise bind again.
Which of the judgments was infallible ?
Which of my predecessors spoke for God ?
And what availed Formosus that this cursed.
That blessed, and then this other cursed again ? *
If the problem of authority had come forward,
on its own merits, before the modernist movement
arose, the history of that movement might have
been a different one. The problems of science were
not those of history, and the problems of phUosophy
were not those of either, but the problem of the
rights and limits of authority was the problem of
aU of them, for it was in virtue of the prevailing
conception of ecclesiastical govemment that the
CathoUc historian, critic, and phUosopher, were
sUenced and repressed.
And yet the authority which adopted such -vigorous
measures for the suppression of its own subjects was
not inexorably closed to the pressure of outside in
fluences. Thus Germany obtained certain exemp
tions in regard to the enforcement of the ' Anti-
Modernist Oath,' and in a letter addressed to
Cardinal Fischer, Archbishop of Cologne, the Pope

In our conversations vnth you, my dear brother, we
• The Ring arid the Book — the Pope.

Modernism and Authority 151
tolerated an exception, and admitted that priests teach
ing in the faculties of theology were not to be obliged
to take the oath}
Yet this same oath was regarded elsewhere as an
absolutely essential pledge of orthodoxy, and forced
on the rest of the Church in spite of any conscientious
difficulties. Two other German protests, supported by poUtical,
not religious, arguments, met with like respect, first
on the occasion of the Borromean EncycUcal Editce,
26th May 1910, which was offensive to Protestant
feeling ; and next on that of the Motu proprio of
9th November 1911,* restraining the right of the
laity to summon clerics before civU tribunals.
In these instances it was manffest that authority
could yield to certain forms of persuasion ; though
it was always persuasion from without, and not from
within. Yet can the Catholic subject feel himself
under a positive obligation to submit to a law from
which others are dispensed in deference to the
representations of a civU power not even professing
the Catholic religion ?
Again, when ecclesiastical authority claims obedi
ence in the name of God, it should surely not attempt
to enforce that obedience by the weapons of man.
The days are, indeed, gone by in which it could in
voke the aid of the sword in support of a religious
^ Published in the Acta Apostolicce Sedis, 16th January 1911.
' Quantavis diligentia, published in the Acta Apostolicce Sedia,
12th November 1911.

152 Modernism

principle, yet it can and does, even now, employ
other weapons as undivine, such as the Press or
human forms of argumentation. A power that
claims the right to condemn a newspaper has surely
not also the right to subsidise, or sanction, or support
another newspaper ; and a power that, in virtue
of more than human enlightenment, represses the
results of human thought, must surely not justffy
its action by human argument. If ' the king can
do no -wrong,' it is because he renounces ordinary
claims whUe asserting extraordinary prerogatives.
Yet the Vatican has had its newspaper organs,
and the Pascendi defends its authoritative pro
nouncements by a series of arguments.
In his reply to the Pastoral Letter of Cardinal
Mercier, George TyrreU says, -with some justice :
Your Eminence is aware of the recent censures
declared against those who speak and ivrite in favour
of Modernism, or Modernists, or against the Encyclical
Pascendi. Is it quite generous to assail men by name
who can defend themselves only by what you consider
a rebellion against legitimate authority — to strike those
who are bound hand and foot ? ^
Revolutions are never planned beforehand, or they
would, according to our Umited human outlook, be
planned -with more method and less waste; the
objects would be obtained without the loss of blood
and strength that ordinarUy takes place, and that
seems actuaUy to delay the end in view.
* Medievalism, p. 24.

Modernism and Authority 153
Modernism was a kind of revolution, and it, too,
was not planned beforehand. Problems of science,
history, theology and phUosophy, pressed forward,
singly and en masse ; organisation was impossible ;
each force struggled for itself, and it would have been
as impracticable to shape them aU to one issue as
to concentrate the force of an earthquake.
But had such organisation been possible ; had it
been feasible for the different sections of modernism
to unite in the insistence on one point, which should
be -vital to aU, that point woidd have been the char
acter and limits of ecclesiastical authority. His
torians were checked in one direction, phUosophers
in another, but it was, in each case, their ecclesi^
astical rulers that checked them. This was the
question on which they could have united ; not
denying the essential need of some form of
authority, but insisting on its Umits.
The remedy, therefore, unless it come in some
catastrophic and unforeseen manner, which is quite
possible, can only be brought forth by the spiritual
activity and Iffe of the faithful. Nominal Catholicism
is highly propitious to the continuance of ecclesiastical
despotism ; active and spiritual CathoUcism must be
its death. The Pascendi, and the decrees that have
foUowed on it, stand for the principle of passivity
in faith and reUgion ; in proportion as religion be
comes more living, with the Ufe of mind, and wiU,
and heart, the form of faith it inculcates must pass
away.

154 Modernism

As George TyrreU pointed out :
The aim of the theological party is to persuade the
uneducated and half-educated multitudes . . . that
those who refuse the new-fangled dictatorial conception
of the papacy, i.e. of a privileged private judgment to
which all must submit — have no alternative but absolute
self-sufficiency. The alternative . . . is Catholicism, the subjection
of the private and individual to the public and collective
mind of the Church}

' Medievalism, p. 38.

NOTE

The events related in this chapter are curiously significant in
the light of later history. The struggle between two conflicting
conceptions of authority is surely very similar to the contest
between the political ideals of the Allies and those of Central
Europe. The respect shown, hy the Vatican, to German protests
is not unlike symptoms that have manifested themselves during
the war. Altogether, a certain sympathy is apparent between
the representatives of absolute ecclesiastical authority and those
of autocratic militarism.

CHAPTER VIII
the failure of modernism
Section 1
Defections
(a) M. Loisy
IN his review of George Tyrrell's posthumous
work, ' Christianity at the Cross - Roads,'
M. Loisy writes :
Between the Modernism of this book and that of
' L'EvangUe et I'EgUse,' there is all the distance that
lies between ardent mysticism and the calm examina
tion of a given belief, or institution, or position. . . .
Both may rest in the graveyard of heresies}
And M. Loisy and Father TyrreU were, perhaps,
the two greatest modernists of a distinguished band.
As to his own Iffe, which had been stretched and
tortured and broken in the cause of modernism,
M. Loisy thus relates the close of his career as a
CathoUc priest :
Why was it that, in November 1893, the bishop pro
tectors of the ' Institut CathoUque,' the pope, Leo XIII.,
• See Revue d'histoire et de littirature religievses, 15th July
1911. 166

156 Modernism

and Cardinal Bampolla, did not say to me : ' you
have the mind of a lay savant. The Church gives
you back your word. Go ; she does not curse you,
do not curse her.' How I should have blessed her !
In 1908 too many sad years had gone by ; my life had
been taken, and not used ; and then, too, the dismissal
was not gracefully given. I am the less bound to
gratitude. The sentence of excommunication was decreed by the
Holy Office on March 7th, 1908, and announced the
same day Urbi et Orbi. To myself it was never
notified ; I read the news in the papers of March Sth.
My first feeling, which is not yet dead, was one of
immense relief. With great commotion, by way of
reproach and condemnation, of ostracism, and, as far
as possible, of extermination, yet in truth and deed,
the Church was restoring to me the liberty that I un-
wisely handed over to her thirty years before. In spite
of herself, but effectively, she gave me back to myself,
and I was almost tempted to thank her.
I found but one fault in that liberating excommunica
tion ; it came twenty years too late. I was, indeed,
only fifty-one years old, bvt many of my years could
have counted for double. It was to end my days with
my family that I had retired to Ceffonds. I expected
nothing more of life, and excommunication could not
restore hope. It only assured, or seemed to assure me,
a tranquil end. My interior peace was complete. To
recall the memory of such quiet of soul I had to go back

The Failure of Modernism 157
to the days of my first youth, when, vnthout any pre
occupation as to the future, without anxiety of mind
or conscience, I helped my mother in the care of the
poultry and garden. I returned to the country, and
took up again the simple life and modest employments
I had always loved. My resolution was to continue
my studies on the New Testament, to comment the
Acts of the Apostles, and the Epistles of St. Paul, and
to crovm the series of my publications by a book on
the founding of the Christian Church.
He recounts how he was then caUed to the chair
of the History of ReUgions in the College de France,
and how the duties of this office somewhat altered
his plan of work ; but he resumes :
// it is given to me to complete my study of Sacrifice
. . . it is very probable that I shall discuss anew the
genesis of Christianity. . . . This work is not super-
fiuous. The impartial and dispassionate study of the
religious past of humanity is not without its use for
the solution of the grave problems which are agitated
in contemporary society. I shall employ in it the
strength and time that remain to me, serving France
in her old college, my safe refuge, my highest honour
and my last love}
Nothing could be more patheticaUy complete, and,
to all appearance, irrevocable, than this fareweU.
In the last paragraph, with its explanation of the
motives for continuing the study of Christian origins,
we are made finaUy aware that France has taken
* Chosee Passiea, pp. 365-379 passim.

158 Modernism

the place of the Church, that the ideals of the pro
fessorship have supplanted those of the priesthood.^
M. Loisy's Iffe is weU known, apart from what he
has told us. His worst enemies would not dare to
affront the storms of indignation with which any
aspersion of the purity and sincerity of that Ufe
would be met. In his most difficult moments he
could never have been charged -with a single in
correct or ignoble action. In his Ufe as a savant he
was sincere ; in his Iffe as a CathoUc priest he was
loyal. Were those years, of which he speaks -with
sorrowful regret, as whoUy wasted as he deems
them to have been ?
What, after aU, it may be asked, has been the gain
to the Church in a Ufe such as his ? So far from
leaming what he tried to teach her, the result of his
endeavours has been to harden her the more against
a department of truth to which she was already hos
tUe. Without him, she would perhaps not have pro
nounced herseff so quickly, clearly and emphaticaUy ;
she might have waited, she might have endured.
And ff religion has gained nothing, has not science
suffered loss from years partly wasted, during which
a futUe struggle diverted a keen mind from the ex
clusive pursuit of scientific truth ?
These questions cannot, unfortunately, be answered
with a downright negative ; and M. Loisy's abandon
ment of the cause stands for one of the faUures of
modernism. ' See again La Religion, referred to in Preface,

The Failure of Modernism 159
Yet, on the other hand, ff the cause for which he
worked be not as whoUy dead as he deems it, may
it not be that the Church which rejected him wUl
never forget the facts he brought before her ? that
ff she struck him, indeed, as kings were wont to
slay the messenger that brought unwelcome tidings,
the truth of those tidings is ever before her ?
And, from the point of view of human knowledge,
has science also not been enriched by the work of
one who has helped to give religion, apart from aU
other and more essential aspects under which it
may be regarded, its place as an object of science,
and has thus, perhaps, advanced the day when faith
and knowledge shaU burst their intervening barriers
and blend ?
There was a time when scientific detachment stood
for indifference to aU but external facts ; and such
detachment can hardly be exempt from some element
of hostUity to religious experience. But history has
now -widened and spirituaUsed its character ; and
seeks to foUow the course of ideas as weU as that of
outward events. M. Loisy, as a Catholic critic,
made faith an object of science just as he made
science the study of faith. To the purely intel-
lectuaUst believer this is to make science supreme
and faith subordinate ; for to him the understand
ing of the thing counts for more than the thing
itseff. But, according to the principles of a more
spiritual phUosophy, the object is the abiding
element, whose meaning can never be exhausted.

i6o Modernism

because reaUty is inexhaustible ; whUe criticism is
judge, not of the thing itseff, but of our know
ledge and understanding of the thing, and of its
manffestations in human history. There was room
in the science of M. Loisy for the recognition of
faith, and the articles of faith, as facts and objects,
whose fuU meaning it did not pretend to fathom ;
whose existence it had no inclination to deny ;
but whose temporal origins and manffestations it
had a right to investigate.
There was room in the faith of M. Loisy for the
recognition of science as a Ught, which need not
indeed penetrate to the depths of religious experience,
but might nevertheless examine, record, and correct
the human expression of that experience.
But ff he could not, as a believer, deny the ex
istence of the reUgious fact, neither could he, as
a scholar, reject the historic estimation of that fact.
He was condemned for attempting to unite his faith,
as a CathoUc, -with his judgment as an historian ;
but the umon had been made, and it was not he
that faUed, nor the position itseff that proved
untenable. (b) Tyrrell
M. Loisy thus bade fareweU to Modernism -with,
as we may hope, years of work before him ;
George TyrreU was only parted from the cause by
death. Though he was but forty-eight years old he
evidently suspected, at the beginning of the year in

The Failure of Modernism 161
which he died, that his end was near ; and as ff to
give a last mark of fidelity to the cause of Catholicism,
in the sense in which he had embraced it and worked
for it, he added a clause to his last ' WUl and Testa
ment,' in which he said :
// / decline the ministrations of a Roman Catholic
priest at my death-bed, it is solely because I wish to
give no basis for the rumour that I made any sort of
retractation of those Catholic principles which I have
defended against the Vatican heresies. If no priest
vnll bury me, let me be buried in perfect silence. If a
stone is put over me let it state that I was a Catholic
priest, and bear the usual emblematic chalice and host.
January 1st, 1909.^
He had certaiiUy known his moments of utter
disheartenment, almost to the point of despair, yet
he never unsaid or unwrote, nor, ff we may venture
to judge from his whole attitude, unthought those
words with which he had closed his answer to
Cardinal Mercier.
If the Roman Church still holds me, it is because, in
spite of the narrow sectarian spirit that has so long
oppressed her, she cannot deny her fundamental
principles ; because, as a fact, she stands for the oldest
and wisest body of corporate Christian experience ;
for the closest approximation, so far attained, to the
still far-distant ideal of a Catholic religion.^
In these words we have, at once, the statement
1 See Autobiography, etc., vol. ii. p. 434.
* Medievalism, p. 185.
(1,986) L

i62 Modernism

and the logical defence of his position. Not science,
in any of its forms, but religion, had been the end
and interest of his life. Yet reUgion, as he under
stood it, was for aU the world, and not only for a
section of it ; a true reUgion must be the reUgion of
mankind, must have place for aU human truth and
knowledge, for aU human effort and achievement.
A form of religion that could only maintain its status
by professed ignorance of what the world was doing
was not an universal reUgion. Thus not only on
the grounds of scientific truth, but on the groimds
of the right of aU mankind to reUgious faith, he
maintained the modernist position, a modernist
being, for him, in the words we have already quoted :
A churchman, of any sort, who believes in the pos
sibility of a synthesis between the essential truth of his
religion and the essential truth of modernity.
Yet-ff TjnrreU held fast to the end, it was not from
any iUusion as to the actual success of the movement.
He saw, as plainly as M. Loisy did, that in its action
on the Church to which he belonged it was a faUure.
What tyranny, he exclaimed, in the last lines that
he ever wrote, ever voted its oum destruction or
admitted a truth fatal to its interests. Will the Roman
bureaucracy, that exploits even the Papacy, ever resign
their revenues and their ascendency ? Modernists do
not believe it for a moment. Their whole hope is in
the irresistible tide of truth and knowledge, which mvM
at last surround and overmount the barriers of ignorance,
buttressed up by untruthfulness ; and, above all, in

The Failure of Modernism 163
such inward and living Christianity as may still be
left in a rapidly dying Church}
And his last word is one of desperate hope, not
in the situation, but in what the situation may bring
forth ; not in modernism itseff, but in modernism
as the transition to something else.
Are we not hastening, he says, to an impasse — to
one of those extremities that are God's opportunities ? *
Modemism is the extremity, and the opportunity
is of God and not of man. The conclusion was not
foreign to that conception of revealed religion on
which he had so continuously insisted, as of a
Divine treasure which man could receive and hold,
but not measure or estimate.
(c) Other Farewells
We might relate the story of a good many other
defections, ff it were our task to give a complete
history of the faUure of modernism in this respect.
But for documents and detaUs we may again refer
those who desire further information to the work
of Monsieur A. Houtin, and confine ourselves to
type rather than detaU.
Monsieur Houtin himseff had quitted the ranks
a good while sooner, in 1903, when two of his works
were placed on the Index. He could abandon the
cause with a certain faciUty, for his studies, he tells
> Christianity at the Cross-Roads, p. 280.
• Idem., p. 282.

164 Modernism

us, were leading him slowly, but surely, ' to the
assurance that a speciaUy revealed reUgion does not
exist and never has existed.' ^
A defection to which the element of tragedy was
lacking was that of Professor Salvatore Minocchi,
a scholar and Biblical student, whose career as a
modernist had been interspersed with reactionary
intervals, and who quitted the Church in 1908,
denouncing the honesty of those who remained
mit.2 In the defection of Dom Romolo Murri, and, in
France, of M. Pierre Dabry, we have types of the
faUure of modernism as a CathoUc social movement.
Murri was one of those who had made the greatest
efforts to combine the work of social reform with
fideUty to the Church ; but his endeavour was vain.
He was excommunicated in 1909, on his election as
deputy to the ItaUan Chamber. In four articles,
pubUshed ia the Messagero of 15th, 16th, 20th, and
21st AprU 1909, he set forth his position as poU-
tician and CathoUc priest. In sum he declares
himseff CathoUc, but anti-clerical, and appeals to
CathoUcism as a Uving, spiritual force, whose proper
field of exercise is the Uving world and not the
dead past.
M. Pierre Dabry left the Church on the occasion
of the condemnation of the ' SUlon.'
In a letter to the Paris Journal, of 29th May 1910,
• Histoire du Mod. Cath., p. 7. See also Appendix III.
? See Appendix IV.

The Failure of Modernism 165
he explained his motives, saying, amongst other
things :
Everything in the Church is anti-democratic, its
actual form, its methods, its habits, its attitude to the
questions of the day ; its actual form, by which a
society where all were at first brothers, and held their
goods in common, has ended in the absorption of in
dividuality, the crystallisation of all thought, all will,
and all right in one person, that of the Pope, . . .
its method, which is to impose everything authorita
tively, and formally, . . . its habits, which are the
effete heritage of a monarchical age, . . . its attitude
to questions of the day . . . in which it never fails
to adopt the most reactionary and retrograde position.
The Church, as it now is, has the appearance of
a foreign element in contemporary society.
I had identified the love which I bore the people with
the love which I bore the Church. The people shall
now have it all.
Section 2
Submissions
The ranks of modernism were thinned, not only
by defections, but also by submissions, and of these
there were many different types of various grades
of respectabUity.
Some men submitted from motives of fear, or
convenience. They cared enough for the cause to

i66 Modernism

go on as long as it demanded a reasonable amount
of effort and trouble, but not enough to sacrifice
the whole peace of their Uves. Their conduct was
not, perhaps, heroic, but ff we had a right to expect
and demand heroism we shoidd have no reason to
prize it as highly as we do when we meet with it.
It is one of the demands we may justly make of
ourselves and not of others.
Another class submitted from the nobler fear of
conscience, a co-wardice of which none need be
ashamed. The conscientious motive in this debaele
is one which the world at large has faUed to recognise,
for the simple reason that the world at large does
not quite understand the ordinary CathoUc con
science. To such a conscience it appears that
obedience is the first and the last duty ; and it is
conscience itseff that dictates submission, though
the submission is rendered to an extemal authority.
There -wiU always be a large class of men, in every
community, belonging to this category. They are
not slaves, because it is a law they have freely and
spirituaUy chosen. Yet they -wUl submit, not in
deed against, but notwithstanding, their own better
judgment, because that judgment has, once for aU,
accepted the authority of the Church as the highest
law of conduct.
To interfere with the good faith of souls such as
these would be as unwarrantable as to endeavour to
shake the confidence of a young chUd in its parents.
Another class submitted in deference to ties of

The Failure of Modernism 167

famUy or spiritual affection. There were sons who
would not break their mothers' hearts ; husbands
who would not pain their wives ; directors of souls
who would not trouble the peace of their spiritual
chUdren. In some cases this might imply a choice of the
easier way, but not in aU. Each man has his own
sphere of duty, and it is not for an outsider to pro
nounce as to which duty is, in any particular case,
paramount. ' Should So-and-so break his father's
heart by -writing in a certain modernist periodical ? '
was the question once asked of the present writer
by the mother of a young modernist. Let those
who wiU reply with an emphatic Yes ; others of
us wiU hold that the question has to be answered
in the young man's own conscience, and that it is
not their part to condemn him ff his answer be the
opposite. Another class has submitted on motives of
asceticism. The broken Ufe, they think, wiU do
more for the cause of God than resistance ; ' the
blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church ' ;
sUence is more potent than speech ; man can do
nothing, God can do everything, and His ways are
not our ways.
Others submitted because to hold out would have
been to close every outlet of apostoUc effort for ever.
Their work for souls lay in the Church, and nowhere
else, and, as they Uved for that work, to abandon
it would be to deprive Iffe of end and purpose.

i68 Modernism

Or else they were inspired by the desire to avoid the
' scandalum pusUlorum.' The common mind would
misunderstand their resistance and suffer harm.
Others submitted because of the uncleamess of the
issue. To avow themselves modernists would have
been to compromise themselves, not only for what
they did believe, but also for much with which they
were ui positive disagreement. It was at least as
truthful to say they were not modernists as to admit
that they were.
Others submitted, at least to the extent of re
maining sUent, on a principle of tolerance and com
prehension. Any pronouncement, either for or
against, would be premature. Modemism was not
a fixed position ; the action of the Church was an
element in the total process ; the duty of the CathoUc
was to work sUently, when he could, and to wait.
Others felt themselves spirituaUy unable to hold
out. Whither should they go ? Lffe without the
sacraments would be a Ufe of spiritual isolation
in which they could not thrive. Their weakness
justified their submission, nor was it a weakness so
contemptible as some may think. The ' door-step
poUcy ' was one, as Father TyrreU, who had ex
perienced it, maintained, that was not Ughtly to
be recommended. Too often it led to a total spiritual
detachment and indifference.
A last motive for submission was that of despair,
at least so far as the existing official element of the
Roman Church could be considered. In the eyes of

The Failure of Modernism 169
some her government was incurably local in its out
look and egotistic in its character. They made up
their minds that the cause was, for the time, ended.
I quote the foUo-wing words from the private
letter of one who had adopted this attitude long be
fore the days of modernism. He entered the Church
in 1867, and says :
Looking back on it all from to-day I see it was —
as I felt it then to be — an end . . . the ' layman of
sorts' he is not wanted in our Church, in our day.
I neither resist or rebel, under pressure of what has
been, or what is, but one word has seemed to me to
describe the situation for the individual : inter mortuos
liber. And, if Uber, only because the very nature
implanted in one's own existence was so}
Section 3
Suppression of Collective Effort
There had been, at the end of the last century,
a refreshing outbreak of religious activity amongst
young CathoUc laymen in France and Italy. Some
had devoted themselves to inteUectual, others to
social enterprises. Amongst the former, some had
founded newspapers and magazines, of avowedly
CathoUc as weU as scientific character, most of
them unexceptionable in their tone towards author
ity ; the latter class devoted itseff to the religious
• The writer of these words was Mr. Edmund Bishop — no
longer li-ving.

170 Modernism

as weU as the material betterment of the condition
of the working classes, in a spirit of democratic
sympathy. AU these efforts were doomed to extinction, the
former because they sought room in the (Church for
modem thought, the latter because they asked a
place for the modem democracy.
The French weekly Demain^ did not await positive
condemnation, but suspended its issue after the
appearance of the SyUabus Lamentabili.
More grievous yet to the CathoUc cause was the
effacement of the ItaUan Rinnovamento,^ a periodical
to which some of the greatest Uving names had con
tributed ; which maintained, throughout its lease
of Ufe, a high inteUectual, scientffic and spiritual
level, never descending to the lower and more sordid
grounds of discussion. Its editors had nothing to
gain from their labours but the reward of advancing
the cause of religious truth ; and they had much
to lose. They finaUy judged it better, after various
adverse pronouncements of authority, to close their
work in December 1909.
The condemnation of the Annales de Philosophie
Chretienne, edited by Pere L. Laberthonniere, is
stUl more recent, and even less expUcable, ff the whole
world did not know that there are other, more
poUtical motives at work in such acts of repression
than simple zeal for orthodoxy. It was the organ
» Published in Lyons, 1905-1906.
* PubUshed in Milan. 1907-1909.

The Failure of Modernism 171
of a deeply spiritual conception of CathoUcism, and
if it had a weakness it was on the side of orthodoxy,
in its treatment of the critical question, and its
attitude to the even unjust acts of ecclesiastical
authority. It was true to its own nature in dying at
the word of that authority, as it had been true to its
spirit in Uving for an ideal of the Church that would
free her from the influence of any political party or
ecclesiastical sect.
The condemnation of the Sillon, to which refer
ence has already been made, was one of the most
startling of the * group ' repressions, inspired by the
Pascendi. It was the first instance of the condemna
tion of a work which was whoUy apostolic in char
acter ; for the raison d'itre of its existence was not
democracy or sociaUsm, but the umon of CathoUc
Christianity with democracy and socialism ; or
rather its introduction into those classes who would
accept no other poUtical ideal.
The submission of M. Sangnier was not cowardly
or iUogical, as those who had appreciated his demo
cratic, but not his CathoUc, sympathies maintained.
He did not believe he could do the work against
the Church, though he had been able to carry it
on without her. His object had been to inculcate
the use of reUgion, and of the CathoUc reUgion, to
every form of society ; to remove the prejudices
of the working classes, and make them feel that they
too could find a spiritual home in the Church, with
out sacrificing what they regarded as their civU and

172 Modernism

political rights. He had not asked the Church to
be democratic ; he had invited the democracy to
be Catholic. It was impossible to continue an
apostoUc work in the face of hostUe authority, and,
as he was mainly an apostle, he had no altemative
but to abandon his efforts. Those of his confreres
who acted otherwise did so, probably, because the
apostolic and religious end had been secondary to
the social aim in their programme.^
Thus perished a very noble reUgious and moral
enterprise. Section 4
Mingling of Incongruous Elements
The faUure of modemism was brought about by
adhesions as weU as defections. As I have said
elsewhere ^ :
The ' modernism ' that includes all those aimed at
in the Pascendi has no collective Credo and no collective
Programme. There are, amongst its ranks, at one
end devout and convinced Catholics, as there are, at
the other end, freethinkers with scarcely a belief in
any God but Humanity ; there are men to whom re
ligion is all, and men to whom it is little else than
a means of social welfare ; and between these two
extremes there are many intermediate shades.
If not a conscious strategy it was certainly, in its
• See Appendix V.
• Hibbert Journal, January 1914.

The Failure of Modernism 173

practical results, a successful manoeuvre, which thus
forced into one category the religious and the non-
religious ; it was a manoeuvre likely, alas / to be as
fatal to the general religious spirit of the Church as it
was convenient to the official temper of those from whom
it originated. For what, after all, can be worse for
the cause of religion than to ignore or despise the dis
tinction between the religious and the non-religious ?
and what can be, at last, more fatal to the Church,
which properly exists in the interests of religion alone,
than to thus under-estimate her ovm true cause ?
The so-caUed ' left wing ' of modernism was not,
in actual truth, modemism at aU. It was a form of
sociaUsm that found the modernist at war with some
of the obstacles that lay in its own path. To the
social modernist the opposition of the Church to
modem democratic principles was wrong, as ex
cluding certain elements of human lffe and society
from the benefits of Christianity ; to the non-re-
Ugious sociaUst it was wrong in the way that any
form of resistance to his principles was wrong. The
former sought to secure his inalienable right of
membership of a Church to which he remained
irrevocably loyal ; the latter endeavoured to destroy
a force that opposed his efforts, or, at most, to keep
it, in a subordinate character, as a means of social
ser-vice. They were at one in their endeavour to
break do-wn the hostUity of the Church to the
democracy ; but not in their reasons for doing so,
nor in the object they would attain thereby.

174 Modernism

Again, in regard to certain ascetic ideals, they were
rejected by the non-religious sociaUst on the grounds
that every form of asceticism was rejected, implying,
as it did, an ideal of weU-being that transcended the
capacities of mortal human Ufe ; they were only dis-
tastefiU to the reUgious sociaUst in so far as a material
form of self-control was made to do duty for its
spiritual counterpart, or in so far as certain practices
were being despoticaUy imposed without deference
to the general lffe and sentiment of the Church.
Thus, for instance, the question of ecclesiastical
ceUbacy, which was not properly a modernist
question at aU, was pressed forward by the non-
religious party as one of its main questions. It is
a question, indeed, which has been treated both
seriously and tactfuUy by a CathoUc party in the
Church ^ ; yet, in itseff, it was not a modernist pro
blem, nor handled by the chief leaders of modemism.
From their point of -view the question entered only
in the way that many other subsidiary questions
entered, namely, in so far as it regarded the right
of authority to impose a law, and refuse at any time
to discuss it, whatever the mind of the general body
of the Church might be on the subject ; or in so far as
such a law was maintained for poUtical, or economic,
or worldly, rather than spiritual motives, and in
defiance of any consideration of resiUting evUs.
As a principle of sheer anti-asceticism, the con-
* We refer, in particular, to the work of Dr. Gennaro Avolin
of Naples in the Battaglie d'oggi and the Nuova Riforma.

The Failure of Modernism 175
demnation of ceUbacy could not be acceptable to
the genuinely CathoUc spirit ; nor even to those
whose sympathy goes forth to every form of reUgious
enthusiasm. The ideal of celibacy has made its
appearance in most reUgions, and it is evidently the
outlet for a certain form of religious aspiration.
Nor, again, could the crusade against ceUbacy
inspire in the Catholic mind the kind of enthusiasm
which has been displayed in some quarters, where
those who set the law aside are not merely treated
-with the same respect as before, which treatment
would certainly, in many cases, be just and reason
able, but are exalted to the rank of heroes for not
continuing to do something more difficult than the
opposite. Advocated on these lines, the abolition of ceUbacy,
whether right or -wrong, was not a modernist ques
tion, and its adoption could only tend to the con
fusion of issues.
The effect of this blending of heterogeneous
elements has been to rouse, in the general mind,
a suspicion that reUgion, to the modernist, was a
pretext and not an end ; whUe the official ecclesias
tical world has been as ready to charge him with
endeavouring to make use of the Church for demo
cratic purposes, as it has been indulgent to other
parties who have made use of her for the support of
ancient forms of political power ; for the ' CathoUque
ath6e ' has met -with an indulgence that has been
refused to the ' Christian democrat.'

176 Modernism

Another note of the non-reUgious party, in its"
less dignified elements, was a tendency to rejoice
and make capital out of sordid and scandalous de
taUs — ^for which, indeed, they could have quoted
precedent in high quarters, but which was not in
keeping with the principles for which modemism
had set up its fight.
Lastly, we have the strong anti-transcendental
bias of a certain section, which has been falsely
identified with modemism. In some cases this anti-
transcendentalism has been pure and moral in its
tendencies ; yet, as exclusive of other-world ideals,
and of definite theistic or Christian beUef , it cannot
be termed religious.
We may quote some of the characteristic utter
ances of this school from articles by a one-time
priest, a man of simple and elevated lffe, who wrote
in the Revue Moderniste of Geneva under the
pseudonym Aschenbrodel} In a conversation with
M. WUfrid Monod, pastor of the Oratory of the
Louvre, Paris, which conversation he reports in
the said Review of February 1910, he describes his
own attitude and that of other CathoUc priests
who have received what he caUs the ' baptism of
modernism,' and whose reUgious views have been,
he maintains, more fundamentaUy transformed than
those of Protestant modernists.
Such men, he says :
Having freed themselves from the nightmare of a
' Dr. Giovanni Pioli.

The Failure of Modernism 177
faith rather imposed than living . . . arrive ordinarily
at such a transformation of religiosity as resolves it into
its simple psychological and irreductible elements, by
means of which they reconstruct a moral edifice of
religious and Christian inspiration, but erected on a
naturalistic and human basis. The last step of their
religious evolution consists almost always in recognis
ing the divinity of nature, which struggles continually
for the realisation of an immanent design of perfection,
and which we must second by the use of the best elements
of our personality and of our institutions.
Criticising the Protestant attitude, as not suffici
ently radical, he remarks :
The scholastic saying, ' less in degree is not different
in kind,' is not less true in the realm of religiovs
transcendentalism. Our spiritual orientation is fun
damentally the same whether we admit a minimum
or a maximum of abstraction of the divine from the
universe, and of external intervention of God in the life
of humanity.
He goes on to relate how he passed out of the stage
of historic Christianity ; and continues :
I thus plunged into the very heart of a religious
vision of life, of humanity, of the world, and began
slowly to form an optimistic and panentheistic belief.
It was in the course of this evolution, which was not
rationalistic, but vital and moral, that I came in con
tact with erratic obstacles, not even specifically Christian
in their origin ; such as the external intervention of
a personal God in history, the Hebrew-Christian
(1.986) M

178 Modernism

revelation, Christology, Mariology, Demonohgy, the
sanction of an individual life beyond the tomb. . . .
You must know that in my optimistic conception of
life — which is shared by many friends — there is no place
for the idea of moral shortcoming or objective sin.
The very idea of evil, of a greater or less diminution
of human personality or of nature, cannot be con
ciliated with my theistic, optimistic conception of life}
This phUosophy has much in common with that
which we found in the Lettere d'un prete modernista,
but if we adhere to the definition of modemism which
Father TyrreU gave, and which has been accepted
by its principal leaders, this is not modernism at
aU. This meeting of waters was, without any doubt,
disastrous to the vitaUty of CathoUc and Christian
modernism. Section 5
The Anti- Modernist Oath
In many cases sUence would have been the answer
of CathoUc priests of modernist sympathies to the
pronouncements of the Pascendi ; they would have
been contented to wait tiU better days came round.
But authority had determined on a more active course
of procedure, and the plan was to obUge every one
to definite acceptance or rupture. Although the
' Op. et loc. cit.

The Failure of Modernism 179
possibility of merely verbal acceptance was un
doubtedly taken into account, we can only conclude
that it was not regarded as an unmixed evU.
On Sth September 1910 the Holy Father published
the Motu proprio, entitled, from its first words,
Sacrorum Antistitum, in which he recaUed the direc
tions of the Pascendi, declared that the evU against
which it had been directed was stiU vigorous, and laid
do-wn new prescriptions for its extirpation. Some
of those prescriptions wUl be considered later, but
the one which now concerns us is the oath which
was imposed on bishops and priests throughout the
Church, whether they had shown signs of modernist
proclivities or not.
It was an unique occasion in the history of the
Church, for the laity were, according to the spirit
of the Pascendi, overlooked, whUe the only member
of the entire ecclesiastical order who was assumed
to be free from heresy was the Pope himself. To
enforce an oath on the rest of the ecclesiastical
world was not necessarUy to declare aU heretics, but
it was surely to imply that there was no certainty
as to the sound faith of any one. The Pope was not
a heretic, but aU the rest of the Church might be.
The text of the oath itself ^ was susceptible of a
' See Appendix VI. As there is no official English version of
the oath, I give my own translation here and in the Appendix.
There are slight verbal differences between sentences as quoted
in this chapter and as given with context in Appendix. Those
differences are for the sake of greater definiteness in the
quotations.

i8o Modernism

good deal of latitude of interpretation ; many of
its declarations could be sincerely made by any
Catholic modernist, while others were so flexible
in their terminology that they could have been
accepted according to one meaning ff not accord
ing to another.
But, on the other hand, there were certain de
finite statements that could not be made by those
convinced of the truth of corresponding critical
positions ; whUe there were others directly con
trary to the spirit of recent CathoUc apologetic.
Thus any CathoUc could declare his adhesion to the
truths defined, affirmed, and declared by the infalUble
magisterium of the Church, particularly those points of
doctrine directly opposed to the errors of the time.
The word infallible, which I have underlined,
qualifies the whole sentence, because, in so far as
the Church is infaUible, every CathoUc accepts her
decisions ; the question is as to the nature, the
domain, and the limits of her infaUibUity.
Next it is declared that :
God . . . can be known, and consequently de
monstrated, with certainty, by the natural light of
reason, by means of the things that have been made
. . , as a cause by its effects.
The whole spirit of this assertion is contrary to
that phUosophy which would seek Grod inwardly,
rather than outwardly ; which would seek Him with
the whole being, and not only with the syUogistic
faculty.

The Failure of Modernism 181

Then comes the clause as to the proofs of Chris
tianity and revealed reUgion :
/ admit and acknowledge the external proofs of
revelation, that is to say divine facts, and flrst of all
miracles and prophesies, as very certain signs of the
divine origin of the Christian religion. And I hold
these same signs to be eminently proportionate to the
intelligence of all men at all times, even in our day.
This was directed against the efforts of CathoUc
critics to show that the truth of revelation did not
stand or faU with the historic proofs for the accuracy
of long past miraculous events.
Next, it must be declared that the Church . . .
was directly and immediately instituted by the true
and historic Christ Himself, during His life amongst
us. . . .
This is an assertion contrary to that critical posi
tion according to which the Church was a conse
quence of the teaching and Ufe of Christ, but not
founded by Him in the way that Leo xm. founded
the Biblical Commission, or Bonaparte the French
Empire. Then comes the clause directed against the theory
of doctrinal development :
/ sincerely accept the doctrine of faith as it was
transmitted to us by the Apostles and the orthodox
Fathers, and with their sense and interpretation
of it. Therefore I absolutely reject the heretical
supposition of the evolution of dogmas, according
to which the sense of these dogmas can be altered to

i82 Modernism

a different one from that which the Church flrst
gave them.
In these words we have an assertion that is actuaUy
contrary to every theory of vital and organic de
velopment, though they might possibly be t-wisted
in other ways.
Next:/ profess sincerely that faith is not a blind religious
sense springing from the dark depths of the svbcon-
science . . . but a true assent of the intelligence to truth
acquired from outside by the teaching that is received.
This is a re-statement of that purely inteUectualist
view of faith, which makes it so impossible to meet
the objections of the agnostic and the sceptic. Here
again the words may be susceptible of another
interpretation, but the spirit of the clause is
unmistakable. Next comes a declaration of adhesion of the whole
soul to all the condemnations, declarations, and pre
scriptions contained in the encyclical Pascendi and
the decree LamentabUi ; especially in all that concems
the history of dogma.
This declaration could not be made without an
implicit condemnation of the modernist leaders ;
nor could it be made by one who had himseff taken
any part in the movement, without disavowing his
own action.
Then follow certain clauses regarding history
and criticism, one to reprove the error of those who
maintain that the faith proposed by the Church can

The Failure of Modernism 183
be contrary to history . . . another to condemn the
opinion of those who divide the personality of the
Christian critic . . . and maintain that provided he
does not directly deny any dogma he may establish
premisses whence would follow the conclusion that
those dogmas are false or doubtful.
It would not have been impossible for a critic to
accept the wording of this clause ; M. Loisy's con
tention, as a Catholic apologist, had always been
that history and dogma were independent of one
another. Respect for rationalistic exegetists is next repro
bated, and then comes the foUowing clause :
/ reject the error of those who maintain that the
savant . . . must be free (in his research) from all
pre-conceived opinions as to the supernatural origin
of Catholic tradition . . . and the same is main
tained in regard to the interpretation of the
Fathers. Here it is a question of whether history is to be
pure history, or history controUed by theology ;
and a claim is made for the exemption of Christian
and ecclesiastical documents from the ordinary
methods of procedure.
Lastly, the one who takes the oath has to declare
himseff entirely free from ' modernist error,' with
various explanations of the nature of that error,
which would, however, make it possible for many
to say that they were not modernists according to
the definition of the term there laid down.

184 Modernism
The anti-modernist oath was almost universaUy
accepted, and the oiUy effective resistance was made
in Germany, where the poUtical power had to be
considered, and certain exemptions were tolerated.
On two grounds this oath might have been
opposed ; by modernists, as a denial of phUoso
phical or scientffic truth ; by non-modernists as
an insult to their faith, and as an outrage to the
dignity of the episcopacy and clergy. In point of
fact, opposition was offered by neither side, and it
continues to be regularly taken. The clergy could
rightly have looked to the episcopacy to lead the
opposition if any was to be offered ; the bishops
were not in a position to organise any concerted
action, even ff they had wished to do so. Without
some co-operation the individual could do Uttie
good to the general cause by personal abstention ;
and could plead that it would entaU a whoUy futUe
martyrdom. Others, again, adopted the attitude of which
there was a classic example in another Church :
* WiU you sign the thirty-nine articles ? ' ' Yes, ff
you wiU give me a pen.' It was not their affair
to correct the absurdities of a govemment, but to
get along as best they could in spite of it. An in
dividual is helpless in front of an organisation ; he
cannot divert the engine one inch from its path,
and his bones are only ground to such fine powder
that not aU the zeal of the early Christians coiUd
gather them together again.

The Failure of Modernism 185
This was the spirit of a group of French priests,
who addressed an anonymous protestation to the
French episcopacy in October 1910.
Then, again, to refuse was not only to refuse to
deny what a man beUeved, but to refuse also, by
reason of the elusiveness of the document, to affirm,
on certain points, what he did beUeve.
Of course there was Ukewise a large mass of the
ignorant and unspiritual, as weU as of the simple
and devout, who were ready to sign anything they
were told to sign.
In fine, ff it was a moment in which both modernists
and non-modernists might reasonably have raised a
protest, it was also a moment in which no one was
prepared and organisation Was hardly possible.
The anti-modernist oath constitutes one more
mUestone on the path of modernist faUure.
Section 6
Isolation and Dishonour
The fight for truth, said M. Loisy in his Preface to
'Autour d'un petit livre,' was not a ranged battle,
but a combat of free-shooters, in which each one took
part at his oum risk and on his own responsibility.
And a little further on :
It was not an honourable spectacle for the Church of
France, that of the pursuit of disinterested workers
as though they were wild beasts. For ten years, with
out support from the world, which had nevertheless

i86 Modernism

some reason to encourage them, they raised their eyes to
the thrones on which were seated the Bishops, appointed
by the Holy Ghost to the government of the Church ;
did the heart of a father beat under the pectoral cross ?
vxis the mind of a doctor of the Church to be found
under the golden mitre ?
These words were -written seven years before the
issue of the anti-modernist oath, but they fumish
a good description of the state of things which
succeeded it, save that the bishops, too, then found
themselves amongst the hunted, and only one hunts
man remained.
George TyrreU wrote in 1907 :
What can be more Quixotic than to defend those
who regard one's defence as a wanton attack, and who,
like delirious patients, try to strangle those who would
serve them? . . . Securus judicat orbis terrarum
— the obvious, the surface presentment of Catholicism,
as accepted both by the official Church and her enemies,
is surely more reliable than the dreams of these dreamers
scorned by both alike}
These words, also, were even more true in regard
to the state of things in 1910.
To the world at large Catholic modernism was
coming to be regarded as a defeated cause, whose
last dignity would consist in the acknowledgment
of its defeat. This cause had got mixed up with
disreputable elements ; it had lost some of its own
greatest partisans ; it had been betrayed by many
• Through Scylla and Charybdis, p. 15.

The Failure of Modernism 187
of its members ; it was distinctly unsuccessful, and
unsuccess comes very near, in the eyes of the world,
to disreputabUity. Added to this, the unfrocked
priest rouses a curious prejudice even amongst those
who had no respect for his cassock ; there is about
him a suggestion of isolation and helplessness which
rouses the meaner instincts in the human as in
the feathered poultry-yard. Again, the cause had
almost lapsed into sUence ; and the world believes
in noise and seff-assertion.
In fact, there were many prepared to endorse
the judgment of M. Loisy with which this chapter
opened, and to relegate the remains of Catholic
modemism to the cemetery.
Yet, even so, a further question might arise, for
there is a yearly death of Nature into the sUence
and darkness and cold of winter, which is previous
to the next rebirth. And ideas have died before
now, leaving their seed behind them.

CHAPTER IX
THE TRIUMPH OF ANTI-MODEBNISM
FOR those who would rather not beUeve in the
complete extinction of modemism the aggres
sive vitality of anti-modernism is a hopeful sign.
For anti-modernism is not CathoUcism, and it is
not orthodoxy, it is just anti-modernism and nothing
else. It was bom on 8th September 1907, a vigor
ous infant ; its health has given, so far, no anxiety,
nor are there, as yet, any definite signs of old
age or decline. It is hard, then, to beUeve that
a temper or spirit, whose very essence consists
in opposition to something else, is actuaUy exist
ing on pure unreality ; nor that each time the
anti-modernist oath is pronounced there is not
implied, thereby, an act of faith in the existence of
modernism. The character of anti-modemism is more easUy
defined than that of its opposite ; but in describing
that character I must beg my readers to under
stand, once for aU, that I am not describing CathoU
cism, or, to be stiU more definite, Roman CathoUcism ;
nor am I speaking of Catholics or Roman CathoUcs.
Even in these days it is possible to be a Roman
Catholic and know nothing about modemism ; to
188

The Triumph of Anti-Modernism 189
have no scrap of interest in it, and yet be as free
of the anti-modernist temper as any modernist.
And again, a man may be a Roman CathoUc in
the genuine sense of the word, and yet also an anti-
modernist, not because he is a CathoUc, but, as some
of us -wUl say, in spite of it, or, at least, besides it.
Lastly, and this is an important point, a man may
be, and often is, an anti-modernist without being a
CathoUc, or, at least, without being more than a
nominal one. He may be, at heart, profoundly
indifferent to every form of reUgion, Catholicism
included, and yet have exceUent reasons for being
an energetic anti-modernist.
In this chapter, then, I am speaking of a definite
profession or temper, which exists in the CathoUc
Church, but is not an integral element of it.
The first characteristic of anti-modemism is a
devotional attitude to the Papacy which is akin
to personal idolatry. The growth of this devotion
has been plainly noticeable for some years past, and
is positively startling to those who were brought up
in the spirit of old English CathoUcism, a Catholicism
as genuine as that of any other country. I have
myself seen an ItaUan picture, given away at the
altar rails, and stamped with the double inscription :
Gloria Marice Immaculatoe !
Gloria Pio Decimo !
In the year 1904 was pubUshed in France a little
pamphlet entitled, De la Devotion au Pape, -with the

190 Modernism

Imprimatur of the Archbishop of Tours. This
pamphlet was honoured by a letter of thanks to the
author, the Rev. Arsene Pierre MUlet, from Cardinal
Merry del Val, on behalf of the Pope, in which it
is stated that the work manifests the ' very inteUi
gent filial piety ' of a ' true CathoUc and exemplary
priest.' The pamphlet has as its text, Mark xU. 30, ' Thou
shalt love (him) with aU thy mind, with aU thy wUl,
with aU thy heart and with aU thy strength ' ; and
since the Pope is the representative of God, and more
our Father than any one after God, these words are
referred to the sentiments we should cherish for his
person. The Pope is the Father of all humanity, the Father
of the simple faithful, as also of the priests and bishops
themselves. We are to love him, though in a subordinate degree,
as God Himself . . . unth all our mind, with all our
vnll, with all our heart, with all our strength. . . .
Although there is not an absolute parity, yet in a
certain sense one may say that, as the Tabernacle is
the home of Jesvs the Victim, so the Palace of the
Vatican at Rome is the home of Jesus the Teacher ;
that it is from this Palace, or rather Sanctuary, that
since His Ascension Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Divine
Word, speaks to the world by the mouth of His
Vicar, whether he be called Peter, or Pius IX., or
Leo XIII., or Pius X, What can be more beautiful

The Triumph of Anti-Modernism 191
or touching than this parellelism ? When we prostrate
ourselves at the Tabernacle before the sacred hosts
therein contained we adore our Lord in His Eucharistic
Presence, which is substantial and personal — when we
fall at the Pope's feet to offer him the homage of our
mind, and to accept his teaching, it is again, in a
certain way, Jesus Christ whom we adore in his
Doctrinal Presence. In both cases we adore and con
fess the same Jesus Christ. Whence it follows by
rigorous consequence that it is as impossible to be a
good Christian without devotion to the Pope as without
devotion to the Eucharist.
If, therefore, we truly hve the Pope, nothing will
be dearer to us than the Pope's will ; and even when
obedience to the Pope means sacrifices, we shall never
hesitate to follow any direction whatsoever emanating
from Rome. Every objection will be silenced, every
reasoning vnll go for nothing, every hesitation will
yield before this unanswerable argument : ' God wills
and commands it because the Pope wills and com
mands it.' Let us enter into the joys of the Pope ; let
us rejoice in his success and ghry in his triumphs,
but let us also share his anguish. . . . By the mere
fact that he is the Vicar of Christ and His principal
co-operant, he is an elect Victim and is ex officio
nailed to the Cross. . . . Pope and Victim are two
inseparable qualities.
The pamphlet concludes with a quotation from
Mgr. Gay ^ : 'Ue la vie et des vertus chritiennes.

192 Modernism

All the devotion to Jesus as Priest, Shepherd, and
Father that enlightened faith can inspire is summed up
practically and effectively in devotion to the Pope.
. . . If one is devout to the Angels the Pope is the
visible angel of the whole Church. If we are devout
to the saints, the Pope is on earth the source of sanctity,
and is called ' his Holiness.' If one would have a
devotion to the sacred Scriptures, the Pope is the living
and speaking Bible. If it is a duty to be devout to
the Sacraments, is not the Pope the sacrament of Jesus
by the mere fact that he is His Vicar ?
Here the Blessed Eucharist and the Papacy are
compared, not only as fundamental doctrines, but
even as fundamental objects of devotion. A dogma
may at least be confined to the inteUect, a devotion
caUs on the heart and soul and the entire being. To
hold a false dogma is to be heretical ; to cultivate
sincerely and beUevingly a false devotion is to be
idolatrous and to worship strange gods.
In this treatise on papolatry, we are in-vited, not
only to beUeve, but also to adore. We are not
actuaUy told to pray to the Pope, but prayer would
be a logical consequence of the devotion incidcated.
Even to think of the Pope brings us nearer to God,
whUe to think with him is to think with God ; and
this latter statement is not made with any restriction
to his official and ex cathedra character. In fact,
we are invited to practise a new devotion to the
spiritual presence of the Pope, as we were taught to
cultivate the remembrance of the presence of God.

The Triumph of Anti-Modernism 193
We are to Uve -with him in spirit ; to seek him and
adore him, only in a lesser degree, as we seek and
adore Christ in the Blessed Eucharist.
An example of the theory of this pamphlet, re
duced to devotional practice, was made in the
foUowing meditation, a satire, and yet a genuine
appUcation of the teaching it contains. The medita
tion is according to the method of St. Ignatius
Loyola, which is in use in most devotional works : ^
First Prelude. — {Composition of Place) — The Pope
seated on his throne in the Vatican, surrounded by
Cardinals and Monsignori, myself prostrate at his
feet. Second Prelude. — {Petition) — Holy Father get me
grace to hve thee with all my mind, with all my will,
with all my heart, unth all my strength, and with all
my wealth.
Point 1. — The Knowledge of the Pope — how near it
comes to divine omniscience — how varied — how de
tailed — how superior in each field of science to the
knowledge of the best experts in that same field — how
unfailing — how convincing.
CoUoquy. — 0 Mind of the Holy Father, kindle in
my mind a light from your ghrious and unfailing
light — have pity on my ignorance — bestow on me one
spark of your immense wisdom.
Point 2. — The Charity of the Pope — how tender to
those who believe in him — how indulgent to heretics
* It was published iu the Italian periodical, Nova et Vetera.
(1.986) N

194 Modernism

who do not believe in him — how fundamentally merciful
and patient with modernists who pain his fatherly
affections. CoUoquy. — 0 Heart of the Holy Father warm my
heart — make me hve those who love you — make me
hve heretics and modernists in the way that you hve
them, but in no other — make me hve you above all
on earth, next only to the Blessed Eucharist.
Point 3. — The Power of the Pope — how immense
— how unlimited — how wise and just in its exercise —
how irresistible in its effects.
CoUoquy. — 0 Will of the Holy Father, humbly I
bow down and adore thee, in all that thou appointest
I accept thee — in all that thou workest I submit to thee
— be thou the Will of my unll, the Law of my soul,
the Norm of all my inmost aspirations and desires.
If this composition savour of irreverence, yet is
not the irreverence of the satire based on the irre
verence of the work which suggested it ? and is not
the prayer itseff a reasonable deduction from the
doctrine ?
Another characteristic of anti-modemism, very
directly inculcated by the Pascendi, is that of
timidity and fear. A priest is more afraid of being
caUed a modernist than of being accused of negU-
gence in his sacerdotal obUgations and duties. He
does not fear to be charged -wdth carelessness in the
work of stimulating his people in their spiritual lffe,
or rousing them to moral reform, ff he can prove

The Triumph of Anti-Modernism 195
that he is warning them, in season, and out of season,
against the dangers of modernism. He has the
diocesan councU of vigUance, instituted by the
Pascendi for the extirpation of modemism, ever in
mind; he is like a shepherd who should be too
much afraid of being bitten by the sheep-dogs to
have time to look after the sheep ; his pastoral
soUcitude is transformed into anti-modernist zeal.
I have had personal acquaintance with the case
of a young man, turning back to the Church after
years of religious and moral indifference and un
belief, and exhorted by the priest to whom he
addressed himself, not against the worldly dangers
to which he had succumbed, but against a
modernist priest who had been one of the few
saving influences in his life.
There was another instance, of historic fame,
which occurred at the deathbed of George Tyrrell.
The Abb6 Bremond was neither modernist nor
anti-modernist, and when caUed to the assistance
of his djdng friend he put aside every consideration
but the last spiritual needs of that friend, and
ministered to his soul as a priest should minister
to any soul in its last necessity. He was rebuked
and suspended for not being more emphaticaUy an
anti-modernist, and less emphaticaUy a Catholic
priest.^ Abbe Bremond was certainly at that moment
lacking in another characteristic of anti-modemism,
• See Autobiography arid Life of Oeorge Tyrrell, vol. ii.

196 Modernism

which is an overmastering soUcitude for one's own
skin. It is not conscience, but the Pascendi, that
makes a coward of the anti-modernist, who -wUl
never rush into St. Paul's extreme and make him
seff anathema for his brethren. There is, on the
contrary, a race to see who can go farthest in pro
fessions of seff-sa-ving, orthodox zeal, for the ones
in front may always charge those bejiind with
remissness. And it is a zeal which brings its own
reward, for anti-modemism has often proved a
useful ladder to ecclesiastical ambition, by which
some, otherwise inconspicuous, personaUties have
risen to unexpected heights.
Last amongst the characteristics of anti-modemism
we may number its spirit of suspiciousness and its
keenness for the denunciation of others. The anti-
modernist profession is one in which place and use
can be found for some of the basest quaUties of
human nature, nor is it only the modernist who has
had occasion to experience this fact. It is one
element of its strength that its victims dare not com
plain, for to complain would be to render themselves
liable to the suspicion of being, not what they reaUy
are, anti-anti-modernists, but of having lapsed into
modemism itseff. So bishops, and even Cardinals,^
suffer, in great part sUently, the insolence and abuse
' Thus Cardinal Ferrari, Archbishop of Milan, who had himseU
condemned the Rinnovamento, became, in 1911, the object of
attack on the part of a violently anti-modernist paper, the
Riscossa, which itself enjoyed the special patronage of the
Vatican.

The Triumph of Anti-Modernism 197
of the sect ; CathoUc journalists endure the con
demnations brought on them by their anti-modernist
rivals ; ecclesiastics in positions of authority tolerate,
in their close neighbourhood, the persons of those
they know to be spies.
How long is this travesty of our religion to be
endured ? ' O God ! one wants a gale out of Heaven,
one wants a great wind from the sea ! ' ^
Shall the once-thronged city, exclaimed George
TyrreU, lie deserted and the Queen of the Nations be
made a widow, and the streets of Zion mourn because
there are none to come to her solemnities, because her
gates are thrown down and her priests in tears and her
virgins in rags, and she herself oppressed with bitter
ness ? Shall her gold be tarnished and her fine colours
faded and the stones of her sanctuary lie heaped at
the street corners, and all this because she has let her
sucklings perish for thirst, and refused the bread of
life to her little ones, to the starving millions of our
modern civilisation who wander harassed and worried
as sheep having no shepherd ; or because, for the
scarlet rags of a secular splendour departed hng since
and for ever, she has forgotten her true glory, and has
walled herself round with stone and iron, and narrowed
the borders of her tent, and Jrom a world-embracing
religion as wide as the heart of Christ has shrivelled
herself up to a waspish sect, ghrying as none other in
her rigidity and exclusiveness ?
Is this what Catholicism has come to — so grand a
1 The New MacchiavelU, H. G. Wells, p. 62.

198 Modernism

name for so mean a thing ? Is this the religion of all
humanity and of the whole man ; of the classes and
the masses ; of the Greek and the barbarian ; of the
university and the slum ; neither above the lowest intel
ligence nor beneath the highest ; neither a burden to
tfie weak nor an offence to the strong ; the religion not
so much of all ' sensible ' men — for all are not sensibh,
as of all honest men — for all can be and are naturally
honest ; a religion unencumbered and unentangled
with contingent and perishable values, free as an arrow
in its flight straight home to the universal conscience
of humanity ? ^ * Medievalism, pp. 184-185.
NOTE
It is worth noting that the exaggerated deference for the Head
of the Church, which was exercised regardless of intellectual diffi
culties, has been very obviously checked by political differences.
Pious people, who could not in the least understand why Tyrrell
or Loisy should hold out on historical or scientific or theological
questions ; who multiplied theii own professions of obedience in
proportion to the recalcitrance of the modernist ; have not hesitated
to criticise papal action that trenched on patriotic interests. They
were not afraid to say that the Pope should not meddle -with what
did not fall within his province. This was exactly what the
modernist had said in regard to other matters.
Does not this show that the root question of the modernist con
troversy, as of our actual political and social crisis, is that of the
mutual relations of authority and life 1 People understand what
concerns themselves, and know how to criticise and rebel ; they
condemn others for not submitting in matters to which they them
selves are indifferent, and of which they are totally ignorant.
The lesson of it all is that such problems demand radical treat
ment. If we had a sound philosophy of rightful authority and
obedience we should know the difference between right and -wrong
obedience ; we should not uphold our own claims and ignore those
of others.

CHAPTER X
THE FUTURE OF CATHOLICISM
THOSE Catholics who have passed through the
modernist crisis, and remain Catholics, find
themselves, at present, in an anomalous position.
By their ecclesiastical superiors they are either
condemned or coldly tolerated ; by their co-reli
gionists they are regarded, for the most part, with
dislike and mistrust, only a few of the mass of the
faithful reserving their opinion, and judging neither
those who condemn nor those who are condemned.
In the outside world a variety of opinions prevaUs
in their regard, but, on the whole, few that are
distinctly favourable ; among the sympathisers the
greater number hold that the Catholic modernist
is, generously perhaps, but vainly, prolonging a
hopeless contest. Yet it is with the disappointments
and fears, and with the yet abiding aspirations and
hopes, of that Uttie remnant that this work must
close. This is not because of any personal interest which
surviving modernists may possess, nor because of
the much-battered cause they stiU represent ; but
simply because it is in the minds of that remnant
199

200 Modernism

we can best hope to discover any essential and abid
ing element of modemism, containing the seed of
future potentiality, ff, indeed, such element exist.
It is, in fact, in the mind of the Catholic modernist
that we may expect to find the worst, as weU as
the best, that can be said for the future of CathoUcism
regarded from the modernist standpoint ; that is
to say, for the future of a CathoUcism not antagonistic
to the inteUectual and social condition of modem
humanity. To the surviving CathoUc modernist it is, then,
first of aU plain that aU ' waspish sects ' must perish,
and that, ff it were the fate of the CathoUc Church
to whoUy degenerate into such a sect, its end
would be in -view. Now it is a ' waspish sect ' that
outruns even the most tyrannical prescriptions of
authority in its spiteful zeal ; that cringes to rulers
and denounces the suspect ; that makes pretence
of the critical spirit in works of sheer misinterpreta
tion ; that, in CathoUc newspapers, indulges in
currish yapping at the heels of great men, or even
at their graves ; that feigns the love of truth when
no sacrifice is needed for its acceptance ; that im
putes motives, that uses the noblest confessions
against the one who makes them, that spits venom,
in fact, at every reUgious ideal that is beyond its
understanding, and, stUl more, beyond its moral
and spiritual capacity.
Every ' waspish sect ' must die, and anti-
modernism cannot Uve. It would not have sur-vived

The Future of Catholicism 201
as long as it has done were it not supported, on the
one side, by the faith and loyalty of the simple and
devout, who obey without questioning the justice
of the command ; and, on the other side, by that
remaining dignity which ecclesiastical authority
possesses, in spite of its abuses, and wUl continue
to possess, so long as it in any way fulffls its one
essential task, which is to minister to the spiritual
needs of the whole Church.
If, then, Catholicism were anti-modernism and
were nothing more, the hopes of the Catholic
modernist would, in aU logic, be dead. And ff they
are not dead it is because he persistently refuses to
give ' so grand a name ' to ' so mean a thing.' He
knows that anti-modernism must perish ; he be
Ueves that the Catholic Church -wUl survive.
As for modernism, that too -wUl perish, because,
in so far as it is in any sense a creed or profession,
it is the creed or profession of a crisis, and wUl be
absorbed, along with that crisis, into whatsoever
the future may bring forth. And yet, unless
Catholicism, nay, Christianity itseff, be an iUusion,
modemism must stand in religious history for the
classic expression of a certain reUgious attitude,
the attitude of those Catholics or Christians who have
maintained that religious faith must not only tolerate
the co-existence of independent scientific, or historic,
or phUosophic truth, but must aUow the play of
such truth on her own domain wherever its rays
can penetrate. It is the classic expression of that

202 Modernism

attitude because the occasion was unique ; for the
first time science had found its way into the very
sanctuary of Christianity. In the midst of panic
and indignation ; in defiance of official vetoes ; in
despite of the discouraging advice of those who held
that the choice had to be made between faith and
science, the modernist declared himseff for both;
unswerving in his fidelity to the Church, he pro
nounced against her closing of a single chink to the
entrance of natural light. His apologetic may not
always have been adequate, and it was never com
plete ; but he put an end to the tactics of com
promise, to the poUtics of half-and-haff acceptance,
whUe he maintained that faith could survive the
consequent ordeal. His temper was not always
perfect, and he displayed the faults incident to
human nature on such occasions ; faults that are,
however, in themselves accidental and insigmficant,
and that even serve the cause, in their own way,
by checking the adhesion of those who would join
it for purely personal motives.
It is not, however, because of its incompleteness
that modernism must die — ^incompleteness is of the
nature of such a movement ; nor is it because of
the human imperfections of its leaders, which could
be more than fuUy balanced by the faults of their
opponents. It must die because it is but the con
centrated expression of a phase of reUgious lffe,
and must therefore pass away along -with that phase.
Whatever it has accomplished will survive its own

The Future of Catholicism 203
destruction, and wiU Uve on, not only in spite of that
dest/uction, but even in virtue of it.
The vital question, then, for the CathoUc modernist,
is not : 'WiU modemism Uve ? ' but : 'WiU Catholi
cism Uve ? ' a CathoUcism, that is to say, that is
not merely an anti-modernist sect, but a reUgion of
aU mankind ; a Catholicism that does not prolong
a precarious existence by the denial of facts.
Here an observation must be repeated once more
in reply to an argument frequently advanced by the
theologian. It is urged that science is ever changing,
and higher criticism stiU more ; and that it is absurd
to ask the Church to accept haff-baked food. When
history has ended her work then the Church may
begin to take count of it.
The answer is that neither history nor criticism
demands a fuUer measure of assent than its proofs
warrant. No one asks the Church to regard as
certain what is merely probable ; she is only asked
to tolerate truth according to its degree of assur
ance, and not to declare what is probably true to be
certainly false.
It is clear, then, to the modernist, that the Church
cannot continue to subsist in virtue of her rejection
of any form of truth ; and ff it may be reasonably
asked whether the Church -wiU live or die, it cannot
be reasonably asked whether she wUl continue to
live and cease to breathe.
Nor wUl mere compromise avaU her. Criticism
has to be met fuU face, and what we withhold

204 Modernism

to-day she wiU return and fetch to-morrow. There
was, at one moment, a school of Christian apologists
who made up their minds to let the Old Testament
go overboard, and concentrate aU their efforts on
saving the New. But they found that the feet of
those who had buried the first were at the door to
carry away the second, ff, indeed, the acceptance of
criticism was to be regarded as death. The CathoUc
Church more wisely refused to yield one thing any
more readUy than another, though she endeavoured
to preserve aU by methods that could not be per
manently maintained. It is, after aU, a somewhat
-wretched position to wait on in the hopes that cer
tain hypotheses wUl eventuaUy be rejected by science
as by faith ; the mere possibUity of their gaining
ground, rather than losing it, is surely as damaging to
the security of faith as their actuaUy having done
so. We have aU of us, in proportion to our know
ledge, and no further, a right to judge and estimate
the results of history and criticism ; but we shaU
do it with more sincerity and success ff we are not
obsessed by the fear of losing the right to beUeve
ff a certain result prove true. We take it, then, that
the CathoUcism which is to survive must do so by
her own native strength, and not in -virtue of arti
ficial support rendered by science and history of
her own making.
But there is the further question as to the manner
in which the Church may surmount the present
crisis, and what changes her passage into the future

The Future of Catholicism 205
Ufe of mankind wiU necessitate. Here a certain
variety of opinion may prevaU, whUe the actual
issue wiU probably be different from aU that has
been guessed or predicted.
Some wiU say that it is, after aU, but a new phase
of a very old struggle. Again and again the Church
has resisted truth, but truth has nevertheless made
its way, and found, at last, its place, even in her
o-wn schools. At this moment it is the Church, and
not science, which is the defaulter ; but the Church
is as sure to survive as truth is certain to prevaU,
and ff she never goes so far as to admit she was
wrong, she wUl, nevertheless, end by being right.
Others wUl take a graver view of the situation,
and -wiU look for a process more revolutionary in
character before the transformation can be effected.
Many of the recent pronouncements and much of
the recent legislation they regard as more purely
reactionary in character than has obtained in the
past. The Pascendi, they consider, represents, not
the best that might be expected of the official Church
in these days, but the worst. They look rather
to euch a change as that which took place in the
passing of Judaism into Christianity than to such
sUghter revolutions as have occurred on various
other occasions, as, for instance, in the acceptance
of Aristotelian phUosophy, or of the scientffic truth
of the Copemican system.
Others, again, look for some very vast and funda
mental transformation, in which CathoUcism wUl be

2o6 Modernism

conquered by humanity and made to serve its re
ligious needs, rather than humanity by CathoUcism.
The question of reunion -wiU be absorbed in greater
questions, for the Church wiU yield up her treasures
to mankind, and occupy a different position in the
future of the world. Yet there is nothing in any
one of these views, even the last, contrary to the
profession of the CathoUc faith and the beUef in the
Catholic Church.
For the rest, it is no business of the modernist to
prophesy, and, indeed, ff we could see what was
coming it would probably not be much worth seeing.
It must be remembered that, ff reUgion be anything
at aU in itseff, and not merely a department of
sociology, then its object is a world of reaUties be
yond this one. We may deny the existence of those
realities, but then we should also deny that reUgion
has an object of its o-wn. The modernist is in the
same position as every other kind of reUgious be
liever when he maintains that reUgion comprises the
action of spiritual forces and influences on man, as
weU as his o-wn response to those forces and m-
fluences. If reUgion have a basis in reaUty man has
not only something to do, in its regard, but also
something to receive ; and ff he can foresee the first
he cannot foresee the second. There is an element
working from outside as weU as from within.
But if he cannot know aU that is to happen, the
modernist nevertheless maintains that he knows this
much, namely, that the notion of faith must undergo

The Future of Catholicism 207
a transformation from that which is impUed in the
official repression of modemism. He has been
charged with immanentism, but there was a strong
element of anti-transcendentalism in the arguments
by which he was condemned. For those arguments
suggested a completeness of understanding of the
reUgious truths with which they dealt which allowed
but smaU latitude to that sense of mystery, which is
properly the transcendental sense.
In face of inteUectual difficulties there are two
conceptions of faith ; one according to which we
beUeve in defiance of such difficulties, and are even
prepared to maintain an assertion in spite of evidence
to the contrary ; the other, according to which we
maintain our faith in religious truth as something
that Ues beyond the reach of those difficulties. The
former is the conception of faith implied in the im
position of the anti-moderiust oath ; the latter is
the conception of faith against which it was directed.
If history and criticism had dealt with truths of
immediate practical import, it would not have been
possible for their facts to be neglected ; with the
best wiU in the world, no one could have taken an
oath to deny the existence of some new scientific
acquisition in use in daUy lffe. But, with truths
that are more remote, what Newman has called
' notional assent ' may prevaU ; and it has thus
been possible for men to deny what they know,
-without fuU consciousness of what they were doing.
But ff modernism has done anything for the life of

2o8 Modernism

the Church it has prepared the day when ' notional '
must yield to ' real ' assent in matters of faith, and
when that element of insincerity must be eliminated.
For we aU feel, at bottom, that we cannot ignore
the knowledge of others any more than our o-wn,
and that we cannot, consequently, give fuU interior
adhesion to a profession of beUef that demands the
exclusion of any department of human science.
Late events have somewhat beUed the confidence
with which we used to reject certain charges made
against the Roman CathoUc Church, We were en
couraged to declare that we were in no sense priest-
ridden ; that our obedience to ecclesiastical rulers
was a reasonable and enUghtened service ; that there
was nothing in our profession of faith to hinder the
fullest acceptance of every form of truth ; that the
Church was our guide in faith and morals, but left
us, outside her own department, the fuUest inteUectual
freedom. It is a Uttie difficult to maintain, under the pre
sent regime, that the layman possesses any civic
rights in the Church to which he belongs ; that his
obedience is that of a fuU-grown son, and not that
of a servant or a chUd ; that his attitude towards
the Head of the Church is free from aU suspicion of
servUity and idolatry ; that our inteUectual freedom
goes beyond the bounds of the most material form
of scientffic truth, the right, as Monsignor Moyes
suggested, to fly in an aeroplane, or send a message
by -wireless telegraphy.

The Future of Catholicism 209
It is also impossible to deny that certain lines
of reUgious thought and apologetic, which seemed,
whatever their inadequacies may have been, essential
to the religious life of the future, have been rejected
in toto by the official guardians of the Church.
Thus we have seen that a Catholic phUosophy
which stands almost alone in the depth and penetra
tion of its understanding of the sceptical position,
and which demonstrates the claim of CathoUcism
to respond to the needs of the whole spiritual nature
of man, has met -with scant official encouragement ;
though no substitute for its apologetic has been
suggested, and sceptics still exist.
Then Catholic critics arose, who acknowledged
the fuU rights of criticism, and yet held that reUgion
and Christianity were facts which criticism neither
lessened nor denied ; on which it cast, indeed, its
own Ught, but a Ught which need not extinguish that
of faith. They did not find God shut up in the pages
of a historical text-book, but they did find that aU
history was part of a Divinely controUed process.
But because they could not make history the servant,
and the lying servant, of theology, they too were
condemned and rejected. Yet the Church has found
no substitute for their apology, and criticism is stiU
at the gates.
We see too that there has been a spirit of ex
clusiveness and pride at work ui the Church, which
has closed her heart to some of the legitimate needs
and aspirations of humanity. Authority is wiUing
(1,988) O

210 Modernism

to patronise the weak, but not to aUow them to
grow strong ; it rules, but it wiU not serve ; it takes
its honours but shirks its responsibUities ; it claims
spiritual honour and earthly privUeges. Yet the
democratic principle has stUl to be reckoned with,
and the people are yet demanding their rightful
place in the Church.
AU these difficulties the CathoUc modernist must
recognise, and yet he knows also that those forces,
which the Church has endeavoured to strangle, are
forces that have arisen -within her as weU as outside ;
and it is, to his mind, her o-wn soiU that is striving
towards a fuUer existence, and her own new lffe that
is struggUng -with the old.
A religion to be truly Catholic, to be educative of all
sorts and conditions of men and of every stage of man's
religious progress, must represent every phase of the
religious Idea, from the lowest to the highest, and not
the highest ahne. The process of the race repeats
itself in the individual. Man does not begin, but ends
by being spiritual and personal ; first that which is
earthly, afterwards that which is heavenly ; milk for
babes, meat for the strong. . . . A Catholic religion
will lead the soul through externaUsm to intemalism.
Ideally the value of the hwer is absorbed into and saved
by the higher. Practically, in existing Catholicism, it
is not so. We find these different sorts of religion
ranged side by side, each subsisting unth its ovm alhy
— the religion of fear, the religion of hope ; the religion
of external and of internal obedience ; the religion of

The Future of Catholicism 211
abstract and exclusive mysticism, and that of inclusive
and world-embracing mysticism. . . . So it is that, in
existing Catholicism, the various phases of the Idea,
each unth its pafficular alhy and limitation, are some
what violently held together by a continual synthetic
effort, so as to constitute a manuductory system, by
which the growing soul is brought to the perfect state of
the Christ-possessed personality. This has been the
work of instinct and experience, rather than of design
directed by a recognition of the laws of religion. It
has all the imperfection and clumsiness of tentative
groupings. But it gives us good reason to think that
Catholic Christianity is more capable of conforming
itself to the exigencies of a historical science of religion
than any of those forms that have narrowed themselves
to the devehpment of some particular element of Catholi
cism, even though it be the highest}
The modernist who believes, in spite of aU, in
the future of CathoUcism, must have the continuous
sense of the ever necessary, ever fruitful, ever bliss-
producing Cross of Christ — the great law and fact
that only through self-renunciation and suffering can
the soul unn its true self, its abiding joy in union
vnth the Source of Life, unth God Who has left to
us, human souls, the choice between two things ahne :
the noble pangs of spiritual child-birth, of painful,
joyous expansion and growth ; and the shameful ache
of spiritual death, of dreary contraction and decay. ^
1 Christianity at the Cross-Roads, pp. 277-279.
• The Mystical Element of Religion, vol. ii. p. 395.

212 Modernism

So that the modernist wiU gladly admit that,
whatever his hopes in the future of CathoUcism may
be, there are outstanding problems yet unsolved,
and that the case, as he leaves it, is incomplete.
Yet this lack of finaUty is not discouraging to the
modern mind, depressing as it may be to that attitude
of dogmatic certitude which it is, in the opinion of
the modernist, doomed to supplant.
Is it not possible, writes one of the younger re
presentatives of the severely orthodox temper, that
we are entering upon an age of Positivism . . . upon
a generation which will not have its theohgy uxttered
doum, but is ready either to totally abstain, or to take
it neat. . . .
Tell us what you want us to believe, and we will see
about it. With full consciousness of the rashness of
attempting to trace tendencies anywhere, I would still
maintain that this is the modern demand}
This is a new form of the old argument — ^atheism
or an infalUble Church — daUy doubt, or a Papal
pronouncement every moming — ^no God, no Christ,
no Eternal Lffe, or a complete and final doctrinal
system, in which we can find aU we want to know
about them.
The demand is neither ' modem ' nor ' ancient,' it
is the demand of every man at one age of his lffe,
and of some men during the whole course of their
Uves. It is because the CathoUc Church contains
a large proportion of souls who would, indeed, thus
» Some Loose Stones, by Rev. B. A. Knox, pp. 12-17,

The Future of Catholicism 213

express themselves that the Pascendi has not
occasioned greater distress.
There is a period in the lffe of the indi-vidual, and
there is a period in the life of a people, when it must
be narrow to be strong. The passage from this
exclusiveness to a -wider lffe is indeed a form of
death ; yet the results of that stage of narrow con
centration are not lost, but carried over into a larger
environment. Thus the reactionary hero of one of Dostoevsky's
novels exclaims :
Every people is only a people so hng as it has its
own God and excludes all other gods on earth irrecon
cilably ; so long as it believes that by its god it will
conquer and drive out of the world all other gods. Such,
from the beginning of time, has been the belief of all
great nations, all anyway who have been specially re
markable, all who have been leaders of humanity. There
is no going against facts. The Jews lived only to await
the coming of the true God and left the world the true God.
The Greeks deified nature and bequeathed the world
their religion, that is, philosophy and art. Rome
deified the people in the State, and bequeathed the idea
of the State to the nations. France throughout her
hng history was only the incarnation and devehpment
of the Roman God, and if they have at lastfiung their
Roman god into the abyss and plunged into atheism,
which, for the time being, they call socialism, it is solely
because socialism is, anyway, healthier than Roman
Catholicism. If a great people does not believe that

214 Modernism

the truth is only to be found in itself ahne {in itself
ahne and in it exclusively) ; if it does not believe that
it ahne is fit and destined to raise up and save all the
rest by its truth, it would at once sink into being ethno
graphical material, and not a great people. A really
great people can never accept a secondary part in the
history of Humanity, nor even one of the first, but will
have the first part. A nation which hses this belief
ceases to be a nation}
And yet it would be wrong to suppose that at any
age, or stage, of mental development, the soul is as
exclusively passive and receptive as Mr. Knox would
depict it. Behind the docffity there is, ff there be
spiritual faith at aU, a certain power of discrimina
tion, and it is because the soul has found something for
itself that it can learn more from others. Furthermore,
there is ever the principle of growth to be reckoned
with ; the chUd grows to manhood, the people acquire
knowledge and education. If that generation, of
which Mr. Ejiox speaks, be indeed growing up around
us, then their chUdren -wUl have to go through an
even more severe crisis than we have outUved.
The transition from the child's religion, writes
Baron Fr. von Hiigel, so simple, naive and unself-
conscious, so tied to time and place, and particular
persons and things, so predominantly traditional and
historical, institutional, and external, to the right and
• The Possessed, p. 234. How strangely appropriate axe these
words to the representatives of national self-sufficiency with
whom we are at war.

The Future of Catholicism 215
normal type of a young man's religion, is as necessary
as it is perilous. The transition is necessary. For
all the rest of him is growing, body and soul are growing
in clamorous complexity in every direction ; how then
can the deepest part of his nature, his religion, not
require to grow and devehp also ?
• ••••«
But the crisis is perilous. For he will be greatly
tempted either to cling exclusively to his existing, all
but simply institutional, external position, and to fight
or elude all approaches of its reasoned, intellectual
apprehension and systematisation ; and in this case
his religion vnll tend to contract and shrivel up,
and to become a something simply alongside of other
things in his life. Or he will feel strongly pressed to
let the individually intellectual simply supplant the
institutional, in which case his religion unll grow hard
and shallow, and unll tend to disappear altogether.
In the former case he will, at best, assimilate his
religion to external law and order, to Economics and
Politics ; in the latter case he will, at best, assimilate
it to Science and Philosophy. In the first case, he
will tend to superstition ; in the second, to rationalism
and indifference}
' TeU us what you want us to believe.'
The Catholic modernist can only answer this
question by recapitulating those points of his faith
for which, throughout the crisis, he has done battle.
1 The Mystical Element of Religion, Fr. von Hiigel, vol. i.
pp. 54-55.

2i6 Modernism

ReUgion is, for him, the supreme interest of Ufe ;
but it cannot be lived alone, and he needs a Church.
This Church can be no academy of ideas, intel
lectual or social ; it must be practicaUy, as weU as
theoreticaUy, adapted to the needs of aU, great and
smaU, rich and poor, learned and ignorant.
Neither Church nor State can exist without some
principle of unity ; hence he beUeves in authority,
and accepts the existing ecclesiastical hierarchy,
not as its only possible, but as its actuaUy present
instrument in the concrete order.
He beUeves in Christianity as the highest form
of religion which man has attained ; he worships
Christ as God ; and he beUeves that, in the historic
Christ, the Divinity was manifested.
He beUeves that God reveals Himseff to man in
diverse manners ; he beUeves in the sacramental
system ; he beUeves in prayer ; he beUeves in
sacrifice ; he beUeves in obedience to rightful
authority ; he beUeves in the humble, daily practices
of the CathoUc Ufe.
On the other hand, he does not beUeve in the
Church as an end, but as a means ; she is, for him,
the porch of entrance to eternal life, she is not,
unless taken in a very widely mystical sense,
eternal life itself. Living within her he accepts
her doctrines, her customs, her regulations, in the
same way as he accepts the Church herseff — that
is to say, relatively to that wider Ufe for which
she exists. He does not believe in ecclesiastical

The Future of Catholicism 217
authority save as existing for the general good,
and as representative of the light and guidance
imparted by the Divine Spirit to the whole Church.
The rulers of the Church are her servants ; they
are personaUy as much subject to the rest of the
Church as the humblest of the laity.
He does not beUeve that Jesus Christ, as known
to history, can be known other-wise than by
historical methods ; nor that a reUgion can at once
find its own proofs in history, and regulate the
process of history in finding them.
He does not beUeve that any of the doctrines
or practices of the CathoUc Ufe have been ex
haustively comprehended, or finaUy explained ;
and he beUeves in an unending process of spiritual
development, in which each individual soul as well
as the whole Church takes part.
He beUeves, lastly, that he has a place in the
Church, because he maintains that it is the
Church's own Ufe that is stirring -within him ; and
he beUeves in that Ufe as contained in no fixed
form or quantity, but as the outpouring of infinity.
And hence the flxity of the revelation, and of the
soul's assent to it, will be as the flxity of a fountain-
head, or as that of the successive evolution and identity
of the human body. The flxity, in a word, will be
conceived and found to be a fixity of orientation,
definiteness of affinities and of assimilative capacity.
Thvs the very same acts and reasons which com-

2i8 Modernism

pletely bind me, do so only to true growth and to
definite expansion. I shall, it is true, ever go back
and cling to the definite spacial and temporal mani
festations of this infinite Spirit's personality, but I
shall, by this same act, proclaim His eternal present-
ness and inexhaustible, self-interpreting illumination.
By the same act by which I believe in the revelation
of the workshop of Nazareth, of the Lake of Galilee,
of Gethsemane and Calvary, I believe that this revela
tion is inexhaustible, and that its gradual analysis and
theory, and above all its successive practical applica
tion, experimentation, acceptance or rejection, and
unfolding, confer and call forth foreign and dramatic
freshness and inexhaustible uniqueness upon and
within every human life, unto the end of time}
As protagonist of the reactionary movement in
reUgious phUosophy, Mr. Knox says, in the work
from which we have already quoted :
The enlightenment of the nineteenth century has not
yet spent its force ; but if I am not mistaken there will
be a reckoning. There will be a common-sense reaction,
which will immolate the Synoptic problem upon the
embers of the Homeric problem, and an intellectualist
reaction, which will bury the appeal to mystical ex
perience under the ruins of Psychical Research.^
The ' common-sense reaction ' is, indeed, ever with
us, nor have we to wait for its manffestations. But
surely those who are not blind to the signs of the
' The Mystical Element of Religion, vol i. pp. 72-73.
• Some Loose Stones, p. 215.

The Future of Catholicism 219
times are aware of a movement in quite the opposite
sense, and feel already in their faces winds that
blow from undiscovered lands, where many strange
guesses and forebodings may find scientific fulfilment.
' It doth not yet appear what we shaU be,' but
may we not reasonably hope that it wiU be something
more than we have been hitherto ; and that our
movement wiU be onwards and not backwards ?
The hope of the Catholic modernist is that his Church
-wUl take part in that movement ; or that she
wUl, at least, be the chief reUgious element in its
constitution. In spite of the clamorous contradiction of my
reason and common-sense, wrote George TyreU, /
cannot even yet bring myself to believe that it is
too late ; I cannot resign myself to the thought that
what has been built up by the hbour of so many
centuries, at the cost of so much suffering and sorrow,
is now doomed to destruction as a mere encum
brance. I will not face, because I can so hardly resist,
the impression that the rich and varied experience in
good and evil of so notable a section of humanity as
has been gathered within its walls is to be as water
poured out on the ground, or as a column of vapour
dispersed in the broad air. I cannot, or at least I
unll not, believe that the persecuted minority, who in
every generation have striven loyally against the over
whelming forces of ecclesiastical corruption and abuse,
have laboured in vain, or that we shall never reap in
joy the harvest that they have sown in tears. Can it

220 Modernism

be that the Church which so many legions of martyrs,
saints, thinkers, and scholars have enriched unth their
very best, with their heart's bhod and their spirit's
anguish, is to fall the prey of a selfish and godless
bureaucracy ? that the gates of hell so long resisted are
at last to prevail against her and shut her up into
medieval darkness for ever ? Is she to have neither
ht nor part in this new world that is struggUng pain
fully to the birth, and so sorely needs that quickening
inspiration of divine breath which it was her mission
to impart ?
My faith in the Church . . . is part of my faith
in humanity, whose prospects seem not less desperate.
The very word ' Catholic ' is music to my ears, and
summons before my eyes the outstretched, all-embracing
arms of Him who died for the whole orbis terrarum. ^
• Medievalism, Conclusion.

APPENDICES

APPENDIX I
Some Works on Modernism
A BIBLIOGRAPHY of Modemism is a task which I should
not dare to undertake. It would have to contain works
in most living languages, and its length would perhaps
astonish even those who are fairly well acquainted with
the subject. An enormous amount of this literature is,
of course, doomed to be eventually forgotten, yet even
of the more important works it would be difficult, at
this stage of the question, to make an exhaustive in
ventory ; nor do I care to furnish a selected list, and
thereby appear to set myself in judgment as to the merits
of the works I include or omit.
I therefore prefer to follow a purely personal course,
and name just one or two books that I consider valuable,
for one reason or another, in the study of Catholic
modernism.

First of aU, it is but a duty of justice, and a law of
courtesy to mention a work which I reckon to be as
valuable for its documentation of the facts of the move
ment as it seems to me, in spite of my personal respect
for its author, inadequate in its appreciation of the life
and spirit of the movement.
I speak of the Histoire du Modernisme CathoUque, by
Monsieur Albert Houtin. (Paris, 1913. To be obtained
of its author, 18 rue Cuvier.) 81S

224 Modernism

n
There is an admirable Uttie German study of
modemism, from a Protestant standpoint, by Professor
Karl HoU of Berlin :
' Modernismus.' Religions geschichtliche Volksbilcher.
(Tiibingen.)
The author begins -with the origins of modemism in
Germany, where DoUinger, Mohler, and Hefele were its
forerunners, in their endeavour to obtain a place in the
Church for modem intellectual Ufe. They stand for
liberal Catholicism, a movement whose traces have been
effaced in the deeper tracks of modemism. The work
of these men was, at least in great part, accompUshed
before the Vatican Council. Hermann ScheU and
Franz Xavier Kraus may be reckoned among the closer
ancestors of modernism, and to these names may be
added those of Franz Xavier Funk, and Professor Albert
Ehrhard, the latter alone stiU U-ving, and author of a
well-kno-wn work, Der Katholizismus und das zvxmzigste
Jahrhundert.' In other countries Professor HoU considers M. Loisy
as the chief scientific, and George Tyrrell as the chief
reUgious exponent of modemism ; and he manifests
special respect for these two men, as having both of
them been free from all iUusion as to their position.
The movement itseff he regards, though he states his
opinion -with much moderation, as essentially Protestant
in character and inevitably doomed to failure in the
Roman Church. Yet he respects the spirit in which
some of its leaders affronted failure, in so far as they did
so, not merely in fanatical support of a hopeless cause.

Appendix I 225

but in virtue of their faith in higher powers than their
own. He considers the encyclical Pascendi a logical pro
nouncement on the part of Roman authority. If in
detaU it was not just, it nevertheless correctly appre
hended the essential characteristics of modemism,
which are profoundly antagonistic to the main positions
of Roman CathoUcism. m
II Modernismo, Dott. Angiolo Gambaro, 1912.
(Private Circulation.)
This study, in pamphlet form, is, as its author teUs
us, the preliminary sketch of a larger work ; it was de
Uvered as a thesis for the laureate at the University of
Bologna, 9th December 1911.
It is a scholarly discussion of modernism, in its remote
and immediate origins, as in its various characteristics
and features. The account of its ItaUan origins is
particularly useful and interesting. The sympathies of
the author are sufficiently indicated in the text from
Renan he has appended to his lecture :
DevM choses sont certaines ; le cathoUcisme ne peut
pirir ; le cathoUcisme ne peut rester tel qu'il est.
rv
Quelques enseignements du Modernisme, by P. Lobstein,
Professor of Protestant Theology at Strasburg.
(Emile Nourry, Paris, 1911.)
Professor Lobstein studies CathoUc modemism in the
works of TyrreU, and points out the lessons which
a,98e) p

226 Modernism

Protestantism may learn from him. He does not admit
that the Reformed Churches have been -without re
minders of these truths from their own members; but
he holds that Tyrrell has expressed them -with a pecuUar
force and eamestness, while Protestants have tended to
overlook them.
The chief points to which he calls attention are :
(1) the conception of soUdarity in CathoUc modemism ;
(2) its sense of growth and evolution in regard to the
revelation of the Gospel ;
(3) its notion of religious authority ; and
(4) TyrreU's distinction between revelation and the
ology. V
Ce qu'on a fait de I'EgUse. (Paris, Felix Alcan, 1912.)
An anonymous work of over 500 closely -written pages.
It is Catholic in profession and spirit, and contains an
exhaustive enumeration and exposition of ecclesiastical
abuses, intellectual, moral, social, and spiritual. If its
length is somewhat intimidating it is nevertheless
valuable for reference. Its authors declare their abiding
devotion to the Church, and commence the work -with
an ' Humble SuppUque ' to the Holy Father.
VI
A little work which deserves very special attention is
the following :
CathoUcisme et Critique : Riflexions d^un profane sur
I'affaire Loisy, by M. Paul Desjabdins. (Cahiers
de la Quinzaine, Paris, 1904.)
In the test case of M. Loisy the writer of this acute

Appendix I 227

and penetrating survey sees displayed the characteristic
attitude of the Church of the day towards criticism
and science. It is not, he maintains, scholasticism
that blocks the way, but intellectual frivoUty and
sentimentality. What strikes one, in reading the apologetic works of the
nineteenth century, is their worldly tone and absurd con
fidence. They display a superficial and ' purely Uterary '
education. Nothing could be better calculated to extinguish
the taste for exact truth (p. 12).
M. Desjardins shows the origin of this temperament
in Chateaubriand, de Bonald and de Maistre, and cites
instances of their appeal to sentiment and pious beliefs
in defiance of facts. The result is a kind of constitu
tional inabiUty to appreciate the rights of knowledge
and the irresistibleness of facts ; such men live in a world
of their o-wn making ; a world which they deem necessary
to the existence and preservation of faith :
// a CathoUc desire to sanctify himself, he is member of
a body — */ he desire to seek or to reflect, he is alone.
M. Desjardins then enumerates four main character
istics of M. Loisy's mentality.
1. In criticism he is purely a critic ; in history purely
a historian. Scientific truth for him is absolute so far
as it is obtainable :
The word boldness has no meaning when applied, not
to opinions, but to the recognition of fads ; it is not truth
that is bold, it is minds that are timid (p. 34).
M. Desjardins maintains that the Abbe Loisy was more
free, in scientific research, from the influence of old
views than Renan himself :
His historical criticism is as free as it could be ; it is
quite free (p. 34).

228 Modernism

2. M. Loisy distinguishes the Gospels as historic
documents from the Gospels as theological and reUgious
documents. 3. On the theory of doctrinal development, adopted
from Newman, M. Loisy finds an answer to the difficulties
of the critical position in its relation to faith.
Yet M. Desjardins also perceives that this theory, which
is ' an essential piece in the CathoUcism of Newman is
adventitious to the CathoUcism of M. Loisy.'
4. M. Loisy's last characteristic is his firm intention
to remain a faithful Catholic :
What a magnificent secret of invulnerability M. Loisy
might have revealed to his co-religionists had they sufficiently
apprehended actual conditions to profit by it (p. 80).
M. Paul Desjardins concludes his study with some
reflections on the total situation. He discusses the
various ways in which the Church might possibly have
met the intellectual movement of the day. The last
and best way would be to teach young priests . . . how
to conduct an honest research !
The case of Loisy proves . . . that the need of the Church
is not so much to carry on scientific labours, aa to raise
vnthin herself a public capable of intelUgently appreciating
those labours (p. 101).
The final lesson is that the (Ilhurch exists primarily,
not to find or seek scientific truth, and still less to re
press it, but to minister to the spiritual hfe of her
children. It is not the critics who have robbed the
Gospel and Christian tradition of their religious and
mvstical value.

Appendix I 229

vii
Modernism, a Record and a Review, by A. Leslie Lilley,
one time Vicar of St. Mary's, Paddington, now
Canon of Hereford and Archdeacon of Ludlow.
(London, Sir Isaac Pitman, 1908.)
This collection of essays is dedicated by its author
' To my dear friend and feUow-countryman, George
TyrreU,' and there is an eloquent ' Epistle Dedicatory.'
The volume contains articles and criticisms on various
works and events of the modernist campaign. Mr. LiUey
possesses a deep and famiUar acquaintance with in
teUectual France, and is singularly competent to treat
of the movement as it manifested itseff in that coimtry.
He is one of the few English writers who has attentively
followed its course in the lands of its origin.

vni
Modernism, by M. Paul Sabatier. (T. Fisher Unwin,
1908.)
In Febmary and March, 1908, M. Sabatier deUvered
three lectures on modernism in London, by the invita
tion of the ' Jowett Lectures ' Committee. A trans
lation of the same was pubUshed by Messrs. Fisher
Un-win. In these lectures there was given an accoimt
of the movement in France and Italy, an explanation
of its character, a justification of its existence. M. Paul
Sabatier has had personal acquaintance with many of
the modernist leaders, and has devoted a part of his
Ufe to the dissemination of their ideas.

230 Modernism

IX
Studies in Modernism, by Rev. Alfred Fawkes. (Smith
and Elder, 1913.)
This collection of essays is not strictly confined to
the subject of modemism, but contains many articles
dealing -with its events and persons from the time when
it first excited interest in England.

I would also gladly call attention to a work whose
importance cannot be whoUy gauged by the attention
it has excited, viz. :
Catholicism and the Modern Mind, by Malcolm Quin.
(Edward Arnold, 1912.)
It is not a work on modemism, but the author, in his
comprehensive advance from Positivism to CathoUcism,
an advance in which he carried -with him the best of
what he was leaving, touches ine-dtably on many of the
main modernist problems. He shows that scientifically,
morally, socially and spiritually humanity needs the
Catholic Church ; he shows, too, that the Catholic
Church exists in a human en-vironment, and can afford
to reject nothing that is, in the best sense, human.
XI
II CattoUcismo Rosso, Giuseppe Peezzolini. (NapoU,
Riccardo Ricciardi, 1908.)
To the author of this work modernism appears as an
essentially equivocal movement, and he is one of the

Appendix I 231

most able advocates of the -view that a Catholic modernist
is objectively, if not subjectively, in a dishonest position.
The interest of the movement lies, for Dr. Prezzolini,
in its ideas, which are immeasurably greater than its
men, and than their own conceptions of the questions
at issue.
For him Christianity and Catholicism, around which
the war is waged, are but passing manifestations of two
great abiding human elements ; elements contrary to
one another, but ever co-existent, the internal and the
formal, the indi-vidual and the mechanico-social elements
of human life. Modernism is a retrograde movement,
because it attaches itseff to a passing form of this two
fold life. The modernist is like the aristocrat, whose
day is gone by, and the movement is a crisis due to ' the
idleness of an unemployed nobility.'
In fact, it would have been better for the Catholic
Church to have succumbed entirely at the time of the
Renaissance, than to have lived on after absorbing its
Paganism. In his criticism of the various currents of modemism
there is a bewildering blend of insight and non-compre
hension ; and in places the author cites anonymous
writers, who have no authority to represent anything
but their own views, as though the whole cause could
be estimated from their statements. He also manffests
a certain inadequacy in his treatment of some points
on which leading modernists have expended a great deal
of thought and careful exposition ; thus he does a good
deal less than justice to the modernist appUcation of
the law of evolution to religious truth, and whoUy over
looks TyrreU's very radical criticism of Newman's theory
of development. There was, he considers, only one bond

232 Modernism

of union between the different modernist elements, and
that was a purely accidental one — namely, the fact that
the same authority blocked the way for all of them ;
a point on which the present work is partially in agree
ment -with him, though for different reasons and with a
different conclusion.
The finest point in this work is its expressed reproba
tion of compromise and haff -hearted convictions ; and
he rightly indicts that form of modemism which seeks,
beyond aU, to be modem.
Thus, in one place, he -writes :
I am persuaded that the nobility has perished for lack
of nobles ; the clergy have failed because they were not
religious (p. 64).
And again :
As primitive Christianity shows us, the true tactics of
those who believe in themselves consist in conquering, and
not in humouring the world.
But modemism is even more hopeless than CathoUcism,
for it is an effort to prolong the existence of a perishing
CathoUcism by making it untrue to its own principles.
For Catholicism there is but the one altemative, to
uphold its o-wn m3rthology, or to succumb to criti
cism (p. 238). Modemism has endeavoured to preserve
CathoUcism, along -with a truth that was deadly to it.

xn
Der KathoUsche Modernismus. Dr. Josef Schnitzer.
(Zeitsohrift fiir PoUtik, Band v.. Heft. 1, BerUn.)
Valuable, in particular, as a study of German modem
ism, and also contains a good analysis of the anti-

Appendix I 233

modernist oath, with the history of its vicissitudes in
Germany.
xm
Lendemains d'Encyclique, by Catholici. (Paris, fimile
Nourry, 1908.)
A scientific and inteUectual defence of modemism,
somewhat on the lines of the ItaUan reply, but of a more
popular and a less scholarly character.

APPENDIX II
Slighting of Episcopal Authority

In the EncycUcal Pascendi bishops are urged to exert
all efforts for the repression of dangerous hterature,
and are furthermore directed to take no count of the fact
that a work may have received the approval of another
diocesan. Nor are you to be deterred by the fact that a book has
obtained the Imprimatur elsewhere, both because this may
be merely simulated, and because it may have been granted
through carelessness or easiness or excessive confidence in
the author, as may sometimes happen in religious Orders.
u
On the occasion of the decree of Sth August 1910,
which prescribed an earlier age for the first communion
of children than had been customary in the Church, a
French bishop pointed out, in a private letter, the in
justice of passing such regulations without any reference
to local authorities. In France it implied a disciplinary
revolution ; yet the new law was imposed -without con
sulting the French episcopacy :
What renders the promulgation of this decree yet more
painful, wrote the Bishop in question, is that it is sprung
upon us suddenly, that its absolute and imperious wording 2S4

Appendix II 235

aUows of no attenuation ; that it permits of no gradual
enforcement and plunges us into a revolution whose violence
and dangers its promotors do not appear even to suspect ;
that in condemning the synodal statutes of all French
dioceses, without exception, it slights and neglects the
laborious and fruitful labours in which the French epis
copacy has, for more than a century, expended its fullest
intelligence, zeal, and devotedness, etc}
m
The history of the passing of the Law of Separation
in France must be studied elsewhere. It furnishes the
most important instance of the sUghting of local ecclesi
astical authority. 1 Quoted in Ce qu'on a fait de I'Eglise, p. 89.

APPENDIX III
Monsieur A. Houtin
MoNSiBUE Houtin gives a brief, documentary account
of his rupture with ecclesiastical authority in a brochure
entitled Mes difficultis avec mon ivique. (It may be
obtained of the author, 18 rue Cu-vier, Paris.)
His first difficulties arose from his treatment of the
question (a buming one in France) of the apostoUc
origin of the French sees. He teUs us how, being at
the time professor in the Seminary of Angers, and having
discussed -with some freedom, before a leamed society,
the ' Legend of S. Rene,' his smaU pupUs were secretly
warned against his influence, and would endeavour to
rectffy the orthodoxy of their master by pious phrases
added to their exercises, such as ' S. Rene, pray for us ! '
From the question of the apostolicity of the Churches
of France Monsieur Houtin passed to graver and more
fundamental ones.
/ think, he writes, there can be nothing sadder in the
world than the feeUngs of a priest when he discovers that
his dogmatic theories are mercilessly refuted by certain
clearly estabUshed facts.
He had Uved in perfect security and finds that there are
valid objections to his beliefs.
He thought that the clergy, to whom he proudly belonged,
were the guardians of civilisation and of science ; he sees
that for centuries they have struggled to maintain super-
236

Appendix III 237
annuated notions, and to defend their privileges and their
revenues in defiance of progress.
Monsieur Houtin endeavoured, for a time, to obtain
some humble post where he could prosecute his studies
-without abandoning the priesthood, but without, at the
same time, being exposed to the compUcations which
would ensue on his returning to the diocese of Angers.
He relates the failure of these efforts, and the subsequent
refusal, on the part of his bishop, to grant him a celebret.

APPENDIX IV
D. Salvatore Minocchi
In No. 1 of the Studi Beligiosi of 1907, Dr. Minocchi
defended the decision of the Biblical Commission in
regard to the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, and
also severely criticised Father TyrreU's much abused
letter as contrary to the dogmatic teaching of the Church.
His own attitude towards exegetical and theological
subjects made these criticisms somewhat astonishing,
and his later development has not served to lessen the
astonishment. (See Rinnovamento, April 1907, i. pp.
482-485.)

2S8

APPENDIX V
Statement made by M. Marc Sangnier to the Temps
ON THE OCCASION OF THE CONDEMNATION OF THE
' SUlon.'
' Some months ago the " Sillon " movement was de
finitively constituted by the creation of a committee of
democratic action and a union for ci-vic education. I
am merely one of the elected members of the boards of
directors of these associations. Of course I agree that
this new organisation is no longer in conformity with the
indications of the Encyclical, and that it therefore ceases
to have any raison d'itre and must be dissolved. For
my own part, I shall carefully avoid in my newspaper,
La Dimocratie, and in the whole of my public life, every
thing which might appear to be contrary to the teachings
of the Church. I know that my attitude will disappoint
certain anti-Clericals, and especially, perhaps, certain
reactionary Roman Catholics who counted upon my
not submitting. But I do not regret having to suffer
for my faith, and I hope that God wiU accept the offer
ing of my grief, since I shall be happy if by this sacrifice
I may still serve the cause to which I have devoted my
life, and help to give to the Republic a moral inspiration
and to the democracy a Christian spirit. Since I am,
and intend to remain, above all a Roman Catholic, the
question does not even arise whether I shall or shall not
submit to the discipline of the Church. Consequently, 239

240 Modernism
and without awaiting more formal orders from the Pope,
who in his EncycUcal declares that he appeals to me as
a father to his chUd, 1 shaU cease to direct the movement
of popular education which, under the name of the
" SUlon," trained young Roman CathoUcs to be good
citizens, and tended to develop in them the moral
virtues and religious faith. I might have been tempted
to abstain from all pubUc action even in the poUtical
sphere, for there is nothing more painful than to see
yourself attacked -with increasing -violence by the most
opposed parties, who seem to be joining in a common
effort to crush you. But I think that that would be
cowardly. I intend to labour for the good of my country
so long as I have the means.'

APPENDIX VI
From the Motu Proprio ' Sacrorum Antistitum,' in
WHICH ARE given DIRECTIONS FOR THE EXTIRPA
TION OF Modernism and the text of the Anti-
MoDERNisT Oath.

Directions for the Administration of the Oath.
In order, then, that every suspicion of the secret
approach of modernism may be prevented. We not only
-wish that what has been prescribed above should be
fully observed, but We ordain, moreover, that individual
professors, before commencing their classes at the be
ginning of the year, should lay before the Bishop the
text which each proposes to follow in his course of
teaching and the questions and theses to be dealt with ;
that during the same year he foUow the programme
marked out in each case ; and that if he is found to
depart from sound doctrine, this should be considered
a sufficient cause why the professor should be immediately
removed. FinaUy, We ordain that, besides the pro
fession of faith, an oath should be taken before his own
Bishop Ul the subjoined form, and bearing the signature
of him who takes it.
This oath, foUowing the profession of faith, according
(1,986) Q 241

242 Modernism

to the form prescribed by our predecessor, Pius iv., of
holy memory, -with the added definitions of the Vatican
Council, must be submitted to their own Bishop by
1. The clerics who are to be promoted to Major
Orders, to each of whom must first be given
a copy of the profession of faith and also of
the form of oath to be pronounced, with the
addition of the sanction, so that they shall
know it well beforehand, as well as afterwards,
in case it should be violated ;
2. Priests destined to hear confessions, and preachers,
before they receive the faculty to exercise those
offices ;
3. Parish priests. Canons, and beneficed clergy before
they take possession of their benefices ;
4. The officials of the Bishop's Curia and of ecclesias
tic tribunals, not excepting the Vicar-General
and the Judges ;
5. Those who have been chosen to be Lenten
preachers ;
6. The officials of the Sacred Congregations and of
the ecclesiastical tribunals of Rome, in the
presence of the Cardinal Prefect and the Secre
tary of the Congregation or tribunal ;
7. The Superiors of reUgious Communities and Con
gregations and the professors before taking up
their offices.
The documents containing the profession of faith
and the oath will be preserved in the Episcopal Chiria
and in the offices of the Roman Congregations. If any
one — which God forbid — should dare to violate the oath,

Appendix VI 243

let him be reported immediately to the tribunal of the
Holy Office. n
The Form of the Oath
I firmly embrace and accept, singly and in general,
aU those points of doctrine which have been defined,
approved, and declared by the infallible magisterium
of the (Church, and particularly those directly opposed
to the errors of the day.
First, I declare that, by the light of natural reason,
God, the beginning and end of aU things, can be certainly
known through those things that were made, that is to
say, through the -visible creation, as a cause is known by
its effects, and that His existence can even be thereby
demonstrated. Secondly, I admit of external proofs of revelation,
and acknowledge certain divine facts, in particular
miracles and prophesies, to be most con-vincing signs
of the di-vine origin of the Christian religion ; and I
hold them to be perfectly proportioned to the intelli
gence of man in all ages, and also in our own day.
Thirdly, I likewise firmly believe that the Church,
which is the guardian and teacher of revealed truth,
was immediately and directly instituted by the true,
historic Christ during His life on earth, and was estab
lished upon Peter, the prince of the Apostolic hierarchy,
and his successors for ever.
Fourthly, I sincerely accept the doctrine of faith in
the same sense and meaning as it has been transmitted
to us from the Apostles through the orthodox Fathers ;
and I therefore absolutely reject the heretical suggestion

244 Modernism

of the evolution of dogmas, according to which they would
pass from one sense into another different from that
which the Church first held ; and I likewise condemn
the erroneous substitution of a philosophical theory,
or of a conception originating in the human conscience
by gradual human effort and susceptible of indefinite
future progress, for the Divine Deposit, delivered to
the faithful custody of the Spouse of Christ.
Fifthly, I positively hold and sincerely profess that
Faith is not a blind religious sense springing from the
depths of the sub-conscience, under the influence of the
heart and the impulse of the moral sense and wiU, but
a true assent of the intellect to truth received by the
hearing from outside, by which we believe in virtue of
the supreme, Divine veracity those things to be true
which are said, attested and revealed by the personal
God, our Creator and our Lord.
Furthermore, I reverently submit, as is fitting, with
my whole soul to the condemnations, declarations, and
ordinances which are contained in the EncycUcal Letter
Pascendi and the Decree Lamentabili, especiaUy in all
that regards the history of dogmas. I thus reject the
error of those who affirm that the faith proposed by the
Church can contradict history, and that Catholic dogmas,
in the sense in which they are now understood, cannot
be reconciled with the true origins of the Christian re
ligion. I also condemn and reject the opinion of those
who say that the personality of the Christian savant
is twofold, that of the beUever and that of the historian,
so that he may hold as a historian what he denies as
a beUever, or may build up premisses from which it
would follow that certain dogmas were false or doubtful,
provided he did not directly deny them.

Appendix VI 245

I Ukewise condemn that manner of judging and in
terpreting the Holy Scriptures which, putting aside
ecclesiastical tradition, the analogy of Faith and the
directions of the Holy See, adheres to rationaUstic
commentaries, and, not less imprudently than boldly,
accepts textual criticism as the one and supreme
rule. I also reject the opinion of those who hold that a
professor of history and theology, or a writer on such
subjects, should first strip himself of his preconceived
opinion of the supernatural origin of the CathoUc tradi
tion and of the Divine assistance promised for the
perpetual preservation of each revealed truth, and that
the writings of the Fathers should be interpreted
on strict scientific principles, without any regard to
sacred authority, with the same freedom of judg
ment as is exercised in the investigation of profane
documents. Finally, I declare myself in general free from the
error by which modernists hold that there is nothing
divine in sacred tradition, or what is worse, interpret
it in a pantheistic sense, so that there remains nothing
but a simple and naked fact, similar to ordinary historic
facts, the continuance, namely, during subsequent ages,
in virtue of the industry, skiU, and intelligence of men,
of a school initiated by Christ and His Apostles.
I also firmly hold and will hold to the end of my hfe
the faith of the Fathers regarding the certain charisma
of truth which is, was, and ever wiU be in the Episcopacy
of Apostolic Succession (Iren. 4 c. 26), so that we cannot
beUeve what seems best and most fitting according to
the culture of each age, but must never believe or under
stand the absolute unchanging truth otherwise than as

246 Modernism

it was preached by the Apostles from the beginning
(Praeser, c. 28).
I pledge myseff to faithfuUy, entirely, and sincerely
keep and inviolably hold all these things, and never to
depart from them in teaching, speaking, or writing.
Thus I promise, thus I swear, so help me God.

INDEX

Anti-modemiBm, triumph of,
188-198.
Anti-modernist oath, the, 150,
178-185, 241-246.
Biblical criticism, 18, 41, 42 et
eeq., 204.
Blondel, M. Maurice, quoted,
30, 36, 39, 40.
Borromean Enoyolioal Editor,
May 1910, 151.
Bremond, Abb6, 195.
Catholic modemism, 101-112.
CathoUcism, future of, 199. See
also Churoh.
Christianity, transformation of,
94 et seq.
Christology, problems of, 83-100.
Church, the, attitude towards
modernism, 2 et seq., 113-131.
 attitude towards science,
27.
 authority of, 234.
 in relation to modem
ism, 132-164.
 foundation by Christ, 85,
89, 145.
 the, future of, 203 et seq.
 neglect of learning, 8-11.
 social principles of, 64.

Ohurch suppression of modem
ism, 156 et seq., 169.
 theological principles of,
54-64.
 tyranny of theological
schools, 12, 14.
Criticism, historical, 18, 41, 42-
54.
Dabry, M. Pierre, 164.
Democracy, modemism in re
lation to the, 64-72.
Divinity of Christ, 84, 87.
Dogmatism, 'moral,' and intel
lectual, 33, 34, 36, 37.
Dostoevsky, quoted, 213.
EncycUcal Pascendi, Sth Sept.
1907, 6, 105, 113, 114, 117,
118, 120, 121, 131, 152, 153,
171, 179, 194, 196, 205.
 the Borromean, May 1910,
151.
Eschatological views of Scrip
tures, 92.
Faith and the philosophy of
action, 29.
 in relation to historical
criticism, 42-54, 74-83.
 in relation to social ideals,
64-72. 247

248

Modernism

Faith in relation to theology, 54-
64.
Fawkes, Rev. Alfred, quoted,
101, 102, 103.
Gardner, Professor Percy,
quoted, 90.
Gay, Mgr., quoted, 192.
Historical criticism, 203-204.
 in relation to faith,
42-54.
 problems in relation to
revelations, 74-83.
Houtin, Abb6 Albert, quoted,
19, 163, 236-237.
Hiigel, Baron Friedrich von,
quoted, 74, 75-81, 211, 214,
217.
Hypostatic union, the, 84, 88.
Inge, Dr., quoted, 104,132.
Knox, Rev. R. A. , quoted, 212,
214, 218.
Laberthonniere, P^re L. , quoted,
32, 33, 35, 36, 40, 170.
Le Roy, M. Edouard, quoted,
30, 37, 38.
Leaming, relation to modernism,
8-11, 22, 24.
Lilley, Archdeacon, quoted, 109-
112.
LamentabUi Syllabus of July
1907, 6, 113, 114, 117, 170.
Loisy, Abb6, contribution to
modemism, 45-64, 76, 85, 168
et seq.

Loisy, Abb6, excommunication
and close of career as priest,
156 et seq.
 quoted, 16, 16, 22,
38, 42, 47, 48, 49, 52, 53, 68, 86-
89, 90, 92, 99, 119, 121-122,
145, 149, 156-166, 186.
Mercier, Cardinal, quoted, xiv,
143, 152, 154.
Minocchi, Professor Salvatore,
164, 238.
Modermsm, attitude of the
official Churoh towards, 113-
131.
 Catholic, and Protestant,
101-112.
 characteristics, 26.
 Ohurch authority in rela
tion to, 132-154.
 conscious, 26-72.
 defections from, 166-165.
 definition of, 1 et seq.
 expression of a reUgious
attitude at a crisis, 201.
 failure of, 155-187, 201, 202.
 mingUng of incongruous
elements in, 172-178.
 points of faith, 216 et seq.
 unconscious, 8-25.
Monod, M. Wilfrid, 176.
Moral dogmatism, 33, 34.
Motu proprio, 8th Sept. 1910,
179.
 Nov. 1911, 161.
Murri, Dom. Romolo, 67, 72,
164.
Moyes, Mgr., 27, 132 et seq.,
139, 140, 208.

Index

249

Newman, John Henry, 34, 50.
Oath, anti-modernist, 150, 178-
185, 241-246.
Old Testament, modemism in
relation to, 18 et seq.
Papolatry, 189-194.
Pascendi Encyclical, Sept. 1907,
6, 105, 113, 114, 117, 118,
120, 121, 131, 152, 153, 171,
179, 194, 196, 205.
Periodicals, suppression of, 169.
'Philosophy of action,' 30.
Pioli, Dr. Giovanni, quoted,
176-178.
Pius X. , his ' Fundamental Rule
for popular Christian action,'
71.
Pope, authority of, 135 et seq.,
142-144.
 pamphlet on devotion to,
189-191.
Programma dei Modernisti, 130.
Protestant modemism, 101-112.
Religious education of the
young, 18-20.
Resurrection, the, 84, 86.
Royce, Professor Josiah, quoted,
91.
Sacrorum antistitum, 179, 241-
246.
Sangnier, M. Mare, 67, 71, 72,
171, 239-240.

Scepticism, 33.
Science, attitude of Churoh
towards, 27.
 relation to religion, 76-
79.
' SiUon,' the, 71, 164, 171.
Social ideals, in relation to faith,
64-72.
Submissions to Churoh authority,
169.
Superstition, 21.
Syllabus Lamentabili, July 1907,
6, 113, 114, 117, 170.
Taxil, M. Uo, 22.
Theology, its relations to faith,
64-64.
 its relation to the plain
man, 12-16.
Tyrrell, Father George, contri
bution to modernism, 64, 76.
 death of, 160, 195.
 quoted, 1, 9, 13,
14, 15, 24, 25, 56, 67, 62,
63, 95-97, 123-130, 135-139,
143, 152, 154, 161, 162, 163,
168, 186, 197, 210, 219.
UnbeUef, 21.
Unlearned, needs of the, 11, 22
et seq.
Voluntarism, 33.
W-ells, H. a., quoted, 28.

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