Modernism Run Amok
by
Thomas A. Droleskey
Uncertainty and anxiety are two of the most most predictable aspects of contemporary life. The average person is uncertain about the purpose of human existence. The average person is uncertain about the nature of truth. The average person is also quite anxious about such things about his ability to acquire and retain material goods and the availability of affordable health-care so as to increase his life-expectancy. The prevalence of uncertainty and anxiety, products of Modernity's war against the the certainty and security provided by the Catholic Faith, should prompt a pope and his bishops and priests to point to the simple fact that there is indeed only one place to find stability and security in this vale of tears: in the true Church that the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity made Man in Our Lady's virginal and immaculate womb created upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope.
Sadly, though, the Church in her human elements has made an accommodation with Modernity, believing, as Pope Benedict XVI noted in his December 22, 2005, address to the Roman Curia, that such an accommodation with the modern world is the equivalent of the Church's reconciling the thought of Saint Augustine with Plato or that of Saint Thomas Aquinas with Aristotle. As Bishop Richard Williamson of the Society of Saint Pius X has noted in an interview with Mr. John Vennari of Catholic Family News (www.cfnews.org/cfn.htm), the Church used what was true from the pagan philosophers of antiquity. Modernity is based on falsehoods and errors of the most manifest order. The pagan philosophers lived before the Incarnation. The philosophers of Modernity and the theologians of Modernism within the Church reject the Incarnation as absolutely essential in the lives of men and of their societies, believing that there is some "scientific" way to organize social life without recognizing the Social Reign of Christ the King and without subordinating everything in popular culture to the Deposit of Faith that Our Lord has entrusted to His true Church, keeping in mind always the greater honor and glory of God and thus the good of the souls for whom He shed every single drop of His Most Precious Blood.
Modernism's attempt at reconciling the Received Teaching of the Divine Redeemer with the false currents of a false age has produced uncertainty and instability within the bosom of the Church in her human elements, starting with what passes for the "normative" Mass that most Catholics of the Roman Rite experience, the Novus Ordo Missae. As I wrote in G.I.R.M. Warfare, the General Instruction to the Roman Missal contains so many legitimate adaptations and exceptions that it is absurd to speak of the synthetic concoction that is the new Mass as a "rite." The late Monsignor Klaus Gamber, who was not a traditionalist, noted the instability produced by the Novus Ordo Missae near the end of his book, The Reform of the Roman Liturgy. That which should be the expression of the immutability and stability of God Himself, the Sacrifice of the Mass, has become for most Catholics an unpredictable show or production that depends upon the predilections of a particular "presider" and/or his parish's "liturgy committee." The offering of the Novus Ordo Missae varies so widely that Catholicism at the parish level today more closely resembles Protestant Congregationalism than the universality that was produced by the Immemorial Mass of Tradition for the better part of two millennia.
Changing the language of the Church's worship for Roman Rite Catholics was just part and parcel of the change of how almost every aspect of the articles contained in the Deposit of Faith have been expressed since the close of the Second Vatican Council in 1965. Uncertainty and instability have infected Catholic preaching, teaching, and pastoral praxis. Although the infection of Modernist thought into Catholic universities and colleges began decades before the Second Vatican Council, it was in the immediate aftermath of the Council's close that all authentic Catholic content was emptied from most catechetical programs for children in the late-1960s, replacing core content with empty words about "God's love" (implying that to love God one does not need to know what He has definitively revealed as binding upon all men for all eternity through His Catholic Church). The uncertainty and instability produced by the Novus Ordo Missae fed off of and helped to reinforce this false dichotomy between God and His Doctrine. Some Catholics, bewildered by the uncertainty produced by the changes, gave up and quit the practice of the Faith. Others accommodated themselves quite readily, seizing upon the opportunity to live wantonly and to remain Catholics in good standing without the fear of the loss of their immortal souls.
Consider, if only for a moment, a very brief and partial list of the things that many Catholics, harmed by the ethos of the novelties of the Second Vatican Council and of the Novus Ordo Missae, do not believe today:
1) God is immutable, that He cannot change, that His truths are unchanging and must be understood exactly in the manner that the Church has taught perennially.
2) God created the world exactly as is recorded in The Book of Genesis.
3) Sacred Scripture is inerrant and cannot contradict itself.
4) The Catholic Church is the sole means of human salvation, outside of which there is no salvation.
5) It is necessary for Original Sin to be washed away in the Sacrament of Baptism.
6) Original Sin, though washed away, leaves man wounded with a darkened intellect and weakened will.
7) Mortal Sin kills the life of sanctifying grace in the soul.
8) Auricular confession has been instituted by Our Lord Himself for the Absolution of Mortal Sins.
9) One must be in a state of Sanctifying Grace to receive worthily Our Lord in Holy Communion.
10) The Eucharist is the actual Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of the God-Man, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
11) The Mass is the unbloody re-presentation of Our Lord's Sacrifice of the Cross.
12) Our Lady was conceived without stain of Original or Actual Sin.
13) Our Lady was and remains perpetually virginal.
14) Our Lord had no brothers or sisters.
15) The miracles of Our Lord, including His actual Bodily Resurrection, as they are recorded in the Gospels.
16) Purgatory.
17) Hell.
18) Limbo.
19) The Social Reign of Christ the King.
20) The necessity of winning converts to the Catholic Faith.
Mind you, this is, as I noted earlier, a very incomplete and partial listing of the things that many Catholics no longer believe. It might be simpler to reduce the list to this statement: many practicing Catholics today no longer believe in the Catholic Faith as it has been handed down to us from the Apostles, who received the Faith from Our Lord Himself. This is no accident. This is the result of the novelties engendered by the Second Vatican Council, including the language of ambiguity and uncertainty contained in the texts of the conciliar and postconciliar documents, including many papal address and encyclical letters. The lion's share of Catholics today are the products of Modernity in the world and the victims of Modernism within the Church.
Take, for example, the non-belief in Purgatory. I told a dentist in Plainview, New York, a practicing Catholic who shall remain nameless, while undergoing a root canal in 2003 that I was offering the pain up to Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart as her consecrated slave to be used as she sees fits, including for the good of the Poor Souls in Purgatory.
"Purgatory!" the dentist exclaimed. "I thought they got rid of that."
This man goes to the Novus Ordo Missae every week. He is a pillar of his parish. I directed him to two quasi-traditionally-minded priests in the Diocese of Rockville Centre, both of whom are patients of his, to verify the fact that Purgatory not only exists but is incapable of being eliminated. The mere fact, however, that this dentist believed that "they" had "gotten rid" of Purgatory speaks volumes about the confusion that has been generated in the past forty years, a confusion that was unthinkable when I was a student at Saint Aloysius School in Great Neck, New York, in the 1950s.
A more crude expression of a pretty generalized lack of belief in Purgatory among Catholics was put to me by a man wearing a Knights of Columbus windbreaker jacket on All Souls Day in 1997. Upset that I was arguing with his pastor, who had said not a word about Purgatory in a "homily" (which was about, interestingly, "life and love"), the paunchy fellow came up to me with a fist and shouted, "Father's right. There ain't no Purgatory no more. You got that?" This particular chap probably said his Rosary every day. Please, please tell me this is not the direct result of the change in the language of the Church's worship and the expression of her doctrine?
That is why, you see, the matter of the existence of Limbo is indeed so very important on a number of levels, including feeding the general skepticism of the past forty years that nothing that was taught to us in our youth in catechism classes should be taken seriously. Thus, to eliminate formally a teaching that has been handed down to us over the centuries, ratified by the likes of Pope Saint Pius X, of all people, is to further convince people that practically every aspect of the Faith is subject to change and that there is nothing pertaining to the Faith that should not and must not be re-examined in light of the alleged "insights" of "contemporary" theology. And this is to say nothing about the actual reason for the effort to declare that all unbaptized infants go straight to Heaven: the heretical belief of Universal Salvation that the souls of all people, whether baptized or unbaptized, go straight to Heaven. That is what is at stake in the case of declaring the non-existence of Limbo, apart from the very important consideration noted above of adding yet another element of uncertainty into the already uncertain and unstable lives of most Catholics today.
Alas, you see, the proponents of the "New Theology" (Karl Rahner, Henri de Lubac, Hans Urs von Balthasar, et al.) desired ambiguity precisely to "raze the bastions" of Catholicism so that the average Catholic would indeed be uncertain about the truths of the Faith, thus making him "open" to "reformulations" of doctrine that take into account the very Modernist presuppositions condemned by the likes of Pope Pius IX, Pope Leo XIII, Pope Saint Pius X, and Pope Pius XI, to name just a few. The dogmatic councils and decrees of the Church meant nothing to the repackaged modernists who labeled themselves as propagators of the "New Theology."
Indeed, the very words of Our Lord Himself meant nothing to these prideful men, intent on using an "openness" to the spirit of the world as the vehicle by which the average Catholic could be convinced that it was necessary for the Church to "learn" more about Christianity from the practitioners of various heretical sects claiming to be Christian. The uncertainty and ambiguity and instability desired by the ilk of Rahner, de Lubac, and von Balthasar were meant of their very diabolical natures to promote the novelty of "ecumenical dialogue" and the novelty of "religious liberty" as normative in the life of the Church.
As an antidote to the Diabolical Disorientation being produced by the Modernist ethos in the Church in her human elements, it would be wise to consider the Oath Against Modernism that Pope Saint Pius X prescribed on September 1, 1910:
To be sworn to by all clergy, pastors, confessors, preachers, religious superiors, and professors in philosophical-theological seminaries.
I . . . . firmly embrace and accept each and every definition that has been set forth and declared by the unerring teaching authority of the Church, especially those principal truths which are directly opposed to the errors of this day. And first of all, I profess that God, the origin and end of all things, can be known with certainty by the natural light of reason from the created world (see Rom. 1:90), that is, from the visible works of creation, as a cause from its effects, and that, therefore, his existence can also be demonstrated: Secondly, I accept and acknowledge the external proofs of revelation, that is, divine acts and especially miracles and prophecies as the surest signs of the divine origin of the Christian religion and I hold that these same proofs are well adapted to the understanding of all eras and all men, even of this time. Thirdly, I believe with equally firm faith that the Church, the guardian and teacher of the revealed word, was personally instituted by the real and historical Christ when he lived among us, and that the Church was built upon Peter, the prince of the apostolic hierarchy, and his successors for the duration of time. Fourthly, I sincerely hold that the doctrine of faith was handed down to us from the apostles through the orthodox Fathers in exactly the same meaning and always in the same purport. Therefore, I entirely reject the heretical misrepresentation that dogmas evolve and change from one meaning to another different from the one which the Church held previously. I also condemn every error according to which, in place of the divine deposit which has been given to the spouse of Christ to be carefully guarded by her, there is put a philosophical figment or product of a human conscience that has gradually been developed by human effort and will continue to develop indefinitely. Fifthly, I hold with certainty and sincerely confess that faith is not a blind sentiment of religion welling up from the depths of the subconscious under the impulse of the heart and the motion of a will trained to morality; but faith is a genuine assent of the intellect to truth received by hearing from an external source. By this assent, because of the authority of the supremely truthful God, we believe to be true that which has been revealed and attested to by a personal God, our creator and lord.
Furthermore, with due reverence, I submit and adhere with my whole heart to the condemnations, declarations, and all the prescripts contained in the encyclical Pascendi and in the decree Lamentabili, especially those concerning what is known as the history of dogmas. I also reject the error of those who say that the faith held by the Church can contradict history, and that Catholic dogmas, in the sense in which they are now understood, are irreconcilable with a more realistic view of the origins of the Christian religion. I also condemn and reject the opinion of those who say that a well-educated Christian assumes a dual personality-that of a believer and at the same time of a historian, as if it were permissible for a historian to hold things that contradict the faith of the believer, or to establish premises which, provided there be no direct denial of dogmas, would lead to the conclusion that dogmas are either false or doubtful. Likewise, I reject that method of judging and interpreting Sacred Scripture which, departing from the tradition of the Church, the analogy of faith, and the norms of the Apostolic See, embraces the misrepresentations of the rationalists and with no prudence or restraint adopts textual criticism as the one and supreme norm. Furthermore, I reject the opinion of those who hold that a professor lecturing or writing on a historico-theological subject should first put aside any preconceived opinion about the supernatural origin of Catholic tradition or about the divine promise of help to preserve all revealed truth forever; and that they should then interpret the writings of each of the Fathers solely by scientific principles, excluding all sacred authority, and with the same liberty of judgment that is common in the investigation of all ordinary historical documents.
Finally, I declare that I am completely opposed to the error of the modernists who hold that there is nothing divine in sacred tradition; or what is far worse, say that there is, but in a pantheistic sense, with the result that there would remain nothing but this plain simple fact-one to be put on a par with the ordinary facts of history-the fact, namely, that a group of men by their own labor, skill, and talent have continued through subsequent ages a school begun by Christ and his apostles. I firmly hold, then, and shall hold to my dying breath the belief of the Fathers in the charism of truth, which certainly is, was, and always will be in the succession of the episcopacy from the apostles. The purpose of this is, then, not that dogma may be tailored according to what seems better and more suited to the culture of each age; rather, that the absolute and immutable truth preached by the apostles from the beginning may never be believed to be different, may never be understood in any other way.
I promise that I shall keep all these articles faithfully, entirely, and sincerely, and guard them inviolate, in no way deviating from them in teaching or in any way in word or in writing. Thus I promise, this I swear, so help me God.
"Therefore, I entirely reject the heretical misrepresentation that dogmas evolve and change from one meaning to another different from the one which the Church held previously. . . . The purpose of this is, then, not that dogma may be tailored according to what seems better and more suited to the culture of each age; rather, that the absolute and immutable truth preached by the apostles from the beginning may never be believed to be different, may never be understood in any other way." No wonder, therefore, that Pope Paul VI repealed the Oath Against Modernism in 1967. The Second Vatican Council and its aftermath did indeed seek to tailor dogma to what seemed better and more suited to modern man in order to make the Faith "credible" to modern man. The result has been catastrophic for the Church and the world, which needs most desperately the surety and stability that the fullness of Catholic Tradition offered for nearly two millennia until the devastating novelties of the recent past.
A review of errors condemned in Lamentabili Sane (appended below), issued on July 3, 1907,. will reveal that the ethos of the Second Vatican Council, which has given us a Pope who believes that many of his predecessors were wrong and in need of correction for having taught what the Church had always taught, was condemned prospectively by Pope Saint Pius X.
In the midst Modernism run amok, we must keep fast to the fullness of Tradition without compromise, without even the slightest concessions to the unjust and illicit conditions imposed upon the Holy See for the offering of the baptismal birthright of all Roman Rite Catholics: the Immemorial Mass of Tradition. It is not enough that Pope Benedict XVI, who we were told in 2005 might grant a "universal indult" for the Traditional Mass, might now grant an "indult" for priests to offer the Mass of all ages privately. Privately? Pope Saint Pius V meant what he said in Quo Primum when he wrote:
Furthermore, by these presents [this law], in virtue of Our Apostolic authority, We grant and concede in perpetuity that, for the chanting or reading of the Mass in any church whatsoever, this Missal is hereafter to be followed absolutely, without any scruple of conscience or fear of incurring any penalty, judgment, or censure, and may freely and lawfully be used. Nor are superiors, administrators, canons, chaplains, and other secular priests, or religious, of whatever title designated, obliged to celebrate the Mass otherwise than as enjoined by Us. We likewise declare and ordain that no one whosoever is forced or coerced to alter this Missal, and that this present document cannot be revoked or modified, but remain always valid and retain its full force notwithstanding the previous constitutions and decrees of the Holy See, as well as any general or special constitutions or edicts of provincial or synodal councils, and notwithstanding the practice and custom of the aforesaid churches, established by long and immemorial prescription - except, however, if more than two hundred years' standing.
Once again, I must reiterate the simple truth that no pope or bishop has the authority to impose any penalty upon any priest who offers exclusively and publicly the Immemorial Mass of Tradition. No pope or bishop has the authority to deny a priest his right to offer the Mass of Tradition. No pope or bishop has the authority to force a priest to offer any other Mass than the Mass of Tradition. Period. The Traditional Latin Mass is the bulwark which best expresses and protects the fullness of the Catholic Faith without any taint of error or concession to the modern world in the slightest. It is the expression par excellence of the eternity and immutability of the Blessed Trinity. We must cling fast to the Mass of Tradition as the means to help us to resist such novelties as doctrinal ambiguity and ecumenism and religious liberty. We must continue to resist error even if this means that other Catholics, no doubt well-meaning, will use all manner of pejorative labels to describe our fidelity to that which has been handed down to us from the Apostles.
Saint John Bosco, who had dreams, more accurately described as visions, from the time of his childhood that influenced his life's work, had a vision of Hell, a topic nowhere mentioned in Pope Benedict XVI's Deus est Caritas, deeming that the hottest place in Hell was for the boys in his care who were disobedient. As this is being written late on his feast day, January 31, 2006, a brief excerpt from his vision is most appropriate:
I couldn't understand why such dreadful punishments should be meted out for infractions that boys thought so little of, but my guide shook me out of my thoughts by saying: "Recall what you were told when you saw those spoiled grapes on the wine." With these words he lifted another curtain which hid many of our Oratory boys, all of whom I recognized instantly. The inscription on the curtain read: The root of all evils.
"Do you know what that means?" he asked me immediately.
"What sin does that refer to?"
"Pride?"
"No!"
"And yet I have always heard that pride is the root of all evil."
"It is, generally speaking, but, specifically, do you know what led Adam and Eve to commit the first sin for which they were driven away from their earthly paradise?"
"Disobedience?"
"Exactly! Disobedience is the root of all evil."
"What shall I tell my boys about it?"
"Listen carefully: the boys you see here are those who prepare such a tragic end for themselves by being disobedient. So-and-so and so-and-so, who you think went to bed, leave the dormitory later in the night to roam about the playground, and, contrary to orders, they stray into dangerous areas and up scaffolds, endangering even their lives. Others go to church, but, ignoring recommendations, they misbehave; instead of praying, they daydream or cause a disturbance. There are also those who make themselves comfortable so as to doze off during church services, and those who only make believe they are going to church. Woe to those who neglect prayer! He who does not pray dooms himself to perdition. Some are here because, instead of singing hymns or saying the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin, they read frivolous or -- worse yet -- forbidden books." He then went on mentioning other serious breaches of discipline.
When he was done, I was deeply moved.
The elders of the Second Vatican Council have been and continue to be disobedient to the language of the Church's liturgy and of how she has taught the doctrines entrusted to her by her Divine Bridegroom from the Apostolic Era. Pope after pope has disobeyed Our Lady's Fatima Message, refusing to consecrate Russia to her Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart with all of the world's bishops. It will only be when some pope decides to be obedient to the Mother of God that the uncertainty and ambiguity of the world, fostered in no small measure by conciliarism's many accommodations to the spirit of the world, will be wiped away and the glories of Tradition, including the Immemorial Mass of all ages and the Social Reign of Christ the King, will be restored as the fruit of the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Our Lady, Help of Christians, pray for us.
Saint Joseph, pray for us.
Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.
Saint John Bosco, pray for us.
Saint Ignatius of Antioch, pray for us.
Saint Francis de Sales, pray for us.
Saint Martina, pray for us.
Saint Philomena, pray for us.
Pope Saint Pius V, pray for us.
Pope Saint Pius X, pray for us.
Blessed Jacinta, pray for us.
Blessed Francisco, pray for us.
Sister Lucia, pray for us.
Lamentabili Sane, July 14, 1907
With truly lamentable results, our age, casting aside all restraint in its search for the ultimate causes of things, frequently pursues novelties so ardently that it rejects the legacy of the human race. Thus it falls into very serious errors, which are even more serious when they concern sacred authority, the interpretation of Sacred Scripture, and the principal mysteries of Faith. The fact that many Catholic writers also go beyond the limits determined by the Fathers and the Church herself is extremely regrettable. In the name of higher knowledge and historical research (they say), they are looking for that progress of dogmas which is, in reality, nothing but the corruption of dogmas.
These errors are being daily spread among the faithful. Lest they captivate the faithful's minds and corrupt the purity of their faith, His Holiness, Pius X, by Divine Providence, Pope, has decided that the chief errors should be noted and condemned by the Office of this Holy Roman and Universal Inquisition.
Therefore, after a very diligent investigation and consultation with the Reverend Consultors, the Most Eminent and Reverend Lord Cardinals, the General Inquisitors in matters of faith and morals have judged the following propositions to be condemned and proscribed. In fact, by this general decree, they are condemned and proscribed.
1. The ecclesiastical law which prescribes that books concerning the Divine Scriptures are subject to previous examination does not apply to critical scholars and students of scientific exegesis of the Old and New Testament.
2. The Church's interpretation of the Sacred Books is by no means to be rejected; nevertheless, it is subject to the more accurate judgment and correction of the exegetes.
3. From the ecclesiastical judgments and censures passed against free and more scientific exegesis, one can conclude that the Faith the Church proposes contradicts history and that Catholic teaching cannot really be reconciled with the true origins of the Christian religion.
4. Even by dogmatic definitions the Church's magisterium cannot determine the genuine sense of the Sacred Scriptures.
5. Since the deposit of Faith contains only revealed truths, the Church has no right to pass judgment on the assertions of the human sciences.
6. The "Church learning" and the "Church teaching" collaborate in such a way in defining truths that it only remains for the "Church teaching" to sanction the opinions of the "Church learning."
7. In proscribing errors, the Church cannot demand any internal assent from the faithful by which the judgments she issues are to be embraced.
8. They are free from all blame who treat lightly the condemnations passed by the Sacred Congregation of the Index or by the Roman Congregations.
9. They display excessive simplicity or ignorance who believe that God is really the author of the Sacred Scriptures.
10. The inspiration of the books of the Old Testament consists in this: The Israelite writers handed down religious doctrines under a peculiar aspect which was either little or not at all known to the Gentiles.
11. Divine inspiration does not extend to all of Sacred Scriptures so that it renders its parts, each and every one, free from every error.
12. If he wishes to apply himself usefully to Biblical studies, the exegete must first put aside all preconceived opinions about the supernatural origin of Sacred Scripture and interpret it the same as any other merely human document.
13. The Evangelists themselves, as well as the Christians of the second and third generation, artificially arranged the evangelical parables. In such a way they explained the scanty fruit of the preaching of Christ among the Jews.
14. In many narrations the Evangelists recorded, not so much things that are true, as things which, even though false, they judged to be more profitable for their readers.
15. Until the time the canon was defined and constituted, the Gospels were increased by additions and corrections. Therefore there remained in them only a faint and uncertain trace of the doctrine of Christ.
16. The narrations of John are not properly history, but a mystical contemplation of the Gospel. The discourses contained in his Gospel are theological meditations, lacking historical truth concerning the mystery of salvation.
17. The fourth Gospel exaggerated miracles not only in order that the extraordinary might stand out but also in order that it might become more suitable for showing forth the work and glory of the Word lncarnate.
18. John claims for himself the quality of witness concerning Christ. In reality, however, he is only a distinguished witness of the Christian life, or of the life of Christ in the Church at the close of the first century.
19. Heterodox exegetes have expressed the true sense of the Scriptures more faithfully than Catholic exegetes.
20. Revelation could be nothing else than the consciousness man acquired of his revelation to God.
21. Revelation, constituting the object of the Catholic faith, was not completed with the Apostles.
22. The dogmas the Church holds out as revealed are not truths which have fallen from heaven. They are an interpretation of religious facts which the human mind has acquired by laborious effort.
23. Opposition may, and actually does, exist between the facts narrated in Sacred Scripture and the Church's dogmas which rest on them. Thus the critic may reject as false facts the Church holds as most certain.
24. The exegete who constructs premises from which it follows that dogmas are historically false or doubtful is not to be reproved as long as he does not directly deny the dogmas themselves.
25. The assent of faith ultimately rests on a mass of probabilities.
26. The dogmas of the Faith are to be held only according to their practical sense; that is to say, as preceptive norms of conduct and not as norms of believing.
27. The divinity of Jesus Christ is not proved from the Gospels. It is a dogma which the Christian conscience has derived from the notion of the Messias.
28. While He was exercising His ministry, Jesus did not speak with the object of teaching He was the Messias, nor did His miracles tend to prove it.
29. It is permissible to grant that the Christ of history is far inferior to the Christ Who is the object of faith.
30 In all the evangelical texts the name "Son of God'' is equivalent only to that of "Messias." It does not in the least way signify that Christ is the true and natural Son of God.
31. The doctrine concerning Christ taught by Paul, John, and the Councils of Nicea, Ephesus and Chalcedon is not that which Jesus taught but that which the Christian conscience conceived concerning Jesus.
32. It is impossible to reconcile the natural sense of the Gospel texts with the sense taught by our theologians concerning the conscience and the infallible knowledge of Jesus Christ.
33 Everyone who is not led by preconceived opinions can readily see that either Jesus professed an error concerning the immediate Messianic coming or the greater part of His doctrine as contained in the Gospels is destitute of authenticity.
34. The critics can ascribe to Christ a knowledge without limits only on a hypothesis which cannot be historically conceived and which is repugnant to the moral sense. That hypothesis is that Christ as man possessed the knowledge of God and yet was unwilling to communicate the knowledge of a great many things to His disciples and posterity.
35. Christ did not always possess the consciousness of His Messianic dignity.
36. The Resurrection of the Savior is not properly a fact of the historical order. It is a fact of merely the supernatural order (neither demonstrated nor demonstrable) which the Christian conscience gradually derived from other facts.
37. In the beginning, faith in the Resurrection of Christ was not so much in the fact itself of the Resurrection as in the immortal life of Christ with God.
38. The doctrine of the expiatory death of Christ is Pauline and not evangelical.
39. The opinions concerning the origin of the Sacraments which the Fathers of Trent held and which certainly influenced their dogmatic canons are very different from those which now rightly exist among historians who examine Christianity.
40. The Sacraments have their origin in the fact that the Apostles and their successors, swayed and moved by circumstances and events, interpreted some idea and intention of Christ.
41. The Sacraments are intended merely to recall to man's mind the ever-beneficent presence of the Creator.
42. The Christian community imposed the necessity of Baptism, adopted it as a necessary rite, and added to it the obligation of the Christian profession.
43. The practice of administering Baptism to infants was a disciplinary evolution, which became one of the causes why the Sacrament was divided into two, namely, Baptism and Penance.
44. There is nothing to prove that the rite of the Sacrament of Confirmation was employed by the Apostles. The formal distinction of the two Sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation does not pertain to the history of primitive Christianity.
45. Not everything which Paul narrates concerning the institution of the Eucharist (I Cor. 11:23-25) is to be taken historically.
46. In the primitive Church the concept of the Christian sinner reconciled by the authority of the Church did not exist. Only very slowly did the Church accustom herself to this concept. As a matter of fact, even after Penance was recognized as an institution of the Church, it was not called a Sacrament since it would be held as a disgraceful Sacrament.
47. The words of the Lord, "Receive the Holy Spirit; whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained'' (John 20:22-23), in no way refer to the Sacrament of Penance, in spite of what it pleased the Fathers of Trent to say.
48. In his Epistle (Ch. 5:14-15) James did not intend to promulgate a Sacrament of Christ but only commend a pious custom. If in this custom he happens to distinguish a means of grace, it is not in that rigorous manner in which it was taken by the theologians who laid down the notion and number of the Sacraments.
49. When the Christian supper gradually assumed the nature of a liturgical action those who customarily presided over the supper acquired the sacerdotal character.
50. The elders who fulfilled the office of watching over the gatherings of the faithful were instituted by the Apostles as priests or bishops to provide for the necessary ordering of the increasing communities and not properly for the perpetuation of the Apostolic mission and power.
51. It is impossible that Matrimony could have become a Sacrament of the new law until later in the Church since it was necessary that a full theological explication of the doctrine of grace and the Sacraments should first take place before Matrimony should be held as a Sacrament.
52. It was far from the mind of Christ to found a Church as a society which would continue on earth for a long course
of centuries. On the contrary, in the mind of Christ the kingdom of heaven together with the end of the world was about to come immediately.
53. The organic constitution of the Church is not immutable. Like human society, Christian society is subject to a perpetual evolution.
54. Dogmas, Sacraments and hierarchy, both their notion and reality, are only interpretations and evolutions of the Christian intelligence which have increased and perfected by an external series of additions the little germ latent in the Gospel.
55. Simon Peter never even suspected that Christ entrusted the primacy in the Church to him.
56. The Roman Church became the head of all the churches, not through the ordinance of Divine Providence, but merely through political conditions.
57. The Church has shown that she is hostile to the progress of the natural and theological sciences.
58. Truth is no more immutable than man himself, since it evolved with him, in him, and through him.
59. Christ did not teach a determined body of doctrine applicable to all times and all men, but rather inaugurated a religious movement adapted or to be adapted to different times and places.
60. Christian Doctrine was originally Judaic. Through successive evolutions it became first Pauline, then Joannine, finally Hellenic and universal.
61. It may be said without paradox that there is no chapter of Scripture, from the first of Genesis to the last of the Apocalypse, which contains a doctrine absolutely identical with that which the Church teaches on the same matter. For the same reason, therefore, no chapter of Scripture has the same sense for the critic and the theologian.
62. The chief articles of the Apostles' Creed did not have the same sense for the Christians of the first ages as they have for the Christians of our time.
63. The Church shows that she is incapable of effectively maintaining evangelical ethics since she obstinately clings to immutable doctrines which cannot be reconciled with modern progress.
64. Scientific progress demands that the concepts of Christian doctrine concerning God, creation, revelation, the Person of the Incarnate Word, and Redemption be re-adjusted.
65. Modern Catholicism can be reconciled with true science only if it is transformed into a non-dogmatic Christianity; that is to say, into a broad and liberal Protestantism.
The following Thursday, the fourth day of the same month and year, all these matters were accurately reported to our Most Holy Lord, Pope Pius X. His Holiness approved and confirmed the decree of the Most Eminent Fathers and ordered that each and every one of the above-listed propositions be held by all as condemned and proscribed.
PETER PALOMBELLI, Notary of the Holy Roman and Universal Inquisition
