While no reasonable man could object to the latter, the former is eagerly exploited against the Church (_Heiner_, Der Syllabus, 1905, p. 31, _seq._; cf. _Frins_, Kirchenlex, 2d ed., XI, 1031; _Hoensbroech_, l. c. 25; _Goetz_, Der Ultramontanismus, 1905, 148). Of course it may be taken for granted that the Syllabus is distasteful to modern liberalism, which is branded there as one of the errors of the day. Yet the Church cannot be censured for not becoming unfaithful to her vocation of preserving the patrimony of Christianity to mankind, or for acting as the invincible defender of the Christian religion in the universal struggle between truth and error, even though the latter pose with great assurance. The Condemnation of Modernism. The great excitement caused in intellectual circles by the Syllabus of _Pius IX._ was aroused again, though not with the same intensity, when some years ago the news of another Syllabus was circulated through the world, and the excitement increased when the rumour was followed by the publication of the encyclical “Pascendi Dominici gregis.” Indeed, the new event was not very unlike the former: in the 60’s Rome’s sentence was directed against the Modernism of that period, which called itself liberalism. The excitement caused by its condemnation was more intense, because it struck directly at the principles governing the liberal politics against the Church, which principles were claimed to be the foundation of the modern state. Now the Modernism repudiated by the Church’s voice was nothing more than the old humanistic, fundamental, errors of liberalism, but put in the form of a religious and philosophical view of the world, and in Catholic garb: it meant man detached from everything supernatural, and dependent alone on himself in his intellectual life, more especially in his religious life. Now, as then, similar charges were raised: The Church is the irreconcilable foe of modern achievements and the opponent of them; “the encyclical aims at modern intellectual life in all its phases and forms” (XX. Jahrh., 1908, 568). Now, as then, we have the same ambiguity of the terms “modern” and “progress.”