Free thought; Modernism (Christian theology) -- Catholic Church; Religion and science; Teaching, Freedom of
What was condemned by the Church? The document “Lamentabili sane exitu,”
issued by the teaching authority of the Church on July 3, 1907, is
entitled “A Decree of the Holy Congregation of the Roman and General
Inquisition or the Holy Office,” which has to watch over the unadulterated
preservation of the faith. The decree soon was christened the “New
Syllabus,” because of its similarity with the Syllabus of _Pius IX._ In a
similar way it condemns sixty-five propositions against the inspiration
and the historical character of Holy Scripture, against the divine origin
of revelation and of faith, against the divinity of Christ, His
Resurrection and His atoning death, against the Sacraments, and against
the Church. These are component parts of the philosophical religious
system of thought which soon after was set forth and condemned by the
encyclical “Pascendi,” of September 8, 1907.
Modernism is essentially philosophy, combining modern _agnostic-autonomous
subjectivism_ with _evolutionism_, and applied to the Christian religion,
which thereby becomes disfigured beyond recognition. Its chain of thought,
excellently stated by the encyclical, starts with the proposition that the
supernatural is beyond the knowledge of man, and hence man cannot know
anything of God. The faith which unites us to God is nothing but a
feeling, born of a blind impulse, which may be considered a divine
revelation. If this religious feeling is expressed in forms, the result is
“doctrines of faith”; for Christian “dogmas” are this and nothing more,
images and symbols of the noble and divine, hence they are of human origin
and are changeable according to the disposition and the degree of learning
of the individual, as well as of the times. There is no dogmatic
Christianity, in the sense of an immutable religious doctrine, nor is
there any absolutely true religion, for religion is but a variable
feeling, that has nothing to do with cognition and knowledge. For this
reason they never can come in conflict. The Christian religion originally
was nothing else but the religious experience of Christ, who was not God
but a man; in the course of time it has undergone changes which are
reflected in the shaping of Christian dogma. Holy Scripture is, similarly,
the expression of the religious experience of its human authors; the
Sacraments are symbols, arousing religious sentiments; the Church is not
founded by God, and only has the task of regulating the development of
Christianity, and of sanctioning at any time whatever religious
experiences the changeable spirit of progressive civilization may produce.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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