LAMENTABILI SANE EXITU. - Decree of the Holy Office of 3-4 July 1907 condemning 65 modernist propositions.
After the condemnation of the books of Loisy (1903), two theologians of Paris (G. Letourneau and P. Bouvier) extracted from them 33 erroneous propositions, which they submitted to the judgment of the archbishop Cardinal Richard. The list was immediately transmitted to the Holy Office, within which an examining commission was set up, of which the cardinals Serafino Vannutelli, Augusto Di Pietro, Mariano Rampolla, Girolamo M. Gatti, Domenico Ferrata, Pietro Respighi, Raffaele Merry del Val, Andrea Steinhuber, Francesco Segna, Calasanzio Vives y Tuto were members. The Parisian list was discussed, modified and above all expanded with the addition of 32 propositions, extracted from other modernist authors. The final editor seems to have been the Franciscan David Fleming. During the period of preparation some news leaked out and the press used it to formulate the most bizarre hypotheses. Finally the decree appeared in L'osservatore romano on 6 July 1907, with the date of the 3rd and the approval of Pius X of the following day.
The decree opens with two observations: the present age has the fever of novelty, to which some Catholic writers also give a favorable welcome, who under the pretext of a greater deepening of the truth in the light of the historical method, admit a corrupting evolution of dogmas. To oppose these novelties, widespread also among the faithful, Pius X ordered the Holy Office to examine and condemn the principal errors. There follows the simple list of 65 propositions, without any external division and without any special gradation in determining the gravity of the individual errors.
However, from the internal examination a latent logic emerges, which holds together the structure of the document, composed of seven well-distinct groups of propositions: 1-8: the authority of the Church's magisterium in religious matters, especially in the field of biblical exegesis; 9-19: inspiration and historicity of the Bible, especially of the Gospels; 20-36: fundamental notions on Revelation, dogma and faith; 27-38: origin and development of Christological dogma; 39-51: origin and development of the Sacraments in general and in particular; 52-57: origin, nature and evolution of the Church and of its constitutive elements; 58-65: general character and value of Christian doctrine as a whole.
From the imposing complex of these propositions there result condemned, also in their particular applications, free examination in the religious field, particularly exegetical, the naturalism that denies the inspiration and the divine origin of Sacred Scripture, the criticism that takes away from the Gospels their historical foundation, the subjectivism that makes of religion an internal phenomenon of consciousness, the evolutionism applied to Christological, sacramental and ecclesiological dogmas; the relativism that denies the absolute value of Christian Revelation and of Catholic dogmatics.
From the rapid examination it appears that all the conceptions of A. Loisy (v.), G. Tyrrell (v.) and of E. Le Roy were kept in mind, although the condemnation is not directed at any person in particular and aims only at striking the modernist system in its principles and in its immediate deductions and applications.
The decree issued by the Holy Office, furnished with the approval in forma communi of the Supreme Pontiff, is not an infallible document (cf. L. Choupin, Valeur des décisions doctrinales et disciplinaires du St-Siège, 3rd ed., Rome 1929, pp. 71-75). In any case it is an authentic document of the Holy See, which must be received with full external and internal submission. Moreover, in rejecting the errors that are diametrically opposed to Revelation and to Catholic dogma, this decree falls within the number of those that prepare the way for a more solemn and more decisive document of the Church's magisterium. The decree is the natural preface to the encyclical Pascendi dominici gregis (v.).