MODERNISM. – It is the heterodox trend that emerged among Catholic scholars at the end of the last century and in the early years of the present one, which aimed to renew and interpret Christian doctrine in harmony with modern thought. The term "modernism" appears officially for the first time in the encyclical *Pascendi dominici gregis* of Pope Pius X as a common designation for a complex of errors in all fields of Catholic doctrine (Sacred Scripture, dogmas, worship, philosophy) in order to reduce it to its original core.
OUTLINE:
I. Historical Genesis
II. The Encyclical *Pascendi*
III. Doctrinal Nature
IV. Principal Errors
V. Critique.I. HISTORICAL GENESIS
The remote origin of modernism is to be seen in the restlessness and craving for novelty that, even during the pontificates of Gregory XVI and Pius IX, was spreading in some Catholic circles, especially in France, intolerant of Scholastic theology. The condemnations of Lamennais’s indifferentism (1834), of the traditionalism of Gousset (1840) and Bonetty (1855), of the rationalism of G. Hermes (1835), Günther (1857), ontologism (1861), and Frohschammer (1862), and the accumulation of errors collected in the *Syllabus* of Pius IX (1864) are the stages of error and the symptoms of the storm that was gathering over the Church. The celebration of the Vatican Council (1870) was for a time a providential barrier: the dogmatic constitution *De fide catholica* defined the relationship between reason and faith and established the supernatural essence of faith and thus the genuine Catholic notion of Revelation and biblical inspiration; the constitution’s chain of theorems, such as those “De Ecclesia Christi,” affirmed the divine authority of the Church and its infallible magisterium in the person of the successor of the Prince of the Apostles, the Roman Pontiff.The first signs of the new tendency within Catholic circles matured in France after Renan (q.v.), through the work of A. Loisy (q.v.), and the tendency of not a few Catholic scholars who sought to adapt Christianity to the results of recent investigations in the comparative history of religions and dogmas, the philology of texts, and biblical archaeology in order to provide an apologetic of Christianity in keeping with the needs of modern times. The Church had already recognized the necessity of an opportune and urgent renewal of sacred and biblical studies in particular, and evidence of this is the encyclical *Providentissimus Deus* (1893) of Leo XIII, which outlined its meaning, program, and principles. The encyclical left private scholars ample scope for research on all those points that were exposed with certain and definite expressions of desire (cf. Denz.-U., 1942), while for points already defined by the Church they could still deepen, adapt to the needs of the times, and defend them against the attacks of adversaries. To this end, the same Pontiff established the Pontifical Biblical Commission (1902), but Loisy proceeded along his own path, and modernism was able to spread and organize itself in England with Tyrrell, in Italy with Buonaiuti (q.v.), Murri (q.v.), Minocchi (q.v.), and in some Catholic circles in Germany, with an ever more alarming breadth and penetration.
It fell to Pius X to undertake the difficult task of exposing the heresy; and, an almost unique event in Church history, modernism collapsed in upon itself almost immediately. The first intervention of Pius X was the decree of the Holy Office *Lamentabili* (q.v.) of 3 July 1907, which summarized in 65 articles the new errors. The decree became a solemn condemnation with the encyclical *Pascendi* of 8 September of the same year, 1907; the encyclical, to the great surprise even of the modernists themselves, condensed the logical synthesis of their principles with a masterly exposition and a magnificent critique (G. Gentile). Finally, to avoid any compromise or ambiguity in the sphere of teaching and ecclesiastical discipline, Pius X, with the *motu proprio Sacrorum Antistitum* of 1 September 1910, expressly referring back to the two previous documents, published the formula of the “Antimodernist Oath,” which at the same time presents the foundational tenets of Catholic doctrine and the principal errors of modernism, which it sought to undermine. It can be said that thus ends the history of modernism, whose painful but now necessary epilogue was the papal condemnations of its leaders who proved rebellious or recalcitrant.
In vain did some supporters of modernism (*Programma dei modernisti*, 2nd ed., Turin 1911, p. 97 ff.) appeal to the doctrines of Newman on the “illative sense” of faith and on the evolution of dogma that he defended, because he always maintained the necessity of the guidance of the Church’s magisterium (cf. J. Guitton, *La philosophie de Newman. Essai sur l'idée de développement*, Paris 1933, p. 166 ff.). In particular, the central idea of modernism of an irreconcilable antagonism between the tradition of the Church and contemporary thought, to be resolved entirely in favor of the latter, is in open contrast with Newman’s formula of the development of dogma according to which “old principles return under new forms and the idea changes with them in order to remain identical,” a principle that was rather meant to prevent than to favor modernism (*Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine*, London 1878, p. 40). Moreover, Newman’s orthodoxy was defended by Pius X in a letter to the Bishop of Limerick of 10 March 1908: “Profecto in tanta lucubrationum eius copia, quidpiam reperiri potest, quod ab usitata theologorum ratione videatur, nihil potest quod de ipsius fide suspicionem afferat” (*Acta Sanctae Sedis*, 41 [1908], p. 201).
In a similar sense, those scholars who, while sympathizing with the new ideas, accepted the papal decision and protested their desire to remain faithful to the authority of the Church were not expressly included in the modernism condemned by the encyclical (and they were the majority). Among these may perhaps be included Baron von Hügel (1852–1925), who was deeply influenced by Newman (cf. M. Schüter-Hermkes, *Friedrich von Hügel, Religion als Ganzheit*, Düsseldorf 1948, p. 441 ff.): taking advantage of the favor he enjoyed among modernists, he attempted, as far as he was able, to bring Loisy and Tyrrell back to obedience to the Church (op. cit., p. 467 ff., where the author concludes: “Hügels Religionsphilosophie ist also unzweidentlich antimodernistisch”; however, on p. 480, n. 180, a letter of 4 May 1907 from Card. Steinhuber, Prefect of the Index, to Card. Ferrari is cited in which the writings of Baron von Hügel together with those of Tyrrell, Fogazzaro, and Murri were deplored. But this was before any formal condemnation; M. Nédoncelle also defends the orthodoxy of Baron von Hügel in *La pensée religieuse de Fr. von Hügel*, Paris 1935, pp. 15–40).
II. THE ENCYCLICAL "PASCENDI."
Considered in its content, its development, and its altogether unmistakable style, the encyclical *Pascendi* is one of the most decisive documents of the supreme Magisterium, and among all the acts of Pius X it remains the most distinguished monument of his pontificate—a document of his most poignant concerns and, as it were, the definitive completion of that dam against the tide of modern errors which for a century had engaged the work of the Roman Pontificate for the salvation of the faith. Its characteristic lies in its strongly theoretical structure, which gives it a singular transparency, through which the manifold aberrations of Modernism are dissolved, revealing their distortion and their evident dissonance with the sacred deposit of faith.
The errors of Modernism had been carefully collected and denounced by the decree *Lamentabili* with resolute and perspicuous formulas (Denz-U, 2001-65); the encyclical takes them up again and presents them in their genesis, linking them together and stripping away the halo of indeterminacy in which their advocates had deliberately left them. In this sense, one may say that, even at so short a remove from the decree, the encyclical offers an original and new exposition of the same errors, with a mastery of terminology and of the opposing technique that is perhaps unique in a document of this kind, and which for this reason was bound to set on the right path all who, in good faith, were numbered among the ranks of error.
To this first part, the most extensive and elaborate, there follow the disciplinary instructions that bishops must implement in the selection of professors for seminaries and in the promotion of philosophical, theological, and auxiliary profane studies. The doctrinal part is divided into three points in which are analyzed the three principal stages or phases of the error—or rather, as the encyclical itself profoundly expresses it, the different personalities that coalesce and are involved among the advocates of Modernism: the philosopher, the believer, the theologian, the historian, the critic, the apologist, the reformer.
The core of the exposition lies in the demonstration of the solidarity and continuity of these three moments in the demolition of the faith, inasmuch as the philosopher begins with the affirmation of absolute subjectivism and individual relativism, proclaiming the sole criterion of private sentiment in which there is resolved not only the conviction regarding the Supreme Being but also the content and meaning of the dogmas themselves. The encyclical warns against the double exacerbation to which Catholic doctrine is subjected by this new criterion: "transfiguration," in that divine truth is constrained to assume a subjective exaltation in order to move the subject, and "deformation" (*defiguratio*), in that an arbitrary situation is created for faith, one different from its reality, in contrast with the declarations of the Vatican Council (Denz-U, 1808). The most pernicious consequence is the profession of an intrinsic and unlimited evolution of dogmas, whose meaning and value do not derive from their immutable content but from the subjective emotion they may arouse in the believer: a frenzy born of a craving for novelty and from proud presumption, as Gregory XVI had already denounced (Denz-U, 2072-80).
It is easy to see how the "believer" finds himself freed from every criterion of extrinsic objectivity and authority, from divine tradition, so as to embrace the absurdity of affirming, for example, that history can say nothing about the divinity of Jesus Christ and that this is present solely to the consciousness of the believer: a violent separation already condemned by Pius IX (Denz-U, 1656) and earlier by Gregory IX in 1228, at the first appearance of theological rationalism (Denz-U, 442 sqq.). Under the apparent fideism, the advocates of Modernism intend to place faith at the discretion of human conscience (Denz-U, 2081-86). The illumination proclaimed by the philosopher and lived by the believer is applied by the "theologian" to the formulas and truths of faith, with the conclusion that "representations" of divine reality are reduced to "symbols" that relate to particular states of the believer's consciousness and change with it: this applies also to the Sacraments and to divine inspiration. The Church herself is a fruit of collective experience and must adapt itself to its rhythm without any coercion or imposition of extrinsic authority. Along this line, the advocates of Modernism go so far as to define the relations of the Church with political power, affirming the absolute separation between Church and State, in opposition to the determination made by Pius VI in the constitution *Auctorem fidei*, which condemned the error of the Synod of Pistoia (Denz-U, 1502 sqq.). In this way, every consistency and authority of the ecclesiastical Magisterium is demolished, along with every external manifestation or hierarchical apparatus: there is no field that Modernism has not invaded and unmoored from its foundations in order to substitute arbitrariness in its place. The final conclusion is already implicit in the first step of philosophical subjectivism: the proclamation of activism and the abolition of every religion (Denz-U, 2087-2109). A strange mixture of turbid aspirations, which under the pretext of a pseudomystical veneer and an appeal to an interiority more theoretical than practically intimate, pretended to sponsor the politics of the new democracy (as in Italy did Murri) to be superimposed upon and to replace the action of the Church.
Not long afterward, with the *motu proprio* *Praestantia Scripturae* (18 Nov. 1907), the Pope rose up against the deformations attempted against the decree *Lamentabili* and the encyclical *Pascendi*, decreeing excommunication against the contradictors and declaring that the contumacious in the errors contained therein were guilty of heresy, because in the majority of those propositions an attack was made upon the foundations of the faith (Denz-U, 2114). The Pope not only personally oversaw the execution of the provisions of the encyclical and those relating to the anti-Modernist oath, but he also intensified the activity of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, which pronounced "with authority" on the principal problems of theology and biblical exegesis; likewise, he founded the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome, so that it might gather the most expert Catholic scholars of Sacred Scripture and prepare the new professors of Sacred Scripture for the seminaries.
III. DOCTRINAL INDICTMENT.
The gravity of the dogmatic error of Modernism lies entirely in its fundamental principle. Modernism does not consist so much in opposition to one or another of the revealed truths, but in the radical alteration of the very notion of "truth," of "religion," and of "revelation": the essence of this alteration is in the unconditional acceptance of the "principle of immanence," which underlies modern thought. It is true that this theoretical principle is rarely expressed by the advocates of Modernism in a systematic way, for they apply themselves rather to the positive investigation of the history of the Church, of dogmas, and of the Bible; nevertheless, the critical direction they follow in their researches is dominated by that principle, which abandons without remainder Christian truth to the contingency of human culture and of subjective experience. Modernism derives in this, both historically and evidently, from the movement of the Lutheran Reformation itself, as the encyclical itself acknowledges (Denz-U, 2086), inasmuch as the "Reformation" detached the faith of the individual from obedience to the hierarchical authority established in the visible Church. The Protestant principle found its lay version in the Kantian gnoseological subjectivism, and from there in the twofold direction of transcendental idealism (Fichte-Schelling-Hegel), which subordinated religion to philosophy, and of irrationalist fideism (closer to Kant) (Jacobi-Fries-Schleiermacher), which placed the essence of religion in the "feeling" of the individual for the divine.
Inevitable fruit of this invasion of subjectivity into the field of faith was the disintegration of the traditional doctrine of truth brought about by German "liberal theology" in the second half of the 19th century. After the Hegelians Feuerbach, Strauss and Bauer—who denied not only Revelation but every form of natural and positive religion—this theology treated the truths of Christianity, and of revealed religion in general, as historical and cultural products of the age in which they arose (Ritschl, Vatke, Troeltsch, Hermann). The concept of the "development" or "becoming" (Werden) of consciousness, elaborated by Hegel from the standpoint of abstract dialectic, was then proposed by Darwin as the single fundamental law for understanding the origin of life and of consciousness itself. Spencer, in the realm of philosophy, set forth in his First Principles the "theory of the unknowable," which, like Kant a century earlier, declared every rational path to the Absolute impossible. Meanwhile, the new path to spiritual reality was indicated in the psychological analysis of inner experience, simultaneously in the work of H. Bergson in France and W. James in America. But the most direct and complete source drawn upon by the advocates of Modernism was the theory of "symbolic fideism" expounded with great charm by A. Sabatier in Esquisse d'une philosophie de la religion (Paris 1879, especially pp. 390 ff.). In this work a radical application is made of the principle of vital immanence to all the foundations of Christian faith, and it is shown, with perfect mastery of Protestant theology, that the reduction of faith to a subjective "instinct" is the only logical outcome of the principle of the "Reformation" (cf. Fr. Heiler, A. Loisy, der Vater des katholischen Modernismus, Munich 1947, p. 46).
At the same time, the results of modern philology applied to Sacred Scripture raised new problems regarding the authenticity, structure and interpretation of the inspired books, which patristic and scholastic theology could not have suspected in the composition of the New Testament. The exploration of the ancient civilizations of the biblical world in the Near East and the study of "extractable religions" brought to light analogies and similarities that could not be accidental and therefore demanded an overall interpretation according to a unifying principle. Modernism took advantage of this to revive the attempt of "Gnosticism" to embrace all the claims of truth within a single principle: the subjectivity of truth and the relativity of all its formulas, and hence the relativity of dogma.
The danger of Modernism lies in its extreme pliability, which seeks to avoid every precise and definite qualification, whether in philosophy or in theology. Indeed, the advocates of Modernism evade accepting either philosophical or theological system in its entirety, claiming to have grasped the unifying principle that characterizes modern man beyond and above the oppositions of systems. This principle, which constitutes the essence of Modernism, is indicated in vital immanence understood as "private experience." Its significance for Christian knowledge lies in the "mediation" which the principle of immanence effects between every real, historical and philosophical datum and the presuppositions of faith: the existence of God, immortality and future life in the strictly theoretical realm, and the objective probative value of miracles and prophecies in the field of apologetics. Within the realm of the truths of faith itself, Modernism operates this "mediation" in the most radical way, eliminating any effective distinction in value between the various religions and even between the most opposed attitudes that an individual may adopt within his own religion.
It can be said today that Modernism has unified, in this principle of immanence, the opposing trends of phenomenism, idealistic stoicism and the fideism of Kant-Schleiermacher, namely: 1) "reality" is the impression of consciousness (Hume, James, Bergson); 2) truth resolves itself into the destiny or development of human consciousness (Hegel); 3) such consciousness manifests and attests itself in the inner impression or perception ("sensus" of the encyclical Pascendi, "Gefühl") of Schleiermacher, as it presents itself to the individual from time to time. Thus the advocates of Modernism could protest that they accepted the entire doctrine of the Church, but in reality they pursued at the same time: 1) the concept of the "ontological transcendence" of God with respect to creation and finite mind, so that God is replaced by the "divine"; 2) the very concept of the supernatural, so that dogmas are reduced to "symbols" and "approximations"; 3) finally, the concept of the "ecclesiastical magisterium," whose authority binds only insofar as the private conscience of the individual is in accord with external authority.
Modernism therefore inverted the traditional method of Christian apologetics in the relationship between "science and faith," renewing the old error of dissociation within the Christian’s own consciousness, as the Oath (Denz.-U., 2146) warns, between the external obedience of the believer to the authority of the Church that proposes truths to be believed and the scholar’s inner conviction. Thus the content and even the value of these same truths were withdrawn from the ecclesiastical magisterium and reserved to a form of "super-comprehension" by virtue of the religious emotion of the subject. In the final analysis, the only valid formula of religious truth resolved itself into the structure that consciousness gives to itself in the face of individual problems of faith. Hence the encyclical was justified in characterizing Modernism not so much as a heresy but as a "compendium of all heresies"; it might almost be called the "essential heresy," since it overturns and negates the very guarantee of orthodoxy, namely the supreme magisterium, which, through the assistance of the Holy Spirit, continues in the Church according to the promise of Jesus Christ.
IV. PRINCIPAL ERRORS
The encyclical Pascendi declared in the most peremptory terms that Modernism, because of its profession of radical subjectivism, passes beyond every religion into absolute agnosticism and therefore necessarily ends in atheism. The Program of Modernists, published in November 1907 as a response to the encyclical, far from exculpating them, proved point by point the opportuneness and soundness of the papal condemnation.1. Biblical Modernism
Opposed to the traditional doctrine (the Program calls it an "opinion") that the Bible contains the genuine process of Revelation in both the Old and New Testaments, because guaranteed by the authority of God who inspired it in every part and by the authority of the secondary writers (e.g., Moses, Joshua, the Evangelists), who were immediate or mediate witnesses of what they narrate, the Modernists, according to their view, oppose the recent results of biblical criticism according to which the historical books of the Old Testament are merely collections of materials that make no pretense of proving the truth but simply of purifying the religious sentiment of the reader, and therefore cannot have God as their principal author.It must be readily admitted that the Bible «contains no error properly so called, and much less any lies, even if they be official» (Il Programma dei modernisti, 2nd ed., Turin 1911, p. 40), inasmuch as the biblical narrative is adapted to the forms and exigencies of life of the readers for whom each book was written. Likewise, biblical inspiration is no longer to be conceived as a mechanical transmission of words or ideas from God to man, but rather in a vital conception of word and idea together, wrought by man united to God in a special and supernatural manner (ibid., p. 41), though the Program does not specify this further. Finally, it should be noted that, according to the Modernists, the purpose and content of divine Revelation is not so much doctrinal in character, concerning abstract knowledge of the deity, as it is practical instruction on how to venerate God and conform life to the supreme norm of His will (ibid., p. 45).
The denial of inspiration as a charism, of the historicity, and of the absolute truth-content of Sacred Scripture is reiterated and analyzed with regard to the New Testament, particularly in the composition of the Gospels and their interrelationships. Here a distinction is drawn between the historical element and the supernatural element of faith, leading to the distinction—already noted in the same encyclical (Denz.-U., 2076)—between «the Christ of history and the Christ of faith» (Programma, pp. 66 ff., 113): to the former belongs the knowledge that Christ is man; to the latter, that Christ is God, and it is for the believer to see Christ everywhere «according to the spirit» (ibid., p. 75). Little matters to faith whether the virgin birth, the striking miracles, and finally the resurrection of the Redeemer can be historically verified, or whether it is possible to attribute to Christ the announcement of certain dogmas and the founding of the Church: these facts elude history and have reality only for faith (ibid., p. 111). The principal representative of biblical Modernism was A. Loisy.
2. Theological Modernism
At the beginning of Christianity there was only intensely lived faith, without defined doctrines or dogmas: these are «incrustations deposited by the reflection of exalted consciences, especially of St. Paul, but foreign to the primitive content of the Gospel of Jesus, which was a warm and passionate proclamation of the imminent kingdom and an invitation to inner purification» (ibid., pp. 74, 88). The same holds for the doctrine of the early Fathers, from whom all dogmatic tendency is absent, so that it is «arbitrary and a priori» to trace back to the primitive teaching of Jesus and His first followers the dogmas of the councils and, in particular, the faith of the Council of Trent in its definitive formulation. The «evolution of dogma» has, according to Modernism, been the effect of a vital adaptation «indispensable to Christianity for its survival in the Hellenistic environment into which it came outside Palestine, and this applies especially to the fundamental and Christological dogmas and to the organization of the Church» (ibid., p. 81 ff.). Thus «everything has changed in the history of Christianity—thought, hierarchy, and worship: the constant element of truth in the early Church, in the centuries that followed, including Scholasticism and the Council of Trent which canonized it, as in our own day, is the religious experience which remains identical in all» (ibid., p. 92). Throughout the history of the Old and New Testaments there is realized «the continuity of a Revelation which, in human consciousness, the divine makes of itself ever more intensely» (ibid., p. 111): dogmas, ecclesiastical organization, Sacraments... are but means to realize that deeper experience of the divine; and the advocates of Modernism hope one day to dispense with them (ibid., p. 112).3. Philosophical Modernism
The Program categorically rejects the charge of «agnosticism» and, while acknowledging the negative critique of reason advanced by Kant and Spencer (ibid., p. 28), declares that it adopts a radically different stance, namely, that all types of knowledge (phenomenal, scientific, philosophical, religious) must be explained in terms of action and hence of experience proper to each sphere. In the religious sphere, in particular, whether to prove the existence of God or to ascertain divine Revelation, the demonstrations of medieval metaphysics and the testimony of miracle and prophecy no longer count:today it is rather the exigencies of our moral life and the experience of the divine, which takes place in the deepest recesses of our consciousness, that lead to a special sense of supersensible realities» (ibid., p. 97). As for the charge of immanentism, the Program, while admitting that the encyclical has correctly identified the principle, strives to show that the principle of immanence is not at all in conflict with Catholic tradition, since even here the judgment «God exists,» admitted as the Scholastic theology itself admits, is neither an analytic a priori nor a synthetic a priori judgment, but remains synthetic a posteriori, demonstrable by experience «which can only be that which is realized by and in the consciousness of man» (ibid., p. 100). The Fathers and even St. Thomas himself meant no more than this, and immanentism is not the grave error the encyclical would have us believe (ibid., pp. 101 ff., 120 ff., 138 ff.). As for the relationship between science and faith, the Program professes the most radical distinction, in the sense that religious faith is «an instinctive need... which arises spontaneously and develops independently of any scientific preparation» (ibid., p. 123). In conclusion, the Program declares that Modernism neither opposes Scripture nor tradition, but only the Scholastic interpretation of them, which is now surpassed by the critical method of modern consciousness (ibid., p. 127).
V. CRITIQUE
The Programme thus confirmed all the principal counts of the indictment contained in the encyclical. It made private experience the inspiriting principle in the conception of faith, of history, of dogmatic formulae, and of the hierarchy of worship: private experience as the subjective. This criterion of private experience is presented as the undisputed and definitive outcome of modern thought, which should constitute the sole formula for the possibility of religious truth for human consciousness in general. The modernist, by exploiting and exacerbating the critical insufficiency of certain traditional positions in the fields of exegesis and Church history, substantially altered the interpretation of the data and of the very meaning of faith, of natural religion, and of the function of human reason. Thus the whole of Greek-Christian realism was rejected root and branch; this realism had been founded on the distinction between man and the world and from God, and on the distinction between the natural and the supernatural order; by this rejection every vestige of transcendence was abolished. Consequently, every absolute and transcendent value of the first principles of reason was eliminated, and with them the possibility of the logical structure of discourse and the validity of every metaphysical position. Protests from certain modernists that they accept the integral Catholic doctrine are of no avail, because modernism has in the principle of vital immanence not only the corrosive poison of the essence and truths of faith but also the objective value of any absolute truth, whether of fact or of reason, and it returns to the principle of Protagoras that “man is the measure of all things” (Theaet., 152, frag. B 1). Modernism, although deriving through manifold channels from the subjectivism of modern thought, presents no theoretical consistency, because it does not engage thoroughly with any determinate system or philosophy, so that it resolves itself into a phenomenon of “theoretical contamination” and superficial concordism. The most essential contamination, however, has been the attempt to interpret the intimate experience of the subject (self-consciousness) in direct continuity and as the unique authentic expression of religious life, and to take common or natural religious consciousness as the essence or common denominator of divine Revelation itself and of the life of grace. The reality is that every religious experience (v.), within the life of grace and of faith, can have only a secondary value and in dependence on Revelation and the Church’s magisterium.The error of modernism, however, has indirectly benefited the life of the Church, by rallying its best forces to confront the most insidious and widespread attack on its spiritual mission: the higher studies of the Catholic universities, stimulated by modernism, have been completely renewed in this first half of the century, especially in the fields of biblical science and the history of dogma, where modernism held its arsenal of weapons. Nevertheless, the danger of modernism has never been completely vanquished, because inherent in human reason, corrupted by sin, is the tendency to set itself up as the absolute criterion of truth in order to subject faith to itself. An attempt akin to theological modernism is the so-called “nouvelle théologie” which appeared in France after the Second World War and was energetically denounced by the encyclical Humani generis (12 Aug. 1950) of Pius XII.