Modernism

MODERNISM. - It is the heterodox movement that took shape among Catholic scholars at the end of the last century and in the early years of the present one, which set out to renew and interpret Christian doctrine in harmony with modern thought. The term m. appears officially for the first time in the encyclical Pascendi dominici gregis of Pope Pius X as the common designation of a complex of errors in all fields of Catholic doctrine (Sacred Scripture, dogmas, worship, philosophy), aiming to reduce it to its original core.

I. HISTORICAL GENESIS

The remote origin of Modernism is to be sought in the restlessness and craving for novelty that, ever since the pontificates of Gregory XVI and Pius IX, had been creeping through certain Catholic circles, especially in France, impatient with scholastic theology: the condemnations of the indifferentism of Lamennais (1834), of the traditionalism of Bautain (1840) and of Bonnetty (1855), of the rationalism of G. Hermes (1835), of Günther (1857), of ontologism (1861) and of Frohschammer (1862), the accumulation of errors gathered in the Syllabus of Pius IX (1864) are the stages of the error and the symptoms of the storm that was gathering over the Church. The celebration of the First Vatican Council (1870) was for a time the providential embankment: the dogmatic constitution De fide catholica defined the relations between reason and faith and established the supernatural essence of faith and therefore of the genuine Catholic notion of Revelation and of biblical inspiration; constitution I (the only one brought to completion), 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 warnings of the new heresy in the Catholic field matured in France, after Renan (v.), with the work of A. Loisy (v.), and with the tendency of not a few Catholic scholars who intended to conform to the results of the recent investigations of the comparative history of religions and of dogmas, of the philology of texts, and of biblical archaeology, in order to provide an apologetics of Christianity suited to the needs of the new times. The Church had already recognized the necessity of an opportune and urgent renewal of sacred studies and of biblical studies in particular, and a document of this is the encyclical Providentissimus Deus (1893) of Leo XIII, which traced its meaning, program and principles: the encyclical left to the private scholar a broad field of research for all those points "qui expositionem certam et definitam adhuc desiderant" (cf. Denz-U, 1942), while for the points already defined by the Church he could still deepen them, adapt them to the needs of the times and defend them against the attacks of adversaries. For this purpose the same Pontiff instituted the Pontifical Biblical Commission (1902), but Loisy proceeded on his own way and Modernism was able to spread and organize itself in England with Tyrrell, in Italy with Buonaiuti (v.), Murri (v.), Minocchi (v.) and in certain German Catholic circles, with an extent and penetration ever more alarming.

It fell to Pius X to undertake the arduous task of unmasking the heresy; and, an almost unique event in the history of the Church, Modernism collapsed upon itself almost immediately. The first intervention of Pius X was the decree of the Holy Office Lamentabili (v.) of 5 July 1907, which summarizes the new errors in 65 articles. The decree became a solemn condemnation with the encyclical Pascendi of 8 Sept. of the same year 1907; the encyclical, to the great surprise of the very supporters of Modernism, condensed the logical synthesis of their principles with a "masterly exposition and a magnificent critique" (G. Gentile). Finally, in order to avoid any compromise and ambiguity in the sphere of ecclesiastical teaching and discipline, Pius X with the motu proprio Sacrorum Antistitum of 1 Sept. 1910, expressly referring to the two preceding documents, published the formula of the "anti-modernist oath," which presents at one and the same time the cornerstones of Catholic doctrine and the principal errors of Modernism, which sought to undermine them. It may be said that thus ends the history of Modernism, whose painful but by then necessary epilogue were the pontifical condemnations of the leaders who proved rebellious or recalcitrant. In vain certain supporters of Modernism (Programma dei modernisti, 2nd ed., Turin 1911, p. 97 ff.) appealed to the doctrines of Newman on the "illative sense" of faith and on the evolution of dogmas defended by him, because he always maintained the necessity of the guidance of the ecclesiastical 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 insurmountable antagonism between the tradition of the Church and contemporary thought, to be resolved at the complete discretion of the latter, is in open contrast with Newman's formula of the development of dogma according to which "the old principles return under new forms and the idea changes with them in order to be able to remain identical," a principle that was bound to hinder rather than favor Modernism (Essay on the development of christian doctrine, London 1878, p. 40). Moreover, Newman's orthodoxy was defended by Pius X in the 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 S. Sedis, 41 [1908], p. 201).

In a similar sense, those scholars are not expressly to be included in the Modernism condemned by the encyclical (and they were the majority) who, while sympathizing with the new ideas, accepted the pontifical decision, protesting their wish to remain faithful to the authority of the Church. Among these is perhaps to be included also Baron von Hügel (1852-1925), who was profoundly influenced by Newman (cf. M. Schüller-Hermkes, Friedrich von Hügel, Religion als Ganzheit, Düsseldorf 1948, p. 441 ff.): taking advantage of the favor he enjoyed among the modernists, he attempted, as far as was in his power, to bring Loisy and Tyrrell back to obedience to the Church (op. cit., p. 467 ff., where the author concludes: "Hügels Religionsphilosophie ist also unzweideutig antimodernistisch"; nevertheless, on p. 480, n. 180, there is reported the letter of 4 May 1907 of Card. Steinhuber, prefect of the Index, to Card. Ferrari, in which the writings of v. Hügel were deplored together with those of Tyrrell, Fagazzaro and Murri. But this is still before any formal condemnation; the orthodoxy of v. Hügel is also defended by M. Nédoncelle, La pensée religieuse de Fr. von Hügel, Paris 1935, pp. 15-40).

II. L'ENCICLICA «PASCENDI»

Considered in its content, in its procedure and also in its entirely unmistakable style, it 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 heartfelt concerns and, as it were, the definitive completion of that dike against the tide of modern errors which for a century now had kept the work of the Roman pontificate engaged for the salvation of the faith. Its characteristic lies in the strongly theoretical structure that confers on it a singular transparency, through which the manifold aberrations of Modernism dissolve, revealing their distortion and their evident dissonance with the sacred deposit of the faith. The errors of Modernism had been carefully collected and denounced by the decree Lamentabili with resolute and perspicuous formulas (Denz-U, 2001-63); the encyclical takes them up again and presents them in their genesis and links them together, wresting them from that halo of vagueness in which they were deliberately left by their proponents: in this sense it may be said that, even at so short a distance from the decree, the encyclical gives an original and new exposition of those same errors, with a mastery of terminology and of the adversaries' technique perhaps unique in a document of this kind, and which for this reason was bound to bring back to the right path all those who in good faith were enlisted in the ranks of error. This first part, the most extensive and elaborate, is followed by the disciplinary instructions that the bishops must carry out in the choice of professors in seminaries and for the advancement of philosophical, theological and auxiliary secular studies. The doctrinal part is divided into three points in which are analyzed the three principal stages or phases of the error or, better, as the encyclical profoundly expresses it, the different personalities that merge and intersect in the supporters 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 the three moments in the demolition of the faith, inasmuch as the philosopher began with the affirmation of subjectivism and absolute individual relativism, proclaiming the sole criterion of each one's private feeling, in which is resolved not only the conviction concerning the Supreme Being but the content and meaning of the dogmas themselves. The encyclical warns against the double exacerbation to which Catholic doctrine is subject under the new criterion: "transfiguration," inasmuch as divine truth is forced to assume a subjective exaltation in order to move the subject, and "deformation" (defiguratio), inasmuch as a situation different from its reality is arbitrarily created for the faith, in contrast with the declarations of the Vatican Council (Denz-U, 1808). The most deleterious consequence is the profession of the intrinsic and unlimited evolution of dogmas, whose meaning and value derive not from their immutable content but from the subjective emotion that they can arouse in the believer: a blindness born of an itch for novelty and of proud presumption, as Gregory XVI had already denounced (Denz-U, 2072-80).

One understands how the "believer" finds himself freed from every criterion of objectivity and extrinsic authority, from divine tradition, so as to embrace the absurdity of affirming that, on the one hand, for example, 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 ff.). Under the appearance of fideism the supporters of Modernism intend to place the faith at the discretion of human consciousness (Denz-U, 2081-86). Immanence, 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 the "representations" of divine reality are reduced to "symbols," which relate to particular situations of the believer's consciousness and change with it: this holds also for the Sacraments and for divine inspiration. The Church herself is a fruit of collective experience and must adapt to its rhythm without any coercion or imposition of external authority. Along this line the supporters of Modernism also proceed to define the relations of the Church with political power, affirming the absolute separation between Church and State, against the determination made by Pius VI in the constitution Auctorem fidei, which condemned the error of the Council of Pistoia (Denz-U, 1502 ff.). In this way every consistency and authority of the ecclesiastical magisterium and every external manifestation or hierarchical apparatus of it is demolished: there is no field that Modernism has not invaded and uprooted from its foundation in order to substitute its own arbitrariness. The final conclusion is already implicit in the first step of philosophical subjectivism: the proclamation of atheism and the abolition of every religion (Denz-U, 2087-2109). A strange mixture of murky aspirations, which under the pretext of a pseudo-mystical veneer and with an appeal to an interiority more theoretical than intimately practical, claimed to patronize the politics of the new democracy (as in Italy Murri did), to be superimposed upon and substituted for the action of the Church.

Shortly thereafter, with the motu proprio Praestantia Scripturae (18 Nov. 1907), the Pope rose up against the deformations attempted with regard to the decree Lamentabili and the encyclical Pascendi, imposing excommunication against those who contradicted them and declaring that those who persisted in the errors condemned therein were guilty of heresy, because in the majority of those propositions the foundations of the faith are attacked (Denz-U, 2114). The Pope not only personally followed the execution of the provisions of the encyclical and those relating to the anti-modernist oath, but 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 the Sacred Text and there prepare the new professors of Sacred Scripture in the seminaries.

III. DOCTRINAL CHARACTER

The gravity of the dogmatic error of Modernism lies entirely in its fundamental principle. Modernism consists not so much in opposition to one or another of the revealed truths, but in the radical change of the very notion of "truth," of "religion" and of "revelation": the essence of this change is the unconditional acceptance of the "principle of immanence" which lies at the foundation of modern thought. It is true that this theoretical principle is rarely expressed by the supporters of Modernism in a systematic way, because they apply themselves by preference to the positive investigation of the history of the Church, of the dogmas and of the Bible: nevertheless the critical approach followed by them in their investigations is dominated by that principle which abandons without residue Christian truth to the contingency of human culture and of subjective experience. In this, Modernism derives — also historically evident — through the movement of the Lutheran Reformation itself, as the encyclical itself warns (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 had its secular version in Kantian epistemological subjectivism and thence in the twofold direction of the transcendental idealism of Fichte-Schelling-Hegel, which subordinated religion to philosophy, and of the fideistic irrationalism (closer to Kant) of Jacobi-Fries-Schleiermacher, which placed the essence of religion in the individual "feeling" of the divine.

The 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, which, after the Hegelians Feuerbach, Strauss and Bauer — deniers not only of Revelation but of every natural and positive religion — treated the truths of Christianity, and of revealed religion in general, as a historical and cultural product of the epoch that saw them arise (Ritschl, Vatke, Tröltsch, Hermann). The concept, moreover, of the "development" or "becoming" (Werden) of consciousness, elaborated by Hegel from the standpoint of abstract dialectic, was proposed by Darwin as the single and fundamental law for understanding the origin of life and of consciousness itself. Spencer, in the domain of philosophy, set forth in his First Principles the "theory of the Unknowable" which, as Kant had already done a century earlier, declared impossible every rational path to attain the Absolute. Furthermore, the new way of access to spiritual reality was indicated in the psychological analysis of intimate experience simultaneously in the work of H. Bergson in France and of W. James in America. But the most direct and complete source from which the supporters of Modernism drew is the theory of "symbolic fideism" which A. Sabatier expounded with great charm in Esquisse d'une philosophie de la religion (Paris 1879, especially p. 390 ff.). In it a radical application is made of the principle of vital immanence to all the foundations of the Christian faith, and it is shown at the same time, with perfect mastery of Protestant theology, that the reduction of faith to subjective "instinct" is the only logical result 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 the Sacred Text raised new problems concerning the authenticity, the structure and the interpretation of the inspired books, which patristic and scholastic theology could not suspect in the composition of the New Testament; the explorations of the ancient civilizations of the biblical world in the Middle East and the study of extra-biblical religions brought face to face with analogies and resemblances that could not be accidental and that therefore demanded an overall interpretation according to a single principle. Modernism took advantage of this to resume the attempt of "Gnosticism" to embrace all the claims of truth with a single principle: the subjectivity of truth and the relativity of all its formulas, and therefore the relativity of dogma.

The danger of Modernism lies in its extreme ductility, which seeks to evade every determinate and precise qualification both in philosophy and in theology: in fact the supporters of Modernism avoid accepting either philosophical system in integral form, claiming to have grasped the unitary principle that characterizes modern man beyond and above the oppositions of systems. This principle, which forms the essence of Modernism, is indicated in vital immanence understood as "private experience." Its significance for Christian knowledge lies in the "mediation" that the principle of immanence performs of every real datum, historical and philosophical, with respect to the prolegomena of faith: the existence of God, immortality and the future life in the strictly theoretical field, and with respect to the objective probative value of miracles and prophecies in the field of apologetics. Then, within the very domain of the truths of faith, Modernism performs this "mediation" in the most radical way, eliminating any effective distinction of value among the various religions and among the most opposed attitudes that the individual can take within his religion. One can say today that Modernism has unified, in this principle of immanence, the opposing tendencies of phenomenalism, of idealist historicism and of the fideism of Kant-Schleiermacher, that is to say: 1) "reality" is the impression of consciousness (Hume, James, Bergson); 2) truth is resolved into the destiny or development of human consciousness (Hegel); 3) such consciousness manifests and attests itself in the intimate impression or perception ("sensua" of the encyclical Pascendi, "Gefühl" of Schleiermacher), as it is given to the individual from time to time. Thus the supporters of Modernism have been able to protest that they accept the whole doctrine of the Church, but in reality they rejected at one and the same time: 1) the concept of the "ontological transcendence" of God with respect to creation and to the finite mind, so that God is replaced by the "divine"; 2) the very concept of the supernatural, so that the dogmas are reduced to "symbols" and to "approximations"; 3) finally the concept of "ecclesiastical magisterium," whose authority binds only to the extent that the private consciousness of the individual finds itself in agreement with the external authority. Modernism has therefore overturned the traditional method of Christian apologetics in the relationship between "science and faith," renewing the Averroist error of dissociation within the consciousness of the Christian himself, as the Oath warns (Denz-U, 2146), between the external homage of the believer to the authority of the Church which proposes the truth to be believed and the interior conviction of the scholar. Thus the content and the very value of the 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. Then, in the last instance, the only valid formula of religious truth was resolved into the structure that consciousness gives to itself in the face of the individual problems of faith. Rightly, therefore, the encyclical characterizes Modernism not so much as a heresy but as a "compendium of all heresies"; one might almost call it the "essential heresy" inasmuch as it overturns and denies the very guarantee of orthodoxy, that is, 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 declares in the most peremptory manner that Modernism, because of its profession of radical subjectivism, passes beyond every religion into absolute agnosticism and therefore of necessity ends in atheism. The Programma dei modernisti, published in November 1907 as a response to the encyclical, far from exonerating it, proves to be a point-by-point confirmation of the appropriateness and soundness of the papal condemnation.

1. Biblical Modernism

The traditional doctrine (the Program calls it an "opinion") holds that in the Bible one possesses the genuine process of Revelation of both the Old and the New Testament, because it is guaranteed by the authority of God who inspired it in every part and by the authority of the secondary writers (for example, Moses, Joshua, the Evangelists), who were immediate or mediate witnesses of what they narrate. Against this, according to the Modernists, stand the recent results of biblical criticism, according to which the historical books of the Old Testament are simple collections of materials that "show no claim to prove the truth, but simply to purify the religious sentiment of the reader" and that therefore cannot have God as their principal author. In this sense one can

It may well be admitted that the Bible "contains no error properly so called, and much less lies, even though officious ones," inasmuch as the biblical narrative relates "to those forms and requirements of life of the readers for whom each book was written" (Il programma dei modernisti, 2nd ed., Turin 1911, p. 40). Likewise, biblical inspiration is no longer to be conceived as a mechanical transmission of the words or of the idea from God to man, but as a vital conception of the word together with the idea, brought about by man united to God in a special and supernatural manner (ibid., p. 41), which, however, the Programma does not specify. It should be noted finally that, according to Modernism, the purpose and content of divine Revelation has not so much a doctrinal character concerning the abstract knowledge of the divinity, as the practical instruction of how to worship 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 content of absolute truth of the sacred book is repeated and analyzed with regard to the New Testament in the composition of the Gospels and their mutual relations, where a distinction is made between the historical element and the supernatural element of faith, in order to pass to the distinction named by the encyclical itself (Denz-U, 2076) between "the Christ of history and the Christ of faith" (Programma, pp. 66 ff., 115): to the one belongs the knowledge that Christ is man, to the other that Christ is God, and it is for the believer to see Christ everywhere according to the spirit (ibid., p. 73). It matters little to faith to ascertain the virginal birth, the clamorous miracles and finally the resurrection of the Redeemer, and whether or not it is possible to attribute to Christ the announcement of certain dogmas and the founding of the Church: these facts escape history and have no reality except for faith (ibid., p. 111). The principal representative of biblical Modernism was A. Loisy.

2. Theological Modernism

At the beginning of Christianity there was nothing but faith intensely lived, 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 announcement of the imminent kingdom and an invitation to inner purification" (ibid., pp. 74, 88). The same applies to the doctrine of the first Fathers, from whom any 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 especially the faith of the Council of Trent in their expression. The "evolution of dogmas" was, according to Modernism, the effect of the vital adaptation "indispensable to Christianity in order to survive in the Hellenistic environment in which it found itself outside Palestine, and this holds especially for the fundamental Trinitarian and Christological dogmas and for the organization of the Church" (ibid., p. 81 ff.). So that "everything has changed in the history of Christianity — thought, hierarchy and worship: the constant element of truth in the early times of the Church, in the following centuries, including Scholasticism and the Council of Trent which canonized it, as in our own days, is the religious experience which is always identical in both" (ibid., p. 92). Throughout the history of the Old and New Testaments there is realized "the continuity of a Revelation which, in the human conscience, the divine makes of itself ever more intensely" (ibid., p. 111): dogmas, ecclesiastical organization, Sacraments... are nothing but means for realizing that deeper experience of the divine; and the proponents of Modernism hope to be able in the future to do without them (ibid., p. 112).

3. Philosophical Modernism

The Programma categorically rejects the accusation of "agnosticism" and — while acknowledging that it accepts the negative critique of reason made by Kant and Spencer (ibid., p. 28) — declares that it professes a radically different attitude, namely that of explaining every type of knowledge (phenomenal, scientific, philosophical, religious) in terms of "action" and therefore of the experience proper to each individual in those fields. In particular, in the religious sphere, whether to prove the existence of God or to ascertain the divine Revelation, the demonstrations of medieval metaphysics and the testimony of miracle and prophecy no longer matter: today, on the other hand, "the demands of our moral life and the experience of the divine that is accomplished in the darkest depths of our conscience, which lead to a special sense of supersensible realities" (ibid., p. 97). As for the accusation of immanentism, the Programma, while acknowledging that the encyclical has seen rightly, strives to demonstrate that the "principle of immanence" is by no means in conflict with Catholic tradition, inasmuch as for it too the judgment "God exists," granted — as scholastic theology itself admits — that it is neither an analytic a priori nor a synthetic a priori judgment, remains a synthetic a posteriori one, that is, demonstrable through experience, "which can be none other than that which is accomplished by and in the conscience of man" (ibid., p. 100). The Fathers too, and St. Thomas himself, meant nothing else, and immanentism is not that gross error which the encyclical wished to make people believe (ibid., pp. 101 ff., 120 ff., 138 ff.). As for the relations between science and faith, the Programma professes to admit the clearest distinction, in the sense that religious faith is the "instinctive need... which is born spontaneously and develops independently of any training of scientific preparation" (ibid., p. 123). In conclusion, the Programma declares that Modernism is hostile neither to Scripture nor even to tradition, but only to the scholastic interpretation of them, because it has by now been surpassed by the critical method of the modern conscience (ibid., p. 127).

V. CRITICISM

The Program therefore confirmed all the principal charges of the encyclical Pascendi, and as its inspiring principle in the conception of faith, of history, of dogmatic formulas, of the hierarchy and of worship: private subjective experience. This criterion of private experience is presented as the undisputed and definitive result of modern thought, which ought to constitute the single formula of the possibility of religious truth for human consciousness in general. Modernism, exploiting and exacerbating the critical insufficiency of certain traditional positions in the field of exegesis and of Church history, has substantially changed the interpretation of the data and of the very meaning of faith, of natural religion and of the function of human reason. Thus the Greek-Christian realism was rejected wholesale, whose foundation was the distinction of man from the world and from God and the distinction of the natural order from the supernatural order; with this, every vestige of transcendence was abolished. Consequently, every absolute and transcendent value of the first principles of reason is eliminated, and with them the possibility of the logical structure of discourse and the validity of every metaphysical position are taken away. The protests of certain modernists that they accept Catholic doctrine integrally are of no avail, because modernism has in the "principle of vital immanence" the corrosive poison not only of the essence and of the truths of faith but of the objective value of any absolute truth of fact and of reason, and it returns to the principle of Protagoras that "man is the measure of all things" (Theaet., 152, frag. B 1). Modernism, moreover, although deriving through many channels from the subjectivism of modern thought, presents no theoretical consistency because it does not engage deeply with any determinate system or philosophy, so that it resolves itself into a phenomenon of "theoretical contamination" and of superficial concordism. The most essential contamination, however, was the attempt to interpret the intimate experience of the subject (self-consciousness) in direct continuity and as the single authentic expression of religious life, and to take common or natural religious consciousness as the essence or the common denominator of divine Revelation itself and of the life of Grace. The reality is that every religious experience (v.), within the sphere of the life of Grace and of faith, can have only a secondary value and one dependent on Revelation and on the ecclesiastical magisterium.

The error of modernism has, however, indirectly benefited the life of the Church, calling together its best forces to confront the most insidious and vast attack on its spiritual mission: the advanced studies of Catholic universities, stimulated by modernism, have in this first half of the century been completely renewed, especially in the field of biblical sciences and of the history of dogmas, where modernism kept the arsenal of its weapons. Nevertheless, the danger of modernism is never completely vanquished, because there is innate in human reason, corrupted by sin, the tendency to set itself up as the absolute criterion of truth in order to subject faith to itself. Akin to theological modernism is the so-called "theologie nouvelle" that appeared in France after World War II and was energetically denounced by the encyclical Humani generis (12 Aug. 1950) of Pius XII.

Cornelio Fabro