The Lord of History, by Msgr. Eugene Kevane. ©2003 The Miriam Press. All Rights Reserved

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VIII. Intellectual Victory Over Modernism

The phenomenon of Modernism in religion may seem at first sight irrelevant in a discussion of the philosophy of history. Exactly the opposite is true, however, for Religious Modernism is the product and function of the philosophy of history in its older Voltairean and Hegelian form. Hence it is impossible to do comprehensive research in this branch of philosophy without taking it into consideration.133 This kind of analysis, furthermore, has great practical value for priestly and catechetical teaching, for the philosophy of history is the best instrument for unmasking the nature of Modernism, for parrying its deception, and for winning a true victory over it for the cause of authentic religious thinking.134

The Genesis of Modernism

Modernism in religion is a phenomenon of the “Modern” period of Western Civilization, the specific result of an application of Modern Philosophy to the Judaeo-Christian religious tradition. Cornelio Fabro describes its genesis accurately: it is “that penetration of Modern Philosophy into the seminaries which produces the phenomenon which comes soon to receive the name of Modernism.”135

This insight, furthermore, applies equally well to all three branches of the Western religious heritage. When Modern Philosophy, as such, is introduced into the training of young men as Rabbis, Reform Judaism results and is sustained. When the same is done in training for the Protestant Ministry, Liberal Protestantism has resulted and is sustained. In all three cases, the general effect is an undermining of faith in the historicity of the sources of each religious tradition, a reinterpretation of these sources in such a way that a new kind of religion begins to function within their organizational frameworks and didactic terminologies. They are thus gradually transformed into what Karl Jaspers aptly terms philosophical faith directed more at the cultivation of immanent human powers on the natural level than religious faith directed toward an order of revealed truth and knowledge, distinct in origin and in object, coming from the personal God standing transcendent above nature.136

Effect of the Magisterium

While this phenomenon is powerfully present in Protestantism and Judaism, its impact within the Catholic Church in the formal and technical sense of “Modernism” is altogether unique. The reason for this bears much further research; but the cause appears to be the presence and the actions of the Magisterium, that teaching authority which is unique in Catholicity.

To bring this into better visibility, the Hebrew Fact and its fulfillment as the Catholic Fact in history must be reviewed. It is interesting to note the insight of the Protestant scholar, Kirsopp Lake, in his Introduction to Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History.

“The object of the whole book,” he writes, “was to present the Christian ‘Succession,’ which did not merely mean, though it certainly included, the apostolic succession of the bishops of the four great ‘thrones,’ but rather the whole intellectual, spiritual and institutional life of the Church. It cannot be too strongly emphasized that Eusebius, like all early church historians, can be understood only if it be recognized that whereas modern writers try to trace the development, growth, and change of doctrines and institutions, their predecessors were trying to prove that nothing of the kind ever happened. According to them the Church had had one and only one teaching from the beginning; it had been preserved by the ‘Succession’ and heresy was the attempt of the Devil to change it.”137

The Catholic Fact, in other words, is constituted dynamically in history by Evangelization and Catechesis: by a doctrinal teaching, that is, which centers upon the Articles of Faith in Jesus Christ as the Apostolic Kerygma or Creed professes Him to be. This is the “Ordinary and Universal Magisterium” which was the object of formal definition by the First Vatican Council.138 This teaching program maintains the Catholic Fact in social reality as the generations of members of the Church move forward in time.

From the beginning Catholic thinkers have recognized in this living Magisterium the proximate Rule of Faith. The early Church Fathers elaborated this point in detail against a kaleidoscope of Gnostic doctrinal innovations in the Argument from Prescription.139 Vincent of Lerins gave it its classical statement which the Magisterium has made its own in every century since, and especially in Vatican I, Vatican II, and the Documents of Popes John XXIII and Paul VI.140

Elimination of the Entire Creed

It is this “prescription,” as the Early Church termed it, this “Ordinary and Universal Magisterium” in the words of Vatican I, which Modernism sets aside. Unlike earlier heretical movements, it takes its position not against this or that particular Article of Faith, but against the Profession of the Apostolic Faith as such.141 This is done by a re-interpretation, as it is called, of the entire Creed in the light of Modern Philosophy. As a writer in the Encyclopedia Britannica puts it accurately, the Modernists “sought to re-interpret traditional Catholic teaching in the light of nineteenth century philosophical, historical and psychological theories.”142 Participating in the essential characteristics of Modern Philosophy as such, in its Cartesian, Spinozan and Kantian metaphysics, it introduces into religious thought the eclipse of the transcendent personal God of Revelation characteristic of Modern Philosophy, and hence its shift toward man-centrism, toward positivism and empiricism in epistemology. Faith, the very heart of religion, is the first element to suffer this reinterpretation: it is now an experience of the Divine (as the God of Abraham comes to be called) and not an intellectual assent to the Word of God revealed and committed to a teaching Church to hand on by means of the human discourse of Evangelization and Catechesis.143 Once this subversion of the eternal concept of truth has taken place in the realm of Faith, all the rest follows, and the re-interpretation of the Creed as a whole begins the logic of its course.

It is quite apparent, therefore, that an immense summational heresy is at work, and that the phenomenon is far larger than this or that incident in connection with one decade or another of the Modern period in Western history.

The philosopher of history will see it more comprehensively in connection with Modernity as such and as a whole, and indeed in terms of the precise analysis of Modernity accomplished increasingly by post-modern thinkers.144 The task which remains here, then, is to locate this religious phenomenon more accurately in the Modern Age and to bring it into view first as a function of Modern Philosophy as such and then as an application of its philosophy of history, the sequence of the three constructs, “Ancient,” “Medieval” and “Modern.”

It is of fundamental importance to recognize that Modernism in the Catholic Church has not had that simple and unimpeded development which has characterized the growth of Reform Judaism and Liberal Protestantism. Catholic Modernism, beginning indeed at the same time and from the same causes, was interrupted in such a way by actions of the Magisterium that it exists historically in three separate moments of time.

The Three Phases of Modernism

The first moment, the decades of the Nineteenth Century prior to the First Vatican Council, is identified by the work of a group of priests, chiefly German, under the leadership of Father Anton Guenther (1783-1863). Enamored with the Modern Philosophy of Descartes and Kant, alienated from the patrimony of Christian Philosophy, Guentherism taught that the dogmas of faith are infallibly true, indeed, but only with a relative truth: relative to the progress reached by science and philosophy at the time of the dogmatic definition. As this progress advances, the articles and dogmas of faith must be re-interpreted accordingly. Definitions and formulations of faith, the best possible when the Church first stated them, become outmoded with the passage of time, and quite simply must be replaced. Thus the dogmas develop intrinsically, just as science and philosophy do. There is no absolute truth in the Catholic Fact, but only a relative truth, always more perfectible.

This is so because the idea of Revelation itself is changed: the object of Revelation is not a locutio Dei, a Word of God communicated in human discourse by a Church sent to teach. The problem is in the First Article of the Creed, obscured by the characteristic influence of Modern Philosophy, casting a shadow of eclipse over the transcendent personal God of creation. Thus Giordano Bruno was correct when he selected as his motto, veritas filia temporis. Faith is rooted in religious experience rather than in the Evangelization and Catechetics of the teaching Church. And the Hegelian dialectic with its historicism, its outmoding of the past, is accepted as the norm of Christian thinking.145

The second moment emerges after Vatican I, from the Encyclical of Leo XIII, Providentissimus Deus (1898), to the firm actions of Pope St. Pius X in 1908, when Fathers Loisy and Tyrrell were excommunicated. They stood at the head of a current of priestly thought located this time primarily in France, Italy and England. From the philosophical point of view, it represents simply an adaptation of Guentherism, and its translation into the other languages which are concerned.

The third moment surfaced shortly after Vatican II, and was identified officially by Pope Paul VI in Petrum et Paulum Apostolos (Feb. 22, 1967), the document which announced the Year of Faith and explained the reason for it: the doctrinal aberrations that result from the continuing advocacy of the characteristic philosophical positions of the older Modern period. Again from the viewpoint of philosophical analysis, this third moment represents nothing new, and is best understood as an organized popularization of Guentherism and the “Modernism” of the opening years of the present century.146

Victory over Modernism

In the light of the foregoing considerations, the intellectual victory over Modernism is not difficult to accomplish, whether in personal thought or in ecclesiastical teaching. For this victory does indeed have these two aspects. The first is the result of personal thinking in the new post-modern position, done in the context of the philosophy of history. For it is quite easy to recognize the dated character of Modernist philosophical thinking, and to see that it has been growing intellectually ever more moribund in the years since 1893, 1908 and 1914. This is clear from the viewpoint of God the Father, Creator of heaven and earth, when the discoveries of 20th century science are recognized and duly considered.147 It is equally clear from the viewpoint of God the Son, the incarnate Lord of human history, when the philosophy of history is liberated from the Voltairean pattern and allowed to open once again to the prophetic word. And it is not unclear from the viewpoint of God the Holy Spirit, who raises and sustains the Catholic Church as a fact standing in history, quite luminous and visible in the late 20th century as a great sign in the realm of the human values. In each of the three instances, the philosophy of history is renewed and restored, achieving contact once again with Him who is the Lord of history.

The second aspect of the victory is a social one within the Catholic Church itself. For just as Modernism fastens its grip upon the internal life of the Church chiefly by forcing its ideas in philosophy to prevail in the training of young men for the priesthood, and now also in training for the Ministry of the Word among Religious Sisters and professional religious educators generally, so the victory over Modernism results from post-modern thinking in the design of philosophical curricula, syllabi and courses of study, thinking which implements the Optatam totius of Vatican II.

The key to this is the recognition that the contemporary renewal of philosophy in the Church has been post-modern since its inception in Vatican I and the Aeterni Patris of Leo XIII.148 When the study of philosophy becomes truly post-modern, candidates for the priesthood and catechists preparing for the priesthood and catechists preparing for the Ministry of the Word will study philosophy of the right kind, metaphysically open to objective reality, to the transcendent God of Creation, and to the spirituality of the human soul. And the mode will be that of the philosophy of history, not that of the history of philosophy.149

For the older Modernist approach, teaching philosophy as a history of philosophy whereby truth in philosophy is presented naively and simplistically as the result of a time-line emptying into the Modern Age as such, and ending with a “philosophy” that is no longer distinct from the positive sciences, will be left behind as outmoded in the post-modern situation. No longer will young men be forced to go from Kant, Comte, Hegel and Marx to the study of theology. On the contrary, when the design of the syllabus for philosophy and the mode of didactic presentation are properly those of the liberated Christian philosophy of history, then the relativism and immanentism of Modern Philosophy will be seen in the full context of the construct “Modern,” and evaluated from a superior position in metaphysics, open and free, aware that it is an autonomous and distinct science with its own proper object and method.

Apostasy Within

There is a further aspect of Modernism which must be faced if this kind of philosophical analysis is to be comprehensive in its logic. If Modern Philosophy, as such, in its Cartesian, Spinozan, Kantian and Hegelian metaphysics of closure to the God of Revelation, becomes visible as the fact of a great historical Apostasy from God, then Modernism stands revealed as the introduction of this same Apostasy inside the Catholic Church, causing it to course within the arteries by which she lives as an Institution sent and commissioned to teach the deposit of the Faith.150

The implications are immense, and quite obvious: Modernism, true to its nature as Gnosticism reborn, is a betrayal of Jesus Christ, both in general, and in particular as the Divine Teacher of mankind. It represents in contemporary history what can well be termed the ripening Judas-phenomenon operating with the priesthood.151

This is the special significance of the sacerdotal revolt against the effort of the Church toward philosophical renewal, already noted in connection with the Juvisy Conference in 1933. It was a small fissure at that time, but it continued opening ever wider in the teaching program of the Church as the Twentieth Century proceeded, until in the years after Vatican II had reached the proportions of a flood. But this too has its own intelligibility when viewed from the intellectual vantage point of a liberated, post-modern philosophy of history.

A Dated Approach

Modernism, to summarize, when subjected to philosophical analysis in the context of the philosophy of history, becomes visible as a dated and historically provincial approach in religious thought. It depends for its very being upon the philosophizing that characterized the Modern Age from Petrarch through Voltaire, Comte and Hegel, marx and Lenin, to Bergson with his disciple Teilhard de Chardin and to Nietzsche with his disciple Heidegger. Intellectually it belongs to the Nineteenth Century. It too ended in the disruptive carnage of the First World War. Its basic intellectual positions were elaborated in its first two phases or moments, indeed in the first one. The current third moment is a light and superficial popularization of those older views, often in more or less secret collusion with the network of cells that props up the intellectual dead horse of Marxism and makes its legs seem to move.152

Victory over this historically dated and philosophically parochial approach in religion results from the advent of post-modern empirical positions in science and post-modern thinking in philosophy, the kind of thinking for which the Church has been calling consistently from Vatican I through Vatican II to the present.

It is a salutary victory. It saves souls. For it preserves in the concluding years of the Twentieth Century that “religious way of thinking” which is an integral part of persevering loyalty to Him who is the Lord of history.

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