The Modernist as Believer:
Individual Experience and Religious Certitude
14. Thus far, Venerable Brethren, of the Modernist considered as Philosopher. Now if we
proceed to consider him as Believer, seeking to know how the Believer, according to
Modernism, is differentiated from the Philosopher, it must be observed that although the
Philosopher recognises as the object of faith the divine reality, still this reality is not to be
found but in the heart of the Believer, as being an object of sentiment and affirmation; and
therefore confined within the sphere of phenomena; but as to whether it exists outside
that sentiment and affirmation is a matter which in no way concerns this Philosopher. For
the Modernist .Believer, on the contrary, it is an established and certain fact that the divine
reality does really exist in itself and quite independently of the person who believes in it. If
you ask on what foundation this assertion of the Believer rests, they answer: In the
experience of the individual. On this head the Modernists differ from the Rationalists only
to fall into the opinion of the Protestants and pseudo-mystics. This is their manner of
putting the question: In the religious sentiment one must recognise a kind of intuition of
the heart which puts man in immediate contact with the very reality of God, and infuses
such a persuasion of God's existence and His action both within and without man as to
excel greatly any scientific conviction. They assert, therefore, the existence of a real
experience, and one of a kind that surpasses all rational experience. If this experience is
denied by some, like the rationalists, it arises from the fact that such persons are
unwilling to put themselves in the moral state which is necessary to produce it. It is this
experience which, when a person acquires it, makes him properly and truly a believer.
How far off we are here from Catholic teaching we have already seen in the decree of the
Vatican Council. We shall see later how, with such theories, added to the other errors
already mentioned, the way is opened wide for atheism. Here it is well to note at once
that, given this doctrine of experience united with the other doctrine of symbolism, every
religion, even that of paganism, must be held to be true. What is to prevent such
experiences from being met within every religion? In fact that they are to be found is
asserted by not a few. And with what right will Modernists deny the truth of an experience
affirmed by a follower of Islam? With what right can they claim true experiences for
Catholics alone? Indeed Modernists do not deny but actually admit, some confusedly,
others in the most open manner, that all religions are true. That they cannot feel
otherwise is clear. For on what ground, according to their theories, could falsity be
predicated of any religion whatsoever? It must be certainly on one of these two: either on
account of the falsity of the religious sentiment or on account of the falsity of the formula
pronounced by the mind. Now the religious sentiment, although it may be more perfect or
less perfect, is always one and the same; and the intellectual formula, in order to be true,
has but to respond to the religious sentiment and to the Believer, whatever be the
intellectual capacity of the latter. In the conflict between different religions, the most that
Modernists can maintain is that the Catholic has more truth because it is more living and
that it deserves with more reason the name of Christian because it corresponds more
fully with the origins of Christianity. That these consequences flow from the premises will
not seem unnatural to anybody. But what is amazing is that there are Catholics and
priests who, We would fain believe, abhor such enormities yet act as if they fully approved
of them. For they heap such praise and bestow such public honour on the teachers of
these errors as to give rise to the belief that their admiration is not meant merely for the
persons, who are perhaps not devoid of a certain merit, but rather for the errors which
these persons openly profess and which they do all in their power to propagate.
Religious Experience and Tradition
15. But this doctrine of experience is also under another aspect entirely contrary to
Catholic truth. It is extended and applied to tradition, as hitherto understood by the
Church, and destroys it. By the Modernists, tradition is understood as a communication to
others, through preaching by means of the intellectual formula, of an original experience.
To this formula, in addition to its representative value, they attribute a species of
suggestive efficacy which acts both in the person who believes, to stimulate the religious
sentiment should it happen to have grown sluggish and to renew the experience once
acquired, and in those who do not yet believe, to awake for the first time the religious
sentiment in them and to produce the experience. In this way is religious experience
propagated among the peoples; and not merely among contemporaries by preaching,
but among future generations both by books and by oral transmission from one to
another. Sometimes this communication of religious experience takes root and thrives, at
other times it withers at once and dies. For the Modernists, to live is a proof of truth, since
for them life and truth are one and the same thing. Hence again it is given to us to infer
that all existing religions are equally true, for otherwise they would not live.
Faith and Science
16. Having reached this point, Venerable Brethren, we have sufficient material in hand to
enable us to see the relations which Modernists establish between faith and science,
including history also under the name of science. And in the first place it is to be held that
the object of the one is quite extraneous to and separate from the object of the other. For
faith occupies itself solely with something which science declares to be unknowable for
it. Hence each has a separate field assigned to it: science is entirely concerned with the
reality of phenomena, into which faith does not enter at all; faith on the contrary concerns
itself with the divine reality which is entirely unknown to science. Thus the conclusion is
reached that there can never be any dissension between faith and science, for if each
keeps on its own ground they can never meet and therefore never be in contradiction. And
if it be objected that in the visible world there are some things which appertain to faith,
such as the human life of Christ, the Modernists reply by denying this. For though such
things come within the category of phenomena, still in as far as they are lived by faith and
in the way already described have been by faith transfigured and disfigured, they have
been removed from the world of sense and translated to become material for the divine.
Hence should it be further asked whether Christ has wrought real miracles, and made
real prophecies, whether He rose truly from the dead and ascended into heaven, the
answer of agnostic science will be in the negative and the answer of faith in the
affirmative - yet there will not be, on that account, any conflict between them. For it will be
denied by the philosopher as philosopher, speaking to philosophers and considering
Christ only in His historical reality; and it will be affirmed by the speaker, speaking to
believers and considering the life of Christ as lived again by the faith and in the faith.
Faith Subject to Science
17. Yet, it would be a great mistake to suppose that, given these theories, one is
authorised to believe that faith and science are independent of one another. On the side
of science the independence is indeed complete, but it is quite different with regard to
faith, which is subject to science not on one but on three grounds. For in the first place it
must be observed that in every religious fact, when you take away the divine reality and
the experience of it which the believer possesses, everything else, and especially the
religious formulas of it, belongs to the sphere of phenomena and therefore falls under
the control of science. Let the believer leave the world if he will, but so long as he remains
in it he must continue, whether he like it or not, to be subject to the laws, the observation,
the judgments of science and of history. Further, when it is said that God is the object of
faith alone, the statement refers only to the divine reality not to the idea of God. The latter
also is subject to science which while it philosophises in what is called the logical order
soars also to the absolute and the ideal. It is therefore the right of philosophy and of
science to form conclusions concerning the idea of God, to direct it in its evolution and to
purify it of any extraneous elements which may become confused with it. Finally, man
does not suffer a dualism to exist in him, and the believer therefore feels within him an
impelling need so to harmonise faith with science, that it may never oppose the general
conception which science sets forth concerning the universe.
Thus it is evident that science is to be entirely independent of faith, while on the other
hand, and notwithstanding that they are supposed to be strangers to each other, faith is
made subject to science. All this, Venerable Brothers, is in formal opposition with the
teachings of Our Predecessor, Pius IX, where he lays it down that: In matters of religion it
is the duty of philosophy not to command but to serve, but not to prescribe what is to be
believed but to embrace what is to be believed with reasonable obedience, not to
scrutinise the depths of the mysteries of God but to venerate them devoutly and humbly.
The Modernists completely invert the parts, and to them may be applied the words of
another Predecessor of Ours, Gregory IX., addressed to some theologians of his time:
Some among you, inflated like bladders with the spirit of vanity strive by profane novelties
to cross the boundaries fixed by the Fathers, twisting the sense of the heavenly pages . .
.to the philosophical teaching of the rationals, not for the profit of their hearer but to make
a show of science . . . these, seduced by strange and eccentric doctrines, make the head
of the tail and force the queen to serve the servant.