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Editorial
Feeding the Lord’s flock
The title of this column is the English translation of the first words of the famous
Encyclical Letter of Pope St. Pius X, published on September 8, 1907. The Latin title is
Pascendi Gregis.
For those who are not familiar with the letter, it exposes the doctrine of false teachers within the Church and outside the Church who were called by the Pope “modernists.” That term can have many different meanings, as is obvious, but in Catholic theology it has a special meaning. To put it very bluntly: modernists are heretics. They come in many different shades; some are more dangerous to the faith than others.
Here are some of the characteristics of the modernist, but each trait does not necessarily apply to every modernist: 1) objective reality is not knowable, so we know only phenomena; this is called agnosticism; 2) our ideas about God, the supernatural, eternal salvation, etc. come from within ourselves—they are expressions of our religious sense—they do not correspond to anything objective; 3) faith is a subjective experience which is not based on objective reality; 4) the only certain knowledge is physical science so faith must be subject to science; 5) Catholic dogma gives expression to the religious sense and is open to constant change depending on the changes in culture; therefore dogmas can and do change with time—all is subject to evolution; 6) Jesus Christ was a mere man with a profound religious consciousness; he did not found a Church; the Church and the Sacraments were introduced some time after Jesus by his followers.
There is much more to it, but the points listed above give you the general drift of modernism as understood in Catholic theology. Pope Pius X called it “the synthesis of all heresies” in the sense that all the heresies of the past regarding the Trinity, Jesus Christ, the Church, the Sacraments, the Bible are held by one modernist or another.
In this issue of HPR you will find an article on this matter by John Young, whose writings have appeared here before. Mr. Young goes into more detail than I do here; he also shows how all the errors condemned explicitly by Pius X are still flourishing within the Catholic Church. They are found especially in universities, colleges, Catholic schools of all kinds, seminaries, publications, nor should we forget radio, TV programs and videos.
I just finished reading Pascendi again. The main thing that struck me was how the very same errors that were described and condemned by Pius X are so current in the Church right now. Most of them are promoted under different names or labels (e.g., Biblical Scholarship, New Theology, consequentialism or proportionalism in moral theology, Religious Education, etc.), but the errors are just as destructive of faith now as they were a hundred years ago. The culprits are the same: certain scholars, professors, journalists, editors and bureaucrats on all levels.
St. Pius X did not just complain about the errors—he did something about them. He ordered that scholastic philosophy as represented by St. Thomas Aquinas be brought back; he ordered bishops to root out all modernists in their dioceses and to give the offenders the lowest positions in the diocese; he ordered vigilance over publications; he forbade congresses of priests unless they were under the control of the bishop; he ordered each bishop to establish a “Council of Vigilance” to oversee the enforcement of the directives. This saintly Pope meant business.
In the confused world of today it would be very helpful to have a new encyclical like Pascendi which would spell out the major errors of the day and direct bishops and major religious Superiors to do their duty to protect the Lord’s flock from the theological, clerical and journalistic wolves.
Kenneth Baker, S.J., Editor
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