Defending the Faith
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DEFENDING THE FAITH DEFENDING THE FAITH an anti-modernist anthology Edited and translated by William H. Marshner Introduction by C. J. T. Talar The Catholic University of America Press Washington, D.C. English translation copyright © 2017 The Catholic University of America Press All rights reserved The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standards for Information Science—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984. ∞ Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Marshner, William H., editor, translator. Title: Defending the faith : an anti-modernist anthology / edited and translated by William H. Marshner ; introduction by C.J.T. Talar. Description: Washington, D.C. : The Catholic University of America Press, [2016] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016042161 | ISBN 9780813228969 (pbk. : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Modernism (Christian theology)—Catholic Church. | Catholic Church. Pope (1903-1914 : Pius X). Pascendi Dominici gregis. | Catholic Church—History—20th century. | Catholic Church— Doctrine—History—20th century. | Modernist-fundamentalist controversy. Classification: LCC BX1396 .D44 2016 | DDC 273/.9—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016042161 To the historical Jesus, qui salvandos salvat gratis contents Editor’s Preface ix | Acknowledgments xi Introduction 1 C. J. T. Talar Part 1. Critical Responses to Alfred Loisy’s L’Évangile et l’Église . 1 “The Gospel and the Church” (1903) 27 Pierre Batiffol . 2 Review of Alfred Loisy, L’Évangile et l’Église (1903) 38 M.-J. Lagrange Part 2. Critical Responses to Alfred Loisy’s Autour d’un petit livre 3. “Jesus and Gospel Criticism”: Part 1 of “Autour des fondements de la foi” (1903) 73 M.-J. Lagrange . 4 “Jesus and the Church”: Part 2 of “Autour des fondements de la foi” (1903) 93 Pierre Batiffol 5. “Dogma and History”: Part 3 of “Autour des fondements de la foi” (1904) 121 Eugène Portalié vii viii Contents Part 3. Critical Responses to George Tyrrell . 6 “A New Catholic Manifesto of Agnosticism” (1903) 189 Eugène Franon . 7 “The Religious Philosophy of Fr. Tyrrell” (1906) 197 Eugène Franon Part 4. Critical Responses to Édouard Le Roy’s “Qu’est-ce qu’un dogme? ” . 8 “What Is a Dogma?” (1905) 213 Léonce de Grandmaison . 9 “An Anti-Intellectualist Scholastic” (1905) 242 Eugène Franon 10. “On the Moral Exposition of Dogmas” A Response to La Quinzaine (1905) 250 Eugène Portalié 11. “On the Nature of Dogma” (1905) 298 J. Wehrlé Bibliography 327 | Index of Biblical Verses 335 General Index 337 editor’s preface After three decades of teaching an occasional elective on the history and nature of Modernism, I became discontented with the one-sidedness of lit- erary fame. It has continued to cling to the pioneers accused of “Modern- ism,” especially Loisy and Tyrrell, but has largely slipped away from their scholarly critics, such as those whose contributions I have selected for this volume. (Many other critics were not at all scholarly, and they are deserv- edly forgotten.) But these, I think, still have something to say to us. They are not easy to pigeonhole. Lagrange was an historico-critical exe- gete, sharply dismissive of the “conservative” exegesis still practiced in most Catholic seminaries. Batiffol was a critical historian, as was Portalié, as was the latter’s fellow Jesuit Grandmaison. None was a professional scholastic philosopher; only Fr. Franon even taught philosophy. So none of them thought the Thomistic revival was the solution to all the church’s problems with what calls itself modern thought. And Wehrlé was even a disciple of the anti-Scholastic Blondel. Yet all of them rejected the Modernist initiatives. And they did so from the beginning, years before Pius X intervened. Why did they do so? I thought it was time the English-speaking reader should see for himself or herself. Is the history of the Modernist period being seen differently since Vati- can II? Then it is time for these pioneers of anti-Modernism to be seen dif- ferently, also. Seeing things differently is always a matter of putting them into a new context, in our case the context created by developments since the close of Vatican II. As to what this context is and demands, one can ix x Editor’s Preface hardly do better than ponder the survey presented by Pope John Paul II in his 1998 encyclical Fides et ratio. There in paragraphs 80 through 99, this Polish pope, who had been both a participant in Vatican II and a privileged witness to the entire post-Conciliar situation, renews the critique of relativ- ism, historicism, positivism, and pragmatism begun by the anti-Modernist pioneers excerpted in this volume. acknowledgments The maker of these selections has the following persons to thank. First of all, the historian Jean Rivière was the author who led me to Msgr. Batiffol, Fr. Portalié, Fr. Franon, and Fr. de Grandmaison, as the most competent critics of the Modernist movement (apart from the already famous bibli- cist M.-J. Lagrange). Second, Fr. C. J. T. Talar was kind enough to replace my own tentative introduction with his more professional, more compre- hensive one. I thank him for his labors. Third, the editors of the Catholic University of America Press have been uniformly supportive, especially the former acquisitions editor, Dr. James Kruggel. I confess also a personal in- debtedness to the many students at Christendom College who served as amanuenses on this project, as well as to my summer assistant, Ms. Lila Black. You are individually and collectively the sine quibus non. Besides these proximate debts, I think it would be churlish to pass over a more remote one. It is to the Baltimore City College that, despite its name, was (and is) a public high school. My professional life as an academic was made possible by a small group of language teachers who worked there fifty-five years ago. They gave me the French, German, and Latin that I have been using ever since, daily and avidly. The program in which they taught was politically incorrect in most ways. It was not co-ed; so it must have been sexist. It was an all college-prep program; so it must have been elitist. Therefore it no longer exists. But my gratitude does not fade, and when my own students hear about it, even the “millennials” share my sorrow at the destruction of what was once available as free public education in America. xi INTRODUCTION C. J. T. Talar “Modernism,” as applied to a series of reformist proposals within Roman Catholicism that roughly coincided with the period of the Belle Époque (1890–1914), is an outsider term. It was initially applied by persons alarmed at the directions such proposals were taking, and it was consecrated in 1907 in the condemnations issued by the Vatican in the forms of the syllabus Lamentabili sane exitu and the encyclical Pascendi dominici gregis.1 While surfacing in various regions of the Church, hopes for a rap- prochement between Catholicism and modernity were especially promi- nent in France. The encyclicalRerum novarum (1891) encouraged greater involvement on the part of Catholics, especially clergy, in social questions of the day. The following year, in an encyclical to the French,Au milieu des sollicitudes, Pope Leo XIII called on French Catholics to rally to the Republic, bolstering progressives’ hopes for a change in the Church’s stance toward democracy. These developments lent support to an intellectual ferment in French Catholicism, assuming prominence around the same time. Closely allied with non-Scholastic philosophies, it took the form of a call for a “new 1. The text of both syllabus and encyclical may be found inAll Things in Christ: Encyclical Let- ters and Selected Documents of Saint Pius X, ed. Vincent A. Yzermans (Westminster, Md.: Newman Press, 1954). 1 2 C. J. T. Talar apologetics” to engage minds shaped by modernity. The work of Maurice Blondel (1861–1949) became a rallying point for Catholics who wished to provide means for the Church to better communicate its message to the time.2 Apologetics could also assume a more historical form among those who labored to domesticate the applications of historical critical meth- ods, wresting those from nonconfessional and liberal Protestant biblical scholars to place them in service of a Catholic orthodoxy. Here both Al- fred Loisy (1857–1940) and Marie-Joseph Lagrange (1855–1938) became prominent practitioners.3 Critical methods also made their presence felt in Church history more broadly, especially in the contested area of Christian origins, and in specializations such as hagiography as practiced by the Bol- landists. Prominent here were Louis Duchesne (1843–1922), Pierre Batiffol (1861–1929), and Hippolyte Delehaye (1859–1941).4 Dogma was impact- ed, as well, and not only the historical development of dogma. The new movements in philosophy and in history placed the very nature of dogma under examination, as exemplified in the controversial article on dogma 2. On Blondel, see Oliva Blanchette, Maurice Blondel: A Philosophical Life (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2010). 3. A prolific writer in the areas of biblical exegesis and the history of religions, Loisy was no less so in the genre of autobiography; see his Choses passées (Paris: Émile Nourry, 1913); English transla- tion My Duel with the Vatican [1924], translated by Richard Wilson Boynton (New York: Green- wood Press, 1968); and Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire religieuse de notre temps, 3 vols. (Paris: Émile Nourry, 1930–31). Émile Goichot has provided a short biography in Alfred Loisy et ses amis (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 2002). On Lagrange, see Marie-Joseph Lagrange, OP, Le Père Lagrange: Au service de la bible; Souvenirs personnels (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1967); English translation Père Lagrange: Personal Reflections and Memoirs, trans.