A Few Years Ago a Cambridge Don Described an Altercation Be- Tween

THE MODERNIST CRISIS HALF A CENTURY LATER A few years ago a Cambridge don described an altercation between two knife-wielding English youth gangs wherein one of the participants objected to a bystander, "Don't call them Teddy boys, guv'ner; they was Modernists."1 This incident is recalled here not to suggest that the Modernist crisis in the Church had quite those sanguinary potentialities. It is rather to indicate at least briefly how the word, in the sense attributed to it by theologians and historians, is rather closely confined to those two groups of specialists. Ask any even well-informed Catholic about Modernism or Loisy today and you are rather likely to be met by the same kind of stare of incom- prehension that a reference to Priscillianism or to Paul of Samosata would occasion. Yet, in its day, and that day was little more than fifty years ago, Modernism was considered the gravest of crises for the Church, while Alfred Loisy, regarded at the beginning of the twentieth century as the Modernist par excellence, died as recently as the Second World War, in 1940 to be exact. Even within a few years of the condemnation of 19072 and the counter-Modernist oath of 1910,3 the movement as a movement was for all practical purposes moribund, despite the over-reactionist worries of some individuals and some groups which saw Modernism anywhere and everywhere for some time yet to come. The First World War and its ensuing problems all but pushed Modernism into the limbo between history and current events. Despite Riviere's 1 A. Vidler, The Church in an Age of Revolution: 1789 to the Present Day (Hammondsworth, England, 1961), 178. 2 Decretum Sancti Officii, "Lamentabili," July 3, 1907, ASS, 40 (1907), 470 ff and H Denzinger, S.J. and A. Schonmetzer, S J., Enchiridion Symbolorum, Editio 32 (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1963), nn. 3401-3466. This latter collection will hereinafter be referred to simply by letters and numbers as follows, e.g., DS 3401-3466. Litterae Encyclicae, "Pascendi dominici gregis," September 8, 1907, ASS, 40 (1907), 596 ff. and DS 3475-3500. 3 Litterae motu proprio, "Sacrorum antistites," Sept. 1, 1910, AAS 2 (1910), 669 ff. and DS 3537-3550. SI 52 The Modernist Crisis Half a Century Later basic work on the movement, published in the 1920s,4 it is only recently, within the past ten years, that scholarship, both historical and theological, has begun to engage in a serious re-examination of the phenomenon and its protagonists. The nature of this paper will preclude, of course, any extended treatment in depth of Modernism. It hopes, rather, to present from a historical point of view, first, some of the background to the movement, without which much of what happened is, and remains, un- intelligible. Secondly, moving to more recent times, the paper will discuss some of the present scholarly work being done, and suggest possible avenues of future research. In between, there will be a brief sketch of the crisis itself and of some reactions to it. This will be brief because some familiarity with those incidents can surely be assumed here. Such background information and such continued research are necessary as an antecedent to a definitive and complete study of Modernism, and though serious theological endeavor is much needed as part of this research, it will be of lasting value only insofar as it is preceded or at least accompanied by truly adequate historical studies. Otherwise it will be an exercise of speculation in a vacuum. Though the French Revolution and its accompanying upheavals did not leave a complete void in the intellectual life of the Church nonetheless the widespread lack of serious scholarship on every level m early and mid-nineteenth century Catholicism is a phenomenon remarked on by almost every historian who writes on the period 5 The eighteenth century intellectual vitality of the Church, especially m theology, had not been of the highest in any case, and the Revo- lution compounded the problem for the nineteenth century by de- stroying on the continent much of the institutional structure of the Church, a structure which might perhaps have provided a place of nurture for a revival of theology after the storm. The Catholicism of the English speaking lands, on the other hand, was leading at best a * J. Rivière, Le modernisme dans l'église (Paris, 1929) T i«fl! f0r example}W0, °f the î>est volumes of church history on that period- r nna re 1789 1846 and de Pu Tx fl8^78 18 rT < - > R- Aubert, Le pontificat depuisÂll les originesy. ?- ™)jusqu'à- The nosy arjourse volume (Paris)s 2. 0 and 21 in the Histoire de l'église 59 The Modernist Crisis Half a Century Later precarious existence with no time, energy, inclination or capability for sustained and organized study. The Church, just as Abbé Sieyès, who answered when asked what he had been doing during the Revo- lution, "had survived," and it might from many points of view equally have counted itself fortunate to have done so. What was the Church like, especially in the country in which the Modernist crisis was to be most severe? Though the great French novelist, Stendhal, is hardly an unbiased witness, still it would do a world of good for any serious scholar of the immediately post-revo- lutionary clerical education to read in Le rouge et le noir the chapters on the incredible rigorism on the one hand and the rampant time-serving hypocrisy on the other hand at the seminary in which the hero of the novel, Julien Sorel, lived for some time.® The picture is surely exaggerated in detail, but not in substance. As for the intellectual training of ecclesiastics, the attractions of Lamennais, of traditionalism, of fideism, to many a spirit are not hard to under- stand as a reaction when we learn, to cite but one instance from a restoration seminary syllabus, that even for the best of minor seminaries philosophy was to proceed from consequence to consequence, from the first principle of reasoning and from certitude, all the way to the Christian religion, all the way to the Catholic Church, and [the teachers are] properly to convince [the students] that it is not possible to reason consistently without arriving at this last term of all the investigations of a man of good will.7 Even thirty years later, in the 1850s, in a textbook of philosophy widely used in colleges and seminaries then and for many years after this date, we learn that everywhere there has been a rank growth of sophists who in ordinary discourse and in their writings try in a mad fury to blot out every notion of the true and the honorable, and to tear down every principle of faith and morals. Heedless youth are often deceived by 'their philosophy and empty « Cf. Stendahl, The Red and the Black, Trans, by C. Tergie (New York, 1961), 157-191. These are chapters 25 through 29. 7 Archives of the Paris Province of the Society of Jesus/2220, N. Loriquet, S.J., Annales du petit-séminaire de St. Acheul (Manuscript copy), 817. 54 The Modernist Crisis Half a Century Later fallacies, drawn from human tradition and from worldly principles, and not from Christ' (Colossians 2:8). Against such a terrible infection, spreading wider every day, the most effective antidote is the study of philosophy as usually taught in Christian schools. Experience proves that they who are versed in this subject are not easily deceived, and that, habit- uated to accurate rules of reasoning, they know how to detect the teachings of an adulterine philosophy, overcome the wicked enemies of religion and refute their godless systems.8 As with philosophy, so too with theology, the aim was for a long time almost exclusively apologetic; the courses were most often very rationalistically orientated, and the carrying out of such a program was sometimes rather incoherent. Again, one brief example will have to suffice here. In minor seminaries, Feller's Catéchisme philosophique was regularly used and, as the author said, "If in certain places it [seemed] too simple and too ordinary, it should be re- membered that it was a catechism; if in others it seemed too erudite, it should be realized that it was a philosophical catechism."9 But concurrently with this quite rationalistic text for students, to the teachers here and in major seminaries was recommended for their own class preparation and personal study a work such as Bergier's Dictionnaire théologique,10 This was also an eighteenth century work often reprinted in the first three-quarters of the nineteenth century, imbued with a theology of traditionalism and seemingly emphasizing a universal interior sentiment as the best proof for the 8 P. Fourner, S.J., Jnstitutiones philosophicae ad usum praelectionum in collegiis et seminariis (Paris, 18S4), 3-4. Cf. also the general study by L. Foucher, La philosophie catholique en France au XIXe siècle: Avant la renais- sance thomiste et dans ses rapports avec elle, 1810-1880 (Paris, 1955). The work deals at some length with the authoritarian current in Catholic philosophy in France during those years. 9 F.-X. Feller, Catéchisme philosophique, un reçeuil d'observations propres à défendre la religion chrétienne contre ses ennemis, Sth ed. (Paris et Lyon, 1821), I, S. The author had been a Jesuit before the suppression of the Society. The first edition of the book was published in 1772 at Liege with the author listed as Fierier de Reval, an anagram of Feller's name.

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