Post by dontlikequitters on Mar 27, 2018 16:34:21 GMT
What did Pope Pius X mean when he called modernism”The Synthesis of all Heresies?
In his encyclical, Pascendi Dominici Gregis, St. Pope Pius X wrote a discourse exploring the entire scope of the Modernist philosophy. Pope Pius X said, “And now, can anybody who takes a survey of the whole system be surprised that we should define it as the synthesis of all heresies?” Also the Holy Father says that Modernists “lay the ax not to the branches and shoots, but to the very root, that is to the faith and its deepest fibers.”
Three main points accurately describe Modernist doctrine: 1.) philosophical agnosticism(Kant), 2.) vital immanence (Schleiermacher), and 3.) radical evolutionism.
The essential thing here is that Modernists–deny the faith. Their Philosophy on its foundation denies knowledge, the supernatural order, the stability of truth, the principle of non-contradiction, and the fundamentals of common sense. The evil resulting from this confusion of knowledge and faith, is a destruction of the soul.
Philosophical Agnosticism
Modernism’s “negative” aspect, the partisans of error deny sound epistemology. They opt to follow Kant, who produced a philosophy that rejects man’s ability to know and reduces all sense impressions to mere “phenomena,” whereas the “neumena” or the thing in itself, (or reality as it is) are ever elusive of our intellectual grasp. Once this sort of philosophy is introduced into Catholic theology – the faith cannot find understanding because the very criteria for so doing are rejected.[ BROTHER ANDRÉ MARIE, catholicism.org] Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher who is a central figure in modern philosophy. Kant argues that the human mind creates the structure of human experience, that reason is the source of morality. This philosophy renders Dogma meaningless, and makes it powerless to the Modernist system. If we are unable to know immutable truth, then revealed scripture as well as tradition is moot. All religion is reduced to a relativistic experience.
Vital Immanence
“Vital Immanence is the wholly psychological process of the human consciousness unfolding itself, which has not the remotest likeness to the presence of a transcendent reality abiding within us. God as transcendent is lost to sight; no room is left for any kind of revelation; God is the permanent possibility of progress, He is ever projected as the ideal in advance of each successive stage of evolution and changes as the advance proceeds. “(Immanence and Incarnation, p. 68) It is the final development of the Cartesian “turn to the subject.”
The agnostic man who calls himself a Christian believer is bound to ask certain questions. If the external criteria for faith are all useless, can man really come to believe? The Modernist can say yes, because of what is implicit in human nature itself. This would be called “immanence” by Kant and developed into “religious sentiment” by his disciple Schleiermacher. In the Modernist mind God is unknowable, and this religious sentiment which is intrinsically known to man, causes him to reach out to God. This seems to be the reason why the Modernist mind is so adverse to the Scholastic method. For Scholasticism rejects this so called intrinsic, a priori knowledge. The roots of Modernism can be seen in the pragmatism of the 19th century.
Radical Evolutionism
“The third plank in the Modernist platform is the radical evolutionism of Hegel, “the first great philosopher of history.”[15] Where Kant made all things static, Hegel introduced a dynamic element into his metaphysics (like Heraclitus). For Hegel, all things evolve in the dialectic of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. History, truth, thought, indeed all reality is explained by this principle. In the history of thought, the Hegelian dialectic gives rise to “Historical Consciousness,” an acute awareness of change as a constant, describing all reality as in continual development. It further produces “Historicism,” the theory in which general laws of historical development are the determinant of events. In this theory, all things are subject to progressive evolutionary processes.
Hegel’s evolutionary dialectic is adapted to Modernism in this wise. By vital immanence the mind of the believer asserts certain things to be true. Then, upon reflection, he states what he holds in “secondary formulae,” which we call dogmas. These become subject to a continued process of evolution. When the early Christians collectively asserted their faith, the Church, a democratic product of the “collective consciousness,” was born. Over time, the Church assumed to itself certain governing offices whose occupants asserted a divine authority to teach (the Magisterium). The Magisterium becomes the conservative element of the dialectic, a principle of stasis. It is the Hegelian thesis. Dialectically opposed to this is the progress of the laity, who assert, by their ever-developing “collective conscious,”[16] ideas which go beyond the static contents of the deposit of faith. This is the antithesis. The resulting change produced by the tension of these two elements is the Hegelian synthesis. “Thus the way is open to the intrinsic evolution of dogma. An immense collection of sophisms this, that ruins and destroys all religion.”[17] This is how the Modernist views the history of dogma. To the Modernist, this process, to which he will contribute, must ever continue.
This three-fold doctrine is so complete in its denials of faith and reason that there is literally no area of dogma which has not been poisoned by its wicked root.”[ BROTHER ANDRÉ MARIE, catholicism.org]
St. Pope Pius X declared Modernism the synthesis of all heresies, but there seems to be a diabolical force behind this heresy. 2 Thessalonians 2:7 speaks of the mystery of lawlessness which is already at work. we also know that “… we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in heavenly places. Therefore take the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.”(Ephesians 6:12-13, RSV)
[15] DVD of Lecture Three: “Two Modernists.”
[16] No. 23.
[17] No. 13.
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