page_title: Modernism in the Catholic Church
section_title: Pre-history: controversies under Pope Pius IX
hierarchical_section_title: Modernism in the Catholic Church / History of the Modernist Controversy / Pre-history: controversies under Pope Pius IX
caption_attribution_description: Taqbaylit: ..
context_page_description: In a historical perspective, Catholic Modernism is neither a system, school, or doctrine, but refers to a number of individual attempts to reconcile Roman Catholicism with modern culture; specifically an understanding of the Bible and Catholic tradition in light of modern mainstream conceptions of archeology, philology, the historical-critical method and new philosophical and political developments of the late 19th and early 20th centuries—and implicitly all that this might entail.
  The term came to prominence in Pope Pius X's 1907 encyclical Pascendi Dominici gregis, which synthesized and condemned modernism as embracing every heresy.
  Writing in the Catholic Encyclopedia in 1911, the Jesuit Arthur Vermeersch gave a definition of modernism in the perspective of the Roman Catholic heresiology of his time: "In general we may say that modernism aims at that radical transformation of human thought in relation to God, man, the world, and life, here and hereafter, which was prepared by Humanism and eighteenth-century philosophy, and solemnly promulgated at the French Revolution."
context_section_description: With notable exceptions like Richard Simon or the Bollandists, Catholic studies in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries tended to avoid the use of critical methodology because of its rationalist tendencies. Frequent political revolutions, bitter opposition of “liberalism” to the church, and the expulsion of religious orders from France and Germany, made the church understandably suspicious of the new intellectual currents.
  In 1863, Ernest Renan published Vie de Jésus (Life of Jesus). Renan had trained for the priesthood before choosing a secular career as a philologist and historian. His book described Jesus as "un homme incomparable", a man, no doubt extraordinary, but only a man. The book was very popular, but cost him his chair of Hebrew at the College de France. Among Renan's most controversial ideas was that "a miracle does not count as a historical event; people believing in a miracle does. Renan’s Jesus is a man of simple piety and almost unimaginable charisma whose main historical significance was his legion of followers.
  In the same year 1863, the church historian Ignaz von Döllinger invited about a 100 German theologians to meet at Munich (Münchener Gelehrtenversammlung, 1863) and to discuss the state of Catholic theology. In his address, “On the Past and Future of Catholic Theology”, Döllinger advocated for greater academic freedom of theology within the church. He formulated also a critique of neo-scholastic theology and championed the historical method in theology. Also in the year 1863, Döllinger's friend Charles de Montalembert gave his famous discourse at the Catholic Congress in Mechelen, favouring the freedom of religion and conscience.
  On 8 December 1864 Pope Pius IX issued the encyclical Quanta cura, decrying what he considered significant errors afflicting the modern age. It condemned certain propositions such as: "the people’s will, manifested by what is called public opinion..., constitutes a supreme law, free from all divine and human control"; on civil law alone depend all rights of parents over their children, and especially that of providing for education; and that religious orders have no legitimate reason for being permitted. Some of these condemnations were aimed at anticlerical governments in various European countries, which were in the process of secularizing education and taking over Catholic schools, as well as suppressing religious orders and confiscating their property. Attached to the encyclical was a "Syllabus of Errors" which had been condemned in previous papal documents, requiring recourse to the original statements to be understood. The Syllabus reacted not only on modern atheism, materialism, and agnosticism, but also on Liberal Catholicism and the new critical study of the Bible. It was also a direct reaction on Döllinger's speech in Munich and Montalembert's discourse at Mechelen. Among the propositions condemned in the Syllabus were:
  "7. The prophecies and miracles set forth and recorded in the Sacred Scriptures are the fiction of poets, and the mysteries of the Christian faith the result of philosophical investigations. In the books of the Old and the New Testament there are contained mythical inventions, and Jesus Christ is Himself a myth."
  "13. The method and principles by which the old scholastic doctors cultivated theology are no longer suitable to the demands of our times and to the progress of the sciences." — Letter to the Archbishop of Munich "Tuas libenter," Dec. 21, 1863.
  "15. Every man is free to embrace and profess the Religion he shall believe true, guided by the light of reason." — Apostolic Letter „Multiplices inter“, 10th June 1851. Allocution „Maxima quidem“, 9th June 1862.
  The First Vatican Council was held from December 1869 to October 1870.  The council provoked a degree of controversy even before it met. In anticipation that the subject of papal infallibility would be discussed, many bishops, especially in France and Germany, expressed the opinion that the time was "inopportune". Ignaz von Döllinger led a movement in Germany hostile to t
caption: Ernest Renan
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