Modernist Crisis

Denotes modernist crisis a crisis of values affecting the Catholic societies in the early ^twentieth century. In the direction Catholic .

The modernist crisis poses to the contemporary look with hindsight of history several questions:

• the modernist crisis that shook the Christian is it still relevant?
• Is it still likely to bear lessons that could be called political or geopolitical in a time when we talk about a revival of religion ?
• she has reached that Christianity ?

• Color key:

The modernist crisis is it still relevant?

Political background

The modernist crisis is set in the upheaval through Europe in the nineteenth ^century and early ^twentieth century.

Under the pressure of the Spring of Nations in 1848 , Italy and united itself into the Kingdom. The Pope is deprived of his state and his temporal sovereignty following the Risorgimento. But it is mainly between the 1870 war and that of 1914 that the modernist crisis develops. It is a time of tension between the three European empires. In this period, the Holy See is suspected of a particular inclination for the Austro-Hungarian Empire , the authoritarian regime imbued Catholicism while the Kulturkampf in Germany wins.

The Holy See seeks to restore its position in societies where rising anticlericalism and secularism. In the middle of the period, Pope Leo XIII task of organizing relations between the Church and States with a series of encyclicals that it recognizes the government in place (Sapientiae Christianae, 1890 ) but not without asserted his authority over those governments (Diuturnum illud, 1881 ) and the independence of the Church (Immortale Dei, 1885 ). Following the Rally tempted by Leo XIII in Belgium and France (with Albert de Mun ) to create religious parties and Catholic republicans, who will be a failure.

Pius IX strengthens the congregation of the Index which will play a large role in the fight against liberalism and modernism.

From a theological

The dynamic activity of exegetes Protestants no longer consider the Gospels as a single text nor as a historical testimony. The quest for the historical Jesus lead some of them to wonder about whether the divinity of Jesus should be taken literally or whether it should be returned to its symbolic dimension.

The publication of the essay on the Origin of Species ( 1859 ) by Charles Darwin cleaves the European intelligentsia and even the world and ruin theory of creationism. Again in 1911 , Pierre Teilhard de Chardin is welcomed to the United States as "the Jesuit said that man descended from monkeys" and a cabal follows.

No product of the modern mind can not avoid provoking resistance of Churches:

• the democracy in political ,
• the liberalism and socialism in the economy ,
• scientific rationality and technical
• and freedom in culture.

Reading the Bible in Europe in the nineteenth ^century

The quarrel is poorly understood at the bottom if we do not take into account the evolution of reading the Bible in the nineteenth century and early development of research on the Pentateuch. These beginnings are evidenced in part by the release of the documentary hypothesis of Julius Wellhausen and, secondly, by a series of works grouped under the name of Quests for the historical Jesus coming as a side effect of many works opened at ^eighteenth century on the synoptic problem. The nineteenth ^century also saw the emergence of High ecclesiastical studies. In France, in 1806, Imperial College has six faculties of Theology . The papacy denied canonical recognition that education is controlled by the state.

Two paradigmatic cases

Although the modernist crisis or a European scale, the modernist crisis is often seen by the Vatican as an evil French. The case study of two French scientists and theologians is emblematic.

The case Loisy, detonator

Facts

The modernist crisis can not be understood without a summary of the case Loisy whose presentation will be made in the article dedicated to this author. It begins as a farce a bit how it narrated by Milan Kundera in The Misunderstanding.

Alfred Loisy, a former professor of exegesis at the Catholic Institute of Paris driven from his pulpit for his liberal ideas, see his nomination to the episcopate supported by the Prince of Monaco.

Following a European tour of conferences that will result in the publication of a book, The Essence of Christianity , Adolf von Harnack , a professor at the University of Tbingen , has a reputation that goes beyond the circle of educated German readers theology .. It is a publishing phenomenon: 75 000 copies sold in 1903 for 15 languages translated.

Books

Alfred Loisy replied in The Gospel and the Church, published in 1902. In his private correspondence, before the affair, addressing Houtin Albert , another modernist subsequently convicted, Alfred Loisy admits two objectives: the want to ridicule Professor Harnack and defense of the Catholic Church . , remains in the minds of everyone who is interested in the history of Christianity is only one sentence "Jesus announced the kingdom is the Church that came. "It is generally cited in support of a critical current of the current dogmatic and authoritarian as did Regis Debray in God, a route . In doing so, they are mistaken about the prospect of Loisy reinterpreting a sentence out of context. Once placed in context, the short sentence develops the position of Cardinal Ratzinger (now Benedict XVI ) in 2005) as expressed in his published work, as Prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith : the Church (Roman Catholic ) as a figure of the Kingdom.

Loisy recurrence barely a year later with a Little Book (1903) explain that just referred to the Gospel and the Church ... and accentuates the gap with the theology of the Catholic Church.

In his thesis , Emile Poulat indicates that the positions espoused by Loisy in his "little book", as the designated Loisy himself, rose in the catechisms from the period pre-concilaire one to which he defended his thesis. The reality is probably less euphoric than the Poulat said. Loisy If theses are shared by some Catholic theologians at the time of the Council (following the diary of Yves Congar ) ^{The condemnation of Loisy}

The answer to Loisy does not derive primarily from the Magisterium of the Catholic Church, but the philosopher Maurice Blondel that meets in 1904 The Gospel and the Church through history and dogma. Gaps philosophical exegesis which he denounced modern historicism, that is to say an excessive reliance on historical science that can be detected in the work of Loisy. Blondel but also recognizes the relevance of certain issues raised by Loisy, regretting the "extrinsic" or excessive separation between the supernatural and the natural order in the theology of his time, often impervious to questions posed by the historian the Bible.

In retrospect, one wonders why the condemnation of Loisy . Besides the political reasons mentioned in the chronology, it is criticized in the first two chapters of the Gospel and the Church:

1. to be reintroduced in the history of sacred history, in particular for making his humanity to Jesus and even his Judaism , against the wishes he supposes to A. von Harnack's Hellenize;
2. consider that faith, at least beliefs through which they expressed has changed between the time of Jesus' contemporaries, the post-Easter period of the Christological councils. In support of this thesis, it gives the many heresies that develop before anyone considering establishing an orthodoxy ,
3. to present briefly the theory of two sources at the origin of the Gospels Synoptic.

As it separates the historical Jesus the Christ of faith like David Friedrich Strauss and specificity Catholic , the dogma of its formulation it is quickly accused of challenging the authority of the Church (meaning interpretive monopoly claimed by the Catholic Church ). In this period of hatred forgotten , was accused of being crypto-Protestant.

Inevitably, this can only go wrong, which is a shame for a book that reveals above all a work of apologia for the institution as soon as we spent the first two chapters where he practices a synthesis of what knew in his day, of exegesis and historical criticism of the Gospels for the educated reader, passing on specialized issues (what can not fail to blame him too).

His detractors see a dogmatic where there are only of history: its judges routinely transpose claims historic doctrinal proposals, taking, in contrast, claims to conciliar historical events (Poulat). The mood of the ecclesiastical authorities is fairly well made in the following passage from an article by Arthur Loth in French Truth, cited by Poulat

"From this we would have to believe in the famous dualism and Elohistic johviste of Genesis and to abandon day-periods as well as solar days of creation , he would put the flood among the fables Chaldeo-Assyrian; could no longer say that the Pentateuch is of Moses , or the Psalms of David, but cons, we should admit two Isaiah, we should also hold for pious fiction books of Judith and Esther, and it does seem not serious if we do not appropriate the point that the book of Judges is after the captivity, he would no longer be allowed to adopt the agenda of the original gospels, and even before that Mark went first, he would admit a protvangliste unknown, it would be naive to continue believing in the authenticity of the verse of the three heavenly witnesses in John "

In 1907 , the encyclical Pascendi and Decree Lamentabili Sane Exitu modernists condemned the proposals in general but especially those of Loisy. In 1908 , the Holy Office excommunicate the latter based on a dossier of reports fed to show that Loisy want to ruin the Church Catholic.

Excluded fifteen years earlier (1893) of the Catholic Institute of Paris, Alfred Loisy was elected to the chair of Comparative History of Religions College de France , the same one that was founded in 1880 by Albert Reville which his son John Reville / A> had succeeded. At the time of its foundation, this chair was an ongoing concern, as evidenced in 1879 , the deliberations of the council of the city of Lyon for the establishment of a museum of Asian religions founded by Emile Guimet. The discussion reveals two opposing trends in the current secular , some are wondering whether to expend energy to expose a bygone era while others see the need to take into account the role of religion in civilization , and there a possibility to relativize Christianity.

The matter Lagrangian

The other case is symptomatic of the modernist crisis is a matter Lagrange ( 1855 - 1938 ). The Dominican Marie-Joseph Lagrange , founder of the Revue Biblique , some work will be banned from publication as suspects of " progressivism. "

But unlike Loisy, Lagrange developed its critical exegesis as part of the dogma and based on theology, rather than against it. Better theologian than many of his opponents, he could use the exegesis and theology at the service of one another. It was however included in the same distrust and experienced banned almost similar to those of Loisy. Lagrange was never able to publish his critique of the documentary theory of Julius Wellhausen. When he left the Bible school to preserve his work, which was never blacklisted, his work on the New Testament, especially his commentary on the Gospel of Mark, never saw the day .

Never formally convicted, but also never rehabilitated, Marie-Joseph Lagrange retained his loyalty to the Church, without renouncing his beliefs exegetical questioning received ideas and old habits. He waited in vain to once again be allowed to express them.

The ecclesiastical texts condemning modernism

As part of its fight against modernism, the Vatican has published several texts denouncing what is seen as a nuisance or a drift from its theological vision of exegetical research. The authors are most often a series of five documents for guidance, lessons or even coercive firm convictions.

Thus, during the pontificate of Pius IX , the papal bull Ineffabilis Deus of 1854 on the Immaculate Conception dogmatizes the original sin which cripples reason. Original sin had not previously been any dogmatization even if the doctrine of original sin was she a major influence. Ten years later, the publication of the Syllabus , accompanying the encyclical Quanta Cura , Pius IX, in which rebels against the freedom of science and philosophy in particular .

Under the pontificate of Pius X seems the decree Lamentabili exitu sane (July 4, 1907) which condemns the excesses of liberal Protestantism which Loisy did lead his exegesis. This syllabus is soon followed by the encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis (September 8, 1907) that outlines the attempts of biblical exegesis as anti-Catholic and led the advocates of modernism identifies as internal enemies . It also condemns the idea of equality of religions , equating modernism to Protestantism and the atheism . Finally, the motu proprio Prstantia Scripturae Sacr of November 18, 1907 added the penalty of excommunication against all alleged modernist .

Freedom of editing during the modernist crisis

Freedom of publishing during the modernist crisis was complete except for the Catholic publishers .

To see this, simply consult the bibliography of scholarly work as the Jesus of Charles Guignebert. The bibliography of the edition of 1933, as presented in the reissue of 1970, has 10 A5 pages of bibliography, the date of publication of books in a continuous stream ranges from 1863 to 1927. This dating of the first bibliography gives an idea of research time and composition of the book whose author was a professor of history of Christianity at the Sorbonne (Paris, France). The complementary bibliography for the 1938 edition includes publications from 1934 to Alfred Loisy , whose ordeal of excommunication is often presented as an example of the power of the Catholic Church on the university production. After his excommunication, Loisy was elected to the College of France , partly because of the highly innovative (for France) of his work and partly for political reasons which consist precisely to show that the Catholic Church does not act in research. Him, but all his colleagues excommunicated or banished (Dhorme, Battifol, etc..) Published a continuous stream. The complementary bibliography for 1970 edition, produced by P. Jay B. Demeret and J. Grousson adds much to the period following.
Overall, this bibliography covers books in 3 languages: two thirds for the good German, a handful (mainly Goguel, and Loisy Battifol but Dhorme and J. Lagrange, which shows the openness of Guignebert) for French and the rest in English.

In the same book Jesus, the footnotes are on page number in 1489 and 80% contain references to journal articles, 10% strip expressions Greek and 10% are sociological explanations. We can make the same comments on the book The Christ of the same author that it should be remembered that he claimed atheist.

Is it still likely to lessons?

Issues

Two conceptions of inspiration and revelation clash:

• one, which will be based on the progressive school of exegesis, said, with Thomas Aquinas , that man receives revelation in its own language and in the socio-historical context in which it operates and because of this, even the prophet reflected in these envelopes;
• another, that of Cardinal Louis Billot is that of biblical inerrancy : God is the author of Scripture, it does not contain errors . This view is the second intransigeantisme (the first was developed from the syllabus).

Meanwhile, two conceptions of history of religions also compete on a front that does not necessarily draw between religious and secular:

• History of Religions School, who practices a comparative structural. In this current are Alfaric Prosper and Salomon Reinach whose Orpheus provoked an outcry among his colleagues;
• the historical school, who also practices in the comparative mode but functional. It is not enough rituals and myths are similar for the same thing should be found where they met and braided. In this current congregate Guignebert Charles , Alfred Loisy and Maurice Goguel.

Though strongly opposed to Loisy, Marie-Joseph Lagrange in 1902 gave a series of lectures entitled the historical method and Biblical Criticism which will be assembled in 1903 in one volume. He describes the second method and thereby attracting the hostility of the Catholic hierarchy and the Jesuits.

The third issue of the conflict is in fact the principal. This is the question of authority : who will own authority on the history of the origins of Christianity? The Magisterium? The university represented by the researchers whether or not Catholic?

This issue is part of the traditional dialogue between faith and reason , which is grafted at the same time the thorny question of the evolution of life. The Catholic Church strongly supports the biblical inerrancy and the principle of the four senses of Scripture reading.

consequences

Evolution of the training of clerics

Establishment of research institutions

Creation of Audit Institutions

Formal institutions

The Catholic Church adopts to various institutions to reframe misconceptions. And the Pontifical Biblical Commission was created in 1902 , followed by the Pontifical Biblical Institute (1909) and the Pontifical Institute of Science.

An institution secret

Sodalitium Pianum also said the Pine Forest was a network of espionage and betrayal involving priests, religious and laity. Founded in 1909 by Umberto Benigni , prelate to antisemitism known which, once repudiated by Benedict XV , will turn to fascism. Sodalitium Pianum was dissolved in 1921 but it found traces of its financial year until 1946 .

The modernist crisis did she reached that Christianity?

Research on the origins of Christianity and other related disciplines has not stopped because of the publication of documents from the Vatican. With regard to language production, she left the repertoire of religious scholars to move to the concerns of researchers with the secular establishment as 1886 of ^the Fifth Section of the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (EPHE), but also with the creation of institutions such as the extension Circle Ernest Renan, founded in the early ^twentieth century by Paul Alphandry .

The modernist crisis is not confined to Christianity insofar as it is mainly the result of a growing epistemological and methodological sciences. It can be observed in the three monotheistic religions different methods of conflict resolution.

Christianity

In Catholicism

Initially, the answer is cautious, focused on repression consisting of the enactment of anti-modernist oath and the excommunication of Alfred Loisy and Ernest Renan. While the official theology of the Roman schools Thomism continues to profess a more systematic theologians and philosophers are trying to explore other avenues, not without attracting some convictions. In Saulchoir , led by Marie-Dominique Chenu , Dominicans trying to "make St. Thomas in the thirteenth ^century" in excess of the Baroque theology and admit that some claims modernists condemned at the time of Pius X was founded, in turn attracting the suspicion of the Roman authorities before these ideas can end up being debated during the Vatican II . At Fourviere , the Jesuits are exploring the path of the Church Fathers to show the legitimate plurality of theological approaches. This is the origin of the series " Christian Sources. "

In a second step, a skylight opens the possibility of a normal exegetical work with the encyclical of Pius XII, Divino Afflante Spiritu (September 30, 1943). But the " New Theology "French scares, Rome responded with different convictions about the encyclical Humani Generis. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange sees a resurgence of modernism while this was not the intention at all of these theologians, as will demonstrate their rehabilitation after the council. Indeed they sought to find a Christian tradition older than the official Thomists.

In May 1950, the "purge Fourviere " Under pressure from the Vatican the Superior General of the Company , the Jesuit Henri de Lubac , Gaston Fessard , Bouillard Henry , Pierre Ganne , Alexandre Durand and Emile Delaye are prohibited Learning Fourviere as in Catholic Schools.

In 1953, it was the turn of the Dominicans of Saulchoir : Marie-Dominique Chenu , Yves Congar , Henri Feret , Pierre-Henri Leger are doomed. Several of them were close to the worker-priests. Many of them are expert at the Council Vatican II , which marks the triumph of many of their positions. Danielou , Congar and de Lubac will be rewarded later by a cardinal's hat.

Catholic exegetes agree that freedom of working only be granted until the Constitution Dei Verbum, Vatican II's end. Henri de Lubac sj testifies in his diary of the Council that n 'will not take less than 5 versions to arrive at a text that would satisfy, the first draft referred to the situation before the crisis and it was rejected by a majority of 4 / 5.

In Protestantism

The Protestantism know a movement similar to that observed in Judaism: accentuation currents claiming Orthodox and liberal trends of development.

Orthodoxy

The Niagara Conference 1873 boasts five basic points that any review should be applied. The goal is to "withdraw at Yale and Chicago monopoly on interpretation" (in Beyond Fundamentalism). This current develops on a substrate of revenge nationalist southern states on the northern states during the defeat of the War of Secession.

Of these five basic points will be born the word fundamentalism a promising posterity.

• The Awakening
• Creating churches evangelicalism

Posterity

• the Bible Belt
• Movement Southern Baptist (Southern Baptist)
• the Chicago Conference ( 1967 )

Liberalism

• the synod of Reformed Churches, 1872
• the Liberal Protestantism

In Judaism

Studies on the Old Testament also affect the Judaism which reacts by multiplying his movements with a liberal movement represented by Moses Mendelsohn or Moses Montefiore , in the wake of assimilationism opposed by a movement claiming Orthodox. There is also a motion synthesis lies in the tradition but also to the conquests of Lights opened with the Haskalah. ^{In Islam}

People Modernists

The book New History of the Church mentions among others a part of the following persons:

France

• Brassac Augustine , St. Sulpice, condemned for its revision (1906) Handbook of Biblical Scripture during or for the use of major seminaries Sulpician Bacu Vigouroux and .
• Albert Condamin , Jesuit condemned for his critical translation of the Book of Isaiah. He had discovered the existence of a second collection, named for the second Isaiah.
• Edward Dhorme , Lagrange successor as director of the Ecole Biblique, a specialist Assyrian-Babylonian texts, the author of a study and comment Books of Samuel (1911) and a book on the language of Canaan (1951), d studies on biblical poetry. It will translate later, the Old Testament to the Pleiades , and prefer to leave himself the order Dominican.
• Marcel Hebert , (1851-1943), headmaster Fenelon, author of Essence of Catholicism (1907), where, in Kantian philosopher, he tried, too, with a reply to Harnack's interpretation of Catholic dogma in terms symbolo-fideists.
• Houtin Albert (1867-1926), author of Short History of Christianity, published in 1924. He had previously produced a book showing the appearance of the legendary origins of the Apostolic Church of France , especially the rebuttal testimony of a bishop saying the evangelization of Provence by Lazarus and his sisters Martha and Mary or yet the legend of Rene d'Angers.
• Lucien Laberthonniere , publication bans in 1913, put on the Index from April 5, 1906 for two books of religious philosophy Trials of 1903 and Christian Realism and idealism Greek .
• Jules Lemire , (1853-1928), priest and politician
• Dalmatia Sertillanges , renovator Dominican philosophy Thomist and creator of the Journal Thomist , exiled in 1924
• Joseph Turmel (1859-1943) historian of dogmas, author of a history of angels from the Treaty angelology of pseudo-Dionysius.

modernists argued, if their theses

• Henri Bremond (1865-1933), Jesuit, historian and literary critic, near George Tyrrell.
• Louis Duchesne , (1843 - 1922), French prelate, philologist and historian French, who was director of the French School in Rome and member of the French Academy. His Ancient History of the Church was placed on the Index in 1912 .
• Leonce de Grandmaison , (1868 - 1927), French Jesuit theologian and
• Lucien Lacroix , (1855 -1922), Bishop of Tarentaise, the "bishop of the modernists' .
• Maurice Le Sage d'Hulst of High Rock , (1841 - 1896), French prelate
• Eudoxus Irenaeus Mignot , (1842 - 1918), French prelate, bishop of Frejus and then archbishop of Albi, who supported Alfred Loisy .

accused of modernism without the support

• Maurice Blondel (1861-1949), philosopher, author of History and Dogma (1904) who explicitly opposed to the Gospel and the Church of Loisy.
• Marie-Joseph Lagrange (1855-1938), Catholic exegete and theologian, founder of the French Biblical and Archaeological School of Jerusalem and the Revue Biblique.
• Henri de Lubac , (1896-1991), Jesuit theologian , it is banned from teaching and his books are removed from schools and training institutes. It will be restored by John XXIII who called as an expert at Vatican II and by John Paul II who made cardinal in 1983 .

Belgium

• Hippolyte Delehaye , Bollandist , author of Legends hagiographic (1903/1905).

Britain

• Friedrich von Hgel , (1852-1925), Catholic exegete and philosopher of great influence on the current modernism.
• George Tyrrell (1861-1909), an Anglican convert to Catholicism and became a Jesuit.
• Maude Petre (1863 - 1942), Catholic nun, author modernist previous close.

Italy

• Ernesto Buonaiuti , (1881-1946), Catholic priest, historian of Christianity, the religious philosopher and theologian, considered the figurehead of Italian modernism.
• Umberto Fracassini , (1862-1950), director of the seminary of Perugia, is involved in the renovation of biblical studies and religious historiography in Italy .
• Fogazzaro Antonio (1842-1911), writer and poet whose publication in 1905 of the novel Il Santo (The Saint) - which includes the theological problems raised by Loisy and Tyrell - has a strong international impact. This novel, called "Divine comedy of modernism" , is probably inspired by the mystic priest modernist Brizio Casciola (1871-1957).
• Genocchi Giovanni (1860-1926), biblical scholar, missionary of the Sacred Heart of Issoudun , influential person maintaining relationships in cultured circles of Europe and for the Curie .
• Minocchi Salvatore (1869-1943), professor of Hebrew at Florence, figurehead of the Italian Progressive exegesis, founder in 1901 of the journal Studi Religiosa that relays the work of Loisy and German critics, ushering in biblical studies Italy. The magazine was suspended in 1907. Minnocchi refuses to submit to anti-modernist decrees .
• Romolo Murri , (1870-1944), priest, founder of the Christian Democrats ;
• Giovanni Pioli , (1877-1969), Catholic priest, is the central religious liberalism
• Giovanni Semeria (1867-1931), priest Barnabite , writer, preacher and collaborator Minocchi, promoter of the intellectual development of the clergy and social action , closely linked to Von Hgel, it is considered by his opponents as the a leader of Italian modernism .

United States

• John Courtney Murray , (1904-1967), Jesuit theologian, a distinguished American scholar, best known for his efforts to reconcile Catholicism with religious pluralism, freedom of religion and politics. At the request of his ecclesiastical superiors, so Murray continues to teach and publish on religious freedom in 1954. He was finally invited as an expert from the second session of Vatican II in 1963.

References

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