The Modernist Movement by F. M. W.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 20, 1911

The Modernist Movement

By F. M. W.

By this term is characterized the liberal movement which has arisen in the church of Rome during the last few years. While professing loyalty to the Catholic Church, some have felt that greater liberality in historical and scientific research should be permitted, and that the church of Rome should adapt itself and its methods and educational systems to the growing liberal spirit of the age. This movement has not been an open revolt against the church, but has claimed as its purpose an effort to better conditions within the church itself. It has, however, evidently been regarded by the Pope of Rome and his advisers as a covert and insidious attack against the authority of the church, and one which, if allowed to continue, would work incalculable harm.

The attitude of the Vatican has been made known by repeated encyclicals against the movement; and church officials in every part of the world have been instructed to use their influence and authority to meet the influence of this new teaching. Particularly has the Vatican felt concerned over Catholic institutions of learning. The priests and prelates of the church have been required to take a solemn oath abjuring the heresies of the modernists, and declaring their allegiance to the authority and doctrines of the Roman Church.

This antimodernist oath, according to the Berlin Vorwärts, as quoted in Current Literature for April, requires the subscriber to submit to the following conditions:—

I submit myself with all required reverence to, and concur with all my soul in, all the condemnations, declarations, and prescriptions contained in the encyclical Pascendi [the chief encyclical in the Pope’s antimodernist campaign] and in the decree Lamentabili, especially in regard to what is called the history of dogma. I also condemn the error of those who maintain that the belief held by the church may be at variance with history, and that the Catholic dogmas, as understood to-day, have no similarity with the authentic beginnings of the Christian religion. I condemn and repudiate also the opinion of those who believe that the personality of the Christian critic can be divided into two parts, and distinguish the believer from the historian. Finally, I avow that I am absolutely free from the error of those modernists who maintain that there is nothing godly in the sacred tradition, or, what is still worse, regard the godly in it in a pantheistic sense, so that all that remains is the pure and naked fact, observable similarly in other historical occurrences, that men carried on through later times, by their work, their skill, and their talent, the school begun by Christ and his apostles.

This requirement has brought much criticism upon the Vatican, particularly in Germany, where the action of the Pope has been criticized even by high

state officials. About two dozen priests in Germany have openly decided not to take this oath, and it is stated that in some of the seminaries for the training of priests, a number of the students have left the institutions, on the ground that the taking of the oath by their preceptors meant an infringement of their liberty as scientific theologians.

The controversy is one between the Papacy, unchanged from the period of the Middle Ages, and the free thought and investigation of the twentieth century. Human reason and judgment are required to be subordinated to church authority and domination. Here and there will be found one of sufficient independence of mind to assert his right to think and act for himself. The great majority, however, will doubtless bow in submission to the dictates of the Roman See. F. M. W.