The Pope’s Interdict Against Modernism
The pope has issued a further interdict condemning those who will not accept his Encyclical on Modernism. He earnestly exhorts those in official positions in congregations and seminaries that should they find any employees in these institutions who are “imbued with the errors of the modernists, and eager for what is new and noxious, or lacking in docility to the prescriptions of the Apostolic See, no matter how they may be published, let them absolutely forbid the teaching office to such; so, too, let them exclude from sacred orders those young men who give the faintest reason for doubt that they hold the condemned doctrines and the pernicious novelties.” He exhorts them also to “take diligent care to put an end to those books and other writings now growing exceedingly numerous which contain opinions or tendencies of the kind condemned in the encyclical letters and decree above mentioned; let them see to it that these publications are removed from Catholic publishing houses, and especially from the hands of students and the clergy.” Surely this is sweeping enough to suit the most orthodox.