Pius X to Francis: From Modernism Expelled to Modernism Enthroned

Modernism was a loosely-defined set of tendencies and views, a method and a mentality, that criss-crossed the Catholic intelligentsia of Europe at the end of the nineteenth and the start of the twentieth centuries, casting a long shadow for many decades to come. The Modernists maintained that Christianity must be reinterpreted in accordance with the (real or perceived) discoveries and needs of the modern age. This, in turn, implies that Christianity is not a religion revealed by God but a product of human minds cogitating on divine subjects, and therefore mirroring the evolution and vicissitudes of human thought and experience. For the Modernist, religion is an organized social expression of personal, immanent, subjective experiences of the divine. Doctrinal formulations, moral standards, acts of worship, all of these emerge from, correspond to, and follow the lead of an inner exigency or urge of the human spirit called the “religious sense.” If we wish to understand Pope Francis and the direction in which he has tried to lead the Church, it is not enough to look at Argentina, or the Jesuits, or the Second Vatican Council. We must step further back and take into view the guiding principles of Modernism, which have morphed into the assumed postconciliar background and the operative framework of the progressivists. This lecture was given in Sacramento on April 29, 2022. The text is published in my book "The Road from Hyperpapalism to Catholicism: Rethinking the Papacy in a Time of Ecclesial Disintegration" (Arouca Press, 2022), as chapter 62 of volume 2.