Modernism Is a Sin

Mr Gaspers explains that modernism denies the existence of truth, thus denying Him who said, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life." (John 14:6)

From One Peter Five

By Matt Gaspers

What, then, is “faith” for the Modernist?

On his first day in office, in addition to signing a flurry of executive orders, President Joe Biden led a virtual swearing-in ceremony for “Day One Presidential Appointees,” that is, administrative staff for the White House and various governmental agencies.

A few minutes into his remarks, Biden told his new subordinates that “we owe your families, we owe your families, because those of you working in the White House, [and] those who will be working in other agencies, you’re gonna work like the devil [an interesting choice of words]. We all do. We put in long hours. And it shouldn’t be something that you should do unless you really care about it a great deal.”

He returned a few minutes later to this theme of needing to be passionate about their work:

So, you shouldn’t be doing this unless you feel it. I always say, a simple proposition: I trust people more who, the idea and the concern starts in their gut, goes to their heart, and is to be [sic] able to articulate it by a good brain, rather than the person who thinks of it intellectually but never feels it. The people you can count on are the ones that starts [sic] in the gut, works their [sic] way to the heart, and have the intellectual capacity to do what needs to be done.

Aside from noting his significant gaffes, the first thing that occurred to me upon hearing these words was, “Wow, spoken like a true Modernist.”

Let me explain.

Modernism, as Pope St. Pius X says in his Encyclical Pascendi Domini Gregis (1907), is “the synthesis of all heresies,” and it leads to “the destruction not of the Catholic religion alone but of all religion” (Pascendi, n. 39). The reason for its destructive power is that it attacks not this or that truth, but rather the nature of truth itself.

According to Modernism, truth is not something external to man (an objective reality to which the human intellect must conform); rather, it is immanent in man, something that mysteriously bubbles up from the depths of his subconscious, or “gut,” to quote Joe Biden. When this philosophical error is applied to religion, the result is that Catholicism — the unique deposit of divinely revealed truths — becomes merely one expression of the “religious sentiment” of believers (as St. Pius X calls it throughout Pascendi) who adhere to a particular tradition as a matter of cultural heritage or personal preference. And since cultures and preferences evolve over time, so should religious dogma.[1]

In this way, Modernists “pervert the eternal concept of truth” (Pascendi, n. 13) and relativize everything that falls outside the realm of empirical science (yet even there, they are prone to take certain liberties, e.g., pretending that biological males can somehow become females while retaining their Y chromosomes). In essence, the Modernist system is rooted in agnosticism, that is, skepticism regarding the ability of the human intellect to attain sure knowledge of immaterial things.

What, then, is “faith” for the Modernist? In short, it is a matter of feelings rather than objective certitude based on reason and revelation. As Joe Biden would say, it “starts in the gut,” whereas St. Thomas Aquinas rightly defines faith as “an act of the intellect assenting to the divine truth at the command of the will moved by the grace of God.”[2]

Those with eyes to see and hears to hear recognize that the Catholic Church has been in a state of grave crisis for several decades, now, following the close of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). What many fail to grasp, however — including the vast majority of the Church’s hierarchy — is that Modernism is at the root of the crisis, which is why they consistently fail to address it in any meaningful way. In light of this tragic reality, Kennedy Hall is to be commended all the more for writing this book, one which should be read by every Catholic of every rank and station.

Using St. Pius X’s Pascendi as his framework, Hall methodically explains the origins of Modernism, including all the major players (both philosophical and theological), and guides readers through the saintly Pontiff’s systematic refutation of Modernist errors and deceitful methods — the very same we see on display at every level of the Church today from those who subvert “the old theology” and seek to replace it with “a new theology which shall follow the vagaries of their philosophers” (Pascendi, n. 18).

Thankfully, after diagnosing the disease, St. Pius X also prescribed the remedies necessary to expel Modernism from the Mystical Body of Christ, which Hall discusses towards the end of this book. If I may be so bold, I would add that the ultimate remedy is contained in one simple phrase: return to Tradition — to that “which the Lord gave, was preached by the Apostles, and was preserved by the Fathers,” in the words of St. Athanasius (Four Letters to Serapion of Thmuis 1, 28).

On that note, I am reminded of what St. Pius X wrote to the French bishops of his day: “the true friends of the people are neither revolutionaries nor innovators: they are traditionalists” (Notre Charge Apostolique). By exposing Modernism and all its various facets, Kennedy Hall has proven himself a true friend of the people and a faithful son of the Church. May God reward his efforts by granting this book a wide readership, which it richly deserves.

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[1] This is precisely why St. Pius X prescribed the following in his Oath Against Modernism (1910): “I sincerely accept that the doctrine of the faith was handed down to us in the same sense and always with the same meaning from the Apostles through the orthodox Fathers; I therefore entirely reject the heretical theory of an evolution of the dogmas, namely, that they change from one meaning to another, different from the one that the Church previously held. I also condemn any error that substitutes for the divine legacy entrusted to the Spouse of Christ, to be faithfully guarded by her, a philosophical system or a creation of human reflection that gradually formed through human effort and is to be perfected in the future through unlimited progress.” (D.H. 3541).

[2] Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 2, a. 9, emphasis added. St. Pius X likewise emphasized in his Oath Against Modernism: “I hold with certainty and I sincerely confess that faith is not a blind inclination of religion welling up from the depths of the subconscious under the impulse of the heart and the inclination of a morally conditioned will but is a genuine assent of the intellect to a truth that is received from outside by hearing. In this assent, given on the authority of the all-truthful God, we hold to be true what has been said, attested to, and revealed by the personal God, our Creator and Lord.” (D.H. 3542).