16. Pascendi II: The Modernist Method, Agnosticism, and Immanence

The Sentinel's Voice

“For his invisible things, from the creation of the world are seen, being understood by those things that are made; his eternal power also and Divinity: so that they are inexcusable.”

— Romans 1:20, original Rheims New Testament (1582)¹

Meditation at the Wall

After establishing his duty to guard the Deposit, Pope St. Pius X explains how he will uncover Modernism. Its doctrines are commonly presented in a scattered and disjointed manner. He therefore gathers them, shows their interconnection, traces them to their sources, and only then prescribes remedies.

This method is essential. An ambiguous statement considered alone can be excused, softened, or interpreted in several ways. A repeated pattern governed by the same principle reveals more. St. Pius X does not construct the system by guessing at motives; he places the Modernists' philosophical, theological, historical, critical, apologetic, and reforming principles beside one another and follows their consequences.

He begins with philosophy because the first corruption concerns what reason can know. Modernist agnosticism confines reason to appearances and excludes its ascent from created things to God. Once natural theology, motives of credibility, and external revelation have been removed, religion must be explained from within man. The system then turns to vital immanence: a need for the divine, an interior sense, and a religious consciousness treated as the beginning of faith and revelation.

The Catholic order is the reverse. God exists independently of human consciousness. Created things manifest Him to natural reason. God can reveal objective truth and confirm that revelation by external signs. Faith is man's supernatural assent to God revealing, not the elevation of an obscure interior need into divine authority.

The Church's Witness

The Scattered Doctrines Form a System

“It is one of the cleverest devices of the Modernists (as they are commonly and rightly called) to present their doctrines without order and systematic arrangement, in a scattered and disjointed manner, so as to make it appear as if their minds were in doubt or hesitation, whereas in reality they are quite fixed and steadfast.”

— Pope St. Pius X, Pascendi Dominici Gregis²

“For this reason it will be of advantage, Venerable Brethren, to bring their teachings together here into one group, and to point out their interconnection, and thus to pass to an examination of the sources of the errors, and to prescribe remedies for averting the evil results.”

— Pascendi Dominici Gregis²

The Pope does not answer isolated phrases with isolated phrases. He identifies the principle joining them. The pilgrim should learn the same sobriety: neither condemn an expression without context nor ignore a coherent pattern merely because each fragment can be made to sound harmless.

The Modernist's Manifold Roles

“To proceed in an orderly manner in this somewhat abstruse subject, it must first of all be noted that the Modernist sustains and includes within himself a manifold personality; he is a philosopher, a believer, a theologian, an historian, a critic, an apologist, a reformer. These roles must be clearly distinguished one from another by all who would accurately understand their system and thoroughly grasp the principles and the outcome of their doctrines.”

— Pascendi Dominici Gregis³

The same governing principles appear under different professional or religious roles. A proposition may therefore sound different in philosophy, history, apologetics, or pastoral reform while serving one system.

Agnosticism as the Philosophical Foundation

“We begin, then, with the philosopher. Modernists place the foundation of religious philosophy in that doctrine which is commonly called Agnosticism. According to this teaching human reason is confined entirely within the field of phenomena, that is to say, to things that appear, and in the manner in which they appear: it has neither the right nor the power to overstep these limits.”

— Pascendi Dominici Gregis³

“Hence it is incapable of lifting itself up to God, and of recognising His existence, even by means of visible things. From this it is inferred that God can never be the direct object of science, and that, as regards history, He must not be considered as an historical subject.”

— Pascendi Dominici Gregis³

This contradicts the natural knowability of God solemnly taught by the First Vatican Council. The Catholic Church does not claim that unaided reason comprehends the divine essence or attains supernatural faith. She teaches that human reason can know with certainty from created things that the one true God exists.

What Agnosticism Sweeps Aside

“Given these premises, every one will at once perceive what becomes of Natural Theology, of the motives of credibility, of external revelation. The Modernists simply sweep them entirely aside.”

— Pascendi Dominici Gregis³

The restriction placed upon reason is not confined to a classroom theory. It removes the rational foundations by which man can know God from creation and recognize the divine credentials of revelation.

St. Pius X immediately sets the Vatican Council's condemnation against this principle:

“If anyone says that the one true God, our Creator and Lord, cannot be known with certainty by the natural light of human reason by means of the things that are made, let him be anathema.”

— First Vatican Council, Dei Filius, canon 1 on revelation, quoted in Pascendi Dominici Gregis³

He also recalls the condemnation of the claim that men should be drawn to faith only by personal internal experience or private inspiration rather than by credible external signs.

From Agnosticism to Immanence

“However, this Agnosticism is only the negative part of the system of the Modernists: the positive part consists in what they call vital immanence.”

— Pascendi Dominici Gregis⁴

“But when natural theology has been destroyed, and the road to revelation closed by the rejection of the arguments of credibility, and all external revelation absolutely denied, it is clear that this explanation will be sought in vain outside of man himself. It must, therefore, be looked for in man.”

— Pascendi Dominici Gregis⁴

The movement inward is not accidental. Once the system excludes the knowledge and revelation of God from without, it must manufacture an origin for religion within human life.

The Religious Sense

“Therefore, as God is the object of religion, we must conclude that faith, which is the basis and foundation of all religion, must consist in a certain interior sense, originating in a need of the divine.”

— Pascendi Dominici Gregis, explaining the Modernist system⁴

St. Pius X is describing the doctrine he will condemn, not teaching that Catholic faith arises from an interior sense. The distinction must remain visible whenever this passage is excerpted.

The system proceeds still further:

“It is this sense to which Modernists give the name of faith, and this is what they hold to be the beginning of religion.”

— Pascendi Dominici Gregis, explaining the Modernist system⁴

“It is thus that they make consciousness and revelation synonymous. From this they derive the law laid down as the universal standard, according to which religious consciousness is to be put on an equal footing with revelation, and that to it all must submit, even the supreme authority of the Church.”

— Pascendi Dominici Gregis, explaining the Modernist system⁵

The final consequence reveals the gravity of the first principle. If religious consciousness becomes revelation, objective revelation and ecclesiastical authority must submit to changing human consciousness.

The Error and Its Condemnation

Modernist agnosticism denies that reason can rise from visible creation to certain knowledge of God and removes external revelation and its rational signs from the field of knowledge. Vital immanence then seeks religion's explanation within human life, locating faith and revelation in a subjective religious sense.

The First Vatican Council condemns the agnostic premise. Catholic doctrine teaches both the natural knowability of God and the possibility and fittingness of supernatural revelation. Faith is not irrational feeling. It is a supernatural virtue by which the intellect, moved and assisted by grace, assents to what God reveals because of the authority of God Who can neither deceive nor be deceived.

The Catholic Truth Defended

God is prior to man's thought, experience, and need. He can be known with certainty from His works by natural reason, although supernatural revelation is necessary for man to know the mysteries hidden in God and to attain his supernatural end in the divinely appointed way.

Revelation comes from God to man. Its credibility is confirmed by external signs such as miracles and prophecies. Interior grace moves the soul to believe, but grace does not transform private feeling into revelation or make consciousness the judge of the Church.

This is why truth must never be allowed to become abstract. The objective revelation defended here is the word and work of the living God, fulfilled in Our Lord Jesus Christ and entrusted to His Church. The Catholic does not defend propositions separated from Christ; he defends the truth spoken by Christ so that souls may know, love, obey, and possess Him.

What the Pilgrim Must Do

• Learn the difference between natural knowledge of God, supernatural revelation, the motives of credibility, and the act of faith.
• Ask whether religious language begins with God revealing or with man experiencing.
• Refuse the claim that strong feeling, sincerity, or communal consciousness can determine revealed truth.
• Judge interior experiences by Catholic doctrine rather than revising doctrine to accommodate experience.
• Read ambiguous statements in their full context and examine whether they form a repeated system.
• Unite study to prayer and mortification so that knowledge produces fidelity rather than intellectual pride.

Feelings may accompany faith, but they neither create nor measure it. The pilgrim may experience dryness without losing faith and consolation without possessing holiness. His security rests in God Who reveals and cannot deceive.

The Watchman's Prayer

O God, Who hast made the created world bear witness to Thy power and hast spoken to us through Thy divine revelation, preserve my reason from proud unbelief and my heart from mistaking feeling for faith. Give me grace to assent humbly to Thy word, to recognize the signs by which Thou hast confirmed it, and to remain docile to the Church entrusted with its custody. Through the Immaculate Virgin Mary and Pope St. Pius X, keep me steadfast in objective truth and lead me through that truth to union with Thee. Amen.

Continue the Reading

Return first to Pascendi I: The Duty to Guard the Deposit. The next guided reading should continue with the Modernist account of faith, revelation, and religious experience; it will be published only after the next portion has been read and verified in full.

For a focused doctrinal treatment, continue to Religious Experience Is Not Revelation.

Sources and Editorial Notes

Footnotes

1. Sacred Scripture quotations are from The New Testament of Jesus Christ, Translated Faithfully into English, out of the Authentical Latin (Rheims: John Fogny, 1582), original translation with spelling modernized; typographical ampersands expanded and annotation markers omitted. ↩

2. Pope St. Pius X, encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis (8 September 1907), transition from the introduction to the analysis; Latin original in Acta Sanctae Sedis 40 (1907), p. 597; contemporary English translation in The Programme of Modernism: A Reply to the Encyclical of Pius X, Pascendi Dominici Gregis; with the Text of the Encyclical in an English Version (New York and London: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1908), pp. 153–154. The encyclical alone—not the accompanying Modernist reply—is cited as authority. ↩ ↩²

3. Pius X, Pascendi Dominici Gregis, opening analysis of the Modernist as philosopher and of agnosticism; Latin original in Acta Sanctae Sedis 40 (1907), pp. 597–599; English translation in The Programme of Modernism (1908), pp. 154–156. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

4. Pius X, Pascendi Dominici Gregis, analysis of vital immanence and the Modernist religious sense; Latin original in Acta Sanctae Sedis 40 (1907), pp. 599–601; English translation in The Programme of Modernism (1908), pp. 156–158. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

5. Pius X, Pascendi Dominici Gregis, analysis of consciousness and revelation; Latin original in Acta Sanctae Sedis 40 (1907), pp. 601–602; English translation in The Programme of Modernism (1908), pp. 158–159. The bracketed descriptive headings in the 1908 English edition were added for the reader's convenience and are not part of the original encyclical. ↩