My experience with Modernism in a Catholic seminary in the late 1950s
My seminary memories, culminating in the Church’s surrender to the heresy of Modernism in the Second Vatican Council, convince me that Archbishop Lefebvre’s and Archbishop Viganò’s assessments of the Second Vatican Council’s role at the grass-roots seminaries level are spot-on accurate.
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(LifeSiteNews) — Way back in the late 1950s, I spent four years studying for the Catholic priesthood – before leaving those studies to pursue a different calling – first as a factory worker, then as an office worker, then as a law student, then as a lawyer, and finally as a law professor.
I remember those seminary days well. They formed my adult Catholic mindset. I had attended a Sisters-of-Mercy grammar school in the 1940s, a Jesuit high school in the early 1950s and then entered the seminary to study for the parish priesthood in the late 1950s. I believed in and trusted the Catholic Church of the 1940s and 50s.
Near the end of the 1950s, however, change was in the air. In the Autumn of 1958, the revered and austere Pope Pius XII died. Several days later, the world joyously welcomed the personable new Pope, Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, whose chosen papal name (John XXIII) seemed to herald a refreshing and rejuvenating newness.
Conversations among my fellow seminarians at the time focused on that prospect of refreshing and rejuvenating newness in the Church. Many began to speak excitedly about changes in the Church, and spoke happily about doing away with Latin, modernizing the Mass, and even about easing the strictness of some Catholic moral principles. It was my first experience with division within the Catholic Church.
I had not entered the seminary in order to change or modernize the Church, but rather to become a priest in the Church as it was – as I had believed and trusted it to be. So, the excitement of so many of the other seminarians over the prospect of changing and modernizing the Church confused me.
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I remember one group conversation in particular. A fellow seminarian named Dick McBrien, who was a year ahead of us in the seminary, seemed somewhat upset. He “warned” us that in a year or two, unless Church law was changed, we would all be required to take something called the “Oath Against Modernism” – a requirement then imposed by Church law on all seminarians prior to ordination.[1] Dick explained that the Oath would prevent us from doing what most of the seminarians were so excited about – advocating for changes in Catholic teachings and trying to “modernize” the Church.
My confusion deepened. Dick was a good friend and a well-respected and likable fellow. I suppose I tried to join him and the others in their enthusiasm for changing and modernizing the Church, and I even tried to share Dick’s worry over the dreaded Oath Against Modernism. My mental efforts to agree with Dick, however, only worsened the confusion in my mind.
[Parenthetical interlude – The Church law requiring the Oath was not changed until 1967.[2] My friend Dick took the Oath Against Modernism, despite his conscience-wrenching opposition, and went on to become Rev. Richard P. McBrien (1936-2015), author of many books and articles on the theme of modernizing the Catholic Church, including a mammoth tome entitled simply Catholicism which became the required text in religion courses at many Catholic universities throughout the nation (despite a scathingly negative review[3] of the tome by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops). I still have an autographed copy of one of Dick’s earliest books, entitled Do We Need the Church?]
Getting back to the excitement among my old seminary friends about changes in Church teachings – I had not entered the seminary in order to change or modernize the Church, but rather to become a priest in the Church as it was – as I had believed and trusted it to be. Dick’s attitude towards the Oath Against Modernism, as well as the excitement that so many of the other seminarians were experiencing over the prospect of changing and modernizing the Church gave me a whole lot to think about.
The sense of “belonging” in the seminary seemed to diminish inside me. I agreed with none of the ideas for change that the other seminarians seemed so excited about. The loss of that sense of belonging weighed on my mind and finally, at the end of the next school year (1959), I decided to take a year’s leave of absence from the seminary to think things over. I never returned from that leave of absence.
The Second Vatican Council (1962-1965)
Then came the Second Vatican Council. The Catholic Church changed. Shortly thereafter, the Catholic Mass changed. The Church and the Mass “modernized.” Not, however, without some opposition within the Church itself. French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre was, perhaps, the most vocal of those who opposed the changes and the “modernizing” – and he was severely disciplined for it. In 1988, Archbishop Lefebvre consecrated four traditionalist Catholic priests as bishops without the expressed permission of the Vatican. He and the four new bishops were declared to have been automatically excommunicated by Pope John Paul II. In 2006, Pope Benedict XVI removed the declaration of excommunication with respect to the four bishops, but by that time Archbishop Lefebvre had long since died, back in 1991.
Many of Archbishop Lefebvre’s statements in opposition to the Second Vatican Council’s teachings seemed to me to contain an echo of the angst that I had felt over what was going on among seminarians at the end of my seminary days. Here’s a quote from one of Archbishop Lefebvre’s speeches:
How can it be that we have received official documents from Rome [i.e., the Documents of the Second Vatican Council] that are not in favor of the Catholic Religion? That do not go along with the Tradition and the Catholic Faith? The answer is easy – the Church has been taken over; yes, it has been taken over; taken over by Modernists who defend errors condemned by Pius X, who said: ‘The enemy is now inside the Church – it is no longer on the outside – it is inside the Church.’
This enemy is found in the seminaries, in these seminaries the enemy of the Church will become a priest, a bishop, a cardinal with ideas that are not Catholic but modernist, laden with naturalism, rationalism, evolutionism and relativism in doctrine and morality. This is Modernism.
Men with these ideas became bishops and cardinals. Then the Second Vatican Council was ushered in and the Modernists wanted to have this Council to spread their ideas.[4])
More recently (2023), Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò has echoed Archbishop Lefebvre’s assessment: “It is the Modernism that was never definitively eradicated from seminaries and self-styled Catholic universities, to which a sect of heretics and those who are misguided has erected the totem of the Second Vatican Council in place of two thousand years of Tradition.”[5]
My seminary memories, culminating in the Church’s surrender to the heresy of modernism in the Second Vatican Council, convince me that Archbishop Lefebvre’s and Archbishop Viganò’s assessments of the Second Vatican Council’s role at the grass-roots seminaries level are spot-on accurate.
The heresy of Modernism
I should, perhaps, explain a bit more about the Heresy of Modernist in the context of Catholic theology.[6] Modernist thought has been present in the Catholic Church for quite a long time, but it grew significantly during the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, and it blossomed forth openly in the Church big-time during and in the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965).
It’s difficult to get an exact handle on the content of Modernism in theology, precisely because of what theological Modernism is.
Igino Giordani, the biographer of Saint Pius X (the Pope who condemned Modernism as a Heresy), explained the Modernism that plagued Pius X’s days as Pope (1903-1914) in these words:
Modernism … consisted principally in a state of mind and way of life that sought to make over Christianity, rationalistically explaining away its difficulties to make the religion acceptable to the thinking of the day.[7])
Modernism quite simply stems from the desire to “modernize” the Church’s teachings – the desire that I had seen in the eyes and the enthusiasms of my classmates in those old seminary days.
Because Modernism seeks to make “the thinking of the day” an influential criterion of religious truth, the content of modernist thought about religious truth will vary with “the thinking of the day.” Indeed, at base, there can be no fixed religious truth at all in Modernist thought. Modernism “changes with the age to conform to the age.”[8]
Why ‘Modernism’ is not a good idea in the Catholic Church
It strikes me that the very word “modernism” suggests concepts like “progress” and “improvement” and “constructive change” – all obviously good ideals that merit our social approval. They are good ideals and they do indeed merit our approval. Why, then, would the Catholic Church condemn modernist thinking as a heresy? Why would anyone choose to have an allegiance to Traditionalism rather than an allegiance to Modernism? Good questions.
We get into the difference between political theory and theology when we try to answer those good questions. I’ll start by trying to fit two theological terms into political theory. “Traditionalism” might suggest the thought process of those whom we might identify as “Conservatives” in today’s political parlance. “Modernism” might suggest the thought process of those whom we might identify as “Progressives” in today’s political parlance. Conservatives tend to believe in carefully “conserving” proven political ideals and policies that have stood the test of time. Progressives tend to believe in carefully “improving” even proven political ideals and policies that have stood the test of time. In the probably over-simplistic parlance of down-to-earth thinking, Conservatives might suggest, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” and Progressives might suggest, “If it ain’t broke, fix it anyway; modernize it.”
The “truth” of purely political principles and policies usually lies somewhere in between those two attitudes, and is often found in the political art of compromise.
When we focus on Traditionalism and Modernism in Catholic Christianity, however, we’re not dealing with the kind of pragmatic “truth” that inhabits purely political principles. We’re dealing with Truth Itself – God’s Truth. If we truly are believers, we’re dealing with Truth as revealed to us by the Creator of the Universe and Everything and Everybody in it. We’re dealing with God Himself. As Christians, we accept Jesus as the Son of God, the Second Person of the Divine Trinity – God Himself – the Way, the Truth, and the Life.[9]
Christians don’t tinker with God’s revealed, Eternal Truth. They don’t “bring it up to date.” They don’t “modernize” it to bring it in line with modern cultural or political ideas about morality. At least Christians shouldn’t engage in such enterprises. They should, instead, do the opposite. Their acceptance of God’s Eternal Truth engages them in efforts to bring evolving “modern” social and political ideas about morality in line with God’s unchanging, un-evolving, revealed, Eternal Truth.
The Catholic Church based its condemnation of Modernism as a Heresy on that mode of thought – God’s revealed, Eternal Truth, being “Eternal,” does not “evolve.” It’s not broken or in need of fixing. It does not invite the art of compromise. It transcends “modernizing.” It is The Eternal Truth.
The Heresy of Modernism, whenever and wherever activated in the Church, leads to Church teachings that are not based on God’s revealed, Eternal Truth, but instead are grounded in times-conscious, trendy untruths, created in the chaos of fickle human social, political, and religious preferences. Thus, Pope Saint Pius X defined and condemned Modernism as a Heresy way back in 1907.[10]
Vatican II participants violated that pesky Oath Against Modernism
As we’ve seen, Pope Saint Pius X, in 1910, in a motu proprio, mandated that all Catholic clergy throughout the entire world must take an Oath Against the Heresy of Modernism before being ordained to the sub-diaconate on their way to the priesthood. Pius X’s order remained in full force until 1967, when Pope Paul VI rescinded it. [Do the math.] Every single Priest, Bishop, Archbishop, Cardinal, and indeed Pope, who entered the priesthood between 1910 and 1967 had taken the Oath Against Modernism. [Fit the math into the calendar.] Every single participant in the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), including Pope Paul VI (but not Pope John XXIII), had taken the Oath Against Modernism.
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who had been a peritus (an expert theological advisor) at the Second Vatican Council and who later became Pope Benedict XVI, wrote a 1982 treatise on Catholic theology, Principles of Catholic Theology: Building Stones for a Fundamental Theology.[11]) In that treatise, he expressed his understanding that the intent of the participants in the Second Vatican Council’s was to reconcile the Catholic Church with what Saint Pius X had condemned as the Heresy of Modernism.[12]
Putting two and two together yields the following: It is not possible to accept that the participants in the Second Vatican Council were cooperating with God the Holy Spirit when they intentionally adopted measures that violated the Oath Against Modernism – the Oath to God that they all had taken. The Second Vatican Council is thus fatally defective and a bogus sham, and cannot be said to be grounded in God’s Eternal Truth.
Conclusion: Today’s Synod on Synodality
From all of the above, I find myself approaching the conclusion that the Catholic Christianity into which I was baptized eighty-five years ago is about to self-destruct in the current efforts to orchestrate a strange new aura of infallibility for our current Pope’s vision of a globalist “Synod-on-Synodality” type of Church in which the timeless truths of the Catholic Faith are scrapped in favor of times-conscious, trendy untruths, created in the chaos of fickle human social, political, and religious preferences, turning God into an image and likeness of Us!
References
References
On September 1, 1910, Pope Saint Pius X issued a motu proprio entitled Sacrorum Antistitum in which he mandated that an Oath Against Modernism be taken by all Catholic clergy before being ordained to the sub-diaconate on their way to the priesthood.
In 1918, the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office declared that the prescriptions of the Oath against Modernism must remain in full force until the Holy See declares otherwise. See The Code of Canon Law: A Text and Commentary (eds. James A. Coriden, Thomas J. Green & Donald E. Heintschel, Paulist Press 1985), p. 585. The mandate was rescinded by a decree of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in July of 1967. See “Oath against Modernism” in The Harper Collins Encyclopedia of Catholicism, at page 926.
See, on the Internet, https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?id=541&CFID=121743&CFTOKEN=22026492.
See, on the Internet, https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2023/08/trent-italy-june-1979-address-by-abp.html . (Emphasis added.
See https://remnantnewspaper.com/web/index.php/articles/item/6776-vigano-blasts-spadaro
Some time ago I wrote an article on the Heresy of Modernism. See https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?id=2872
Igino Giordani, Pius X: A Country Priest 153 (1954). (Emphasis added.
See “The Etiology of Modernism” on the Internet at https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=2872
John 14:6.
See St. Pius X’s Encyclical, Pascendi Dominici Gregis (On Modernism). Available on the Internet at: https://www.vatican.va/content/pius-x/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-x_enc_19070908_pascendi-dominici-gregis.html . For an excellent discussion of Modernism in general and Pascendi Dominici Gregis in particular, see Michael Davies, Partisans of Error: St. Pius X Against the Modernists (Neumann Press, 1983). See also St. Pius X, Sacrorum Antistitum (The Oath Against Modernism). Available on the Internet at: https://www.fisheaters.com/sacrorum.html
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (trans. Sister Mary Frances McCarthy), Principles of Catholic Theology: Building Stones for a Fundamental Theology (San Francisco: Ignatius Press 1987); originally published in German under the title Theologische Prinzipienlehre (Erich Wewel Verlag, Munich, 1982
See, e.g., “Was Vatican II a valid ecumenical council?” on the Internet at https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/was-vatican-ii-a-valid-ecumenical-council/
Topics
Tagged as
- Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre
- Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI)
- Catholic Church in the 1950s
- Catholic Church Modernization
- Catholic Priesthood Studies
- Heresy of Modernism
- Historical Context of the Catholic Church
- Modernism in Catholic Theology
- Oath Against Modernism
- Pope Pius XII and John XXIII
- Pope Saint Pius X
- Second Vatican Council Participants
- Seminary Experience
- Synod On Synodality
- Theological Shifts in Catholicism
- Traditionalism vs. Modernism
- Vatican II Council
