Modernistic Crisis

In the Catholic direction , the term modernism indicates a current of doctrines appeared at the end of the 19th century and at the beginning of 20th. It is employed by the Pape Pie X in its Encyclique Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907) aiming at denouncing “the errors of the modernism”, but recognized forever by those whose it wants to criticize the errors, including inside the Église. The modernistic crisis durably assigns the countries of Europe Occidentale to majority Catholique.

However, the Syllabus and the test of Darwin reconfigured the whole of European intelligentsia.

The modernistic crisis poses to the contemporaries who examine it with the passing of the Histoire several questions: is

the modernistic crisis which agitated the Christianisme since the middle of the 19th century until the middle of the 20th century still of topicality?
is it still likely to carry Enseignement S which one could describe as Politique S, even Géopolitique S in a time when one speaks about a return in strength of the Religieux?
does it have reaches only the Christianisme?

Chronology

Caption colors

Chronological table

Comments

On the political plan

Unification of the Italy and its constitution in Kingdom under the push:

of the Spring of the people
of Cavour, of Napoleon III, Giuseppe Garibaldi and Giuseppe Verdi deprive the Pape of his States and its temporal sovereignty.

During this time, the Holy See is suspected of a particular inclination for the Empire Austro-Hungarian, authoritarian regime impregnated of Catholicisme. He seeks to restore his position in companies where assembles the anticlericalism and secularization.

In the middle of the period, the pope Leon XIII task to organize the relations between the Church and the States using a series of Encyclique S where he recognizes the governments places from there ( Sapientiæ Christianæ , 1890) not without to have affirmed his authority on the aforementioned governments ( Diuturnum Illud , 1881) and the independence of the Église ( Immortale Dei , 1885). Following the Rallying tried by Leon XIII, in Belgium and France (with Albert de Mun) create for themselves left religious catholic and republicans who will be a failure.

Pie IX reinforces the congregation of the Index which will play a great part in its fight against the liberalism and the Modernisme.

On the theological level

The dynamic activity of the Protestant exégètes does not make it possible any more to regard the Gospels as a single text either that like a historical testimony. The Quêtes of the historical Jesus lead a part of them to wonder about the point to know if the divinity of Jesus must be taken literally or if it must be returned to her dimension symbolic system.

The publication of the test on the Origine of the Species (1859) by Charles Darwin cleaves European and even world intelligentsia and ruins the theory of the Créationnisme. Still in 1911, Pierre Teilhard of Chardin is accommodated with the the United States as the Jesuit who says that the man goes down from the monkey and a cabal follows.

A Hindu and a unitarian Christian mix to foment peace between the Religion S. Their initiative perdure.

No product of the modern spirit could avoid causing the resistance of the Churches:

the Political Democracy in ,
the Liberalism and the Socialism in economy,
scientific and technical rationality
and freedom in the culture.

The Loisy business

the detonator

The modernistic crisis is not included/understood without a summary of the business Loisy whose talk will be done in the article dedicated to this author. It begins a little like a nasty prank the made-to-order of that told by Milan Kundera in the Misunderstanding .

Alfred Loisy, former professor of Interpretation at the Catholic Institute of Paris driven out of his pulpit for his liberal ideas, sees his candidature for the episcopate supported by the prince of Monaco. Following a European round of conferences which will give place to the publication of a book, Adolf von Harnack, professor at the university of Tübingen, know a notoriety which exceeds the cultivated circle of the German readers of theology. Its plate Das Wesen of Christentums (1901; English translation: What is Christianity ? 1901, translation French the gasoline of the Christianisme , rather bad at Fischbacher in May 1902) is a leading phenomenon: 75 000 specimens sold in 1903 for 15 translated languages.

In its private correspondence, before the business, being addressed to Albert Houtin, another modernistic condemned later on, Alfred Loisy admits to have 2 objectives:

the desire for ridiculing the professor Harnack
need for defending the Church

It is what it does by publishing the Gospel and the Church whose first publication goes back to 1902. Of this work which was republished 4 times between 1902 and 1919 and more republished until 2000 (at Noesis), does not remain in the spirit of each one which is interested in the history of Christianity that only one sentence Jesus announced the Kingdom and it is the Church which came . One generally quotes it in support of a criticism of the current current dogmatic and authoritative like does it Régis Debray in God, a route (Odile Jacob). By doing this, one is mistaken on the prospect for Loisy by reinterpreting a sentence isolated from his context. Once given in context, the short phrase develops the position of the Ratzinger cardinal (become Benoît XVI) in 2005) as expressed in its work published, as Préfet for the Congrégation for the doctrines of the faith: the Church (roman catholic) like appears of the Kingdom.

In its thesis, Emile Poulat indicates that positions defended by Loisy in its little book , as Loisy indicated it itself, passed in the Catéchisme S as of the period pre-concilaire, that to which it supports his thesis. Reality is probably less euphoric than Poulat says it. If the theses of Loisy are shared by part of the catholic theologists at the time of the council (according to in that the newspaper of Congar), they are always fought by what seemed a rear-guard in the years 1970, limited to the Fraternité Saint-Pie X, they (and their posterity) remain unknown catholic general public except for the Catholiques reformers and of most committed which follow the courses of the Center Sevres.

The judgment of Loisy

A posteriori , one is thus founded to wonder the reasons of the judgment of Loisy. In addition to the political reasons evoked under the chronology, One reproaches him in the first two chapters of the Gospel and the Church :

to have reintroduced the history in sacred History , to have returned in particular its humanity with Jesus and even his Judaism, against the will that it supposes with A. von Harnack of the helléniser;
to consider that the faith, all at least the beliefs in through they is expressed, evolved/moved between the period of the contemporaries of Jesus, the period post-Pascale, the period of the christologic councils. In support of this thesis, it gives many the Hérésie S which develops before one thinks of fixing a Orthodoxie,
to briefly present the theory of the 2 sources at the origin of the synoptic Gospel S.

As it separates the Jesus from the history of the Christ of the faith following the example David Friedrich Strauss and, specificity Catholique, the Dogme of its formulation, it is quickly shown to call into question the authority of the Church (to hear the interpretative monopoly which asserts the the Catholic church). In this period of forgotten hatred , one shows it to be crypto-Protestant. Inevitably, that can only badly to turn, which is damage for a work which appears before a whole work of apology for the institution as soon as one passed the first two chapters where it practices a synthesis of what one knew, at its time, of the historico-critical Exégèse of the Gospel S for the reader cultivated while passing on the specialized questions (what one will not fail to also reproach him).

Its detractors will see a dogmatic where there is only history: its judges transpose systematically of the historical assertions in doctrinal proposals, fascinating, contrary, the assertions concilaires for historical events (Poulat). The frame of mind of the ecclesiastical authorities is rather well returned in the following passage of an article of Arthur Loth in the French Truth , quoted by Poulat (COp cit.)

“According to that one would be obliged to accept famous dualism elohist and jeohvist of the Genesis and to give up the day-periods as well as the solar days of the creation; it would be necessary to put the flood at the number of the chaldéo-Assyrian fables; one could not say any more that the Pentateuque of Moïse, nor the Psalms of David, but on the other hand, would have to be admitted two are Isaïe; one should also hold for Romance piles the books of Judith and Esther, and one does not appear serious if it were not agreed that the book of the Judges is posterior with the captivity; it would not be allowed any more to adopt the order originating in the Gospels, and even, for Marc who passed the first, it would be necessary to admit an unknown protevangelist; one would be naive to continue to accept the authenticity of the verse of the three celestial witnesses in Jean saint”

In 1907, the encyclical Pascendi and the decree Lamentabili Sane Exitu in general condemn the proposals of modernistic but those of Loisy in particular. In 1908, the the Holy Office excommunicates this last while being based on a nourished file of denunciations tending to show that Loisy wants to ruin the Church Catholique .

Excluded fifteen years earlier (1893) from the catholic Institute of Paris, Alfred Loisy is elected with the pulpit of Histoire compared of the Religions of the Collège de France, that one even which had been founded in 1880 by Albert Réville which his/her son Jean Réville had succeeded. At the time of its foundation, this pulpit represented a concern of topicality, as testifies some in 1879, the deliberation of the Municipal council of the town of Lyon for the establishment of a museum of the Asian religions founded by Emile Guimet. The debate reveals two tendencies opposed in the laic current ; the ones wonder whether it is necessary to spend of energy to expose a completed past while the others perceive the need for taking into account the role of the Religion S in the Civilization S and, by there, a possibility of relativizing the Christianisme.

The Lagrange business

The other symptomatic business of the modernistic crisis is the business Lagrange o.p. (1855 - 1938). The Lagrange father is the founder of the biblical and archaeological École French of Jerusalem, founder of the Biblical Revue whose certain work will be prohibited of publication like suspects of '' progressionism ''.

But with the difference of Loisy, Lagrange developed its exegetic criticism within the framework of the dogma and while being based on theology, more than against it. Better theologist than many his adversaries, it could use interpretation and theology with the service one of the other. He however was included/understood in the same distrust and knew interdicts almost similar to those of Loisy. The Lagrange Father chose fidelity with the Church, without anything to disavow his exegetic convictions calling into question the generally accepted ideas and the old habits. He waited simply and humbly (not without suffering) to be again authorized to express them.

Other settings with the variation in Europe

In his thesis on the modernistic crisis, Emile Poulat draws up the following list:

to follow

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