Modernism : the Jowett lectures, 1908

Front matter

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Introduction

LEcTuRE I.

LeEctTur_E II. j : : ; “ LeEctTurE III.

APPENDICES—

I. EncycuicaL /vent 2 Animo

II. PETITION FROM A GROUP OF FRENCH CATHOLICS

III. Svytuaspus Lamentabili Sane Eexttu IV. EncycuicaL Lascendt

Index

197 217 231

NOTE

THE translation of the Syllabus Lamentad:/7 is reprinted from The Tablet, by kind permission of the Editor. The translation of the Encyclical Pascendi is the official version originally published in The Tablet, and subsequently issued, with modifications, by Messrs Burns & Oates.

INTRODUCTION

In the following pages are reproduced three lectures delivered in London, at the invitation of the “* Jowett Lectures ” Committee, during February and March 1908.

A month later M. Loisy’s fourth little orange-coloured book appeared — Quelques Lettres sur des Questions Actuelles et sur des Evénements Récents.*

The thoughts and questionings revealed in it were so like those which had called forth my lectures, the answers given to those questionings were so similar to my own, although far better and far more authoritative, that at first I made up my mind to publish nothing. On further consideration, however, it occurred to me that what I had thought to be modesty might after all be something quite different.

* Published by the author at Ceffonds, near Montier en Der (Haute Marne). 295 pp. M. Loisy’s three other little orange books are: 1. L’Evangile et ?Eglise. (4th Edition) 1908. 280+xxxiv pp. 2. Autour dun Petit Livre. 300+xxxvi pp. 3. Simples Réflexions sur le Décret du Saint Office Lamentabili sane Exitu e¢ sur ?Encycligue Pascendi Dominici Gregis. 277 pp . 7

Because on my poor patch of moorland I can never produce crops to compete with my neighbour’s, ought I to remain with arms folded? The other day I arranged some broom around a plantation of young cedars, to shelter them from the wind; afterwards, when the broom gave out, I made use of common brushwood. In a few months’ time this broom and brushwood will be but dry sticks, unnoticed and yet still useful. Well, I myself should like to do for Loisy somewhat the same service as these humble plants are doing for the cedars of La

Maisonnette.

The famous exegete’s last book seems to me the simplest and most effective answer that can be given to the questions about Modernism which are being asked on all sides. The movement has produced works of the first rank in almost every field: on Biblical criticism, for instance, on church history and the lives of the saints, on dogmatics and religious philosophy, and on social questions; but all these have dealt with special and limited subjects, and Modernism has been known to the world chiefly by books.

INTRODUCTION fe)

That was not enough; people wanted to know the authors, to come into personal, living touch with them, to be with them not only when they were teaching, lecturing, speaking, but also during their long hours of thought and meditation and preparation, their hours of work and prayer, their hours of joy and their hours of suffering. It is just this personal touch that, with rare precision and absolute sincerity, Loisy gives us in his last book.

Which of us, in reading the history of great intellectual and moral crises, has not longed to have been the contemporary and associate of the men who initiated and produced them? Well, Quelques Lettres admits us to the intimate society of one of the apostles of Modernism and helps us to understand the influence which this humble priest— “Ce petit prétre de rien de tout ’’—living in an out-ofthe-way village in Champagne, is exercising over the whole Christian world, an influence which he himself is the last to realise. When, after some generations, the time comes to write the history of the moral and religious renewal which will characterise the early twentieth century, it is in this book that its origin and programme will have to be studied.

From it too, it may be, our descendants will learn what a marvellous instrument the language of their ancestors was. Flexibility, lucidity, conciseness and good taste, these are qualities to which our best authors have accustomed us, but there are others which we find in M. Loisy in an eminent and even unique degree—propriety or rather sincerity of expression, discreetness of style, and a certain urbanity which passes from the writer’s personality into his work.

M. Loisy thus continues one of the ines traditions of our language and our national character. It is much to be wished that in this respect also he should have many followers. Among our writers of the day there are some who with wild enthusiasm: proclaim themselves nationalists, for whom everything in the past of France is perfection. Would not these men do well to begin by displaying in their own work the tact, the moderation, the reserve, the whole group of qualities which show an author’s respect for his readers, and which form one of the most original characteristics of the great periods in our literature ?

From this point of view we in France are still far from giving Loisy his rightful place. The critics who day by day distribute their laurels seem

INTRODUCTION II to fight shy of him. They are often heard to groan over the blindness of foreign nations in confusing our contemporary literature with the books with which our railway and street bookstalls are stocked. We cannot be too grateful to them for thus warning the public of its mistake. Would it not, however, be better still if they were to give to works like Loisy’s, which mark an epoch in the history of the French mind, the place that belongs to them? Loisy’s work * is of importance not only because

* The persecutions of which M. Loisy has been the victim have had one result among others—they have given him the time he needed for the writing of his books. It is plain that, if he had remained professor at the Catholic Institute in Paris, the preparation of his lectures and his duties as a member of the professorial body would have absorbed the greater part of his time ; we should then certainly not have had from him the series of little orange books which have brought him into sympathetic touch with the general public.

‘I cannot here attempt to give even a brief bibliography of the Reviews to which he has contributed. The following is merely a chronological list of his chief volumes. (The little orange-coloured books have been mentioned in an earlier note).

Histoire du Canon de? Ancien Testament (1890).

Histoire du Canon du Nouveau Testament (1891).

Histoire Critique du Texte et des Versions de [ Ancien Testament (1892-1893). 2 vols.

Le Livre de Job (1892).

Les Mythes Babylonions et les Premiers Chapitres de la Genése (1901) La Religion a’ [srael (1901). Etudes Evangéliques (1902). Etudes Bibliques (1903). Le Quatriéme Evangile (1903).

The intensity of M. Loisy’s scientific output will be noted. It has it is so fine in itself but also because of its profound influence on the intellectual evolution of our generaation. A genuine product of the French genius, it contains seeds of thought which have found among us a soil ready for them and have germinated there.

Why then this silence, or rather this reticence? Why do our greatest critics so obstinately refuse to see what a cheering symptom the success of Modernism is? Are they not aware that in Paris, in the very Quartier Latin, Loisy’s books are selling faster than the novels of the day? Is not that a sign of the times to be noted with some satisfaction?

Nor is the great scholar’s influence over studious young men bounded by the frontiers of France. M.

Pierre de Quirielle has told us, in one of his most been rendered possible by the inflexible regularity with which he works, and by the retired life he has led in his hermitage at Garnay, and of late at Ceffonds.

It is a strange thing that certain ecclesiastics are, quite rightly, full of admiration for St Bonaventura, who was once taken by surprise while washing dishes in the kitchen of his convent, and yet find something laughable in the sight of M. Loisy attending to his poultry with more intelligence and success than his neighbours the farmers. Two scenes so closely alike should surely be equally edifying.

brilliant articles,* with what ardent sympathy the Rector of an Italian seminary questioned him about this heretic. He would find the same interest in Germany—even among men whose opinions M. Loisy combats—and in England on the part of prelates who follow his work at once with anxiety and with admiration. Last February I saw on an

* In the Journal des Débats for February 24, 1908.

As I have mentioned the name of this journal, I cannot help saying with how much interest those who concern themselves with religious affairs are following both M. de Quirielle’s articles and the Roman letters which bear the signature of ‘‘M. P.” These studies are written with a knowledge and a conscientiousness which are very rarely given to the treatment of questions so delicate. I am all the more glad to be able to speak so highly of them, as it is impossible not to note a strangely weak-kneed attitude on the part of many European papers in regard to Roman affairs.

There is at the Vatican a certain Mgr. Benigni, who has rapidly and unexpectedly attained a unique position through the skill with which he has organised the Holy See’s relations with the Press. I will not, as some do, accuse him of having bought, for cash down, the correspondents of certain London and Paris papers, for I am enough ofa Roman to know that though on the banks of the Tiber pretty nearly everything is sold, good care is taken never to buy anything. But here is a less gross and withal more effective means of ensuring the docility of journalists, and that is to withhold communiqueés.

Mgr. Benigni is not so simple as those governments which daily supply the whole Press with one and the same bulletin. He takes the trouble to give what he writes a different shade, according as it is destined for Madrid, New York or—Geneva.

This coercion of a certain number of organs of public opinion by the agents of the Holy See is quite one of the darkest sides of Pius X.’s pontificate. The astonishing part played by La Corrispondenza

Anglican bishop’s table Loisy’s Commentary on the Synoptics and his Study of the Fourth Gospel. “It is years,” said the bishop to me, “ since any scientific work has interested me so profoundly. I have read the preface to the Synoptics twice, and I get on very slowly, for I am full of admiration, and also of perplexity. I am an old man, and many questions are here presented in so novel a way that I am quite baffled by it all. But my heart divines what my intellect cannot grasp—Loisy has a noble mind, and above all he is a true son of the Church. He does not think himself omniscient or infallible. Where he is wrong he must be shown his mistakes. Our Roman brethren are preparing to excommunicate him, but excommunication is no argument. Loisy has evidently arrived at his views honestly and invol-

Romana, which faithfully reflects the reading and the views, ideas, hopes, anger, hatred, alarm, arrogance and stupidity of a power which claims to speak in the name of God Himself, is not the least irony of Pius X.’s reign. Public opinion is for the moment engaged elsewhere, and many of those who throw stones at the Vatican may well seem to it to have few qualifications for posing as apostles of an ideal morality. But it may well be that when the day comes for Mgr. Benigni and Mgr. Montagnini to receive the cardinal’s hat, there will be an irresistible movement against a camaril/a whose reign will be regarded not only as a scandal but as one of the most incredible facts in the ecclesiastical history of the last few centuries.

INTRODUCTION I5 untarily, while in fact actually desiring to reach opposite views. To cut him off from the communion of the faithful is a confession of weakness, not to say unbelief. Believe me, in saying this I am not thinking only of Pius X., but also of the Eastern Church, and especially of the Church of England, which has its own crisis, its own troubles and difficulties. Here too we are threatened with a mechanical or materialistic view of the Church, which leads people to believe that to persecute error and to love truth are the same thing.” At this point our conversation, which I have given as faithfully as I can remember it, was interrupted. I thought it worth relating because it seemed to me a typical example of the penetrative power of Loisy’s thought.*

The mysterious influence he gains over those who are willing to take a few steps in his company will be best understood by the readers of Quelques Lettres.

* At the Pan-Anglican Congress one of the most prominent of the English prelates, Dr Talbot, Bishop of Southwark, spoke some memorable words, which are summarised as follows by Zhe Guardian (June 24, 1908, p. 1078): ‘*The Bishop of Southwark admitted that modern criticism had greatly helped him in dealing with difficulties found in the Old Testament, and helped him also the better to love and preach the Old Testament.”

In his other books we see the exegete, the savant, the thinker; in this one we see the man. It has all the interest of a volume of memoirs, the realism of a book of confessions, and the historical value of a collection of documents.

In the choice of the letters to appear in this selection the author was guided by one anxiety— to avoid everything that could serve as a pretext for measures of persecution, or arouse mere idle curiosity.

His desire was to tell not only the truth but the whole truth, and he has included pages which would certainly not have appeared if he had sought to draw a flattering portrait of himself or to provide materials for his legend. In saying this I have my mind particularly on the letters addressed to M. Auguste Roussel, to the unspeakable Dom Chamard, and to Canon Henri Debout, lauréat of the Academie Francaise and Curé of the Sacré Cceur at Calais.

In some of the letters we seem to hear the thunder of a just indignation; others show a rather haughty compassion; they all enthral us and carry us away. We applaud, but the next moment we are seized with pity for the victims. We feel they have not entered the arena quite of their own accord; they remind us of those wretched Spanish mules which the bull in his fury rips up without their knowing why. Undoubtedly the proceedings of the clerical Press, which with superb insolence poses as the appointed guardian of orthodoxy, are even more vulgar and offensive than those which disgrace a section of the political Press. The fact that a priest, the Abbé Garnier, editor of the Peuple Francais, could write an article* accusing M. Loisy of having sold himself to a Jew and a Protestant—he was careful not to name them, for fear of legal proceedings being taken, but they were clearly pointed out by their initials— is a painful symptom of the state of moral degradation reached by papers before which our bishops tremble and which the Pope loads with benedictions. When we remember that these accusations appeared, over the signature of the editor-in-chief, at the head of the front page, and called forth no protest from the subscribers to the paper, nor, what is more, from the other editors, who most of them know both M. Loisy and the Protestant and the Jew in question, we cannot form a high opinion of the public which reads this sort of literature, or of those

* In the number for September 19, 1907.

who cater for it, in spite of their pretensions to being the saviours of divine morality in the country.

Loisy, however, knows his strength; he is now victorious enough not to waste his time in correcting the mistakes—intentional or merely stupid—of the bonne presse.

M. Auguste Roussel with his Univers and his Verité Francatse, Canon Debout with his laurels and diplomas, Dom Chamard with his bravadoes, will have been forgotten long ago when Quelques Lettres is still read; and our descendants, seeing these champions of orthodoxy only through the medium of Loisy’s letters, will be in danger of forming an exaggerated and even an unjust idea of them.

The Modernists have introduced into philosophy and dogmatics the idea of relativity; in my opinion they ought also to apply this conception in their estimates of men. To refrain from judging and consequently condemning our opponents perfect saintliness is not necessary; it 1s enough to use a little observation and good sense. A tree can only bring forth its own fruit.

A man who disregards the most elementary rules of good faith, who supports grave charges by quotations which he either misinterprets or altogether invents, who, when his error is pointed out to him, not only does not desist but tries to silence all contradiction, and will see and hear nothing; such a man, though to us he seems on so low an intellectual and moral level, may be at other times, and when other questions are concerned, a model of delicacy and kindness and devotion.

John Huss was able to divine the saintliness of the poor woman who threw a faggot into his fire of martyrdom. Inour time there are still many people whose mentality is like that of this simple person. Let us study them with the sympathetic interest of a scientist examining the last representatives of a species that is becoming extinct. These organisms of a past epoch, which are to-day being slowly but inexorably eliminated by Nature, exhibit peculiarities that will richly repay our observation.

Men like Pius X., Mgr. Turinaz or Pere Fontaine, are neither to be pitied nor blamed; they are what they are, and even what they ought to be. Their inborn incapacity to understand what we say is a fact; we must note it as a fact, and not only not be angry at it, but profit by it and learn from it; for, vast, ingenuous and exuberant as it is, it may help us to realise how slowly the human mind evolves and how necessary it is to allow it plenty of time.

We do not get angry with a peasant because he can see nothing in a painting by Rembrandt, and finds it ugly, grotesque or coarse. Should we accuse him of bad faith if he were incapable of correctly describing the attitude or expression of the persons represented? After a little reflection we may well feel that our own view of the picture is but little better than his, and that to our descendants it will one day seem quite as defective.

There is need of patience, above all, in dealing with images which for some men embody ideas that are the best part of their moral and religious life. In this respect Loisy may be instanced as a model. He has in him nothing of the iconoclast: for twenty years he had left certain papers to misunderstand his ideas, distort his clearest words, and quite overlook the very real sacrifices that he has often made in deference to discipline.

I can see that it was impossible for him to keep silence, but I regret nevertheless that he should have entered into discussions with those who cannot understand him.

All this shuffling, these tricks and artifices, these mutilated, falsified, and even fabricated quotations, seem from our point of view to form a method of unintelligent lying; they are really something quite different on the part of our opponents—they are the involuntary result of fear, the irresponsible strategy of people who have lost their heads.

I hope these reservations will be forgiven me; they are the only ones I have to make with regard to Loisy’s work. One reads and re-reads it with increasing deliberation and ever-fresh delight. The impatience which the illustrious scholar shows towards certain unimportant opponents only strikes one because it interrupts the serenity—or rather the security—of the faith manifested in the book. God is patient because He is eternal. The Modernist, too, ought to be patient, because he feels himself a moment in this eternity, and, as it were, a member of it—no passive and inert element, but a moment and a member which, by its willing service, is in a sense the realisation of that eternity. Human language can express these realities but feebly, but perhaps it is better to express them badly than not at all.

The fundamental impression one gets from reading Quelques Lettres is that the author has reached a higher stage of religious development, not because he has discovered a few new truths in the realm of science or exegesis, but because in him the soul. of Catholicism has grown broader and stronger, has embraced a wider horizon and become more truly Catholic.

I know that this will greatly astonish those—if they ever read my books—who picture Loisy as a sort of Satan who has taken the destruction of the Bible as his mission.

Criticism has never destroyed anything; it is true that in unskilful hands it has occasionally seemed like a sort of inverted dogmatics, but it is precisely under Loisy’s treatment that it is found to be constructive and edifying, that it gives us the history of religious endeavour throughout the ages, and shows us the way in which rude and clumsy attempts have been the necessary prelude to and preparation for the noblest advances of the human conscience. There is a certain rationalist idealism which gladly accepts the chief conquests of humanity, but is unwilling to see how long a path was traversed before they could be attained. Criticism, on the contrary, shows us that we cannot understand the one without the other, that to know the fruit we must study the tree.

This sense of catholicity, of union with the whole past and of responsibility towards the future, is given us in an extraordinary degree by Loisy’s last work. One is forced to think that those who accuse him of having adopted Protestant views must have been struck with blindness.

Read, for instance, the letter to a student of theology at Geneva, and you will see what missionary effort will become when those engaged in it have attained to a full consciousness of the laws of life, and have realised that it is their duty to respect those laws and to assist Nature in spiritual matters, just as the doctor assists her in another field. In this letter the author speaks with a simplicity and moderation which are in no way studied or calculated. He knows that if his correspondent has reached a certain degree of religious development he will understand; and that, if he has not reached it, it would be unwise, premature, and even culpable, to disturb him and to seek to hasten his evolution from outside.

Sometimes a brooding hen thinks she hears, before the time, her chicks knocking at the door of their prison. All in a fever, she tries to answer them discreetly; she fears lest she should be mistaken, and feels that it is not for her to hasten the solemn moment. Just like this is Loisy’s delicate consideration for others; in no sense is it a tactical manceuvre. It comes from his faith; he knows that the essential thing is not to have reached some particular point, but to be at work, to be on the move.

By a purely scientific route he has arrived where many will be surprised to find him—at an intensely mystical conception of the Church. How poor, how external, how formal appears that unity of the Church which the Holy See is maintaining by dint of disciplinary measures when compared with the real, free unity in which the thought of this alleged heretic moves! | |

Pius X. believes that unity is saved when he receives the expression of the unanimous submission of the episcopate. That may be unity, but it is the unity of enforced homage, if not the unity of men who are one only in their ‘discouragement, faintheartedness and fear. It is not merely a lying unity, it is a blasphemy against the true unity. Do but compare the grandiloquent and obsequious letters of these regiments of bishops with the pages where Loisy tells of his experience, his actual sense of communion with an eternal body to which at first he belonged involuntarily, but of which he becomes each day a more willing and resolute member. You will soon see to which side posterity will turn for a witness to the faith of the early twentieth century.

The strength of his position and the Modernists’ is that their scientific honesty, far from leading them to a bare negation of religion, brings them, on the contrary, to firm scientific ground on which religious thought can develop with a vigour, serenity, independence and boldness such as the world has never seen.

Many people think that these new teachers, lke prudent folk, are making concessions on scientific ground; that they are opportunists who are bowing to circumstances. Those who think this are as grossly mistaken as those who regard them as Protestants in disguise. This equivocal attitude—when a person affirms as a member of a Church what he denies as a savant, or merely as a man—is no doubt very common ; it dates from long before our time; and it makes it fatally easy to accuse believers of duplicity and hypocrisy. But this is in no dégree the attitude of the Modernists. On the contrary, their great characteristic is a complete inner harmony. For them science illuminates faith, and if it makes faith less mysterious to them, on the other hand it shows them how strong and firmly-rooted faith is.

Let us take a definite instance. The problem of the Fourth Gospel is one of the most debated questions of the present day. A certain school of orthodoxy, whose deliberations are conducted with closed doors, declares that its author is St John the Apostle, and that its narratives are to be taken ina strictly historical sense. On the other hand there is a certain school of rationalism which, after showing that the document has merely a symbolical meaning, comes to the conclusion that it is valueless. Will the Modernist take a middle course and accept theoretically the rationalist view, while continuing to use the document in the orthodox way? No, he escapes from the dilemma by a conception more scientific than that of the rationalist: “‘ The Gospel and Christian tradition are not merely old memories which we are free to consult or let go at will ; they are religious experiences which are somehow continued in our own experience, and I will venture to say that we could never succeed in entirely rooting them out of ourselves, even 1f we could banish them from our recollection.”’ *

Never has a writer noted more happily the error of those who, under pretext of exalting the sacred books, make them documents of superhuman origin, and, on the other hand, the error of those who, having proved that there is nothing absolute about them, refuse to see their immense value as formative elements of our thought and our moral life.

Anti-religious rationalism and orthodox intellectualism—they are more opposed in appearance than reality—both start from the same idea of the absolute. Modernism moves on a very different plane—the plane of reality, of life, of experience; the Modernist has no more need to believe his

* Quelgues Lettres, p. 42.

Church to be ease ealhy chesil ty infallible in order tc be faithful to her than he has to believe his parents to be impeccable or omniscient in order to love and obey them. It is indeed true that mankind’s great witnesses to the religious life seem to him much closer to us common men, but if they appear less majestic they become more real, and a truer view is gained of them.

The Modernist has a sense of the life of the Church in our day, and he enters vigorously into it. He does not in the least share the Protestant idea—an idea which from Protestantism has everywhere filtered through into Catholicism—that revelation ceased with the composition of the sacred books, that the great epochs of religious thought are closed, and that all we have now to do is to live on the interest of our spiritual heritage.

On the contrary, the idea—so eminently Catholic, and also scientific—of the continuity of life, of our solidarity with both the past and the future, inspires M. Loisy to such a degree as to transcend the limits of science and pass into the realm of mysticism and poetry. The work of this typical Frenchman, born in the region which was the cradle of Gothic architecture, makes one think of those great thirteenth century cathedrals which are the noblest expression of Christian art, because in them all is coherent, harmonious, at one.

There are certain pages of Loisy’s which should be read in some old cathedral at the hour when the evening shadows fall, when the details vanish and blend together in the majesty of the whole, and one can guess at, rather than see, the faithful who linger to meditate or pray; when the building itself seems wrapped in contemplation, vibrating in mysterious union with all Nature in her homage to the setting sun. A great peace, a sense of calm and forgiveness, seems to descend from the vaults and pervade all things; the memory of the past comes with more freedom and intensity than at common times, it enfolds and takes possession of one. It is the hour of Compline. Up there in the choir voices ascend —voices of boys, voices of old men; in and with them we seem to be living again through all the sorrows, the hopes, the faith of the past, and this past is lending us its voice that we may go further, rise higher than it has done. After the little child that still lives in each of us has been lulled and calmed by the chant of the In Manus, the Salve Regina comes at last with its passionate strains, now bursting into joy, now turning to a wail, to lead us to the threshold of those templa serena whither the savant, the artist, the poet and the mystic come by different ways, to meet in communion as beneficent as it is unexpected.