But the philosophy of Kant or Hegel is purposefully post-Christian and seeks to replace the Catholic Faith with something better and new. Hence, Modernism tries to do the impossible: it seeks to reinterpret Catholicism within a modern system that already rejects Christianity.
The features of Modernism, according to Pius X, are threefold. The first feature is the critical analysis and rational “demythologizing” of Sacred Scripture. For Modernists, the Bible is an important collection of legends redacted by powerful people to communicate a message. The existence of Noah, Abraham, Moses, and David is brought under suspicion. Even the four Gospels are questioned for their accounts of miracles. Following the presumed naturalism of Freemasonry, Modernism rejects anything truly supernatural. For example, when Our Lord Jesus Christ multiplies the loaves and fishes, it is really the “miracle of sharing.” Nothing supernatural happens to increase the amount of consumable food. Christ’s driving out demons, the Modernist explains, is a symbolic story of bringing psychological peace to troubled people. Jesus’ walking on water is just a literary way to depict Him overcoming worldly troubles. When Christ tells His Apostles, “This is my body,” He is asking them to remember Him. Bread doesn’t become anything supernatural. Everything has a natural explanation.
The second feature of Modernism is secularism and universal fraternity. Saint Thomas Aquinas rightly taught that grace heals and elevates nature. The order of reality is that the supernatural reigns over the natural. With the Modernist denial of the supernatural, the secular and the political become primary. The concepts of beatitude and salvation are reinterpreted as secular or political goals. This reduces the clergy to political activists and demotes the pope to merely an inspiring “coach” to the secular nations. It is such a separation of Church and state that the Church no longer even has relevance in the public sphere. Religion is private.
The third plank of Modernism is the rejection of what Catholics had known as the good (morals), the true (doctrine), and the beautiful (aesthetics). The tight system of original sin, venial sin, mortal sin, and being forgiven and healed through redemption in Christ is abandoned. Moral relativism is promoted. Modernists say that doctrine must always be “pastoral,” not “true.” And the gorgeous art, statuary, architecture, and music of the Catholic Church is cast aside for the pedestrian, modern, and useful.
Any Catholic living in the third millennium will immediately identify the remains of Modernism still rotting the Catholic Church. Scripture is not read at all or is explained away in homilies. How many times have you heard, “Matthew didn’t really write this” or “Paul didn’t actually write this”? The pope and the cardinals are generally reduced to cheerleaders for globalism, migration, and the redistribution of goods. Catholic morality has declined. Heresy is preached from the pulpit. And once-glorious churches have been renovated to remove statuary from the sanctuary in favor of their bare utility as “worship spaces.”
In July 1907, the Holy Office published Lamentabili sane exitu, which condemned sixty-five Modernist propositions. Most of those propositions were taken from the writings of the suspect priests Father George Tyrrell, S.J., and Father Alfred Loisy.
When people ask, “What happened to the Jesuits?” one might aptly reply “Father Tyrrell.” George Tyrrell was an Irish Anglican convert to Catholicism who joined the Jesuits. He made a reputation for himself by rejecting the Scholastic tradition of Saint Thomas Aquinas. Tyrrell openly taught that reason did not apply to the dogmas of the Catholic Faith. This assertion condemns not only Thomas Aquinas, but the entire medieval consensus of faith and reason. Instead, he defended “the right of each age to adjust the historico-philosophical expression of Christianity to contemporary certainties, and thus to put an end to this utterly needless conflict between faith and science which is a mere theological bogey.”29
This claim of Tyrrell captures the Modernist prejudice that Christianity needs to be reconformed to each and every age, and especially to our modern time. Tyrrell’s theology was seen as outrageous, even for the Jesuits, and he was dismissed from the Society of Jesus for his heretical beliefs in 1906 — one year before Lamentabili sane exitu was issued.
Pope Pius X followed up in September 1907 with his anti-Modernist encyclical Pascendi dominici gregis, in which he described Modernism as the “synthesis of all heresies.” Father Tyrrell published two critical letters against Pascendi in the Times and was subsequently suspended and excommunicated. He was later denied Catholic burial because he refused to abjure his Modernist beliefs.
In 1908, Father Alfred Loisy was also excommunicated for Modernism. Loisy substantially agreed with Tyrrell. The boldness of Loisy’s Modernism is manifest by his own admission: “Christ has even less importance in my religion than he does in that of the liberal Protestants: for I attach little importance to the revelation of God the Father for which they honor Jesus. If I am anything in religion, it is more pantheist-positivist-humanitarian than Christian.”30
Pope Pius X’s motu proprio Sacrorum antistitum required all Catholic bishops, priests, and teachers to take an anti-Modernist oath. This was the formal and public means by which Pius X would expose Modernists among the clergy and in seminaries and universities.31 An unofficial group of monitoring theologians called the Sodalitium Pianum, or “Fellowship of Pius,” was tasked with reporting anyone who taught Modernist doctrines. Regarding the covert Modernist clergy, Pius X said, “For they should be beaten with fists. In a duel, you don’t count or measure the blows, you strike as you can.”32
To correct doctrine and establish the Catholic Church in orthodoxy further, Pius X decreed a catechism class in every parish on earth. In 1908, he issued the 115-page Catechism of Pius X for doctrinal instruction in parishes. He required that in marriages between Catholics and non-Catholics, the non-Catholic spouses must promise to allow the children to be raised Catholic. He gave bishops greater oversight over seminaries and called for regional seminaries. He also called for the first universal codified Code of Canon Law, which would not be completed until after his death and then promulgated by his successor Pope Benedict XV in 1917 as the Pio-Benedictine Code of Canon Law.
Theologically, Pius X followed Pope Leo XIII’s ardent enthusiasm for Thomism, but politically he was much more conservative. Pius X was a hardliner against the secular state of Italy and broke off diplomatic relations with France over it. He opposed trade unions that were not Catholic, and he told Italian Catholics that they could never vote for Socialists. One month before he died, Pope Pius X approved the request of Cardinal James Gibbons for the construction site of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. He suffered heart trouble after the outbreak of World War I and died on 20 August 1914.
The World War I Conclave
The Papal Conclave of 1914 met eleven days after the death Pope Pius X. Prior to that, a Bosnian Serb Yugoslav nationalist named Gavrilo Princip assassinated the Austro-Hungarian heir Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. That July crisis divided Europe into two coalitions consisting of Britain, France, and Russia allied in opposition against Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy. The conclave of 1914 brought together cardinals from all the opposing alliances and nations.
Fifty-seven cardinals participated and voted. Eight cardinals were not able to attend due to illness or distance — such as the two American cardinals and the Canadian cardinal who arrived too late to vote. The papal conclave lasted four days and consisted of ten ballots. Three cardinals were initially favored. Domenico Cardinal Serafini was the moral successor to Pius X. He was an archconservative and desired to pursue the anti-Modernist protocols of Pius X. Opposite him was the liberal Pietro Cardinal Maffi of Pisa. Standing between Serafini on the right and Maffi on the left was the compromise candidate: Giacomo Cardinal della Chiesa of Bologna.
The three cardinals were equally supported. By the fifth ballot, the liberal Maffi lost support and left the election to Serafini and della Chiesa. Maffi’s supporters switched to
della Chiesa, and on the tenth ballot della Chiesa gained the two-thirds majority. There was a further compilation because della Chiesa had won the two-thirds majority by only one vote, and the pious cardinal Rafael Merry del Val noted that if della Chiesa had voted for himself, the election was invalid. When they checked the ballots, it was shown that della Chiesa had not voted for himself. The election stood.
Cardinal della Chiesa, elected at the young age of fifty-nine, took the name Benedict XV. He was known as Il Piccoletto, or “the little man,” and the white papal cassock had to be quickly hemmed to fit him. He immediately declared that the Holy See remained neutral in World War I, which he called “the suicide of Europe.”
The war had disrupted Catholic missionary work throughout the world. Pope Benedict XV sought to revitalize the missions. In 1917, he promulgated the Code of Canon Law initiated by his predecessor, Pius X. He canonized Saint Joan of Arc and Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque. He approved the feast of Mary, Mediatrix of All Graces by authorizing a Mass and office under this title for the dioceses of Belgium. Most importantly, Pope Benedict continued the fight against Modernism in his Ad beatissimi Apostolorum. He also upheld the excommunications of Modernists by Pius X, despite the initial allegations that he was a theological moderate. Pope Benedict XV died of pneumonia on 22 January 1922.
His pontificate is known not so much for his leadership as for what happened during his reign. Toward the end of the war, from 13 May to 13 October 1917, apparitions of Our Lady occurred in Fatima, Portugal. Theologians and historians have connected the pastoral letter of Pope Benedict XV on 5 May 1917 to the beginning of the Fatima apparitions eight days later. In this letter, the pope formally added the title “Our Lady of Peace” to the Litany of Loreto and asked for an end to World War I through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary:
Our earnestly pleading voice, invoking the end of the vast conflict, the suicide of civilized Europe, was then and has remained ever since unheard. Indeed, it seemed that the dark tide of hatred grew higher and wider among the belligerent nations, and drew other countries into its frightful sweep, multiplying ruin and massacre. Nevertheless our confidence was not lessened. . . . To Mary, then, who is the Mother of Mercy and omnipotent by grace, let loving and devout appeals go up from every corner of the earth – from noble temples and tiniest chapels, from royal palaces and mansions of the rich as from the poorest hut – from blood-drenched plains and seas. Let it bear to Her the anguished cry of mothers and wives, the wailing of innocent little ones, the sighs of every generous heart: that Her most tender and benign solicitude may be moved and the peace we ask for be obtained for our agitated world.33
It is providential and miraculous that eight days later, the visions of Fatima began, and on that same day Pope Benedict XV consecrated Eugenio Pacelli as a bishop. Pacelli would go on to become Pope Pius XII and, as such, would serve as the pope of Fatima.
24 Humanum genus (1884), Dall’alto dell’Apostolico Seggio (1890), Custodi di quella fede (1892), and Inimica vis (1892).
25 David V. Barret, “Ballot Sheets from 1903 Conclave to Be Sold at Auction,” Catholic Herald, 2 June 2014.
26 Pius X lowered the age to the age of reason in his decree Quam singulari (1910).
27 Saint Pius X, Tra le sollecitudini.
28 Ibid., 19.
29 Autobiography and Life of George Tyrell: Life of George Tyrell from 1884 to 1909 (New York: Longman, Green, 1912), 185.
30 Alfred Loisy, Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire religieuse de notre temps (Paris: E. Nourry, 1930–1931), II, 397.
31 This oath remained in force until 1967, when Pope Paul VI abolished it.
32 John Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII (New York: Penguin, 2008), 37.
33 Pope Benedict XV, Letter of 27 April 1915.
7
Our Lady of Fatima
The events at Fatima mark the most important Marian apparition in the history of the Catholic Church and lead up to the largest witnessed miracle in the history of humanity, second only to the parting of the Red Sea under Moses. The story began in 1916, when nine-year-old Lúcia dos Santos and her cousins Francisco and Jacinta Marto were herding sheep at the Cova da Iria near the parish of Fatima, Portugal. They were visited three times by an angel who introduced himself in this way:
Do not be afraid. I am the Angel of Peace. Pray with me.” He knelt, bending his forehead to the ground. With a supernatural impulse we did the same, repeating the words we heard him say: “My God, I believe, I adore, I hope, and I love Thee. I ask pardon for those who do not believe, do not adore, do not hope, and do not love Thee.” After repeating this prayer three times the angel rose and said to us: “Pray in this way. The Hearts of Jesus and Mary are ready to listen to you.”34
It is notable that during World War I, Pope Benedict XV added “Our Lady of Peace” to the Litany of Loreto, and this angel calls himself the “Angel of Peace.” A second time, the angel appeared and exhorted them to pray: “What are you doing? You must pray! Pray! The hearts of Jesus and Mary have merciful designs for you. You must offer your prayers and sacrifices to God, the Most High.”
When the children asked what sacrifices they should make, the angel explained: “In every way you can offer sacrifice to God in reparation for the sins by which He is offended, and in supplication for sinners. In this way you will bring peace to our country, for I am its guardian angel, the Angel of Portugal. Above all, bear and accept with patience the sufferings God will send you.”
During third and final visit, the angel taught the children to pray this prayer:
Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, I adore Thee profoundly, and I offer Thee the Most Precious Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ, present in all the tabernacles of the world, in reparation for the outrages, sacrileges, and indifferences by which He is offended. And by the infinite merits of His most Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I beg the conversion of poor sinners.
Then the angel offered the Eucharistic host and chalice to the children, saying, “Eat and drink the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, terribly outraged by the ingratitude of men. Offer reparation for their sakes and console God.” Then he disappeared, and they never saw him again.
The First Apparition of Fatima
Just as these visions ended with the Blessed Sacrament, so they resumed almost eight months later on the feast of the Blessed Sacrament: 13 May 1917. On that morning, the three children passed the parish church of Fatima and walked north to the slopes of the Cova to graze their sheep as they played in the field. They ate their packed lunches and decided to pray the Rosary. The three children had adopted a quick version of the Rosary in which they said only the first few words of each prayer. After finishing their abbreviated Rosary, they saw lightning and prepared to return home. As they drove the sheep home, they saw another flash of lightning and then saw on a short holm oak tree a lady dressed in white “shining brighter than the sun, giving out rays of clear and intense light, just like a crystal goblet full of pure water when the fiery sun passes through it. We stopped, astounded by the apparition. We were so near that we were in the light that encircled her, or which she radiated, perhaps a meter and a half away.” The Lady wore a pure white mantle down to her feet, trimmed with gold. The rosary beads in her hands shone like stars, with its crucifix the most radiant gem of all.
The Lady tenderly addressed the children: “Please don’t be afraid of me; I’m not going to harm you.”
Lúcia responded, “Where are you from?”
“I come from heaven.”
“And what do you want of me?”
The Lady explained, “I want you to return here on the thirteenth of each month for the next six months, and at the very same hour. Later I shall tell you who I am, and what it is that I most desire. And I shall return here yet a seventh time.”
“And shall I go to heaven?”
“Yes, you will,” answered the Lady.
“And Ja
cinta?”
“She will go, too.”
“And Francisco?”
“Francisco, too, my dear, but he will first have many Rosaries to say.”
For a moment the Lady looked at Francisco with compassion. Lúcia then remembered some friends who had died: “Is Maria Neves in heaven?”
“Yes, she is.”
“And Amelia?”
“She is in purgatory.”
“Will you offer yourselves to God, and bear all the sufferings He sends you? In atonement for all the sins that offend Him? And for the conversion of sinners?”
“Oh, we will, we will!”
“Then you will have a great deal to suffer, but the grace of God will be with you and will strengthen you.”
Lúcia said that “as the Lady pronounced these words, she opened her hands, and we were bathed in a heavenly light that appeared to come directly from her hands. The light’s reality cut into our hearts and our souls, and we knew somehow that this light was God, and we could see ourselves embraced in it. By an interior impulse of grace we fell to our knees, repeating in our hearts: ‘O Holy Trinity, we adore Thee. My God, my God, I love Thee in the Blessed Sacrament.’ ”
The children remained kneeling in the flood of this wondrous light, until the Lady spoke again, mentioning the war in Europe, which the pope had prayed about eight days before, but of which they had little knowledge.
“Pray the Rosary every day, to bring peace to the world and an end to the war.”
Lúcia recorded later: “After that she began to rise slowly in the direction of the east, until she disappeared in the immense distance. The light that encircled her seemed to make a way amidst the stars, and that is why we sometimes said we had seen the heavens open.”
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