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One can’t help but smile at this line in Ruth Gledhill’s article on Bishop Williamson in The Times on Wednesday:
In an address there last summer [Williamson] praised Pope Pius IX’s encyclical Quanta Cura of 1864, a considered analysis of the ills of Modernism, a liberal Catholic movement of the era.
Good thing we got that one behind us! And what have the liberal Catholics been up to since?
St. Louis-Marie de Montfort,
Pope St. Pius X,
St. Joseph,
St. Ambrose of Milan,
St. Thomas Aquinas,
St. Francis (and St. Clare),
St. Catherine of Siena,
St. Alphonsus Ligouri,
St. John Chrysostom,
Isn’t “Modernism” more often associated with the specific outbreak of liberal heresy ca. 1910?
That thought occurred to me after I put the post during the middle of the night. Perhaps they would have used the label of “liberalism” rather than “Modernism” for what was happening in Pius IX’s day. I don’t know, though, if it’s right to say that Modernism, as defined in Pascendi Dominici Gregis came into existence some time later than 1864. If it did, it wasn’t much later! And I say all this while being too lazy to go and take another peek at Quanta Cura. :) Such is the rigor of my blogging.
Modernism is, naturally, coveal with Modernity. In some sense it arose with the “Reformation,” with slightly different branches in early Modern philosophy in Machiavelli, Hobbes, Bacon, and Descartes. Why modernism arose when it did is itself a fascinating question and I think many have persuasively argued that it is in some sense rooted in the developments of Nominalism, especially in the late Francsiscan thought of Ockham, Scotus, and others.
Certainly the Modernism that Pius X discusses in Pascendi is Kantian in form (with the noumenal / phenomenal disctinction being explicitly discussed), but Kant is just the natural fruition of early Modern thought. Pope Benedict XVI discussed this in the utterly misunderstood Regensburg address as well as earlier in his brilliant Introduction to Christianity.
Thanks, Doctor Asinorum. However, I was referring to the usage of Modernism with a capital “M” as a specific title for a specific movement of “Catholic liberalism” (sic). That is how Gledhill uses the term. I wordsearched both Quanta Cura and the Syllabus of Errors — no “Modernism” mentioned. Gledhill is using the term either incorrectly or, at best, imprecisely. If the latter, she should have left the word uncapitalized.
Considering that Pius X, when criticizing “The Doctrines of the Modernists” (Pascendi), discusses a set of ideas that have a long history I’m not entirely sure that the usage you suggest is that important. That is, while it might be the case that there was at some point a specific usage of ‘Modernism’ as you suggest, I think today it really must refer to the larger movement, whether capitalized or not.
Mightn’t this point be made? As an intellectual creature, Modernism was around for a long time before it had the label “Modernism” slapped on it. Gledhill was probably trying to refer to Modernism labeled as such, and so missed the mark in that the label wasn’t current in 1864, though those here can see how it can be applied retroactively, as it were. In short, Gledhill is right to use the term, but for the wrong reasons (probably). Unless she was at that conference at Notre Dame several years ago . . . .
I agree with Iosephus.
I just refreshed my failing memory via Google – and I doubt the Subtle Doctor and the “Invincible Doctor” really occupy the same sphere. I have read no credible condemnation of the former’s teaching, but Fr Fahey does demonstrate that Nominalism is an error. Anyone here less ignorant than yours truly? Louis