Posted by father john george
on October 28, 2009, 9:51 am, in reply to "Modernist reject Aquinas and Scholasticism. Why that is so bad for the true Catholic faith."
--Previous Message--
: Thus, they will not allow that Christ ever
: uttered those things which do not seem to be
: within the capacity of the multitudes that
: listened to Him. Hence they delete from His
: real history and transfer to faith all the
: allegories found in His discourses. We may
: peradventure inquire on what principle they
: make these divisions? Their reply is that
: they argue from the character of the man,
: from his condition of life, from his
: education, from the complexus of the
: circumstances under which the facts took
: place; in short, if We understand them
: aright, on a principle which in the last
: analysis is merely .subjective. Their method
: is to put themselves into the position and
: person of Christ, and then to attribute to
: Him what they would have done under like
: circumstances. In this way, absolutely a
: priori and acting on philosophical
: principles which they hold but which they
: profess to ignore, they proclaim that
: Christ, according to what they call His real
: history, was not God and never did anything
: divine, and that as man He did and said only
: what they, judging from the time in which He
: lived, consider that He ought to have said
: or done. . . .
:
: If we pass on from the moral to the
: intellectual causes of Modernism, the first
: and the chief which presents itself is
: ignorance. Yes, these very Modernists who
: seek to be esteemed as Doctors of the
: Church, who speak so loftily of modern
: philosophy and show such contempt for
: scholasticism, have embraced the one with
: all its false glamour, precisely because
: their ignorance of the other has left them
: without the means of being able to recognize
: confusion of thought and to refute
: sophistry. Their whole system, containing as
: it does errors so many and so great, has
: been born of the union between faith and
: false philosophy.
:
: Would that they had but displayed less zeal
: and energy in propagating it! But such is
: their activity and such their unwearying
: labor on behalf of their cause, that one
: cannot but be pained to see them waste such
: energy in endeavoring to ruin the Church
: when they might have been of such service to
: her had their efforts been better directed.
: Their artifices to delude men's minds are of
: two kinds, the first to remove obstacles
: from their path, the second to devise and
: apply actively and patiently every resource
: that can serve their purpose. They recognize
: that the three chief difficulties which
: stand in their way are the scholastic method
: of philosophy, the authority and tradition
: of the Fathers, and the magisterium of the
: Church, and on these they wage unrelenting
: war. Against scholastic philosophy and
: theology they use the weapons of ridicule
: and contempt. Whether it is ignorance or
: fear, or both, that inspires this conduct in
: them, certain it is that their passion for
: novelty is always united in them with hatred
: of scholasticism, and there is no surer sign
: that a man is tending to Modernism than when
: he begins to show his dislike for the
: scholastic method. Let the Modernists and
: their admirers remember the proposition
: condemned by Pius IX: "The method and
: principles which have served the ancient
: doctors of scholasticism when treating of
: theology no longer correspond with the
: exigencies of our time or the progress of
: science." They exercise all their
: ingenuity in an effort to weaken the force
: and falsify the character of tradition, so
: as to rob it of all its weight and
: authority. But for Catholics nothing will
: remove the authority of the second Council
: of Nicea, where it condemns those "who
: dare, after the impious fashion of heretics,
: to deride the ecclesiastical traditions, to
: invent novelties of some kind...or endeavor
: by malice or craft to overthrow any one of
: the legitimate traditions of the Catholic
: Church"; nor that of the declaration of
: the fourth Council of Constantinople:
: "We therefore profess to preserve and
: guard the rules bequeathed to the Holy
: Catholic and Apostolic Church, by the Holy
: and most illustrious Apostles, by the
: orthodox Councils, both general and local,
: and by everyone of those divine
: interpreters, the Fathers and Doctors of the
: Church." Wherefore the Roman Pontiffs,
: Pius IV and Pius IX, ordered the insertion
: in the profession of faith of the following
: declaration: "I most firmly admit and
: embrace the apostolic and ecclesiastical
: traditions and other observances and
: constitutions of the Church.''
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