89. INDIVIDUALISTIC MATERIALISM

Generic definition. Though Materialism was not a new phenomenon in history, both Carlton Hayes and Father Corrigan would stress it as characteristic of the period after 1870. Father Corrigan endeavors to define Materialism, terming it a “perennial pseudo-philosophy, which teaches that we know nothing but matter, and that there is no ground for supposing thought and the human mind to be anything beyond a function of organized material substance. Materialism is latent in most of the ‘isms’ of the century. In a less philosophical sense, but scarcely less important, Materialism stands for an immersion in material things, in money-making, pleasure, comfort, and power: living as if there were no soul, no God, no future life.” ¹

Raymond Corrigan, The Church in the Nineteenth Century (Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Co., 1938), p. 306.

Philosophic exponents. In the strict sense of a philosophic theory, Materialism is foreshadowed in Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-72). This disciple of Hegel converted his master’s Idealism into a thoroughgoing Materialism, while retaining his method. Étienne Gilson has characterized Feuerbach as “instead of a theologian, an anthropologian,” and has analyzed his revolutionary “religion” as follows: “God has not created man in His own image, but man has created God in his own image and likeness; the worship of man under the name of God is the very essence of religion. The doctrine of Feuerbach aimed at the destruction of all  ^{[p. 591]} supernaturalism, and was expressly contrived to achieve it. . . . As Feuerbach himself says, ‘He who no longer has any supernatural wishes has no longer any supernatural beings either.’ The new religion was, therefore, not a worship of society like the sociolatry of Comte; it was a worship of human nature, an ‘anthropolatry.”‘ ² Feuerbach was the intellectual progenitor of Marx’s “Dialectical Materialism,” but the liberal world was itself treated to a sweeping denial of the spiritual by Thomas Huxley (1825-95). This coiner of the word “agnosticism” drew antireligious conclusions from Darwin’s questionable and ambiguous hypotheses; as the latter’s “bulldog” he barked at theologians: “That this Christianity is doomed to fall is, to my mind, beyond a doubt.” And the nineteenth century ended with Ernst Haeckel (1834-1920) stating dogmatically in his Riddle of the Universe (1899) that matter is all; spirit is nothing.

Popular attitudes, however, usually eschewed metaphysics for a more pragmatic cult of matter. “In this broad sense, many persons may be accounted ‘materialist’ who were not at all philosophically minded and who ignored, rather than denied, the traditional dualism of ‘spirit’ and ‘matter’—persons who were absorbed in ‘practical matters’ of making money, directing banks, organizing industrial corporations, devising machinery, or otherwise ‘applying’ science. Such persons had little time or inclination to think about the ultimates of human life and destiny. Some of them might profess from habit a belief in the supernatural, but most of them were influenced, consciously or unconsciously, by the Materialism of the ‘philosophical’ science accompanying the experimental or applied science which they immensely—if somewhat vaguely —respected. Among them and amongst most ‘scientific’ philosophers too, it was not so much a question of dogmatically rejecting the spiritual as of exalting the physical and the material and confessing a complete agnosticism about the supernatural.” ³

² Etienne Gilson, Unity of Philosophical Experience (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1937), pp. 281-82.

‘Carlton Hayes, Political and Cultural History of Modern Europe (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1932-36), II, 356.

 (2) MANIFESTATION OF MATERIALISM

Militarism. “Not by speeches and majority resolutions are the great questions of the time decided ... but by blood and iron.” Thus Bismarck, Prussia’s “Iron Chancellor,” had announced his program bluntly in 1862. Within a decade he had seemingly proved that “might makes right” by installing the Hohenzollern Second Reich as the leading state of the European Continent. Until 1890 Bismarck himself was the diplomatic arbiter with a prestige that rivaled that of Metternich during^{[p. 592]} the first half of the century. Great Britain, still mistress of the seas, at first regarded with complacence the new German land hegemony as vindication of an Anglo-Teutonic racial superiority. It was an Englishman, Walter Bagehot, who smugly assured readers of the Fortnightly Review that, “those nations which are strongest tend to be the best.” Other proofs of the “survival of the fittest” in a military “struggle for existence” were the triumph of the North over the South in the American Union, Italian appropriation of Rome from a “medieval papacy,” and the ease with which European “powers” exploited the resources of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. In 1888 this machtpolitik emerged baldly from diplomatic circumlocutions when Kaiser Wilhelm II—and last—opened his reign with the manifesto: “We belong to each other—I and the Army—we were born for each other and will cleave indissolubly to each other.” Until 1914 the world would hear a succession of militant speeches. Militarism seemed in the saddle, the ancient conflict between the “two swords” resolved in favor of the material one. But the realm of the spiritual enjoyed less publicity; for instance, it was also in 1888 that Thérèse Martin entered Carmel at Lisieux.

 “Realism.” If militarism was a social consequence of materialistic philosophy in the strict sense, “Realism,” which now dethroned Romanticism in the literary field, was a barometer of the materialistic attitude in the broader sense. “It was defined by its champions as the basing of art, as well as of human activity and practical ‘progress’ not on ancient models or ‘reason’ as ‘classicists’ had done; not on ‘emotion’ and an idyllic state of nature or an idealized Middle Age, as Romantics had tried to do, but on a veritably photographic representation of observable facts of the contemporary world. There should be in it no idealization of man, of his past, of his mind or ‘soul,’ or his aspirations or philosophizings. Indeed, it would tend in an opposite direction toward emphasizing the very gradualness of man’s ascent from his savage animal origins, and the atavistic, pathological, and irrational features of his present existence. In the name of reality, it would utilize the ugly as the raw stuff of art.” ⁴

Ibid., p. 383.

Typical realists were Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906), Émile Zola (1840– 1902) , and Anatole France (1844-1924) , and many of the same symptoms can be found in Blasco Ibanez (1867-1928), Thomas Hardy (18401928) , Anton Chekov (1860-1904) , Maxim Gorky (1868-1936) , and Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951) and Ernest Hemingway. Corresponding to materialist philosophy, then, there emerged what Sorokin has termed a “sensate culture,” or at least the traditional Christian civilization became afflicted with various sensate maladies. Among these were the degradation of social values to sensual enjoyment, an endeavor to ^{[p. 593]} portray the sensual, even the sexual, “frankly”; the nervous quest for sensationalism and novelty to the extent of entering the realm of the pathological and fantastic; the tendency to make means an end; a depressing standardization of mass production, carried over into the artistic and literary fields by catering to popular animal tastes. A true realism which would face the fact of original sin—as opposed to Victorian prudishness—might have been salutary, but scarcely a pseudo-realism which rashly plumbed the depths of human evil while ignoring supernatural remedies. Such imprudent probing threatened moral disaster, perhaps what Chesterton would call “breaking the spring.”

(3) POLITICAL SURVEY (1870-1914)

Teutonic ascendancy on the European Continent was seemingly established by Bismarck’s rout of Bonapartist France and his consolidation of the Hohenzollern Second Reich (1871-1918). With Francis Joseph of Austria-Hungary he cemented a Dual Alliance straddling Central Europe, a pact formally ratified in 1879. Simultaneously Bismarck maintained good relations with Russian Czardom through an understanding often labeled the Drei-Kaiser-Bund. His successors, however, proved incapable of composing the rival ambitions of Austria and Russia in regard to the Balkans, and Germany was eventually obliged to back the former at the expense of alienating the latter. Austrian annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina and several diplomatic reverses of the Russians in the Balkans through international intervention seemed to warrant this choice. Yet the subject Slays came to regard the Austrians and Hungarians as oppressors, and to look to the Russians as potential liberators. Austria-Hungary, moreover, proved quite incapable of controlling the antinational hodgepodge ruled by the Habsburgs from Vienna and Budapest. Italy also came into the Teutonic orbit in 1882, thus expanding the Dual into a Triple Alliance, but her adherence proved lukewarm. Italy’s alliance was self-interested and labored against strong anti-German historical prejudices. Hence, it easily dissolved at the first sound of actual hostilities. But though the Teutonic position thus worsened diplomatically, the German military might seemed to grow with the years.

Anglo-French entente, at first improbable by reason of colonial rivalries, nonetheless became a reality in 1904 after a series of developments. While Great Britain and France composed their colonial differences by marking out separate spheres of influence in Africa and elsewhere, German aspirations to become a naval power aroused British fears. The Kaiser’s open sympathy for the revolting Boers in South Africa during 1898 boded ill for the continuance of the British Empire, and a naval race commenced. German-Austrian alienation of Russia also drove ^{[p. 594]} the latter into Anglo-French hands, especially after Russian defeat by Japan convinced the Czarist government of the need of finding allies. Then, two rival leagues faced one another in Europe, while lesser states curried favor with either group, or desperately proclaimed neutrality. The colonial domains of these two leagues involved all the continents and promised that a conflict, if it should occur, would be world-wide.

Balkan nationalism also came of age during this period in the wake of periodic risings against Turkish oppression. Greece was joined in her independent status by Serbia, Montenegro, and Rumania (1878), and later by Bulgaria (1909) and Albania (1913) . This was all at the expense of the fast fading Ottoman dominions, which lost Tripoli to Italy in 1911 and retained but nominal suzerainty outside of the Anatolian peninsula, where, indeed, a saving nationalism was brewing in the “Young Turk” movement.

Peace efforts through the Hague conferences of 1899 and 1907 were the only hopeful omens in this charged atmosphere. Certain regulations for hostilities were adopted and provisions were made for voluntary arbitration of disputes. But on the crucial points of sanctions for international justice and compulsory arbitration, no agreement was possible amid the fixation of “national sovereignty” which deemed every state its own ultimate judge of its own interests. What remained of Metternich’s “Concert of Europe” was fast dissolving into “International Anarchy.”

B. The Individualistic Accent

(1) ASPECTS OF INDIVIDUALISM

Contractualism. If Materialism may be assigned as a common denominator for both the bourgeois Liberal culture and the proletarian Socialism which now became its rival, it is the former that remained in the ascendant prior to World War I. Sorokin discovers in the voluntary contract the pattern for this classic age of triumphant Liberalism, this “Gilded Age” of Individualism, flaunting its wealth in America at the century’s turn. “If we were to characterize modern Western society in a single word, one such word would unquestionably be contractual-ism. ... Its dominant capitalist system of economy was a contractual system of economic relationship between the parties involved. . . . Contractual government is a more precise definition of so-called democratic political systems—of government of the people, by the people and for the people... . Liberty of religion meant a transformation of religious organizations into contractual bodies: one was free to become, or not to become a member of any religious organization. A similar transformation occurred within the family. Marriage was declared a ^{[p. 595]} purely civil contract between free parties, in contradistinction to a compulsory marriage. . . . Marriage was also made more contractual in its continuity and dissolution. . . . Not only in the relation of husband and wife, but also in those of the parents and children, the family tended to become an increasingly contractual institution. With individualism, the period became the century of triumphant sensate liberty, in contradistinction to ideational liberty.... Ideational liberty is inner liberty rooted in the restraint and control of our desires, wishes, and lusts... . Sensate liberty strives to expand endlessly both wishes and the means of their satisfaction.”

Cult of progress. This ceaseless quest—for a beatitude to be found in God alone—found its expression in the “cult of progress,” a sort of universal application of Darwinian biological postulates. The magic key to knowledge became evolution. Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859) was presently followed in 1867 by Marx’s “evolutionary materialism” that applied the hypothesis to the economic sphere; in 1871 Edward Tylor revolutionized anthropology on an evolutionary basis; in 1872 D. F. Strauss abandoned “spiritual philosophy” for “the materialism of modern science” in the name of evolution: philosophy, ceasing to be metaphysics, would become a synthesis of physical science. Wilhelm Wundt during 1874 used the evolutionary hypothesis for his “New Psychology,” and by 1875 sociology saw Gumplowicz employing evolution in his analysis of civilization as the “struggle for existence between races”—remotely sowing seeds of Nazism. William James and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., hailed an “evolutionary law.” Nowhere was the application of the evolutionary presupposition more exposed to abuse than in religion. Yet not only did contemporary Protestants for the most part surrender to doctrinal Latitudinarianism, but—as will be noted more in detail later—the Catholic Church faced the insidious threat of “Modernism.” It is true that all Protestants did not yield to the Zeitgeist, but many who had rejected the lures of “agnosticism,” “creedless morality,” “religion of humanity,” “national faith,” etc., did so only by blind insistence upon Genesis literally interpreted according to outworn scientific principles, as was lamentably demonstrated at the Scopes trial in 1925. While docility to authoritative interpretation preserved Catholics from like folly, stubborn fundamentalists not merely cut themselves off from contemporary intellectual movements, but brought traditional religion into contempt among the younger generations by narrow-minded, if sincere, attitudes. Many of today’s Radicals are reactionaries against a blind and arid Fundamentalism. ^{[p. 596]}

Pitirim Sorokin, Crisis of Our Age (New York: E. P. Dutton and Co., 1942), pp. 110 ff.

2) SOCIAL CONCOMITANTS

Parliamentary omnicompetence. Politically, the period witnessed the general victory in the Western World, if not precisely of Democracy, yet of parliamentarianism. The English system of “constitutional monarchy” or ministerial responsibility became the model for Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Italy, Greece, Austria, and Hungary. France differed from this system only in its “republican” nomenclature, and Germany’s Reichstag, if it could not unseat Chancellor Bismarck, could at least prevent him from always having his own way. American Democracy was presidential in form, but toward the end of the period even the United States seemed susceptible of conversion under Woodrow Wilson who as professor had defended the British system and as president professed to regard himself as prime minister. Following the Second Reform Act of 1868, the English Victorian Compromise came to an end and the suffrage was more widely extended, though the ruling parties continued to avoid universal manhood suffrage and to smile tolerantly at feminine suffragists. While it had been established that the chief of state and his ministers were responsible to parliament, it was not considered prudent to make them fully dependent on the popular will. Parties might rotate in office, but collectively the charmed circle of parliamentarians still felt that they knew best.

Laicization or secularization of the state went on incessantly, reaching an explicit avowal in the French separation of Church and state in 1906. If other Latin countries did not go so far in theory, they approached this in practice. In Protestant countries, the established religion was either disestablished or practically disregarded by the majority of the inhabitants. By gaining control of education, both in nominally Catholic and in Protestant countries, the state generally imprinted the idea of the unquestioned supremacy of secularism on the rising generations. This universal secularization was an ultimate consequence of Luther’s distinction between private and social morality: the subjectivist principle that religion is a private affair was crashing on the rocks of sterile Fundamentalism, amorphous Latitudinarianism, and a secularized “Church” could afford no relief. Lutheran dualism was not yet sufficiently countered by Catholic Action, and the masses were enticed from religious to secular influences. Hence, Pius XI is reported to have remarked to Canon Cardijn: “The great scandal of the nineteenth century was the neglect of the worker.” ^{[p. 597]}

90. SOCIALIST CHALLENGE

“All the industrial developments of the period from 1830 to 1870 continued and spread throughout the period from 1870 to 1910 in an exaggerated degree and with more and more far-reaching effects. .. . Opportunities for ‘self-made men’ as well as for professional bankers (and corporation lawyers) were now golden. And such opportunities were not neglected. . . . The new type of business corporation dispersed nominal ownership and centralized actual control. It enabled a few directors and officials to enrich themselves on other peoples’ money and to become irresponsible ‘captains of industry,’ tsars of paper-credit empires. At the same time it imparted to a mass of investors a blissful ignorance of sordid details and a heavenly manna of bond interest and stock dividends. It also promoted monopoly. For the corporation was big and rich compared with most individual and family enterprises, and the big fellow might buy up the little fellow, or still more simply, might crush him in free and open competition. By the 1880’s industrial and financial combination was striding over the industrial world.” ^{6, 7} International concerns limited competition and obtained privileges; varying with the countries involved, there were now “trusts” or “holding-companies,” joint-stock concerns, cartels. Everywhere in the Western World arose industrial and financial titans to flourish in a classic age of economic feudalism. Henceforth the “first families” in wealth and power were not those of kings and nobles, but the economic barons, more often than not newly rich. Nobel in Sweden, Krupp in Germany, Creusot in France, J. & P. Coats in England, Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Morgan in the United States, and the Rothschilds nearly everywhere were but a few of these dynasties.

° Hayes, op. cit., pp. 285, 304.

‘ Carlton Hayes, Generation of Materialism (New York: Harper and Bros., 1941), pp. 100-101.

 (2) LAISSEZ-FAIRE PATERNALISM

It would be unjust to characterize all of these business leaders as ruthless exploiters of the poor. Frequently men like Nobel and Carnegie would turn philanthropists in their old age and contribute hugely to public welfare. Yet their patronage of the underprivileged was at best humanitarian condescension, not social justice. These “barons” might throw largesse after the manner of a medieval lord, but they consoled themselves that their success was but another verification of Darwinian “survival of the fittest.” At least so they were assured by ^{[p. 598]} Herbert Spencer: “The poverty of the incapable, the distresses that come upon the imprudent, the starvation of the idle . . . when regarded not separately, but in connection with the interests of universal humanity, these harsh fatalities are seen to be full of the highest beneficence—the same beneficence which brings to early graves the children of diseased parents, and singles out the low-spirited, the intemperate, and the debilitated as the victims of an epidemic. . . . That rigorous necessity which when allowed to act on them, becomes so sharp a spur to the lazy and so strong a bridle to the random, these paupers’ friends would repeal because of the wailings it here and there produces.” When ministers of religion, educators, sociologists either approved of or did not contradict this new “gospel of wealth,” it is possible to understand, if not to justify, Marxian condemnation of “bourgeois morality” and “capitalist religion.” This very smugness of capitalists drove socialists to fury.

B. Socialist Onslaught

(1) SOCIALIST ORIGINS

Utopian Socialism ushered in the nineteenth century with the schemes of Saint-Simon (1760-1825) and Charles Fourier (1772-1837) in France, and Robert Owen (1771-1858) in England, Scotland, and the United States. The general aim of these reformers was to correct the abuses of private property by the voluntary example of model communities. But if the Scots for a time publicized New Lanark in Scotland, “New Harmony” in Indiana proved a dismal failure. Briefly, voluntary communal living, difficult in religious orders for supernatural motives, proved too much to expect of unregenerate human selfishness.

Syndicalism—derived from the French syndicat, a trade union—was foreshadowed in the short-lived “national workshops” of Louis Blanc (1813-82), and came into prominence with Proudhon (1809-65) and Sorel (1847-1922). At first an anarchist, Proudhon after 1852 admitted economic society under proletarian leaders. Holding that “property is theft,” the syndicalist did not scruple to sabotage capitalist industry: literally, putting a sabot or wooden shoe into the machinery. Another tactic was the strike, preparatory to the “general strike” in which all the workmen of the land would be able to take over the means of production. Syndicalism, represented in the United States by the I.W.W., proved too radical for the majority of workers, and the famed British General Strike of 1926 turned out to be a failure.

Marxian Socialism was born when Karl Marx (1818-83) and his patron and inseparable collaborator, Friedrich Engels (1829-95) , adapted some of Proudhon’s economic materialism to Hegelian dialectic. Marx had been born in the Rhineland, a region stirred by the French ^{[p. 599]} Revolution and chafing under the reactionary Prussian yoke. Of his ancestral Judaism, Marx seems to have retained nothing save perhaps a despiritualized Messianism to be fulfilled in a Communist millennium. Any Christianity he imbibed from the family’s outward acceptance was lost under teachers of the prevailing Hegelian Pantheism and Feuerbach’s “anthropolatry.” From Hegel’s Philosophy of History, Marx derived a determinist theory which at Proudhon’s suggestion, he transposed from its idealist setting to a remorseless march of materialist economics. Barred from teaching by his rebellion against the official Hegelianism and successively exiled from Germany and France for journalistic agitation against the established order, Marx spent his later life in England composing that “Dialectical Materialism” which would become concrete in Russian Communism. Assuming an autodynamic, wholly material universe, Marx made man subject chiefly, if not entirely, to economic motives. Existing society is but an expression and defense of the proprietary avarice of the dominant capitalists. In pursuing his exclusive interests, the capitalist usurps the “surplus value” of workmen’s labor, for the product is sold for more than the wage paid—an economically unsound postulate. Inevitably, Marx argued, capitalistic exploitation would reach intolerable dimensions and provoke the proletariat into revolt; whereupon the “expropriators are expropriated.” Then a transitional “dictatorship of the proletariat” would enforce proper remuneration for each through collective ownership of the means of production. Eventually, when all classes have been dissolved into a classless society, the state will “wither away” and there will emerge a world-society without coercion in which “man, at last master of his own form of social organization, becomes at the same time lord over nature, his own master—free.”

(2) SOCIALIST PROGRESS (1848-1914)

First International. In 1848 Marx and Engels gave this doctrine to the world in rudimentary form in their Communist Manifesto. From the first, Marxism sought an international audience: “The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workingmen of all countries, unite!” The rebels of 1848, however, were chiefly interested in political and national grievances, and the Manifesto escaped general notice—though not that of Father Ketteler. From his English exile, Marx in 1864 organized the “International Workingmen’s Association,” popularly called the “Internationale.” The intellectuals who tried to spread Socialist doctrines among the workers were furnished in 1867 with a Marxian bible, the first volume of Das Kapital. International congresses were held and in 1871 the first approximation of the “Dictatorship of the Proletariat” appeared in the “Commune of ^{[p. 600]} Paris” where Socialists and Anarchists revolted against the inchoate Third Republic. Only after copious bloodshed was their attempt overthrown, and the episode frightened away disciples from Marxism. Marx himself was led to dissolve his alliance with the Anarchist, Mikhail Bakunin. The remnants of the First International dispersed at the Philadelphia World’s Fair in 1876.

State Socialism appeared as a reaction to Marxism in Germany. Karl Rodbertus (1805-75) and Ferdinand Lassalle (1825-64) , while not formally repudiating Marxian orthodoxy, stressed practical short-term objectives. Lassalle organized a political party, the Social Democrats, to work for government legislation on behalf of the worker and to form workers’ co-operatives. Gradual extension of these and other means, it was felt, would achieve the downfall of capitalism by peaceful, democratic methods. Presently Jules Guesde (1845-1922) formed a similar party in France, and analogous movements appeared in most countries. In England, the “Fabian Socialists,” organized in 1883 by Shaw, Webb, Cole, and MacDonald, advised a gradual transformation of society through education and propaganda; many of its members reappeared in the British Labor Party. These Socialist parties were successful in forcing capitalist governments, beginning with that of Bismarck, into conceding limited reforms which mitigated the lot of the worker. Such partial successes irritated the “all or nothing” doctrinaires, and prepared the way for a schism into a political and moderate “Socialism,” and a more violent “Communism.”

The Second International, founded at Paris on the centenary of Bastile Day, July 14, 1889, signalized the re-emergence of Marxism into favor. After some disputes, leaders avoided the pitfall of the First International by repudiating Anarchism for Marxian orthodoxy. The dead Marx henceforth became a revered and infallible guide, although live leaders continued to dispute about various interpretations of his teaching. Membership in this Second International grew rapidly at successive congresses where a standard program was prepared and party discipline enforced. But as membership grew, so did the numbers of moderates, workingmen, and reformers, interested more in social betterment than in “Dialectical Materialism.” Hence the movement became increasingly “political,” to the disgust of Lenin’s faction. It remained to be seen whether it was truly international. When in 1914 the Socialists for the most part rallied to their respective national states, the Second International practically dissolved—though a “Fourth International” founded in 1946 mustered 22 national units for its 1951 Frankfurt congress. But meanwhile Lenin and Trotsky had organized a more famous and influential “Third International”: Communism. ^{[p. 601]}

C. The Catholic Answer

(1) BISHOP KETTELER’S CORPORATE REVIVAL

Wilhelm von Ketteler (1811-77), bishop of Mainz, has already been briefly mentioned as a leader of German Catholic social organization. As early as November, 1848, he began to prepare a Catholic alternative to unrestricted capitalism and materialistic Socialism. Elected to the Frankfurt parliament in 1848, he commenced during October of that year a series of addresses and sermons on the “Social Question,” taking note of the Communist Manifesto in the very year of its publication. In 1862 appeared the first of the many able pamphlets on social problems, and during 1869 he led the German hierarchy in making pronouncements on social topics at Fulda.

Revived Thomistic teaching, applied to modern conditions, was the essence of Bishop Ketteler’s solution for the social question. Pointing out that God has eminent domain over property and that man merely the usufruct, the bishop asserted that, “the Catholic teaching of private property has nothing in common with the concept current in the world, according to which man regards himself as unrestricted master of his possessions.” Rather, “man should never look on these fruits as his exclusive property, but as the common property of all, and should therefore be ready to share them with others in their need.” Under existing conditions, however, the bishop deemed the organization of labor unions to assist in this work “not only justified but necessary.” Indeed, “it would be great folly on our part if we kept aloof from this movement merely because at the present time it happens to be promoted chiefly by men who are hostile to Christianity.” The Catholic Church ought to replace the vanished guilds with “workingmen’s associations.” With prudent foresight, moreover, Ketteler warned: “Lassalle wishes to carry out this project with the help of capital advanced by the state. This expedient, at least if carried out on a large scale, appears to us . . . unjustifiable encroachment on the rights of private property.” Admonishing labor against excessive wage increase demands, he said: “The object of the labor movement is not to be war between the workman and the employer, but peace on equitable terms between both.” Among such fair terms, however, the bishop would recognize the justice of workers’ claims for shorter hours, days of rest, prohibition of child labor and of female work in the factories. To secure these and other demands, he admitted that the “working classes have a right to demand from the state that it give back to them what it deprived them of, namely, a labor constitution, regulated labor. . . . In the second place, the workingman has a right to demand from the state protection for himself, his ^{[p. 602]} family, his work and health, against the superior force with which capital endows its owner. .. . By wise legislation the state can bring about peaceful organization of the working-classes, and it certainly has no right to leave this result to be accomplished by a long-drawn-out struggle between capital and labor.” During the Kulturkampf, Bishop Ketteler continued to lead Catholics on social issues, completing his fund of ninety-two sermons or pamphlets. It was a just as well as a graceful tribute to Bishop Ketteler for Pope Leo XIII to refer to him as “my great predecessor”: that is, in the preparation of the papal social teaching eventually appearing in Rerum Novarum.

(2) CATHOLIC SOCIAL PIONEERS

Realist School. Bishop Ketteler’s immediate disciples, who might be termed the Realist School of Social Christianity, had as their spokesman Father Franz Hitze, for a time Center Party deputy in the Reichstag. Building on Father Kolping’s Youth Group of 1849, Father Hitze organized the Arbeiterwohl during 1879. He and his associates sought state intervention for limiting hours of labor, ensuring Sunday rest, old age and accident insurance, and workers’ social education. The German Center Party was its instrument for the realization of its program of defense of the worker. Other German leaders were Alfred Huffer and Father Joseph Schlimps, who organized a federation of Catholic social groups in 1868, and adopted a complete program in 1870. A minority adhered to these methods in Austria-Hungary as well.

Corporative School. On the other hand, a so-called “Corporative School” was largely predominant among the Austrian and French groups. In Austria this movement was led by Baron Karl von Vogelsang (1818-90), and in France it was headed by Count Albert de Mun (1841-1914) and Marquis Tour du Pin. As might be suspected from the titles of these aristocrats, the movement tended to be paternalistic, and somewhat idealized the Middle Ages. Some proposed an ideal organization of the whole state under a “grand council of corporations” which would advise on social questions. But Count de Mun also formed a Catholic association, including a youth movement, and advocated state relief legislation. During 1880 Father Cerutti formed near Venice the first farm co-operative, and this organization was imitated in most of the other countries by 1914.

Education was the medium chiefly employed by Giuseppe Toniolo (1845-1918), professor and writer at the University of Pisa. He outlined the program of “Christian Democracy,” a Catholic social and political movement founded in 1903, which evolved into Don Luigi Sturzo’s Partito Popolare. Organizations for families were begun by Abbé Viollet in France in 1887, and in Switzerland, Cardinal Gaspard ^{[p. 603]} Mermillod (1824-92), bishop of Lausanne, sponsored social journals and the Catholic Union for Social Studies. In 1925 Abbé Cardijn founded the Jocists—Young Christian Workers—in Belgium, and they spread to France in 1926.

In Anglo-Saxon lands, Cardinal Manning, archbishop of Westminster, took the lead in the Catholic labor movement in England, and intervened with outstanding success in the London dock strike of 1889. In the United States, Cardinal Gibbons, archbishop of Baltimore, averted papal condemnation of the first nation-wide labor organization, the Knights of Labor, and softened possible censure on Father McGlynn for participation in Henry George’s ill-advised but popular “Single Tax” scheme.

These pioneers, all intelligent, zealous, and courageous workers, even if not always successful at first, in the long run launched movements which achieved great results. Christian democracy, or the banding together for social action of Catholics and conservative non-Catholics, was to be a bulwark against Communism in Western Europe after World War II. Unfortunately much precious time had by then been consumed in overcoming prejudices and fixed ideas, and in working out effective lay support.

91. LEO XIII AND CATHOLIC REVIVAL

Gioacchino Vincenzo Pecci (1810-1903) was born at Carpineto, then in the Papal States, of an aristocratic family. In his early years he seems to have shared his relatives’ ambitions for a brilliant ecclesiastical career: on one occasion he assured his brother that he sought “to rise in the hierarchical ranks of prelacy, and so augment the due respect our family enjoys in the country.” Educated at the Roman Academia dei Nobili and the Gregorian University, he was ordained to the priesthood in 1837 and entered upon the temporal administration of the Papal States, first as governor of Benevento, and then as delegate for Umbria. In 1843 he was named nuncio to Belgium and consecrated titular archbishop. But as a diplomat he seems to have proved somewhat inexperienced; at least he was recalled in 1845 and “rusticated” as archbishop of Perugia. Out of favor with Cardinal Antonelli, the papal secretary of state, Pecci reminded himself of St. Ignatius Loyola’s axiom that everyone ought to be resigned to being but an instrument of Divine . Providence, and applied himself to the work of his diocese. Pecci’s pastoral skill attracted the pope’s attention. He was named cardinal in 1854, consulted on many ecclesiastical projects, and after Antonelli’s death, also made camerlengo. As such he presided over the conclave of  ^{[p. 604]} February 18, 1878, which on the third ballot of the third day, February 20, chose him as Pope Leo XIII.

Character. “His well-known portraits reveal a tall, thin, diaphanous, distinguished-looking nobleman of exquisite poise and dignity; a man of delicate constitution, but of iron will and tireless energy; a likable, witty, winsome individual who was at the same time conscious of the greatness of his office.” ⁸ Called to the papacy at what seemed the end of his life, he lived to celebrate his silver jubilee. On being congratulated on his age with the wish: “May Your Holiness live to be a hundred,” he could retort: “Why put limits to Providence?” Signora Rattazzi felt that he gave an austere impression, though softened by benevolence, especially toward children. On the other hand, the German, Von Bülow, deemed him very friendly and approachable. Finally John Henry Newman, whom Leo at length vindicated, probably carried away the English impression that the pope was the personification of a Christian gentleman.

Corrigan, op. cit., p. 57.

 Role. This holy urbanity enabled Leo XIII to conciliate many of those who had been alienated by Pius IX’s intransigence. Without abating any of the Church’s claims, the new pope nevertheless found a way of presenting them without needlessly antagonizing Liberals. Perhaps he came to regard them less as traitors to the Church than as deluded wanderers in a generation which no longer appreciated religious authority. At least such was the respect which Leo won for the papacy that from his pontificate may be dated much of the esteem for the office in moderate non-Catholic circles. The Leonine tact induced many to cease to regard the Holy See as the Beast of the Apocalypse_; some now deemed it a venerable, benevolent, if somewhat impractical force for peace.

 (2) PONTIFICAL PROGRAM

Inscrutabili, issued shortly after Pope Leo’s accession in 1878, provided a sort of sketch of the papal program. The pope traced the evils of modern society to a repudiation of the Church’s guidance in social life. Instead of crippling ecclesiastical activity by anticlerical secularization and indifference, society, once civilized by the Church, ought again to hear her voice, for she has been appointed by God the teacher of mankind. And the pope’s valedictory, Graves de Communi (1902), continued to plead for the world’s recognition that moderns are “not animals but men; not heathens, but Christians.”

Doctrinal errors condemned by Leo XIII included Rosmini’s Ontologism (Denzinger 1881) and the so-called “Americanism” of natural virtue (Denzinger 1967), treated elsewhere. Dueling, cremation, and abortion were reprobated by the Holy Office, and Anglican orders held invalid.

Devotional practices recommended by the pope included those to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Rosary of the Blessed Virgin. The vernacular prayers after low Mass and the “October Devotions” are of Leonine institution.

Pacification of the Kulturkampf in Germany and Switzerland, the reaching of an understanding on the Belgian dispute about education, a modus vivendi with Russia, termination of the Goa schism and the Chaldean estrangement, settlement of the Philippine Friary question, and arbitration of the Caroline Island dispute between Germany and Spain—this list of diplomatic successes discussed more at length elsewhere, reveals Leo’s conciliatory attitude.

(3) THE ROMAN QUESTION (1870-1903)

Regime of Guarantees. Pope Leo’s relations with the Italian kingdom, however, had been largely predetermined by his predecessor’s policies. After the annexation of Rome, the Italian parliament had enacted a “Law of Guarantees” which unilaterally regulated relations between Italy and the Holy See. These assured the Roman pontiff of personal inviolability equal to that of the Italian monarch; allowed him complete freedom of communication “in spiritual matters” with the Catholic world; permitted him to retain the Vatican and Lateran palaces, with Castel Gandolfo, and assigned him an annual subsidy of 3,225,000 lire—about $640,000 at pre-1914 rates. Pope Pius IX had rejected this law as a mere governmental fiat which ignored his sovereignty and threatened to reduce him to the status of a national chaplain. To avoid any appearance of recognizing the de facto situation, he had inaugurated the famous “Vatican Captivity” of the papacy during which no pope set foot on Italian soil in order to avoid even an implicit recognition of the kingdom of Italy. But the Italian government could display its resentment as well. Protestant churches began to appear in Rome without disguise in 1871; in 1873 houses of religious orders in Rome were declared secularized, and during 1876 Premier Depretis, a cousin of St. Francesca Cabrini, banned all religious processions outside of churches. During 1874 Pope Pius IX had applied an earlier decree, Non Expedit, to regulate the conduct of loyal Italian Catholics: none who manifested his allegiance to the Holy See ought to vote or hold office under the usurping government of Savoyard Italy, and Roman aristocracy divided into pro-Vatican or pro-Quirinal factions.

Papal-royal estrangement. When Leo XIII succeeded Pius IX in February, 1878, it was generally expected that a reconciliation would be reached with the new King, Humbert I (1878-1900), who had mounted ^{[p. 606]} the throne the preceding month. And the new pontiff, without abating papal claims, did show himself not unfriendly. On his own account he made no overt move until the obsequies of the late pontiff—delayed until July 13, 1881—provoked public insults and an attempt to throw the body into the Tiber as it was borne from St. Peter’s to San Lorenzo. Pope Leo denounced this violence in an allocution of August 4, and the Freemasons countered with a demonstration on August 7 during which they denounced the Law of Guarantees as too generous toward the papacy. Open conflict followed, sometimes reaching fanatical proportions, e.g., Carducci presented his “Hymn to Satan” at La Scala Opera House in 1882. The regime of Premier Depretis (1876; 1878-79; 1881-87) renewed legal attacks upon the Church. One of the most reprehensible of these was seizure of the property of Propaganda, devoted to the service of Catholic missions throughout the world. No fancied principles of national interest could justify this grievous act of injustice, and Catholic bishops endorsed the protest of Cardinal Guibert of Paris (1884). The Italian government, moreover, violated its own Law of Guarantees in 1882 by assuming jurisdiction over Vatican territory in the case of Martinucci, a dismissed Vatican employee. The French anticlerical Gambetta was eulogized, and a royal representative presided at the erection of a statue at Brescia in honor of the medieval “Communist” agitator, Arnold of Brescia. Papal protests, however repeated, seemed to fall on deaf ears.

Impasse. Some claim that the Italian government during 1887 meditated restoration of a small strip of territory to the Holy See, and that proposals in this direction were actually made in 1894, but quashed by French governmental interference. However this may be, relations between the Holy See and Italy even worsened when Depretis was succeeded by the more radical Francesco Crispi (1887-91; 1893-96). His associate minister, Giuseppe Zanardelli, in 1888 enacted a penal code which threatened with fine or prison clerics or laymen violating the anticlerical laws or speaking against them. In the same year new decrees forbade religious instruction in the state schools. During June, 1889, erection of a statue to the renaissance rebel, Giordano Bruno, provoked antipapal demonstrations at Rome, so that even Leo XIII is reported to have long considered leaving the city. New governmental decrees subjected works of charity to state control. While not essentially modifying the papal directive of Non Expedit or Non Licet, Leo XIII did approve of the formation of nonpolitical organizations of Catholics to work for local social reforms. Yet in 1898 the otherwise moderate Rudini ministry suppressed four thousand of such groups. But disasters to Italian arms in the invasion of Ethiopia, and bread riots—falsely blamed on Milanese priests—contributed to Rudini’s fall. His succcessor ^{[p. 607]} as premier, General Pelloux, permitted re-establishment of the Catholic social groups. The pontificate of Leo XIII closed, however, without any essential modification of the Vatican-Quirinal impasse. Perhaps Pecci had been too closely associated with papal temporal government in his youth to propose the radical solution of 1929, but it is questionable if Italian statesmen were yet disposed to be fair.

B. Papal Doctrinal Guidance

(1) INTELLECTUAL REVIVAL

Papal guidance in intellectual matters had been minimized and hampered by Gallicanism and Febronianism, but the definition of papal infallibility at the Vatican Council had marked the definitive triumph of Ultramontanism. With Leo XIII, instruction of the Catholic world through papal encyclicals became a normal procedure. But few of these Leonine pronouncements can be touched upon here. Basic, however, were the instructions which contemplated a revival of sound ecclesiastical studies and thus prepared the way for a Catholic intellectual revival.

Aeterni Patris (1879) directed Catholic theologians and philosophers to return to St. Thomas Aquinas and Scholastic principles. Catholic educators were to seek in these sources perennial principles for refuting modern pseudo-science, pseudo-rationalism, and pseudo-historicism. Since “false conclusions concerning divine and human things, which originated in the schools of philosophy, have crept into all the orders of the state and have been accepted by the common consent of the masses,” the pope insisted that the truth be sought again from the Fathers and Scholastics and reapplied to present-day conditions. From the pope’s initiative dates the Neo-Scholastic movement, carried on by Zigliara, Cornoldi, and Satolli at Rome, and soon pushed forward by Mercier at Louvain. This movement, besides systematizing clerical instruction, has produced lay philosophical experts and even interested some non-Catholic scholars, although not to a degree to offset the prevailing anti-metaphysical bias of secular philosophers. The next pontificate would indicate that the Leonine revival of the philosophia perennis had come in the nick of time to avert a widespread infiltration of the clergy by Kantian subjectivism.

Saepenumero (1883) is Pope Leo’s instruction on history. The pope reminded relativist cynics about the validity of any objective history, that still the “first law of history is that it presume to say nothing false.” This was no mere aphorism, for the pontiff opened the Vatican archives to the research of Ludwig von Pastor on papal history, remarking that the truth could never damage the Catholic Church. Rather, “all history shouts out” that God is the supreme governor of mortal events. The ^{[p. 608]} historian, then, ought to go beyond the mere narration of facts to their interpretation; indeed, every Catholic philosophy of history tends to become somewhat of a “theology of history.” And for a mentor in this quest for meaning in history, the Pope bade Catholics turn to St. Augustine, author of De Civitate Dei.

Providentissimus Deus (1893) completed the Leonine study program by urging the careful cultivation of Biblical sciences. While firmly laying down principles of divine inspiration and inerrancy of the Holy Scriptures, Leo XIII bade Catholic scholars devote human learning to the exposition of the sacred text. When a tendency toward Modernism appeared, the pope took the first steps to combat it in 1902 by setting up the Pontifical Biblical Commission to serve as an official, reliable, although not necessarily infallible, guide to biblical studies.

Officiorum ac Munerum (1897) undertook the first thorough revision of the Index Librorecm Prohibitorum since the sixteenth century. The revised lists and modernized norms still preserved a salutary restraint upon inordinate human curiosity.

(2) POLITICAL GUIDANCE

Diuturnum Illud (1881) defended Democracy as a legitimate form of government. It eased many consciences and allayed some hard feelings to hear the Holy See declare authoritatively: “There is here no question of the forms of government, for there is no reason why the government, whether by one or by many, should not meet with the approval of the Church, provided that it be just and for the common good. Therefore, provided that justice be fulfilled, peoples are not forbidden to procure that form of government which is most in agreement with their national temperament and the institutions and customs of their ancestors.” By this document Leo XIII did not antagonize the spirit of the age, but if most Catholics heard him gladly, French diehard monarchists, even when specially urged by Au Milieu des Solicitudes (1892), refused to “rally” to the Third Republic.

Immortale Dei (1885) clarified Catholic teaching on relations between Church and state. The Syllabus had been misinterpreted by many. Between secularists and anticlericals who would subject the Church to the state or entirely separate the institutions, and fanatical medievalists and curialists who would, against all reasonable hope, cling to their own inaccurate versions of theocracy, the pope steered a middle course that recalled the Gelasian dyarchy. Basing his teaching upon Christ’s response regarding the rights of God and Caesar, Leo XIII asserted: “The Almighty has appointed the charge of the human race between two powers, the ecclesiastical and the civil, the one being set over divine, the other over human things. Each in its kind is supreme, each has fixed

 ^{[p. 609]} limits within which it is contained, limits which are defined by the nature and special object of the province of each, so that there is, we may say, an orbit traced out within which the action of each is brought into play by its own native right.” Neither disestablishment nor inquisition need be the consequences, for “the Church, indeed, deems it unlawful to place the various forms of divine worship on the same footing as the true religion, but does not on that account condemn those rulers who, for the sake of securing some great good or hindering some great evil, allow patiently custom or usage to be a kind of sanction for each kind of religion having its place in the state.”

Libertas (1888) admitted a legitimate political Liberalism, but distinguished between true liberty and license: “Men have a right freely and prudently to propagate throughout the state what things are true and honorable, so that as many as possible may possess them; but lying opinions, than which no mental plague is greater, and vices which corrupt the heart and moral life, should be diligently repressed by public authority, lest they insidiously work the ruin of the state. . . . Every man in the state may follow the will of God and from a consciousness of duty and free from every obstacle, obey his commands. This is true liberty.”

Sapientiae Christianae (1890) commended legitimate love of country, without envy of the Church: “Church and state alike both possess individual sovereignty; hence in the conduct of public affairs neither is subject to the other within the limits to which each is restricted by its constitution.” And Americans were reminded by Longinqua Oceani (1895) that “it would be very erroneous to draw the conclusion that in America is to be sought the type of the most desirable status of the Church, or that it would be universally lawful or expedient for Church and state to be, as in America, dissevered and divorced.”

(3) SOCIAL RENEWAL

Arcanum Divinae Sapientiae (1880) was devoted by Leo XIII to the subject of Christian marriage, stressing anew its sacramental and indissoluble character. To the latter point the pope returned in the decree of the Holy Office (1886) against civil divorce and formal cooperation with it. Pertinent to the same domestic social unit was the prohibition by the Holy Office in 1889 of direct craniotomy and abortion.

Rerum Novarum (1891) is proof that Pope Leo did not share the blindness or indifference of the arch-Liberal, Leon Gambetta, who had made in 1872 the too-sweeping statement that “there is no remedy for social ills for the simple reason that there is no social question.” The pope refused to allow Christian justice and charity to be fettered by “remorseless economic laws,” even though the average Liberal statesman ^{[p. 610]} was not yet willing to admit with Franklin Roosevelt that these “economic laws are not made by nature; they are made by human beings.” Lest clerics remain tied to this economic Old Regime, the pope stoutly defended not only private property against Socialism, but the poor man’s title to property, his wage, against Capitalism. Since this title was personal as well as physical, the workman ought to have a wage that is “sufficient to enable him to maintain himself, his wife, and his children in reasonable comfort.” The state was therefore urged to abandon its discrimination among persons euphoniously termed “laissez-faire” Individualism, and come to the assistance of the poor, though not to the extent of absorbing all private initiative and enterprise. This initiative could best be exerted in the formation of trade associations, defensive unions of workingmen if necessary, but preferably leagues of mutual co-operation between employers and employees. It would be this last directive that would prove most difficult of execution. Indeed, it was impossible save by the means indicated at the close of the encyclical: “Charity is patient, is kind . . . seeketh not her own.”

92. ST. PIUS X AND CATHOLIC ACTION

Giuseppe Sarto (1835-1914) was born in the village of Riese, near Vicenza, then under Austrian rule. He was early acquainted with manual labor on the small plot of his peasant parents. After his father’s death in 1852, only his pious mother’s self-denial and help from clerical sponsors enabled him to acquire a formal education and later a scholarship to a seminary. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1858 by Bishop Farini of Treviso and at once began a long parochial apprenticeship, as curate of Tombolo (1858-67) and pastor of Salzano (1867-75) . Zealous preaching and devoted solicitude for the poor impressed his superiors, and between 1875 and 1884 he served at one time or another as canon, seminary director, synodal examiner, canonical judge, chancellor, vicar-general, and vicar-capitular.

Episcopate. In 1884 Leo XIII named Sarto to the see of Mantua, where Masonry and Jewry had been strong. Undismayed, the new bishop in his first pastoral pledged “hope—not in man, but in Christ.” Even then he set out to fulfill his subsequent papal motto: “restaware omnia in Christo.” He pointed out that, “God is driven from politics by separation of Church and state; from science by teaching doubt as a system; from art, lowered through Realism; from the laws, modelled according to notions of flesh and blood; from schools, by the abolition of the catechism; from the family, by the attempt to secularize it in its ^{[p. 611]} origin and deprive it of sacramental grace.” After first reforming his clergy and seminary, Bishop Sarto next provided spiritual and civic leadership. Named cardinal and patriarch of Venice in 1893, his installation was held up until 1895 by a governmental exequatur. Then the king, after a reserved but friendly interview, yielded. Sarto’s denunciation of the king’s assassination in 1900 improved unofficial clerical relations with the House of Savoy. At Venice, the cardinal merely expanded his Mantuan activities among clergy and laity, and it is here that he first designated lay participation in the Christian apostolate as “Catholic Action.” Music and liturgy were also stressed in his pastoral vigilance.

Papal election. At Pope Leo’s death, this “poor country cardinal” met the unforeseen emergency by borrowing money for a round trip to Rome. Assured by Cardinal Mathieu of Paris that he was not papabile because he could not speak French, Sarto entered the conclave of August at ease. The early favorite was Cardinal Rampolla, Leo’s secretary of state, but Cardinal Puzyna of Cracow announced a veto by the Austrian monarch. In spite of general protest at this anachronistic revival of Caesaro-papism, the cardinals reconsidered and on the seventh ballot, August 4, cast fifty votes for Sarto. He gave every indication of a refusal until, it is said, Cardinal Gibbons pressed acceptance on him through Monsignor Merry del Val, secretary of the conclave and presently secretary of state. The latter reminisced that “truly deep and unaffected humility was, I consider, the prominent characteristic of the Holy Father.” This humility, it is now confirmed, was that of sanctity, not of weakness. On January 20, 1904, by Commissuni Nobis Pius X repudiated the Austrian claim to a veto. For the new pope, “temporal dreams were out of date,” and the Habsburgs were reminded of this again in 1914 when the dying pontiff exclaimed: “I bless peace, not war.”

(2) SPIRITUAL LEADERSHIP

Liturgical reform was the object of papal directives beginning with Tra Le Sollicitudine (1903) stressing Gregorian Chant, and Divino Afflatu (1911) revising the Breviary. Truly historic were the pope’s regulations on the Holy Eucharist, the object of all liturgical devotion. Early and frequent reception of Holy Communion was urged in the decrees, De Quotidiana (1906) , Romana et Aliarum (1906) , and Quam Singulari (1911) . In a letter to the Benedictine abbot primate, April, 1907, the pope also ordered a revision of the Vulgate to the original text of St. Jerome.

Canonical codification was set in progress by St. Pius’s initiative expressed in Arduum Sane (1904). A commission under Cardinal Pietro Gasparri attacked this gigantic task with vigor, so that it was actually ^{[p. 612]} completed with the issuance of the New Code during the succeeding pontificate. Already in 1908 Ne Temere had anticipated the Code in the regulation of marriage.

Curial reorganization was effected by Sapienti Consilio, June, 1908. This, the first complete overhauling of the curial machinery since the Sistine decree of 1587, set up the modern sacred congregations, prescribing for Roman congregations, tribunals, and offices, their titles, rights, and duties. By this apostolic constitution the Congregation of Propaganda was confined to strictly missionary jurisdiction, and England, Ireland, Holland, Canada, and the United States, where the hierarchy had been by then regularly established, were removed from its direction.

Catechetical instruction was deemed of prime importance by St. Pius. In 1905 the encyclical Acerbo Nimis reinforced Tridentine decrees on the conscientious teaching of the catechism by the clergy, and also ordered erection of the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine in each parish to secure “lay helpers in the teaching of the catechism.” Major points in the papal directive were: 1) “On every Sunday and holy day, with no exception throughout the year, all parish priests and in general all those having the care of souls, shall instruct boys and girls for the space of an hour from the text of the Catechism on those things they must believe and do in order to attain salvation.” 2) “They shall at certain times throughout the year, prepare boys and girls to receive properly the sacraments of penance and confirmation by a continued instruction over a period of days.” 3) “They shall with a very special zeal on every day in Lent, and if necessary on the days following Easter, instruct the youth of both sexes to receive Holy Communion in a holy manner with the use of apt illustrations and exhortations.” 4) In each and every parish the society known as the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine is to be canonically established. Through this Confraternity the pastors . . . will have lay helpers in the teaching of the Catechism. 5) “In the larger cities and especially where universities, colleges, and secondary schools are located, let classes in religion be organized to instruct in the truths of faith and in the practice of Christian life the youths who attend the public schools from which all religious teaching is banned.”

Joseph Collins, “Diffusion of Christian Teaching,” Symposium on the Life and Works of Pope Pius X (Washington: Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, 1946), pp. 10613.

Seminary instruction was regulated by Pius X who followed up Pope Leo’s stress on Thomistic principles and care for biblical studies, himself founding the Biblical Institute in 1909. Some three hundred Italian seminaries, some with but one or two professors, were consolidated into ^{[p. 613]} regional institutions for which a thorough program was laid down in 1908.

(3) CATHOLIC ACTION

“Catholic Action will not please certain timid souls who though good-living, are so attached to the habitual quiet and so afraid of every innovation that they believe it is quite sufficient to pray.” ¹° But let these “rabbits,” these “pessimists,” know that one must join prayer to action. At any rate, it should be enough to remind these “wearied and dispirited souls” that this enterprise had been commanded by the Holy See. These words of Cardinal Sarto were now to be urged more widely and strongly by Pope Pius X. “Although Pius X did not coin the title ‘Catholic Action,’ yet he is certainly the first pope to make frequent use of this term to designate the laity’s share in the apostolic mission of the Church. .. . Since his pontificate, Catholic Action has remained a technical term both in papal documents and in other writings that adhere accurately to the terminology of the Popes. . . .” ⁱⁱ In his first encyclical, E Supremi Apostolatus (1903), in which he had announced his goal to “restore all things in Christ,” St. Pius had declared that the clergy must not fail to enlist the assistance of the laity in the work of the apostolate, but always under the direction of the hierarchy. And the pope is reported to have expressed the conviction that the Church’s greatest need of the moment was the formation of such a group of apostolic lay workers in each parish.

‘° Joseph Sommers, S.J., “Catholic Action,” ibid., p. 125. ¹¹ Loc. cit.

The lay social apostolate, nevertheless, presented its own problems, chiefly those of insubordination of single-minded zealots toward hierarchical direction. As early as July, 1904, the pope was obliged to dissolve the rebellious Catholic groups, Opera dei Congressi. Publications of the Societa Editrice Romana were also banned for insubordination to hierarchical jurisdiction. On March 1, 1905, the pope, as will be seen, condemned the Italian Catholic “autonomous movement” of Padre Murri; the latter’s Lega Democratica Nacionale was repudiated in 1906, and clerics were forbidden to join under pain of suspension. The Pentecostal encyclical of 1905, Il Fenno Proposito, reiterated the need of subjection of Catholic Action to ecclesiastical authority. Notre Charge (1910) suppressed Sangnier’s French review, Le Sillon, as productive of a “democracy neither Jewish, nor Protestant, nor Catholic, a religion more universal than the Catholic Church.” The Sillonists submitted, but in 1912 the pope had to warn against a similar tendency among Catholic workers’ unions. In Singulari Quadam (1912), the pope opposed formation ^{[p. 614]} of interconfessional labor unions with a design of escaping ecclesiastical direction. In 1914 the Centrist Dr. Wacker’s book, Center Party and Ecclesiastical Authority, was placed on the Index. The pope continued to prefer purely Catholic labor organizations, although tolerating in addition “federations formed by Catholics with non-Catholics for the purpose of promoting material welfare ... under certain definite conditions.”

(4) PAPAL POLITICAL RELATIONS

Papal diplomacy. St. Pius X’s conduct of diplomatic affairs was definitely in the tradition of the Zelanti, and so he was advised and sustained by his secretary of state, Cardinal Merry del Val. This uncompromising policy was criticized by many, especially in regard to Modernism, but the papal attitude was respected. Thus St. Pius X refused to compromise with the French government in regard to separation of Church and state: Vehementer Nos (1906). This independence toward secular government was coupled with his repudiation of Austrian dictation, already noted. And his condemnation of Action Française—never published until 1927—reveals his willingness to rebuke as well the “sovereign people” for any exaggerated nationalism.

Italian “Christian Democracy,” already taught by Toniolo, was implemented by Don Luigi Sturzo’s “Popular Union.” When Father Sturzo was elected mayor of Caltagirone in 1905, Pius X, instead of excommunicating him as some demanded, accorded him audience and embraced him. But the Vatican refused to endorse any official Catholic political party, and Don Sturzo’s activities were merely tolerated as private efforts. During 1909, however, a decree of the Sacred Penitentiary allowed local ordinaries to relax Non Expedit at their discretion—by 1914 most of them had done so for local questions. On March 1, 1905, the pope in rejecting Padre Murri’s “autonomous movement,” denied the view that ecclesiastical authority did not extend to civic matters.

“The Roman Question” remained unsolved, although there may have been some improvement in papal-royal relations during the pontificate. In 1908 the ban on religious instruction in state schools was relaxed to allow parents to provide it at their own expense. After 1909 some Catholics took part in politics and in that year twenty-four Catholic deputies were elected. From 1906 to 1914 Ernesto Nathan, a violent Jewish anticlerical, made himself particularly obnoxious as mayor of Rome. His tactless address of September 20, 1910, elicited an open letter of protest from the pope. Finally in 1914 the Catholics were able to replace Nathan with Prince Colonna. The pope’s influence also prevailed sufficiently with 228 deputies to block a divorce bill, and in 1914 the Freemason, Finocchiaro-Apule, was prevented from imposing a civil ^{[p. 615]} marriage ceremony prior to the religious rite. The new Catholic deputies made no difficulty about recognizing Rome as the Italian capital, and it is possible that the Holy See inspired the “feelers” in Osservatore Romano suggesting a safeguarding of papal independence “otherwise than by means of territorial sovereignty, as for instance, by an international guarantee.” But for this or any other settlement the Liberal Italian statesmen were not yet ready.

c092b_Modernism_in_Kant

Origin and nature. Modernism was the attempt of certain Catholic scholars—their eyes captivated by contemporary philosophy and science —to renovate or “modernize” the Catholic Church, not only in discipline, but even in dogma, by applying to it principles of Kantian subjectivism. Though the external fabric of ecclesiastical organization and the dogmatic terminology were to remain, behind this façade the innovators hoped to “reinterpret” Catholicity in the light of “modern needs.” Thus, Modernism became a form of subjective Nominalism whereby the meaning underlying dogmatic expressions would be expounded according to the personal views of theologians and thereby the more easily harmonized with contemporary non-Catholic thought. “Revelation,” Modernists said, “is not an affirmation but an experience.” This could only signify that subconscious individual experience alone would serve as the source of enlightenment about the meaning of dogmas. The latter, indeed, were to be esteemed as nothing more than external stimuli, adaptable changing guides. Truth, then, was merely an intrinsic phenomenon varying with individuals and times, which bore merely an accidental relation to external phenomena or reality. Since, according to Modernists, present-day experience must be unduly strained to conform to antiquated dogmatic formulas, such as the Trinity and the Divinity of Christ, such formulas, though remaining verbally the same, might be reinterpreted in a new sense. For in Loisy’s view, “these formulas are not immutable, they are perfectible. All have responded to a need of the Christian conscience, and consequently contain a moral sense which we must extract when the symbol itself has become outmoded.” In their place new religious impulses will be substituted, emerging from the subconscious as a “vital phenomenon.”

Expression of modernist ideas can already be found in the Protestant Sabatier’s Esquisse d’une Philosophie de la Religion (1879) . Blondel’s L’Action (1893) presented a novel theme, while Modernism was detected in La Berthonnierre’s Essais de Philosophie Religieuse (1903) and Le Realisme Chretien et L’Idealisme Grec (1904). At the same time Abbé Alfred Loisy applied Modernism to biblical criticism  ^{[p. 616]} in L’Evangile et L’Eglise (1902) and Autour d’un Petit Livre (1903) . Therein distinction was drawn between a “Christ of history” and a “Christ of Faith”: the former had no intention of founding a Church, which is the product of the evolution of Christian consciousness. French Modernism culminated in a notorious article, “What is dogma?”, written by Edouard Le Roy for the April, 1905, number of La Quinzaine. Official formulas, it would seem, were issued merely to stimulate internal religious inquiry. Meanwhile in England the Jesuit, George Tyrrell, was developing Modernist theology. He had indeed studied St. Thomas superficially, but the teaching of his Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi and Between Scylla and Charybdis (1903-7) was no brand of Scholasticism. For Tyrrell, theology was normative only insofar as it “formulates and justifies the devotion of the best Catholics, and as far as it is true to the life of faith and charity as actually lived.” It Italy, Foggazaro tried to sketch in popular fashion how Modernism should be lived in his novel, Il Santo (1905) . Here he predicted that the moment was at hand when the Church would undergo revival under Modernist auspices. At the same time Padre Murri sought applications of Modernism in the social field. Most of these leaders belonged to a reputed intelligentsia, but one uninfluenced by the budding Neo-Scholasticism—which they derided as the dusting off of outworn weapons.

Preliminary censures. Pope Leo’s Providentissimus Deus had been a rebuke to biblical Modernism, and when Loisy failed to heed its norms he was deprived of his professorship at the Institut Catholique at Paris. In 1903 five of Loisy’s books, together with others by Le Roy, Le Berthonniere, and Houtin, were placed on the Index by a decree of the Holy Office. Finally on July 4, 1907, the Holy Office in the decree Lamentabili proscribed sixty-five propositions, drawn chiefly from Loisy, Le Roy, and Tyrrell, although these authors were not superficially named. These propositions were all “reprobated and proscribed” with papal approval.

Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907). Modernist subtleties did not appeal to St. Pius X, simple with the simplicity of Christ. As successor of him to whom the “historical Christ” had said, “Feed my sheep,” he issued on September 8, 1907, an encyclical providing solid doctrinal food for the flock. Pascendi branded Modernism as a “synthesis of all heresies,” embracing Agnosticism, Immanentism, and Evolutionism. Its chief cause lay in ignorance of Scholasticism by men deluded by the “false glamour” of modern philosophies. Curious to know more than it behooves to know, inflated by the pride of modern science, these persons were pushed on to novelties, “lest they appear as other men,” saying the traditional ^{[p. 617]} things. Whence their erroneous conclusions: Faith arises from a need of the divine, a need perceived by a religious sense resident in the subconscious, unaffected by dogmas. Tradition, therefore, they would term but communication of the collective religious sense, successively “transfigured and disfigured” during the course of centuries. Thereafter everything, Church, sacraments, Scriptures, history, is warped to fit their varying subconscious religious sense, their emotional “need of the divine.” Dogmas vanish into mere symbols; censures are disregarded as antiquated. All is “theological symbolism.”

Repression. The pope then laid down practical remedies to check Modernism: (1) study of scholastic as well as positive theology; (2) exclusion from seminaries and colleges of directors and professors in any way imbued with Modernism; (3) episcopal vigilance committees to supervise publications and clergy conferences, and to report to the bishop who in turn must periodically inform the Holy See. These measures proved so effective that as early as 1909 Loisy admitted that Modernism was “doomed and would not be difficult to crush.” The leaders left the Church: Loisy, excommunicated by name in 1908, held tenaciously to his views until his death in 1940. Tyrrell died in the Petrie home in 1909, dubiously reconciled by Abbé Bremond. Padre Murri was excommunicated in 1909 but returned to the Church during the 1940’s. Floods of modernist pamphlets appeared and there were reports of clandestine agitation. Pius X, who believed in taking no chances, issued on September 1, 1910, the motu proprio, Sacrorum Antistitum, which imposed an “Oath Against Modernism,” upon prelates, educators, and candidates for the subdiaconate. Criticism has been heard in certain quarters that this provision is now obsolete, but Pius XII in Humani Generis, August 12, 1950, still found it necessary to castigate “some false. opinions which threaten to undermine the foundations of Catholic doctrine.” At the time of Modernism, however, some suspicions were excessive, even if it may not be true that Pope Benedict XV discovered in his predecessor’s desk a denunciation of himself, then archbishop of Bologna, as suspected of Modernism.

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