MODERNISM.  A movement within the Roman Catholic Church which aimed at bringing the tradition of Catholic belief into closer relation with the modern outlook in philosophy, the historical and other sciences and social ideas. It arose spontaneously and independently in several different countries in the later years of the 19th cent. In France, where it was most vigorous, it was fostered in its earlier years esp. by a number of professors at the Institut Catholique at Paris, notably L. Duchesne (who himself, however, stood apart from the Movement when it had developed) and his pupils. It reached the height of its influence in the first years of the 20th century. It was formally condemned by Pius X in 1907.

The Modernists, having no common programme, differed widely among themselves. The leading ideas and tendencies to be found in the Movement were:

(1) The whole-hearted adoption of the critical view of the Bible, by this date generally accepted outside the Roman Catholic Church. The Bible was to be understood as the record of a real unfolding of Divine truth in history. Abandoning artificial attempts at harmonizing inconsistencies, the Modernists recognized that the biblical writers were subject to many of the limitations of other historians. They approached the scriptural record with considerable independence, indeed often with much greater scepticism than the Protestant scholars. In the 1890s they found encouragement in Leo XIII’s two-edged ‘Providentissimus Deus’ (1893).

(2) A strong inclination to reject the ‘intellectualism’ of the Scholastic theology and correspondingly to subordinate doctrine to practice. Many of the Modernists accepted a philosophy of ‘action’ (M. Blondel) and welcomed the Pragmatism of W. James and the Intuitionism of H. Bergson. They sought the essence of Christianity in life rather than in an intellectual system or creed.

(3) A teleological attitude to history, finding the meaning of the historic process in its issue rather than in its origins. Since the Church’s growth took place under the guidance of the Spirit, the essence of the Gospel will lie in its full expansion rather than in its primitive historic kernel. This belief was sometimes reflected in an extreme historical scepticism about Christian origins. Thus,

[a] whether or not the historic Jesus founded a Church was a question of small importance and one to which we should never know the answer: the significant fact was that the seed then sown had developed into the worldwide institution for bringing men into touch with supernatural reality and saving their souls;

[b] the Mass was to be understood in its developed glory, and this would remain whether or not the historic Christ instituted it.

Among the leaders in the Modernist Movement were, in FRANCE

A. F. Loisy,

M. Blondel,

E. I. Mignot (1842–1918; Abp. of Albi from 1899),

L, Laberthonnière, and

Édouard Le Roy (1870–1954);

in ITALY,

Romolo Murri (1870–1944) and

A. Fogazzaro (1842–1911);

and in the BRITISH ISLES,

F. von Hügel and

G. Tyrrell (1861–1909).

In some ways von Hügel filled a special position in the Movement as the chief link between the Modernists in the different countries.

The accession of Leo XIII (Pope, 1878–1903) gave those who held liberal views considerable encouragement, for Leo had a real respect for learning and sought to abandon the isolationism of his predecessor. But his tolerance of Modernism prob. rested rather on grounds of expediency than on any personal sympathy with its ideals; and in his later years he became increasingly critical of the Movement. His successor, St Pius X (Pope, 1903–14), wholly distrusted the Movement from the first. Officially described as the ‘synthesis of all the heresies’, Modernism was finally condemned in 1907 by the decree ‘Lamentabili’ and the encyclical ‘Pascendi’. These decrees were carried into effect by the motu proprio ‘Sacrorum Antistitum’ (1910), imposing an Anti-Modernist oath on all clerics at their ordination and taking up various offices. While the clergy who had been identified with the Movement were for the most part excommunicated, the laymen, such as von Hügel and Blondel, were generally left untouched.

With regard to the word ‘Modernism’, it should be noted that it was apparently not applied to the Movement until after the turn of the 20th century. In a wider sense the term ‘Modernist’ has been used more recently of radical critics of traditional theology in the non-Roman Catholic Churches, esp. of the thought of those associated with the Modern Church People’s Union (q.v.).

VON HUGEL

VON HÜGEL  von Hügel, Baron Friedrich (1852–1925), RC theologian and philosopher. He was born at Florence, the elder son of Carl Alexander Anselm, Baron von Hügel (1795–1870), and of Elizabeth, née Farquharson, a Scottish Presbyterian lady who was a convert to the RC Church. After a cosmopolitan education he settled in England in 1867. In 1870 an attack of typhus left him deaf and permanently weakened in health. After a religious crisis he was brought to a firm faith at Vienna through the influence of Raymond Hocking, a Dutch Dominican (1870). He married in 1873 and for the rest of his life lived at Hampstead (1876–1903) and Kensington (1903–25), though he constantly travelled abroad. In 1884 he met for the first time H. Huvelin at Paris, who made a profound spiritual impression on him.

Meanwhile von Hügel had become a keen student of science (esp. geology), philosophy, biblical criticism, and religious history. Having become convinced of the critical view of the OT, he defended it in 1897 in a Congress at Fribourg (Switzerland). He found himself in growing accord with the cultural and liberalizing tendencies in the RC Church and several of the leaders of the Modernist Movement (A. Loisy, G. Tyrrell) became his lifelong friends. In 1904 he founded the London Society for the Study of Religion, which brought him into touch with thinkers and scholars of the most diverse views. In 1908 he published The Mystical Element of Religion as studied in St Catherine of Genoa and her Friends. This was followed in 1911 by an article on St John’s Gospel in the Encyclopaedia Britannica (11th edn.) and in 1912 by his book Eternal Life. In 1921 appeared his Essays and Addresses on the Philosophy of Religion; a second series followed in 1926, after his death. He was appointed Gifford Lecturer at Edinburgh for 1924–6, but owing to ill-health was unable to deliver the course; portions of it were published posthumously in The Reality of God (1931).

Among the problems with which von Hügel constantly wrestled were the relation of Christianity to history (in which field he found a kindred spirit in E. Troeltsch), the place of human culture in the Christian life, the Christian conception of time, and the significance of eschatology for the modern world. He saw the Institutional, the Intellectual, and the Mystical as the three abiding elements in religion. In his earlier life he had much sympathy with the activist philosophy of M. Blondel, but believing that the essence of religion was ‘adoration’, he came in his later years to emphasize the Divine transcendence and the ‘givenness’ of faith. ‘The Baron’ became one of the chief religious influences in cultured circles in England, more so outside the RC Church than within it, though his ‘Modernism’ escaped formal condemnation. The confidence which he inspired as a spiritual counsellor may be clearly discerned in his published correspondence.

Von Hügel’s Selected Letters, 1896–1924, ed. B. Holland (1927), with Memoir by id., pp. 1–68; Letters from Baron Friedrich von Hügel to a Niece, ed. G. Greene (1928), with introd., pp. vii–xlv; The Le Letters of Baron Friedrich von Hügel and Professor Norman Kemp Smith, ed. L. F. Barmann (New York, 1981). Much of his correspondence with G. Tyrrell is pr. in M. D. Petre, Von Hügel and Tyrrell: The Story of a Friendship (1937). Life by M. de la Bedoyère (London, 1951). Studies by M. Nédoncelle (Paris thesis, 1935; Eng. tr., 1937), J. Steinmann (Paris, 1962), J. J. Heaney (Washington, DC, 1968; London, 1969), J. P. Whelan, SJ (London, 1971), and L. F. Barmann (Cambridge, 1972). P. Neuner, Religiöse Erfahrung und geschichtliche Offenbarung: Friedrich von Hügels Grundlegung der Theologie (Beiträge zur ökumenischen Theologie, 15; 1977); J. J. Kelly, Baron Friedrich von Hügel’s Philosophy of Religion (Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium, 62; 1983). T. M. Loome, Liberal Catholicism, Reform Catholicism, Modernism (Tübingen Theologische Studien, 14; 1979), esp. pp. 123–92 and 209–17. C. C. J. Webb in DNB, 1922–1930, pp. 874–6.

LOISY

LOISY, Alfred Firmin (1857–1940), French Modernist biblical scholar. A native of Ambrières (Marne), he came of farming stock. Educated at the diocesan seminary at Châlons-sur-Marne and at the Institut Catholique in Paris, he was ordained priest in 1879. After a short time as a country curé, he returned to Paris at the instigation of L. Duchesne, who inspired him with zeal for historicocritical study. It was to the critical study of the Bible that Loisy devoted himself, and in this sphere he came to feel the need for a radical renewal of conventional ecclesiastical teaching. Although by 1886 his own faith in traditional Catholicism had been severely strained he remained in the RC Church in the hope of modernizing its teaching.

     In 1890, when he was appointed Professor of Sacred Scripture at the Institut Catholique, he was already publishing the results of his critical studies, which were arousing both enthusiasm and suspicion. In 1893 he was dismissed from his professorship and urged to confine himself to oriental languages. From this time he received encouragement from his friends E. I. Mignot (1842–1918), Archbishop of Albi, and F. von Hügel. From 1894 to 1896 he was chaplain to the Dominican nuns and their school at Neuilly; here he had ample time to work out a new apologetic for Catholicism. From 1900 he taught at the École Pratique des Hautes Études.

     In 1902 Loisy published L’Évangile et l’Église; it took the form of a reply to A. Harnack’s Wesen des Christentums (1900), but it was in effect a sensationally novel defence of Catholicism. As against Harnack, who sought to base Christianity on the teaching of the historic Jesus apart from later dogmatic accretions, Loisy maintained that its essence was to be sought in the faith of the developed Church as expanded under the guidance of the Spirit. The fact that Christ did not found a Church or institute Sacraments did not detract from their central place in the Christian life [!!]. The book was welcomed in some quarters, but also violently attacked. It was condemned by the Archbishop of Paris and by a few other French bishops, but the Papacy refrained from intervening. When, however, in the following year Loisy published not only Autour d’un petit livre, which dealt with the controversy that had arisen, but also Le Quatrième Évangile, Pope Pius X, who had just succeeded Leo XIII, placed both these books and other works of his on the Index. In 1904 Loisy reluctantly made a formal act of submission, resigned his lectureship at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, and retired to the country. In 1906 he abandoned his priestly functions. A final breach with the Church came after the Papal acts of 1907 which condemned Modernism. Loisy published Simples Réflexions sur le décret du Saint-Office Lamentabili sane Exitu et sur l’encyclique Pascendi Dominici gregis (1908), as well as his great work Les Évangiles synoptiques (2 vols., 1907–8). On 7 Mar. 1908 he was excommunicated.

     From 1909 to 1930 Loisy was professor of the history of religions at the Collège de France. He was a prolific writer and during this period he published major works on Christian origins and on the comparative history of religions, such as Les Actes des Apôtres (1920) and Essai historique sur le sacrifice (1920), and smaller books in which he foreshadowed his own religious and moral philosophy, notably La Religion (1917; 2nd edn., 1924). In his autobiographical writings, Choses passées (1913) and Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire religieuse de notre temps (3 vols., 1930–1), he sought to justify his part in the Modernist movement and to interpret its history.

     After his break with the Church, his work as a biblical critic, despite the brilliance of style and learning which characterized it, was generally regarded as erratic and recklessly conjectural. His final views on the NT are summed up in La Naissance du christianisme (1933), in which he treated the Gospels not as historical documents but as catechetical and cultural literature with but slight historical basis. The works of his last years, however, attacked the proponents of the Christmyth theories and appear more in line with his earlier Christian faith. Since 1968 many volumes of his private papers have been accessible in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris. They emphasize that he was a mystic, with a pastoral sense, as well as a savant, and reveal the complexity of his character as well as the range of his interests and friendships.

R. Marlé, SJ, Au cœur de la crise moderniste: Le dossier inédit d’une controverse. Lettres de Maurice Blondel, H. Bremond, Fr. von Hügel, Alfred Loisy, Fernand Mourret, J. Wehrlé (1960). Contemporary accounts by [H. Bremond], Un Clerc qui n’a pas trahi, pub. under the pseudonym Sylvain Leblanc (1931); M. J. Lag-range, OP, M. Loisy et le modernisme (1932); and A. Houtin (d. 1926) and F. Sartiaux (d. 1944), Alfred Loisy: Sa Vie, son œuvre, ed. E. Poulat (1960). M. D. Petre, Alfred Loisy: His Religious Significance; (1944); F. Heiler, Der Vater der katholischen Modernismus, Alfred Loisy (Munich, 1947); R. de Boyer de Sainte Suzanne, Alfred Loisy entre la foi et l’incroyance [1968], with some unpub. letters; M. Guasco, Alfred Loisy in Italia (Pubblicazioni dell’Istituto di Scienze Politiche dell’Università di Torino, 33; 1975), also with unpub. letters. F. Turvasi, The Condemnation of Alfred Loisy and the Historical Method (Uomini e Dottrine, 24; 1979). A. R. Vidler, The Modernist Movement in the Roman Catholic Church (Cambridge, 1934), pp. 67–139; id., A Variety of Catholic Modernists (ibid., 1970), esp. pp. 20–56. J. Ratté, Three Modernists (1968), pp. 43–141, with bibl. pp. 353 f. A. H. Jones, Independence and Exegesis: The Study of Early Christianity in the Work of Alfred Loisy … Charles Guignebert … and Maurice Goguel … (Beiträge zur Geschichte der Biblischen Exegese, 26; 1983), pp. 60–127. H. Hill, The Politics of Modernism: Alfred Loisy and the Scientific Study of Religion (Washington, DC [2002]). See also other works cited s.v. MODERNISM.

Bremond H. Bremond, Histoire littéraire du sentiment religieux en France depuis la fin des guerres de religion jusqu’à nos jours (11 vols., 1916–33, + index, 1936).

BLONDEL

BLONDEL Blondel, Maurice (1861–1949), French philosopher. He was a native of Dijon, where he was educated at the École Normale, and later held professorships of philosophy at Montauban, Lille, and Aix-Marseille. The work that first placed him in the front rank of contemporary thinkers was L ’Action (1893; Eng. tr., 1984), with the significant subtitle, ‘Essai d’une critique de la vie et d’une science de la pratique’. In it Blondel attempted to construct a ‘philosophy of action’, conceiving ‘action’ in its widest sense and all its ramifications, and to develop also a philosophy of the idea, as well as to expound the relations between science and belief and between philosophy and religion. His analysis of action led him to conclude that the human will which produces action cannot satisfy itself, because its fundamental desire is never fulfilled by any finite good. From this point of departure he developed an argument for the being of God resting on volition, in the light of which he modified the old Scholastic proofs. God imposes Himself on the will as the first principle and the last term; we must, therefore, ‘opt’ either for or against Him.

The teaching of L’Action was amplified in several later works, e.g. Histoire et dogme (1904; Eng. tr., 1964), Le Procès de l’intelligence (1922), and esp. Le Problème de la philosophie catholique (1932) and La Pensée (2 vols., 1934). The last-named work states his final position with regard to the intellectual aspects of experience. He here accords a greater place to abstract conceptions than in L’Action and affirms the legitimacy of methodical argumentation, e.g. in the rational proofs of the existence of God. Yet his position is not that of Aristotle and St Thomas Aquinas, but follows rather the Platonic tradition as continued in St Augustine, R. Descartes, and G. W. Leibniz. For Blondel it is not that knowledge of creatures precedes knowledge of God, but rather it is the existence of an obscure yet positive affirmation of God that is the very condition which makes the Aristotelian and Thomist proofs possible. The problem of the supernatural also played a large part in the thought of Blondel, who was a devout Catholic. He held that the whole mental life of man was directed to the possession of God in the Beatific Vision, and consequently he attributed to unaided human reason the capacity of demonstrating its positive possibility.

Blondel’s thought has been of considerable influence in modern philosophy. For several years he was closely associated with the leading figures in the Modernist Movement, which welcomed the pragmatist aspects of his teaching; and many contemporary thinkers, incl. R. Eucken (1846–1926), G. Gentile, and F. von Hügel, were indebted to him.

P. Archambault, L’Œuvre philosophique de Maurice Blondel: Vers un réalisme intégral (Cahiers de La Nouvelle Journée, 12; 1928); B. Romeyer, SJ, La Philosophie religieuse de Maurice Blondel (1943); H. Duméry, La Philosophie de l’action: Essai sur l’intellectualisme blondélien (‘Philosophie de l’Esprit’, 1948), with preface by Blondel; H. Bouillard, Blondel et le christianisme [1961]; C. Tresmontant, Introduction à la métaphysique de Maurice Blondel [1963]; R. Saint Jean, SJ, Genèse de l’Action: Blondel 1882–1893 (Museum Lessianum, section philosophique, 52; 1965); id., L’Apologétique philosophique: Blondel 1893–1913 (Théologie, 67; 1966); J. J. McNeill, SJ, The Blondelian Synthesis: A Study of the Influence of German Philosophical Sources on the Formation of Blondel’s Method and Thought (Studies in the History of Christian Thought, 1; Leiden, 1966); M. Jouhaud, Le Probléme de l’être de l’expérience morale chez Maurice Blondel (1970); U. Hommes, Tranzendenz und Personalität: Zum Begriff der Action bei Maurice Blondel (Philosophische Abhandlungen, 41; Frankfurt am Main [1972]); R. Virgoulay, Blondel et le Modernisme (1980). D. Folscheid (ed.), Maurice Blondel: Une Dramatique de la modernité. Actes du colloque … organisé par le séminaire Saint Luc, Aix-en-Provence, mars 1989 (1990). E. Tourpe (ed.), Penser l’être de l’action. La métaphysique du ‘dernier’ Blondel (Centre d’Archives Maurice Blondel, 6; Louvain [2000]). G. Baum, Man Becoming: God in Secular Experience (New York, 1970), esp. ch. 1. R. Virgoulay and C. Troisfontaines, Maurice Blondel: Bibliographie analytique et critique (Centre d’Archives Maurice Blondel, 2–3; Louvain [1975–6]). See also bibl. to LABERTHONNIÈRE, L.

BREMOND

BREMOND Bremond, Henri (1865–1933), French spiritual writer. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1882, and after spending his novitiate in England was ordained priest in 1892. In 1899 he was appointed editor of the Jesuit periodical Études. In 1904 he left the order to devote himself entirely to literary activities. He soon experienced difficulties with the ecclesiastical authorities, notably in 1907 in connection with his essay on J. H. Newman (pub. in 1906), and his Life of Jane Frances de Chantal (pub. in 1912) was put on the Index in 1913.

His principal work, his voluminous Histoire littéraire du sentiment religieux en France (11 vols., 1916–33 + index, 1936), is a history of French spirituality, chiefly in the 17th cent., in the form of a series of essays on outstanding religious personalities. Its original and penetrating descriptions of the life of souls are illustrated by numerous quotations, often from forgotten and almost inaccessible contemporary sources. A brilliant stylist, Bremond draws captivating pictures esp. of less well-known personalities such as Mme Acarie, J. Surin, or the Ursuline nun Marie Guyard. His judgement on representatives of a more active and ascetical type was in general less sympathetic. Among his other works is an exquisite little study, Prière et poésie (1926).

His Histoire littéraire was repr. 1967–8; index, 1971. H. Hogarth, Henri Bremond: The Life and Work of a Devout Humanist (1950). F. Hermans, L’Humanisme Religieux de I’Abbé Henri  Bremond  1865–1933 (1965). Entretiens sur Henri  Bremond sous la direction de M. Nédoncelle et J. Dagens [27–31 Aug. 1965] (Décades du Centre Culturel International de Cerisy-la-Salle, NS 4 [1967]). A. Blanchet, Histoire d’une mise à l’index: La “Sainte Chantal” de l’Abbé  Bremond  d’aprés des documents inédits [1967]. Id., Henri Bremond 1865–1904 (posthumously pub. [1975]). E. Goichot, Henri  Bremond  historien du sentiment religieux: Genèse et stratégie d’une enterprise littéraire [1982]. A. Loisy, George Tyrrell et Henri Bremond (1936). A. Blanchet (ed.), Henri Bremond et Maurice Blondel: Correspondance (3 vols., 1970–1). Correspondence with H. Delehaye ed. B. Joassart in Anal. Boll. 113 (1995), pp. 365–413. A. Guinan, ‘Portrait of a devout humanist, M. l’Abbé Henri Brémond’, HTR 47 (1954), pp. 15–53. Polgár, 1 (1990), pp. 378–84.

Bremond H. Bremond, Histoire littéraire du sentiment religieux en France depuis la fin des guerres de religion jusqu’à nos jours (11 vols., 1916–33, + index, 1936).

HTR Harvard Theological Review (New York, 1908 f.; Cambridge, Mass., 1910 ff.).

Polgár L. Polgár, SJ, Bibliographic sur l’Histoire de la Compagnie de Jésus 1901–1980, 3: Les Personnes (3 vols., Rome, 1990).

xcxxcxxc  F ” “ This Webpage was created for a workshop held at Saint Andrew's Abbey, Valyermo, California in 2014....x....  ’ “”.