Home > Modernism (Roman Catholicism)
Modernism is, according to the teachings of the Catholic Church, a heresy. First condemned in 1910 by Pope St. Pius X, Modernism is characterised by an unwillingness to accept defined Church dogmas accompanied by claims for the possibility of the evolution of dogma - a notion subtly distinct from Cardinal Newman's teaching on the "development of doctrine".Modernism was a term given by clergy, theologians, and popes such as Pius X, to describe series of movements and beliefs of other Catholic and Protestant theologians, clergy, and bishops. It should be noted that almost none of the "modernists" used this label, or saw themselves as a unified group; it was applied to them by the popes and others.
Modernism in the Catholic Church is the result of a certain memes and schools of thought popular in the Catholic and Protestant Churches around the turn of the 20th century:
- Textual Criticism of the BibleThe Bible (From Greek βιβλια biblia meaning "books", which in turn is derived from βυβλος byblos meaning "papyrus", from the ancient Phoenician city of Byblos which exported papyrus). In other words, attempting to reevalute the meaning of the Bible by focusing on the text alone and ignoring what others have historically taught about it, especially with the assumption that the miracleMiracle is a term used by adherents of many religions for what they say is an intervention by God in the universe. One must keep in mind that in Judaism, Christianity, Islam and in other faiths people have substantially different definitions of the word ms described within couldn't possibly have happened, and attempting to piece together what really happened and why the writers might have written about what they did. This way of looking at the Bible became quite popular in the Protestant churches and found its way into Catholic churches. It was an offshoot of the concept of sola scripturaSola scriptura ( Latin by Scripture alone is one of five important slogans of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century. It meant that Scripture is the Church's only infallible rule for deciding issues of faith and practices that involve doctrines., since that doctrine asserts an individual's ability to learn all that is necessary regarding religion by reading the Bible alone.
- SecularismThis article concerns secularism the exclusion of religion and supernatural beliefs. For other forms of being secular and perspective on the terminology underlying the word "secularism", see secularity. Secularism means: in philosophy, the belief that one and other enlightenmentFor the period in European history, The Age of Enlightenment For the corresponding movement in the European Jewish community, see Haskalah''. For the Hindu religious concept of enlightenment, see moksha For the Buddhist religious concept, see enlightenmen ideals. The ideal of secularism can be briefly summarised as holding that the best course of action in politics and other civic fields is that which flows from disparate groups' and religions' common understanding of the "good". By implication, Church and State should be separated, and the laws of the state should generally only cover the "common ground" of beliefs between the various religious groups that might be present - for example the prohibition of murder, etc. From the secularists' point of view, it was possible to distinguish between political ideas and structures that were religious and those that were not. Many Catholic theologians at the time did not believe that such a distinction was possible, arguing that all aspects of society had to be organized with the final goal of heavenThe heavens are the sky, the celestial sphere, or outer space. Indeed, sky is the original meaning of the word Heaven''. Heaven is an afterlife concept found in many world religions or spiritual philosophies. Those who believe in heaven generally hold tha in mind. The roots of secularism can arguably be traced to those English philosophers who attempted to create a "universal religion" based on the "common denominator" of all other religions; it was largely spread through the secret societies of the Enlightenment, including the Freemasons, the IlluminatiThis is an article about groups called Illuminati''. For information on the games, see Illuminati (game) and Illuminati: New World Order''. For the novels, see The Illuminatus! Trilogy''. The Illuminati is the name of many groups, modern and historical, r, and the Carbonari.
The combination of these three currents usually led to other conclusions which were common in Modernist thinking:
- That religion is primarily a matter of irrational emotions. Since textual criticism apparently taught that miracles did not really happen, and the philosophical systems in vogue at the time taught that the existence of God and other things could never be known, then religion must be primarily caused and centered on the feelings of believers. This bolsters the claims of secularism in weakening any position supporting the favoring of one religion over the other in the state.
