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Handout #266

The condemnation of modernism by Pius X (1907)

The decree Lamentabili (3 July 1907). The propositions which follow are the propositions which are condemned, for the most part extracts from Loisy's books.

1. The ecclesiastical law which prescribes that books concerning the Holy Scriptures shall be submitted to prior censorship does not extend to writers involved in the scientific criticism or exegesis of the books of the Old and New Testament. 

20. Revelation cannot be anything other than human acquired awareness of the relationships existing between God and man. 

36 The resurrection of the Savior is not strictly speaking a fact I the Savior is not strictly speaking a fact in the historical order but a fact in the purely supernatural order, neither demonstrated not demonstrable, which Christian awareness has deduced little by little from other facts. 

40. The sacraments were born out of an idea, an intention of Christ, interpreted by the apostles and their successors, under the inspiration and pressure of circumstances and events. 

52. It was not in the mind of Christ to form a church as a society destined to endure for a long series of centuries on earth; on the contrary, in the mind of Christ the kingdom of God and the end of the worlds were equally imminent. 

65. Catholicism today cannot be reconciled with true science unless it transforms itself into a kind of non-dogmatic Christianity, in other words a broad-minded and liberal Protestantism.

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