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Chapter Twenty-one |
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The Weight of Modernity |
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Christians Face to Face with Industrial Society, Contemporary Thought and Confessional Divisions 1848-1939 |
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| I. | Introduction--Up until 1789 the Church had given the impression that all life and all aspects of life revolved around the Church. After the Revolutions in Europe the Church had to face a whole new world view. The fact was that this world, alien to the Church, was opposed to the traditions which the Church had handed down for centuries. Catholicism now had to coexist with other Christian confessions which it had been able to ignore pretty well in times past, Christians now had to pay attention to changes in society in which they were living or else become aliens in a land where they were no longer in a position to spread the gospel. | |||
| A. |
Christians in industrial Society |
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| 1. | Questions for the church--in the 1800's fear thrust bishops and Catholic leaders back into the conservative camps. In Germany Catholicism remained firmly rooted in the working classes of people. In America and Australia the strongest classes of people were those in the cities. In France Catholics were the wealthy, not the poor farmers. Many left their farms to work in the factories of the cities and lived in crowded suburban areas that overfilled these churches. Priests no longer knew their parishioners on an individual basis, but became the sacrament givers. They preached the evils of more money, more leisure time, and continued proclaim the laws of the church. | |||
| See handout #260 | ||||
| a. | The evolution of socialisms--God must be replaced by justice. In 1848 The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital by Karl Marx worked out a scientific socialism; i.e., the class struggle was the mainspring of history; religion was the opium of the people. It was anti-God, anti-religion, anti-cleric. | |||
| B. | Paternalism and Reformism--it was not the liberals, but the conservative Catholics who were interested in social problems. They thought economic liberalism was responsible for the widespread poverty in the 1800's. They felt that if the old order of structure, patriarchal and corporate system all would be well in society. As a result several social Christian organizations sprouted up to incorporate gospel values in the work place to protect the worker, give younger people apprenticeship programs and generally be their protectors in this industrialized society. It could not stand against the communist ideal. The socialist ideals were a success because they seemed to appear as a complete solution to a widespread social problem of poverty among the workers and the Church could not offer anything like it. | |||
| 1. | In Germany--industrialization came late in the 1800's and Catholics better understood what was at stake for the worker. The Bishop of Mainz Germany headed German social Catholicism and he opposed liberal capitalism and socialism and convinced the state to limit working hours, enforce Sunday as a day of rest, allow workers to share in profits and to help mothers left back at home. There was an attempt to restore Trade Guilds, but did not meet with much success. | |||
| 2. | Reflections and realizations, 1870-1890--unions were formed and promoted by leading Catholics in Austria, Switzerland, Italy, the United States and Australia. With these came bloody strikes and anarchy (total all out war from the working classes against anything they felt were unjust against them). | |||
| C. |
The birth of a social doctrine of the church |
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| See handout #261 | ||||
| 1. | Rerum Novarum (15 May 1891)--Leo XII feared that the whole working class of Catholicism would go over to socialism. Catholics were being won over by socialism advances and the working classes of Catholics became divided over the issues of economic freedom and working class organization. Catholics leaders asked the Holy Father to intervene in order to support a common thought and action in the working class world. The encyclical--a bit late-- states that society had changed; there were undeserved poor in the world; socialism was a false remedy as it suppressed private ownership, and the working class should be a fair wage for a fair day's work. | |||
| a. | The consequences of the encyclical--it freed socially-minded Catholics and gave them a new dynamism. They felt the pope had given them approval for a more democratic process of working conditions through establishment of free trade unions. Soon this lead to difficulties between the Church hierarchy and social Catholicism. Could the laity be independent of the clergy in the social sphere of life? | |||
| See handout #262 | ||||
| b. | The social doctrine of the church--this dissension led to the whole realm of social teachings of the Church. The following popes in the early 1900's followed up and enriched the encyclical of Leo's. They supported Christian trade unions, supported clergy in their attempts at social reforms. This was a period when Communism was becoming a world threat and the economic crisis of the world was at stake and at its worst. The popes continued to condemn the paganism of totalitarian governments. | |||
| II. | The Difficult Confrontation between Catholic Tradition and Modern Science | |||
| A. |
The questioning of the Catholic Tradition |
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| 1. | The Attack of philosophy and the sciences--the scientific advances in l7th and 18th centuries seemed to call a certain number of revealed truths of the Catholic Church into question; i.e., God could not be reached through reason; God really was of no concern to thinking people; religion was no longer of any use to anyone; science could provide all of the answers to life that was needed to live and religion was in its final retreat. Human origins had been pushed back thousands of years with the discovery of ancient fossils and human evolution, because of Darwin's theory on evolution from apes, came the understanding that God and the story of creation and original sin no longer was applicable. Historical sources from antiquity had been published from the Middle Ages; i.e., Egyptian hieroglyphics, cuneiform tablets had been translated and the Old and New Testaments were being compared to them as if they were just another form of writings of the world. What had become of divine revelation? Science had shaken foundations of the Christian history of the world and now everything became uncertain about who we were, where we came from, and who was in charge. | |||
| a. | The church's reaction--as usual the Church's reaction was a defensive one. Science was attacked as the work of Satan. Apologists defended the Church's position on all of these issues. Books were suppressed by the Church from being read by the faithful. It didn't work. | |||
| See handout #263 | ||||
| b. | The revival of the religious sciences among Catholics--university scholars of Catholic institutions began on a course that would lead them and the secular public and Catholic hierarchy to become a bit nervous about their defense of the Church and its doctrines. In France, and in Germany theologians, through study of some of the Christian legends and some of the ancient philosophers began making statements in writings like the human person can aspire to the transcendent through human effort and possibly through other means than just through Christian thought. | |||
| B. | The modernist crisis--this led to what the Church fathers termed "Modernism Catholic thinkers found themselves lining up on opposite sides of this fence. Modernism is defined as "reconciling recent knowledge with the continuing demands of faith". This means that those who put scientific knowledge at the service of religion while safeguarding the unchanging requirements of faith were on one side. Science had priority over Christianity and the Church had to adapt itself to this fact. The Church had to be transformed from within. This group eventually concluded that Catholic beliefs could no longer be upheld in the face of science. They were known as rationalists. They consisted mostly of a few of the Catholic intellectuals and a small minority of the laity. They worked under an umbrella of paranoia and wrote their works under assumed names to avoid persecution from Church officials. On the other side of the fence were the staunch conservative thinkers of the Church who maintained a hard line on Catholic teachings; dogma was unchangeable; the Church's teaching of the truth remained the truth; no of this was open to debate or question. | |||
| 1. | The biblical question--Alfred Loisy, a scholar at the Catholic institute in Paris concluded in his studies that Moses could not have possibly written the first five books of the Bible and that those stories could not possibly have happened. The Church condemned his writings and forbade the faithful to read any of his works. He continued to write books destroying many of the long held beliefs that the Bible's stories were in fact actual Historical stories to be taken at face value. He refused to back down from the Holy Father's request that he stop trying to confuse the faithful with his writings and all of his books were condemned by the Church. | |||
| See handout #264 | ||||
| a. | The significance of dogmas--Father George Tyrrell (died in 1909) was significant in that as a Jesuit scholar in England his thoughts on Modernism led him to be expelled from the Jesuit order and then excommunicated by the Church. He taught that the Church needed to seriously look at its own dogma and accept the fact that we can experience new revelations from God and that the Church must review it and then adapt itself to evolving new ideas of thought. The Church must evolve with new experiences of revelation and change its dogma to fit a new way of thinking. He died in disgrace as an excommunicated priest. | |||
| See handout #265 | ||||
| b. | The great melting pot--this became a time when priests from many differing countries began to question what the scholastic church was doing. There were theologians and scholars questioning the church's position of faith and morals and through their writings expressed their discontent with the entrenched, hard line the church remained fixed on against such dissent. | |||
| See handout #266 | ||||
| See handout #267 | ||||
| C. | The papal condemnations--books were placed on what was called the "index"; i.e., not be read by the faithful. Priests were removed from their teaching posts and sometimes from their orders entirely. The church seemed like a huge fortress under fire from all sides. It was a time when anti-clericalism and separation of church and state was occurring in many countries. | |||
| 1. | The general condemnations--Pope Pius X condemned modernism in two documents in 1907. He called the dissident writings errors in sacred knowledge, errors in interpretation of scripture and errors in understanding the mystery of faith. Modernism, he said, "was the meeting ground of all heresies." | |||
| a. | The means of defense--clergy were encouraged to return to the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas. Dioceses formed watch-dog committees that read anything a priest wrote and then reported to Rome any that smacked of modernism. Now the requirement was made that clergy were forced to take the anti-modernist oath. Still required to this day before ordination will be conferred. | |||
| b. | The consequences of the condemnations--only a small fraction of priests refused to sign the oath. Many felt this intrusion as over bearing on behalf of Rome and resented it. Lay people were unaffected by all of this turmoil within the theological ranks since it only concerned priests. It seemed as though theological order had been restored, but in fact modernism continues to emerge in various forms from time to time to this day. This whole affair set up an attitude of BIG BROTHER in the church and isolationism and secretiveness were the only alternatives for those priests who remained faithful to the modernist cause. The church caused an atmosphere of intrigue within its ranks by establishing a secret society totally dedicated to hunting down and eliminating dissident priests. | |||
| D. Towards reconciling the church and intellectual thought--as the first world war began the whole modernist movement was shoved into the background and the thought that science could provide the answer to all of our ills eased off somewhat. Science did not answer all of human problems and it could not construct and define morality. Pope Pius XII wrote an encyclical that lessened the pressure on intellectual exegesis and even encouraged scholars to once again begin seriously studying scripture and the ancient father's writings. The church relaxed its hard line on historical proof of scripture and no longer required scholars to remain firmly fixed in this legalistic mentality. | ||||
| III. | The Hesitant Beginnings of Ecumenism | |||
| A. | The Christian confessions at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century--we became a mobile society both here in America and Europe. Cars, trains, and buses were moving people in large numbers. Ghettos of immigrants were being dispersed and Catholics found themselves living next to Lutherans, Baptists, Methodists, Quakers etc... They began to ask questions about the break-up of Christianity in a world where Christians were becoming a minority group. | |||
| 1. | The Eastern Churches--Eastern Europe and Russia, Greece, Bulgaria, and Romania freed themselves from Turkish rule and regained their independence. Each country reestablished its own Orthodox church with its own patriarch. Armenian Orthodox were massacred by the Turks and they fled to all parts of the world. Russian Orthodox also fled Russia as a result of the Bolshevik revolution there. | |||
| 2. | The Protestant world--the Salvation Army continued its struggle to fight against poverty, sin and vice in the working classes. In 1876 the Holiness Movement sprang up as a result from the split from Methodists where they waited on the movement of the Holy Spirit to create a new person in a world caught up in rationalism. From this movement came the Pentecostals proclaiming prophecy, ecstatic union with God, the gift of tongues, physical healings. It was a church for the poor where they could come and find a place of warm welcome and express themselves. Three important figures in the Protestant circles of theologians were Karl Barth (1886-1966) broke away from liberal thinking and reaffirmed the transcendence of God, fought Nazism through his writings and made Catholic scholars take notice of a profound thinker in the Protestant circles. Rudolf Bultmann (1884-1976) another Protestant theologian created the form criticism of biblical study; i.e., it explored the basic material of which the Gospels were formed and he argued that the New Testament must be demythologized. Paul Tillich (1886-1965) forced to leave Nazi Germany sought to connect theology and culture with God. Religion was the substance of all culture and that culture was necessary as an expression of religion. | |||
| B. | The birth of an ecumenism outside Catholicism--ecumenism (oikoumene) Greek for "the inhabited world" became the word used to denote a willingness on the part of different Christian groups to come together. In 1867 all of the Anglican churches came together to talk. Later the Baptists, Lutherans would do the same. The YMCA and the YWCA came into existence. | |||
| 1. | The scandal of division--missionaries felt the need to evangelize a country as a unified body more than any other group. It was scandal that Christianity was made up of so many factions and it was difficult to explain this to an indigenous people. | |||
| See handout #268 | ||||
| 2. | Unity of action and unity of doctrine--in 1925 a Lutheran Archbishop called for a general meeting of all Christian religions to study the relationship between churches, society and the problems of social justice. 600 delegates from 27 countries attended the meeting. In 1937 he called for a second meeting and the response was even better for those attending, including the Orthodox religions. This was a time to discuss church, ministry and seek out the truth and not aim at reunion at any price. From this beginning the World Council of Churches was established in 1938. | |||
| See handout #269 | ||||
| See handout #270 | ||||
| C. | The difficulties for ecumenism in the Catholic Church | |||
| See handout #271 | ||||
| 1. | Portal and Anglicanism--in 1890 Father Fernand Portal and an Anglican Father Halifax met and became friends. Portal envisioned that the Anglicans had kept the essentials of Catholic tradition and in particular the apostolic succession through bishops and so why couldn't they come together as one church again. In 1896 Rome declared Anglican ordinations as invalid and that ended Portal's dream of bringing the two churches together. With the death of both of these men the discussions between the two churches ended | |||
| 2. | Papal opposition--the Catholic Church had a mind-set that it was the only true deposit of faith and held this arrogant attitude until the Second Vatican Council. There was no way they were going to enter into talks with other Christian denominations on an equal footing. Pope Benedict XV politely refused to enter into any kind of dialogue and encouraged them to return to the church. His successor Pope Pius XI even wrote an encyclical in 1929 forbidding Catholics to involve themselves in any kind of ecumenical movement. | |||
| See handout #272 | ||||
| See handout #273 | ||||
| a. Spiritual ecumenism--getting past the Vatican's response to ecumenism monks began to establish prayer means of bringing differing religions together. They prayed and invited others to pray with them that unity as the one people of God could only be accomplished by God. A certain Trappist Abbot Couturier asked each denomination to pray for the will of God in the matter in their own religious groups admitting that we are all at fault and confess our sins towards each other over the centuries. | ||||
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Handouts |
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| 260 | Why we are deserting you. A Bishop asks the question and gets a reply. | |||
| See Full Text | ||||
| 261 | Leo XIII: The encyclical Rerum Novarum on the condition of workers (15 May 1891) | |||
| See Full Text | ||||
| 262 | Pius XI: The encyclical Quadragesimo anno, on the restoration of the social order in full conformity with the precepts of the gospel (15 May 1931) | |||
| See Full Text | ||||
| 263 | Catholic exegesis in the middle of the nineteenth century. A second look at Jonah and the Whale. | |||
| See Full Text | ||||
| 264 | The Biblical question at the end of the nineteenth century. Moses is not the author of the Pentateuch. | |||
| See Full Text | ||||
| 265 | The Gospel and the Church. The Modernist's crisis. | |||
| See Full Text | ||||
| 266 | The condemnation of modernism by Pius X (1907) | |||
| See Full Text | ||||
| 267 | The encyclical Pascendi. A description of a modernist qualities. | |||
| See Full Text | ||||
| 268 | The World Missionary Conference, Edinburgh 1910. | |||
| See Full Text | ||||
| 269 | The World Council of Churches. An attempt at ecumenism. | |||
| See Full Text | ||||
| 270 | The nature of the World Council of Churches. | |||
| See Full Text | ||||
| 271 | The development of M. Portal. A priest (Catholic) and a priest (Anglican) attempt ecumenism on their own. | |||
| See Full Text | ||||
| 272 | Pius XI against growing ecumenism. | |||
| See Full Text | ||||
| 273 | The week of prayer for unity or the spiritual ecumenism of Abbe Couturier. An abbot calls on all Christians to pray together for ecumenism. | |||
| See Full Text | ||||
