In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

The French Connection: The Church’s “Eldest Daughter” and the Condemnation of Modernism C.J.T. Talar Along with language, we acquire a set of social norms and values. A vocabulary is not merely a string of words; immanent within it are societal textures—institutional and political coordinates. Back of a vocabulary lie sets of collective action. C. Wright Mills1 A t the outset of his study of Modernist figures both central and marginal, Alec Vidler retrieves Pope Pius X’s labeling of the movement as the mal francese of the church. While he did not find this “an edifying thing for a pope to say” he thought Pius “certainly was justified in using the epithet francese.”2 Vidler then cited Émile Poulat’s demonstration that the Modernist movement was centered in France to make the point: It is in France, unquestionably, that modernism was on its home ground. There it had its eponymous personality, Loisy, —its precursor, Duchesne, —its philosophers, Hébert and, above all, Edouard Le Roy, —its erudite scholars among whom Turmel stands out, —its moderator, Mgr. Mignot, archbishop of Albi, —its publicists and historiographer, Houtin, —its reporters and its propagandists, —its publisher, Emile Nourry; its journals and periodicals . . . its adepts and sympathizers, its third order, with Paul Sabatier and Paul Desjardins, the one a liberal protestant and the other an ‘ultra-Christian’; and even its selfstyled bishop, Mgr. Lacroix, who resigned his see of Tarentaise when he had promulgated the Pascendi in his diocese.3 55 1. C. Wright Mills, “Logic, Language and Culture” in Irving L. Horowitz, ed., Power, Politics and People: The Collected Essays of C. Wright Mills (New York: Oxford University Press, 1963), 433. 2. Alec Vidler, A Variety of Catholic Modernists (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 20. 3. Idem. Quoting Émile Poulat, Histoire, dogme et critique dans la crise moderniste (Tournai: Casterman, 1962), 19. Social psychological research on stereotyping has shown their functionality for individuals in their ability to organize and simplify the complexities of the world in order to facilitate understanding.4 Certainly Pius’s label, while acknowledging significant French influence, oversimplifies. Modernism was not the product of a number of wayward French intellectuals whose ideas had produced a growing pandemic among younger clergy and a number of lay Catholics—as the papal condemnation of Modernism itself indicated. If one were to retain the vocabulary of disease, then the plague was modernity itself in its multiple guises: philosophical, historical, political, and social. Stereotypes also serve a number of functions on the collective level; they “will often say more about the realities and interests of the group holding them than their targets.”5 They not only categorize outgroups and justify stances taken against those, but also reinforce ingroup solidarity and identity. Thus an examination of French responses to the syllabus Lamentabili sane exitu and the encyclical Pascendi dominici gregis will provide perspective on reactions to the Vatican perception of Modernism from both its partisans and opponents, as well as the French context of the claims that were at issue between them. Much of what follows will focus on substantive matters raised by the encyclical’s defenders and dissidents. However, before proceeding to engage those issues it would be well to note the degree of formal authority exercised by the condemnation. Though an extreme statement of the ultramontanism described elsewhere in this issue by Lawrence Barmann, the following admonition made relative to Pascendi is indicative of a climate in which any questioning of the terms laid down by the magisterium would be equated with institutional disloyalty. We do not judge authority before accepting its decisions: the orders that it hands down to us, be they dogmatic, moral or disciplinary, impose themselves on us from the moment that they issue forth from the power established by God. If we were to examine before submitting ourselves, we would hold our authority as higher than that of the Church, and this would be the ruin of our Catholic constitution. This adherence without examination, blind in appearance, is, in reality, based on the most solid motives: for it is after having established by preliminary studies on the act of faith the legitimate authority of the teaching...

pdf

Share