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How modernists operate(d) within the Church…… February 21, 2013

 ……and what some of their leaders believed.  In getting into some real red meat in Roberto de Mattei’s The Second Vatican Council: an unwritten story, he explains how the modernist movement went underground after it was condemned by Pope St. Pius X in 1907, either moderating public beliefs just enough to be acceptable, or camoflauging their activities by moving out of theology and into areas like liturgy and the study of Sacred Scripture.   They definitely formed a semi-secret cabal with leadership in given areas, disciples, programs to recruit new members, meetings, agendas, etc – everything one would expect an organized body to have.  They laid low for 10-15 years after Pascendi – the document used by Pope St. Pius X to condemn the modernists – and then just gradually came back into the open, but this time there was no Saint with the charity, the fortitude, and the faith to oppose them.  They gained more and more power and influence, until, during the Pontificate of Pius XII, in many respects the real, orthodox Church was just a fragile veneer over a seething cauldron of modernist heresy. At least as far as academics, leaders of many religious orders, and other individuals of more than usual influence in the Church were concerned.  All that heresy needed to explode and run rampant in the Church was a spark, and while I haven’t gotten that far in the book yet, I’m sure de Mattei will argue that Vatican II provided that spark.

Two questions I’ve personally had, and that I get asked a lot, is why don’t people who flat out admit to disbelieving even such elemental things as the Incarnation and Resurrection just be intellectually honest and leave the Church, and what do “modernist beliefs” really mean?  To answer the first, here is a quote discussing how the modernists themselves described their operation:

An “insider” [of the elitist, academically-linked modernist cabal] like the French ex-Benedictine Albert Houtin, in describing the plan of modernism, foresaw that the innovators would not leave the Church, not even if they had lost the faith, but would remain as long as possible to propagate their ideas. “It is in this sense that it was agreed around 1903 and was still written in 1911, that no true modernist, whether layman or priest, would be able to abandon the Church or cassock, because otherwise he would then cease to be a modernist in the lofty sense of the term;” “at the same time as the Delenda Cathargo [‘Carthage must be destroyed’, an ancient Roman political slogan], why not carry out the Dissolvenda [‘It [the Church] must be dissolved’]?”

“Until now,” Ernesto Buonaiuti [a major Italian modernist]  explained in turn, “they wanted to reform Rome without Rome, or even against Rome. Rome needs to be reformed with Rome; they have to act so that the reform passes through the hands of those who need to be reformed. This is the true and infallible method……”  [And this is what many critics of Vatican II feel occurred at the Council] (E. Buonaiuti, Il moderismo cattolico (Modena: Guanda, 1943), p. 128). From this perspective, modernism proposed to transform Catholicism from within, leaving intact, as much as possible, the external trappings of the Church. “The external worship,” Buonaiuti continues, “will last forever like the hierarchy, but the Church, as the teacher of the Sacraments and of her sacred orders, will modify her hierarchy and her worship according to the times: she wil make it simpler, freer, and thus more spiritual [hah! Is that what’s happened?] ; that way she will become a form of protestantism; but an

Tyrell

orthodox protestantism that is gradual and not violent, aggressive…….a protestantism that will not destroy the apostolic continuity of ecclesiastical ministry or the very essence of worship” [oops….many feel that “very essence of worship” has been destroyed, or at least horrifically mangled]

“Rome,” [the massively modernist “convert” to Catholicism] George Tyrell had asserted, “cannot be destroyed in a day, but it is necessary to make it fall into dust and ashes gradually and inoffensively, then we will have a new religion and a new decalogue.” [The intent is certainly crystal clear]

[End Quote] So we can see from the above that modernists intended to stay undercover in the Church, and to work to modify the beliefs of the Church not from the bottom up but from the top down, resulting in a top-down imposition of a radically new form of “church,” a church not of the Apostles, mysticism, the Body and Blood, Saints, Angels, Sacraments, etc., but of protestantism.  How can any belief system that so takes advantage of lying, subterfuge, and misrepresentation – as fundamental aspects of its operation – claim Divine Inspiration? What an insidious evil modernism was, and is. Quoting again:

The existence of this undeground stream that flowed into the Church was confirmed in 1978 when a hitherto unknown document was published, entitled Out of the Depths: The Testament of Faith of Don Primo Vannutelli, a Roman priest who had died in Rome on April 9, 1945, in the community of the Oratorian Fathers [I’m going to skip a bit and condense: Don Vannutelli was from a well connected family that had produced two Cardinals in the 19th century. He was also completely modernist, but wrote in his “testament” how he had laid low, slowly influencing dozens of young priests and religious, spreading his modernist ideas clandestinely, never being discovered, but being very influential.  He was a mentor of a young Father Giovanni Battista Montini, the later Pope Paul VI, this established in Montini’s own letters published in Italy in 1998 by Xenio Toscani] Quoting again:

Don Primo Vannutelli articulates his profession in the new Church as follows:

“Careful studies………….have shown that according to the “older“ Gospels Jesus did not know that he was the Logos of God, was God with the Father, and had been so before the creation of the world. In those accounts, Jesus never gives himself [sic] those titles. [So, Don Vannutelli jettisons the Gospel of St. John because it is not convenient for his belief system. This is all, entirely, B as in B, S as in S] He was a great prophet, the servant and son of God, sent to do a great work, but was not fortunate like Moses or Muhammad, or Francis of Assisi: when he was alive, his people were expecting a Messiah…It does appear that Jesus himself [sic] considered himself the Messiah: but he never said he was the Logos of God, God co-equal with the Father.” [Yes, he did.  St. John’s Gospel is full of such statements: “Have you been with me so long Phillip, and still you do not know that I and the Father are one?!”  This guy just deletes the entire discourse after the Last Supper in St. John’s Gospel, one of the most beautiful, theologically dense, and important discourses Christ left us with. One must wonder how a person holding such beliefs could live in a religious community for decades and not be discovered, unless there was some sympathy for those views which helped keep them hidden, or explained them away as innocuous]

“And if someone who reads these pages were to ask me: ‘What remains then of Christianity, if Jesus is not God?,’ I would tell him right away: ‘Very little remains: God, and the longing and joy of the universe.’ ‘But then, what will distinguish a Christian from a Jew and from a Muslim now?’ Would you be saddened if nothing really distinguished us? If in the Father’s love we were all of one mind and one heart? If, with all the causes of discord among men, we did not add what ought to be the cause of love? If the truth, which is one, were to unite us?”

——————-End All Quotes————————

Kumbayyah, my Lord.  One can certainly see how modernist theo-philosophical views align so well with, and very often stem from, left-wing political views. Can’t you see we’re all just brothers?  Forget that part where Jesus separates the wheat from the chaff, and speaks of being a sword of division……he was just speaking extemporaneously, just fooling about!  Actually, to a modernist, that was all made up after the fact, the idea of having to explain that the Blessed Sacrament is not cannibalism being such a natural starting point for any religion.  Sheesh.

The above is not to say that all modernists are quite this radical. Like any belief system, there is a spectrum, but those who were more honest, and more committed, held these types of views. It is amazing that such men could think they were doing good, when in order to exist in the Church at that time they had to lie constantly about who they were and what they believed, all the while working from within to destroy the Faith.  That such men were totally inured to the surely diabolical inspiration for what they were doing is very sad.  The devastated and empty churches of Europe (and those rapidly emptying in other locales like Central and South America) are the heirs of the triumph of modernism.

If you didn’t know what modernism was before, now you do.  God help us.

Former Convent of Notre Dame, a perfect figure for the impact of modernism on religious life

I’m sure I’ll have more from this book in the coming days.