This was a very interesting discussion to listen to, but it didn't resolve or adequately address a question that, in the beginning, I thought it was meant to help resolve. Namely, is a traditionalist misuse of the Church's condemnations of Modernism merely the result of their own misinterpretations of Pascendi etc., or was there anything *wrong* with Pascendi itself, something that needed re-balancing later in the 20th century? Near the very beginning of the video they quote, "as for that other purely subjective truth, the fruit of sentiment and action, if it serves its purpose for the jugglery of words, it is of no use to the man who wants to know above all things whether outside himself there is a God into whose hands he is one day to fall." What isn't noticed there or later is that this is one of the stronger NON-propositionalist statements in Pascendi itself! Furthermore, it gives an important interpretive key to the other passages elsewhere about what it means to assert that truth is "outside man". Granted, one *can* interpret the "truth is outside man" concept in a very propositionalist way, and there's no doubt that many neo-Thomists have being doing exactly that for over a century - so no straw-man problem there. But that very quote (it's in paragraph #39 § 2) makes it plain as the nose on my face that the Church's magisterial teaching *did not intend* it to be understood that way! The truth is outside of myself. And it is so, *not* in the sense of an objective proposition, but exactly in the sense that **another person** exists outside of myself. Pascendi is deeply incarnational in that way. The Syllabus itself, therefore, needs to be interpreted that way, and not as proof of any propositionalism on the part of the Magisterium itself.
As a bumper-sticker: The dogmas of the Church are icons which direct the intellect of the believer to God: authoritative summary statements of what God has revealed to us.
@ Dr. Larry Chapp... So from Fr. John Hardon Modern Catholic Dictionary: MODERNISM. A theory about the origin and nature of Christianity, first developed into a system by George Tyrrell (1861-1909), Lucien Laberthonnière (1860-1932), and Alfred Loisy (1857-1940). According to Modernism, religion is essentially a matter of experience, personal and collective. There is no objective revelation from God to the human race, on which Christianity is finally based, nor any reasonable grounds for credibility in the Christian faith, based on miracles or the testimony of history. Faith, therefore, is uniquely from within. In fact it is part of human nature, "a kind of motion of the heart," hidden and unconscious. It is, in Modernist terms, a natural instinct belonging to the emotions, a "feeling for the divine" that cannot be expressed in words or doctrinal propositions, an attitude of spirit that all people have naturally but that some are more aware of having. Modernism was condemned by Pope St. Pius X in two formal documents, Lamentabili and Pascendi, both published in 1907. (Etym. Latin modernus, belonging to the present fashion.)
What great conversations these are. I'm glad to have stumbled upon your show (on my interest in Ivan Illich)
Good convo Larry
This was a very interesting discussion to listen to, but it didn't resolve or adequately address a question that, in the beginning, I thought it was meant to help resolve. Namely, is a traditionalist misuse of the Church's condemnations of Modernism merely the result of their own misinterpretations of Pascendi etc., or was there anything *wrong* with Pascendi itself, something that needed re-balancing later in the 20th century?
Near the very beginning of the video they quote, "as for that other purely subjective truth, the fruit of sentiment and action, if it serves its purpose for the jugglery of words, it is of no use to the man who wants to know above all things whether outside himself there is a God into whose hands he is one day to fall." What isn't noticed there or later is that this is one of the stronger NON-propositionalist statements in Pascendi itself! Furthermore, it gives an important interpretive key to the other passages elsewhere about what it means to assert that truth is "outside man". Granted, one *can* interpret the "truth is outside man" concept in a very propositionalist way, and there's no doubt that many neo-Thomists have being doing exactly that for over a century - so no straw-man problem there. But that very quote (it's in paragraph #39 § 2) makes it plain as the nose on my face that the Church's magisterial teaching *did not intend* it to be understood that way!
The truth is outside of myself. And it is so, *not* in the sense of an objective proposition, but exactly in the sense that **another person** exists outside of myself. Pascendi is deeply incarnational in that way. The Syllabus itself, therefore, needs to be interpreted that way, and not as proof of any propositionalism on the part of the Magisterium itself.
As a bumper-sticker: The dogmas of the Church are icons which direct the intellect of the believer to God: authoritative summary statements of what God has revealed to us.
@ Dr. Larry Chapp...
So from Fr. John Hardon Modern Catholic Dictionary:
MODERNISM. A theory about the origin and nature of Christianity, first developed into a system by George Tyrrell (1861-1909), Lucien Laberthonnière (1860-1932), and Alfred Loisy (1857-1940). According to Modernism, religion is essentially a matter of experience, personal and collective. There is no objective revelation from God to the human race, on which Christianity is finally based, nor any reasonable grounds for credibility in the Christian faith, based on miracles or the testimony of history. Faith, therefore, is uniquely from within. In fact it is part of human nature, "a kind of motion of the heart," hidden and unconscious. It is, in Modernist terms, a natural instinct belonging to the emotions, a "feeling for the divine" that cannot be expressed in words or doctrinal propositions, an attitude of spirit that all people have naturally but that some are more aware of having. Modernism was condemned by Pope St. Pius X in two formal documents, Lamentabili and Pascendi, both published in 1907. (Etym. Latin modernus, belonging to the present fashion.)
Pius X, not Pius IX