Modernism

What is the meaning of this “ism” that crops up in any number of philosophical or theological discussions? Most scholars trace it back to the Enlightenment, specifically to the thought of Immanuel Kant, whose thesis – that the human mind can know nothing in-and-of-itself but rather that the human mind projects a structure of reality upon what is perceived and experienced in the world – a thesis if true, then, “there can be no such thing as absolute, objective truth. ‘Truth’ is dependent on the structure of our perceiving instrument, that is, our individual minds. Thus ‘truth’ is individual, situational, and relative.”1

Here is the foundation of much of modern philosophy, but this idea has surfaced under many different guises and during much of the history of thought ever since classical antiquity. We come across it in the Greek sophists, who were relativists and who were so soundly refuted by Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. In a theological context, “modernism” really first appeared in the great struggle of the Church against the heresy of Arianism in the early fourth century. John Henry Newman, even before his conversion to the Catholic Church, delved into this subject in his The Arians of the Fourth Century, and there he dissected the problem with his usual acumen.

The Arians, followers of the heretic priest Arius, rejected the orthodox belief concerning Christ’s co-equality with God the Father – that Christ in His Person is truly the Son of God and of one substance or nature with the Father. Newman notes that this heresy was really dependent upon a prior and devastating principle: that God is absolutely ineffable, completely unknowable and inexpressible, and therefore, Christ, who is known by His followers, cannot be God Himself come in human flesh, but rather the highest creature of the visible realm. His advent into our world then could not have been to reveal God but rather reveal how people are to live, to behave. Christ is, then, merely the perfect example of how human beings are supposed to act. The priority here is not knowing but rather imitating, not truth but action.

All this was again quite in vogue during my seminary days: there it took up the mantra orthopraxis as distinct from orthodoxy. This “new” – or actually warmed over – emphasis did not escape the notice of then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, who commented on it in an interview with the Italian journalist Vittorio Messori: “[S]ome facile slogans are making the rounds, one of which asserts that all that really matters today is orthopraxis, hence “right conduct,” love of neighbor. On the other hand, concern for orthodoxy, that is, for “right belief,” according to the true meaning of Scripture, which is read within the living tradition of the Church, occupies a second rank, when it is not downright alienating.” More simply put, this chatter about orthopraxis is just a variant of what common street language expresses as “it doesn’t really matter what you believe as long as you are good.” Thus, the Church’s presentation of the moral life no longer has the status of teaching or doctrine, but is changed into “principles for action.” Like the Arians of old, the modernist – who exalts orthopraxis over orthodoxy – does not view Christ as the means of truly knowing the inner life of God and as revealer of truths that would form our minds and hearts (and so then, our actions), but rather is the highest example for orthopraxis.

But with the unhinging of “principles of action” from dogma and doctrine, the horse got behind the cart: instead of doctrines forming and informing our behavior, we now have, with modernism, perceived “right behavior” forming “doctrine.” The void (where once was doctrine) is now filled with “the thinking of the day” about what is “good” or acceptable behavior. A good illustration of this is the debate within church circles concerning homosexual acts, which the Catholic Church has always defined as intrinsically disordered: with modernism the perennial teaching is trumped by the principle of action of non-discrimination. Or, the example of abortion: the teaching, the doctrine, that the unborn child is an innocent human being, whose intentional destruction is murder, must give way to the principle of action – the policy, as it were – of the widely accepted view of the right of choice in reproductive matters.

Newman countered all this with his oft-repeated motto “belief forms all action”; not that believing the right thing of itself completely provides all one needs for right action, but that it is certainly the indispensable starting point in matters of moral decision-making. Newman consistently adhered to what he called “the dogmatic principle”: that there are propositions or definitions of reality, dogmas that communicate to us unchanging truth. These form the content of what one believes so as to be informed of how to live and behave. But modernism, following Arius, the Greek sophists, and Kant, holds that knowledge of unchanging realities is impossible, and so we are left with the duty of “right” behavior that shifts and adjusts to the changing times in which we live. Theologically, this relativism appeared in Arianism which posited that the mind of God is unknowable and that all the Christian can do is follow after the example of the human life of Christ. Thus the modernist – the contemporary Arian – does very often appeal to Jesus Christ, but notice, almost always to His actions, rarely His teaching. In the Gospel story of the woman caught in adultery, for example, the modernist is quick to point out that Jesus did not condemn her; Christ’s admonition “to go and sin no more” is usually passed over in silence. Christ’s willing identification with sinners becomes the paradigm of toleration, not His opportunity to reveal to the lost the love of God and the way to liberty from the thralldom of sin; and so forth.

Modernism, then, is essentially a whole other religion apart from Catholicism. It makes use of Christian vocabulary, stories, and even “dogmas” so as to propose a way of life that is in keeping with behavioral norms thought to be presently applicable to human well-being, yet norms that can – and will – change (“evolve” is usually the word used) to better accommodate things to the zeitgeist, the spirit of the age. Despite its cloak of the intellectually sophisticated, in matters of religion it is a vapid “creed,” denying its adherents the very thing we need most: to know the mind of Christ through Whom we know God; it is a weather-vane “religion,” that can really only tell us which way the wind is blowing. And so people follow after the wind, or as St. Paul warned – a warning repeated recently by Pope Benedict XVI – people will follow after any and every “wind of doctrine.”

The only truths we can really know are of this world, dictated Arius, and modernists slavishly obey. And since science and its method have proved so effective in our “knowing” so much, science, people are led to believe, can and does explain everything. But of course it doesn’t, as seen in the novelist Walker Percy’s description of the incoherence produced by science pontificating about things beyond its scope: “You are a clever ape, a chemical accident. Now be nice to your neighbor.”2 Percy notes that everyone around us these days may very well be “nice,” but science cannot tell us why this should be so; nor can science tell us why certain human deeds are indeed very much horrible. In his book The Message in the Bottle, Percy elaborates with his usual wit:

Yes, it’s true; in fact there seem to be more nice people around now than ever before, but somehow as the world grows nicer it also grows more violent. The triumphant secular society of the Western world, the nicest of all worlds, killed more people in the first half of [the twentieth century] than have been killed in all history. Travelers to Germany before [World War II] reported that the Germans were the nicest people in Europe.

As Percy makes clear, when the foundation of the moral life is not unchanging truth but rather is contemporary views of appropriate behavior (such as “niceness”), then something as ethereal as “tenderness” can become the guiding principle behind one atrocity after another. (“Tenderness,” Percy’s fictional character, Fr. Smith, observes “leads to the gas chamber” in the modern world, or to the abortion and euthanasia clinic.) It all just depends on the latest “thinking of the day,” propounded by an ever-evolving scientific “understanding” of things: in one age, “scientific” eugenics requires the coaxing of “inferior” races to avoid procreation; in another age, say that of “enlightened” France, it demands the “tender” extermination of the old aristocracy and all recalcitrant Catholics; nowadays, it proposes the extremely “tender” gift of democracy to other nations, a gift that costs the violent destruction of thousands of lives.

Modernism disconnects any communication between the divine and human, and we are left to be guided by the lights we have. And so the travail of man chronicled by history – man separated from his Creator and so at war with himself, with those around him, and with the world in which he “lives.” Moderns, without God, subject themselves to ever-changing “scientific” theoretical analyses which, because they have no real means of understanding man himself, reduce man to just another object of observation geared toward manipulation. And man is alienated from himself.

The pro-abortion view of the unborn human being is a classic instance of the scientific mindset’s power to alienate. The new creature is labeled “a fetus.” Not a baby. Not a particular boy or girl waiting to be born, known, and named. Just “a fetus” – as if, though the words “fetus” and “unborn baby” refer to exactly the same thing, the changed name somehow changed the reality. What the names do in fact change is one’s emotional reaction and, consequently, our morals and our laws. In an age of ethical emotionalism, when we govern by “tenderness,” morality follows emotions (it’s not that we cry because something is wrong; rather it’s wrong because we cry about it). The language of science – the language of “fetuses” and “blastocytes” and “products of conception” – does not indulge in emotional connotation; it is designed to arrive at the objective [scientific] truth. It inspires neither tears nor laughter nor morality. In the 1990 Crisis interview, Percy said: “It may be quite true what Mother Teresa said – if a mother can kill her unborn child, then I can kill you and you can kill me – but it is not necessarily horrifying…” Indeed, Americans are not horrified by abortion. Overcoming the aversion to human bloodshed, it seems, was as easy as changing a name.

Change the name, change the theory, change the ideology – and the modernist Christian cheerleads the new direction down which we all are supposed to obediently plod. But the Church stands fast upon what God has revealed in human nature itself and supremely made clear in the revelation of God in Jesus Christ: these things do not change, for they are the insights we need into reality itself. Modernism bases itself in the flux of the world and presumes that science’s increasing knowledge of this world is the means of understanding the human being as yet other phenomenon under observation. “Through his theories,” writes John Wauck, [modern man] constructs a world in which he is himself inexplicable.” The Church counters with her unchanging proclamation – that God revealed in Christ, the God-Man, reveals man to himself. That is, only the Creator of man can show man what he really is, and thus, how to live and reach his appointed end.