On the Modernist Doctrine of Religious Immanence

The Angelus - August 1979







The Conciliar Church Speaks:

" ...for fifty years, I have observed with fervent satisfaction the development of what has been called, in the precise sense of the word, 'social Christianity'....

Today, with many people, I observe an appreciable evolution, according to which major importance is now attributed in value and in method, to the living experience of ecclesial communities, in opposition to an abstract and universal teaching, which was not untouched by ideology. Started by John XXIII, in particular in the encyclical Pacem in Terris, which set out to distinguish the 'signs of the times,' this evolution became explicit at the second Vatican Council, in the constitution Gaudium et Spes, deliberately drawn up in this perspective. Pope Paul VI's Letter to Cardinal Roy (May 1971), on the occasion of the eightieth anniversary of Rerum Novarum, is situated in this line....Paul VI, however, covers with his authority the new procedure, based no longer on deduction from a pre-established, immutable and non-temporal doctrine in a sacred 'model,' but on an empirical analysis of situations, according to the multiform variety of places and times. For it is impossible to determine social practice by taking an ideal world, which is supposed to reflect divine glory, as a common reference for all men: sacralizing in actual fact a contingent structure of a momentary social order.

Observing with sympathy and confidence the copious and urgent new problems raised by the hope of men, the Pope defined, as follows, the method to be adopted.

Thus the historical dimension, implied in Christian economy, which does not develop as an abstract ideology but as a 'sacred history,' is integrated in the understanding of faith, in progress in Christian communities. It is a reversal of procedure, which is no longer based on reference to immutable natural law alone, affirmed as a divine right, but directly on the Word of God listened to and heard on the basis of experience. Christian morality is thus linked with the dynamic of social change, takings its source in the Mystery on which Christianity is founded.

In this way the consistency, sometimes ambiguous, but always inspiring, between the renewal of the world and the historicity of the Kingdom of God, is manifested....In his famous address to U.N. (4 Oct. 1965), Paul VI said:





The Roman Catholic Church Teaches:

"...the positive part [of the system of the Modernists] consists in what they call vital immanence....Religion, whether natural or supernatural, must, like every other fact, admit of some explanation. But when natural theology has been destroyed, and the road to revelation absolutely denied, it is clear that this explanation will be sought in vain outside of man himself. It must, therefore, be looked to in man; and since religion is a form of life, the explanation must certainly be found in the life of man. In this way is formulated the principle of religious immanence. Moreover, the first actuation, so to speak, of every vital phenomenon—and religion, as noted above, belongs to this category—is due to a certain need or impulsion; but speaking more particularly of life, it has its origin in a movement of the heart, which movement is called a sense. Therefore, as God is the object of religion, we must conclude that faith, which is the basis and foundation of all religion, must consist in a certain interior sense, originating in a need of the divine. This need of the divine, which is experienced only in special and favorable circumstances, cannot of itself appertain to the domain of consciousness, but is first latent beneath consciousness....

...Modernists find in this sense not only faith, but in and with faith, as they understand it, they affirm that there is also to be found revelation....

From this, Venerable Brethren, springs that most absurd tenet of the Modernists, that every religion....must be considered as both natural and supernatural. It is thus that they make consciousness and revelation synonymous. From this they derive the law laid down as the universal standard, according to which religious consciousness is to be put on an equal footing with revelation, and that to it all must submit, even the supreme authority of the Church, whether in the capacity of teacher, or in that of legislator in the province of sacred liturgy or discipline.

....

It is thus that the religious sense, which through the agency of vital immanence emerges from the lurking places of the subconsciousness, is the germ of all religion, and the explanation of everything that has been or ever will be in any religion. This sense, which was at first only rudimentary and almost formless, under the influence of that mysterious principle from which it originated, gradually matured with the progress of human life, of which, as has been said, it is a certain form. This, then, is the origin of all, even of supernatural religion. For religions are mere developments of this religious sense. Nor is the Catholic religion an exception; it is quite on a level with the rest; for it was engendered, by the process of vital immanence, and by no other way, in the consciousness of Christ, who was a man of the choicest nature, whose like has never been, nor will be. In hearing these things we shudder indeed at so great an audacity of assertion and so great a sacrilege. And yet, Venerable Brethren, these are not merely the foolish babblings of unbelievers. There are Catholics, yes, and priests, too, who say these things openly; and they boast that they are going to reform the Church by these ravings!"