LAMENTABILI SANE
SYLLABUS CONDEMNING THE ERRORS OF THE MODERNISTS
Decree issued by Pope St. Pius X
July 3, 1907
With truly lamentable results, our age, casting
aside all restraint in its search for the ultimate causes of things,
frequently pursues novelties so ardently that it rejects the legacy
of the human race. Thus it falls into very serious errors, which
are even more serious when they concern sacred authority, the
interpretation of Sacred Scripture, and the principal mysteries
of Faith. The fact that many Catholic writers also go beyond the
limits determined by the Fathers and the Church herself is extremely
regrettable. In the name of higher knowledge and historical research
(they say), they are looking for that progress of dogmas which
is, in reality, nothing but the corruption of dogmas.
These errors are being daily spread among the
faithful. Lest they captivate the faithful's minds and corrupt
the purity of their faith, His Holiness, Pius X, by Divine Providence,
Pope, has decided that the chief errors should be noted and condemned
by the Office of this Holy Roman and Universal Inquisition.
Therefore, after a very diligent investigation
and consultation with the Reverend Consultors, the Most Eminent
and Reverend Lord Cardinals, the General Inquisitors in matters
of faith and morals have judged the following propositions to
be condemned and proscribed. In fact, by this general decree,
they are condemned and proscribed.
[The following propositions are hereby condemned
and proscribed]
1. The ecclesiastical law which prescribes that
books concerning the Divine Scriptures are subject to previous
examination does not apply to critical scholars and students of
scientific exegesis of the Old and New Testament.
2. The Church's interpretation of the Sacred
Books is by no means to be rejected; nevertheless, it is subject
to the more accurate judgment and correction of the exegetes.
3. From the ecclesiastical judgments and censures
passed against free and more scientific exegesis, one can conclude
that the Faith the Church proposes contradicts history and that
Catholic teaching cannot really be reconciled with the true origins
of the Christian religion.
4. Even by dogmatic definitions the Church's
Magisterium cannot determine the genuine sense of the Sacred Scriptures.
5. Since the deposit of Faith contains only revealed
truths, the Church has no right to pass judgment on the assertions
of the human sciences.
6. The "Church learning" and the "Church
teaching" collaborate in such a way in defining truths that
it only remains for the "Church teaching" to sanction
the opinions of the "Church learning."
7. In proscribing errors, the Church cannot demand
any internal assent from the faithful by which the judgments she
issues are to be embraced.
8. They are free from all blame who treat lightly
the condemnations passed by the Sacred Congregation of the Index
or by the Roman Congregations.
9. They display excessive simplicity or ignorance
who believe that God is really the author of the Sacred Scriptures.
10. The inspiration of the books of the Old Testament
consists in this: The Israelite writers handed down religious
doctrines under a peculiar aspect which was either little or not
at all known to the Gentiles.
11. Divine inspiration does not extend to all
of Sacred Scriptures so that it renders its parts, each and every
one, free from every error.
12. If he wishes to apply himself usefully to
Biblical studies, the exegete must first put aside all preconceived
opinions about the supernatural origin of Sacred Scripture and
interpret it the same as any other merely human document.
13. The Evangelists themselves, as well as the
Christians of the second and third generation, artificially arranged
the evangelical parables. In such a way they explained the scanty
fruit of the preaching of Christ among the Jews.
14. In many narrations the Evangelists recorded,
not so much things that are true, as things which, even though
false, they judged to be more profitable for their readers.
15. Until the time the canon was defined and
constituted, the Gospels were increased by additions and corrections.
Therefore there remained in them only a faint and uncertain trace
of the doctrine of Christ.
16. The narrations of John are not properly history,
but a mystical contemplation of the Gospel. The discourses contained
in his Gospel are theological meditations, lacking historical
truth concerning the mystery of salvation.
17. The fourth Gospel exaggerated miracles not
only in order that the extraordinary might stand out but also
in order that it might become more suitable for showing forth
the work and glory of the Word lncarnate.
18. John claims for himself the quality of witness
concerning Christ. In reality, however, he is only a distinguished
witness of the Christian life, or of the life of Christ in the
Church at the close of the first century.
19. Heterodox exegetes have expressed the true
sense of the Scriptures more faithfully than Catholic exegetes.
20. Revelation could be nothing else than the
consciousness man acquired of his revelation to God.
21. Revelation, constituting the object of the
Catholic faith, was not completed with the Apostles.
22. The dogmas the Church holds out as revealed
are not truths which have fallen from heaven. They are an interpretation
of religious facts which the human mind has acquired by laborious
effort.
23. Opposition may, and actually does, exist
between the facts narrated in Sacred Scripture and the Church's
dogmas which rest on them. Thus the critic may reject as false
facts the Church holds as most certain.
24. The exegete who constructs premises from
which it follows that dogmas are historically false or doubtful
is not to be reproved as long as he does not directly deny the
dogmas themselves .
25. The assent of faith ultimately rests on a
mass of probabilities .
26. The dogmas of the Faith are to be held only
according to their practical sense; that is to say, as preceptive
norms of conduct and not as norms of believing.
27. The divinity of Jesus Christ is not proved
from the Gospels. It is a dogma which the Christian conscience
has derived from the notion of the Messias.
28. While He was exercising His ministry, Jesus
did not speak with the object of teaching He was the Messias,
nor did His miracles tend to prove it.
29. It is permissible to grant that the Christ
of history is far inferior to the Christ Who is the object of
faith.
30 In all the evangelical texts the name "Son
of God'' is equivalent only to that of "Messias." It
does not in the least way signify that Christ is the true and
natural Son of God.
31. The doctrine concerning Christ taught by
Paul, John, and the Councils of Nicea, Ephesus and Chalcedon is
not that which Jesus taught but that which the Christian conscience
conceived concerning Jesus.
32. It is impossible to reconcile the natural
sense of the Gospel texts with the sense taught by our theologians
concerning the conscience and the infallible knowledge of Jesus
Christ.
33 Everyone who is not led by preconceived opinions
can readily see that either Jesus professed an error concerning
the immediate Messianic coming or the greater part of His doctrine
as contained in the Gospels is destitute of authenticity.
34. The critics can ascribe to Christ a knowledge
without limits only on a hypothesis which cannot be historically
conceived and which is repugnant to the moral sense. That hypothesis
is that Christ as man possessed the knowledge of God and yet was
unwilling to communicate the knowledge of a great many things
to His disciples and posterity.
35. Christ did not always possess the consciousness
of His Messianic dignity.
36. The Resurrection of the Savior is not properly
a fact of the historical order. It is a fact of merely the supernatural
order (neither demonstrated nor demonstrable) which the Christian
conscience gradually derived from other facts.
37. In the beginning, faith in the Resurrection
of Christ was not so much in the fact itself of the Resurrection
as in the immortal life of Christ with God.
38. The doctrine of the expiatory death of Christ
is Pauline and not evangelical.
39. The opinions concerning the origin of the
Sacraments which the Fathers of Trent held and which certainly
influenced their dogmatic canons are very different from those
which now rightly exist among historians who examine Christianity
.
40. The Sacraments have their origin in the fact
that the Apostles and their successors, swayed and moved by circumstances
and events, interpreted some idea and intention of Christ.
41. The Sacraments are intended merely to recall
to man's mind the ever-beneficent presence of the Creator.
42. The Christian community imposed the necessity
of Baptism, adopted it as a necessary rite, and added to it the
obligation of the Christian profession.
43. The practice of administering Baptism to
infants was a disciplinary evolution, which became one of the
causes why the Sacrament was divided into two, namely, Baptism
and Penance.
44. There is nothing to prove that the rite of
the Sacrament of Confirmation was employed by the Apostles. The
formal distinction of the two Sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation
does not pertain to the history of primitive Christianity.
45. Not everything which Paul narrates concerning
the institution of the Eucharist (I Cor. 11:23-25) is to be taken
historically.
46. In the primitive Church the concept of the
Christian sinner reconciled by the authority of the Church did
not exist. Only very slowly did the Church accustom herself to
this concept. As a matter of fact, even after Penance was recognized
as an institution of the Church, it was not called a Sacrament
since it would be held as a disgraceful Sacrament.
47. The words of the Lord, "Receive the
Holy Spirit; whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them;
and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained'' (John 20:22-23),
in no way refer to the Sacrament of Penance, in spite of what
it pleased the Fathers of Trent to say.
48. In his Epistle (Ch. 5:14-15) James did not
intend to promulgate a Sacrament of Christ but only commend a
pious custom. If in this custom he happens to distinguish a means
of grace, it is not in that rigorous manner in which it was taken
by the theologians who laid down the notion and number of the
Sacraments.
49. When the Christian supper gradually assumed
the nature of a liturgical action those who customarily presided
over the supper acquired the sacerdotal character.
50. The elders who fulfilled the office of watching
over the gatherings of the faithful were instituted by the Apostles
as priests or bishops to provide for the necessary ordering of
the increasing communities and not properly for the perpetuation
of the Apostolic mission and power.
51. It is impossible that Matrimony could have
become a Sacrament of the new law until later in the Church since
it was necessary that a full theological explication of the doctrine
of grace and the Sacraments should first take place before Matrimony
should be held as a Sacrament.
52. It was far from the mind of Christ to found
a Church as a society which would continue on earth for a long
course of centuries. On the contrary, in the mind of Christ the
kingdom of heaven together with the end of the world was about
to come immediately.
53. The organic constitution of the Church is
not immutable. Like human society, Christian society is subject
to a perpetual evolution.
54. Dogmas, Sacraments and hierarchy, both their
notion and reality, are only interpretations and evolutions of
the Christian intelligence which have increased and perfected
by an external series of additions the little germ latent in the
Gospel.
55. Simon Peter never even suspected that Christ
entrusted the primacy in the Church to him.
56. The Roman Church became the head of all the
churches, not through the ordinance of Divine Providence, but
merely through political conditions.
57. The Church has shown that she is hostile
to the progress of the natural and theological sciences.
58. Truth is no more immutable than man himself,
since it evolved with him, in him, and through him.
59. Christ did not teach a determined body of
doctrine applicable to all times and all men, but rather inaugurated
a religious movement adapted or to be adapted to different times
and places.
60. Christian Doctrine was originally Judaic.
Through successive evolutions it became first Pauline, then Joannine,
finally Hellenic and universal.
61. It may be said without paradox that there
is no chapter of Scripture, from the first of Genesis to the last
of the Apocalypse, which contains a doctrine absolutely identical
with that which the Church teaches on the same matter. For the
same reason, therefore, no chapter of Scripture has the same sense
for the critic and the theologian.
62. The chief articles of the Apostles' Creed
did not have the same sense for the Christians of the first ages
as they have for the Christians of our time.
63. The Church shows that she is incapable of
effectively maintaining evangelical ethics since she obstinately
clings to immutable doctrines which cannot be reconciled with
modern progress.
64. Scientific progress demands that the concepts
of Christian doctrine concerning God, creation, revelation, the
Person of the Incarnate Word, and Redemption be re-adjusted.
65. Modern Catholicism can be reconciled with
true science only if it is transformed into a non-dogmatic Christianity;
that is to say, into a broad and liberal Protestantism.
The following Thursday, the fourth day of the
same month and year, all these matters were accurately reported
to our Most Holy Lord, Pope Pius X. His Holiness approved and
confirmed the decree of the Most Eminent Fathers and ordered that
each and every one of the above-listed propositions be held by
all as condemned and proscribed.
Peter Palombelli,
Notary of the Holy Roman and Universal Inquisition
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