Today being the feast day of Pope Pius X, I present here a section of the magnificent encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis, in which the Pope describes the heretical notion of the evolution of dogma.
The Origin of Dogma
In that sentiment
of which We have frequently spoken, since sentiment is not knowledge, God
indeed presents Himself to man, but in a manner so confused and indistinct
that He can hardly be perceived by the believer. It is therefore necessary
that a ray of light should be cast upon this sentiment, so that God may be
clearly distinguished and set apart from it. This is the task of the
intellect, whose office it is to reflect and to analyse, and by means of which
man first transforms into mental pictures the vital phenomena which arise
within him, and then expresses them in words. Hence the common saying of
Modernists: that the religious man must ponder his faith. - The
intellect, then, encountering this sentiment directs itself upon it, and
produces in it a work resembling that of a painter who restores and gives new
life to a picture that has perished with age. The simile is that of one of the
leaders of Modernism. The operation of the intellect in this work is a double
one: first by a natural and spontaneous act it expresses its concept in a
simple, ordinary statement; then, on reflection and deeper consideration, or,
as they say, by elaborating its thought, it expresses the idea in secondary
propositions, which are derived from the first, but are more perfect and
distinct. These secondary propositions, if they finally receive the
approval of the supreme magisterium of the Church, constitute dogma.
12. Thus, We have reached one of the principal points in the
Modernists' system, namely the origin and the nature of dogma. For they place
the origin of dogma in those primitive and simple formulae, which, under a
certain aspect, are necessary to faith; for revelation, to be truly such,
requires the clear manifestation of God in the consciousness. But dogma itself
they apparently hold, is contained in the secondary formulae.
To ascertain the nature of dogma, we must first find the
relation which exists between the religious formulas and the religious
sentiment. This will be readily perceived by him who realises that these
formulas have no other purpose than to furnish the believer with a means of
giving an account of his faith to himself. These formulas therefore stand
midway between the believer and his faith; in their relation to the faith,
they are the inadequate expression of its object, and are usually called symbols;
in their relation to the believer, they are mere instruments.
Its Evolution
13. Hence it is quite impossible to maintain that they express
absolute truth: for, in so far as they are symbols, they are the images
of truth, and so must be adapted to the religious sentiment in its relation to
man; and as instruments, they are the vehicles of truth, and must
therefore in their turn be adapted to man in his relation to the religious
sentiment. But the object of the religious sentiment, since it embraces
that absolute, possesses an infinite variety of aspects of which now
one, now another, may present itself. In like manner, he who believes may pass
through different phases. Consequently, the formulae too, which we call
dogmas, must be subject to these vicissitudes, and are, therefore, liable to
change. Thus the way is open to the intrinsic evolution of dogma. An
immense collection of sophisms this, that ruins and destroys all religion.
Dogma is not only able, but ought to evolve and to be changed. This is
strongly affirmed by the Modernists, and as clearly flows from their
principles. For amongst the chief points of their teaching is this which they
deduce from the principle of vital immanence; that religious formulas,
to be really religious and not merely theological speculations, ought to be
living and to live the life of the religious sentiment. This is not to be
understood in the sense that these formulas, especially if merely imaginative,
were to be made for the religious sentiment; it has no more to do with their
origin than with number or quality; what is necessary is that the religious
sentiment, with some modification when necessary, should vitally assimilate
them. In other words, it is necessary that the primitive formula be accepted
and sanctioned by the heart; and similarly the subsequent work from which
spring the secondary formulas must proceed under the guidance of the heart.
Hence it comes that these formulas, to be living, should be, and should
remain, adapted to the faith and to him who believes. Wherefore if for any
reason this adaptation should cease to exist, they lose their first meaning
and accordingly must be changed. And since the character and lot of dogmatic
formulas is so precarious, there is no room for surprise that Modernists
regard them so lightly and in such open disrespect. And so they audaciously
charge the Church both with taking the wrong road from inability to
distinguish the religious and moral sense of formulas from their surface
meaning, and with clinging tenaciously and vainly to meaningless formulas
whilst religion is allowed to go to ruin. Blind that they are, and leaders
of the blind, inflated with a boastful science, they have reached that
pitch of folly where they pervert the eternal concept of truth and the true
nature of the religious sentiment; with that new system of theirs they are
seen to be under the sway of a blind and unchecked passion for novelty,
thinking not at all of finding some solid foundation of truth, but despising
the holy and apostolic traditions, they embrace other vain, futile, uncertain
doctrines, condemned by the Church, on which, in the height of their vanity,
they think they can rest and maintain truth itself.
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