The Encyclical Against the “Modernists” Turns 100

From Sandro Magister:

The anniversary came and went in silence, in the Vatican, without any official commemorations. But the questions addressed one hundred years ago in the encyclical “Pascendi Dominici Gregis” by saint Pius X “on the errors of modernism” are still seen as relevant. The reservation is due, instead, to the specific measures that the Church took a century ago: measures viewed as mistaken by today’s Church authorities.

This is what the new director of “L’Osservatore Romano,” professor Giovanni Maria Vian, said in the first significant interview that he granted after his appointment:

“Pius X was a great reformist pope, and in regard to the modernist question he understood very well what was at stake and what were the dangers for the Church’s faith. Unfortunately, his reputation is now linked mostly to the ways in which modernism was combated, often with methods unworthy of the cause they were intended to defend.”

And this is also what is said in the only two articles on the “Pascendi” encyclical published in recent weeks by press outlets controlled by the Church hierarchy: “La Civiltà Cattolica,” the journal of the Rome Jesuits printed with the editorial authorization of the Vatican authorities, and “Avvenire,” the newspaper owned by the Italian bishops’ conference.

In “Avvenire,” the theologian Corrado Pizziolo emphasized the enduring relevance of the central questions addressed by the encyclical.

But in “La Civiltà Cattolica,” Jesuit historian Giovanni Sale, in reconstructing the genesis and development of the document, highlighted the elements judged as most outdated: its excessively “doctrinaire” structure, its excessively “harsh and censorious” tone, and its “excessively fundamentalist and hard-line” application.