Modernism and Modern Thought

Modernism and Kant 5 Modernism and Catholicism 16 Modernism and Jesus Christ 24 Modernism and Dogma. I. Symbolism 32 Modernism and Dogma. II. Pragmatism 42 Modernism and Theology 49 Modernism -- Historical Retrospect 56 Conclusion 63 SOME apology may perhaps be needed to a Catholic audience for discussing the subject of Modernism at all. It might be thought that it is a topic which might well be let alone -- let severely alone -- in an English Catholic pulpit. The system that has come to be known as Modernism is so largely a matter of metaphysical speculation that it hardly commends itself to the average English intelligence. We flatter ourselves as a race on being practical. We like to be practical in our religion as in other things, and speculative theories on religious subjects possess little charm for our minds and exercise little influence on our beliefs and conduct. It might be thought, then, that Modernism presents little danger to English Catholics. There is some truth in this view if we regard only the actual tenets of Modernism. No doubt we Englishmen are plain men in our habits of thinking, and to plain men much of the teaching of Modernism is simply bewildering. But underlying the doctrines of Modernism there is the spirit of Modernism. The doctrines of Modernism may not be a danger to us, the spirit of Modernism may. And it cannot be denied, I think, that the spirit of Modernism is abroad at the present time. It infects much of the thought and literature of the day. Catholics need then to be put on their guard against it, and these lectures will have fulfilled their purpose if they serve to warn Catholics against a real danger to their faith. It may be said with truth that the term Modernism stands not so much for a cut-and-dried system ready-made as for a system in the making. It represents a spirit, a tendency, a method or process of contemporary thought.