Snake in the grass

I BELIEVE this is not paranoia. Rather, it is a simple norm of prudence and vigilance.

Even if we seem to have a very civilized world now, what with all the gadgets and technologies coming out, we still need to look out for a possible snake in the grass.

In fact, I would say that our so-called progress in society can offer a trickier cover for serpents to get to us. Mainly material and external development, without the corresponding spiritual growth, makes for a good ground for such treacherous creatures to breed, flourish and later infest.

Thus, it happened recently that in Manila the police had to be called to catch a big, fat python right in the middle of a crowded street. No owner claimed it. But since it was huge, it was easily seen and caught. We have to be more wary of the smaller ones, and even more so of the less material ones.

And we cannot deny that as attested in Church history, both remote and contemporary, when these troublemakers are tolerated and even encouraged, they really can make a big mess in both the Church and society.

So it might be good to alert everyone of such snake in the grass in the form of a heresy called modernism. We need to know what it is, why it’s dangerous, and why it’s condemned by the Church.

We have to do this because it seems it is making a come-back, a revival, especially in our crucial centers of learning, that is, in universities and even in seminaries!

Modernism can be understood in many ways, and there are many good things about it. That’s really the source of the problem, since we often get confused as to what’s good and bad with it, what’s right and wrong with it.

Its controversy came to a head long time ago, with Pope Pius X condemning it with his encyclical “Pascendi” in 1907. Before that, the then Holy Office issued a decree “Lamentabili,” enumerating the modernistic theses that had been disapproved.

It would be good, especially for those in the field of philosophy, theology and the humanities, to be familiar with these proscribed modernistic views, so they can be guided and be more discriminating in their work.

In layman’s language, modernism is a kind of movement mainly within the Church that tends to examine and question traditional belief in the light of contemporary researches.

Of course, at face value there’s hardly anything wrong with it. In fact, it’s good that continuing study and research be done on our Christian faith. By its very nature, our faith requires such study so as to be better understood by all.

The problem arises when the modernist’s efforts to develop and update Christian belief and dogmas starts to give absolute value to modern findings at the expense of the authority of the Church magisterium.

It’s a tendency that causes a kind of paradigm shift in doing philosophy or theology, since it can lean and gravitate toward a purely subjective way of understanding things.

The Church authority is little by little replaced by subjective criteria, albeit presented as being scientific and attuned to modern conditions and mentalities. Doubts begin to be raised about the supernatural character of the Church and the sacraments, about the nature of revelation and dogma, etc.

At bottom, what drives a modernist’s efforts is his so-called religious experience that now plays the leading role in determining what’s from God and what’s not.

He goes on a rampage of “demythologizing” the faith, of distinguishing, for example, the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith, etc. He develops an increasingly hostile attitude toward all Church authority, toward papal infallibility while bestowing that quality on himself.

He most likely will mouth the mantra of academic freedom for effect, accusing Church authorities of overstepping their competence. It’s a well-known ploy.

University and seminary professors in the faculty of philosophy, theology and the humanities should be keenly vetted at least for their doctrinal soundness if not also for their personal spiritual life.

These two aspects should go together, since they make for what can be considered as teachers and models fit for students and seminarians to listen and follow. Church authorities should laser-focus their supervision on them.