Key People: Alfred Firmin Losey, George Tyrell
Modernism is a movement in the history of the Roman Catholic Church in the last decade of the 19th century and the first decade of the 20th century, which sought to reinterpret traditional Catholic teaching in the light of the philosophical, historical conscience, and psychological principles of the 19th century. Was. Influenced by non-Catholic biblical scholars, modernists argued that the authors of both the Old and New Testaments were adapted according to the time in which they lived and developed in the history of biblical religion. Modernism also reflected a reaction against the increasing centralization of church authority in the Pope and the Roman Curia (papal bureaucracy).
In France, the movement was closely associated with the writings of Alfred Firmin Lossy, who was dismissed from his teaching post at the Institut Catholic in Paris in 1893 for his views on Old Testament doctrine. These views were later expressed in La Région d’Israel (1900; “The Religion of Israel”), and both his doctrine on the Gospels in Etudes Evangelique (1902; “Studies in the Gospel”) by the Archbishop of Paris. François was condemned by Cardinal Richard. George Tyrell in England, (1869–70) was an Irish-born Jesuit priest who was dismissed from his teaching position and from the Jesuits for his views on the papal infallibility and for a doctrine that undermined the intellectual element of Revelation and thus contradicted the teachings of the First Vatican Council. His principles influenced others, most notably the French layman Edouard Le Roy. Also in England, a scholar, Baron Friedrich von Hugel, was critical of some methods of church government and defended the right of Loisy and Tyrrell to publish their ideas; However, he did not reject the papacy or share some of Tyrell’s philosophical views. In Italy, the writings of Losi and Tyrrell influenced the priest-scholars Ernesto Buonauti and Giovanni Semeria, the novelist Antonio Fogazzaro, and other Catholics. In Italy, as in Germany, concern with the reform of church institutions was a more prominent topic than the rejection of doctrine.
Rome’s response included the suspension or pre-communication of some priests and scholars associated with the movement, the placement of books on the Index of Prohibited Books, the establishment in 1903 of the Pontifical Bible Commission by Pope Leo XIII to oversee the scholars of Scripture. The work, and the 1907 formal condemnation in the encyclopedia of the Pope and the Decree of the Holy Office of the Curia Lamentabili Sane Exitu. To ensure enforcement, priest-scholar Umberto Benigni, through personal contacts with theologians, organized a non-governmental group of censors who would report to him those who were teaching blasphemy doctrine. This group, known as the Integralists (or Sodalitium Pianum, “Solidarity of Pius”), often employed overzealous and covert methods and countered modernity to hinder rather than help. On June 29, 1908, Pius X publicly acknowledged that modernism was a dead issue, but on September 1, 1910, at Benigni’s insistence, he issued the Sacrorum Antiserum, which stipulated that all teachers of seminary and clerics Take an oath before your ordination. Condemning modernism and supporting Lamentbili and Passendi.
source:www.britannica.com