Pius X, 1903-1914

2036. 36. The resurrection of the Savior is not properly a fact of the historical order, but a fact of the purely supernatural order, neither demonstrated nor demonstrable, and which the Christian conscience gradually derived from other sources.

2037. 37. Faith in the resurrection of Christ was from the beginning not so much of the fact of the resurrection itself, as of the immortal life of Christ with God.

2038. 38. The doctrine of the expiatory death of Christ is not evangelical but only Pauline.

2039. 39. The opinions about the origin of the sacraments with which the Fathers of Trent were imbued, and which certainly had an influence on their dogmatic canons, are far different from those which now rightly obtain among historical investigators of Christianity.

2040. 40. The sacraments had their origin in this, that the apostles and their successors, swayed and moved by circumstances and events, interpreted some idea and intention of Christ.

2041. 41. The sacraments have this one end, to call to man's mind the ever beneficent presence of the Creator.

2042. 42. The Christian community has introduced the necessity of baptism, adopting it as a necessary rite, and adding to it the obligation of professing Christianity.

2043. 43. The practice of conferring baptism on infants was a disciplinary evolution, which was one reason for resolving the sacrament into two, baptism and penance.

2044. 44. There is no proof that the rite of the sacrament of confirmation was practiced by the apostles; but the formal distinction between the two sacraments, namely, baptism and confirmation, by no means goes back to the history of primitive Christianity.

2045. 45. Not all that Paul says about the institution of the Eucharist [I Cor. 11:23-25] is to be taken historically.

2046. 46. There was no conception in the primitive Church of the Christian sinner reconciled by the authority of the Church, but the Church only very gradually became accustomed to such a conception. Indeed, even after penance was recognized as an institution of the Church, it was not called by the name, sacrament, for the reason that it would have been held as a shameful sacrament.

2047. 47. The words of the Lord: "Receive ye the Holy Ghost; whose sins ye shall forgive they are forgiven them, and whose sins ye shall retain they are retained" [John 20:22, 23], do not refer at all to the sacrament of penance, whatever the Fathers of Trent were pleased to say.

2048. 48. James in his Epistle [Jas. 5:14 f.] does not intend to promulgate some sacrament of Christ, but to commend a certain pious custom, and if in this custom by chance he perceives some means of grace, he does