Pius X, 1903–1914

and undetected.—Someone perhaps will ask in what way does this need of the divine, which man himself perceives within himself, finally evolve into religion? To this the modernists reply: “Science and history are included within a twofold boundary: one external, that is the visible world; the other internal, which is consciousness. When they have reached one or the other, they are unable to proceed further, for beyond these boundaries is the unknowable. In the presence of this unknowable, whether this be outside man and beyond the perceptible world of nature, or lies concealed within the subconsciousness, the need of the divine in a soul prone to religion, according to the tenets of fideism, with no judg- ment of the mind anticipating, excites a certain peculiar sense; but this sense has the divine reality itself, not only as its object but also as its intrinsic cause implicated within itself, and somehow unites man with God.” This sense, moreover, is what the modernists call by the name of faith, and is for them the beginning of religion.

2075. But this is not the end of their philosophizing, or more correctly of their raving. For in such a sense the modernists find not only faith, but together with faith and in faith itself, as they understand it, they affirm that there is place for revelation. For will anyone ask whether anything more is needed for revelation? Shall we not call that religious sense that appears in the conscience “revelation,” or at least the beginning of reve- lation; why not God himself, although rather confusedly, manifesting Himself to souls in the same religious sense? But they add: Since God is alike both object and cause of faith, that revelation is equally of God and from God, that is, it has God as the Revealer as well as the Revealed. From this, moreover, Venerable Brothers, comes that absurd affirmation of the modernists, according to which any religion according to its various aspects is to be called natural and also supernatural. From this, consciousness and revelation have interchangeable meanings. From this is the law according to which religious consciousness is handed down as a universal rule, to be equated completely with revelation, to which all must submit, even the supreme power in the Church, whether this teaches or legislates on sacred matters or discipline.

2076. Yet in all this process, from which according to the modernists, faith and revelation come forth, one thing is especially to be noted, indeed of no small moment because of the historico-critical sequences which they pry from it. For the unknowable, of which they speak, does not present itself to faith as something simple or alone, but on the contrary adhering closely to some phenomenon, which, although it pertains to the fields of science and history, yet in some way passes beyond them, whether this phenomenon be a fact of nature containing some secret within itself, or be any man whose character, actions, and words do not seem possible of being reconciled with the ordinary laws of history. Then faith, attracted