Pius X, 1903–1914

and disorderly that He is distinguished with difficulty, or not at all, by the subject believer. It is necessary, therefore, that this sense be illuminated by some light, so that God may completely stand out and be separated from it. Now, this pertains to the intellect, whose function it is to ponder and to institute analysis, by which man first brings to light the vital phenomena arising within him, and then makes them known by words. Hence the common expression of the modernists, that the religious man must think his faith.—The mind then, encountering this sense, reflects upon it and works on it, as a painter who brightens up the faded outline of a picture to bring it out more clearly, for essentially thus does one of the teachers of the modernists explain the matter. Moreover, in such a work the mind operates in a twofold way: first, by a natural and spontaneous act it presents the matter in a simple and popular judgment; but then after reflection and deeper consideration, or, as they say, by elaborating the thought, it speaks forth its thoughts in secondary judgments, derived, to be sure, from the simple first, but more precise and distinct. These secondary judgments, if they are finally sanctioned by the supreme magisterium of the Church, will constitute dogma.

2079. Thus, then, in the doctrine of the modernists we have come to an outstanding chapter, namely, the origin of dogma and the inner nature of dogma. For they place the origin of dogma in those primitive simple formulae, which in a certain respect are necessary for faith; for revelation, to actually be such, requires a clear knowledge of God in consciousness. Yet the dogma itself, they seem to affirm, is properly contained in the secondary formulae.—Furthermore, to ascertain its nature we must inquire above all what revelation intervenes between the religious formulae and the religious sense of the soul. But this he will easily understand, who holds that such formulae have no other purpose than to supply the means by which he (the believer) may give himself an account of his faith. Therefore, they are midway between the believer and his faith; but as far as faith is concerned, they are inadequate signs of its object, usually called symbolae; in their relationship to the believer, they are mere instruments. —So by no means can it be maintained that they absolutely contain the truth; for, insofar as they are symbols, they are images of the truth, and so are to be accommodated to the religious sense, according as this refers to man; and as instruments they are the vehicles of truth, and so they are in turn to be adapted to man, insofar as there is reference to the religious sense. But the object of the religious sense, inasmuch as it is contained in the absolute, has infinite aspects of which now one, now another can appear. Likewise, the man who believes can make use of varying conditions. Accordingly, also, the formulae which we call dogma should be subject to the same vicissitudes, and so be liable to change. Thus, then,