Pius X, 1903-1914

is to find and determine the formula which corresponds best with the common conscience; and this mind must have sufficient authority to impose on the community the formula which it has determined upon. Moreover, in this union and fusion, as it were, both of the mind which draws up the formula, and of the power which prescribes it, the modernists place the notion of the magisterium of the Church. Since, then, the magisterium finally arises at some time from the individual consciences, and has as a mandate the public duty to the benefit of the same consciences, it necessarily follows that the magisterium depends on these, and so must bend to popular forms. Therefore, to prohibit the consciences of individuals from expressing publicly and openly the impulses which they feel; to obstruct the way of criticism whereby it impels dogma in the path of necessary evolutions, is not the use but the abuse of the power permitted for the public weal. Similarly, in the very use of power, measure and moderation are to be applied. To censure and proscribe any book without the knowledge of the author, without permitting any explanation, without discussion, is surely very close to tyranny.—Thus, here also a middle course must be found to preserve the rights at once of authority and liberty. Meanwhile the Catholic must so conduct himself as to proclaim publicly his strict respect for authority, yet not to fail to obey his own mind.—In general they prescribe as follows for the Church: that, since the end of ecclesiastical power pertains only to the spiritual, all external trappings must be abolished, by which it is adorned most magnificently for the eyes of the onlookers. In this the following is completely overlooked, that religion, although it pertains to souls, is not confined to souls exclusively, and that the honor paid to authority redounds to Christ as its founder.

2094. Moreover, to complete this whole subject of faith and its various branches, it remains for us, Venerable Brethren, to consider finally the precepts of the modernists on the development of both.—Here is a general principle: In a religion which is living nothing is without change, and so there must be change. From here they make a step to what is essentially the chief point in their doctrines, namely, evolution. Dogma, then, Church, worship, the Books that we revere as sacred, even faith itself, unless we wish all these to be powerless, must be bound by the laws of evolution. This cannot appear surprising to you, if you bear in mind what the modernists have taught on each of these subjects. So, granted the law of evolution, we have the way of evolution described by the modernists themselves. And first, as regards faith. The primitive form of faith, they say, was crude and common to all men, since it had its origin in human nature and human life. Vital evolution contributed progress; to be sure, not by the novelty of forms added to it from the outside, but by the daily increasing pervasion of the religious sense into