Pius X, 1903-1914

But why, to speak cursorily, if there is so much force and value in these ex- periences, should not the same value be attributed to that experience which many thousands of Catholics assert that they have regarding the erroneous path on which the modernists tread? Is not all this false and fallacious? But the great majority of men firmly hold this, and will hold this: that through sense alone and experience, with no guidance and light of the mind, man can never attain God. And so we again have atheism, and no religion.

2108. The modernists promise themselves nothing better by proclaiming the doctrine of symbolism. For if all intellectual elements, as they say, are merely symbols of God, will not the very name of God, or of the divine personality be a symbol. And if this is so, then there will be a possibility of doubt about the divine personality and the way is open to pantheism. Moreover, in the same way the other doctrine of divine immanence leads to pure and unmixed pantheism. For we ask this: Does such immanence distinguish God from man or not? If it does so distinguish, in what then does it differ from Catholic doctrine, or why does it reject the doctrine of external revelation? If it does not so distinguish, we have pantheism. But this immanence of the modernists holds and grants that every phenom- enon of conscience proceeds from man as man. Thus good reasoning infers from this that God and man are one and the same; and so we have pantheism.

2109. Indeed, the distinction which they proclaim between science and faith admits no other conclusion. For, they place the object of science in the reality of the knowable; the object of faith, on the contrary, in the reality of the unknowable. Now, the unknowable is fully established from this, that between the material object and the intellect there is no proportion, and this defect of proportion can never be removed, not even in the doctrine of the modernists. Therefore, the unknowable will always remain un- knowable, to the believer as well as to the philosopher. Therefore, if we will possess any religion, it will be of an unknowable reality. Why this cannot also be the soul of the universe, as certain rationalists admit, we certainly do not see. But let these words suffice now to show fully how the doctrine of the modernists leads by manifold routes to atheism, and to the destruction of all religion. Indeed, the error of the Protestants was the first to take the step down this road; the error of the modernists follows; atheism will be the next step. [After fixing the causes of these errors— curiosity, pride, ignorance of true philosophy—certain rules are laid down for the support and organization of philosophical, theological, and profane studies, and for the cautious selection of teachers, etc.]