Beautiful looking apples sometimes have worms

Feb. 1, 2025

The heresy of Modernism can find its first fruitful seeds going back to the French Revolution which began in 1789. There has been this tendency to glorify the revolution as the “people rising up” or demonize the monarchy as the source and root of all the problems of the society. While there were most definitely problems there and the need for serious reform, this was never really the goal of the revolution. We hear often trumpeted the values of “fraternity” and “liberty” that it proclaimed and ushered in. Those were only available to the people who sided with it and followed their lead. It was not liberty from all the problems; it was liberty from the Faith and the Church that were on the forefront. It was fraternity for those who despised the Bride of Christ. It is no secret that one of the primary goals of the philosophy that spurred on the revolution was to completely eliminate any authority or effect the Catholic Church had on that society and eventually to eliminate the Church completely. That is why they directed some of their most demonic fury against the Church and the faithful. Keep in mind, that during that revolution, all church property – churches, monasteries, convents, chapels, hospitals and schools were confiscated by the revolutionary government. Many of them were destroyed outright, others were turned into dance halls, prisons, stables, military barracks or bars. Some, such as the famous Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, were ransacked and dedicated as the new “temple of reason” by the building of an idol of sorts on the altar complete with the celebration of demonic and pagan freemason rituals which happened there and in many of the other famous churches of France (an interesting sidenote is that Notre Dame and the majority of historic churches in France are still owned by the government, they just allow the Catholic Church to still use some of them sometimes). Any relics of saints or sacred things that were found were publicly blasphemed and destroyed. In order for a church to remain open one had to sign an oath of loyalty to the revolutionary government and speak on things they desired and teach as they desired as well (give up objective truth for the sake of subjective truth). Refusal to do so meant you were an enemy of the state and the society; therefore, you deserve to die. If a lay Catholic went to a secret Mass or hid a priest, it also meant you were an enemy of the revolution. The penalty was death.

The basis of the modernist heresy had to be laid in country that up until that time had been a bastion of the Faith and one of the major sources of missionaries throughout the world. As I say on occasion - the devil is evil, but he isn’t stupid. He knows where to attack first. The heresy had to begin in the political and social realm before it could directly attack the Faith. “Be sober and vigilant. Your opponent the devil is prowling around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” (1 Peter 5, 8)

This gives us an idea of how the heresy began to slowly reveal itself. Now we can look at how the modernist movement within the Church itself began to appear. It was something like a snowball that slowly grew and took more and more to itself. We can say that under Pius IX (pope from 1846-1878) its tendency was politico-liberal, under Leo XIII (pope from 1878-1903) and Pius X (pope from 1903-1914) social; later, under Pius X, its tendency became avowedly theological.

The main contention of modernism as such is that the Church and Her teaching are to be examined solely through the subjective lens of the individual and the here and now. There are no revealed eternal moral truths that are to be always followed, and the Church herself is not the main arbiter of knowledge of God and moral law. It is purely the individual/society that does so while looking at everything through the lens of the current times and issues. It is your feelings, ideas or thoughts that dictate what is true. It pushes the primacy of current science over all things and the primacy of the individual conscience over the revealed and eternal truths of the Faith. With modernism, everything is subjective and always to be graded, understood and practiced purely in the lens and light of the particular area or time. Well, I have run out of space this week.

Until next time,

God love you, Fr. Anthony