The Synthesis of All Heresies

Fr. Scalia explains the heresy of Modernism

 by James Blankenship

Speaking to a packed house of over 300 people at Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Gainesville, VA, Fr. Paul Scalia, son of Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia and Pastor of St John the Beloved Catholic Church in McLean VA, explained the modern heresy of Modernism. Pope Pius IX, in his encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis, lays out the Modernist heresy in great detail and emphatically condemns it.

Modernism is anintellectual system that undermines the Catholic Faith and religion itself. Pope Pius IX describes Modernism as “the synthesis of all heresies.” In his talk, Fr. Scalia tries to describe Modernism in the same way the US Supreme Court tried to describe pornography, you know when you see it. Have you come across the person that believes in and strives for the “Church of the future”? Or have you heard the Church described and the “Pre-Vatican II and Post-Vatican II Church”? Has anyone ever asked who Jesus is to you? These are all sentiments held by the modernist.

Fr. Scalia breaks down this complicated heresy into three basic parts: Agnosticism, Vital Immanence, and Evolution.

Agnosticism, as understood by the Modernists, is the premise that we cannot know God by our human reason. It is a rejection of the human reason to grasp the things that are divine, to the point of not establishing or even discussing the basic rules of morality in society and the radical separation of faith and science.

Vital Immanence accounts for the phenomenon of devotion. It is the divine within the man; the manifestation of the divine to each person. This aspect of the Modernist heresy makes religion radically individualistic nullifying the need for a teacher and ultimately the Church.
Evolution is central to the Modernist heresy, not simply evolution in the scientific sense, but the evolution of doctrine and dogma. Evolution of doctrine holds that a particular doctrine evolves into something completely and totally different. Remembering a conversation he once had with a parishioner about the 6th Commandment, the parishioner told Fr. Scalia, “Come on Father, it’s the ‘90s”, as if the 6th Commandment somehow evolved and is no longer the same as it was in 80’s or even 800’s.

Cardinal John Henry Newman describes the heresy of Modernism in his famous Biglietto Speech:

Liberalism [Modernism]is the doctrine that there is no positive truth in religion, but that one creed is as good as another and this is the teaching which is gaining substance and force daily. It is inconsistent with any recognition of any religion, as true. It teaches that all are to be tolerated, for all are matters of opinion. Revealed religion is not a truth, but a sentiment and a taste; not an objective fact, not miraculous; and it is the right of each individual to make it say just what strikes his fancy. Devotion is not necessarily founded on faith. Men may go to Protestant Churches and to Catholic, may get good from both and belong to neither. They may fraternize together in spiritual thoughts and feelings, without having any views at all of doctrine in common, or seeing the need of them. Since, then, religion is so personal a peculiarity and so private a possession, we must of necessity ignore it in the intercourse of man with man. If a man puts on a new religion every morning, what is that to you? It is as impertinent to think about a man's religion as about his sources of income or his management of his family. Religion is in no sense the bond of society.

To hear Fr. Scalia’s talk entitled The Errors of Modernism: Pascendi Dominici Gregis, visit the Institute of Catholic Culture’s website at http://instituteofcatholicculture.org.