Chief Pastor of the flock, and dealing with his own, perhaps erring, sheep, and with students who, if mistaken, may at least be honest. We will not sully our pages, we will not dishonour a holy Pope, by quoting the acrid abuse of Modernists which is scattered freely through this document; but we speak from experience as to the resentment and shame which it evokes among many who are by no means Modernists. All the crimes of the men who are rebuked are set down to pride and curiosity (§116). Nothing is allowed for the possibility that they may have been misled in a genuine zeal for truth; nothing for a generous, if hasty, anxiety to win back to Christ nations which are sadly alienated from Him; no hint is given that part of the alienation may be due to worldliness among the superior clergy. The Pope must know, and he is too good a man not to lament, that the morals of the Curia are not above reproach; that the condition of some seminaries is scandalous; that paganism rather than Christianity prevails in many places. An honest recognition of these points would have added the weight of fairness to the charges of the Encyclical.

It is not easy to ascertain the effects of this crusade. Of the floods of official rhetoric which the Pope's Letter has evoked it is hardly necessary to speak. Never does a Pope utter a word without an outburst of adulation which would be excessive if he were a Gregory the Great. We have not come across any attempt to support the Encyclical with serious argument. Nor have our researches been much more successful on the opposed side. Father Tyrrell's Medievalism we have already noticed, and one other work, not touching upon the controversy but with a distinctly Modernist and no less distinctly Roman Catholic spirit, is a solid gain to theology; but we refrain deliberately from naming it, because it has so far escaped censure.1

1 The Programma dei Modernisti (Rome: Società ScientificoReligiosa, 1908), published immediately after the Encyclical, seems to us rather contentious than argumentative: the anonymous writers have no right to speak in the name of anybody but themselves. M. Paul Sabatier's Jowett lectures on Modernism (Les Modernistes. Paris : Fischbacher, 1909. E. T. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1908), delivered in

Several useful periodicals which took an intelligent part in religion, but by no means adopted the views condemned in the Encyclical, have ceased to appear; among them Demain and the delightful Revue Catholique des Églises in France, and in Italy the learned and sober Studi Religiosi. The three laymen who were the editors of Il Rinnovamento, which took a more pronounced line, were required by the Archbishop of Milan to cease publication. One of them obeyed, not renouncing his principles but not finding that his conscience constrained him to publish a magazine in disobedience to his bishop; the others continue to issue what is one of the most interesting Reviews not confined to theological topics.

He

With regard to the men who have suffered for Modernism we can give few details. We do not know of anybody who has been excommunicated on this score save the two men of whom we have spoken, the editors of the magazine just noticed, and a few anonymous writers. The list of those who have been censured, suspended from the ministry, or otherwise punished is far greater. The eminently Christian and reverent romance of Fogazzaro, Il Santo,1 has been placed on the Index. Two cases deserve particular notice. Mgr Fracassini has long presided over the seminary at Perugia to the entire satisfaction of his bishop and of Leo XIII, who previously held that see. is a grave and moderate man. In 1907 he was superseded on charges which were some of them untrue and some of them trivial. His bishop was confident that an appeal to Rome would cancel the sentence; but it was confirmed on London, are of course well-informed and attractive. M. Vidal's essay, though we must regret with the author the ton agressif, in the Revue du Clergé Français, January 1909, is hostile to Modernism, but about equally contemptuous to writers on the other side: it gives a good bibliography. Cattolicismo Rosso (Napoli: Ricciardi, 1908), by G. Prezzolini, has the same useful feature it is the work of an unbeliever who thinks it a vain attempt to reconcile modern society with the Church; society is altruistic, but Christianity is based upon the selfish hope of reward after death!

An English translation, The Saint, was published in 1906. (Hodder and Stoughton.)

the score that his Biblical teaching was not in conformity with the Pope's desire. Don Salvatore Minocchi is a learned teacher of Hebrew in the University of Florence. His version of Isaiah, with notes, had been favourably introduced by the late Cardinal Svampa.1 A similar work on Genesis was in the censor's hands awaiting the imprimatur, when the author read as a lecture before a small gathering of students the chapter which dealt with the story of Eden. It pleaded for the view, common among the Fathers, that this story need not be regarded as a literal narrative, but might be treated as an allegory. Minocchi was summoned by the Vicar-General to sign a rigid recantation, and, refusing, was suspended. The case was referred to Rome, and the final decision was that, although there is nothing reprehensible in the teaching incriminated, yet the writer must recant in order to save the face of the authority which had suspended him. Needless to say that he is unable to do so. Father Semeria, whose judicious work on the development of the Church (Dogma, Gerarchia e Culto) is one which Newman might have endorsed, has been silenced, though we hear that some arrangement has been arrived at; and a similar story may be told of Mgr. P. Batiffol, who won at Toulouse the respect of all students of Church history. A saintly man, who has an unequalled influence among educated young men, has so far escaped censure by abstaining from the pulpit. Those who are familiar with the works of such men as these will observe a strange non sequitur between the Encyclical and the repression of these very moderate writers. It is as if Convocation had censured the Encyclopaedia Biblica, and had proceeded to remove from his chair Professor Sanday; or as if an Act against the Moonlighters had been used to imprison Mr. Gladstone. One consequence of this repression may be pointed out. It should be evident that, if there are men who run to dangerous extremes, the critics who are best fitted to confute them and bring them to order are precisely those who go some distance with them. Socialists are more likely to be influenced by moderate reformers than

Cf. C.Q.R. No. 130, p. 444.

by bigoted admirers of the present condition of society. The recent action of the Vatican closes the lips of moderate writers they do not care to criticize those who go further than themselves when they are in adversity; and they are silent, lest in their temperate works something should be discovered which is not agreeable to the present temper of the Curia.

What is to be the future of Modernism we cannot say. We are no prophets, but gatherers of sycomore fruit which sometimes wrings our lips. If we are honoured by finding readers among the Modernists, we trust they will not resent a word of frank advice. We would urge them to remember the not unjustified prejudices of many of their brethren; not to shock them unnecessarily by hasty conclusions harshly propounded. We know that their aim is not to call out from the Roman Church a small body of enlightened men, but to spread light through the whole Church. The task will need infinite patience and charity. They must shun all temptation to court martyrdom. They will study and write, but, in spite of our strong dislike of anonymous publication, it may be desirable to keep their authorship secret. We hope that they will avoid all inclination to form a party, and to set many heads on one neck for the benefit of Domitian. We hope that no difficulties will induce them to separate from that part of the Catholic Church in which God has placed them. Not that we doubt for an instant that the Anglican conception of a Catholic Church without papal supremacy is true, though Anglicans have done little to commend it by their practice; nor do we take it upon ourselves to condemn the Old Catholics for taking a different course amid different circumstances. But in Italy and France, where the movement is mainly clerical, where it would win few adherents among a listless laity, separation would cast away the only hope of gaining a hearing. It may be well to say that the recent consecration of an Old Catholic bishop for England did not look towards the enlistment of recruits among the Modernists; and the English Church will not waver from her traditional course of making no converts from other portions of the Catholic

Church. Here and there a person may have paltered with his convictions and made an insincere submission; here and there a man may have yielded to despair and thrown away the Christian faith which the Vatican travesties. Some may have sought a refuge in some Protestant society; though it should not be taken for granted that those who have taken this course were led to it by what the Encyclical calls Modernism. A certain amount of interest has been taken in the recent case of Don G. Bartoli, formerly a professor in a Jesuit college in India, who has to some extent identified himself with the Waldensian Church; but he is an ardent and not very generous opponent of what he regards as Modernism, and is moved by principles which were more in place in the sixteenth century than in the twentieth. There are those who say that Modernism is past. Such persons may have said after Novara that United Italy was extinguished, or when the tide turned flattered Knut that the sea obeyed him. Experience shews how frequently a time of depression is a time of consolidation.

Rome has pursued an uniform effort after autocracy. We cannot detach the campaign against Modernism from the resolute setting aside of the French episcopate in the reorganization of their suffering Church, from the Pope's quiet determination to take the right of appointment to vacant bishoprics, from the supersession of local metropolitans by Cardinals of the Holy See. Whether this despotism can yet be tempered by reform, or whether it will find its only cure in revolution, we cannot tell; but at least we can pray and hope.

HERBERT H. JEAFFRESON.