need of the awaking of another faculty under the influence of the Holy Spirit to convert this experience into faith? The conversion had to take place somewhere, whether the facts were those which the Evangelists record or the scanty remnant of them which M. Loisy retains. Where, then, was the interest of the Modernists in cutting down the miracles, seeing that, be they many or few, no phenomenon is, by their hypothesis, a cause of faith unless there be a sort of knowledge which is not relative-a sort of knowledge which comes from the immanence of God in man? If there be, as the Encyclical alleges, any genetic connexion between the three elements of the Modernist philosophy, we are pretty sure that it is asserted in the wrong order.

It was not the Kantian who, in terror of Atheism, clutched at a philosophy of Immanence; and then, for fear this theory might not be strong enough to bear so heavy a burden, sought the aid of criticism to reduce the difficulty of our Lord's life to a more manageable bulk. Evidently the real family history is this: that Relativism and Immanentism are not mother and daughter, but two sisters who, after a time of estrangement, are coming to appreciate one another; and that Criticism, if perchance she comes to stay in the same house, is of an entirely distinct family. It is difficult to describe the relations of a family if one has never lived in it, but rather has thought all its members odious and contemptible.

A small part of the Encyclical is devoted to the censure of those Modernists who plead the cause of social liberty (§ 106). Although it is quite untrue that there is a system of social thought which follows as a necessary consequence either from the theological and philosophical views which certain Modernists actually hold, or from those which are attributed to them in the Encyclical, it is likely enough that they have a general sympathy with what may be called, but not in a party sense, democracy-that sort of democracy which among ourselves finds advocates no less on one side of the House than on the other. It is a democracy which sees the hand of God more clearly in the growth of a people than in the permanence of institutions; which, honouring man as

man, cannot think that the faithful layman has no function in the Church besides passive submission; which regards the censure of a book without opportunity granted to the writer to explain his views as akin to tyranny (§ 69); which considers the regal pomp of the papal court as less likely to win men to Christ than a return to clerical humility and simplicity (§ 106). If these are the contentions of some Modernists, we hardly think that they will regard the censure of them as a reproach, or that Englishmen generally will condemn them.

The last section of the Encyclical states the practical measures to be taken to stop the disease (§§ 130-153). The philosophy of the thirteenth century is to form the basis of study; attendance at public universities is discouraged; professors suspected of Modernism are to be excluded from seminaries; bishops are to use redoubled diligence in repressing suspected books, even if they be by authors of good repute and have received the imprimatur elsewhere; tradesmen who sell such works are to be forbidden to call themselves Catholic booksellers; bishops are to forbid clerical meetings, except rarely and under strict supervision as to topics and speakers; in every diocese a Council of Vigilance is to be formed, to meet every two months, and to report to Rome every three years supposed cases of Modernism. In this way, we suppose, the clergy are to learn how much confidence is placed in them, and are to prepare themselves to meet the questions of a critical world. The secret informer is already too common a person in Italy; and a distinguished French writer anticipates an age of delation and hypocrisy.'

We are unwillingly compelled to call attention to what may be mildly termed the unkind tone of the Encyclical. It has a sad precedent in the virulent way in which controversy was generally conducted in a ruder age. But most combatants have at least learned courtesy, if not charity; a political opponent is not called a pickpocket, nor does the scholar send his rival' to eternal perdition for his treatise on the irregular verbs.' If we might have expected to find anywhere signs of such improved manners, it would surely have been in a solemn Letter addressed to bishops by the

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.

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. He 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.