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John Ireland and the Modernist Controversy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Neil T. Storch
Neil T. Storch
Affiliation:
Mr. Storch is professor of history in the University of Minnesota, Duluth, Minnesota.
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Extract

The effects of the condemnation of Modernism in the opening decades of the twentieth century were deep and far reaching. The Vatican, continuing its long-standing feud with doctrinal Modernism, took sharp, decisive action on 3 July 1907 when the Holy Office issued a syllabus, Lamentabili sane exitu, listing sixty-five condemned propositions taken mostly from the writings of the noted French theologian and exegete Alfred Loisy.1 Two months later, on 8 September, Pius X renewed the attack with his anti-Modernist encyclical, Pascendi Dominici gregis.2 The encyclical outlined and condemned “most attempts then being made by European Catholics, priests and laity, to incorporate the most recent nonscholastic research and scholarship into the development of theology and scripture studies.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 54 , Issue 3 , September 1985 , pp. 353 - 365
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1985

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References

1. “Decree of the Holy Roman and Universal Inquisition,” American Catholic Quarterly Review 32 (1907): 561–566.Google Scholar See Gannon, Michael V., “Before and After Modernism: The Intellectual Isolation of the American Priest,” in The Catholic Priest in the United States: Historical Investigations, ed. Ellis, John Tracy (Collegeville, Minn., 1971), p. 335.Google Scholar

2. “Pascendi Dominici gregis,” in Claudia Carlen, The Papal Encyclicals, 5 vols. (Wilmington, N. C., 1981), 3: 71–97.Google Scholar

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4. Fogarty, Gerald P., The Vatican and the American Hierarchy From 1870 to 1965 (Stuttgart, 1982), p. 193.Google Scholar See Hennesey, James, “Papacy and Episcopacy in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century American Catholic Thought,” Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia 77 (1966): 187–188,Google Scholar and American Catholics: A History of the Roman Catholic Community in the United States (New York, 1981), p. 203;Google ScholarGannon, , “Before and After Modernism,” pp. 350–364;Google ScholarReher, Margaret Mary, “Pope Leo XIII and ‘Americanism,”“ Theological Studies 34 (1973): 689.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5. Storch, Neil T., “John Ireland's Americanism After 1899: The Argument from History,” Church History 51 (1982): 434–444.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6. Wangler, Thomas E., “John Ireland's Emergence as a Liberal Catholic and Americanist: 1875–1887,” Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia 81 (1970): 69.Google Scholar See also Wangler, , “John Ireland and the Origins of Liberal Catholicism in the United States,” Catholic Historical Review 56 (1971): 617–629,Google Scholar“The Birth of Americanism: ‘Westward the Apocalyptic Candlestick,’” Harvard Theological Review 65 (1972): 415–436,Google Scholar and “American Catholic Expansionism: 1886–1894,” Harvard Theological Review 75 (1982): 369–393.Google Scholar

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13. Ireland, , “Church and the Age,” The Church, 1: 108.Google Scholar

14. Commenting on the relationship between scientific progress and morality, Ireland noted that some contemporary observers felt that humanity no longer needed a teacher or savior. Science, they argued, had become the master and guide; science would unlock all needed knowledge and provide a secure foundation for morality. Taking issue with this view, Ireland made the following observation: “The needs and the ills of humanity are the same to-day as they were yesterday. Material conditions may have changed; steam and electricity may have annihilated distance, made earth's hidden treasures tributary to our industry, and increased a thousand fold our sovereignty over nature. But with all this the mind within us ceases not its questionings, and the heart within us still quivers beneath the wild storms of passion. If, with the material progress around us, any change has come to the human soul, the change is that the mind is more earnest in its inquiries, and the battle of virtue is more fierce. To-day, more than ever, is humanity in need of Christ”; Ireland, , “Jesus Christ, Yesterday, and To-day; and the Same For Ever,” 14 04 1901, The Church, 2: 421–426.Google Scholar

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16. As Father William Busch pointed out in a 10 March 1933 report, found in the Minutes of the Catholic Historical Society of Saint Paul, Archbishop Ireland “had grown up with the diocese and was intimately related to every part of its development and therefore knew its history from memory”; Archives of the Catholic Historical Society, Saint Paul Seminary, Saint Paul. Ireland's interest in history can also be seen in his active involvement with the Minnesota Historical Society. He became a member in 1867, served on its council for twenty-two years (1867–1889), and was its president for two years (1877–1878); Warren Upham to Ambrose McNulty, 29 August 1905, vol. 10, MHS Papers, Archives of the Minnesota Historical Society, Saint Paul. In addition, Ireland contributed historical pieces to a wide range of publications. Ireland's writings on Loras and Cretin included the following: “Right Rev. Mathias Loras, First Bishop of Dubuque,” Catholic World 67 (1898): 721–731;Google ScholarCatholic World 68 (1898): 1–12; “The Church in America,” 17 04 1901, The Church, 2: 221–250;Google Scholar“Fifty Years of Catholicity in the Northwest,” 2 07 1901, The Church, 2: 253–278;Google Scholar“Life of the Rt. Rev. Joseph Cretin, First Bishop of the Diocese of St. Paul,” Acta et Dicta (07 1916): 187–218,Google Scholar (July 1917): 3–66, (July 1918): 170–205.

17. Ireland, , “Mission of Catholics,” The Church, 1: 75–79.Google Scholar

18. Ibid., pp. 79–80.

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20. John Ireland to Denis J. O'Connell, 4 August 1903, 15 November 1903, microfilm of letters, Catholic University of America, John Ireland collection, compiled by Helen Angela Hurley, Archives of the Minnesota Historical Society; John Ireland to Maria Longworth Storer, 11 September 1903, in Storer, Maria Longworth, In Memoriam: Bellamy Storer (Boston, 1923), p. 80.Google Scholar See Fogarty, Gerald P., The Vatican and the Americanist Crisis: Denis J. O'Connell, American Agent in Rome, 1885–1903 (Rome, 1974), pp. 300–301,Google Scholar and The Vatican and the American Hierarchy, pp. 200–201.Google Scholar

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24. John, Ireland to Maria Longworth Storer, 5 04 1904,Google Scholar in Storer, , In Memortam, p. 104.Google Scholar

25. Raffaele Merry del Val to John Ireland, 14 February 1907, John Ireland Papers, Chancery of the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis; John Ireland to Denis J. O'Connell, 8 March 1907, microfilm of letters, Catholic University of America, John Ireland Collection, compiled by Hurley, Archives of the Minnesota Historical Society.

26. “Three Years and a Half of Pius X,” North American Review 184 (4 02. 1907): 35–45.Google Scholar

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28. Ireland to Alfred Loisy, 14 June 1893, in Reher, , “Americanism and Modernism,” p. 101n.Google Scholar It is interesting to note that Monsignor Denis J. O'Connell, a fellow Americanist, recommended Loisy to Ireland, stating that the Frenchman was the leading biblical scholar in the Catholic church. O'Connell thought that Loisy was suitable for Ireland's seminary; Fogarty, , The Vatican and the American Hierarchy, p. 144n.Google Scholar

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30. Ibid., pp. 241–242. In 1903 Ireland himself had written an apologetical piece which stressed instinct. The archbishop did not reject, however, the more traditional arguments of the older school of apologetics. He wrote: “That our God and our Heaven are not dreams, arguments without number, from reason and history, give sufficient proof. But, for the moment, I seek no other argument than that which positivism itself affords”; Ireland, , “Religion: Deepest Instinct of the Human Soul,” p. 397.Google Scholar

31. Ireland, , “Pontificate of Pius X,” p. 245.Google Scholar

32. Storch, , “John Ireland's Americanism,” pp. 436–444.Google Scholar

33. New Cathedral Bulletin, December 1907. See the second installment of Ireland's, “Is the Papacy an Obstacle to the Reunion of Christendom?” North American Review 187 (01 1908): 22;Google ScholarCatholic Bulletin, 11 February 1911, 27 January 1912.

34. Ireland, , “The Dogmatic Authority of the Papacy: The Encyclical on Modernism,” North American Review 187 (04 1908): 489–490.Google Scholar

35. New Cathedral Bulletin, December 1907.

36. Catholic Bulletin, 11 February 1911.

37. Ireland, , “Dogmatic Authority of the Papacy,” pp. 490–492.Google Scholar

38. New Cathedral Bulletin, December 1907.

39. Ireland, , “Dogmatic Authority of the Papacy,” pp. 495–496.Google Scholar

40. For summaries of Pascendi by other authors, see Mooney, Joseph F., “The Rights of the Supreme Pontiff, Catholic World 86 (1908): 519–523;Google ScholarBurke, Thomas F., “The Errors Condemned,” Catholic World 86 (1908): 524–531;Google ScholarDaily, Joseph W., “The Causes of Modernism,” Catholic World 86 (1908): 645–650;Google ScholarMurphy, John T., “The Pope's Encyclical on Modernism,” American Catholic Quarterly Review 33 (1908): 130–137;Google ScholarVieban, A., “Who are the Modernists of the Encyclical?” Ecclesiastical Review 38 (1908): 489–508.Google Scholar For a more detailed discussion of “The Philosophical Bases of Modernism,” see Turner, William, Catholic University Bulletin 14 (1908): 421–455.Google Scholar

41. Ireland, , “Dogmatic Authority of the Papacy,” p. 496.Google Scholar

42. Ibid., pp. 490–492. See the Catholic Bulletin, 15 August 1914.

43. New Cathedral Bulletin, December 1907.

44. Ireland, , “Dogmatic Authority of the Papacy,” pp. 493–494.Google Scholar

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