The greatest possible misconception of modernism is the official representation of it as a presumptuous liberalism, itself empty of faith, which would eventually empty religion of all reality. Into this grievous misapprehension of it some conservative Protestants, misled by its most radical Biblical criticism, have too hastily fallen. It will not be so quickly judged by those theological inquirers among us, who learned long since only to smile, and not to be embarrassed, when some small denominational infallibility confronted them with the pleasing dilemma, Give up your new ideas or your Church life! They chose rather to stay in the communions where they were born, and more than once they have lived to see their new theologies entertained as old friends. These Roman modernists will survive the same reproach. It may be granted that in their eager following of the newer scientific methods of investigating the historical origins of Christianity they may, some of them, have ventured beyond the limits of sober Biblical criticism. Among ourselves as well as with them the so-called higher critics do not always perceive clearly the full extent to which the historical Christ authenticates himself in the Gospel narratives. But few, if any, among them would deny that the spiritual superlativeness of Jesus, and the supreme uniqueness of his personality, are facts of history, which have been taken up and interpreted in the faith of Christianity in his divine pre-eminence. They do not profess to have wrought out their philosophy or formulated their theological beliefs. Hence to those who cannot lift up their eyes and believe without definitions, their thought may seem at times vague and their faith illusive. But it is not because they lack positive religious experience. Through much travail of mind they have gained a new spiritual life, and for the hope of it they are willing now to suffer the loss of all things. From such travail there has not come forth another starveling unbelief, always hungry and never fed-a lean, alldevouring scepticism with no enthusiasm for humanity in its heart, and with nerveless touch upon the divine realities. Educated in mediæval scholasticism, many of them have seen the whole raft and framework of St. Thomas Aquinas's syllogisms broken to pieces on the wind-swept flood of

modern thought. All their religious beliefs were embarked on that scholastic system, their spiritual devotions were supported by it; and when it went to pieces beneath them, all seemed lost. Yet in this wreck of their Roman education they have saved their religious life. They have gained the sunny shore; they stand upon the reality of God in history.

It is largely because of this genuineness and positive vitality of their religious experience that they fail to recognize their own portraits in the delineation which the Pope has drawn of their errors and negations. Even when some lines of it resemble their features, it is as a face without its expression-as the countenance of one with the spirit of another. A few points only may here be touched upon to indicate the character of their theological thinking. They are charged with denying that God can be known; they only affirm that God is incomprehensible. This, they say, is not to deny that the knowledge of God is the key to science and history. They are represented as removing all historical ground for Christianity; what they affirm is that faith cannot determine what the historical facts were, but that Christian faith has been and is the interpretation of the facts of history. Critical historical methods search for the facts; faith understands them. The doctrines of the Church represent the moral and spiritual values of the history of religion. Their thought of Christ may seem somewhat mystical and idealized; but in their profound sense of the divine in humanity they themselves have not lost the Christ of their worshipful faith because they seek to find again the Man of history.

It would be easy to gather from their writings more richly even than from recent Protestant literature, passages of help to those whose minds have been swept loose from their moorings in our churches, and who are adrift in the fogs of agnosticism. Indeed to some of the choicest of such minds one might happily quote the Abbé Loisy's reply to a clerical correspondent who gave to him the advice so familiar to us, not to discuss for the sake of troubled souls. "I also," he wrote, "have known trouble of soul, not for days, and months, but for years of secret martyrdom. I am not then insensible to the anguish of others.

But my trouble has not come to me from reading heterodox books, or very little from that. During the most acute periods of my anguish I have only known saintly people, and good books, and I have exhausted myself in searching for the solution of my difficulties which rise before my spirit in the official teaching of the Church. At length, and especially since my arrival in Paris, I have surmounted these disquietudes; but it has not been by returning blindly to tradition, or in bowing, my eyes shut, under the authority of the Church, but by forming for myself little by little an opinion concerning the Catholic beliefs, their origin and their history. . . . I can only indicate to others, for their escape from doubt, the laborious way through which I have succeeded myself in coming out of it, constructing my faith as well as my science, always striving for a clear view in my thought, for a clear view in my conscience, and to act honestly."

More than a year has now passed since the Vatican ordered a war of extermination against modernism; and what thus far have been the results? Repetitions with monotonous echoes of the words of the Encyclical; suspicions and accusations springing up anywhere; suspensions of priests from their sacred functions and removals of professors from their chairs; excommunications by wholesale of unknown editors and contributors to condemned periodicals, and excommunications by name hanging over avowed modernists, such as Tyrrell in England, Loisy in France, Bartoli from among the Jesuits and also two laymen in Italy, and in Germany St. Schnitzer and Engert; besides this, the tame submission of the Bishops in public at least; a strengthening of the already dominating power of the religious orders; an attempted control of the Catholic faculties in State Universities, and the consequent beginning of a culture conflict not only in the civil domain, but within the teaching Church itself; the further discrediting, especially in Italy, of the political capacity of Catholics and the punishment of those who by their participation in a progressive nationalism have exceeded the direction of the Vatican; a declaration that the Church is not opposed to science and the penalizing of scholars who do not submit their Biblical and his

torical science to the final judgment of the Papal Commission-these are among the first fruits of the effort to destroy throughout the Roman pale the seeds of modernism. The whole force of the greatest and most dominating organization that the world has ever known, has been thrown against an unorganized and scattered company-enough one might think to make short work of a rebellious uprising and to drive into hopeless exile any dreamers of reform. But what is the actuality?

The Vatican has succeeded in putting out a few scholarly periodicals; in their places others more popular have appeared. It has persuaded some enlightened teachers to relapse into the obedience of silence for a season, yet without actual recantation of their opinions; others it has forced to stand by their own conscientious intelligence before the whole world. It has prohibited the publication of some Italian magazines, only to increase their circulation. It forbade the faithful to read the Programme of the Modernists, and a new and enlarged edition was called for by the public. It enjoined the Bavarian bishops to see to it that the people read the "catechism and good books," and it obtained from the civil authority of Innsbruck the confiscation of a lecture by a modernist professor of canonical law, only to cause forty-three editions of it to be issued within a short time, and to lead many thousand liberal German students to organize a strike in behalf of the freedom of academic teaching. The Index of prohibited writings increases; but it cannot keep up with the modernist press. In short the Encyclical Pascendi, which aimed to destroy by a blow a heresy of the schools, has succeeded in creating a literature of it for the people. It commands the utmost vigilance in every diocese in searching out modernist ideas; and in Rome itself, under the very shadow of the Vatican, a scientific-religious publishing society has been established, and its issues, increasing in power as well as in number, are now to be found scattered through many lands.

Besides all this, account should be taken of the number of secular journals which are in sympathy, more or less avowed, with the modernists. An ecclesiastical authority which in former times could bind peoples and humble kings, has yet to show whether

it is mightier than the power of a free press in a free state. Still another ally of NeoCatholicism, with which the Roman Curia will have more and more to reckon, is the immense reserve force of State education. The free school means eventually thoughtfree religion everywhere. In the State universities history is no longer read through ecclesiastical spectacles. The complaint of a Catholic newspaper is ever more true in the educated world, "Thought is bird-free in Austria." Rome has not been slow to perceive the strategic necessity of controlling the education of its future priests in the universities. It now demands of the Catholic faculties unconditional submission to its teaching authority. And at this point the battle for the liberty of Catholic teaching has already been hotly begun in South Germany and in Austria. Not to mention several events, which may be regarded as preliminary skirmishes, the issue was directly joined over the case of Professor Wahrmund of the University of Innsbruck. In February, 1908, he published a lecture on the "Catholic View of the World and Free Science," in which he sharply attacked all along the line the received dogmatism of the Church as irreconcilable with modern science. The pamphlet, as just stated, was prohibited by the local civil authority, and the papal legate asked for the removal of Wahrmund from the university. The Austrian ministry, thrown into a dilemma, and threatened with Catholic obstruction in Parliament to their budget, endeavored to avoid the issue by a temporizing diplomacy;-liberty of teaching was of course to be guaranteed in the universities; Wahrmund was to close the course of lectures which he was then giving, and subsequently to be removed to another university, where the atmosphere might be more favorable to his activity. The rectors of the higher educational institutions met, and resolved to maintain their academic liberty; afterward they were drawn into the diplomatic compromise of the Austrian ministry. And then the free student body rose up. They demanded that Wahrmund be allowed unrestricted liberty of teaching at Innsbruck. The liberal German youth in the higher schools of Austria were in no mood for diplomatic evasions. On June 1st Wahrmund, having returned from a leave of absence, began

a seminary course, and the clerical storm at once broke forth. The next day the Austrian minister ordered the university courses suspended, ostensibly from fear of disturbances. The following day the free student body went on a strike, and for several days afterward almost the whole higher educational industry of Austria stood still. All efforts to appease the insurrectionary student body failed, until Wahrmund himself requested them to suspend the strike that he might not be embarrassed in judicial proceedings to determine his rights. So at present it seems to be a drawn battle. If the Vatican wins it, it will prove a costly victory, for it will be won only by the sacrifice of the honor of the Catholic faculties in the universities. Professors thrust upon the students at the point of ecclesiastical bayonets will hold no enviable position. Again would the saying be found true that Rome's greatest victories have proved her greatest losses. On the other hand, if the civil government firmly sustains the liberty of teaching in the higher education of the State, and Rome evacuates its teaching position in the universities, withdrawing its students into seminaries of its own fortification, it must lose more than ever its command over the whole outlying field of education. In this crisis Archbishop Fischer gained a temporary advantage only when he succeeded in forestalling a discussion of the demands of the educated class in a recent Catholic Congress at Düsseldorf; and Pius X betrayed his apprehension of an exigent situation when he urged the bishops to renewed efforts against all modernist teachings especially among the educated.

A year of modernism under the papal ban shows other signs of its vitality in the very heart of the Church. But recently a diffused light of learning, modernism is now focussed at several centres of illumination. A year ago an appeal and a protest, it is become henceforth an active and purposeful propaganda. At first a solitary call, as a voice in the valley, it is now the hail and greeting of many voices from answering heights. Excommunication, formerly feared, has been robbed of its terrors. Patiently endured it has become to some of the New Catholics a call to a more sacrificial devotion, and the open door to larger fellowship. The one universal Church,

they are saying among themselves, is not a society of material interests, nor is its faith a legal codex. Divorce from the profound reality of the Christian society and its faith for the man who has given the best part of his life to it is impossible; to him excommunication has no spiritual reality. "For one who truly loves, divorce is not a reality."

To many of them excommunication must mean indeed what marriage to poverty meant to St. Francis; nor will they find it so easy as St. Francis did to fulfil without means their evangelistic mission. Nevertheless the number is increasing not only of those who are secretly inclining to modernist views, but also of those who will not deny them, when official vigilance requires them to confess their reformatory faith. In Italy alone those who are in the best position to know can count some four hundred priests who will be found ready to take up this work. It is not dependent upon the personal fate of its first champions.

Moreover among the reserves of NeoCatholicism is the uncounted multitude of faithful believers who are not enlisted in any theological revolt, but who are becoming responsive to the demands of practical reforms, and who are restless under any ecclesiastical restraints over their active interest in the economic and political ideals of the day. Their break with tradition is not so much philosophical as practical; not theological, but social; not sceptical, but patriotic. Many of them wish to see removed from the teaching and rites of the Church a vast accumulation of what one of them characterizes as "ecclesiastical rubbish." Don Murri in Italy has been a representative of this class. He has not, as others of them, abandoned the scholasticism in which he has been trained. He at least cannot be charged with the dogmatic errors which are condemned in the Pope's Syllabus. Yet hardly any one has been more relentlessly pursued than Don Murri. He sought to awaken the civic aspirations of Italian youth, and to organize societies of Christian democrats. The Roman Curia followed him, breaking up his societies; and the Vatican, which will have nothing of Americanism in Italy, suspended him from his priestly functions. He was ready to submit to authority in

matters of faith, and it was thought at one time that a way of reconciliation with the Vatican might be found for him. But modernism in the life of the people is no more to be tolerated than modernism in the thought of the schools; and Don Murri has gone into exile near Fermo. A young man still, needing for his own work a deeper sympathy with modern thought, but capable of popular leadership, if he remain true to his democratic ideals, he may yet find a great work held for him in the reserve of providence.

In a broad view of the prospects of the modernist reform within the Roman Church, one should not overlook the silent and pervasive influence of modern thought over large areas where it is hardly recognized. It is not a mere metaphor when an Italian prophet of modernism speaks of it as "a vivifying breeze, blowing suddenly over a meadow, causing all the flowers of April to bend with a unifying motion, full of mysterious fecundity."

Just here, however, modernism is put to its severest test: Can it become a great popular movement? With its lofty ideality can it kindle the religious life of the masses? For no spiritual renaissance for our times seems possible which shall not come also in the flame and joy of a social renovation. But are not the present leaders of this New Catholic movement scholars, professors, priests? Some of them, like Fogazzaro's Saint are lovers of men, consumed with the enthusiasm for humanity. Still it is true that its best known leaders are men of liberal education-university men. So was Martin Luther. Do we forget that Luther went from the cloister of a university to nail his academic theses on the door of the Church at Wittemberg? and that his first clarion appeal was to the nobility of the German people? It was the rejection of his theses by Rome that made him become the matchless leader of the people. Shall modernism, rejected again in history by the hierarchy, do likewise? Herein lies the final test of its power to work the greatest of reformations,-one within the heart of a vast religious organization. And the modernists face this test. Their writings already greet it. Their endeavors move toward it. They are among the first to declare that their movement cannot reach its end as a propa

ganda of “aristocratic intellectuality." Although it has taken up the weapons of criticism and science, they regard its inmost faith as a Messianic hope for all men. The great mass of the people, they admit, may seem indifferent to the religious crisis, of which the new movement may be the epilogue. But it appeals to the immutable religious nature of man. Therefore these Italian priests, who see hanging over them the major penalty of the Church, are eager (so one of them writes to me) "to infuse into the social life that surrounds us a new evangelical spirit, and to begin a social apostleship." Their modernism would regain for democracy the substance of religion. "It would put its ploughshare deeper into the unexplored depths of the collective conscience, moved by new accents of hope and love, sowing with full hands the gladness of the apocalyptic expectation." Such modernism will make of its learning bread for the people's life, and its saints shall be the servants of all.

If still it be dubiously said that this reformation has no Luther; that it is not impersonated in any commanding leader; the answer returns again from the changed conditions of our times. For ours is the age, coming and already come, of intellectual and spiritual democracy. We need no Luthers; in these latter days the Spirit is poured out upon all; the many see visions and the peoples dream dreams. The thought that springs up from everywhere is the prophecy of our civilization; the ideals that come as airy messengers on the wings of the wind from all lands are our harbingers and songs. Modernism cannot fail of its full flood, if indeed its spirit is as the voice of many waters.

One question remains: Has Pius X learned to appreciate the New Catholic movement better from the many answers to his Encyclical? Occasionally there have been rumors of milder counsels and possible modifications of the severe measures taken against it. But such hopes have vanished since the address which last September the Pope gave to a deputation of his beloved Venetians. The sincerity of that utterance is beyond all question. It expressed the deep conviction of a holy man who feels that a supreme responsibility has been laid upon him, and who speaks, as he told them, as one who must shortly render

his account before God. Modernism is still to him the poison of faith. Its capital sin is disobedience. "Without obedience," he said, "it is impossible to have faith, because the intelligence will not yield itself to the will of the Master; without obedience one cannot have love, because disobedience engenders schism and disorder. Modernism will not penetrate among you. If it comes, say, Get thee behind me Satan." Because he thus believes and with all the energy of an evangelical spirit, Pius X cannot change his determination. It may be the great service which history shall attribute to the present Pope that he was thus called and chosen to make the final stand of the now fully developed claim of papal authority against the spirit of the modern age. It may be well for the progress of humanity and for the life of the Church that it is so.

Already the eyes of the Holy Inquisition, looking beyond the Latin Church, where the conflict with modernism has had its beginnings, seem to be directed toward modernism in this country. But here the prelacy have bowed to authority; and an ominous silence prevails. No prophet has appeared among us of the modernism which the educated Catholic laity know. In Italy, not in America; in Rome, where the papacy has still its pretorian guard, not in New York where liberty holds the torch enlightening the world, this new epoch of faith united to freedom has begun; and what God has joined together no man shall put asunder.

A foreign newspaper correspondent, in view of the silencing of a single modernist, speaks of modernism as ending in a tragedy. But the falling of the curtain upon a single scene is not the end of the divine drama of history, in which the centuries measure the progress, and the acts of the passing years shall find at last their justifying unity. The great religious act of the twentieth century has already opened before our eyes. And now events move quickly, and we have not to wait over long between the scenes.

Whatever the future may be, New Catholicism has already become an epochmaking force in the religious world. We have sought to appreciate it, not indeed as it appears through the traditions of the hierarchy; nor as it may be regarded by