Chapter 17. What is tradition? Modernism is indeed what undermines the church from within,

today as yesterday. Let us again quote from the encyclical Pashendi some typical features

which correspond with what we're experiencing now.

Quote, the modernists say that authority in the church, since its end is purely spiritual,

should strip itself of all external pomp, all those pretentious adornments with which it parades itself in public. In this, they forget that religion, while it belongs to the soul,

is not exclusively for the soul, and that the honor paid to authority is reflected back on Christ

who institutes it. It is under pressure from these speakers of novelties that Paul VI abandoned the tiara.

Bishops gave up the violet cassock, and even the black, as well as their rings, and priests

appear in layclothes, usually in a deliberately casual style.

There is nothing among the general reforms already put into effect

or insistently demanded that St. Pius X has not mentioned as the quote-unquote maniac desires

of the modernist reformers. You will recognize them in this passage.

As regards worship, they want to diminish the number of external devotions, or at least stop their increasing.

Let ecclesiastical government become democratic.

Let a share in the government be given to the junior clergy, and even the laity. Let authority be decentralized, reform of the Roman congregations above all the Holy Office and the Index.

Finally, there are those among them who, echoing their Protestant masters, seek the suppression of priestly celibacy.

Notice that the same demands are now being put forward, and that there is absolutely nothing

original. As regards Christian thought and the formation of future priests, the intention of the

reformers of St. Pius X's time was the abandonment

of scholastic philosophy among the obsolete systems. They advocate that young people should

be taught modern philosophy, the only true philosophy, the only one suitable for our times. That so-called rational

theology should be based on modern philosophy and positive theology on the history of dogmas.

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