I think this is telling:

It must, however, be confessed that these latter days have witnessed a notable increase in the number of the enemies of the Cross of Christ, who, by arts entirely new and full of deceit, are striving to destroy the vital energy of the Church, and, as far as in them lies, utterly to subvert the very Kingdom of Christ.

arts entirely new and full of deceit... do I hear 'novel hymn texts' and 'banal music' in this one? it wasn't the case back then so much, but, boy has this evolved into a monster or what?!

meandering, ambiguous speech used by the Modernists that allow them to subtly undermine the Faith, while at the same time appear to uphold the traditional, orthodox teaching of the Church

Ever heard proponents of banal music try to justify its use?

Meandering, ambiguous speech used by contemporary liturgists that allow them to subtly undermine the faith, while at the same time appearing to uphold the intended instructions on worship by the council.

And, you know... lex orandi, lex vivendi, lex credendi...

...and to drive the point home for us all, this is the next paragraph:

3. Although they express their astonishment that We should number them amongst the enemies of the Church, no one will be reasonably surprised that We should do so, if, leaving out of account the internal disposition of the soul, of which God alone is the Judge, he considers their tenets, their manner of speech, and their action. Nor indeed would he be wrong in regarding them as the most pernicious of all the adversaries of the Church. For, as We have said, they put into operation their designs for her undoing, not from without but from within. Hence, the danger is present almost in the very veins and heart of the Church, whose injury is the more certain from the very fact that their knowledge of her is more intimate. Moreover, they lay the ax not to the branches and shoots, but to the very root, that is, to the faith and its deepest fibers. And once having struck at this root of immortality, they proceed to diffuse poison through the whole tree, so that there is no part of Catholic truth which they leave untouched, none that they do not strive to corrupt. Further, none is more skillful, none more astute than they, in the employment of a thousand noxious devices; for they play the double part of rationalist and Catholic, and this so craftily that they easily lead the unwary into error; and as audacity is their chief characteristic, there is no conclusion of any kind from which they shrink or which they do not thrust forward with pertinacity and assurance To this must be added the fact, which indeed is well calculated to deceive souls, that they lead a life of the greatest activity, of assiduous and ardent application to every branch of learning, and that they possess, as a rule, a reputation for irreproachable morality. Finally, there is the fact which is all but fatal to the hope of cure that their very doctrines have given such a bent to their minds, that they disdain all authority and brook no restraint; and relying upon a false conscience, they attempt to ascribe to a love of truth that which is in reality the result of pride and obstinacy.

Well, the part about irreproachable morality has truly been exposed as a chinc in the armor.

Remember, back at that time the American Bishops also had been given a formal stern warning from the pope in another of his encyclicals which I will also mention in this thread. So, America was already running adrift in this direction way back then, and it is now coming full circle.

The stern warning toward America was addressed in the encyclical, Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae. It can be read here.

http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Leo13/l13teste.htm

This paragraph is the one that puts a lump in the throat:

From the foregoing it is manifest, beloved son, that we are not able to give approval to those views which, in their collective sense, are called by some "Americanism." But if by this name are to be understood certain endowments of mind which belong to the American people, just as other characteristics belong to various other nations, and if, moreover, by it is designated your political condition and the laws and customs by which you are governed, there is no reason to take exception to the name. But if this is to be so understood that the doctrines which have been adverted to above are not only indicated, but exalted, there can be no manner of doubt that our venerable brethren, the bishops of America, would be the first to repudiate and condemn it as being most injurious to themselves and to their country. For it would give rise to the suspicion that there are among you some who conceive and would have the Church in America to be different from what it is in the rest of the world.

This earlier paragraph in the same document is, sadly, and extremely accurate in that we have done 'in flying colors' exactly what we were warned not to do, and has truly dealt a somewhat fatal blow:

The underlying principle of these new opinions is that, in order to more easily attract those who differ from her, the Church should shape her teachings more in accord with the spirit of the age and relax some of her ancient severity and make some concessions to new opinions. Many think that these concessions should be made not only in regard to ways of living, but even in regard to doctrines which belong to the deposit of the faith. They contend that it would be opportune, in order to gain those who differ from us, to omit certain points of her teaching which are of lesser importance, and to tone down the meaning which the Church has always attached to them. It does not need many words, beloved son, to prove the falsity of these ideas if the nature and origin of the doctrine which the Church proposes are recalled to mind. The Vatican Council says concerning this point: "For the doctrine of faith which God has revealed has not been proposed, like a philosophical invention to be perfected by human ingenuity, but has been delivered as a divine deposit to the Spouse of Christ to be faithfully kept and infallibly declared. Hence that meaning of the sacred dogmas is perpetually to be retained which our Holy Mother, the Church, has once declared, nor is that meaning ever to be departed from under the pretense or pretext of a deeper comprehension of them." -Constitutio de Fide Catholica, Chapter iv.

Lest we imagine that banal music is a thing only of our own time, one will offer the observation that drums, cymbals and bells were common features of Italian church organs in the not so distant past; not to mention tawdry warmed over Palestrina, weepy purple prose, and other schmaltzy music which can only be described as the maudlin expressions of a put-on white-eyed spirituality. These were all the XIXth and early XXth century predecessors of today's saccharin Ed Sullivan 'presiders', cheap rock-pop songs, over-heated rock-bands, and cluelessly dumb combos which insinuate themselves into our lives and worship and imagine vainly that they are modern.

Francis -
Actually, I draw a clear distinction between truly modern music, such as Britten, Poulenc, Messiaen, Lauridson, Whitacre, Part, etc., and that which is so called 'contemporary' and not usually very modern at all. By this definition some modern music, while not being better than, is a fit descendent of Tallis, et al., whilst contemporary music has a rather different pedigree into which I shant delve, and the composers of which fail utterly (and usually deliberately) to be of the lineage of Monteverdi, et al. Further, it could, by this reasoning, be argued that some modern music is better than some renaissance music and vice versa. Please note that I said of the purveyors and clientelle of 'contemporary' music that they 'vainly imagine themselves to be modern'.

As for your mention of digital and electronic, when descriptive of musical instruments one must carefully assess whether the instrument at issue is a legitimate and unique instrument in its own right, such as an Ondes Martinot, or is actually a synthesiser, a simulacrum, of an instrument of which it is, inelluctably, an ontological fake. It isn't, then, that being digital or electronic is inherently a negative: it depends upon the use to which such technology is put, i.e., is it a real invention that adds to our array of instruments and sounds, or is it a simulation, a synthesiser (a synthetic thing), which usurps that of which it is a skillfully marketed and inherently deceitful substitute? In conclusion, one arrives at the logic that an Ondes Marinot is a modern instrument, whilst a digital piano or organ (or whatever) is not a modern 'instrument' but the synthesiser of an instrument which is at once ancient and modern. To refer to it without the modifiers 'digital piano simulacrum' is to prevaricate and deceive, to prey on the credulity of the ignorant and undiscerning.

Francis, my friend... I often agree with you but there are a few things that seem to have been overlooked in your argument. Disobedience to the authority of the pope is nothing new to the western hemisphere. Consider for example, that Pope Eugene IV forbade slavery in the encyclical "Sicut Dudum" in 1435. Pope Gregory X forbade the forced baptism of Jews in 1272. The Vicars of Christ have for the most part spoken out forcefully in defense of the faith and of justice. While I agree that in most of what you have said, you are correct, I always feel a bit worried when book burnings are mentioned.

While Pius X was a saint, he did not necessarily have great foresight with respect to the effect of his policies on the church. During his pontificate, the desire to rid the church of modernists led to what amounts to a witch hunt which did great damage to some very decent people. His immediate successor was exiled from Rome during his pontificate and left in Bologna for nearly seven years before being raised to the cardinalate. And lest we think of Pius X as if he was oblivious to politics, let us remember that Giacomo Della Chiesa did not become a cardinal until his mentor, Cardinal Rampolla passed to the next world.

It should also be noted that where music is concerned, the human race doesn't exist in a vacuum. Tastes in music change over time as do styles of expression. If memory serves, St. Alphonsus De Ligouri used to frequent the theatre and remove his spectacles so that he could enjoy the music without having his morals corrupted by the actors and dancers. I disagree with the inclusion of "electronic" or "digital" in the list of those things which might be held up for exclusion. Music does not exclude. Imagine how much Mozart or Bach could have created with the technology at our disposal. There is good music IMHO of all kinds. Some are to my liking and others are less so, but it is art and it should be heard.

MORE.

This one is about the notion of false religions. It reminds me of the ultimate error of Assisi and promoting world peace under the guise of fraternalism, brotherhood and dialogue in the end, to which dogma must yield (see paragraph 13 above):

14. Thus far, Venerable Brethren, We have considered the Modernist as a philosopher. Now if We proceed to consider him as a believer, and seek to know how the believer, according to Modernism, is marked off from the philosopher, it must be observed that, although the philosopher recognizes the reality of the divine as the object of faith, still this reality is not to be found by him but in the heart of the believer, as an object of feeling and affirmation, and therefore confined within the sphere of phenomena; but the question as to whether in itself it exists outside that feeling and affirmation is one which the philosopher passes over and neglects. For the Modernist believer, on the contrary, it is an established and certain fact that the reality of the divine does really exist in itself and quite independently of the person who believes in it. If you ask on what foundation this assertion of the believer rests, he answers: In the personal experience of the individual. On this head the Modernists differ from the Rationalists only to fall into the views of the Protestants and pseudo-mystics. The following is their manner of stating the question: In the religious sense one must recognize a kind of intuition of the heart which puts man in immediate contact with the reality of God, and infuses such a persuasion of God's existence and His action both within and without man as far to exceed any scientific conviction. They assert, therefore, the existence of a real experience, and one of a kind that surpasses all rational experience. If this experience is denied by some, like the Rationalists, they say that this arises from the fact that such persons are unwilling to put themselves in the moral state necessary to produce it. It is this experience which makes the person who acquires it to be properly and truly a believer.


How far this position is removed from that of Catholic teaching! We have already seen how its fallacies have been condemned by the Vatican Council. Later on, we shall see how these errors, combined with those which we have already mentioned, open wide the way to Atheism. Here it is well to note at once that, given this doctrine of experience united with that of symbolism, every religion, even that of paganism, must be held to be true. What is to prevent such experiences from being found in any religion? In fact, that they are so is maintained by not a few. On what grounds can Modernists deny the truth of an experience affirmed by a follower of Islam? Will they claim a monopoly of true experiences for Catholics alone? Indeed, Modernists do not deny, but actually maintain, some confusedly, others frankly, that all religions are true. That they cannot feel otherwise is obvious. For on what ground, according to their theories, could falsity be predicated of any religion whatsoever? Certainly it would be either on account of the falsity of the religious .sense or on account of the falsity of the formula pronounced by the mind. Now the religious sense, although it maybe more perfect or less perfect, is always one and the same; and the intellectual formula, in order to be true, has but to respond to the religious sense and to the believer, whatever be the intellectual capacity of the latter. In the conflict between different religions, the most that Modernists can maintain is that the Catholic has more truth because it is more vivid, and that it deserves with more reason the name of Christian because it corresponds more fully with the origins of Christianity. No one will find it unreasonable that these consequences flow from the premises. But what is most amazing is that there are Catholics and priests, who, We would fain believe, abhor such enormities, and yet act as if they fully approved of them. For they lavish such praise and bestow such public honor on the teachers of these errors as to convey the belief that their admiration is not meant merely for the persons, who are perhaps not devoid of a certain merit, but rather for the sake of the errors which these persons openly profess and which they do all in their power to propagate.

Except that there are significant limitations on that "ban" on slavery. It's limited to a specific place and specific persons. This allowed enslavement of other peoples later. Modernism in the early Modern era, or not?

To compare 1600 versus today, if a person buys or sells a chattle slave or holds descendants thereof in bound service, would he or she have to confess it as grave matter in (i) 1600, or (ii) today? Very likely not absent additional facts in 1600, certainly yes today. Is that Modernism at work?

It is in fact a terrible work of propaganda to claim that the popes ignored this sin, or turned a blind eye to it. Eugene IV and Paul III spoke out vigorously against slavery the moment that its reality came to their attention. Their teaching was continued by Gregory XIV in 1591 and by Urban VIII in 1639. Pope Gregory XVI made this clear in 1839 when he said, ""There were to be found subsequently among the faithful some who, shamefully blinded by the desire of sordid gain, in lonely and distant countries did not hesitate to reduce to slavery (in servitutem redigere) Indians, Blacks and other unfortunate peoples, or else, by instituting or expanding the trade in those who had been made slaves by others, aided the crime of others. Certainly many Roman Pontiffs of glorious memory, Our Predecessors, did not fail, according to the duties of their office, to blame severely this way of acting as dangerous for the spiritual welfare of those who did such things and a shame to the Christian name." "The slave trade, although it has been somewhat diminished, is still carried on by numerous Christians. Therefore, desiring to remove such a great shame from all Christian peoples ... and walking in the footsteps of Our Predecessors, We, by apostolic authority, warn and strongly exhort in the Lord faithful Christians of every condition that no one in the future dare to bother unjustly, despoil of their possessions, or reduce to slavery (in servitutem redigere) Indians, Blacks or other such peoples. Nor are they to lend aid and favor to those who give themselves up to these practices, or exercise that inhuman traffic by which the Blacks, as if they were not humans but rather mere animals, having been brought into slavery in no matter what way, are, without any distinction and contrary to the rights of justice and humanity, bought, sold and sometimes given over to the hardest labor."

While history tells us that those involved in the slave trade ignored the popes, it is a great comfort to many of us to know that the Vicars of Christ lived up to their duties to speak against this horrible practice. It was not the effect of modernism (as you put it)
that woke the church up to the injustice of slavery.

Very nice. Prophetic even...

41. If we pass on from the moral to the intellectual causes of Modernism, the first and the chief which presents itself is ignorance. Yes, these very Modernists who seek to be esteemed as Doctors of the Church, who speak so loftily of modern philosophy and show such contempt for scholasticism, have embraced the one with all its false glamour, precisely because their ignorance of the other has left them without the means of being able to recognize confusion of thought and to refute sophistry. Their whole system, containing as it does errors so many and so great, has been born of the union between faith and false philosophy.

42. Would that they had but displayed less zeal and energy in propagating it! But such is their activity and such their unwearying labor on behalf of their cause, that one cannot but be pained to see them waste such energy in endeavoring to ruin the Church when they might have been of such service to her had their efforts been better directed. Their artifices to delude men's minds are of two kinds, the first to remove obstacles from their path, the second to devise and apply actively and patiently every resource that can serve their purpose. They recognize that the three chief difficulties which stand in their way are the scholastic method of philosophy, the authority and tradition of the Fathers, and the magisterium of the Church, and on these they wage unrelenting war. Against scholastic philosophy and theology they use the weapons of ridicule and contempt. Whether it is ignorance or fear, or both, that inspires this conduct in them, certain it is that the passion for novelty is always united in them with hatred of scholasticism, and there is no surer sign that a man is tending to Modernism than when he begins to show his dislike for the scholastic method. Let the Modernists and their admirers remember the proposition condemned by Pius IX: "The method and principles which have served the ancient doctors of scholasticism when treating of theology no longer correspond with the exigencies of our time or the progress of science."[22] They exercise all their ingenuity in an effort to weaken the force and falsify the character of tradition, so as to rob it of all its weight and authority. But for Catholics nothing will remove the authority of the second Council of Nicea, where it condemns those "who dare, after the impious fashion of heretics, to deride the ecclesiastical traditions, to invent novelties of some kind...or endeavor by malice or craft to overthrow any one of the legitimate traditions of the Catholic Church"; nor that of the declaration of the fourth Council of Constantinople: "We therefore profess to preserve and guard the rules bequeathed to the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, by the Holy and most illustrious Apostles, by the orthodox Councils, both general and local, and by everyone of those divine interpreters, the Fathers and Doctors of the Church." Wherefore the Roman Pontiffs, Pius IV and Pius IX, ordered the insertion in the profession of faith of the following declaration: "I most firmly admit and embrace the apostolic and ecclesiastical traditions and other observances and constitutions of the Church.''

The Modernists pass judgment on the holy Fathers of the Church even as they do upon tradition. With consummate temerity they assure the public that the Fathers, while personally most worthy of all veneration, were entirely ignorant of history and criticism, for which they are only excusable on account of the time in which they lived. Finally, the Modernists try in every way to diminish and weaken the authority of the ecclesiastical magisterium itself by sacrilegiously falsifying its origin, character, and rights, and by freely repeating the calumnies of its adversaries. To the entire band of Modernists may be applied those words which Our predecessor sorrowfully wrote: "To bring contempt and odium on the mystic Spouse of Christ, who is the true light, the children of darkness have been wont to cast in her face before the world a stupid calumny, and perverting the meaning and force of things and words, to depict her as the friend of darkness and ignorance, and the enemy of light, science, and progress.''[23] This being so, Venerable Brethren, there is little reason to wonder that the Modernists vent all their bitterness and hatred on Catholics who zealously fight the battles of the Church. There is no species of insult which they do not heap upon them, but their usual course is to charge them with ignorance or obstinacy. When an adversary rises up against them with an erudition and force that renders them redoubtable, they seek to make a conspiracy of silence around him to nullify the effects of his attack. This policy towards Catholics is the more invidious in that they belaud with admiration which knows no bounds the writers who range themselves on their side, hailing their works, exuding novelty in every page, with a chorus of applause. For them the scholarship of a writer is in direct proportion to the recklessness of his attacks on antiquity, and of his efforts to undermine tradition and the ecclesiastical magisterium. When one of their number falls under the condemnations of the Church the rest of them, to the disgust of good Catholics, gather round him, loudly and publicly applaud him, and hold him up in veneration as almost a martyr for truth. The young, excited and confused by all this clamor of praise and abuse, some of them afraid of being branded as ignorant, others ambitious to rank among the learned, and both classes goaded internally by curiosity and pride, not infrequently surrender and give themselves up to Modernism.

hmmm... didn't even think about common core issues. will have to send this portion out to my buds who are teachers.

Dear colleagues! Sorry for reviving an old thread. For quite a while I had in mind adding to the preceding magisterial quotations against modernism another one attributed to St.Pius X:

"Kindness is for fools! They (the modernists) want them to be treated with oil, soap, and caresses, but they ought to be beaten with fists! In a duel you don't count or measure the blows, you strike as you can! War is not made with charity, it is a struggle, a duel."

which is found in some traditional Catholic sites. I thought it would be appropriate in light of the recent somewhat similar utterances of our Pope Francis. It, thought I, would contribute towards establishing hermeneutic of continuity between the reigning Pontiff and St. Pius X, and perhaps even to St. Nicolas. And what about launching a movement (a lio?) under slogan "Punch a modernist in your neighbourhood"?

Alas, only today I noticed that everywhere in internet this quote appears without source. Except for Wikipedia which points to the infamous book Hitler's Pope by J. Cornwell. If somebody of you has access to this book could you look into p. 37 and find out where it comes from. Speech, private letter, audience? Thanks in advance.

Andris,

Don't apologize for resurrecting an old thread. Some folk around here do it as a matter of course, every January 1st.

Andris:

I am quite grateful you have resurrected this thread. The stuff in it is more pertinent now than when it was written... dead popes or not!

Dear Mr. Chonak,
Many thanks for the references. In Duffy's 2006 edition, the citation (shorter) is on p. 329. In the 2015 edition, page numbers are not seen in Google Books. The Falconi's book itself I have not found yet.