History of Modernism in the Life of Father Lamennais

Who Was Father Lamennais?

Simply put, Father Lamennais is most recognized today by the epithet ‘Father of Modernism.’

Father Hugues-Félicité Robert de Lamennais was a Roman Catholic priest, philosopher, and political theorist. He lived from 1782 to 1854 in France. This was a turbulent time. France had suffered terribly from the French Revolution, the ideas of the so-called ‘Enlightenment’ were in ascendancy, and many no longer knew the fundamentals of a sound Catholic catechism. While Lamennais began his priesthood as a faithful son of the Church, he later fell from the Faith and became a liberal proponent of the false idea of the separation of Church and State. He founded a newspaper called L’Avenir (“The Future”) in 1830 with the goal of advancing the so-called “Catholic liberalism.”

In response to his teachings, Pope Gregory XVI (1831-1846) issued the encyclical letter Mirari vos on August 15, 1832, which condemned the errors that Lamennais taught on the separation of Church and State.[1] Two years later, on June 21, 1834, Pope Gregory XVI excommunicated Father Lamennais through Singulari nos.

The Condemnation of Father Lamennais in Singulari Nos

Issued in 1834 with the subtitle “On the Errors of Lamennais,” Pope Gregory XVI condemned and excommunicated Father Lamennais while summarizing the chief errors of the modernism he propagated as follows:

  1. The rejection of the authority of the Catholic Church: Lamennais believed that the Church should not exercise authority over individual consciences and that the faithful should be free to interpret the Bible and the teachings of the Church for themselves.
  1. The elevation of reason and individualism over faith and tradition: Lamennais believed that reason and individual experience were the ultimate sources of truth and that the Church should adapt its teachings to modern conditions, which is a core tenet of the heresy of modernism.
  1. The rejection of supernaturalism with a contrary emphasis on immanence: Lamennais believed that God was present in the natural world and that our religious experience should be based on a direct encounter with the divine in nature and human society. This error is continued in the New Age movement. (Immanence is the state of being present as a natural and permanent part of something. The opposite of immanence is transcendence.)
  1. The advocacy of a so-called “universal church of humanity”: Lamennais believed that the Church should transcend national boundaries and be open to all people, regardless of their race or religion. Of course, the Catholic Faith is already open to all peoples regardless of race or nation. But the false idea that one can be saved outside of the Catholic Faith is condemned and opposed to not only Catholicism but the very teaching of Jesus Christ (cf. Acts 4:12).

Part of the encyclical stated, in reference to Father Lamennais’ book, Words of a Believer:

“We have studied the book entitled Paroles d’un croyant. By Our apostolic power, We condemn the book… It corrupts the people by a wicked abuse of the word of God, to dissolve the bonds of all public order and to weaken all authority. It arouses, fosters, and strengthens seditions, riots, and rebellions in the empires. We condemn the book because it contains false, calumnious, and rash propositions which lead to anarchy; which are contrary to the word of God; which are impious, scandalous, and erroneous; and which the Church already condemned…”

Sadly, Lamennais died excommunicated from the Catholic Church, the barque of salvation. Nevertheless, his influence was widespread, and he had many posthumous disciples. As the reader can see, modernism was active and spreading long before its definitive condemnation by Pope St. Pius X.

The Condemnation of Modernism by St. Pius X (1907)

The errors of Father Lamennais and other early modernists spread and intensified throughout the 1800s, long before the papacy of St. Pius X. The continued growth of modernist thought was a reason why, for instance, Pope Pius IX issued the Syllabus of Errors in 1864. Many of Pope Leo XIII’s encyclicals also dealt with exposing and correcting the errors of modernism.

Finally, in 1907, Pope St. Pius X issued an encyclical called Pascendi dominici gregis in which he condemned modernism as “the synthesis of all heresies” that threatened to undermine the very foundations of the Catholic faith. According to the Holy Father, modernism was characterized by a number of errors, including:

  1. A rejection of the authority of the Catholic Church and its teachings, in favor of individual interpretation and subjective experience.
  2. A belief in the evolution of religious doctrine, in which traditional beliefs and practices are constantly reinterpreted and adapted to changing social and cultural conditions.
  3. A focus on immanentism, or the idea that divine truths can be discovered within the human person, rather than transcendentally through divine revelation.
  4. A tendency to reduce religious belief to mere sentiment or emotion, rather than rational reflection or theological inquiry.

Yet we know from history that modernism continued full force after the death of Pope St. Pius X and is still unleashing its fury today on those who hold fast to the True Catholic Faith.

Further Study

An excellent resource covering these matters is The Popes Against Modern Errors (TAN, 1999). This book is a compilation of 16 papal encyclicals written in the 19th and 20th centuries, from Mirari Vos (1832) through Huamni Generis (1950). These papal works are hard-hitting commentaries of many of our age’s most pernicious and noxious errors. It is missing some landmark works, such as Singulari Nos, Satis Cognitum (1896) and Testem Benevolentiae (1899), but all the papal encyclicals can easily be found online.

David Rodríguez also gave a series of lectures on these encyclicals against modern errors. Contact info@svfonline.org for more information on that course, including notes, CDs, and presentations.


ENDNOTES:

[1] The encyclical is primarily concerned with condemning a number of errors and false teachings that were prevalent in the Catholic Church at the time, including rationalism, liberalism, and indifferentism. In the encyclical, Pope Gregory XVI expressed his concern about the spread of these errors and their potential to undermine the authority of the Church and the faith of its members. He rightly criticized the idea that religious belief should be subject to individual interpretation or that it could be reconciled with secular values and institutions.

One of the key themes of Mirari vos is the importance of preserving the traditional teachings and practices of the Catholic Church, as embodied in the Magisterium (i.e., the teaching authority of the Church) and the Sacraments. Pope Gregory XVI emphasized the need for Catholics to resist the influence of false teachings and to remain faithful to the teachings of the Church, as passed down through the ages.

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