The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. FRIDAY, MARCH 5, 1909. THE TRIUMPH OF MODERNISM.

Auckland Star, Volume XL, Issue 55, 5 March 1909, Page 4

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

FRIDAY, MARCH 5, 1909. THE TRIUMPH OF MODERNISM.

For the cause that lacks assistance. For the wrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that tee can do.

The appointment of Abbe Loisy to the chair of History and Religion at tbe National College of France will be accepted on the Continent as an event of first-class public interest and importance. The Abbe, who has frequently been described as the most famous priest in the world, is certainly one of the most noteworthy figures on the stage of Continental life to-day, and the fact that the French Government has now formally championed his cause against the Pope will probably lead to important developments in the struggle between Church and State by which France has so long been convulsed. I Loisy was originally a simple country priest, but by his critical and exegetical writings on various points of doctrine j and on portions of the Bible he placed himself at the head of the so-called Modernist or rationalistic movement in ! the Church, and thus came into direct conflict with the Vatican. Much against his will, the anti-clerical party in France utilised Loisy and his personal influence as weapons against Roman Catholicism, and the appointment of the rebellious Abbe to tho highest educational position that a churchman can occupy in France is probably due, at least, as much to the desire of the Republicans to challenge the Papal authority as to express sympathy for the recalcitrant priest.

The career of Loisy has been in many ■ways interesting", and liis eminence in his own special line of critical exposition is undoubted. While very young his natural ability attracted the attention of the Archbishop of Tours, who sent him to a famous Carmelite seminary, where he surprised all ais teachers by bis profound knowledge of Hebrew, Syriac, and Chaldaic, and by his extensive acquaintance with ancient history. He was given the chair of Hebrew and Theology at the Catholic Institute, and he then began his famous dissertations on the authenticity of the Old Testament and the Gospels. The scholarly erudition, the eloquence, and the amazing controversial powers of the young priest soon gained him a great following, and when his views were formally condemned by a Papal encyclical, the French Government, delighted to embarrass the Pope, made Loisy one of the Professors of the Sorbonne. The struggle between the Abbe and the Pope went on, ror Loisy, though a loyal Churchman, was too 'bold and honest a thinker to accept the Papal command to hold his peace. Yet to prove his fidelity to the Church he has made three several " submissions " to the Papal will. First he offered to submit unreservedly to the Holy See on theological matters, reserving his historical and critical theories. The Pope, or his familiar Cardinal, Merry del Val, declared this to be insufficient, and Loisy was informed that his submission must be absolute and unqualified. Sentence of excommunication was formulated against him, and pJaced in the hands of the Archbishop of Paris; and Loisy, anxious to avert the secession of his large body of able and intellectual followers from the Church, made another attempt to satisfy the Pope without denying his faith. He resigned his chair at the Sorbonne, pledged himself to publish his writings in future only under certain conditions, and offered to retire from Paris to the country, and take no active part in controversial matters. But the Pope was determined to make no terms with the rebels, and the Syllabus of Errors, followed by the Encyclical, against Modernism, published over a-year ago, declared the determination of the "Vatican to eradicate the pestilential heresies preached by Loisy, and to cut off the priest and his followers from all association with the Church.

In Protestant -countries the | sympathy for Loisy his follow■er* ia even more active aad .widespread

than in France. It -would not be easy to distinguish many of Loisy's most characteristic views from the sOmewhat heterodox opinions advanced by such representative English divines as Canon Henson or the Reverend R. J. Campbell. To the world at large it is not a matter of surpassing interest that Loisy and his followers refuse to accept the Old Testament as verbally inspired, or that they incline toward the views of the Unitarians on the subject of the Divinity of Christ. What constitutes loisy's real importance is that partly by circumstances, and largely against his own desire, he has been ■forced into the position of heading the movement which places Reason above any other authority in the formulation of creeds. Regarded politically, his advancement to the high office he has just accepted is a reassertion of the svpremacy of the State over the Church in France.