MODERNISM, the designation applied to the advanced opinion of publicists and lecturers which in recent times were at variance with traditional orthodox doctrines. Official re straint was laid on them when Pope Pius X during his pontificate (1903-14) enunciated the following doctrines in his famous encyclical "Pascendi gregis" issued in 1907. Dealing with the °modernist° movement and propaganda, and, speaking of it he laid down the following conditions and regulations, which he ordered Catholics to follow. He said in part: "In the first place, as regard to studies, we shall not ordain that scholastic philosophy be made the basis of the sacred sciences. It goes without saying that if anything is met with among the scholastic doctors which may be re garded as an excess of subtlety, or too care lessly stated; if there is anything which does not square with later discoveries, or which is altogether destitute of probability, we have no desire whatever to propose it for the imitation of present generations. And let it be clearly understood above all things that the scholastic philosophy we prescribe is that which the an gelic doctor has bequeathed to us. . . . In the vast and varied abundance of studies open ing before the mind desirous of truth, every body knows how the old maxim describes the ology as so far in front of all others that every science and art should serve it and be to it as handmaidens. . . . Anyone who in any way is found to be imbued with modernism is to be excluded without compunction from these offices, and those who already occupy them are to be removed. . . . Equal diligence and severity are to he used in examining and se lecting candidates for holy orders. . . .
It is also the duty of the bishops to prevent writings infected with modernism, or favorable to it, from being read when they have been published, and to hinder their publication when they have not. No book or paper or periodical of this kind must ever be permitted to semi narists or university students. . . . The Holy See neglects no means to put down writings of this kind, but the number of them has now grown to such an extent that it is impossible to censure them all. . . . It is forbidden to secular priests, without the previous consent of the ordinary, to undertake the direction of papers or periodicals. . . . Let priests hold as sacred the authority of their prelates, let them take it for certain that the sacerdotal min istry, if not exercised under the guidance of the bishops, can never be either holy, or very fruitful or without blemish. . . . It is im possible to approve in Catholic publications of a style inspired by unsound novelty which seems to deride the piety of the faithful and dwells on the introduction of a new order of Christian life, on new ordinances of the Church, on new aspirations of the modern soul, on a new vocation of the clergy, on a new Christian civilization. . . . Ancient relics are to retain the veneration they have always enjoyed, except in those individual instances when there are clear arguments that they are false." Consult Marchesan, A.,