Because they're in a state of cognitive dissonance. They've tried to compartmentalize EENS away from the other modernist errors, but they do not understand that EENS-denial is at the root of the modernist errors.
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You're too kind. Would that it can be explained away by a psychological aberration.
It seems to be a lot more serious than compartmentalization.
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My exposure to how they cope with the Church's teaching on Modernism was very helpful for me. I went into the meeting believing that a good priest these days would be eager to help Catholics better understand what Modernism is and what we can do to stay far away from it in our own thinking.
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If someone told me what I was about to see, I wouldn't have believed it. I could hardly believe my eyes as it was happening. But happen, IT DID.
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Three other men asked him a question after I took the opportunity to highly recommend the study of
Pascendi in order to understand Modernism, but that
you can't just read it like a Jack London short story. That got their attention I suppose, because they could all be Jack London fans, I thought. The name evokes images of a poor man who strikes it rich by his unrelenting efforts as a writer. That, and fantastic images of powerful forces, both natural and human.
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But the response the priest gave them when they asked him, "Father, what is Modernism... what is
Pascendi?" took me entirely by surprise. I noticed that they did NOT ask him: Father, who is Jack London? If they had, he could have been equivalently as helpful if he had answered that
London was a famous author whose short stories were about the same length as Pius X's encyclicals but not as challenging to read.