Many years ago I discovered that Pope Leo XIII gave licence for a modernist approach to Biblical interpretation that promoted Modernism in the womb of the Catholic Church.
A Modernist is best described as a Catholic one day and a modernist the next day. I recall many of my friends were shocked until they were shown the evidence.
History records that the modernism that led to the demise of the traditional Catholic faith began in the middle of the 19th century. This fits in with Pope Pius VII's 1820-35 acceptance of heliocentric science and ordering all heliocentric books be taken off the Index. In 1616 and 1633, in the Galileo case, heliocentrism was defined and declared as formal heresy because it contradicted the geocentrism of the Bible, an understanding of ALL THE FATHERS. Pope Urban VIII stated in 1633 that if this one interpretation of Scripture was changed based on a scientific theory, it would "PUT THE CATHOLIC FAITH IN DANGER." This happened in 1835 and led to other scientific theories like uniformitarianism (long ages) and evolution being used by 'Biblical Scholars' to change other traditional meanings in Scripture.
This 'modernism' (liberalism) became so bad that Pope Leo XIII had to try to stop the ROT in his encyclical Providentissimus deus. Alas, wherein he did warn of all the dangers to biblical understanding, but then had to back up his predecessors in their U-turn from a geocentric meaning of Scripture to an updated heretical heliocentric one. Here are the two passages under Pope Leo XIII's name that changed the Bible from Tradition to Modernist;
‘15: But we must not on that account consider that it is forbidden, when just cause exists, to push enquiry and exposition beyond what the Fathers have done; provided he carefully observes the rule so wisely laid down by St Augustine – not to depart from the literal and obvious sense, except only where reason makes it untenable or necessity requires, a rule to which it is more necessary to adhere strictly in these times, when the thirst for novelty and unrestrained freedom of thought make the danger of error most real and proximate.’ Neither should those passages be neglected which the Fathers have understood in an allegorical or figurative sense.’
‘18: To understand how just is the rule here formulated we must remember, first, that the sacred writers, or to speak more accurately, the Holy Ghost “Who spoke by them, did not intend to teach men these things (that is to say, the essential nature of the things of the visible universe), things in no way profitable unto salvation” (St Augustine). Hence, they did not seek to penetrate the secrets of nature, but rather described and dealt with things in more or less figurative language, or in terms which were commonly used at the time, and which in many instances are in daily use at this day, even by the most eminent men of science [Like ‘sunrise’ and ‘sunset’?]. Ordinary speech primarily and properly describes what comes under the senses; and somewhat in the same way the sacred writers , as the Angelic Doctor also reminds us, “went by what sensibly appeared,” or put down what God, speaking to men, signified, in the way men could understand and were accustomed to.’
’18: The unshrinking defence of the Holy Scripture, however, does not require that we should equally uphold all the opinions which each of the Fathers or the more recent interpreters have put forth in explaining it; for it may be that, in commenting on passages where physical matters occur, they have sometimes expressed the ideas of their own times, and thus made statements which in these days have been abandoned as incorrect. Hence, in their interpretations, we must carefully note what they lay down as belonging to faith, or as intimately connected with faith, what they are unanimous in. For “in those things which do not come under the obligation of faith, the Saints were at liberty to hold divergent opinions, just as we ourselves are,” according to the saying of St. Thomas Aquinas.’
Thus was the licence to turn the supernatural creation by God into a natural evolutionary one that did not need a Creator as atheists were claiming since the mid 1850s. In my next post I will give examples of how this licence was used by so many since 1893. First though, the latest use of Leo XIII's licence..
"Since Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Providentissimus Deus (1893), Catholic exegetes have abandoned the idea that the Bible is meant to teach science, adding this principle to the age-old Catholic principle that the Bible must be reconciled with science, at least with settled science. Pope Leo explicitly states that: Sacred Scripture speaks in a popular language that describes physical things as they appear to the senses, and so does not describe them with scientific exactitude. The Fathers of the Church were mistaken in some of their opinions about questions of science [like geocentrism, Biblical ages, a world-wide flood, etc?]. Catholics are only obliged to follow the opinion of the Fathers when they were unanimous on questions of faith and morals, where they did not err, and not on questions of science, where they sometimes erred." --- Fr Paul Robinson, SSPX.
Topic: Leo XIII: The First Liberal Pope Who Went Beyond His Authority (Read 9540 times)