Modernism

Modernism is not just one heresy, but a family of heresies. It can take many different forms. What unites them all is the conviction that the Church is "behind the times" and that it is up to the avant-garde, the more advanced and progressive members of the Church, to modernize the teaching of the Church.

Modernists dogmatize culture and relativize revelation. For the modernists, reason and self-determination are exalted while obedience to God's authority is cast down. The Church's traditional teaching appears as the enemy of the gospel of lust; the world says, "If it feels good, it is good; do what you think is right for you," but the Church says, "Do what is right in God's eyes; use your bodily nature to serve God and neighbor."

Modernism was opposed by Pius IX in the nineteenth century and was defined and condemned explicitly by Pius X in 1907 ("Pascendi Dmonici Gregis"). He called it "the synthesis of all heresies."

The Litany of the Catholic Buts

It is characteristic of the modernists to say, "I am Catholic but I disagree with the teaching of the Church." That's why I call them "Catholic Buts." Another name for them is "Protestants." Unlike classical Protestants, this group of Protestants want to stay in the Catholic Church. The most likely explanation for their becoming traitors-in-place is that they have come to understand from the history of the Protestant schisms that leaving the Church never changes the Church.

I am Catholic, but I disagree with what the Church teaches about:

• Sunday obligation
• masturbation
• sex outside of marriage
• sex inside of marriage (natural family planning)
• bestiality
• group sex
• monogamy
• in vitro fertilization
• same sex activity
• same sex marriage
• divorce and remarriage
• the ordination of women
• mandatory celibacy for priests in the Latin Rite
• the infallibility of the Church
• the infallibility of the Pope
• the divinity of Jesus
• reincarnation
• abortion
• euthanasia
• cloning
• Transubstantiation
• Reconciliation
• the Immaculate Conception of Mary
• the Virginal Conception of Jesus
• the Perpetual Virginity of Mary
• the Assumption of Mary into Heaven
• the Queenship of Mary
• the intercession of the saints
• the existence, presence, and power of the angels
• Heaven
• Hell
• Purgatory

Links

• "Modernism" (Catholic Encyclopedia).
• "144 Theologians Confront Hierarchy."
• We Are Church
  • We Are Church (USA): "A Part of the International Movembent (sic) We Are Church (IMWAC)."
  • International Movement We Are Church (IMWAC).
• Spiritus Christi.
• Community of St. Peter.
• American Catholic Council.

"For the Dissidents, We Are All Priests Now."

Criticizing the current separation of ordained from laity has characterized Cooke’s career for the past 30 years. Claiming that the shortage of priests will lead to a “liturgical starvation” for an expanding U.S. Catholic population, Cooke’s solution is to empower the laity and allow married priests to assume leadership once again. A member of CORPUS, an advocacy organization of former priests — mostly married — that lobbies for optional celibacy in the Catholic Church, Cooke is also a board member of Call to Action, one of the organizations spearheading the American Catholic Council. It is no coincidence that Detroit has been chosen for the site of the American Catholic Council meeting on Pentecost: For the dissidents, the first Call to Action Conference in Detroit in 1976 is kind of a Catholic Woodstock that these now-aging revolutionaries all speak of as the most hopeful time of the Church — a time when the “promise of Vatican II” was most vivid to them.