The late Pope's theology was formed decisively during the inter-war period when foment for Ressourcement theology reached its zenith in Europe. Ressourcement as the French epithet suggests entailed a return to the primary sources of Christian faith - the Scriptures, the Fathers, the early Greek and Latin theologians.
This movement was a counterreaction to the renewal of Scholastic philosophy and theology of St. Thomas Aquinas. The renewal dubbed 'neo-scholasticism' by its opponents represented a legitimate call for a return to St. Thomas as the best viable option to combat the super-heresy of Modernism. This renewal begun by Pope Leo XIII is laid out in profoundly specific action plans in Pope Pius X's encyclical Pascendi Domenici gregis (On the Doctrines of the Modernists):
In the first place, with regard to studies, We will and 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 regarded as an excess of subtlety, or which is altogether destitute of probability, We have no desire whatever to propose it for the imitation of present generations (Leo XIII. Enc. Aeterni Patris). And let it be clearly understood above all things that the scholastic philosophy We prescribe is that which the Angelic Doctor has bequeathed to us, and We, therefore, declare that all the ordinances of Our Predecessor on this subject continue fully in force, and, as far as may be necessary, We do decree anew, and confirm, and ordain that they be by all strictly observed. In seminaries where they may have been neglected let the Bishops impose them and require their observance, and let this apply also to the Superiors of religious institutions. Further let Professors remember that they cannot set St. Thomas aside, especially in metaphysical questions, without grave detriment. (Pascendi gregis #45)
Reaction to Pope Pius X's encyclical was both strong and divisive; it resulted in the excommunication of some of Modernism's chief luminaries (Fr. George Tyrrell, S.J. and Fr. Alfred Loisy) and drove many of its adepts underground. Chafed by the restrictions of neo-scholasticism, some ventured a way around them by appeal to primary sources which when exegeted carefully could circumvent St. Thomas. The movement aimed to find a way to entertain the modern philosophies that sprang up after the French revolution; philosophies that more adequately reflected the juggernaut of the profane sciences and the progress it purported to hail.
The immovable object for the innovators was the twice dogmatically defined prohibition on exegeting Scripture against the consensus of the Church Fathers:
Now since the decree on the interpretation of holy scripture, profitably made by the council of Trent, with the intention of constraining rash speculation, has been wrongly interpreted by some, we renew that decree and declare its meaning to be as follows: that in matters of faith and morals, belonging as they do to the establishing of Christian doctrine, that meaning of holy scripture must be held to be the true one, which Holy Mother Church held and holds, since it is her right to judge of the true meaning and interpretation of holy scripture.
In consequence, it is not permissible for anyone to interpret holy scripture in a sense contrary to this, or indeed against the unanimous consent of the fathers."
-Vatican Council, Chapter II, On Revelation
7. Therefore we define that every assertion contrary to the truth of enlightened faith is totally false [34].8. Furthermore the Church which, together with its apostolic office of teaching, has received the charge of preserving the deposit of faith, has by divine appointment the right and duty of condemning what wrongly passes for knowledge, lest anyone be led astray by philosophy and empty deceit [35].9. Hence all faithful Christians are forbidden to defend as the legitimate conclusions of science those opinions which are known to be contrary to the doctrine of faith, particularly if they have been condemned by the Church; and furthermore they are absolutely bound to hold them to be errors which wear the deceptive appearance of truth.(Session III, chapter iv)
Parenthetically, we may remind the reader that historically and traditionally philosophy encompassed a great deal of subject matter - which included natural sciences, metaphysics, and what we now think of as psychology. The adage in the Church: philosophy is the handmaid of theology.
For in the vast and varied abundance of studies opening before the mind desirous of truth, everybody knows how the old maxim describes theology as so far in front of all others that every science and art should serve it and be to it as handmaidens. (Leo XIII., Lett. ap. In Magna, Dec. 10, 1889).
In his analysis of Modernism, St. Pius X concludes that the primary error in the system flows from its agnostic philosophy, which is condemned in the Council of the Vatican, 1869-1870. Likewise in a similarly urgent encyclical promulgated by Pope Pius XII in 1950, Humani generis warns that
6. Such fictitious tenets of evolution which repudiate all that is absolute, firm and immutable, have paved the way for the new erroneous philosophy which, rivaling idealism, immanentism and pragmatism, has assumed the name of existentialism, since it concerns itself only with existence of individual things and neglects all consideration of their immutable essences.
Forty-three years earlier St. Pius X had warned against the disastrous effects of evolutionism in his 1907 encyclical:
To finish with this whole question of faith and its shoots, it remains to be seen, Venerable Brethren, what the Modernists have to say about their development. First of all they lay down the general principle that in a living religion everything is subject to change, and must change, and in this way they pass to what may be said to be, among the chief of their doctrines, that of Evolution. To the laws of evolution everything is subject - dogma, Church, worship, the Books we revere as sacred, even faith itself, and the penalty of disobedience is death.
...Consequently, the formulae too, which we call dogmas, must be subject to these vicissitudes, and are, therefore, liable to change. Thus the way is open to the intrinsic evolution of dogma. An immense collection of sophisms this, that ruins and destroys all religion. Dogma is not only able, but ought to evolve and to be changed. This is strongly affirmed by the Modernists, and as clearly flows from their principles." (Pasc. 36, 13)
The theory of evolution cannot be reconciled with the early chapters of Genesis without doing violence to Sacred Scripture. While this is disputed by many, the cleavage generally falls into opposing camps, one that says scientific theory must submit to the revealed Word of God, the other that claims Scripture must be reinterpreted in order to accommodate scientific theory. The Church has always taught that true science cannot oppose what God has revealed, "who can neither deceive nor be deceived" (Vatican I).
The Modernists obviously opted for the latter in the borrowing from the protestants a new biblical pseudo-science known alternately as the 'historico-critical' method or form criticism. It is condemned by Pope Leo XIII in Providentissimus Deus and by St. Pius X in Pascendi.
The great prophet of evolution was in fact a student of the aforementioned Fr. Tyrrell in England. Teilhard de Chardin's grotesque theology-fiction (epithet ascribed by Etienne Gilson) generated an impressive series of books, tracts, and articles which were suppressed by his own order (Society of Jesus) for their explosive content, forbidding Teilhard to publish or to teach. Yet his ideas caught on rapidly through an underground network of enthusiasts, and for some proposed a promising synthesis of Catholic religion and evolutionary theory. Teilhard's insistence on the primacy of evolution left no room for dissent:
Is evolution a theory, a system or a hypothesis? It is much more: it is a general condition to which all theories, all hypotheses, all systems must bow and which they must satisfy henceforward if they are to be thinkable and true. Evolution is a light illuminating all facts, a curve that all lines must follow.
- Teilhard de Chardin, Christianity and Evolution, p. 130.
Obviously in the face of such ideological absolutism, Scholastic philosophy seemed dusty, irrelevant, and overcome by events. The conviction among the partisans of Ressourcement was so intense that Fr. Josef Ratzinger was impelled to say
I want to emphasize again that I decidedly agree with [Hans] Kung when he makes a clear distinction between Roman theology (taught in the schools of Rome) and the Catholic Faith. To free itself from the constraining fetters of Roman Scholastic Theology represents a duty upon which, in my humble opinion, the possibility of the survival of Catholicism seems to depend.
(Fr. Joseph Ratzinger, from a chapter in the book Zum Problem Unfehlbarkeit – “The Problem of Infallibility”, a series of essays edited by Karl Rahner and published in 1971)
Here the tensions are displayed clearly and openly: For a new and relevant Catholicism to emerge Roman Scholastic theology must be overcome. For Ratzinger, the contestation was existential; the survival of the Catholic faith depended on it.
Fr. Ratzinger, a native German subscribed to the philosophy of Georg W. F. Hegel. This system applies a theory of evolution known as dialectics, whereby a thesis is opposed by it's antithesis, and from the dialectic struggle between the two, a new synthesis emerges which itself becomes a thesis, and the process continues indefinitely. There is little room in Hegel's system for St. Thomas, and at the risk of a gross oversimplification, Hegel's philosophy may be considered the ontology of becoming as opposed St. Thomas' philosophy of being.
The biological-historical theory of evolution proposed by Darwin and embellished with Catholic syntax by Teilhard de Chardin provided a basis for Hegelian philosophy in nature. If evolution were true as the modernists proposed, the entire approach to Catholicism and even the God-Man Christ Jesus required a comprehensive reappraisal, leading the editors of the Second Vatican Council's Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et spes) to conclude:
"Thus, the human race has passed from a rather static concept of reality to a more dynamic, evolutionary one. In consequence there has arisen a new series of problems, a series as numerous as can be, calling for efforts of analysis and synthesis." GS #5)
Fr. Ratzinger remained a convinced evolutionist for his entire life. His effusive praise of Teilhard de Chardin culminated in his characterization of Christ's resurrection as a 'mutation' in his 2006 Easter Sunday sermon. His voluminous writing both as a cleric and a private doctor feature ubiquitous references to Teilhardian concepts such as hominization, complexification, cosmogenesis, and other terminology indigenous to the Jesuit.
As regards creation, Josef Ratzinger ascribed to the documentary hypothesis advanced by the 19th century protestant biblical critics, which proposed that the Scriptures were redacted, edited, compiled by various sources conditioned by their own times and circumstances and are not the work of the authors accredited to them by the Church Fathers.
"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth...."
…these words give rise to a certain conflict. They are beautiful and familiar, but are they also true? Everything seems to speak against it, for science has long since disposed of the concepts that we have just now heard -- the idea of a world that is completely comprehensible in terms of space and time, and the idea that creation was built up piece by piece over the course of seven [or six] days. Instead of this we now face measurements that transcend all comprehension.
…Do these words, then, count for anything? In fact a theologian said not long ago that creation has now become an "unreal" concept; that if one is to be intellectually honest one ought to speak no longer of creation but rather of "mutation and selection." Are these words true?
There were times when Israel was so preoccupied with the sufferings or the hopes of its own history, so fastened upon the here and now, that there was hardly any use in its looking back at creation; indeed, it hardly could. The moment when creation became a dominant theme occurred during the Babylonian Exile. It was then that the account that we have just heard -- based, to be sure, on very ancient traditions -- assumed its present form. Israel had lost its land and its temple. According to the mentality of the time this was something incomprehensible, for it meant that the God of Israel was vanquished -- a God whose people, whose land, and whose worshipers could be snatched away from him. A God who could not defend his worshipers and his worship was seen to be, at the time, a weak God. Indeed, he was no God at all; he had abandoned his divinity. And so, being driven out of their own land and being erased from the map was for Israel a terrible trial: Has our God been vanquished, and is our faith void?
Ratzinger, In the Beginning (editor's note: the people of Israel were exiled because of centuries of idolatry and grave sins, and only went into captivity after the Lord God had mercifully sent His prophets to forewarn and admonish them to repent)
As regards liturgy, where he is highly regarded by some Traditionalists as being a major force in preserving the integrity of the Missal of St. Pius V, he writes
“The history of the liturgy is constantly growing into an ever-new now, and it must also repeatedly prune back a present that has become the past, so that what is essential can reappear with new vigor. The liturgy needs growth and development as well as purgation and refining and in both cases needs to preserve its identity and that purpose without which it would lose the very reason for its existence. And if that is really the case, then the alternative between ‘traditionalists’ and ‘reformers’ is woefully inadequate to the situation. He who believes that he can only choose between old and new has already traveled a good way along a dead-end street.”
(Cardinal Ratzinger – 1994 sermon on the occasion of the retirement of his brother, Monsignor Georg Ratzinger, as choirmaster of Regensburg Cathedral)
In a 2006 letter written during his Papacy, Pope Benedict XVI with his eventual decease in view, sweetly and gently thanks God, his parents, siblings, and other supporters for his lifelong blessings and sundry advantages. The longest paragraph is reserved for his ruminations about science.
Without analyzing Ratzinger's theological postulations directly, we can at least pause and ask, where does this leave us in reference to Modernism? Is Modernism no longer a threat to Christian revelation? The fact that Josef Ratzinger came to be the Prefect for the Confratenity of the Doctrine of the Faith - in effect, the supreme chief of theological integrity in the Catholic Church - requires us to ask, what then became of Modernism? What is the dogmatic legacy of Pope Benedict XVI? Can the grave warnings issued by St. Pius X and Pope Pius XII in Pascendi and Humani generis be ignored now? Is a philosophy dependent upon evolution now to be considered not only true, but a replacement for St. Thomas' Scholastic philosophy? Is St. Thomas now opposed to the Magisterium of the Catholic Church? Has the philosophy of becoming overtaken the philosophy of being?
Defenders of the late Pontiff will undoubtedly point to his laudable and and inspiring work of preserving the Traditional Roman liturgy. This is indeed a most profoundly important development for the Church; but we must ask, why did he do it?
In The Reform of the Roman Liturgy by Msgr. Klaus Gamber, Cardinal Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) wrote:
J. A. Jungmann, one of the truly great liturgists of our time, defined the liturgy of his day, such as it could be understood in the light of historical research, as a "liturgy which is the fruit of development" . . . What happened after the [Second Vatican] Council was something else entirely: in the place of the liturgy as the fruit of development came fabricated liturgy. We abandoned the organic, living process of growth and development over centuries and replaced it, as in a manufacturing process, with a fabrication, a banal on-the-spot product (produit banal de l'instant). [Introduction by Cardinal Ratzinger to La Reforme Liturgique en question (Le-Barroux: Editions Sainte-Madeleine), 1992, pp. 7-8.]
Could the "organic, living process of growth and development over centuries" be in fact a reference to evolution in the mind of Cardinal Ratzinger? Could his contention be with the process of reform (revolution) which disregarded what he esteemed the proper way (evolution)? Could his insistence on subjecting the reforms that proceeded from the Second Vatican Council to a "hermeneutic of continuity" be a reflection of his Hegelian philosophy? Could his primary concern with evolution have driven his moderation of the more radical reforms of the council?
This essay deliberately avoids any consideration of the man Josef Ratzinger, or his prudential decisions in governing the Catholic Church, many which cheered the heart of this author during his pontificate. The real concern for this essay is the threat Modernism continues to pose to the Catholic Church. If Modernism - absolutely dependent on the theory of evolution - is now enshrined at the highest levels of doctrinal authority in the Church, who were its champions? And how can we claim heroic sanctity and virtue for its supporters?
As with Modernism and its offshoots addressed by Pope Pius XII in Humani generis, it is philosophy which is determinative for the formulation of errors. And errors about nature are the most serious, for they distort our ability to reason. We will conclude with St. Thomas:
It is absolutely false to maintain, with reference to the truths of our faith, that what we believe regarding the creation is of no consequence, so long as one has an exact conception of God; because an error regarding the nature of creation always gives rise to a false idea concerning God.
—Thomas Aquinas, "Summa Contra Gentiles"
