Translator’s Note: Roberto de Mattei’s paper, presented today in Rome, is entitled “The roots and historical consequences of Modernism”. It provides a detailed study of the origin of the present theological confusion in the Church in the ideas embraced at the time of the so-called “Modernist crisis” of the early 20^th century. The teaching of Maurice Blondel that experience is the criteria of truth spread to influential theologians such as Alfred Loisy, George Tyrrell, and Ernesto Buonaiuti, who all affirmed in various ways that truth is not immutable, rather it evolves as man evolves. These writers in turn influenced Teilhard de Chardin, Henri de Lubac, and Karl Rahner, all of whom were extremely influential on the work and teaching of the Second Vatican Council. This “Neo-Modernism” subtly tried to influence the Church without revealing its agenda of dismantling the philosophical foundation of the immutable nature of Truth and the theological foundation of the unchanging character of Divine Revelation. Through a “revolution of language,” one of the key principles of Marxism, those who seek to foment revolution in the Church have used words such as “renewal,” “aggiornamento,” and “accompaniment” to radically change the Church’s praxis, falsely setting up a separation between doctrine and praxis. The writings and statements of contemporary churchmen such as Walter Kasper, Bruno Forte, and Jorge Bergoglio are imbued with this same thinking. Bergoglio is clearly a disciple of Blondel. The only effective way to combat the present culmination of the “Modernist crisis” is to embrace the immutable Tradition of the Church.

The roots and historical consequences of Modernism

Prof. Roberto de Mattei

 Conference on the occasion of the Study Day on

“Old and new Modernism: The Roots of the Church’ s Crisis”

Rome – June 23, 2018

            The origin of the term “Modernism”

It seems that the term “Modernism” was coined by the Belgian Catholic economist Charles Périn in his volume dedicated to Le modernisme dans l’Eglise[1] to indicate, under this name, a complex of errors which were penetrating the Church through the liberal Catholicism of Lamennais. In 1883 Padre Matteo Liberatore developed this theme with a series of articles in “Civiltà Cattolica“[2].

The one, however, who gave the word “Modernism” its historical significance in the sense in which we still use it was Saint Pius X, who first used the term in the decree Lamentabili[3] of 3 July 1907 and in the encyclical Pascendi[4] of 8 September 1907. With this name Pius X wanted to define the united nature of the theological, philosophical and exegetical errors which had been spreading within the Catholic Church during the decades prior to his pontificate.

When he published Pascendi, Pius X had been reigning for only four years, whereas Modernism had had a long period of incubation. In order to trace its origins one must trace a genealogy of errors which took root above all within German philosophy in the 19^th century. In fact, Modernism is derived from two lines of thought stemming from Lutheranism: the rationalism of Kant and Hegel, which reduced religion to philosophy, and the irrationalism of the “philosophers of feeling,” Jacobi and Schleiermacher, who identified religion with a feeling (sentiment) of the divine.

But Modernism is more than a doctrine: it is a new psychological attitude in the face of the modern world which can be linked to Americanism, a complex of new theories proposed by Fr. Isaac Hecker (1819-1888), a Protestant convert who became the founder of the Paulist congregation, who proposed the idea of a general evolution of faith and an accommodation of the Church to the exigencies of modernity.

This change of mentality developed above all during the pontificate of Leo XIII. On the philosophical level, the thought of Leo XIII was categorically opposed to modernity. In this sense, the encyclical Aeterni Patris of 4 August 1879 was a true manifesto against the errors of modern philosophy, in which the Pope affirmed that the great way for recovering lost truth was a return to to the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas. It was no coincidence that Pius X, in an Apostolic Letter written to the Roman Accademia of St. Thomas, affirmed that one of the principal titles of glory of Leo XIII was having sought “first and foremost and with all his strength to restore the doctrine of St. Thomas Aquinas.”[5]

On the political and pastoral level, however, Leo XIII sought to reconcile with the modern world which he fought on the philosophical level. This spirit of compromise was principally expressed in the idea of ralliement[6], or in the politics of rapprochement with the masonic and secularist Third Republic in France as endorsed by the encyclical Au milieu des sollicitudes[7] of 16 February 1892.

Modernism presented itself, purely arbitrarily, as the transposition of ralliement from the political to the theological and philsophical level. Ralliement actually encouraged numerous members of the clergy (not only in France) to extend an openness to the modern world beyond the political level to include the theological level. Leo XIII, it was said, had opened the way to a more modern and scientific teaching in which exegesis and history ought to accompany theological and philosophical research.[8] The Institut Catholique of Paris showed itself to be a “laboratory” of new tendencies. It was here that Msgr. Louis Duchesne (1843-1922) taught Church History and, under his guidance, Alfred Loisy (1857-1940) was formed as a docent of exegesis. It was Loisy who carried the “historical-critical” method of his teacher to extreme consequences. A third personality, Abbé Marcel Hébert (1851-1916), translated the ideas of Loisy and Duchesne into the philosophical realm. According to Abbé Barbier, these three priests, two of whom ended up in apostasy, exercised a decisive influence on the orientation of young clergy and young lay Catholics during the years 1880-1893.[9] 

This “Neo-Christianity” also spread rapidly outside the walls of the Institut Catholique. On 7 June 1893, the young Maurice Blondel (1861-1949), defended his doctoral thesis at the Sorbonne entitled L’Action: Essai d’une critique de la vie et d’une science de la pratique.[10] In this work which was destined to be widely acclaimed, he proposed that the human spirit is led by an internal dynamism to seek God in the immanence of action. Blondel’s new “philosophy of immanence” sought to substitute “intellectualism” with the aspirations of the heart and the exigencies of life, seeking the roots of the supernatural within man’s own nature. Based on this premise of immanentism, modern thought derived the idea that man, by following his desire for the infinite, can participate in the divine infinity in his identity. What united the philosophical method of Blondel to the scientific method of the new historians and exegetes was the primacy of place given to experience as the ultimate criteria of all certainty and truth.

Leo XIII began to take account of the danger represented by these new exegetical and philosophical doctrines. After the Apostolic Letter Testem Benevolentiæ[11] against Americanism on 22 January 1889, he published on 8 September 1899 his letter to the clergy of France Depuis le jour,[12] with which he reaffirmed the urgency of returning to the philosophy and theology of Saint Thomas. But the new philosophical and exegetical tendencies were still spreading.

St. Pius X and Modernism

        The spark that would set off the Modernist controversy was the polemic initiated by the appearance in 1902 of the essay by Abbé Alfred Loisy L’Evangile et l’Eglise,[13] written in response to the interpretation of Christianity which had been given by the Protestant exegete Adolf von Harnack (1851-1930) in his lectures at the University of Berlin. Loisy, applying the new “historical-critical” method to the exegetical field, denied or nullified the revealed nature of the Old and New Testament, the divinity of Christ, the institution of the Church, the hierarchy, and the sacraments. In a retrospective analysis of his work, he declared that he had wanted “an essential reform of Biblical exegesis, of all of theology, and finally of Catholicism in general.”[14]

The debate was further extended to the philosophical field by the Oratorian Lucien Laberthonnière (1862-1932), director of the “Annales de philosophie chrétienne,” in which he laid out the argument for the necessity of separating Christianity from Thomistic Aristotelianism, and also by Edouard Le Roy (1870-1954), the successor of Bergson at the College de France, for whom dogmatic truth was only an element giving orientation to praxis and which could not be demonstrated to be true in itself, but rather could only be translated into ethical action.

The two principal theologians of the movement were two priests, George Tyrrell of Ireland (1861-1909) and Ernesto Buonaiuti of Italy (1881-1946). Tyrrell converted from Calvinism to Anglicanism and then to Catholicism (1879) and then entered the Society of Jesus, identifying Revelation with “religious experience,” which is accomplished in each individual conscience, through which the lex orandi dictates the norms of the lex credendi, and not vice-versa. In fact, this Revelation-experience, “cannot come to us from outside; the teaching can be the occasion, not the cause.”[15]

Buonaiuti was professor of Church history at the Seminario dell’Apollinare and the author of Programma dei modernisti, which appeared anonymously in Rome in October 1907. This work constituted an attempt to make an organic response to Pascendi and was praised by the chief propoents of the Modernist movement like Tyrrell, who translated it into English.

Modernism finally found, according to the expression of Loisy, an important “agent of connection” in the figure of Baron Friedrich von Hügel (1852-1925). The son of an Austrian father and a Scottish mother, by means of his social prestige and his cosmopolitan status, von Hügel was “the intermediate link between German-English and Italian society, between the ideas of the philosophy of action and those of historical immanence.”[16] Paul Sabatier (1858-1928), defined von Hügel as the “lay bishop of the Modernists,”[17] but Tyrrell presented him to Abbé Henri Brémond (1865-1933) as their “lay Pope.” Our program, he wrote with sarcasm, “is a religion made perfectly acceptable and which will be received with open arms by the major part of the Anglican and Protestant confessions; and when the papacy will be completely confounded and discredited, we will march on the Vatican and we will install the Baron [von Hügel] on the Chair of Peter as the first lay Pope.”[18]

Faced with this aggressive and underground movement, Pius X reacted with the publication of a prophetic document, the encyclical Pascendi.

The nucleus of Modernism for St. Pius X did not consist only in opposition to one or another of the revealed truths, but in the radical transformation of the whole notion of “truth” itself, through the acceptance of the “principle of immanence” which is at the foundation of modern thought, as is summed up in proposition 58 condemned by the Decree Lamentabili: “The truth is no more immutable than man himself, for it evolves with him and for him.”

Immanence is a philosophical conception which assumes experience as an absolute and excludes all transcendent reality. For the modernists, it is born from a religious feeling, which by not placing itself on any rational foundation is in reality fideism. Faith is thus not an adhesion of the intelligence to a truth revealed by God, but a religious exigency which springs from the obscure foundation (the subconscience) of the human soul. The representations of the divine realities are reduced to “symbols,” whose “intellectual formula” changes according to the “interior experience” of the believer. The formulas of dogma, for the Modernists, do not contain absolute truths; they are images of the truth which ought to adapt themselves to religious feeling.

In the final analysis religious truth resolves itself in the self-conscience of the individual faced with the individual problems of faith. In this sense there is a return to the tendency of Gnosticism to embrace all truths by means of one principle, the subjectivity of the truth and the relativity of all of its formulas.[19] For St. Pius X, “in fact the immanence of the Modernists desires and admits that each phenomenon of conscience is born from man in each man. Therefore as a legitimate consequence we may deduce that God and man are the same thing: it is therefore pantheism.[20]

Pascendi may be considered to be a fundamental document of the Magisterium of the Church, and among all the acts of Pius X it remains, as Padre Cornelio Fabro wrote, “the most distinguished monument of his pontificate.”[21] In turn the historian Emile Poulat emphasizes that Pascendi is the logical outcome of the direction affirmed by Pius IX a half-century earlier in the Syllabus of Errors (1864): “Pius IX denounced errors ad extra (outside the Church) which were running through the world; Pius X, in contrast, condemned a phenomenon ad intra (inside the Church), condeming these same errors which were infiltrating the Church, where they had taken form and root.”[22]

From Modernism to Nouvelle théologie

Saint Pius understood that he was dealing not with a philosophical school but with a [political] party, and in the Motu Proprio Sacrorum Antistitum[23] of 1 September 1910 with which he imposed the anti-Modernist oath, he also advanced the hypothesis that Modernism formed a true and real “secret society” within the Church.[24] A witness from “within” the movement like Albert Houtin describing the level of Modernism foresaw that the innovators would not leave the Church, not even even if they would lose their faith, but that rather they would remain within the Church as long as possible so as to propagate their ideas.[25] “Up until now,” explained Buonaiuti, “they wanted to reform Rome without Rome, or perhaps against Rome. There is a need to reform Rome with Rome; to make the reform pass through the hands of those who need to be reformed. Behold, this is the true and infallible method; but it is difficult. Hic opus, hic labor.”[26] Modernism proposed, in this perspective, to transform Catholicism from within, leaving intact, as far as possible, the external trappings of the Church.

How is it possible to imagine that such a vast and complex movement would have surrendered after being condemned? In the years following the death of Pius X, the strategy of the Modernists was to declare Modernism inexistent and to strongly condemn the anti-Modernist movement. The tendencies of the innovators in the Biblical, liturgical, theological, and ecumenical fields continued to develop within the Church in an apparently spontaneous manner without any order or direction, as had already taken place under Leo XIII. In reality Modernism was circulating, not only in books, but throughout the entire body of the Church, poisoning every aspect. This allowed the “nouvelle théologie” which was just emerging to present itself as a “living” theology and philosophy, linked to history, in opposition to the bookish abstraction of the Neo-Scholastic school.

In Belgium, at Tournai, stood the Dominican convent of Le Saulchoir, where, beginning in 1932, Pere Marie-Dominique Chenu (1895-1990) was “regent of studies.” In 1937 there appeared his wise proto-manuscript, entitled Une école de théologie, Le Saulchoir,[27] which wanted to be a “methodological” program for the formation of Dominican students. Chenu criticized anti-Modernist theology in the name of a “Christ of faith” who can be known (as the Modernists wanted) in the “Christ of history.” In the measure in which historicity is the condition of the faith and of the Church, the theologians ought to be able to read “the signs of the times,” or the manifestation of faith in history.

The “manifesto” of the French Dominican was placed on the Index by a decree of the Holy Office on 4 February 1942, and Chenu was removed from his position. But his disciples, like Pere Yves Congar (1904-1995), were more convinced than ever that their generation ought to “recover and transfer into the patrimony of the Church any element of value which could emerge from embracing Modernism.”[28]

What the school of Le Saulchoir was for the Dominicans, the university institute of Fourvière near Lyon was for the Jesuits. This school was influenced above all by the teaching of Pere Auguste Valensin (1879-1953), a disciple of Blondel and close friend of another leading personality, the Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955), who was suspended from his teaching position in 1926 and condemned by the Holy Office in 1939. The most direct continuer of the work of Blondel and Teilhard was Pere Henri de Lubac (1896-1991), who had known Teilhard at the beginning of the 1920s, and was profoundly influenced by him.

Corresponding to the “nouvelle théologie” was the idea of a “nouvelle chrétienté” elaborated in the same years by the French philosopher Jacques Maritain (1882-1973). His work Humanisme intégral[29] (1936) exercised an influence no less than that of Blondel’s Action, above all on the laity[30]. Despite Maritain’s declared adherence to the principles of Thomism, his philosophy of history and his sociology converged with the Neo-Modernism which was flourishing among the young religious of the Jesuit and Dominican orders.

In 1946 there appeared an important article by Pere Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange (1877-1964), one of the most acute theological minds of his time, on the theme La Nouvelle Théologie où va-t-elle?[31]. The Dominican theologian affirmed that the nouvelle théologie comes from Modernism and leads to complete Apostasy. “In place of the philosophy of being or ontology there is substituted the philosophy of action, which defines the Truth as a function, not of being, but of action. Thus one returns to the Modernist position: ‘The truth is not any more immutable than man, because it evolves with him, in him, and through him’ (Denz. 2058).For this reason Saint Pius X said of the Modernists: ‘They pervert the eternal notion of truth’ (Denz. 2080).”

The Nouvelle Thélogie was thus condemned by Pius XII on 12 August 1950, with the encyclical Humani Generis.[32] The Pope denounced the “poisonous fruits” produced by “novelties in almost every field of theology” and condemned, without naming them, those who made their own the language and mentality of modern philosophy and who attempted “to be able to explain dogmas with the categories of contemporary philosophy, whether of immanentism, idealism, existentialism, or whatever other system.”[33] The principal error condemned by the encyclical was relativism, according to which human knowledge never has a real and immutable value, but only a relative value.

The encyclical Humani generis did not succeed in stopping the advance of the Nouvelle Théologie, which in the final years of the pontificate of Pius XII extended itself to the field of moral theology. The primary subverters of traditional morality were the German Jesuit Josef Fuchs (1912–2005), the Italian Redemptorist Domenico Capone (1907-1998), and above all the German Redemptorist Bernard Häring (1912-1998). The Nouvelle Thèologie, daughter of Modernism, supported the principle of the evolution of dogmas. The new moralists extended this principle to the moral realm, substituting in place of the absolute and immutable natural law a new moral law which was affective, personal, and existential. The individual conscience became the sovereign norm of morality.

The anthropological shift of Vatican II 

Writing to Cardinal Ottaviani on 9 May 1961, Cardinal Ernesto Ruffini (1888-1967) expressed himself without using half-measures: “I have said it other times and I repeat it: Modernism, condemned by St. Pius X, today has become freely spread in aspects even more serious and deleterious than it was then!”[34] The same Cardinal Ruffini, together with Cardinal Ottaviani, had suggested to John XXIII, who succeeded Pius XII in 1958, to convoke an ecumenical Council, thinking that such a council would have condemned the errors of the time in a definitive manner. But John XXIII, in his allocution which opened Vatican II on 11 October 1962, explained that the Council had been launched not to condemn errors or formulate new dogmas, but rather to propose, with language adapted to new times, the perennial teaching of the Church.[35] What actually happened was that the primacy attributed to the pastoral dimension effected a revolution in language and in mentality. It was this new mode of expressing itself which, according to the Jesuit historian Father John W. O”Malley, “signaled a definitive rupture with the preceding Councils.”[36]

The Council Fathers were surrounded by “experts,” or “periti,” charged with revising and re-elaborating the schemas and, often, preparing the interventions of the Council Fathers. Many of these theologians had been suspected of heterodoxy during the pontificate of Pius XII. The first objective they achieved was that of rejecting the conciliar schemas written by the preparatory commissions. The rejection of these schemas which, according to council regulations, were supposed to form the basis for the discussion, signaled a capital turning point in the history of the Second Vatican Council.[37]

An Italian bishop, Msgr. Luigi Borromeo (1893-1975), even in the very first session of the Council, wrote in his diary, “We are in full Modernism. Not the naive, open, aggressive and combative Modernism of the time of Pius X, no. The Modernism of today is more subtle, more camouflaged, more penetrating, and more hypocritical. It does not want to stir up another tempest; it desires that the entire Church will find that it has become Modernist without noticing it. (…) Thus the Modernism of today saves all of Christianity, its dogmas and its organization, but it empties it completely and overturns it. It is no longer a religion which comes from God, but a religion which comes directly from man and indirectly from the divine which is within man.”[38]

Msgr. Borromeo intuited the “anthropological shift” of the Second Vatican Council which translated Modernism’s philosophical principle of immanence to the theological level. The major interpreter of this shift was the Jesuit Karl Rahner (1904-1984) [39],  the theologian who exercised the greatest influence on the Second Vatican Council and on the post-conciliar period. The conservative Council Fathers had a clear awareness of the errors which snaked their way into the heart of the Church, but they overestimated their own strength and underestimated the strength of their adversaries. The Nouvelle théologie was not only a theological school, but an organized party, with a precise objective and strategy. The voice of Msgr. Antonino Romeo (1902-1979), who at the beginning of January 1960 had launched in the journal “Divinitas” a deep attack against the Biblical Institute,[40] denouncing the existence of an articulated conspiracy on the part of the neo-Modernists who were working within the Church, remained an isolated one.[41]

The epoch of the Council was also the epoch of the greatest diffusion of communism, the principal error of the twentieth century, which Vatican II ignored. It is not difficult to see in the “primacy of the pastoral,” which made great strides in those years, the theological transposition of the “primacy of praxis” enunciated by Marx in his Thesis on Feuerbach, with these words: “It is in praxis that man ought to demonstrate the truth, that is, reality and power, the coming down to earth [mondano] of his thought,”[42] and “the philosophers have only interpreted the world in diverse ways; now however they try to change it.”[43]

The liberation theology of Latin America, in its different versions, was the point of confluence between progressive theology and the Marxist thought of the twentieth century[44]. The encounter betweeen these two currents was precisely in the affirmation of the primacy of praxis, that is, in the idea that what is more important than the truth is the experience that is drawn from action. Thus a communist theorist of the 1980s, Lucio Lombardo Radice (1916-1992), wrote that the essence of liberation theology is in “a reversal of the theology-praxis relationship. Not a praxis of theology, but rather a theology taken from a praxis of faith.”[45]

In accord with this perspective, Giuseppe Alberigo, who wanted to make the school of Bologna the continuation of that of Le Saulchoir, entrusts to the field of history the task of the “ecclesiological reform” advocated by the “nouvelle théologie” and, before that, by Modernism.

In the post-conciliar period, historical praxis became a “locus theologicus.”[46] The truth-history relationship was reformulated following the thought of Cardinal Kasper, in the form of a “critical theory of Christian and ecclesial praxis.”[47] “The theology which developed in the reception of Vatican II is thus characterized by its peculiar historicity,”[48] wrote Msgr. Bruno Forte, echoing the “manifesto” of Le Soulchoir. It is in this perspective that it is necessary to place key words of the conciliar epoch such as “pastoral,” “aggiornamento,” “signs of the times,” which in recent years have effected a true and proper cultural revolution by means of language.[49]

Neo-Modernism in the Church today 

How extensive is the presence of Neo-Modernism in the Church today? It is difficult to find a seminary or a Catholic university that is immune from it. The question ought to be turned around: Which seminary or Catholic university is faithful to the Magisterium of the Church? Unfortunately, it is not difficult to answer this question. Modernism pervades the Church, even if few explicitly claim it. Among those who do is Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, who in an article which appeared in the newspaper Sole-24 Ore affirmed that the intuition at the foundation of modernism “was linked to the necessity of a cultural and systematic ‘aggiornamento’ of the analysis and communication of the Christian message” and that “in itself this undertaking was not only legitimate but necessary.” In Ravasi’s interpretation, Loisy, Tyrrell, and Buonaiuti were “theologians of great intellectual quality who were attacked by the anti-Modernist repression of the Church.”[50]

Furthermore, Cardinal Ravasi, affixed his preface to La vita di Antonio Fogazzaro[51], a book by Tommaso Gallarati Scotti (1878-1940) which was placed on the Index of Forbidden Books (9 December 1920), for its apologia of an author who had been repeatedly placed on the Index, the Vicenzan author Antonio Fogazzaro (1842-1911). The names of Fogazzaro and Gallarati Scotti accompany each other in the pages of Cardinal Ravasi along with other Modernists, such as Tyrrell, Loisy, Murri, Buonaiuti, all of whom were excommunicated and all of whom are remembered by Ravasi as interpreters “of the ferment that was then developing in society and culture.”[52]

Cardinal Kasper does not claim Modernism as explicitly as Ravasi does, but his philosophical and theological vision is imbued with the same errors. His teachers are Schelling and Hegel, Heidegger and Rahner. From these authors he takes up the idea of a “renewal of the theological method” in which becoming prevails over being, time over space, history over nature, Scripture over Tradition, praxis over doctrine, life over truth.

In the presentation with which Cardinal Kasper opened the the work of the Extraordinary Consistory on the family on 20 February 2014, Christianity is transformed into life without truth, or better still into life which produces the truth in the “becoming” of experience. Praxis becomes the measure of value, and since the life of many Christians today is immersed in sin to the point that they no longer consider it to be sin, the Church ought to adapt her doctrine to these lived convictions, negating the very concept of sin itself, deprived of any ontological significance. The ultimate criteria of truth becomes sociological reality.

The good rapport between Pope Francis and Cardinal Kasper is well-known, but despite the fact that Padre Bergoglio spent a period of study in Germany, it is difficult to imagine that he had the intellectual tools to understand the most cryptic passages of Rahnerian-Kasperian theology. The culture of Bergoglio, more than it is indebted to his Jesuit brother Rahner, is indebted to another Jesuit brother, Father de Lubac, and through de Lubac, it is linked to Blondel, as many exegetes of Bergoglian thought assure us.

Among those who would attempt to exonerate Pope Francis from every stain of heterodoxy is Professor Massimo Borghesi; however, he contradicts himself when he assures us that Pope Francis is Blondelian, through father Gaston Fessard (1897-1978).[53] Maurice Blondel was in fact a Modernist because he created his philosophical method out of the principle of immanence, as Fathers Tonquédec[54], Réginald Garrigou Lagrange[55] and  Cornelio Fabro[56] have demonstrated in numerous writings. In 1924 the Holy Office condemned twelve propositions taken from the philosophy of Blondel, among which was the one concerning his notion of truth as “conformity of mind and life” and no longer as rational conformity of the intellect with the thing being inverstigated (adaequatio rei et intellectus).

The relationship of Blondel with Papa Bergoglio was brought to light by another one of his Argentine Jesuit brothers, Padre Juan Carlos Scannone, who in his volume François philosophe[57] dedicates many pages to the parallel between Bergoglian philosophy and “la dialectique blondélienne de l’action.”[58]

Francis and Blondel are united in their anti-intellectual conception of knowledge and in the reduction of truth to method or language. The formula, “God is not an equation”[59] expresses this conception, which Professor Gian Enrico Rusconi defines as “narrative theology.”[60] Rusconi recognizes that Pope Francis claims to change the paradigm of Catholic theology, from systematic theology to narrative theology, from argumentation to narration, in the attempt to redefine the very identity of Catholicism with new mythical or metaphorical semantic codes.

Pope Francis affirms in “Evangelii gaudium” (nn. 231-233) and in “Laudato si’” (n. 201) that “the reality is more important than the idea.” Padre Scalese has observed that the postulate “the reality is more important than the idea” has nothing to do with the ‘adaequatio intellectus ad rem.’ “Rather, it means we must accept reality as it is, without attempting to change it based on absolute principles, for example moral principles, which are only abstract ‘ideas,’ which most of the time risk becoming ideologies.”[61]

Papa Bergoglio is neither a theologian nor a philosopher, but the phrase which says that the reality counts more than the idea is a philosophical affirmation which overturns the primacy of being and contemplation which is the basis for all of Western and Christian philosophy. The contraposition between the theologian pope and the pastor pope signifies the end of dogmatic and moral theology as norms of action for the Christian person. Pastoral ministry, without theology, loses the absolute references of metaphysics and of morality and offers us instead an ethics of “day by day and case by case.” Human action is reduced to the choice of the individual conscience, based not in the objectivity of the divine and natural law, but in the “becoming” of history. But because every idea has consequences in reality, we must also resort to history to demonstrate the catastrophic consequences of these errors.

Just as it would be wrong to combat the symptoms of a revolution without addressing the ideological causes, it would also be erroneous to attempt to abstractly refute errors without considering their concrete consequences. Today we are facing a revolutionary process which ought to be evaluated at the level of thought, of action, and of deeper tendencies. This is one of the teachings which I owe to Professor Plinio Correa de Oliveira, author of a book which appeared in 1943, Em defesa de Ação Catolica,[62] which constitutes one of the first wide-ranging refutations of the modernist deviations within Catholic Action in Brazil and in the world.

The problem which we are confronting is not an abstract question, but rather it touches concretely the way in which we live our faith at an historic moment described by Benedict XVI on the eve of his renunciation of the papacy in these words: “As we know, in large areas of the world the faith is in danger of being extinguished like a flame which no longer has any fuel. We are facing a profound crisis of faith , a loss of the religious sense, which constitutes the greatest challenge for the Church of today.”[63]

I believe that at the roots of the abdication of Pope Benedict there may be also the awareness of having lost this challenge as a result of the inadequacy of the “hermeneutic of continuity,” a theological approach which makes the very same error which it wants to combat. It is necessary to oppose neo-Modernism, which presents itself as a changeable and subjective interpretation of Catholic doctrine, not with a contrary hermeneutic, but rather with the fullness of Catholic doctrine, which coincides with Tradition, maintained and transmitted not only by the Magisterium but by all the faithful, “from the bishops to the last layperson,” as expressed by the celebrated formula of Saint Augustine.[64] The sensus fidei impels us to refute every hermeneutical deformation of the truth, supported by the immutable Tradition of the Church[65].

At any rate, it is not enough to limit oneself to affirming that the doctrine of the Faith is immutable, it is also necessary to add to this that the Faith is not impractical and it does not admit of exceptions on the level of praxis. It is necessary to reintegrate the disassociation which the neo-Modernists have created between doctrine and praxis, restoring to Truth and to Life the inseparable unity expressed in those words of Jesus Christ which show us the only possible Way in the darkness of the present moment (Gv 14, 6).

Translated by Giuseppe Pellegrino

NOTES:

[1] Charles Périn, Le modernisme dans l’Eglise. D’après des lettres inédites de Lamennais, Victor Lecoffre, Paris, 1881.

[2] Matteo  Liberatore, S. J., Il naturalismo politico, introduction and editing by Giovanni Turco, Rispostes, Giffoni Valle Piana 2016.

[3] Decr. S. Officii Lamentabili, 3 July 1907 in AAS, vol. 40 (1907), p. 470-478; Denz-H, nn. 3401-3466.

[4] Pius X, Enciclica Pascendi dominici gregis, 8 September 1907 in AAS, vol. 40 (1907), p. 596-628; Denz-H, nn. 3475-3500.

[5] S. Pius X, Lett. Apost. In praecipuis laudibus, 3 January 1904, in AAS, 36 (1903-1904), p. 67.

[6] Roberto de Mattei, Il Ralliement di Leone XIII. Il fallimento di un progetto pastorale, Le Lettere, Firenze 2015.

[7] Leo XIII, Enc. Au Milieu des sollicitudes, 16 February 1892, in AAS 24 (1891-1892), pp. 519-529.

[8] Cfr. F. Laplanche, La crise de l’origine. La science catholique des Evangiles et l’histoire du XXème siècle, Albin Michel, Paris 2006; id., La Bible en France entre mythe et critique, XVI-XIX siècles, Albin Michel, Paris 1994.

[9] Emmanuel Barbier, Histoire du catholicisme libéral et social en Francedu Concile du Vatican à l’avènement de SS. Benoit XV (1870-1914), Cadoret, Paris 1923-1924, vol.  III, p. 199.

[10] Maurice Blondel (1861-1949), L’Action. Essai d’une critique de vie et d’une science de pratique, Alcan, Paris 1893. This work was reprinted on the occasion of its centenary by Presses Universitaires de France, Paris 1993.

[11] Letter Testem benevolentiae de americanismo, 22 January 1899, in ASS, 31 (1898-99), pp. 470-479.

[12] Leone XIII, Depuis le jour, to the Archbishops, Bishops, and Clergy of France, 8 September 1899, in AAS, 32 (1899-1900), pp. 193-213.

[13] This essay, published by the editor Picard on 17 January 1903, was placed on 23 December 1903 on the Index of Forbidden Books together with four other works of Loisy, who was personally excommunicated on 7 March 1908.

[14] Alfred Loisy, Choses passées, Nourry, Paris 1913, p. 246.

[15] George Tyrrell, Through Scylla and Charydbis, London, Green and Co. 1907, pp. 305-306.

[16] Giuseppe Prezzolini, Cos’è  il modernismo, Treves, Milano 1908, p. 75.

[17] Paul Sabatier, Les modernistes, Fischbacher, Paris 1909, p. LI.

[18]Lettres de Georges Tyrrell à Henri Bremond, Aubier-Montaigne, Paris 1971, p. 280.

[19] Cornelio Fabro, Modernismo, in Enciclopedia Cattolica, vol. VIII, col 1191.

[20] S. Pius X, Pascendi, n. 228.

[21] C. Fabro, Modernismo, col. 1190.

[22] Emile Poulat, Modernistica. Horizons, Physionomies Débats, Nouvelles Editions Latines, Paris 1982, p. 25.

[23] Motu proprio Sacrorum antistitum of 1 September 1910, in AAS, 2 (1910), p. 669-672 ; Denz-H, nn. 3537-3550.

[24] Pius X, Motu proprio Sacrorum Antistitum, p. 655.

[25] A. Houtin, Histoire du Modernisme catholique, published by the author, Paris 1913., pp. 116-117.

[26] Ernesto Buonaiuti, Il modernismo cattolico Guanda, Modena 1943. p. 128.

[27] Marie-Dominique Chenu, Le Saulchoir. Una scuola di teologia, preceduto da una nota introduttiva di G. Alberigo, Marietti, Casale Monferrato 1982.

[28] Aidan Nichols, Yves Congar, San Paolo, Cinisello Balsamo 1991, p. 12.

[29] Cfr. Jacques Maritain, Humanisme intégral. Problèmes temporels et spirituels d’une nouvelle chrétienté, Aubier-Montaigne, Parigi 1936, now in Jacques and Raissa Maritain, Oeuvres complètes, Editions Universitaires, Fribourg 1984, vol. VI, pp. 293-642.

[30] Cfr. Jean-Hugues Soret, Philosophes de l’Action catholique: Blondel-Maritain, Cerf, Parigi 2007.

[31] Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., La nouvelle théologie où va-t-elle?, in “Angelicum”, n. 23 (1946), pp. 126-145.

[32] Pius XII, Enciclica Humani Generis del 12 agosto 1950, in Discorsi e Radiomessaggi, vol. XII, pp. 493-510.

[33] Ibid., p. 499.

[34] Letter of Cardinal Ernesto Ruffini to Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani of 9 May 1961, in Francesco Michele Stabile, Il Cardinale Ruffini e il Vaticano II. Lettere di un “intransigente”, in “Cristianesimo nella Storia”, n. 11 (1990), p. 115.

[35] John XXIII, Allocution Gaudet Mater Ecclesiae of 11 October 1962, in AAS, 54 (1962), p. 792.

[36] John W. O’Malley, Che cosa è successo nel Vaticano II, Italian translation, Vita e Pensiero, Milano 2010, p. 47; cfr. Enrico Maria Radaelli, Il domani-terribile o radioso? – del dogma, Milano 2013.

[37] Michael Davies, Pope John’s Council, Augustine Publishing Company, Chawleigh, Chulmleigh (Devon) 1972; Roberto de Mattei, Il Concilio Vaticano II. Una storia mai scritta, Lindau, Torino 2011; Paolo Pasqualucci, Il Concilio parallelo. L’inizio anomalo del Vaticano II, Fede e Cultura, Verona 2014.

[38]Il Concilio Vaticano II attraverso le pagine del diario di Luigi Carlo Borromeo, vescovo di Pesaro, in “Rivista di Storia della Chiesa in Italia”, 52 (1998), 3 December 1962.

[39] On Rahner cfr. The critical studies of C. Fabro, La svolta antropologica di Karl Rahner, Editrice del Verbo Incarnato, Segni 2011; Karl Rahner: un’analisi critica. La figura, l’opera e la recezione teologica di Karl Rahner (1904-1984), edited by P. Serafino M. Lanzetta; Giovanni Cavalcoli o.p., Karl Rahner: il Concilio tradito, Fede e Cultura, Verona 2009; Fra Tomas Tyn, OP (1950-1990), Saggio sull’etica esistenziale formale di Karl Rahner, Fede e Cultura, Verona 2011; Jaime Mercant Simó, Los fundamentos filosoficos de la teologia trascendental de Karl Rahner, Leonardo da Vinci, Roma 2017.

[40] Cfr. Antonino Romeo, L’Enciclica “Divino Afflante Spiritu” e le “opiniones novae”, in “Divinitas”, n. 4 (1960), pp. 385-456.

[41] A documented reconstruction of the polemic in Anthony Dupont e Karim Schelkens, Katholische Exegese vor dem Zweiten Vatikanischen Konzil (1960-1961), in “Zeitschrift für katholische Theologie”, n. 1 (2010), pp. 1-24.

[42] Karl Marx, Tesi su Feuerbach (1845), in Feuerbach-Marx-Engels, Materialismo dialettico e materialismo storico, a cura di Cornelio Fabro, Editrice La Scuola, Brescia 1962, pp. 81-84, II Tesi, p. 82.

[43] Ivi, XI Tesi, p. 84.

[44] Cfr. Julio Loredo, Teologia della liberazione. Un salvagente di piombo per i poveri, Cantagalli, Siena 2015.

[45] Lucio Lombardo Radice, Cristianesimo e liberazione. Il caso dell’America latina in “Critica marxista” n. 5 (sett.-ott. 1981), p. 97.

[46] See, among others, Il Concilio vent’anni dopo. L’ingresso della categoria “storia”, edited by Enrico Cattaneo, Ave, Roma 1985, pp. 419-429.

[47] Walter Kasper, La funzione della teologia della Chiesa, in Avvenire della Chiesa. Il libro del Congresso di Bruxelles, Queriniana, Brescia 1970, p. 72.

[48] Bruno Forte, Le prospettive della ricerca teologica, in Il Concilio Vaticano II. Recezione e attualità alla luce del Giubileo, edited by Rino Fisichella, San Paolo, Cinisello Balsamo 2000. p. 424.

[49] Guido Vignelli, Una rivoluzione pastorale. Sei parole talismaniche nel dibattito sinodale sulla famiglia, with a preface by His Excellency Msgr. Athanasius Schneider, Tradizione, Famiglia, Proprietà, Roma 2016.

[50] Gianfranco Ravasi,  Sguardo moderno sul Modernismo, in Il Sole 24 Ore, 22 February 2015.

[51] Tommaso Gallarati Scotti, La vita di Antonio Fogazzaro , Morcelliana, Brescia 2011).

[52] Card. G. Ravasi, preface to T. Gallarati Scotti cited, p. 6.

[53] Massimo Borghesi, Jorge Mario Bergoglio. Una biografia intellettuale, Jaca Book, 2017.

[54] Joseph de Tonquédec, Immanence. Essai critique sur la doctrine de Maurice Blondel, Beauchesne, paris 1913.

[55] R. Garrigou-Lagrange, Vérité et option selon M: Maurice Blondel, in “Acta Pontificiae Academiae Romanae S. Tomae Aquinatis, Marietti, Roma 1936, pp. 146-149.

[56] C. Fabro, Dall’essere all’esistente, Morcelliana, Brescia 1957, pp. 425-489.

[57] Juan Carlos Scannone, La philosophie blondélienne de l’action et l’action du papa Francois, in E. Falque, L. Solignac (under the direction of), François philosophe, Salvator, Paris 2017. The volume gathers the contributions of seven Catholic intelectuals at the symposium  “Philosophie du papa François” held 18 October 2016 through the initiative of the Institut Catholique of Paris. Cfr. the recension made by Don Samuele Cecotti, La praxis-philosophie bergoglienne. Sources et portée, in “Catholica” 138 (2018), pp. 13-24.

[58]François philosophe, pp. 41-65.

[59] Papa Francesco, Discourse at Santa Marta of 21 May 2016.

[60] Gian Enrico Rusconi, La teologia narrativa di papa Francesco, Laterza, Bari-Roma 2017.

[61]Giovanni Scalese, I quattro chiodi a cui Bergoglio appende il suo pensiero, in http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/1351301.html

[62] Plinio Correa de Oliveira, Em defesa de Ação Catolica, with the preface of the Nuncio Benedetto Aloisi Masella, Ave Maria, São Paulo 1943.

[63] Benedict XVI, Discorso ai partecipanti alla plenaria della Congregazione per la Dottrina della fede, January 27, 2012.

[64] S. Augustine, De Praedestinatione sanctorum, 14, 27, in PL, 44, col. 980.

[65] Cfr. R. de Mattei, Apologia della Tradizione, Lindau, Torino 2011.

In light of the revelations about the secret life of Cardinal Theodore “Uncle Teddy” McCarrick — a man who has been described with alarming frequency over the years (even though these warnings have gone largely unheeded) as a homosexual predator who took advantage of vulnerable seminarians under his spiritual authority — we wish to present to our readers a talk by Dr. Gerard van den Aardweg, a member of the newly formed John Paul II Academy for Human Life and the Family, which was given at their recent conference in Rome. Dr. Aardweg has has written extensively on the topics of homosexuality and pedophilia, and is considered one of Europe’s foremost experts on these topics — as well as gays within the Catholic priesthood.

In his talk, given earlier this year, van den Aardweg points out that gay ideology includes a hatred of natural marriage, and sees Humanae Vitae (HV)as its primary obstacle, which must be defeated. When one considers the number of bishops and priests who have opposed HV over the past 50 years — or even the current push to re-evaluate its lessons on the occasion of its anniversary year — the accusation that gay ideology sees this encyclical as its enemy brings certain developments in the ecclesiastical sphere into sharper focus.

Dr. van den Aardweg’s talk deserves to be read in full, and we have included the complete text of it at the conclusion of this commentary. But it seems opportune, given the events of the past few days, to highlight certain important points deserving of special consideration by our readers.

First, Dr. van den Aardweg makes an important observation regarding the approach one may take to his homosexual attraction:

It is crucial whether or not a person normalizes his attractions. Doing this, he suppresses his reason and conscience, for the inner perception that homosexual activities are contra naturam is inborn and universal. Starting thus to lie to himself, he must suppress his awareness of the normality of man-woman love and of normal marriage with its fertility, and is forced to cling desperately to rationalizations that justify his choice to see himself as normal, healthy, and morally good. Thus he alienates himself from reality, locks himself up in wishful thinking and, not willing to seek the truth about himself, wants to change the natural feelings and opinions about homosexuality of 98% of mankind which he feels as hostile to him. In reality, it is not society, culture, or religion that persecute him but his own conscience.

On the nature of “gay ideology,” Dr. van den Aardweg states:

The gay ideology proclaims that gay sexuality, including its inherent polygamy, is a natural instinct, that faithful non-contraceptive marriage is unnatural, and so is diametrically opposed to Humanae Vitae. It hates marriage, out of jealousy and rebellion. Insofar as it has infiltrated in the Church, which is rather far, it is out to eliminate its main obstacle, Humanae Vitae.

In a section directly relevant to the abuse of minors by clergy, Dr. van den Aardweg informs us that:

Homosexual pedophiles on their part likewise childishly idealize man-boy love. Same-sex sexual feelings are pubertal: 40% of male homosexuals are (whether or not exclusively) attracted by adolescents, and for two-thirds of homosexual men the ideal partner may be under 21 years. Thus pederasty, contact with minors, has always been one of the most common expressions of homosexuality. (By the way, the priest scandals overwhelmingly concern pederasty, these priests are ordinary homosexuals.)

And what of the ideological alignment of some of our progressive prelates? Could homosexuality play a role?

Activist homosexuals and lesbians have played key roles in the sexual reform movement. Understandably, because they are animated by deep-seated anti-marriage sentiments. Homosexual organizations have always been adamantly pro abortion, sterilization and contraception; no pro-life manifestation or a horde of screaming, provoking gays and lesbians try to disturb it. That is one reason why Planned Parenthood and the Population Movement “encourage increase of homosexuality”[xvi] and why the hostility of Freemasonry to normal marriage has been powerfully instrumental in the legalization of both contraception and homosexual “marriage”.[xvii] And so we see Hirschfeld, an effeminate, very polygamous homosexual, act as the leader of the International Congress for Sexual Reform in Vienna, 1930, where he “pathetically exclaimed: ‘Better a love without marriage than a marriage without love!’ (‘Lieber eine Liebe ohne Ehe, als eine Ehe ohne Liebe!’).”[xviii] He was quite aware that “free love“ implies contraception, and that contraceptive habits erode the resistance to homo-sex.

As pertains to the directly preceding passage, I note that one of the things I’ve come across in my research on McCarrick was the way he “failed to inform the bishops about Ratzinger’s letter authorizing them to refuse Communion to pro-choice congregants or politicians.”

That was the New Yorker‘s take. Phil Lawler was a bit more acrid in his assessment:

In 2004, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger wrote to the American bishops, advising that prominent Catholics who “reject the doctrine of the Church” should not receive the Eucharist. That statement was clearly addressed to the situation of politicians who supported legal abortion: politicians like Ted Kennedy, in fact. But Cardinal McCarrick, to whom the Ratzinger letter was addressed, did not convey that message to his brother bishops in the US; instead he presented them with a bowdlerized version of the letter, carefully vetted to suggest that the Vatican had not recommended withholding Communion from abortion advocates.

On the occasion of Kennedy’s funeral, however, Cardinal McCarrick did not censor a letter from the Vatican. Quite the contrary. The cardinal read a letter from the Vatican Secretary of State, creating the impression that it was a friendly personal letter from the Pope. Yet again, the net result of the cardinal’s action was to suggest that the Church– in this instance the Pope– retained a warm sympathy for Senator Kennedy despite his support for the Culture of Death.

On the matter of the gay subculture — which, if some reports are to be believed, is less a subculture than a superculture — in the priesthood, Dr. van den Aardweg says:

There has been subversive gay networking within the Church, even on high levels, to normalize homosexuality. Moral theologians provide the arguments, some openly, like Charles Curran: “The Church should accept the normal value and goodness of same-sex relationships”. In general, gay or pro-gay priests dissent to Humanae Vitae, and conversely, many dissenters to Humanae Vitae are pro-gay, although they do not show their colors.

Dr. van den Aardweg points again to the enmity between clerical homosexuals and the Church’s moral teaching, as exemplified in HV — and shows why they feel the need to attack it:

As a matter of fact, from what happened in the world, we can learn that the promotion of contraceptive sex has for a large part been the work of people driven by the wish to normalize their own abnormality and impose their immorality on the society at large. Now it is rather probable that the existing attempts within the Church to amend the doctrine of Humanae Vitae is likewise strongly motivated and orchestrated by gay priests. Not out of compassion with parents, for whom observing Humanae Vitae would be too difficult. Because gay men, having little affinity with and understanding of adult marital love, are motivated in this issue by more ego-centered feelings: Humanae Vitae stands in the way of their own, dubious ideals.

And what of McCarrick? After examining a number of places in official Church documents — including the Catechism of the Catholic Church — where homosexual behavior is not placed in the moral context it demands, the elephant in the room is at last acknowledged. This week, everyone is asking the question of how a man who had a history of financial settlements over encounters with adult men during his tenure as a bishop wound up appointed to one of the most important sees in the United States and given a red hat. But Dr. van den Aardweg has already provided the answer:

It is not amazing that so much subtle and less subtle gay propaganda is echoed in Church documents. Since the priest scandals, the reality that, at least since the 1950s, a disproportionally high percentage of seminarians and priests are homosexual has surfaced. Many of them must have “normalized” their feelings for themselves. And many of them must have arrived at the higher echelons in the Church, also because many homosexual priests tend to ambitiously strive after ecclesiastical careers and are successful in that.

And now, without further preamble, we present the full text of the talk of Dr. Gerard van den Aardweg on these questions the Church must grapple with if she wants the scandals we face to come to and end.

THE “NORMALIZATION” OF HOMOSEXUALITY AND HUMANAE VITAE

Dr. Gerard van den Aardweg

Homosexuality must be defined in terms of attraction.(i) It is the condition of being chronically or periodically sexually attracted to the same-sex, along with rudimentary or reduced heterosexual interest, and this after adolescence, say 17-18 years. According to the best estimates less than 2% of men have these attractions, and less than 1.5% of women.[ii]

The term “gay” I shall use for those who choose to declare their tendency normal and live it out; that is the majority today; however about 20% do not want to identify themselves as gay and to live that way. This group has no public voice and is discriminated against by the gay establishment. It is crucial whether or not a person normalizes his attractions. Doing this, he suppresses his reason and conscience, for the inner perception that homosexual activities are contra naturam is inborn and universal.[iii] Starting thus to lie to himself, he must suppress his awareness of the normality of man-woman love and of normal marriage with its fertility, and is forced to cling desperately to rationalizations that justify his choice to see himself as normal, healthy, and morally good. Thus he alienates himself from reality, locks himself up in wishful thinking and, not willing to seek the truth about himself, wants to change the natural feelings and opinions about homosexuality of 98% of mankind which he feels as hostile to him. In reality, it is not society, culture, or religion that persecute him but his own conscience.[iv] Gay normalization turns things upside down; not I am crazy, but the rest of you are. The gay ideology proclaims that gay sexuality, including its inherent polygamy, is a natural instinct, that faithful non-contraceptive marriage is unnatural, and so is diametrically opposed to Humanae Vitae. It hates marriage, out of jealousy and rebellion. Insofar as it has infiltrated in the Church, which is rather far, it is out to eliminate its main obstacle, Humanae Vitae.

The gay ideology propagates various justifications, all of them falsehoods. It thrives on the dogmas of biological causation, or of being born-that-way, and of the immutability of the disorder. In fact, the biological theory was never proved. Since the gay ideology began to tyrannize the scientific establishment after the gay putsch in 1973, when the American Psychiatric and Psychological Associations gave up their scientific integrity, renewed efforts have been made, and mostly by activist gay investigators, to finally detect some biological cause. But interestingly, precisely the opposite result was obtained. The biological myth is exploded. Homosexuals have normal hormones, genes, and brains.[v] Even the pro-gay British Royal College of Psychiatrists declared in 2014 that homosexuality is not an inborn variant of sexuality.[vi] But this reality hardly penetrates. Also the dogma of unchangeability is fiercely upheld, for the possibility of change not only threatens a key argument of the normalizers but also a necessary argument for many to justify their personal lifestyle. Due to the political and social advance of the gay ideology, change-directed homosexuality treatment and counseling have increasingly become tabooed; yet psychological counseling and Christian self-help initiatives outside the mainstream continued and demonstrated the viability of such approaches. Just a short note: overcoming these tendencies is mainly a battle with oneself,[vii] but a major, and even radical and lasting change has been resulted in many cases,[viii] mostly with the support of a sustained religious inner life.[ix] The gay-promoting political establishment tries to stamp out these activities and publications. Hence, for instance, the actual Bill of Prohibition of homosexuality treatment in Ireland. Surely, a homo-tyranny is upon us. In 2003, prof. Spitzer of Columbia University, the same psychiatrist who had managed the surrender of the APA to the militant gay lobby, published his study on the effects of sane counseling of 200 homosexuals, male and female. A minority changed profoundly, most others improved, both as to sexual orientation and overall emotional balance. No signs of harm, but a noticeable decrease of depressions.[x] A hurricane of hatred from the gay establishment fell over him, with such violence that he felt a broken man who (some months later) assured me he would never, never again involve himself with that terrible subject of homosexuality.

One classical rationalization is the idealization of gay love as superior to “vulgar” hetero-love: it would be more tender, refined, noble, creative, progressive, etc. This betrays the childish naivety of these people, who are emotionally fixated to their teens, when normal sexual love between adults is yet outside the scope of the youth. Homosexual pedophiles on their part likewise childishly idealize man-boy love.[xi] Same-sex sexual feelings are pubertal: 40% of male homosexuals are (whether or not exclusively) attracted by adolescents, and for two-thirds of homosexual men the ideal partner may be under 21 years.[xii] Thus pederasty, contact with minors, has always been one of the most common expressions of homosexuality. (By the way, the priest scandals overwhelmingly concern pederasty, these priests are ordinary homosexuals[xiii].)

***

Now, to give you a general idea of what follows, I want to give you some key psychological facts and insights. I must restrict myself to male homosexuality, but most of it also applies to lesbianism with this difference that “father” must be substituted for “mother”, “girlish” for “boyish”.

Same-sex feelings usually arise in adolescence, in boys who are wanting in boyishness or manliness, more specifically, in daring and fighting spirit. They lack boyish firmness and tend to be overly soft to themselves. This character trait, which in pronounced form appears as “sissiness” or effeminacy, makes them feel uncomfortable among their same-sex companions and inferior as to their manliness. This trait is not inborn, but the effect of upbringing, parent-child interactions and habit formation. In a nutshell: frequently, the prehomosexual boy’s underdeveloped or suppressed masculinity results from some combination of a mother who overly dominated his emotional life, in some way or other, while the masculinity-encouraging influence of the father was insignificant or negative. Variations of this pattern occur in at least 60% of cases of male homosexuality. (Other factors of importance can be physical defects or handicaps, exceptionally young or old parents, upbringing by grand-parents, sibling relationships.) Very often, the boy was unhealthily attached to and dependent on his mother, while the bond with his father was defective. He may have been overprotected, babied, adored as mother’s favorite, over-indulged; or over-“domesticated”, treated with too much maternal coercive interference; but not as “a real boy”, sometimes in a feminizing way. There is no doubt that these parent-child interactions factors are well-established.

Yet more closely correlated with later homosexual attractions is the factor of maladjustment to the same-sex world of boyhood and adolescence, the factor of “peer isolation”. Feeling the outsider, inferior in manliness, is traumatic. This feeling of not belonging may animate passionate longings for friendship and idolization of youths who in the eyes of the boy possess the sort of manliness he feels he has not. During puberty such longings may engender erotic fantasies about physical affection from some adored but inaccessible comrade. Such daydreams are pathetic, they spring from self-pity or self-dramatization about being lonely, having no friends, not being “one of the other boys”. Especially when accompanied by habitual masturbation, they reinforce the boy’s yearnings and nourish his self-pity and feeling the tragic outsider. These feelings are addictive. In short, homosexual partner seeking is an anxious chasing after impossible pubertal illusions. It is fully self-centered: the other one is totally claimed, he must be totally for ME; it is begging for love, demanding love, not loving. When this craze is not outgrown before adulthood, it may take control of the person’s mind, so that it becomes an autonomous drive. As a result, he partly or even largely remains emotionally the teenager in much of his thinking and feeling, his personality habits, relationships with his parents and others, his feelings with respect to his own sex and the opposite sex. He never becomes mature and is dominated by immature self-love, excessive self-centeredness, especially in his same-sex cravings. Film maker Pasolini was one of numerous examples; of himself, he said he had “an infinite hunger for the love of bodies without souls.“ A German gay fashion designer called it an enslavement to drinking salt water, the more you drink, the greater your thirst. Anyway, gay relationships are exercises in “selfism”. “I lived with a succession of roomates, some of whom I professed to love”, said a middle-aged gay man. “They swore they loved me. But homosexual ties begin and end with sex. … After the first passionate fling, sex becomes less and less frequent. The partners become nervous, want new thrills, begin to cheat each other.” His summary of the average gay life is sobering, the realistic truth devoid of pubertal idealizations and propaganda lies: “Gay life … is a rough world, I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.”[xiv]

Don’t believe the propaganda for the noble, faithful, loving gay “marriage” of devote Catholics. It is a trick to sell acceptance of gay sex.[xv]

Otherwise, the just quoted gay man illustrates the fact that treatment, or self-education no doubt must fight the sexual addiction, but above all the person’s generalized infantile self-seeking, self-love and self-pity. Fighting the vices, exercising the virtues; above all the virtues of sincerity, loving, responsibility, and fortitude or character strength. Homo-sex is neurotic sex. Homosexuality and pedophile homosexuality a sexual neurosis, but also a sickness of the soul.

***

I return to the main theme. The advocacy for homosexuality-normalization began in the second half of the 19^th century when contraceptive sex became acceptable through the propaganda for free love, sexual reform and divorce. It was sponsored by all Malthusian movements: the socialists, Marxists, freethinkers, humanists and feminists. In 1897 the Marxist physician Magnus Hirschfeld founded the Scientific Humanitarian Committee, and in 1917 the first Institute for Sexology in Berlin. The motto of his enterprise was per scientiam ad justitiam, through science to justice, which expressed the eternal falsehoods of the gay normalization ideology, then as now. Namely, the normality view is based on science, and homosexuals and lesbians are denied their natural sexual rights. Society and religion must change their attitudes.

Activist homosexuals and lesbians have played key roles in the sexual reform movement. Understandably, because they are animated by deep-seated anti-marriage sentiments. Homosexual organizations have always been adamantly pro abortion, sterilization and contraception; no pro-life manifestation or a horde of screaming, provoking gays and lesbians try to disturb it. That is one reason why Planned Parenthood and the Population Movement “encourage increase of homosexuality”[xvi] and why the hostility of Freemasonry to normal marriage has been powerfully instrumental in the legalization of both contraception and homosexual “marriage”.[xvii] And so we see Hirschfeld, an effeminate, very polygamous homosexual, act as the leader of the International Congress for Sexual Reform in Vienna, 1930, where he “pathetically exclaimed: ‘Better a love without marriage than a marriage without love!’ (‘Lieber eine Liebe ohne Ehe, als eine Ehe ohne Liebe!’).”[xviii] He was quite aware that “free love“ implies contraception, and that contraceptive habits erode the resistance to homo-sex.

The by far most influential sexual reformer after the war, the father of the sexual revolution of the 50s and 60s was also a sex-enslaved homosexual, (and probably a pedophile homosexual, too): Alfred Kinsey, the founder of the institute of sexology named after him, and the mastermind behind the de-humanizing sexual education of today. Like Hirschfeld, he was obsessed with the wish to abolish society’s moral standards based on normal marriage and to normalize homosexuality, pedophilia, and incest. To him, faithful marriage was unnatural, homosexuality and all sexual abnormalities natural; abortion should be legitimized; masturbation, contraceptive sex, adultery, prostitution were healthy. Also Kinsey posed as a great scientist, but his intensively propagated books were gay propaganda based on fraudulent research.[xix]

A third example: Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre’s companion, the mother of radical feminism and of the gender theory. Her influence in France directly led to the foundation of the Ministry of Women’s Rights and the De Beauvoir Commission on Women. Her book The second sex,[xx] touting the puerile slogan that one is not born but made a woman through cultural and familial coercion, “the Bible of the Women’s Movement, set in motion an unstoppable train”.[xxi] She was a lesbian, who, which is frequent among lesbians, “had never felt the wish to have a child, [and] could not imagine what impels a man and woman to wish for it”.[xxii] She was animated by “disgust, fear, hatred of motherhood”.[xxiii] “Babies filled me with horror”, she said. “The sight of a mother with a child sucking the life from her breast … it all filled me with disgust.”[xxiv] The disturbed femininity underlying her lesbianism made her a passionate rebel against marriage and motherhood, a fierce propagandist of contraceptive sex and abortion with a destructive impact.

Militant homosexuals and lesbians, although they certainly do not represent even the 2% of the population with homosexual tendencies, have tremendously contributed to the present contraceptive mentality and habits through their influence in the sexual reform and feminist movements. But not less through the successful normalization of their own lifestyle. This success has still further obscured the perception of many, especially in the younger generations, of the moral and psychological degeneracy of contraceptive relationships in contrast to the beauty of faithful, child-directed marital love. For, if sexual relations involving the disgusting genital contacts between two men or women are officially celebrated and such liaisons, which are inherently not even monogamous and most neurotic, are given the status of “marriage”, then any sterile heterosexual relation becomes normal by comparison. A study on the effects of gay “marriage“ in Scandinavia concluded that it had “driven home the message that marriage itself is outdated and that virtually any family form … is acceptable.”[xxv] This necessarily means increased contraception.

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In sum, any approval or suggestions of approval of the falsehoods of the gay ideology undermine the teachings of Humanae Vitae. Yet for about half a century such suggestions are to be found in important documents of the Catholic Church. Let us see:

In 1975, the Declaration on certain questions of sexual ethics of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith wrote that “A distinction is made, and it seems with some reason, between homosexuals whose tendency … is transitory or at least not incurable, and homosexuals who are definitively so because of some innate instinct … judged to be incurable.” At the time, the distinction between so-called “nuclear” and superficial homosexuality was a favorite pseudo-scientific contention among the gay normalizers in professional circles. It was shortly after the gay lobby in the American Psychiatric Association had “normalized” the definition of homosexuality from “disturbance” to “condition”. The Vatican Declaration uncritically gave authority to the gay dogmas “born that way” and “immutable”. Perhaps sheer naivety, but in any case blameworthy ignorance and incompetence. The “born that way” statement has been followed in several later Church documents.[xxvi]And with serious consequences. Instead of opposing the secular world’s fatalist gay propaganda that homosexual inclinations had to be accepted as a fact of nature, the authority of the Church poured some more oil on the flames. Instead of helping parents to prevent a homosexual orientation in their children, of teaching parents the wisdom about natural femininity and masculinity both in their marriage relations and educational roles of father and mother, they came with the passive and hope-less message of acceptance and “nothing can be done about it”.[xxvii] But In fact, also in 1975 the biological theory had not a leg to stand on, as there was not a single bit of solid evidence for it, while there was ample evidence for the psychological causation.

Really troubling are the statements on homosexuality in Nrs. 2357 and 2358 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church of 1992. They create the false impression of homosexuality as a complex, profound mystery of nature, which view is one of the trump-cards of the gay normalizers. The mystery view is emphasized in the puzzling affirmation: “Its psycho-genesis remains largely unexplained.” Is this meant to support the myth of biology? At any rate, it is conform to the gay policy to totally ignore the psychological approach, representing it as unscientific and insignificant. It is highly misleading and incorrect. Correct would have been a text in the sense that the psychological causation had the most convincing and scientifically best arguments. But apart from this, the “largely unexplained” contention is a (mis-) judgment that lies out of the domain of theologians. It belongs to that of the human sciences. (Remember the Galileo lesson). In truth, all non-morality statements on homosexuality must be removed from the Catechism. Like in the parable, they are weeds, sowed among the wheat of sound doctrine when some people were asleep.

Another dubious statement speaks of the “not negligible number of men and women [with] profound homosexual tendencies.” In 1992, this was support for the Kinsey propaganda that 10% of the male population was homosexual, which would indicate how “normal” it was. And then we read this simplistic half-truth: “They do not choose their condition … [which] is an ordeal for most of them.” Very dubious, furthermore, is the melodramatic representation of homosexual people as innocent victims of discrimination, as is suggested in the following admonition: “…they must be treated with respect, compassion, delicacy. Every mark of unjust discrimination against them must be avoided.” This over-dramatization is grist to the mill of the gay propaganda. Precisely the massive public indoctrination with the image of the homosexual as the victim of social oppression, in combination with the born-that-way fallacy, has been devastatingly effective in overcoming public resistance to the gay claims to “equal rights” for their sexuality. Why not a sober reminder of the normal duty of charity?

Anyway, the rhetoric of compassion and melodrama has been fully developed in subsequent Church documents to create an atmosphere where objection to homosexual practices begins to feel as unchristian. A case in point is the “Message” of the American Bishops to parents of (allegedly) homosexual children, Always Our Children (1997). It is all pastoral unction, dramatization, and psycho-babble about: “Accepting and loving your child as a gift of God”, “sexual identity helps define the unique person we are”, “chastity means … integrating one’s thoughts etc. … in a way that values and respects one’s dignity and that of others”, “All homosexual persons have a right to be welcomed in the community”, “A shocking number of homosexual youth end up on the streets because of rejection by their families…”, “Accept and love yourselves as parents … do not blame yourselves for a homosexual orientation.” The Interim Report of the Vatican’s Synod on the Family in 2014 continues in the same whining style that is typical of the gay propaganda about the victimhood of the repudiated homosexual, but now its intention to legalize homosexual relations and to tinker with Humanae Vitae is more evident. “Homosexuals”, it says, and it clearly does not exclude practicing and self-normalizing homosexuals, “have gifts and qualities to offer to the Christian community”; the faithful must “provide them a place of fellowship in our communities” because they “oftentimes want to encounter a Church which offers them a welcoming home.” Thus they are poor outcasts; but with a right to be warmly accepted in the Church. It are the faithful must be educated, who are lectured for their mercilessness, not those who live immorally: “Are our communities capable of … accepting and valuing their sexual orientation?” The gay union is presented as respectable love: “…there are instances where mutual assistance to the point of sacrifice is a valuable support in the life of these persons.”

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To conclude, it is not amazing that so much subtle and less subtle gay propaganda is echoed in Church documents. Since the priest scandals, the reality that, at least since the 1950s, a disproportionally high percentage of seminarians and priests are homosexual has surfaced. Many of them must have “normalized” their feelings for themselves. And many of them must have arrived at the higher echelons in the Church, also because many homosexual priests tend to ambitiously strive after ecclesiastical careers and are successful in that.[xxviii] There has been subversive gay networking within the Church, even on high levels, to normalize homosexuality. Moral theologians provide the arguments, some openly, like Charles Curran: “The Church should accept the normal value and goodness of same-sex relationships”. In general, gay or pro-gay priests dissent to Humanae Vitae, and conversely, many dissenters to Humanae Vitae are pro-gay, although they do not show their colors.

As a matter of fact, from what happened in the world, we can learn that the promotion of contraceptive sex has for a large part been the work of people driven by the wish to normalize their own abnormality and impose their immorality on the society at large. Now it is rather probable that the existing attempts within the Church to amend the doctrine of Humanae Vitae is likewise strongly motivated and orchestrated by gay priests. Not out of compassion with parents, for whom observing Humanae Vitae would be too difficult. Because gay men, having little affinity with and understanding of adult marital love, are motivated in this issue by more ego-centered feelings: Humanae Vitae stands in the way of their own, dubious ideals.

Dr. Gerard van den Aardweg is a member of the newly formed John Paul II Academy for Human Life and the Family. He has written extensively on the topics of homosexuality and pedophilia, including The Battle for Normality: Self-Therapy for Homosexual Persons and Homosexuality and Hope: A Psychologist Talks About Treatment and Change. Dr. and Mrs. van den Aardweg have seven children and seventeen grandchildren.

This post has been updated.