Modernism

The term for the thought of some late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Roman Catholic scholars who sought to embrace the results of recent advances in history, science, and philosophy. They trusted catholic tradition but mistrusted scholastic theology. They insisted on the complete freedom of scholarly research from ecclesiastical interference. Extreme modernists asserted that it was possible to hold in faith to the truth of Christian dogma while allowing its factual contradiction on the historical level. Roman Catholic modernists best known among Anglicans are Alfred Loisy, George Tyrrell, and Friedrich von Hügel. Extreme modernist positions were condemned by Pope Pius X in the encyclical Pascendi (1907). Roman Catholic modernists exerted considerable influence on Anglican liberalism, particularly on the synthesis between broad church and high church represented by Charles Gore and expressed in Lux Mundi, a collection of essays which Gore edited and published in 1889. An Anglican modernist association, the Modern Churchman's Union, disseminated Anglican versions of modernist views for half a century through its annual conferences and quarterly journal, The Modern Churchman. Among the well-known Anglican modernists were A. E. J. Rawlinson, W. R. Matthews, and H. D. A. Major. The modernist movement in England is the counterpart of liberal evangelicalism in the United States. See Gore, Charles; see Liberal Evangelicalism.