Section — Bucceroni, Institutions of Moral Theology
Decree of the Holy Office, Wednesday, July 3, 1907
by which certain propositions are rejected and proscribed.
"With truly lamentable result, our age, impatient of restraint in investigating the highest reasons of things, not rarely follows new things in such a way that, having dismissed as it were the inheritance of the human race, it falls into most grave errors. These errors will be far more pernicious if there is question of sacred disciplines, if of interpreting Sacred Scripture, if of the principal mysteries of faith. But it must be deeply lamented that there are found also among Catholics not a few writers who, having passed beyond the boundaries established by the Fathers and by Holy Church itself, under the appearance of a higher understanding and in the name of historical consideration, seek that progress of dogmas which in reality is their corruption.
But lest errors of this kind, which daily are spread among the faithful, fix roots in their minds and corrupt the sincerity of the faith, it pleased our Most Holy Lord Pius, Pope X by divine providence, that through this office of the Sacred Roman and Universal Inquisition those which were chief among them should be noted and rejected.
Wherefore, after a most diligent examination had been instituted, and after the vote of the Reverend Consultors had been received, the Eminent and Most Reverend Lord Cardinals, General Inquisitors in matters of faith and morals, judged that the propositions which follow are to be rejected and proscribed, as by this general Decree they are rejected and proscribed:
The ecclesiastical law which prescribes that books concerning the Divine Scriptures be subjected to prior censorship does not extend to cultivators of criticism or of scientific exegesis of the books of the Old and New Testament.
The Church's interpretation of the Sacred Books is indeed not to be despised, but nevertheless it is subject to the more accurate judgment and correction of exegetes.
From ecclesiastical judgments and censures brought against free and more cultivated exegesis, it can be gathered that the faith proposed by the Church contradicts history, and that Catholic dogmas cannot in reality be reconciled with the truer origins of the Christian religion.
The Magisterium of the Church, not even through dogmatic definitions, can determine the genuine sense of the Sacred Scriptures.
Since in the deposit of faith only revealed truths are contained, under no respect does it pertain to the Church to pass judgment on the assertions of human disciplines.
In defining truths, the learning Church and the teaching Church collaborate in such a way that nothing remains for the teaching Church except to sanction the common opinions of the learning Church.
When the Church proscribes errors, she cannot require from the faithful any internal assent by which they embrace the judgments issued by her.
They are to be considered immune from all fault who make nothing of the condemnations issued by the Sacred Congregation of the Index or by the other Sacred Roman Congregations.
They display excessive simplicity or ignorance who believe that God is truly the author of Sacred Scripture.
The inspiration of the books of the Old Testament consists in this, that the Israelite writers handed down religious doctrines under a certain peculiar aspect, little known or unknown to the Gentiles.
Divine inspiration is not extended to the whole of Sacred Scripture in such a way that it safeguards all and each of its parts from every error.
If an exegete wishes to engage usefully in biblical studies, he must first set aside any preconceived opinion about the supernatural origin of Sacred Scripture, and interpret it no otherwise than other merely human documents.
The evangelic parables were artfully arranged by the Evangelists themselves and by Christians of the second and third generation, and thus they gave the reason for the slight fruit of Christ's preaching among the Jews.
In many narratives the Evangelists reported not so much the things which are true, as those which, although false, they judged more profitable for readers.
The Gospels, up to the definite and constituted canon, were augmented by continual additions and corrections; therefore there remained in them only a slender and uncertain trace of the doctrine of Christ.
The narratives of John are not properly history, but a mystical contemplation of the Gospel; the discourses contained in his Gospel are theological meditations concerning the mystery of salvation, destitute of historical truth.
The Fourth Gospel exaggerated miracles not only so that they might appear more extraordinary, but also so that they might become more apt for signifying the work and glory of the Incarnate Word.
John indeed claims for himself the character of a witness concerning Christ; but in reality he is only an eminent witness of the Christian life, or of the life of Christ in the Church, at the end of the first century.
Heterodox exegetes have expressed the true sense of the Scriptures more faithfully than Catholic exegetes.
Revelation could have been nothing other than the consciousness acquired by man of his relation to God.
Revelation, constituting the object of Catholic faith, was not completed with the Apostles.
The dogmas which the Church declares as revealed are not truths fallen down from heaven, but are a certain interpretation of religious facts which the human mind has acquired for itself by laborious effort.
There can exist, and in reality there does exist, opposition between the facts which are narrated in Sacred Scripture and the dogmas of the Church founded upon them; so that the critic can reject as false facts which the Church believes as most certain.
An exegete is not to be reproved who sets up premises from which it follows that dogmas are historically false or doubtful, provided he does not directly deny the dogmas themselves.
The assent of faith rests ultimately on a heap of probabilities.
Dogmas of faith are to be retained only according to a practical sense, that is, as a preceptive norm of acting, but not as a norm of believing.
The divinity of Jesus Christ is not proved from the Gospels; but it is a dogma which Christian consciousness deduced from the notion of Messiah.
When Jesus exercised his ministry, he did not speak for the purpose of teaching that he was the Messiah, nor did his miracles tend to demonstrate this.
It is permitted to grant that the Christ whom history exhibits is far inferior to the Christ who is the object of faith.
In all the Gospel texts the name Son of God is equivalent only to the name Messiah, and by no means signifies that Christ is the true and natural Son of God.
The doctrine about Christ which Paul, John, and the Councils of Nicaea, Ephesus, and Chalcedon hand down is not that which Jesus taught, but that which Christian consciousness conceived about Jesus.
The natural sense of the Gospel texts cannot be reconciled with what our theologians teach concerning the consciousness and infallible knowledge of Jesus Christ.
It is evident to anyone who is not led by preconceived opinions that Jesus either professed an error concerning the near messianic advent, or that the greater part of his doctrine contained in the Synoptic Gospels lacks authenticity.
The critic cannot assert that Christ had knowledge circumscribed by no limit except by making a hypothesis which historically can hardly be conceived and which is repugnant to the moral sense, namely that Christ as man had the knowledge of God and nevertheless was unwilling to communicate knowledge of so many things with the disciples and posterity.
Christ did not always have consciousness of his messianic dignity.
The Resurrection of the Savior is not properly a fact of the historical order, but a fact of the merely supernatural order, neither demonstrated nor demonstrable, which Christian consciousness gradually derived from others.
Faith in the Resurrection of Christ from the beginning was not so much about the fact itself of the Resurrection, as about the immortal life of Christ with God.
The doctrine concerning the expiatory death of Christ is not evangelical but only Pauline.
The opinions concerning the origin of the sacraments with which the Tridentine Fathers were imbued, and which without doubt had influence on their dogmatic canons, are far distant from those which now rightly prevail among historical investigators of Christian matters.
The sacraments had their origin from this, that the Apostles and their successors, with circumstances and events urging and moving them, interpreted some idea and intention of Christ.
The sacraments tend only to this, that they recall to the mind of man the ever-beneficent presence of the Creator.
The Christian community introduced the necessity of baptism, adopting it as a necessary rite and attaching to it the obligations of Christian profession.
The use of conferring baptism on infants was a disciplinary evolution, which was one of the causes for the sacrament being resolved into two, namely into baptism and penance.
Nothing proves that the rite of the sacrament of confirmation was used by the Apostles; but the formal distinction of two sacraments, namely baptism and confirmation, does not belong to the history of primitive Christianity.
Not all things which Paul narrates concerning the institution of the Eucharist (1 Cor. 11:23-25) are to be taken historically.
In the primitive Church the concept of the Christian sinner reconciled by the authority of the Church was not present, but the Church became accustomed to this kind of concept only very slowly. Indeed, even after penance was recognized as an institution of the Church, it was not called by the name of sacrament, because it was held as a shameful sacrament.
The words of the Lord: Receive the Holy Spirit; whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them, and whose you shall retain, they are retained (John 20:22-23), by no means refer to the sacrament of penance, whatever it pleased the Tridentine Fathers to assert.
James in his Epistle (vv. 14 and 15) does not intend to promulgate any sacrament of Christ, but to commend some pious custom; and if perhaps in this custom he sees some means of grace, he does not take it with that rigor with which theologians who established the notion and number of the sacraments took it.
When the Christian supper gradually assumed the character of a liturgical action, those who had been accustomed to preside over the Supper acquired a priestly character.
The elders who discharged the duty of overseeing in the assemblies of Christians were instituted by the Apostles as priests or bishops to provide for the necessary ordering of growing communities, not properly to perpetuate the Apostolic mission and power.
Marriage could not become a sacrament of the new law except later in the Church; since, in order that marriage be held as a sacrament, it was necessary that a full doctrine concerning grace and a theological explanation concerning the sacraments precede.
It was alien to the mind of Christ to constitute the Church as a society upon earth destined to endure through a long series of centuries; indeed, in the mind of Christ the kingdom of heaven together with the end of the world was about to come very soon.
The organic constitution of the Church is not immutable; but Christian society, just as human society, is subject to perpetual evolution.
Dogmas, sacraments, hierarchy, both as regards notion and as regards reality, are only interpretations and evolutions of Christian understanding, which by external increments increased and perfected the small germ hidden in the Gospel.
Simon Peter never even suspected that primacy in the Church had been entrusted to him by Christ.
The Roman Church became the head of all the Churches not by the ordination of divine providence, but from merely political conditions.
The Church shows herself hostile to the progress of the natural and theological sciences.
Truth is not immutable any more than man himself is, since it evolves with him, in him, and through him.
Christ did not teach a determinate body of doctrine applicable to all times and all men, but rather began a certain religious movement adapted or to be adapted to diverse times and places.
Christian doctrine in its beginnings was Judaic, but by successive evolutions became first Pauline, then Johannine, finally Hellenic and universal.
It can be said without paradox that no chapter of Scripture, from the first of Genesis to the last of the Apocalypse, contains doctrine entirely identical with that which the Church hands down on the same matter, and therefore that no chapter of Scripture has the same sense for the critic as for the theologian.
The principal articles of the Apostles' Creed did not have for Christians of the first times the same signification which they have for Christians of our time.
The Church shows herself unequal to effectively safeguarding evangelical ethics, because she obstinately adheres to immutable doctrines which cannot be reconciled with modern progress.
The progress of the sciences demands that the concepts of Christian doctrine concerning God, concerning Creation, concerning Revelation, concerning the Person of the Incarnate Word, and concerning Redemption be reformed.
Modern Catholicism cannot be reconciled with true science unless it is transformed into a certain non-dogmatic Christianity, that is, into broad and liberal Protestantism.
But on the following Thursday, the fourth day of the same month and year, after an accurate report concerning all these things had been made to our Most Holy Lord Pius, Pope X, His Holiness approved and confirmed the Decree of the Eminent Fathers, and ordered that all and each of the propositions reviewed above be held by all as rejected and proscribed."