nthropomorphic belief that the
universe was created for man. It opposed Darwin, and it did right, for
Darwinism tends to shatter our belief that man is an exceptional animal,
created expressly to be eternalized. And lastly, Pius IX., the first
Pontiff to be proclaimed infallible, declared that he was irreconcilable
with the so-called modern civilization. And he did right.

Loisy, the Catholic ex-abbe, said: "I say simply this, that the Church
and theology have not looked with favour upon the scientific movement,
and that on certain decisive occasions, so far as it lay in their power,
they have hindered it. I say, above all, that Catholic teaching has not
associated itself with, or accommodated itself to, this movement.
Theology has conducted itself, and conducts itself still, as if it were
self-possessed of a science of nature and a science of history,
together with that general philosophy of nature and history which
results from a scientific knowledge of them. It might be supposed that
the domain of theology and that of science, distinct in principle and
even as defined by the Vatican Council, must not be distinct in
practice. Everything proceeds almost as if theology had nothing to learn
from modern science, natural or historical, and as if by itself it had
the power and the right to exercise a direct and absolute control over
all the activities of the human mind" (_Autour d'un Petit Livre_, 1903,
p. 211).

And such must needs be, and such in fact is, the Church's attitude in
its struggle with Modernism, of which Loisy was the learned and leading
exponent.

The recent struggle against Kantian and fideist Modernism is a struggle
for life. Is it indeed possible for life, life that seeks assurance of
survival, to tolerate that a Loisy, a Catholic priest, should affirm
that the resurrection of the Saviour is not a fact of the historical
order, demonstrable and demonstrated by the testimony of history alone?
Read, moreover, the exposition of the central dogma, that of the
resurrection of Jesus, in E. Le Roy's excellent work, _Dogme et
Critique_, and tell me if any solid ground is left for our hope to build
on. Do not the Modernists see that the question at issue is not so much
that of the immortal life of Christ, reduced, perhaps, to a life in the
collective Christian consciousness, as that of a guarantee of our own
personal resurrection of body as well as soul? This new psychological
apologetic appeals to the moral mir