Joseph Ratzinger in 1990: Church’s Anti-Modernist Teachings Have Been ‘Superseded’

Talk about Modernism…

Joseph Ratzinger in 1990:
Church’s Anti-Modernist Teachings Have Been ‘Superseded’

‘Cardinal’ Joseph Ratzinger presenting the new instruction on the role of theologians at the Vatican on June 26, 1990
(image: Associated Press/Massimo Sambucetti)

On June 26, 1990, the Vatican released a 27-page “Instruction on the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian” bearing the official title Donum Veritatis (“The Gift of Truth”). It is available on the Vatican web site in English and sundry other languages:

• Instruction Donum Veritatis on the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian (May 24, 1990)

The text was presented at a press conference by then-‘Cardinal’ Joseph Ratzinger (1927-2022), who at the time was head of the so-called Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under ‘Pope’ John Paul II (r. 1978-2005). Although officially dated May 24, 1990, the document was not published until a month later. It came with the full approval of John Paul, who ordered its publication.

The instruction has been widely seen as a conservative document that defends cracking down on dissenting theologians. In fact, it came in response to the so-called ‘Cologne Declaration’ of 1989, which was signed by over 220 progressivist ‘Catholic’ theology professors from Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and the Netherlands (full German text here). In essence, these men were complaining that authority in the Church was too centralized, that theologians did not enjoy enough academic ‘freedom’, that the rights of local churches were not being respected with regard to the selection of bishops, that the Church was claiming authority on issues outside her competence, and that individual conscience was being made subject to the papal magisterium. Among the signatories were prominent names such as Fr. Bernhard Häring (1912-1998), Fr. Peter Hünermann (1929-2025), Fr. Hans Küng (1928-2021), and Fr. Johann Baptist Metz (1928-2019).

Against these voices, the Neo-Modernist Ratzinger in charge of the Vatican’s doctrinal office looked like an ultra-conservative bulldog by comparison. He was nothing of the sort, however, and his own remarks made at the press conference introducing Donum Veritatis demonstrate it.

Ratzinger’s presentation of the instruction Donum Veritatis was printed in full in the July 2, 1990 English edition of Osservatore Romano, the Vatican’s own newspaper. It is from that source we will now quote.

The English Osservatore Romano printed the text of Ratzinger’s remarks at the press briefing

Ratzinger’s Distortions

The Vatican’s ‘watchdog of orthodoxy’ said:

The text [of the instruction] also offers different forms of binding which arise from different levels of magisterial teaching. It states — perhaps for the first time with such clarity — that there are magisterial decisions which cannot be and are not intended to be the last word on the matter as such, but are a substantial anchorage in the problem and are first and foremost an expression of pastoral prudence, a sort of provisional disposition. Their core remains valid, but the individual details influenced by the circumstances at the time may need further rectification. In this regard one can refer to the statements of the Popes during the last century on religious freedom as well as the anti-modernistic decisions at the beginning of this century, especially the decisions of the Biblical Commission of that time. As a warning cry against hasty and superficial adaptations they remain fully justified; a person of the stature of Johann Baptist Metz has said, for example, that the antimodernist decisions of the Church rendered a great service in keeping her from sinking into the liberal-bourgeois world. But the details of the determinations of their contents were later superceded once they had carried out their pastoral duty at a particular moment.

(Joseph Ratzinger at Vatican press conference of June 26, 1990; printed in “Theology is not private idea of theologian”, Osservatore Romano, n. 27/1147 [July 2, 1990], p. 5.)

What the prefect of the Congregation for the Destruction of the Faith says there is not entirely wrong, of course, but that makes his comments only more dangerous.

It is certainly true that the Church’s magisterium can and often does express itself in ways that are not meant to be definitive. Such non-definitive judgments may be, in a sense, provisional, and the magisterium could revise them in the future. They are nevertheless binding in the meantime and always spiritually safe; and they must be assented to in a spirit of genuine obedience:

• The Binding Force of Papal Teaching: A Pre-Vatican II Theologian Explains
• What Are Catholics Bound to Believe?
• Do Catholics Have to Assent to Non-Infallible Church Teaching?
• Could Non-Infallible Papal Teaching Be Heretical?
• Can we reject Magisterial Teaching if it wasn’t believed Always, Everywhere, and by All?

In his presentation, Ratzinger is trying to have it both ways. He knows he cannot plainly reject the anti-Modernist and anti-Liberal teachings of the Popes of the 19th and 20th centuries — especially not in a press conference that condemns theological dissent against papal teaching — but he also knows he cannot concede that the magisterial condemnations of Modernism and Liberalism are still in force, since he himself does not adhere to them. Besides, the entire Vatican II Church would expose itself as a counterfeit if it told people to adhere to the magisterium of Popes Gregory XVI, Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Benedict XV, Pius XI, and Pius XII.

So, what does Ratzinger do? He tries to find a way that allows him to say that the teachings and condemnations of these Popes remain true and valid in some way but not in such a way that we must still adhere to them today (ha!). And thus he pays lip service to them, lauding them as “a substantial anchorage” whose “core remains valid”, while at the same time reducing them to a mere matter of “pastoral prudence”, a “provisional disposition”. This way he appears to affirm the decrees and teachings in theory while at the same time taking away their concrete, practical force.

The Real Magisterium Speaks

When one reviews the actual teachings of the Popes concerning these matters, however, one senses immediately that in no wise are they being given provisionally as a matter of mere prudence. Rather, the Popes make clear that the errors being condemned are subversive of the very foundations of the Catholic religion, spell the ruin of the social order, or present grave dangers to the salvation of souls in some other way.

Let’s look at some examples.

In his landmark encyclical against Liberalism, issued in 1831, Pope Gregory XVI denounces a number of grave errors, among them Indifferentism and freedom of conscience:

Now We consider another abundant source of the evils with which the Church is afflicted at present: indifferentism. This perverse opinion is spread on all sides by the fraud of the wicked who claim that it is possible to obtain the eternal salvation of the soul by the profession of any kind of religion, as long as morality is maintained. Surely, in so clear a matter, you will drive this deadly error far from the people committed to your care. With the admonition of the apostle that “there is one God, one faith, one baptism” [Eph 4:5] may those fear who contrive the notion that the safe harbor of salvation is open to persons of any religion whatever. They should consider the testimony of Christ Himself that “those who are not with Christ are against Him” [Lk 11:23], and that they disperse unhappily who do not gather with Him. …

This shameful font of indifferentism gives rise to that absurd and erroneous proposition which claims that liberty of conscience must be maintained for everyone. It spreads ruin in sacred and civil affairs, though some repeat over and over again with the greatest impudence that some advantage accrues to religion from it. “But the death of the soul is worse than freedom of error,” as Augustine was wont to say. When all restraints are removed by which men are kept on the narrow path of truth, their nature, which is already inclined to evil, propels them to ruin. Then truly “the bottomless pit” [Apoc 9:3] is open from which John saw smoke ascending which obscured the sun, and out of which locusts flew forth to devastate the earth. Thence comes transformation of minds, corruption of youths, contempt of sacred things and holy laws — in other words, a pestilence more deadly to the state than any other. Experience shows, even from earliest times, that cities renowned for wealth, dominion, and glory perished as a result of this single evil, namely immoderate freedom of opinion, license of free speech, and desire for novelty.

(Pope Gregory XVI, Encyclical Mirari Vos, nn. 13-14; italics and bold print given.)

Pope Gregory’s successor, Pius IX, issued the encyclical Quanta Cura in 1864 and appended to it a list of 80 specific errors he was condemning. Note the language he uses, which leaves no doubt about the errors being contrary to Catholic truth and detrimental to souls:

…Our Predecessors, asserters of justice, being especially anxious for the salvation of souls, had nothing ever more at heart than by their most wise Letters and Constitutions to unveil and condemn all those heresies and errors which, being adverse to our Divine Faith, to the doctrine of the Catholic Church, to purity of morals, and to the eternal salvation of men, have frequently excited violent tempests, and have miserably afflicted both Church and State. For which cause the same Our Predecessors, have, with Apostolic fortitude, constantly resisted the nefarious enterprises of wicked men, who, like raging waves of the sea foaming out their own confusion, and promising liberty whereas they are the slaves of corruption, have striven by their deceptive opinions and most pernicious writings to raze the foundations of the Catholic religion and of civil society, to remove from among men all virtue and justice, to deprave persons, and especially inexperienced youth, to lead it into the snares of error, and at length to tear it from the bosom of the Catholic Church.

But now, as is well known to you, Venerable Brethren, already, scarcely had we been elevated to this Chair of Peter (by the hidden counsel of Divine Providence, certainly by no merit of our own), when, seeing with the greatest grief of Our soul a truly awful storm excited by so many evil opinions, and (seeing also) the most grievous calamities never sufficiently to be deplored which overspread the Christian people from so many errors, according to the duty of Our Apostolic Ministry, and following the illustrious example of Our Predecessors, We raised Our voice, and in many published Encyclical Letters and Allocutions delivered in Consistory, and other Apostolic Letters, we condemned the chief errors of this most unhappy age, and we excited your admirable episcopal vigilance, and we again and again admonished and exhorted all sons of the Catholic Church, to us most dear, that they should altogether abhor and flee from the contagion of so dire a pestilence. And especially in our first Encyclical Letter written to you on Nov. 9, 1846, and in two Allocutions delivered by us in Consistory, the one on Dec. 9, 1854, and the other on June 9, 1862, we condemned the monstrous portents of opinion which prevail especially in this age, bringing with them the greatest loss of souls and detriment of civil society itself; which are grievously opposed also, not only to the Catholic Church and her salutary doctrine and venerable rights, but also to the eternal natural law engraven by God in all men’s hearts, and to right reason; and from which almost all other errors have their origin.

But, although we have not omitted often to proscribe and reprobate the chief errors of this kind, yet the cause of the Catholic Church, and the salvation of souls entrusted to us by God, and the welfare of human society itself, altogether demand that we again stir up your pastoral solicitude to exterminate other evil opinions, which spring forth from the said errors as from a fountain. Which false and perverse opinions are on that ground the more to be detested, because they chiefly tend to this, that that salutary influence be impeded and (even) removed, which the Catholic Church, according to the institution and command of her Divine Author, should freely exercise even to the end of the world — not only over private individuals, but over nations, peoples, and their sovereign princes; and (tend also) to take away that mutual fellowship and concord of counsels between Church and State which has ever proved itself propitious and salutary, both for religious and civil interests.

For you well know, venerable brethren, that at this time men are found not a few who, applying to civil society the impious and absurd principle of “naturalism,” as they call it, dare to teach that “the best constitution of public society and (also) civil progress altogether require that human society be conducted and governed without regard being had to religion any more than if it did not exist; or, at least, without any distinction being made between the true religion and false ones.” And, against the doctrine of Scripture, of the Church, and of the Holy Fathers, they do not hesitate to assert that “that is the best condition of civil society, in which no duty is recognized, as attached to the civil power, of restraining by enacted penalties, offenders against the Catholic religion, except so far as public peace may require.” From which totally false idea of social government they do not fear to foster that erroneous opinion, most fatal in its effects on the Catholic Church and the salvation of souls, called by Our Predecessor, Gregory XVI, an “insanity,” viz., that “liberty of conscience and worship is each man’s personal right, which ought to be legally proclaimed and asserted in every rightly constituted society; and that a right resides in the citizens to an absolute liberty, which should be restrained by no authority whether ecclesiastical or civil, whereby they may be able openly and publicly to manifest and declare any of their ideas whatever, either by word of mouth, by the press, or in any other way.” But, while they rashly affirm this, they do not think and consider that they are preaching “liberty of perdition;” and that “if human arguments are always allowed free room for discussion, there will never be wanting men who will dare to resist truth, and to trust in the flowing speech of human wisdom; whereas we know, from the very teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ, how carefully Christian faith and wisdom should avoid this most injurious babbling.”

(Pope Pius IX, Encyclical Quanta Cura, nn. 1-3. The full list of specific errors is found in the Syllabus of Errors here.)

Pope St. Pius X, too, published a syllabus, listing the chief errors of Modernism. In 1907, he released the decree Lamentabili Sane, in which he denounced 65 propositions as “very serious errors”.

About two months after the publication of the Anti-Modernist Syllabus, St. Pius X released the encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis to explain, refute, and utterly condemn the Modernist system. Indeed, the sainted pontiff identified Modernism as the very “synthesis of all heresies”. In fact, he pointed out that if one were “to attempt the task of collecting together all the errors that have been broached against the faith and to concentrate into one the sap and substance of them all, he could not succeed in doing so better than the Modernists have done. Nay, they have gone farther than this, for, as We have already intimated, their system means the destruction not of the Catholic religion alone, but of all religion” (Encyclical Pascendi, n. 39).

Pope Pius X was not merely a man of words but also of action. He understood how dangerous and clever the Modernists were and that it would require more than publishing documents to root out this synthesis of all heresies:

But of what avail, Venerable Brethren, will be all Our commands and prescriptions if they be not dutifully and firmly carried out? In order that this may be done it has seemed expedient to us to extend to all dioceses the regulations which the Bishops of Umbria, with great wisdom, laid down for theirs many years ago. “In order,” they say, ”to extirpate the errors already propagated and to prevent their further diffusion, and to remove those teachers of impiety through whom the pernicious effects of such diffusion are being perpetuated, this sacred Assembly, following the example of St. Charles Borromeo, has decided to establish in each of the dioceses a Council consisting of approved members of both branches of the clergy, which shall be charged with the task of noting the existence of errors and the devices by which new ones are introduced and propagated, and to inform the Bishop of the whole, so that he may take counsel with them as to the best means for suppressing the evil at the outset and preventing it spreading for the ruin of souls or, worse still, gaining strength and growth” [Acts of the Congress of the Bishops of Umbria, November, 1849]. We decree, therefore, that in every diocese a council of this kind, which We are pleased to name the “Council of Vigilance,” be instituted without delay.

(Pope St. Pius X, Encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis, n. 55)

Shortly after the release of his Anti-Modernist Syllabus, the same Holy Father decreed the penalty of excommunication for anyone who would contradict it, that is, for those who would espouse any of the condemned errors:

Moreover, in order to check the daily increasing audacity of many modernists who are endeavoring by all kinds of sophistry and devices to detract from the force and efficacy not only of the decree “Lamentabili sane exitu” (the so-called Syllabus), issued by our order by the Holy Roman and Universal Inquisition on July 3 of the present year, but also of our encyclical letters “Pascendi dominici gregis” given on September 8 of this same year, we do by our apostolic authority repeat and confirm both that decree of the Supreme Sacred Congregation and those encyclical letters of ours, adding the penalty of excommunication against their contradictors, and this we declare and decree that should anybody, which may God forbid, be so rash as to defend any one of the propositions, opinions or teachings condemned in these documents he falls, ipso facto, under the censure contained under the chapter “Docentes” of the constitution “Apostolicae Sedis”, which is the first among the excommunications latae sententiae [=automatic], simply reserved to the Roman Pontiff. This excommunication is to be understood as salvis poenis, which may be incurred by those who have violated in any way the said documents, as propagators and defenders of heresies, when their propositions, opinions and teachings are heretical, as has happened more than once in the case of the adversaries of both these documents, especially when they advocate the errors of the modernists that is, the synthesis of all heresies.

(Pope St. Pius X, Motu Proprio Apostolic Letter Praestantia Scripturae; italics added.)

Does any of the above sound like the Popes were merely making “magisterial decisions which cannot be and are not intended to be the last word on the matter as such, but are a substantial anchorage in the problem and are first and foremost an expression of pastoral prudence, a sort of provisional disposition”, as Ratzinger would have it?

In fact, on Sep. 1, 1910, Pope St. Pius X instituted yet another device to combat Modernism: He required “all clergy, pastors, confessors, preachers, religious superiors, and professors in philosophical-theological seminaries” to swear an oath that they reject the Modernist errors and “submit and adhere with [their] whole heart to the condemnations, declarations, and all the prescripts contained in the encyclical Pascendi and in the decree Lamentabili…” (Oath Against Modernism; part of the Motu Proprio Apostolic Letter Sacrorum Antistitum)

Making clergy and teachers swear before God that they reject the errors of Modernism and adhere to the contrary teachings — is that a measure the Pope would take to uphold something that is merely a provisional pastoral action and that could be “superseded” before long?

Temporary Measures to Uphold Eternal Truths

It is true that certain disciplinary means related to the condemnation of these errors, such as the institution of the Oath Against Modernism or the setting up of diocesan vigilance committees, were temporary or provisional in nature. However, this fact does not help Ratzinger in the least, for it is not his position that some disciplinary means once deemed necessary or useful in combatting the errors of Modernism and Liberalism are no longer needed or effective today; rather, his position is that the very errors these means sought to combat can no longer be considered errors. In other words, according to the man who went on to become the false pope Benedict XVI, it is their condemnation that has been superseded, not the disciplinary means used to ensure the errors weren’t actually held or wouldn’t spread.

Shortly before the 1917 Code of Canon Law was to go into effect on May 19, 1918, the Holy Office under Pope Benedict XV was asked whether Pope St. Pius X’s prescriptions regarding the Oath Against Modernism and diocesan vigilance councils would still remain in force, as these found no mention in the Code. The Holy Office, with the explicit approval of Pope Benedict, replied:

The question arose whether the prescriptions regarding the Council of Vigilance and the oath against Modernism, contained respectively in the Constitution of Pius X, Pascendi, of 8 Sept., 1907, and in the Motu proprio of Pius X, Sacrorum antistitum, of 1 Sept., 1910, were to remain in effect after the [1917] Code [of Canon Law], in view of canon 6, 6°, and in view of the fact that they are nowhere mentioned in the Code.

The Holy Office, on 22 Mar., 1918, declared that the aforesaid prescriptions, which were enacted on account of the current Modernistic errors, are not mentioned in the Code because they are of their nature temporary and transitory; but that, since the virus of Modernism has not ceased to spread, those prescriptions must remain in full force until the Holy See decrees otherwise.

The above Decree was approved and confirmed by His Holiness.

(T. Lincoln Bouscaren, S.J., ed., The Canon Law Digest, vol. I [Milwaukee, IL: The Bruce Publishing Company, 1934], pp. 50-51)

Note well, then: The specific disciplinary prescriptions that were instituted to help combat the errors of Modernism “are of their nature temporary and transitory” and can be revoked — not, however, the Church’s opposition to Modernism itself. What methods the Church deems useful or appropriate for ensuring that Modernism does not creep into or spread inside the Church is one thing; that Modernism is indeed heretical and subversive of the Catholic religion is another.

If anything, these transitory disciplinary directives underscore the fact that the anti-Modernist teachings of the Popes were not merely a provisional appeal for caution but touched upon the very foundations of the Catholic Faith — hence the need for special measures to ensure orthodoxy!

It seems that Ratzinger simply tried to justify his own rejection of the pre-Vatican II magisterium regarding Modernism and Liberalism since he himself was a Modernist and a Liberal (we recall here that his second doctoral dissertation, submitted in 1956, was at first rejected for Modernism!).

Ratzinger’s Argumentation Has Consequences

But let’s use Ratzinger’s logic and apply it — why not? — to the dogma of Transubstantiation. What’s to keep ‘Cardinal’ Victor Manuel Fernandez, the current prefect of the Vatican’s doctrinal dicastery, from declaring that the Council of Trent’s anathemas were true and valid only for the time in which they were pronounced, which was the period of the Counter-Reformation; but now, in the era of ecumenism, interreligious dialogue, and human fraternity, they have been superseded and cannot be taken literally? Their “core remains valid”, you see, insofar as they serve as a prudent warning against new theories proposed without sufficient justification. At the end of the day, however, Trent really only meant to affirm that Christ is present in the Holy Eucharist. The theological details regarding Transubstantiation were merely historically conditioned accidents — no pun intended — of the teaching and do not pertain to its “core”. Such would be utter nonsense, of course, but is this not precisely the argumentation used by Ratzinger in his 1990 press conference introducing Donum Veritatis?

Our concern here is not unreasonable. In fact, the argumentation we just made regarding Trent is more or less what some in the Vatican II Church have been saying already! For instance, the Jesuit Modernist Thomas Reese and the ‘conservative’ Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller are ultimately saying or implying the same thing. As for Ratzinger himself, who knows what he believed about Transubstantiation.

Although a member of the Novus Ordo Church, the historian Fr. Georg May once provided an excellent description of the error Ratzinger put forward in his presentation on the ecclesial vocation of the theologian. It is called ‘Historicism’:

A typical Modernist error is the talk about the historicity of truth. By this is not meant the (explicative) development of dogma which is guided by the Holy Ghost, but the abandonment or redefinition of dogmas. The binding (and unchanging) faith of the Church is passed off as the product of a historical period which has been overcome, and thus the faith has to adapt itself to the changed social conditions. The standard for modifying what is preached is to be the spirit of the age (Zeitgeist). The thesis about the historicity of truth provides the apparent basis for reformulating the truths of the Christian faith, to make them “acceptable” to contemporaries. One speaks so much about the [historical] circumstances of a [dogmatic] definition and the changed conditions until the original sense of a dogma is no longer recognizable. An example of this mode of procedure is the constantly repeated attacks against the sacrosanct term of Transubstantiation.

(Fr. Georg May, 300 Jahre gläubige und ungläubige Theologie [Bobingen: Sarto Verlag, 2017], p. 913; our translation; underlining added.)

Lastly, we should not fail to recall that until the death of Pope Pius XII in 1958, there was no inkling that the magisterial condemnations of Liberalism and Modernism had lost any of their validity, truth, or relevance. Nor were they considered merely provisional and time-conditioned. And yet, people like Joseph Ratzinger want us to believe that a mere seven years later, they were all “superseded” by the Second Vatican Council (1962-65).

If anything, the idea that the Church’s anti-Modernist teachings could be obsolete and superseded exemplifies the very Modernism the Catholic Church has condemned.

Title image: Associated Press (Massimo Sambucetti)
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