REFLECTIONS ON Fundamentalism: "MODERNISTS TRY TO PRESENT THE HIGH PONTIFF AS IF HE WERE ONE OF THEM"

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With the current Pope, the modernists have changed tactics. Having seen that insults and ridicule do not serve to correct the Popes, now they resort to equally blatant flattery, to present the Pope as one of them, taking advantage of some of his gestures, acts or words, which can lend themselves to misunderstanding or be misinterpreted, while the Pope does not seem to take care to remove the misunderstandings, so that the bad interpretations are immediately spread all over the world […] In my view, the Holy Father is too severe towards i traditionalists and too lenient towards i modernists. In doing so it lacks that impartiality, which suits him as the fulcrum of ecclesial communion […]

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Occasionally in literature and publications Catholic still appears today the relief or accusation of "fundamentalism", as a moral or religious defect, as well as an outdated exegetical method. This accusation is usually launched against backward and stagnant environments, by those Catholics, who want to be advanced and faithful to the Church of our time.

This term it is also used by modernists, to denote with contempt the Catholics firm and steadfast in their convictions, fighters, attached to dogma and enemies of heresies. They can be Catholic or more tradition-oriented, like the Servant of God Tomas Tyn [cf. WHO], or more open to progress, come Jacques Maritain. The disciples of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre are also the subject of these attacks.

On the lips of the modernists, so it happens that even good Catholics are accused of fundamentalism, and are united with the Lefebvrians, because both admit the eternity and immutability of truth, unlike the modernists, which, as St. Pius X already noted with disdain when writing:

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“They are truly blind and leaders of the blind, that, swollen with the proud name of science, raving to the point of perverting the eternal concept of truth " [Feeding of Dominic's Sheep, n.20].

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Of the term "fundamentalism" thus took over modernists, to oppose not only the Lefebvrians, but also to all good Catholics, faithful to the Pope, to the Second Vatican Council and to the Magisterium of the Church. For the modernist, the charge of fundamentalism is infamous, disqualifying and is a condemnation without appeal.

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We converse with the atheist, with the Muslim, with the communist, with the mafia, with the Freemason, with the Buddhist, but not with the fundamentalist. The modernists did not hesitate to accuse even the post-conciliar Popes of fundamentalism, up to a great Pope and progressive theologian like Benedict XVI, which however reminded us of the existence of "non-negotiable values". So still a fundamentalist.

With the current Pope modernists have changed tactics. Having seen that insults and ridicule do not serve to correct the Popes, now they resort to equally blatant flattery, to present the Pope as one of them, taking advantage of some of his gestures, acts or words, which can lend themselves to misunderstanding or be misinterpreted, while the Pope does not seem to take care to remove the misunderstandings, so that the bad interpretations are immediately spread all over the world, with the consequence that the furrow that divides the modernists from the Lefebvrians is deepening.

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It would be necessary that the Pope would do more for reconciliation in the Church. No one other than him has the capacity from God, the authority and power on earth to restore unity, safeguard unity, defend unity, foster and promote unity. One of the purposes of the Council was to rebuild the harmony between the divided and separated brothers. Instead, after fifty years of ecumenism and pastoral initiatives, not only has unity among Christians not been restored, but the Church has never been so divided internally. Concord is found on the basis of the unity of faith in Christ. He is the "cornerstone" [Ef 2,20: The Pt 2, 6-7], the "rock" [The Cor 10,4], the "foundation" [II Tm 2,19], on which it is necessary to rely [cf Col 2,7] and it is necessary to build.

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It is therefore supremely up to Peter [Mt 16, 18], that is to the Pope, "Lay the foundation" [The Cor 3,10-11], so that the disciples of the Lord are "founded in faith" [With the 1,23]. It is up to the Pope to call to himself, that is to Christ, lost children and lost men in the shadows of death. Nobody can take his place. Indeed, «when the foundations are shaken, what the right can do?» [Shall 11,2]. If the Pope does not intervene, who can replace it? Mons. Lefebvre? Luther? Rahner?

The Pope is also the good shepherd who goes in search of the lost sheep, having compassion for the lost crowds and without a shepherd, leads the flock to fertile pastures and defends it from wolves. As Vicar of Christ, the Pope is the foundation of the Church, it is a fundamental point of support. When the foundations are shaken, like today, with satanic powers; it's up to him, with the power of the Holy Spirit, strengthen them and defend the Church from the powers of evil.

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In my view, the Holy Father is too severe towards traditionalists and too indulgent towards modernists. In doing so it lacks that impartiality, which suits him as the fulcrum of ecclesial communion, and that would allow it to operate effectively, as it is up to him, for a rapprochement between the two trends, linking together the qualities of each: the tradition of the traditionalists and the progress of the modernists. In this way it would be realized, in Catholic unity, the very happy formula of Benedict XVI: "Progress in continuity".

"Fundamentalism", by itself, it's a nice word, which means love for the ground. A firm and sure foundation is very important in life and in thought. We need to lean on a foundation. All the great philosophers have always sought the principle or foundation of being, of thought and action. However, this foundation must be authentic and distinct from what is not or is no longer so. Here a problem arises, linked to the historical origin of the term. In fact, it originally designates an American Protestant sect, born in the 19th century, but she saw in the Bible the revealed foundation of doctrine and morals, the "foundation of faith", but with a rigid attitude, naive, uncritical and a-historical, led to consider as the Word of God and as absolute moral principles, also many ideas, institutions, mores, laws, overcome; or names, facts or stories of Scripture, without historical foundation or scientific reliability.

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The fundamentalists they realized that the Bible is a fundamental value for life and salvation, universal, Permanent, essential and indispensable. This they sought in the Bible and, at the bottom of, rightly. But they also exaggerated in absolutizing many forms of expression, ways of thinking, historical contexts, human situations, political systems, judicial practices, mentality, local uses, primitive conceptions, genealogy, popular traditions and prejudices, artistic forms, archaic myths, geographic news, religious symbols, which in reality had nothing to do with divine Revelation, but they were only the contingent and transient mark and imprint of the human author, which God used to communicate his Truth. They entered into controversy with those liberal and rationalist Protestant exegetes, who used the new biblical sciences to question, relativize or deny those Catholic dogmas, which Luther had kept, like the Trinity, the Incarnation, the miracles of Christ, the atoning Redemption, the existence of the devil, the resurrection, the end of the world and the universal judgment. The same Catholic exegesis of the past, one could say since the early centuries, did not go exempt, until the Second Vatican Council, from this trend, that today we call "fundamentalist". This is why this way of commenting on Scripture was considered "traditional" and, therefore, untouchable.

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The modernist phenomenon of the times of St. Pius X one of his demands was that of a renewal of biblical exegesis, inspired by the progress made by the biblical sciences in Germany in the nineteenth century. But the problem was that these advances were used either in the interest of Protestantism or to give a hand to rationalism; so the modernists were unable to separate those exegetical methods from erroneous conceptions, to which they were related. Hence the condemnation of the modernist proposal, to be understood, But, not as it refers to the new biblical sciences, but as it is invalidated, as noted by St. Pius X, from an "agnostic criticism, immanentist, evolutionist" [cf. Feeding of Dominic's Sheep, n.66].

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In this very difficult and intricate situation, and distinguished, But, on initiative, courage, perseverance and wisdom, the learned and holy French Dominican exegete, the Servant of God Father Marie-Joseph Lagrange, founder of the Biblical School of Jerusalem. He took the Fathers as a model of Bible commentators, the Doctors and St. Thomas for the spiritual and dogmatic aspect, and modern historical-critical methods, for the scientific aspect. We owe him the amendment of the modernist proposal, so as to make it compatible with the doctrine of the faith, so that Catholic exegesis could begin, in a difficult relationship with the Biblical Commission, founded by San Pio X, a prudent assumption of modern exegetical methods, without the risk of making mistakes. However, only with the Second Vatican Council, in particular in the Dogmatic Constitution God's word, the Church has fully welcomed Father Lagrange's project and satisfied what was acceptable in the instance of the modernists, avoiding Protestant and rationalist contaminations. At the same time, persistence has begun to be called "fundamentalism", from certain parts, of the old exegesis.

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Thus the Church once again demonstrated the compatibility of science with faith. To tell the truth, even the liberal exegetes, with their scientific approach to Scripture, they wanted to prove the same thing, against Luther himself, famously convinced that reason is opposed to faith. Except that the liberal Protestants were infected with a Kantian conception, positivist and historicist of reason and science, and this serious ball and chain led them to disregard or ignore the divine foundations of faith, that were important to the fundamentalists, but above all to the Catholic Church itself, far better equipped than the fundamentalists in terms of tradition, and of philosophical and theological wisdom.

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Fundamentalism it was basically a reference to the Sacred Tradition, in itself right. Ma, since he was not guided and enlightened by the Magisterium of the Church, supreme and infallible guardian of Tradition, it ended in a blocked and sterile conservatism. Fundamentalism is a form of traditionalism different from the Lefevrian and the Tynian ones [CF. G. Horses, Tomas Tyn. A post-conciliar traditionalist, Faith&Culture, Verona 2007]. It deals with, substantially, of a Protestant movement, with the characteristic flaws of Protestantism. Vice versa, Lefebvrism is a Catholic movement, even if hostile to the Second Vatican Council and not in full communion with the Church. Instead, Father Tyn's traditionalism respects the right sense of tradition with full obedience to the doctrines of the Second Vatican Council.

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Another factor of the momentum, that borders on aggression, of fundamentalism, it is an authentic value in itself, but badly set up or experienced, that is, it is the iron conviction that everyone must embrace, by love or by force, our faith, being the real one. This principle is particularly accentuated in Islam, less evident in Hinduism, in Buddhism and Judaism.

Christianity, instead, wisely accompanies an articulate one, delicate and accurate work of persuasion with the charitable warning of the divine punishment of the otherworldly in case of refusal. For its safety and rigidity, which tends to fanaticism, fundamentalism pushes, in conduct towards opponents, to acts of violence and intolerance, that can come, in extreme cases, for example in Islam, up to terrorism.

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Fundamentalism, unfortunately also present in the Church, it generates dire consequences in the moral field, and in civil and ecclesial relationships and coexistence. On the one hand, it maintains undoubted fundamental values, such as religious piety, love for the Bible, the liturgy, the Onesti, the family, social and work commitment, But, on the other, being the fundamentalist convinced that he has always God with himself or on his side - error, this, typical of Protestantism and all heretics -, he is inclined to support his ideas, perhaps purely questionable or even wrong, always in an absolutist way, peremptory, aggressive, he admits no objections and is deaf to any refutation. Mistakes rigidity for fidelity to truth and flexibility for yielding to error. For him the different is not a value to be respected, but an enemy to fight. He does not accept uncertainty and always wants to show maximum safety. In fact, he is convinced that his word coincides with the very Word of God, as well as in the Bible, under the pretext of inenarrangement, it does not distinguish the true Word of God from the limitations and errors of the hagiographer. He is on the side of good; whoever contradicts him is on the side of evil. And since there is no mediation between good and evil, ends up despising, as inconsistent people, opportunists and doubles, not just the open opponent, ie the modernist, but also those kind people, peaceful and wise, that, knowing that at the center of power and therefore rejecting the opposite extremisms, they keep, although they are the object of contempt by the extremes, in an intermediate or synthetic position, as peace mediators, promoters of dialogue and links, and advocates of conciliatory balance.

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The rest, the mindset of the modernist it's the same, even if of opposite sign; he is on the side of good; anyone is anti-modernist, either with the Council or against the Council it does not matter, is on the side of evil. So, even the modernist does not recognize any mediating ecclesial formation between him and Lefebvrism, faithful to the Magisterium, as is that of true Catholics.

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Due to the rebirth of modernism after the Council, the term "fundamentalism" has begun to have two meanings: one, to signify this persistence of the old exegesis and a stale traditionalism, tough and aggressive. And this is the language we find in the Magisterium. We find this meaning of the term, for instance, in a document of the Biblical Commission of 1993, "The interpretation of the Bible in the Church", who devotes a paragraph to the theme [pp. 62-65]. It deals with, in essence, as it is said on p. 100, of a "confusion of the human with the divine, for which the contingent aspects of human expressions are also considered as revealed truth ". We find it, for instance, in these words of the Pope in the interview with 30 last November released during the flight that brought him back to Rome from Africa:

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“We Catholics have some, not some, many, who believe they have the absolute truth and go on dirtying others with slander, with defamation, and they hurt, they hurt. And I say this because it is my Church, we too, everyone! And you have to fight. Religious fundamentalism is not religious. Because? Because God is missing. It is idolatrous, how idolatrous money is. Doing politics in the sense of convincing these people that they have this tendency, it is a policy that we religious leaders must do. But the fundamentalism that always ends in a tragedy or in crimes, it's a bad thing, but there is a little bit of it in all religions ".

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The other sense is what I have already explained, used by modernists to attack the anti-modernism of both Catholics and Lefevrians. From these considerations we see how the term "fundamentalism" has become ambiguous. The sense in which the Pope uses it is not that used by the modernists, to attack Catholics and Lefevrians. It is possible that modernists believe that the Pope uses the term in their own sense. Poor deluded! And we do not think with the Lefevrians that the Pope is a modernist. Let's put our hearts in peace: is a "Catholic" Pope.

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It is therefore necessary to be very careful in using the term and in discerning, when we hear it from others, in order not to take the whistle for flasks in a very important theme of our life of faith and of the Church.

Varazze, 19 January 2016

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