Vincent Zapletal and the Question of the Modernization Strategies in the Catholic Church at the Beginning of the 20th Century

Vincent Zapletal and the Question of the Modernization Strategies in the Catholic Church at the Beginning of the 20th Century Tomáš Petráček KEY WORDS: modernisation— modernist crisis— secularisation— catholic church INTRODUCTION The concepts of the modernization of society or the state are large themes of social history, which have undergone an enthusiastic conjuncture as well as subsequent critique and revision of the created models.1 With an awareness of the limits of these concepts, they can provide auseful interpretational framework for an explication of the historical processes. Within social history, the process of modernization represents agreat challenge also for the European Churches, not only as aprocess influencing the form of the external framework of their activities, something with which they had to come to terms, which reshaped the milieu of their existence, but also fundamentally touches their internal life and development, because it forced them to endeavour for their own modernization and adaption. The most important problems of the development of religious society are the moments of development, changes, i.e. the questions of continuity and discontinuity.2 For the emphasis of their credibility and authority, the relevant religious tradition usually stresses its stability and inalterability given by the declared divine origin of its teaching and its perfection, authenticity and completeness. At the same time, the transformations of the forms of religious practices, institutions and formulations of doctrine are inevitable, and their success or failure depends on the viability of agiven tradition. The Catholic Church has experienced several paradigm shifts, mainly successful, because it was therefore able to develop and acquire the religious, cultural and symbolic dominance typical of the late ancient and medieval periods. However, the situation changed in the 16th century, when by the influence of anumber of effects of confessional intolerance and the closed nature of the ecclesiastical elite it lost its innovative ability and power to create aunified cultural and civilizational framework 1 See Lucie Storchová et al., Koncepty adějiny. Proměny pojmů vsoučasné historické vědě, Prague 2014, pp.258–268. 2 See David G.Shultenover, Vatican II. Did Anything Happen?, New York— London— New Delphi— Sydney 2007, or Massimo Faggioli, Vatican II. The Battle for Meaning, New York— Mahwah— New Jersey 2012. OPEN ACCESS 8 WISOHIM/ESHP 29 and lead the society in terms of culture and civilization, saturate its needs with sense and stimulate its development.3 Western civilization has gradually created an alternative value framework and substitute religions and the process of the secularization of Western society came out fully already during the French Revolution, the first attempt for astate-led dechristianization of the entirety of asingle European country. The Catholic Church realized its changed position, but the traumatic shock of the revolution and the subsequent changes did not allow it to adopt adifferentiated position to the ideas of modernity. We speak of the time of Popes Pius’s era of the lasting uncompromising struggle against the development of Western society, massively undergoing secularization etc. After the French Revolution, Christianity as areligion and value system was losing its position, which strengthened the trend of its marginalization, since it lacked the abilities, talents and energy of those who left the original tradition.4 Inside the Church itself, many endeavours for achange of the approach appeared, among the most significant was the birth of Liberal Catholicism at the end of the 1820s, the efforts for ecclesiastical reform around the revolutionary year of 1848 in anumber of countries or the attempts for new theological schools, but precisely so is their suppression symptomatic and the repeated victory of the strategy of uncompromising confrontation with modernity, the peak of which is the declaration of the dogmas on the universal jurisdiction primacy of the pope and papal infallibility at the First Vatican Council of 1870. The phenomenon of the so-called modernist crisis of the first decades of the 20th century is one of these unsuccessful attempts to change the paradigm.5 In traditional Catholic historiography, it is presented in the language of the victors as an attempt by the priests, who had lost the real faith, to infiltrate the heretical liberal and rationalistic ideas inside ecclesiastical society and its teachings, which was stopped by the hard disciplinary and doctrinal measures of the uncompromising and vigilant Pope Pius X and his co-workers. Since the 1960s, knowledge of the real history of modernism has shifted so much that today rather an antimodern crisis is spoken of, which deadened intellectual life in the Church for long decades and postponed the essential modernization measures, which could only be implemented under the pontificate of Pope Pius XII (1939–1958) and mainly by the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965). The phenomenon of the modernist and antimodernist crises does not concern only the Catholic Church, many processes and transformations in aseries of moments an3 Cf. Tomáš Petráček, Church, Society and Change. Christianity Impaired by Conflicting Elites, Lublin 2014, pp.7–22, 91–113. 4 René Rémond, Religion et société en Europe, Paris 2009; Hugh McLeod, Secularisation in Western Europe 1848–1914, New York 2000. 5 On the characteristics of the modernist and antimodernist crises see Otto Weiss, Der katholische Modernisms. Begriff— Selbstverständniss— Ausprägung— Weiterwirken. In: Hubert Wolf (Hrsg.), Antimodernismus und Modernismus in der katholischen Kirche: Beiträge zum theologischen Vorfeld des II. Vatikanums, Paderborn 1998, pp.108 –117. Out of the most recent synthetic works: Maurilio Guasco, Le modernisme. Les faits, les ideés, les hommes, Paris 1995 and Claus Arnold, Kleine Geschichte des Modernismus, Freiburg— Basel— Wien 2007. OPEN ACCESS TOMáš PETráčEk 9 ticipates or follows the development of other segments of European society. From the point of view of social history, this crisis provides remarkable material where the strategies and mechanisms can be studied of how the community seeks to promote or prevent change, what the motives of actors were and the impacts of the chosen solution. In the following study, using the example of aCzech modernizing priest, we will show what game fields the men thinking in this way had at that time, which strategies they chose, and in what their potential success or failure lay, what impacts the power-driven stopping of the modernization efforts and the subsequent period of stagnation had. THE STORY OF VINCENT ZAPLETAL, BIBLICAL STUDIES AND THE (ANTI-)MODERNIST CRISIS IN THE CHURCH In the works dealing with Catholic modernism, we find the claim that Czech modernism does not express interest in the theological battles of the turn of the century and has the reform Catholic character of the German type (Reformkatholizismus).6 However, at the very least in the area of biblical science, the Czech Catholic progressive exegesis was entirely on the level of contemporary European science, or even in its profiling personalities distinctly intervened in the dramatic history of this discipline in the period of the antimodernist crisis. Awhole range of figures followed their Western European colleagues even in the difficult fate, which led them from the possibility to devote themselves to scientific modern exegesis. Their thought, scientific methods and approaches, results and motivation, are entirely comparable with people like the Dominican M.-J. Lagrange in France or the Jesuit Franz von Hummelauer in Germany.7 At the beginning of the 20th century, the Czech Catholic Church has adistinctive generation of creative personalities; it definitely was not an intellectually and organizationally dead milieu, but the antimodernist measures of the Roman curia disrupted their ambition not only in the biblical question.8 The last decade of the pontificate of Leo XIII (1878–1903)9 is an extraordinarily favourable time of Catholic exegesis after along period of stagnation. Many Catholics, 6 On the Czech modernist personalities see Miroslav Kaňák, Zdějin reformního úsilí českého duchovenstva, Praha 1951; Zdeněk Kučera— Jan Lašek (eds.), Modernismus, historie nebo výzva? Studie ke genezi českého katolického modernismu, Praha 2002; Jaroslav Hrdlička, Život adílo Prof. Františka Kováře. Příběh patriarchy aučence, Brno 2007; Pavel Marek, Apologetové nebo kacíři? Studie amateriály kdějinám české Katolické moderny, Olomouc 1999; Pavel Marek, Český katolicismus 1890–1914, Kapitoly zdějin českého katolického tábora na přelomu 19.a20.století, Olomouc 2003. 7 On the other personalities in the context, see Tomáš Petráček, Bible amoderní kritika. Česká asvětová exegeze ve víru anti-modernistické krize, Praha 2011. 8 About specific aspects of the history of Czech catholic church, still dominating national church at the beginning of the 20th century, see Tomáš Petráček, In the Maelstrom of Secularisation, Collaboration and Persecution. Roman Catholicism in Modern Czech Society and the State, Lublin 2014, pp.32–45. 9 See Owen Chadwick, AHistory of the Popes 1830–1914, Oxford— New York 1998, pp.273–330. OPEN ACCESS 10 WISOHIM/ESHP 29 including the pope, were then aware of the lag behind Protestant and rationalistic studies Bible at state universities mainly in Germany and France. Although the majority of the clergy, hierarchy and faithful continued in the policy of the absolute rejection of modern sciences, discoveries and methods to the extent that they were incompatible with the traditional interpretation of the Bible, the very possibility to apply the historical-critical method to the study of the Bible was questioned; anumber of Catholic Bible scholars decided to master the modern methods, to verify the new theories impartially and borrow from the new directions everything that could aid in abetter interpretation of the Bible and naturally to the defence of its authority.10 They were the thorniest issues, because the Church declares the books of the Old and New Testament as the inspired text, revealed by God, which contains the information necessary for the salvation of the faithful. All deviations from the orthodox teaching of the Church, but also any theological statements can be deduced from some verse of the biblical text. Atext, which was created over many centuries in aculturally absolutely different context, and the original wording of which has been preserved in Hebrew, Aramaic and Ancient Greek, languages that no one has spoken for millennia. In the Catholic Church, an ancient Latin translation modified in the 16th century, called the Vulgate, had mainly been used since the Council of Trent.11 The advancement of modern linguistic techniques and instruments of historical criticism in the 18th and 19th centuries, the study of the original wording and the discovery of new codices and papyruses with the biblical text dramatically opened the question of the correct, adequate interpretation of the Bible.12 The group of progressive Catholic bible scholars included also Vincent Zapletal (1867–1938).13 ADominican from age sixteen, this native of Vilémov near Litovel underwent his order formation in Olomouc and predominantly in Vienna. In the autumn of 1891, he left for study at the just founded Ecole biblique in Jerusalem, the director of which Lagrange he already knew from Vienna, where they both had studied precisely the foundations of the modern methods of textual and historical criticism at the Faculty of Arts. Already in the autumn of 1893, Zapletal at age 26 was appointed professor of the interpretation of the Old Testament at the recently established Dominican Faculty of Theology at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland.14 He gained 10 Cf. Tomáš Petráček, Bible amoderní kritika, pp.36–81. 11 See Sascha Müller, Richard Simon (1638 –1712). Exeget, Theologe, Philosoph und Historiker. Eine Biographie, Würzburg 2005, pp.33 –98. 12 Pierre Gilbert, L’invention critique de la Bible. XVe–XVIIIe siècle, Paris 2010, pp.54 – 63. 13 On his life and work, see Tomáš Petráček, Výklad Bible vdobě (anti-)modernistické krize. Život adílo Vincenta Zapletala OP, Praha 2006 or shorter French version Tomáš Petráček, Le Père Vincent Zapletal O.P. (1867–1938), Portrait d’un exégète catholique. Studia fribourgensia Series historica 6, Fribourg 2007. 14 About the Dominicans at Fribourg University also compare Dominique Barthélemy, Idéologie et Fondation, Etudes et Documents sur l’histoire de l’Université de Fribourg/Suisse, Fribourg 1991, pp.82–166. Otto Weiss, Modernisms und AntiModernisms im Dominikanerorden. Zugleich ein Beitrag zum “Sodalitium Pianum”. Quellen und Studien zur neueren Theologiegeschichte 2, Regensburg 1998; Urs Altermatt, Vorgeschichte und Gründung, in: OPEN ACCESS TOMáš PETráčEk 11 recognition with his first works, predominantly ascientific monograph on the relationship of the Old Testament and Totemism, where he refutes one of the numerous rationalistic period theories, which were to compromise the authority of the Bible.15 He also achieved recognition by the most famous personality of Protestant and liberal exegesis.16 Zapletal embarked on his master work, which is acommentary on the first chapters of the Book of Genesis.17 In the German-written monograph, he provides an interpretation, which can be labelled as abreakthrough in the Catholic understanding of these texts. Instead of artificial attempts for aforced harmonization of the letter of the biblical text and period scientific discoveries of palaeontology and geology, Zapletal turned his attention to the religious content and emphasizes that the Bible is not atextbook of the natural sciences, but in that it is conforming to period ideas. According to Zapletal, the core of the narration comes from Moses’s time, but its literary treatment is significantly later, he works with the theory of several sources of the final text. His narrative denies any trace of historicity or natural-science value and in no way hides its inspiration with the pagan cosmogonies of the surrounding nations.18 Progressive Catholic biblical scholars had to cope with administrative obstacles such as the prohibition on owning and reading the banned books written by Protestant authors or to participate in scientific conferences, organized by non-Catholics, despite that their engagement and results in 1890–1903 give the impression that the lead of rationalist and Protestant exegesis could be erased within one generation, especially when the human potential hidden in the Catholic clergy was only beginning to engage in exegesis. In the Czech milieu, seven different Catholic priests reviewed Zapletal’s work positively in the Journal of the Catholic Clergy [Časopis katolického duchovenstva]. After the death of Jesuit cardinal Mazzella,19 the main brake on modern exegesis on the official level, in March 1900, Pope Leo XIII could support the dynamic renewal of Catholic biblical scholars, for instance, by the foundation of the Pontifical Biblical Commission in 1902. Whereas Leo XIII saw the role of the commission mainly in the encouragement and coordination of Catholic biblical scholars, under the pontificate of his successor Pius X (1903–1914) the commission became an instrument of censorship and repression. The official line of Catholic exegesis was controlled by the traditionalists, the teaching of exegesis in Roman seminaries and order academies Histoire de l’Université de Fribourg/Suisse— Geschichte der Universität Freiburg/ Schweiz, Bd. 1, Fribourg 1992, pp.32–74. 15 Vincent Zapletal, Totemismus und die Religion Israels. Ein Beitrag zur Religionswissenschaft und zur Erklärung des Alten Testamentes, Freiburg 1901. 16 See Petráček, Výklad Bible, pp.46–53. 17 Vincent Zapletal, Der Schöpfungsbericht der Genesis (1,1–2,3) mit Berücksichtigung der neuesten Entdeckungen und Forschungen, Freiburg 1902. 18 See Tomáš Petráček, Výklad Bible, pp.56–66. 19 On the dominant to exclusive influence of the Jesuit Roman Theological School on the performance of the papal magisterium, see Francesco Berreta, De l’inerrance absolue à la vérité salvifique de l’Ecriture, in: Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie 46, 1999, pp.500–501. OPEN ACCESS 12 WISOHIM/ESHP 29 was entrusted to conservative exegetes, the protagonists of modern biblical science found themselves on the margins. The culmination of the battle against modernism was 1907, when the Congregation of the Holy Office, entrusted with oversight of the orthodoxy of the members of the Catholic Church, issued the decree Lamentabili sane exitu, which condemned the errors of the modern period expressed in sixty-five theses in questions of theology and the interpretation of the Bible.20 Three months later, the pope issued the encyclical letter Pascendi, which introduced the new term modernism into official church documents. Both declarations of ecclesiastical authority were followed in 1908–1913 by awide range of further disciplinary measures, which affected books and journals accused of modernism and their authors to an extent from Christian social and trade movements, through Catholic prodemocratic and republican political parties and movements all the way to philosophers, exegetes, theologians and even men of letters.21 The encyclical letter Pascendi requires thorough personal purification at theological faculties and seminaries, the appointment of censors for all Catholic publications, and the establishment of avigilance committee in each diocese. In the area of biblical sciences, the battle was fought predominantly through the decrees of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, which in 1905 through 1910 issued atotal of five resolutions concerning the interpretation of the Old Testament, in which, for example, it denied that historical biblical books might contain narratives that do not partly or totally belong in real, objective history in the true sense of the word, but in the form of historical narrative they express or explain truths that are not connected with the historical reality of the rendering. In another decree, the commission denied that the arguments brought by historical criticism are enough to question the Pentateuch’s authorship by Moses. The resolution then of the commission proved to be unsustainable and were unsustainable already at the time of their declaration and had the result of the triumph of “reactionary conservativism”, which lay like ashadow over all of the Catholic biblical studies of the first half of the 20th century.22 No one wanted to get into the difficult questions of biblical exegesis in lectures and publications; creative activity was limited to linguistic and other auxiliary fields such as archaeology or Oriental Studies. The official doctrinal-disciplinary measures of the ecclesiastical authorities comprised only one part of the problems, which prevented the work of progressive Catholic theologians and exegetes. Not only various individuals but entire well-organized groups self-declared themselves to be appointed to oversee their performance. The most powerful of them was the so-called La Sapinière (Sodalitium Pianum). Its activities lie in the accumulation of compromising data, in the organization of aprint 20 On the creation of the document see Claus Arnold, Lamentabili sane exitu (1907). Das Römische Lehramt und die Exegese Alfred Loisy, in: Zeitschrift für Neuere Theologiegeschichte 11, 2004, pp.24 –51. 21 See Claus Arnold, Modernism als Kampfbegriff? Das “Jubiläum” der antimodernism- -Enzyklika von Papst Pius X.In: Herder Korrespondenz 61, 2007, pp.629 – 633. 22 Heinrich Fries, Das kirchliche Lehramt und die exegetische Arbeit. In: Heinrich Kahlefeld (Hrsg.), Schriftauslegung dient dem Glauben, Frankfurt a. M. 1979, p.73. OPEN ACCESS TOMáš PETráčEk 13 campaign against the supposed modernists, and in relevant denunciations, which were usually directed directly to Rome and circumvented the authority of the bishops and order representatives. In 1909, the Italian priest Umberto Benigni, who was in ahigh position in the Roman Curia, built his developed network on astronger institutional base and founded asecret organization run from Rome, which, however, had members from England to Russia. Although the organization was very close to the Consistorial Congregation and the most influential curial cardinals (de Lai, Merry del Val) and pope Pius X himself knew of its activities, Benigni did not manage that La Sapiniére acquire official canonical status or even entirely conceal the existence of the network.23 Progressive Catholic biblical scholars, historians and theologians were among the fundamental aims of the members of La Sapiniére, especially those working at the Faculty of Theology in Fribourg.24 Zapletal enjoyed protection on the part of the Master General of the Dominican Order Hyacinth Cormier. He moreover stood out for his ability to formulate his conclusions dextrously so that he did not come into apparent contradiction with the decrees of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, he succeeded in withstanding the attacks of the integrists. In spite of repeated conflicts with censorship and gradual narrowing of the space for scientific activity, he managed to prepare and publish an excellent commentary on the biblical book of Ecclesiastes (1905) and on the Song of Solomon (1907).25 Then, his publication activity gradually ceases; he orients himself on the relatively innocuous study of forms of Hebrew poetry, but still has the courage to publish his older works, and his rectorial address from 1910 can be described as amanifesto of Catholic progressive biblical scholars.26 Cormier entrusted him with the demanding post of the superior of the Dominican convent Albertinum in Fribourg for twelve years. Later, he threw the remnants of his powers into writing extensive biblical novels. He died two months earlier than his confrere Lagrange, in January 1938 in Vienna. THE AIMS AND STRATEGIES OF THE ACTORS: THE AIMS AND STRATEGIES OF THE ANTIMODERNISTS Why did the battle against modernists absorb the Catholic Church in the first decade of the 20th century? Did the long confrontational definition against the enemies 23 See Emil Poulat, Intégrisme et catholicisme intégral. Un réseau secret international antimoderniste: La „Sapinière“, Paris 1969, pp.188–206. For more detail on the activity of the network against Zapletal see Tomáš Petráček, Výklad Bible, pp.112–114, 146–150, 198–202ff. 24 Otto Weiss, Modernismus und Antimodernismus, pp.42–45, 220–276. 25 Vincent Zapletal, Das Buch Kohelet. Kritisch und metrisch untersucht, übersetzt und erklärt, Freiburg 1904. Ibid., Das Buch Hohelied, kritisch und metrisch untersucht, Freiburg 1907. On the circumstances surrounding the edition and the reception: Tomáš Petráček, Výklad Bible, pp.82–85, 102–108. 26 Vincent Zapletal, Über einigen Aufgaben der katholischen alttestamentlichen Exegeze. Rektoratsrede, Freiburg 1910. OPEN ACCESS 14 WISOHIM/ESHP 29 besieging the fortress have to flip sooner or later into seeking an internal enemy? It is not adispute of intelligent open-minded researchers with the conservative Roman Curia, the hierarchy and duller colleagues from the ranks of the biblical scholars or theologians. There were very intelligent people among the integristic cardinals and people like Benigni knew how to work with scientific thoroughness and systematicity. The integristic attitude cannot be explained by alack of intelligence. Its causes lie in the clearly defined conception of the Church and in the vision of the world as the places of the intrigues of the forces of Judeo-Masonic inspiration, the Church of the enemies. With the majority of them, we see anxiety from the world in the look at the church, which is losing influence on the public, gradually losing internally alienated workers, the intelligentsia and the world of trade and politics and saw correction in the renewal of the idealized medieval harmony between the church, state and society. In the documents fear can be felt; fear for identity, for apossible disintegration of society, fear of the domino effect and immense impacts, if it allows change or doubt in important questions like the infallibility of the Bible is. In its essence, it was astruggle for the character of the Church, for its future development and direction.27 They have facilitated their struggle with avery broad, vague definition of modernism, which is labelled as apack of all heresies, where anything could be included, anyone who did not share the ultramontanistic, traditionalistic, anti-reformation and antimodern conception of the role of the Church and this narrow, negative, selfdefined against others Catholicism. The integrists in their treatises and even in the church documents, such as the decrees of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, not only ignore, but calmly even deny scientific evidence (although it is revisable and developing knowledge) and imposed their positions with power and manipulation on the entire Church. They forced Catholic professors of exegesis and everyone at all who deals with the interpretation of the Bible to defend the opinions of the Pontifical Biblical Commission publicly.28 This means forcing the denial of their scientific erudition and raping the consciousness of scientists, who forced under threat to think and say something with which they cannot according to their scientific knowledge agree. In some moments, the position is heard so explicitly that the Catholic priest and scientist must know when it is necessary to settle and accept the official position that it recalls the later slogan “It is better to be wrong with the Party than to be right against it”.29 The majority of the bishops, priests and believers look at the attempts for modern exegesis as at unfortunate concessions to Protestant biblical studies or as acompromise, which betrays the fundamental principles and traditions of the Catholic 27 Josef Blank, Das politische Element in der historisch-kritischen Methode. In: Paul Neuenzeit (Hrsg.): Die Funktion der Theologie in Kirche und Gesellschaft, Münich 1969, pp.40 – 42. 28 Cf. Raymond E.Brown, Rome and the Freedom of Catholic Biblical Studies. In: Raymond T.Stamm— Jacob M.Myers,— Otto Reimherr, Search the Scriptures. New Testament Studies in honour of Raymond T.Stamm, Gettysburg Theological Studies 3, Leiden 1969, p.132. 29 See Tomáš Petráček, Bible amoderní kritika, pp.180–183. OPEN ACCESS TOMáš PETráčEk 15 Church. The position of Catholics even in formally and mainly Catholic countries like Austro-Hungary or Italy was made uncertain and vulnerable, so that the mentality of the besieged fortress connected with the strict rejection of everything foreign and different was apsychologically natural reaction. The animosity and envy on the part of the conservative exegetes also played its role, who could not digest the successes and respect that Zapletal or Lagrange enjoyed with the Protestant and agnostic biblical scholars. In the battle against the supposed modernists, the integrists without hesitation used all the methods: anonymous denunciation, false accusation, espionage, opening of letters, organization of seditious campaigns in the purposely founded press. The popular tactic are accusations of the modernists for the practices, which are in fact those of the integrists. Today, we already know for sure that no modernistic movement plot existed; it is not possible to speak of any organization or centre.30 On the contrary, the integrists have awell-organized structure, cover names, conspiration meetings, plan events and set aims, have influential defenders at the highest places of the Roman Curia and financial means. What is problematic is also the dehumanization of the opponents, supposed modernists, who are not only labelled as men of amistaken and deviant modernist opinions, but also in the relevant documents they are also betrayed by the infidelity and moral perversion of those who merely pretend to be of Christian faith in order to disrupt and destroy the Church. The diction of ecclesiastical documents of that era are reminiscent of the language of late medieval and early modern malevolent responses to witches, heretics and Protestants. THE AIMS AND STRATEGIES OF THE ACTORS: STRATEGIES AND METHODS OF THE MODERNIZING AUTHORS Since no real modernistic movement existed and there were great differences among the individual theologists, bible scholars and historians in the approaches,31 we should rather speak of modernizing scholars. Their aims were with most entirely ecclesiastical endeavours in the sense of the effort to harmonize the teachings of the church with the discoveries of modern science. The modernizing authors also noticed with asense of wrong the process of the secularization of society and mainly the massive departure of the educated elites from the church, but they saw the solution in something else— if the church had such an influence in European history, then it was thanks to the fact that the church actively shaped this history, entered into them and offered asolution for the problems of the times. When the church found itself on the margins of society, the solution is not areturn to the once-proven solutions, approaches and mental structures. It is not possible to compel the entire society to return to religion by restoring some monarchic, authoritative regime, which will impose aChristian moral and religious life by force. On the contrary, it is necessary to 30 Alec R.Vidler, AVariety of Catholic Modernists, Cambridge 1970. 31 See Emil Poulat, Histoire, dogme et critique dans la crise moderniste, Paris 1996, p.9; Alec Vidler, AVariety of Catholic Modernists, Cambridge 1970, p.15. OPEN ACCESS