A Reflection on Modernism and Protestantism

Modernism is Protestant. One might say that as an ideology, it is Protestantism with the Catholic trappings removed. Catholicism is a revealed religion, descended from on high (like a few others claim to be, but most religions just sort of developed in certain ethnic peoples, over time).

And "revealed religion" is the very thing Modernism rejects. It came from German Protestants about the time Darwin was making waves, and Modernism is all about evolution. Evolution of a certain sort. There was the natural Development of Doctrine, which could be said to be a form of evolution -- but if it were, the Holy Ghost directed it slowly, steadily, over the centuries.
Protestantism wrenched that away and created the basis for "Evolution by Fiat", a intentional redirection of Doctrine based not on lived experience threaded through centuries and many, many individuals, but something directed by revolutionaries with "novel" doctrines. (The very idea of Sola Scriptura cries out for absolute novelty from every single reader of Holy Writ.) Once that began, then a new form of evolution started, actually a devolution, resulting in the basic Modernist beliefs, seen in Mainline Prot Churches and the Mainline Catholic National Language Churches, i.e. everything evolves, we evolve, morality evolves (as in our understanding of the death penalty), the Faith evolves (obviously "the spirit" of Vat 2 operates on that notion), the Church evolves structurally, and ultimately God Himself evolves.

The corporate managers running the Church today were weaned on this core bone marrow of Modernism and I suspect they really don't have a clue as to what a revealed religion really implies; certainly they don't grasp what Catholicism means. If ever I had that rock in my gut, as a friend put it, of wondering about whether the current bishops, etc., were actual Catholics, I guess I passed that (rather large) kidney stone some time ago.

An Préachán