One Hundred Years of Modernism: A Genealogy of the Principles of the Second Vatican Council

“Change” was the buzzword of the 1960’s and ’70’s. When it hit the Catholic Church, its faithful were told to expect a glorious springtime. Instead, doubt and instability have prevailed.

Where has the destruction come from? All indicators point to the Second Vatican Council (1962 – 65) as its epicenter. To prove it, the author reconstructed a family tree – a genealogy – of Vatican II to uncover the chain of causes that resulted in this Council and its novelties.

The Vatican II “effect” is related to a heresy going back one hundred years: Modernism. The modernists, actively fought by Pope Pius X (1903-14) and condemned by the encyclical Pascendi (1907), had been working ever since to align the Church with new ideas in philosophy. But their “new ideas” had an origin, too. Following back links in the chain, the author reached the first link: Martin Luther.

One Hundred Years of Modernism is an everyman’s survey of the history of philosophical ideas from Aristotle’s sane realism to the existentialists’ insanity. In chronological order, from its roots in Luther’s principle of private judgment through its subsequent developments, it shows that modernism, prematurely declared dead after St. Pius X’s reign, revived after World War II and reached the highest levels of the Catholic Church’s hierarchy.

From causes to effects and from masters to disciples. The book is divided into five historical periods:

-Christian Truth -Protestant critical modernism in Germany -Modernism in France -Neo-modernism in Europe -Triumphant modernism in Rome itself