Pascendi Dominici Gregis

Pascendi or with full title Pascendi Dominici gregis is an encyclical of Pius X. It was published shortly after the decree of the Holy Office Lamentabili sane exitu on September 8, 1907, but is independent of it emerged.

The encyclical Pascendi opposes the so-called modernism in the Catholic Church. Pius X wants it for the first time the "system" of the modernists as omnium haereseon conlectum ( summary of all heresies ) disclose or reveal. In its doctrinal main part of the encyclical described the modernists in seven roles: as philosopher, who only in the context of immanence, ie within the world thinks; as believers, which is based only on the subjective religious experience; as theologians who can understand the dogma only symbolically; as a historian and Bible critic who dissolves the divine revelation through use of the historical -critical method in worldly development processes; as apologists justifying the Christian truth only from the standpoint of immanence ago; and finally as a reformer who wants to change the church due to tumbling. Modernism offers resistance against their inherited scholastic theology and the magisterium. Its characteristics are the wrong intellectual curiosity, arrogance, ignorance and intent to deceive. This proved among other things, that no modernist modernist system represent the whole open, but always auftrete in only one of said rollers. In a disciplinary final part of the encyclical met practical measures to inculcation of scholastic philosophy and theology, to reprimand suspicious lecturers and candidates for the priesthood, to censorship and the creation of anti-modernist supervisory bodies. Pascendi endorsing the scientific progress only when he is " in the light of Catholic truth and under her leadership " took place.

The principal author of the encyclical was the French theologian Joseph Lemius from the Order of the Oblates ( OMI ). In the reconstruction of the "system " of modernism, he relied mainly on the works of French theologian Alfred Loisy. Lemius ' intention was to reveal the hidden philosophical and theological presuppositions of Loisys Bible interpretation.

Pope Benedict XV. in his inaugural encyclical in 1914 confirmed the work of his predecessor and appreciated, but at the same time found that among theologians insist at any time and as long as academic freedom until a final decision of the church's ministry it was established. He turned at the same time from fundamentalism from which was often associated with the anti-modernism and the Pius X had promoted the Sodalitium Pianum. Pascendi today to pay tribute in light of the decisions of the Second Vatican Council ( cf. Fides et Ratio Enz of Pope John Paul II, 1998).

Condemned doctrines

• Agnosticism
• Pantheism
• Historicism