The Last Anti-Modern Encyclical Planned by Pius XII
Four years prior to Vatican II, in 1958, a final anti-modern papal document, an encyclical, was in preparation at the Apostolic Palace. The Pope’s death interrupted its final drafting and publication. This was revealed in 2020 with the opening of the archives of Pius XII’s pontificate, which can now be consulted up to 1958, the year of the Pope’s death.
This opening prompted a flood of researchers to flock to the Vatican archives, thinking they would be able to demonstrate the Pontiff’s culpable weaknesses towards Hitler’s regime. Unsurprisingly, they were disappointed to find evidence to the contrary. On the other hand, serious historians saw vast new perspectives open up on subjects of the greatest interest.
It was known that Pius XII had launched preparations for an ecumenical council in 1948, which were the subject of significant research until 1951. It was also very characteristic that the idea was not to convene a new council, but to “continue” the one convened by Pius IX in 1869, which had to be interrupted in 1870 due to the Franco-Prussian War. But the project was abandoned[1].
On the other hand, what German historian Matthias Daufratshofer reported in March 2020 had been up to then generally unknown. While researching the archives of the former Holy Office on the studies that had preceded the proclamation of the dogma of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, he discovered the preparatory texts, the detailed outline, of an anti-modern encyclical drafted in the last years of Pacelli’s pontificate, which would have developed and clarified the 1950 encyclical letter, Humani generis, “on some false opinions which threaten to undermine the foundations of Catholic doctrine.”[2] Two researchers, Sister Sabine Schratz, OP, of the Institutum Historicum Ordinis Prædicatorum, and Daniele Premoli (Archivum Generale Ordinis Prædicatorum), have devoted themselves to the study of this project. They are preparing the publication of the successive stages of the draft, which had been produced by a commission, and on 3 January 2024, they published an article on the status of their work in the Journal of Modern and Contemporary Christianity: “L’Enciclica Pascendi dei tempi moderni. Il progetto per l’ultima enciclica di Pio XII (1956-58).”
The initial project: to publish an encyclical in 1957, on the 50th anniversary of the condemnation of modernism by Pascendi
During the pontificate of Pius XII, concern had been growing in Rome about the spread of new currents that were referred to around the Pope under the general name of “Nouvelle théologie” (New Theology). The expression was used by Pius XII himself in a speech to the General Congregation of the Jesuits on 19 September 1946[3], following which Father Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, OP, published an article in the journal Angelicum in October 1946 that caused quite a stir: “The ‘Nouvelle Théologie’: Where is it Heading?” The criticism was aimed primarily at the fact that this Nouvelle théologie, in the name of an ideologized “return” to the theology of the Fathers, denigrated scholastic theology (and through it, dogmatic formulations, which were largely dependent upon this scholasticism). Referring to this new way of talking about doctrine, Humani generis stated in 1950 that there was a desire that “the age-old work of men endowed with no common talent and holiness, working under the vigilant supervision of the holy magisterium and with the light and leadership of the Holy Ghost in order to state the truths of the faith ever more accurately”, be replaced by “conjectural notions and by some formless and unstable tenets of a new philosophy.”
Rome was particularly concerned about the theological turmoil that was raging in France. In view of the Plenary Assembly of French Bishops, which was to be held in April 1957, Archbishop Joseph Lefebvre of Bourges, who would be made a cardinal by John XXIII and who came from the same family of industrialists in northern France as Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, was preparing to present a doctrinal report based on the responses to a questionnaire sent to all French bishops[4]. The report noted that relativism, rationalism, naturalism, and atheistic humanism had led to a “mutilation of our nature” that severed man’s bond with God, with idealism and existentialism closing him in on himself, and Marxism leading him to determinism and materialism. Hence, there had arisen, among a fair number of Catholics, a loss of the sense of God, of sin, and of the Church, along with a series of deviations, which the report described as a weakness of faith or a misunderstanding of faith, claiming the right to personal freedom, ignoring the nature of ecclesiastical authority, dissociating the visible Church from the invisible, withdrawing the Church from the affairs of the state and society, and finally reducing Christian witness to pure interiority. The report spoke of “a kind of neo-Protestantism” and of the dependence of a number of theologians on the ideas of the time.
But after this criticism of “progressivism”, the Lefebvre report also denounced the “integrism” of those who set themselves up as censors of French bishops, who were deemed too weak in the face of those theologians who were defending the new positions. The report accused priests and the faithful of engaging in “unacceptable interventions” by which they gave lessons in orthodoxy “even to the hierarchy”.
As a result, the Lefebvre report was reminiscent of the pastoral letter from Cardinal Suhard, Archbishop of Paris, entitled Essor ou déclin de l’Église (The Rise or Decline of the Church) and published for Lent 1947, in which the cardinal rejected both options that were setting back the hoped-for rise, namely “modernism” and “integrism”. The Lefebvre report was careful to note that the modern errors it enumerated should not be considered universal, with some bishops even asserting that these errors were in decline, and that, in any case, it was necessary to guard against ‒ the innuendo being addressed to the “integrists” ‒ “turning the few lingering clouds in an otherwise bright sky into a stormy black horizon.” This theme was echoed in John XXIII’s opening address to Vatican II, Gaudet Mater Ecclesia, on 11 October 1962, with his famous attack on those “those prophets of gloom, who are always forecasting disaster, as though the end of the world were at hand.”
This leads us to note that the situation of French Catholicism under Pius XII foreshadowed what it would become at the time of the Council and the post-conciliar period. On the one hand, there was “progressivism” in various forms: the ecumenical movement, the liturgical movement, the Worker Priests affair, and various magazines fascinated by Marxism: Esprit, Témoignage chrétien, La Quinzaine, the publication of works questioning traditional theology in various ways, such as those by the Dominicans Congar and Chenu (the latter having coined the term “Saulchoir school”), those by Father de Lubac and the Jesuits known as the Fourvière school, as well as those by other theologians. On the opposing side, a sort of “integrist” minority had formed, heirs to uncompromising Catholicism, such as Abbé Luc Lefèvre, founder of La Pensée catholique, Abbé Victor Berto, who would become Marcel Lefebvre’s theologian during the Council, Abbés Alphonse Roul and Raymond Dulac, Father Fillère and Father Richard, founders of L’Homme Nouveau.
However, these clergymen, marginalized in France, were in harmony with the theological staff of Pius XII’s pontificate, namely the Dominicans Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Marie-Rosaire Gagnebet, and Luigi Ciappi; Jesuits such as the moralist Franz Hürth and Sébastien Tromp; the Franciscan Ermenegildo Lio; the Stigmatine Cornelio Fabro; the Carmelite Philippe de la Trinité; and secular priests such as Pietro Parente, Pietro Palazzini, Dino Staffa, and Antonio Piolanti, who became rector of the Lateran University in 1957. They formed what was known as the Roman School of Theology, which also included Cardinals Pizzardo and Ottaviani, successive secretaries of the Holy Office, as well as Ruffini, Archbishop of Palermo, and Siri, Archbishop of Genoa.
Due to the particular attention within the Curia to what was happening in France, the imminence of the meeting of the Plenary Assembly of the Episcopate, which was to take stock of the doctrinal situation, led to the decision in 1956 to take up the theme of criticism of the Nouvelle théologie in a papal document. The preparatory commission for the Plenary Assembly of the Episcopate had asked Father Paul Philippe, a Dominican, commissioner of the Holy Office, and future cardinal, for a report. In some sixty pages, Paul Philippe linked the Nouvelle théologie to modernism, while explaining that the deviations of the former did not have the rationalist character of the heresy denounced by the encyclical Pascendi in 1907, but were presented in a more “mystical” way and were intended to be very optimistic. Cardinal Ottaviani considered Philippe’s report suitable as a basis for the preparation of the papal document planned for 1957.
Preparatory work for the encyclical (1956-1958)
Pius XII formally approved the project at Christmas 1956. Immediately, in the last days of December, an ad hoc commission was appointed within the Holy Office (which would become the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith after Vatican II). The pope reserved for himself the presidency of this Roman congregation, which was responsible for doctrine and was then the most eminent congregation in the Curia (it was called the Suprema). It did not have a prefect, but was headed by a secretary. The commission did not manage to complete its work in 1957 and was still pursuing it when Pius XII died in 1958.
It met for the first time in early 1957. Its members were among the most eminent of the Holy Office: the Dominicans Paul Philippe, president, Gagnebet, and Garrigou-Lagrange, all three close to the Master General of the Order, Michael Browne, and forming with him an extremely influential Dominican quartet; the Jesuits who had contributed to the drafting of Humani generis, Fathers Tromp and Bea, the latter being Pius XII’s confessor, but who was to become a turncoat after 1958; the great Mariologist Karlo Balić, a Capuchin; the French Carmelite Philippe de la Trinité; and Antonio Piolanti.
The report by Bishop Joseph Lefebvre, sent to the Holy Office, became, along with the Philippe report, a source available for the examination that was proposed of the doctrinal errors of the time. His criticism of the “integrists,” on the other hand, was considered completely counterproductive.
On 20 March 1958, Fr. Tromp presented a first draft, a 64-page outline, which began with the words Instaurare omnia in Christo, the motto of St. Pius X. Fr. Philippe also presented another draft. Both are to be published by Sister Sabine Schratz and Daniele Premoli.
In May 1958, the Holy Office had a decision to make: given the significance of the material gathered by the commission, should a single document or several documents be published? Cardinal Ottaviani wanted to reserve the question of the relations between Church and State for a specific document, the substance of which had been in preparation since 1950 (Fr. Gagnebet was its main author) and had in fact aimed to recall the traditional doctrine against ideas which were forerunners of the doctrine of religious liberty developed by Fr. Courtney Murray, an American Jesuit, and Jacques Maritain, the French philosopher. During the preparation of Vatican II, the document of the Holy Office served as the basis for chapter 9 of the De Ecclesia outline prepared by the theology commission and taken up for the occasion by Father Gagnebet[5]. The entire outline was eventually discarded and replaced by the one that would become the constitution, Lumen Gentium. As for the content of chapter 9, it was invalidated by the declaration Dignitatis humanæ. Regarding all the material gathered by the commission, Pius XII, who was kept informed of the preparatory work every step of the way, made it known that he wanted to publish a single text rather than several encyclicals.
The commission, reduced to Philippe, Piolanti, Bea, Tromp, Balić, and Gagnebet, met a third time on 10 June 1958, and formulated recommendations that Fr. Tromp incorporated into his second version of the preparatory outline. It now began with the words: Cultum Regi Regum, Worship of the King of Kings. This final draft was communicated to the other members of the commission on 27 September 1958. But Pius XII died twelve days later, on the 9th of October. Since the subsequent archives are not available for consultation, it is unknown whether the draft encyclical was presented to John XXIII, which is highly probable. In any case, it was without consequence.
The content of the Cultum Regi Regum outline
In fact, the draft took the form of a continuation of Humani generis as well as of a more in-depth study of the matters which it had addressed. The text addressed all areas of ecclesial, moral, and social life, exposing, 50 years after Pascendi, “the overall heresy of modernity”[6], namely, the acceptance of society’s rupture with God. It did so in six chapters:
- The nature of religion.
- Liturgical worship and private devotions (worship whose social significance explained the title that the encyclical would have received).
- Moral theology.
- The profession of faith.
- The relationship between authority and freedom in the Church.
- The relationship between the religious order and the secular order.
The draft encyclical recalled that religion is a virtue by which man, recognizing divine excellence, worships God as creator and master of the entire natural order, which God transcends. It is not a purely sentimental and emotional reality, nor is it the opium of the people.
The treatment of the liturgical question in the second chapter took up themes from the 1947 encyclical Mediator Dei and addressed various errors, including the one according to which “the celebration of a single Mass, attended religiously by a hundred priests, is the same thing as a hundred Masses celebrated separately by a hundred priests.”[7] The outline also emphasized the seriousness and social harm of not respecting the sanctification of Sunday through divine worship and rest.
In the moral section, the traditional doctrine on natural law was recalled and the most controversial issues examined: the dangers of materialism, both communist and capitalist; the sovereign character of the judgment of the Church, whose authority was established by God Himself, enabling the Church to shed light on difficult moral questions and to decide on issues that are controversial today, such as that of the primacy of procreation in the hierarchy of the ends of marriage, with virginity for the Kingdom of God remaining a more perfect state than marriage.
The fourth chapter addressed the theme of ecumenism, focusing on collaboration with Christians of other denominations with a view to opposing atheistic communism. It highlighted the problematic nature of setting aside what separates Catholicism from these denominations, particularly the hatred of the Church upon which the latter had been founded. More generally, collaboration between Catholics and non-Catholics for laudable goals, while acceptable in principle, raised significant reservations: “If a healthy doctor collaborates with a doctor suffering from leprosy in order to combat leprosy, he will honor his colleague, but the closer the collaboration with his partner, the more vigilant he will need to be for fear of contracting the disease himself.”
The fifth chapter of the draft dealt with the relationship between authority and freedom, that is, between the magisterium and theologians: the Kingdom of God can only be reached through “the path of authority and obedience”; however, the latter, especially after the fall of totalitarianism in Germany and Italy, had entered into crisis, not only within the State, but also within the Catholic Church. Cultum Regi Regum strongly reaffirmed that the munus docendi, the duty to teach in the Church, resided solely in the hierarchy, consisting of the Roman Pontiff and the episcopate.
The text added: “Far be it from us to deny that theologians have a special vocation within the Mystical Body of Christ, to which correspond the grace and light of the Holy Spirit. For it is to them that the Bride of Christ entrusts the formation of the future clergy; they are called by the sacred Magisterium itself to prepare doctrinal documents; it is their task to bring depth and precision to the decisions made by the authentic Magisterium; it is their task above all to manifest to the world the wonderful and divine harmony by which divinely revealed truths harmonize with one another and with the various human sciences. It is also the duty of theologians to determine for what reason and to what extent such truths are contained in the deposit of faith, or are proposed by the Magisterium as being necessary to be believed or professed; and, consequently, in what sense and to what extent it is appropriate to qualify contrary errors. If theologians act in this way under the supervision of the Pastors, they in no way arrogate to themselves the competence of the Magisterium, but rather contribute greatly to preserving the purity of the faith.”
The last chapter of the document, entitled Ordo religiosus et ordo profanus, was in fact a kind of anticipation of the aforementioned document which had been in preparation by the Holy Office since 1950, which dealt with the relations between the two perfect societies (each possessing everything necessary for the fulfillment of its end), distinct but united societies, namely the Church and the State[8].
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Did Pius XII thus wish to crown his pontificate with a kind of great testamentary text, which would have taken up the themes he had dealt with in his various encyclicals, and which would have attempted to stem the flood he sensed was coming after him? Our allusion to the words attributed to Louis XV, “après moi, le deluge” (“after me, the flood”), is intentional. The abundant activity of Pius XII, including the defense and the in-depth study of doctrine, through a series of great encyclicals (Mystici Corporis in 1943, on the Mystical Body of Christ; Divino afflante, also in 1943, on biblical studies; Mediator Dei in 1947, on the principles of liturgy; Humani generis in 1950, on the errors of our time); the counter-current definition of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin in body and soul; as well as the canonization of Pius X in 1954, is reminiscent, all things being equal, of the attempt by Louis XV, at the end of his reign, to consolidate what was to become the Ancien Régime, at least on one point, that of justice, this endeavor being interrupted by the death of the monarch in 1774.
For want of having resumed the Vatican Council convened by Pius IX, Pius XII would have sealed his pontificate through the continuation of Pius X’s Pascendi, which would have been accompanied by a document from the Holy Office closing the door to the theses that would become the doctrine of religious freedom. But God, in the mysterious arrangements of His Providence, had decided to chastise his people.
Fr. Claude Barthe
[1] Patrick Descourtieux, “La preparazione del mancato Concilio ecumenico del 1951 secondo l’Archivio del Sant’Uffizio” (The Preparation of the Failed Ecumenical Council of 1951 according to the Archives of the Holy Office), at the symposium on L’Inquisizione romana. Nuove ricerche, nuove prospettive (The Roman Inquisition: New Research, New Perspectives), 22-24 November 2023, proceedings to be published.
[2] Kathpress, 10 March 2020.
[3] Speech inspired by an article by Pietro Parente in L’Osservatore Romano in 1942, “Nuove tendenze teologiche.”
[4] Rapport doctrinal présenté le 30 avril 1957 à l’Assemblée plénière de l’Épiscopat Français (Doctrinal report presented on 30 April 1957, to the Plenary Assembly of the French Episcopate) (Tardy edition, 1957).
[5] Translation of the text in: Claude Barthe, Quel avenir pour Vatican II ?, François-Xavier de Guibert, 1999, pp. 163-179. J. A. Komonchak, in Giuseppe Alberigo (ed.), Histoire du Concile Vatican II (1959-1965), vol. 1, Cerf, 1997, p. 336. See also: Philippe Chenaux, “Maritain devant le Saint-Office: le rôle du père Garrigou-Lagrange, OP” [Maritain before the Holy Office: the role of Father Garrigou-Lagrange, OP]. Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum, Nova Series, vol. 6, 2021, pp. 401-420.
[6] Claus Arnold, Giovanni Vian, La Redazione dell’Enciclica Pascendi. Studi e documenti sull’antimodernismo di Papa Pio X, Anton Hiersemann, 2020.
[7] As early as the 1940s, there were signs of what would become concelebration: priests in albs and stoles, arranged in a semicircle in front of the altar where one of them was celebrating, attended his Mass and received Communion from his hand.
[8] The document of the Holy Office, as introduced in the preparatory outline for Vatican II De Ecclesia, stated: “Just as the civil power considers it its duty to attend to public morality, so too, in order to protect citizens from the seductions of error and to maintain the State in the unity of the faith, which is the supreme good and the source of a multitude of benefits, including in the temporal order, civil authority may itself regulate the public manifestations of other religions and defend its citizens against the spread of false doctrines which, in the judgment of the Church, endanger their eternal salvation.” (Claude Barthe, Quel avenir pour Vatican II ?, op. cit., pp. 174-175).