The Attitude of the Future Paul VI Toward the Encyclical Humani Generis of Pius XII

[Stone]

The Attitude of the Future Paul VI Toward the Encyclical Humani Generis of Pius XII
Jean Madiran, in Itinéraires no. 128, December 1968, pp. 154–159.

Source: La Revue Item / Abbé Paul Aulagnier [AI translation] / October 2013

Here is Jean Madiran's article on the intellectual attitude of Msgr. Montini, the future Pope Paul VI, who was substitute of the Secretariat of State at the time of the publication by Pius XII, in 1950, of his encyclical Humani Generis condemning modern errors. And they would also like to canonize Paul VI?

"…Since we are speaking of inattention to texts and errors of fact, I may well say that I had stumbled over page 27 of Jean Guitton's book (Dialogues avec Paul VI, vol. 2) concerning the encyclical Humani Generis of 1950. I was so immediately shaken by it that I reopened the encyclical — which is always a grace, a blessing, a light — and for that I thank Jean Guitton, who was its occasional cause.

On page 27 we are at the date of September 8, 1950. The encyclical is not yet a month old: it is dated August 12. It is entirely fresh in the minds of those who have just read it, who have begun to study it. Yet on that date, on that page, transcribing the 'notes he had written that very evening' of September 8, Jean Guitton reports the following remark:

'You have no doubt yourselves noticed the nuances inscribed in this pontifical text. For example, the Encyclical never speaks of ERRORS (errores). It speaks only of OPINIONS (opiniones). This indicates that the Holy See aims to condemn not errors properly so called, but modes of thought that could lead to errors but which in themselves remain respectable.'

The error of fact is complete; the inattention to the invoked text is total; and point by point:

1. 'The Encyclical never speaks of errors (errores).'

The word 'errors' appears from the very first line of the French translation to render the Latin term aberratio, which is not error, but which is no less serious — on the contrary. We find aberrationem again at the beginning of the second paragraph.

In §6, there is mention of a novae aberranti philosophiae, a new aberrant philosophy.

In §7, of a historicism that subverts veritatis legisque absolutae fundamenta, that is, that 'undermines at its foundation all truth and all absolute law': would this be a mere 'opinion,' and no error at all?

In §10, we find erroribus and errorem, warning us that among our philosophers and theologians there are those who 'strive to escape the direction of the Magisterium and fall imperceptibly and unwittingly into the danger of abandoning even divinely revealed truth and of leading others into error.'

In §18, it is emphasized that what the encyclicals of the Roman Pontiffs explain 'is neglected by some in a habitual and premeditated manner.'

Speaking of the assertions against which the first eighteen paragraphs are directed, §19 declares: 'All these sayings may appear very clever; error, however, is not absent from them' (the Latin does not say error or errores, it says fallacia, which is equivalent, or rather even more serious).

In §22, there is mention of Catholic teachers who 'renew the theory already condemned several times…'

In §37, the encyclical repeats that it is pointing out manifest errors and dangers of error: manifestos errores errorisque pericula — not only, therefore, dangers of error, but indeed MANIFEST ERRORS.

§58 repeats: these errors, 'today spread openly or in secret' (iis erroribus).

Whether one consults the authentic Latin text or the French translation, it is incredible that one could have advanced such a proposition: 'The encyclical never speaks of errors (errores).' It speaks of them constantly. When it does not say errores, it says aberrationes and it says fallacia.


2. 'The Encyclical speaks only of opinions (opiniones).'

The term 'opinions' does indeed appear in the title: 'de Nonnullis falsis opinionibus quae catholicae doctrinae fundamenta subruere minantur': 'On certain false opinions which threaten to undermine the foundations of Catholic doctrine.' It is not a question, therefore, of mere 'opinions'; the encyclical does not speak 'only of opinions' — it speaks of false opinions. It is difficult to see what difference one could perceive between 'a false opinion' and an error, when the opinions in question are false opinions that threaten to undermine the foundations of Catholic doctrine.

It is not true, as we have seen, that the encyclical never uses the term errores: it uses it frequently. It is true that it also uses the terms opiniones and opinationes, but in the same sense as errores: beyond the title, this is clear from §58, where 'these new opinions' (novas eiusdem opinationes) and 'these errors' (iis erroribus) are used alternately not to designate two different kinds of things, but as two expressions having in context the same extension and the same comprehension.


3. 'The Holy See aims to condemn not errors properly so called, but modes of thought that could lead to errors.'

A) Here, in order, are the 'modes of thought' explicitly designated in the encyclical:

• monist and pantheist theory (§5)
  
• the dialectical materialism of the communists (ibid.)
  
• immanentism, pragmatism, existentialism (§6)
  
• a false historicism (§7); etc., etc.
  

It is singularly strange to see in these doctrines 'not errors properly so called, but modes of thought that could lead to errors'…

B) Moreover, the encyclical explicitly declares that it is targeting not thoughts that could lead to errors, but novelties that have already produced, in almost all parts of theology, poisoned fruits (§25: ac mirum non est hujusmodi novitates, ad omnes fere theologiae partes quod attinet, jam venenosos peperisse fructus). Poisoned fruits! Already produced! In almost all parts of theology!

In §16 it was said: 'These attempts not only lead to what is called dogmatic relativism, but already really contain it' (non tantum ducere…sed illum iam reapse continere).

Thus at least twice, the text of the encyclical, in the most explicit and precise manner, takes care to prevent and rule out the interpretation which would claim that it targets 'not errors properly so called, but modes of thought that COULD LEAD TO errors.' Nevertheless, this interpretation was put forward less than a month after its publication.

It is thus indeed, as we have just seen, point by point and word by word, that the remarks of September 8, 1950, reported on page 27 of Jean Guitton, contradict explicit affirmations of the encyclical Humani Generis.

On the preceding page, Jean Guitton had reported his own opinion: 'The encyclical needs an interpretation.' That is possible — at least in the sense that all reading is interpretive. To interpret means, for example, to seek what meaning to give to the terms errores, aberrationes, fallacia contained in the text. But to begin by saying, and apparently by believing, that these terms are not in the text, and that their absence is a characteristic of the highest importance, which must govern the entire reading of the document and which indicates its general intention — that is no longer an interpretation. It is not even a false interpretation. It is, short of any interpretation, the negation of the object, the refusal of the text to be interpreted, replaced by a gratuitous reverie upon which one constructs considerations of a decisive and imperative appearance, but which hang in the air.

Thus reflection, instead of scrutinizing what is, becomes purely 'poetic,' in the Greek sense understood by Marcel de Corte, and begins to hover in an arbitrariness which, discouraging the intellectual communications effected by means of articulate language, leaves in the end, necessarily, nothing subsisting between men but relations of force.

You know the story of the cauldron:

• 'Have you not yet returned my new cauldron?'
  
• 'You never lent me one. And it was not new. And I have already returned it to you.'
  

Catholic thought, among a growing number of its most highly eminent representatives (N.B. Jean Madiran has in view here Msgr. Montini, substitute of the Secretariat of State), has thus arrived at the hour of the cauldron.

I do not know whether in 1967, when the proofs of page 27 were being re-read, anyone had the simple curiosity to reopen the encyclical Humani Generis of Pius XII; I do not know whether the arbitrary contradiction made against it by private whisper in 1950, and publicly renewed in 1967, was deliberately and knowingly intended. I note the facts.

Compared to the present state of the world and of the Church, the encyclical of Pius XII is as timely as the answer of Jesus to Saint Jude. But we are led to believe that Jesus did not answer; and that 'the manifest errors' noted in 1950 were not truly errors.

And so this generation of men sinks into anguish and into night.