More on Josephine Ward: Elizabeth Huddleston's Project

I do believe Josephine Ward's time for revival and reevaluation has come! (Here's some detail about the books she wrote.)

From the University of Notre Dame's Cushwa Center:

Elizabeth Huddleston is head of research and publications at the National Institute for Newman Studies and associate editor of the Newman Studies Journal. She also teaches in the Department of Catholic Studies at Duquesne University. In 2024, she received a Research Travel Grant from the Cushwa Center to carry out archival research at Notre Dame in support of her project, “‘A Story of Well-Defined Purpose’: Josephine Hope-Scott Ward’s Social Criticism of Modernism.” Shane Ulbrich corresponded with Huddleston following her visit in April to the Notre Dame Archives.

Huddleston is focused on the Modernist Crisis and what Ward can teach us about it:

The Modernist Controversy has often been studied through the lens of its key figures—Tyrrell, Loisy, Hébert, Houtin, Sabatier, von Hügel, Bremond, to name a few—and their anti-modernist counterparts—Garrigou Lagrange, Merry del Val, Pius X, etc. What can be lost in only viewing the crisis through these polarized and zoomed-in lenses is a sense of how the crisis spilled into the lives of others not at the epicenter. Wilfrid and Josephine were conversant with tenets of both modernism and anti-modernism. Of course they did not want to be censored or condemned, but they also felt that the church was lacking in her relationship with the modern world. Their writings, both personal and published, reflect the tumult felt within the Catholic landscape of the era. While it is important to study the central figures and tenets of movements and crises, it is also important to take a step back and try to view the ripple effects of the crisis to the wider church. The correspondence and writings of Josephine Ward help us gain a better understanding of these currents.

Please read the rest there . . .

Years ago (pre-blog) I read Critics on Trial: An Introduction to the Catholic Modernist Crisis by Marvin O'Connell. One reason I've been interested in the subject is of course the effect on Cardinal Newman's reputation at the time. You may be sure that I'll be following this project with great interest! It especially makes me hope that Out of Due Time, the novel Huddleston mentions, might be published soon.

The Tenth Pope Named Pius

There have been twelve popes named Pius; the first (Pope Saint Pius I) in the second century; the latest (Pope Pius XII) reigning from 1939 to 1958. Popes named Pius have seen the Church through tumultuous times: During Pope St. Pius V’s pontificate, the Catechism of the Council of Trent was published and also revised editions of the Roman Missal and Breviary as he continued the Church’s implantation of the reforms of the Council of Trent. Pope Pius VII, whose cause for canonization was promoted by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, endured imprisonment and exile at the hands of Napoleon Bonaparte and worked for the freedom of the Church in France after the Revolution and Reign of Terror. Pope (Venerable) Pius XII served during World War II, doing all he could to aid civilians affected by the war, especially leading efforts to save Jews in Italy and Rome, descrying the Nazi regime’s campaigns against non-Aryans, including the Polish Catholics.

Pope St. Pius X, who reigned a little more than 11 years from 1903 to 1914, was a reforming pontiff, taking the motto Instaurare Omnia in Christo, or "to restore all things in Christ" to guide his papacy. Like Pope St. Pius V, he lived simply, stating that he had been born poor, had lived poor, and wanted to die poor. He shared Pius V’s devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, writing an encyclical on the fiftieth anniversary of the proclamation of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. Also like Pius V—and his immediate predecessor Pope Leo XIII—he promoted the method and works of St. Thomas Aquinas.

Pius X was born Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto on June 2, 1835 in what was then the Kingdom of Lombardy. As a parish priest and then bishop he had more pastoral experience than previous popes, but he also taught theology in seminary even though he never earned a doctorate. When he succeeded Pope Leo XIII, he saw the great danger to the Catholic faith as Modernism, which he considered the "synthesis of all heresies." Setting out a long list of Modernist propositions which he said Catholic could not agree, he also wrote an encyclical descrying Modernism, Pascendi dominici gregis ("Feeding the Lord's Flock"), pointing out that the agnosticism of the Modernists on matters of Church doctrine, the inspiration of the Scriptures, and the Sacraments could lead to atheism. Pius X demanded loyalty oaths against Modernism from all Catholic priests.

Some scholars and theologians, like Alfred Loisy and George Tyrell, were removed from teaching positions, forbidden to publish their works, and even excommunicated. Some faithful but innovative scholars and theologians, like Father Marie-Joseph Lagrange, OP, founder of the Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem, were also suspected and hampered in their efforts. During the reign of Pope Pius XII, the Ecole Biblique would publish The Jerusalem Bible translated not from the Latin Vulgate but from Greek and Hebrew texts; during Pope St. Pius X’s campaign against Modernism, such a volume might not have been possible. Marvin R. O’Connell provides an excellent overview of the period in Critics on Trial: An Introduction to the Catholic Modernist Crisis (Washington DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1995).

More positively, Pius X encouraged frequent reception of Holy Communion and earlier First Communion. First Holy Communion had been delayed until the teenaged years, but he moved it to the age of reason, about seven years old, when a child could accept the doctrine of the Real Presence of Jesus, Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity in the Host. He is the “Pope of the Blessed Sacrament”.

Other liturgical reforms included the restoration of Gregorian chant in the Mass instead of classical settings by Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, or Cherubini. His motu proprio Tra le sollecitudini, written in Italian, also encouraged Renaissance polyphony, leading to the revival of works by Victoria, Palestrina, Byrd, and others from the sixteenth century.

Pius X also began the process of revising and regularizing the Code of Canon Law for the universal Church and, because of his pastoral experience, required the teaching of catechism classes in every parish in the world, establishing the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine. Pope Pius X described the duties of a catechist in his 1905 encyclical, Acerbo Nimis (“At this very troubled and difficult time”):

The task of the catechist is to take up one or other of the truths of faith or of Christian morality and then explain it in all its parts; and since amendment of life is the chief aim of his instruction, the catechist must needs make a comparison between what God commands us to do and what is our actual conduct. After this, he will use examples appropriately taken from the Holy Scriptures, Church history, and the lives of the saints - thus moving his hearers and clearly pointing out to them how they are to regulate their own conduct. He should, in conclusion, earnestly exhort all present to dread and avoid vice and to practice virtue.

As a pastor, Pius X knew this material had to be taught so that the students, both young and old, would understand it, but he also required that the catechesis be comprehensive and complete:

The catechetical instruction shall be based on the Catechism of the Council of Trent; and the matter is to be divided in such a way that in the space of four or five years, treatment will be given to the Apostles' Creed, the Sacraments, the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer and the Precepts of the Church.

As pastor in Rome, Pope Pius X preached a homily every Sunday at St. Peter’s and gave catechetical instructions himself.

Pope Pius X dealt with some difficult church-state relationships in Europe, particularly in France, where conflict led to the official secularization of French society, called laicite. France had long been known as the Eldest Daughter of the Church and after the French Revolution, strong links between the government and Church, especially in education and healthcare, had been re-established. The official 1905 separation of Church and State ended that cooperation and Pius X condemned that action.

In the United States, he recognized the growth and stability of the Catholic hierarchy, and removed it from the authority of the Congregation of Propaganda—the U.S.A. was no longer considered mission territory. On August 15, 1913, Pope Pius X authorized the building of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC, making a donation in Italian lire to its construction.

When he died on August 20, 1914, Europe was on the brink of World War I. Devotion to him led to the process for his canonization to begin quickly and he was beatified by Pope Pius XII on June 3, 1951 and canonized on Mary 29, 1954—the first pope to be canonized since Pope Pius V in 1712.

Pope Saint Pius X, pray for us!

Cardinal Merry del Val and Blessed John Henry Newman

From The Catholic Herald, this article by Stephen Bullivant, Senior Lecturer in Theology and Ethics at St Mary’s University, Twickenham, describes how one faction in Catholic theology, the Modernists, tried to claim Newman as one of them. Bullivant demonstrates the crucial role of Rafael Merry del Val y de Zulueta, Cardinal Merry del Val, who died on February 26, 1930:

His unlikely name notwithstanding, Merry del Val is surely among the most remarkable churchmen this country has ever produced. The son of a Spanish diplomat, he was born in London in 1865. He lived here until he was thirteen, later returning to begin his ordination studies at Ushaw. Following a meteoric rise within the Vatican diplomatic corps – including, bizarrely, being made a monsignor before he was a priest – he was ultimately appointed Secretary of State by Pius X in 1903, aged just 38. Though a Spanish national, he considered himself to ‘be English to all intents and purposes’, even to the point of dreaming in English. There were rumours of his succeeding Cardinal Bourne as Archbishop of Westminster in 1903.

Though this was not to be – Pius had other plans for him – his gimlet eye remained fixed on English ecclesiastical life, and on its burgeoning modernism especially. It was Merry del Val who commissioned Joseph Lemius, procurator of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, to draft Pascendi; Merry del Val who took a lead role in enforcing its anti-modernist agenda; and – nota bene – Merry del Val who tirelessly championed Newman’s orthodoxy, using the semi-official L’Osservatore Romano to underline the ‘world of difference between what the Cardinal taught and the Modernism which is condemned in the Encyclical.’

Pius himself, in the same letter I quoted above, wrote to Bishop O’Dwyer of Limerick to commend him for showing, in a pamphlet, that ‘the writings of Cardinal Newman, far from being in disagreement with Our Encyclical Letter Pascendi, are very much in harmony with it’. To [George] Tyrrell’s guessing assertions, neither the magisterium nor its closest confidants had then any intention whatsoever of censuring, or casting aspersions upon, Newman’s thought and legacy. The simple fact is that, at this time, nobody – Protestant or Catholic, ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’ – had a bad word to say about him.

Today especially, this point is of more than merely historical interest. The significant point is this: had Tyrrell been more successful in arguing for Newman’s condemnation, or Merry del Val and St Pius less proactive in denying it, then a great doubt would surely have been cast over his orthodoxy. So much so, that even his latter-day supporters John Paul II (who declared him Venerable) and Benedict XVI (who broke his own protocol to beatify him personally, and who has previously suggested Newman to be a Doctor of a Church) might have been wary of overturning it.

Read the rest there. The best book on the Modernist Crisis and papal response to it is Marvin R. O'Connell's Critics on Trial: An Introduction to the Catholic Modernist Crisis, published by the Catholic University of America Press:

Here for the first time [published in 1994], the story of the Catholic Modernists is presented as a chronological narrative of events, with special emphasis placed upon the persons involved, their interrelations and opinions. Through a study of the participants, Marvin O'Connell traces the emergence of Modernism and the controversies related to it, offers a careful examination of the movement's multiple causes and ramifications, and places the events within the political, social, and intellectual context of the time.

Rather than analyze the phenomenon called Catholic Modernism or argue one side or the other, the author tells the story of the Modernists themselves. These intellectuals-scripture scholars, philosophers, apologists, priests, and laypersons-were bound together by a mutual concern that the church could not survive the challenges of the modern world unless it brought its teaching and its constitution into line with contemporary thought. They offered unconventional solutions to the religious questions of the day, solutions they were convinced would reform and revivify their church.

Their story involves a cast of fascinating characters: the deeply learned and deeply skeptical exegete, Alfred Loisy; the lyrical and melancholy Anglo-Irish Jesuit, George Tyrell; the eccentric polymath, Friedrich von Hegel; the apostle of Christian democracy, Romolo Murri; the combative philosopher, Lucien Laberthonniere, and his mentor, Maurice Blondel. Against them stood the pope who, in the name of doctrinal integrity, sought to root out and destroy their ideas.

O'Connell follows the drama step by step until it reaches its climax in the condemnations of 1907, when Pius X denounced Catholic Modernism as the synthesis of all heresies. The author recounts the story largely in the words of the Modernists and their opponents, as well as those who, like the journalist and biographer Wilfrid Ward and the scripture scholar Marie-Joseph Lagrange, desperately sought a middle ground.

Critics on Trial offers the nonspecialist a reliable, compelling account of the Modernist crisis; it offers the student of nineteenth- and twentieth-century religious and intellectual history a thorough introduction to the topic.

Cardinal Merry del Val wrote the great Litany of Humility:

O Jesus! meek and humble of heart, Hear me.
From the desire of being esteemed,
Deliver me, Jesus.
From the desire of being loved...
From the desire of being extolled ...
From the desire of being honored ...
From the desire of being praised ...
From the desire of being preferred to others...
From the desire of being consulted ...
From the desire of being approved ...
From the fear of being humiliated ...
From the fear of being despised...
From the fear of suffering rebukes ...
From the fear of being calumniated ...
From the fear of being forgotten ...
From the fear of being ridiculed ...
From the fear of being wronged ...
From the fear of being suspected ...

That others may be loved more than I,
Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.That others may be esteemed more than I ...
That, in the opinion of the world,
others may increase and I may decrease ...
That others may be chosen and I set aside ...
That others may be praised and I unnoticed ...
That others may be preferred to me in everything...
That others may become holier than I, provided that I may become as holy as I should…