Modernism and the Zeitgeist

Dr. Mirus has put out a great piece:

Sometimes good things come in strange packages. I was looking through Derek Hastings’ new book Catholicism & the Roots of Nazism (Oxford University Press, 2010) to figure out what his arresting title could possibly mean. Hastings demonstrates beyond doubt that before the failed Beer Hall Putsch in Munich in 1923, significant segments of Catholic clergy and faithful in Munich were among the most important supporters of National Socialism, very much in tune with its increasing emphasis on Aryan racial supremacy and its contempt for Jews.

It turns out, however, that this Catholic support was prevalent in Munich precisely because Munich’s Catholicism was significantly different from the Catholicism of most other areas of Germany. Many Munich Catholics intensely disliked the ultramontane perspective of most other German Catholics, who increasingly saw the Holy See as their one hope against an increasingly anti-Catholic German state. The more irenic Catholic leaders in Munich often dismissed this tendency to look toward Rome as “political Catholicism”. Instead, they attempted to articulate what they euphemistically called “religious Catholicism”, which would concentrate on non-controversial spiritual affairs, would seek to define a more broadly acceptable national presence, and would champion the rights of the lower classes... ...the most important factor in Munich was that Catholics there were infected with a strong strain of Modernism. As famously articulated early on by Fr. Ignaz von Döllinger, this Modernism held Neo-Scholastic orthodox philosophy and theology in contempt, it regarded Roman culture as “feminine” and inferior, and it prized the superior spirit and power of the German people. In other words, like Modernism everywhere and in every form, this strain latched on to the prevailing spirit of the times. Such ideas, and the vehemence with which they were expressed, led Döllinger to be excommunicated, but his followers and successors quickly learned the value of staying within the Church if they hoped to have the influence they thought they deserved.

Read the whole thing--remarkable the staying power of this one ideology.