Rome Rediscovers the Heresy Condemned by St. Pius X

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The Modernist Gospel of Lived Experience: Rome Rediscovers the Heresy Condemned by St. Pius X
At Leo XIV’s Vatican, theology is now said to emerge from people’s experiences.
St. Pius X exposed this inversion of Catholic faith 119 years ago.

Chris Jackson via Hiraeth in Exile | October 16, 2026

The Modernists Are Finally Saying It Out Loud

Sometimes the Modernists make their intentions so obvious that one wonders why they bother dressing them up in theological jargon.

During the October 14 Vatican press conference marking the tenth anniversary of Amoris Laetitia, Fr. Stanislaus Chu Ilo, a Nigerian theologian at DePaul University, offered this remarkable explanation of the theological revolution currently underway:

“There is a paradigm shift or a methodological shift that we see now of theology listening, and emerging from the experiences of people.”

There it is.

Theology emerging from the experiences of people. A paradigm shift. A methodological shift. And the Vatican presents this spectacle to the Catholic world as though it represents some wonderful development in the Church’s understanding of divine Revelation.

St. Pius X must be turning over in his grave.

On September 8, 1907, the saintly pontiff published Pascendi Dominici Gregis, his devastating encyclical against Modernism. Among the errors he condemned was the doctrine of vital immanence, the theory that religion originates within man himself, arising from religious consciousness and experience rather than from an objective Revelation communicated by God.

The resemblance to the language now being celebrated in Rome is extraordinary.

Chu Ilo’s precise formulation deserves close attention. He is describing a shift in theological method. Theology is to listen and emerge from people’s experiences.

What becomes of the revealed truths that theology is supposed to explain, defend, and transmit? Where do Scripture, Tradition, and the definitions of the Church enter this wonderful new arrangement? Do they govern the interpretation of experience, or must they themselves be reinterpreted in response to whatever contemporary experience produces?

Those questions go directly to the heart of the Modernist controversy.


Latin Mass Banner and Trad Nun Excommunicator Bishop Michael Olson Agrees!

On March 3, 2014, Bishop Michael Olson of Fort Worth appeared on American Religious Town Hall, an ecumenical television program featuring representatives of different religious denominations.

Olson was explaining the Catholic understanding of faith.

During the broadcast (which was quickly deleted after being exposed), he said:

“Faith begins by a lived experience of God…”

He then described believers articulating their experiences and sharing them with others who had similar experiences.

The video continues with an especially revealing phrase:

“…which we form Doctrine…”

Olson then describes believers returning to their lived faith and reflecting further as it develops among people.

Read those statements alongside paragraphs 11 through 13 of Pascendi.

Experience comes first. Believers communicate their experiences. Those experiences become the occasion for formulating doctrine. The doctrine is subsequently reconsidered as the religious life of the community develops.

This is precisely the sort of progression Pius X identified as central to the Modernist understanding of dogma.

And remember the circumstances.

This was a Catholic bishop explaining Catholic faith to representatives of other religions. If there were ever an occasion to distinguish supernatural faith from the merely human experience of religion, that was it.

Instead, the explanation sounded precisely like the theory condemned by Pius X.

That video was made more than twelve years before Chu Ilo’s Vatican appearance.

There is nothing novel about the underlying theological dispute. What has changed is how casually and openly these formulations now circulate within the Catholic establishment.


Vital Immanence: The Heresy Returns in Synodal Clothing

In paragraph 7 of Pascendi, St. Pius X explains how Modernist theology begins by removing the supernatural foundation of religion.

Having rejected external Revelation, the Modernist seeks the explanation of religion within man. Religious sentiment, arising from man’s perceived need for the divine, becomes the foundation of faith.

The process continues in paragraph 8. Religious consciousness assumes the role properly belonging to Revelation. The subjective experience of the divine becomes the basis upon which theological claims are made.

By paragraph 10, Pius X describes the logical consequence: religious experience becomes the germ from which religious doctrines develop.

Think about that.

Under this system, faith effectively arises from below. Human experience generates religious consciousness; religious consciousness produces theological formulations; those formulations change as humanity develops new experiences.

The direction of authority has been reversed.

Catholicism begins with God revealing Himself to man. The Church receives and safeguards that Revelation. The faithful assent to it through the supernatural virtue of faith, assisted by grace.

Modernism begins with man and his consciousness. Religious formulations arise through the internal development of that consciousness and acquire their authority from their relationship to religious experience.

Two radically different understandings of religion are at stake.

And here comes a Vatican theologian speaking about a paradigm shift in which theology emerges from the experiences of people.

Perhaps Chu Ilo would insist that he accepts divine Revelation and merely wants theologians to pay greater attention to the circumstances of contemporary families. His single sentence cannot establish that he embraces every philosophical proposition condemned in Pascendi.

Then let him explain precisely what emerges from these experiences.

Does theology discover better ways to communicate immutable Catholic teaching? Or does it discover moral judgments previously excluded by that teaching?

The answer is key because Rome has spent the last decade conducting precisely this experiment.


When Human Experience Becomes the Measure of Doctrine

Consider the controversy surrounding Amoris Laetitia.

Traditional Catholic doctrine teaches the indissolubility of a valid consummated sacramental marriage. A Catholic living in an adulterous relationship must repent and abandon sinful conduct. The Church has no authority to declare adultery morally permissible because the people involved experience affection, suffering, or sincere personal commitment.

Yet the controversy following Amoris Laetitia concerned precisely the possibility of permitting certain divorced and civilly remarried Catholics to receive the sacraments while continuing relationships traditionally understood to involve adultery.

Pastoral circumstances and subjective culpability became central to arguments for changing sacramental practice.

Now Rome commemorates that document by promoting a theological methodology centered upon listening to experience.

One hardly needs a doctorate from the Gregorian University to recognize the danger.

If experience acquires practical authority over the application of moral doctrine, the commandments of God risk becoming ideals to be negotiated rather than laws to be obeyed.

The adulterer has an experience. So does the person involved in a homosexual relationship. Every moral transgression can be accompanied by a narrative of suffering, emotional attachment, personal sincerity, and difficult circumstances.

Christ already knew the complexity of the human condition when He commanded men to repent.

His moral law requires no revision to accommodate the twenty-first century’s impressive collection of excuses.

Catholic charity demands patience toward sinners, understanding of personal circumstances, and a sincere desire for their salvation. None of these duties authorizes a theologian to treat human experience as a source of new moral truth.


The Other Half of Pascendi: When Authority Comes from Below

St. Pius X had more to say about Modernism than its corruption of faith and dogma. He also explained how the same principles would eventually transform the Church’s understanding of her own authority.

In paragraph 23 of Pascendi, Pius X describes the Modernist theory that the Church develops from the collective religious consciousness of believers. Under this system, ecclesiastical authority ultimately derives from that consciousness and must adapt itself to the evolving demands of the community.

And who better to illustrate this than Cardinal Óscar Rodríguez Maradiaga, one of Francis’s principal advisers?

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In an October 2013 address at the University of Dallas Ministry Conference, Maradiaga announced that Vatican II had effectively brought the conflict between the Church and Modernism to an end.

He subsequently explained his understanding of the hierarchy:

“The hierarchy has no purpose in itself and for itself, but only in reference and subordination to the community.”

Now compare that with Pius X’s description of the condemned Modernist theory in paragraph 23:

“Authority therefore, like the Church, has its origin in the religious conscience…”

The similarity in language is astonishing.

A hierarchy serving the faithful is perfectly Catholic. Our Lord Himself washed the feet of His Apostles. The problem begins when service is transformed into subordination to a community whose changing religious consciousness determines what the hierarchy must teach.

Maradiaga’s speech contains an even more revealing statement. He described the new thinking of Vatican II as having been “slowly brewing in the Christian conscience” before finally receiving its public articulation.

Brewing in the Christian conscience!

This is precisely the language that should send any reader of Pascendi reaching for the encyclical.

In paragraph 27, Pius X describes the condemned Modernist mechanism of doctrinal evolution. Religious developments begin within individual consciences, spread into the collective consciousness, and eventually exert pressure upon ecclesiastical authorities. A compromise is reached, and the authorities subsequently give institutional expression to what has developed from below.

The implications are enormous.

Under this theory, the hierarchy gradually becomes the instrument through which the changing religious consciousness of the community acquires official recognition.

Consider what Maradiaga was saying in 2013. New ecclesiastical thinking had been developing within the consciousness of Christians, and Vatican II finally articulated it. The Council itself was presented as ending the historic conflict with Modernism.

Now jump forward to October 2026.

Fr. Stanislaus Chu Ilo sits before the Vatican press corps and celebrates a methodological shift toward theology emerging from people’s experiences.

Apparently, we are meant to admire this as a great theological discovery.

The disturbing possibility is that we are witnessing two parts of the same intellectual system: an account of faith and doctrine rooted increasingly in human experience, accompanied by an understanding of ecclesiastical authority increasingly responsive to the collective consciousness of the faithful.

One provides the theological content. The other supplies the means by which that content receives ecclesiastical approval.

This is why the contemporary enthusiasm for synodality deserves far more scrutiny than it receives from the conservative Catholic establishment. Endless consultations, listening sessions, and appeals to lived experience can become mechanisms for elevating contemporary preferences into demands for doctrinal change.

The decisive question is whether the deposit of faith governs that entire process or whether the process itself becomes an engine for reshaping Catholic teaching.

Pius X foresaw the danger in extraordinary detail.

And the consequences reach well beyond questions of homosexuality, Communion for adulterers, or women preaching at Mass.

They concern the very constitution of the Catholic Church.

Did Christ establish a teaching authority charged with preserving and transmitting His Revelation? Or does religious authority ultimately serve to ratify theological conclusions emerging from the evolving consciousness of the faithful?

Catholic Tradition has always maintained the former.

The Modernists condemned by Pius X embraced the latter.

Maradiaga’s 2013 speech, Olson’s 2014 definition of faith, and Chu Ilo’s 2026 remarks deserve to be read together, with Pascendi open beside them. Their language raises precisely the questions that Pius X regarded as fundamental to the survival of Catholic doctrine.


Leo XIV Presides Over the Same Theological Revolution

Leo XIV convened the Vatican gathering to examine the legacy of Amoris Laetitia and consider the Church’s pastoral response to families.

His administration has given institutional prominence to a process in which listening to personal experiences is presented as essential to discerning future pastoral directions.

The Vatican’s October 2 preparatory presentation even emphasized that the meeting would generate an account of what participants had recognized through listening and discernment, with further processes expected to follow.

Meanwhile, theologians such as Chu Ilo publicly describe the method in language disturbingly reminiscent of the intellectual system condemned by Pius X.

How much clearer must the resemblance become before Catholics recognize the theological danger?

The Modernists of 1907 were accused of attempting to transform Catholicism from within. They remained among the clergy and Catholic intellectual establishment while promoting theories that ultimately subjected dogma, ecclesiastical authority, and religious practice to historical development and human consciousness.

Today, ideas inviting comparison with those condemned theories are discussed openly at Vatican press conferences.

The tragedy is that countless Catholics have become accustomed to hearing this language. Terms that would once have provoked immediate theological scrutiny now pass almost without comment.

There is nothing particularly mysterious about the old Catholic understanding. God revealed the truth. Christ established His Church. The Church was entrusted with preserving and transmitting the deposit of faith.

Human beings must conform themselves to that truth, however painful the necessary conversion may prove.

The Modernist temptation is to reverse the arrangement, allowing the experiences of modern man to determine what religion must become.

St. Pius X understood the consequences in 1907.

The spectacle unfolding under Leo XIV gives Catholics ample reason to revisit his warning.