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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 June 2011
George Tyrrell's identification of the Pope as the Antichrist was not particularly original but it was important. For Tyrrell was the leader of a movement which, in the opinion of René Marlé, created the most serious disturbance in the Catholic Church since the time of the Reformation. Moreover, the reformers and iconoclasts who had made this charge previously had usually done so from a position outside of Catholic tradition. Tyrrell, however, attacked the Pope from within, as a member of his flock. The Jesuit philosopher even went so far as to claim that his radical posture was the inevitable consequence of his Catholic convictions. Thus he explained:
I believe in the Roman Church so far as it is Christian and Catholic; I disbelieve in it so far as it is papal. I see two spirits in it, as in myself, struggling for supremacy — Light and Darkness, Christ and Anti-Christ; God and the Devil. At present Christ is thrown and Anti-Christ is uppermost. … I look for the day when Peter, after his boasted fidelity and manifold denials, aliquando conversus, confirmabit fratres. It is a long way off from that blessed cockcrow.
1 Marlé, René, Au Coeur de la Crist Moderniste: Le Dossier d'une Controverse Inédite (Paris, 1960), 9Google Scholar. This disturbance could have rent the church asunder, dividing it into schismatic factions. Even before Modernism had reached its climax Blondel wrote: “With every day that passes, the conflict between the tendencies which set Catholic against Catholic in every order — social, political, philosophical — is revealed as sharper and more general. One could almost say that there are now two quite incompatible ‘Catholic mentalities,’ particularly in France. And that is manifestly abnormal, since there cannot be two Catholicisms.” (Blondel, Maurice, Letter on Apologetics and History and Dogma, trans. Dru, Alexander and Trethowan, Illtyd [London, 1964], 221Google Scholar.) Tyrrell also observed that at the turn of the century there were two Catholicisms struggling for ascendancy in the Church. Between them, he said, “reconciliation was impossible owing to the utterly fundamental nature of the point at issue sc. the nature and unity and bases of authority.” (Tyrrell, George, George Tyrrell's Letters, ed. Petre, M. D. [London, 1920] 110Google Scholar.) The Pope entirely agreed with Tyrrell's assessment and excommunicated him.
2 The original of this letter appears to have been lost, but its content is preserved in Petre, M. D., Life of George Tyrrell, 1884–1909 (2 vols., London, 1912), II, 413Google Scholar.
3 Tyrrell, George, Théologie et Religion, Annales de Philosophic Chrétienne (March, 1900), 625–41Google Scholar. Cf.: Tyrrell, George, A Much Abused Letter (London, 1906), 56Google Scholar.
4 In a letter to von Hügel, dated 9th November, 1906, Tyrrell said that the continued existence of the Church was at stake. She “seems like some little Alpine village doomed by the slow resistless progress of a granding glacier. Can she change now, even at the eleventh hour, and plant herself elsewhere out of the way?” Von Hügel and Tyrrell Correspondence, British Museum, Add. MSS 44929.
5 Bourdon, Hilaire (GeorgeTyrrell), The Church and the Future (Edinburgh, 1903), 19Google Scholar. Prior to his Modernist phase, Tyrrell defended the notions of ecclesiastical and papal infallibility as strongly as he was later to deny them. In a sermon preached in 1899, Tyrrell defended Rome's claim to be in exclusive possession of the truth. “This note of exclusiveness and what is called ‘intolerance’ must mark the Church which Christ left on earth to continue his work. Does it mark any section of Christendom except the Church of Rome? Notoriously not … All indeed profess to be right, but only one professes to be infallibly right — Rome … If Christ does not speak to us in Rome when does he speak? To whom shall we go?” This unpublished sermon is in the Provincial Archives, Society of Jesus, London.
6 The letter is dated 3rd January, 1902. Von Hügel and Tyrrell Correspondence, Br. Mus. Add. MSS 44928. Six years later Tyrrell could claim that the “hard and fast mechanical view of Scriptural inerrancy has yielded forever to a much looser, more flexible and dynamic notion of inspiration … The inerrancy of General Councils must inevitably and a fortiori be re-interpreted with a similar latitude.” (Tyrrell, George, Medievalism: A Reply to Cardinal Mercier [London, 1908], 79.Google Scholar)
7 Tyrrell, The Church and the Future, 20.
8 Loisy, Alfred, L'Éangile et L'Église (2nd ed., Bellevue, 1903), 70Google Scholar.
9 Tyrrell, The Church and the Future, 61.
10 Ibid., 55.
11 Ibid., 53. The traditional explanation for this transitus has usually been worked out along the lines of development. See, for example, Chadwick, Owen, From Bossuet to Newman: The Idea of Doctrinal Development (Cambridge, 1957)Google Scholar. Tyrrell endorsed the idea of development when it suited his purposes to do so but rejected it when it did not. He charged, in fact, that the Roman Church had only applied the idea in a half-hearted fashion, stopping the process of development in the Middle Ages. At the same time, though, Tyrrell also maintained, especially towards the end of his life, that Scripture should provide the formal structure for religious belief. He then shuttled between these two positions as circumstance required. His most explicit statement on revelation is contained in an unpublished paper, Revelation as Experience, Petre Papers, Br. Mus. MSS 52369.
12 GeorgeTyrrell, L'Affaire Loisy, The Pilot (Jan. 2, 1904), 11.
13 GeorgeTyrrell, Medievalism and Modernism, Harvard Theological Review (July, 1908), 309.
14 The letter is dated 25th Jan., 1905. Von Hügel and Tyrrell Correspondence, Br. Mus. Add. MSS 44929.
15 The letter is dated simply 27th January, Archiv., Soc. Jes.
16 This letter to A. L. Lilley, dated 4th October, 1907, is in the personal possession of A. R. Vidler.
17 The letter is dated 29th June, 1904. Von Hügel and Tyrrell Correspondence, Br. Mus. Add. MSS 44928.
18 Cf. his remark on the disciplinary action taken against Bonomelli: “the action of the pope to Bonomelli is so purely worldly in its motive, and so cruel and brutal in its manner, that we must regard him as gone over to the potestas tenebrarum.” (Petre, II, 265.)
19 Apparently the Pope was equally clear in his mind where the course of duty lay. In the encyclical Pascendi Gregis by which Tyrrell and his friends were condemned, Pius said that the Modernists, “lacking the solid safeguards of philosophy and theology, may work, thoroughly imbued with the poisonous doctrines taught by the enemies of the Church, and lost to all sense of modesty, put themselves forward as reformers of the Church; and, forming more boldly into line of attack, assail all that is most sacred in the work of Christ, not sparing even the Person of the Divine Redeemer … Moreover, they lay the axe not to the branches and shoots, but to the very root, that is, to faith and its deepest fibers. And once having struck at this root of immortality, they proceed to diffuse poison through the whole tree, so that there is no part of Catholic truth which they leave untouched, none that they do not strive to corrupt.” (Pascendi … [London, 1907], 4–5.) The existence of such unveiled and dangerous skepticism in the midst of the Church was insufferable.
20 This was revealed in remarks such as: “Pius X is in the same case as a mad father, who orders his children to burn down the house … the vision of Pius X is as incoherent and ugly as that of a nightmare.” (Petre, II, 405.)
21 The letter is dated 20th Nov., 1904. Von Hügel and Tyrrell Correspondence, Br. Mus. Add. MSS 44928.
22 The Second Vatican Council partly conceded Tyrrell's point, though not entirely. The constitution Lumen Gentium counterbalanced the traditional notion of the Hierarchica Ecclesia by a new emphasis on the Populus Dei to whom the hierarchy is responsible. The former notion is juridical in its essence; the latter, sacramental. This shift in emphasis picked up a theme earlier expounded in Moehler's Die Einkeit in der Kirche and then in Henri deLubac's Méditation sur l'Église. It has led inevitably to a new emphasis on the laity and upon their religious experience. Cf. Schillebeeckx, E., Un Nouveau Type de Laïc, La Nouvelle Image de L'Église, ed. Lambert, B. (Paris, 1967), 177Google Scholar.
23 Vatican II conceded this point without equivocation. See Con. Lumen Gentium, 18, 8, 25, 27, 28. Cf. Roux, Hébert, Déresse et Promesse de Vatican II: Réflexions et Expériences d'un Observateur au Concile (Paris, 1967), 120Google Scholar.
24 (GeorgeTyrrell), Lord Halifax Demurs, The Weekly Register (May 3, 1901), 550.
25 ibid.
26 The letter is dated 20th Feb., 1901. Von Hügel and Tyrrell Correspondence, Br. Mus. Add. MSS 44927. Three years later Tyrrell was still smarting from this pastoral and expressing indignation over it. In a letter to A. L. Lilley he explained the cause of his grief: “Now the Jesuit theologians hold that even fallible ecclesiastical rulings bind to internal assent under pain of mortal sin against faith though not of the particular mortal sin called ‘heresy.’ Also they hold that the Church's indirect teaching authority extends … to all natural truth … This is tantamount to an indirect jurisdiction over the whole field of human knowledge, as claimed in the Joint-Pastoral of 1901.” (The letter, dated 30th Jan., 1904, is in the possession of A. R. Vidler.)
27 Tyrrell, Lord Halifax Demurs, 550.
28 Writing under a pseudonym, Tyrrell explained that it “is in the collective mind of the Church, not in the separate mind of the Pontiff that the truth is elaborated … the Pope cannot be conceived to speak ex cathedra except when he professedly investigates the ecumenical mind.” (S. T. L. [GeorgeTyrrell], Letter to Weekly Register [May 24, 1901], 662–63.) Tyrrell's view is coming back into vogue. See Küng, Hans, The Living Church: Reflections on the Second Vatican Council, trans. Hastings, C. and Smith, M. D. (London, 1963), 301–02Google Scholar. “There is no doubt,” says Butler, “that a pope who attempted to define an article of faith without making use of such means [of consulting the whole Church] would commit a grievous sin.” (Butler, Christopher, The Theology of Vatican II [London, 1967], 105.Google Scholar)
29 The letter is dated 15th Dec, Archiv., Soc. Jes.
30 The letter is dated 24th Oct. 1899. Von Hügel and Tyrrell Correspondence, Br. Mus. Add. MSS 44927.
31 Butler, Cuthbert, The Vatican Council (2 vols., London, 1930), II, 95Google Scholar.
33 Ibid., 144–43. Küng has argued that “it can be shown from the Acts of the Council how the Pope, when making binding statements of doctrine, must not act separately from the Church but only as representing the whole Church, with whom he must remain in contact. The Pope cannot by any means define arbitrarily or against the will of the Church as a whole; the Pope himself has to be on his guard against schism” (Küng, 301–02). In view of the Council's rejection of St. Antonius' formulation which embodies Küng's view, it would be interesting to know which acts of the Council he had in mind when he made this statement.
33 The letter is dated 30th Sept., 1904. Von Hügel and Tyrrell Correspondence, Br. Mus. Add. MSS 44928.
34 GeorgeTyrrell, Beati Excommunicati, Petre Papers, Br. Mus. MSS 52369. This paper, completed on 18th May, 1905, re-examined the nature of excommunication and it indicates that Tyrrell had counted the cost carefully before embarking on his campaign against Pius. Ironically, the paper was completed exactly twenty-six years after Tyrrell entered the Church on 18th May, 1879. Later, the paper was published as L'Excommunication Salutaire, Grande Revue (Oct. 10, 1907), 661–72.
35 Wernz, F. X. and Vidal, P., IUS Canonicum (6 vols., Roma, 1943), II, 516ffGoogle Scholar.
