Catholic Modernism - anyone know anything?

[zenandtheartofbaking]

Does anyone on mumsnet anything about Catholic Modernism? Particulary, what is the standing of their ideas these days, are any of them accepted within the mainstream or within (which circles)?
And could anyone tell me anything about the scholastic attitude towards novelty? I seem to recall Chaucer expressing a degree of ambivalence towards novelty, linking it to sexual transgression. Was that unusual or a position underwritten by medieval theology?
I'd really appreciate any help on this one. Thank you.

I think it (modernism) is considered heretical within the RCC

Thank you fivesetsofschoolfees, I'm really glad you posted. If you want to add any more, please do ... I really know very little and am keen even to receive ideas as to where I might find further information.

Does anyone know if all aspects of it are still considered heretical? I'm guessing that many elements have become accepted but am very curious about the status of some of the more radical ideas. I have no idea where to go to find this out.

And I'm still really interested in the notion of novelty.

Is there any more information out there?

What do you mean by novelty? Is it to do with the expanding universe, or eschatology, or something else entirely?

When I think of modernism, I think liberalism, which I think has been very damaging for the church

I am very intrigued as to why Zen is interested in this topic.

Yippee!! von Hugel would be great. I know, at present v. little about von hugel; I've been looking mainly at George Tyrell, so a brief outline (!) of his thinking would be brilliantly helpful if you have the time or energy for that. To narrow that down a bit, I'm interested in ideas which have become assimilated within Anglican and Catholic thinking (! - because I know that's not brief). Just a sort of skim because I will go off and read up on my own. It's just so ... big ... that any indication of where and what is a good place to start would be brilliant.

Novelty -- well, I really love the emphasis Tyrell put on novelty and change. the way I understand him is that he picked up the Darwinian glove and tried to think of a religion of change and movement and progress. I don't know if I'm over-reading him there. So a part of that was thinking of a divine in which novelty and change was an integral part, rather than a religion that held on to ideas of change and (implicitly) earthly decline and falling away from an (earlier) perfection and ideal.

Why am I interested? Partly for thesis reasons but actually, really, because I really love Tyrell and think he was part of a movement that re-interpreted religion in general and Christianity in particular as a profound way of embracing and cherishing humanity; it underwrites and gives weight to our tendency to give meaning to and invest with emotion our short lives (and those of others) within the long, almost annihilating, time of eternity. Simultaneously, he seems to emphasise a notion of the divine as a limit to human over-reaching.

I'm just of an age where that is very, very appealing.

Aaagh! As you can see, I'm slightly over-enthusiastic about this and can bore for Britain on the subject.

However, i have no idea of the wider context of these ideas and thus how much of this is particular to Catholic Modernism. My guess is that this is still pretty non-mainstream thinking. I read your earlier post, revjustabout, on Don Cupitt, who I see as having a similar approach, and had been unaware he lost his parish (!). There's a great deal I don't know. (I always tell my dcs that's a good and exciting position to be in - but I do wish it wasn't quite so for myself.)

So any help on this score would be helpful and really, really fascinating.

I don't know how to CAT - would you tell me?

My thesis touches on Evelyn Underhill too! I'm looking at English literature (1890-1940-ish) but at the influence of religion on literature of the period.

I'm all excited now. Contact with a real person who has heard of Evelyn Underhill!

Modernism was one of the things outlawed I think by one of the Pope Pius' > As we have only just forgiven Galileo I think it will be at least a few hundred years before we embrace modernism.

revjustabout - I will be exploring those two options. Thank you very much.

I apologise in advance for just how enthusiastic I might be. I'm having to really hold myself back here. Mn really is amazing, isn't it? I've been working away for ages now and in RL have come across no-one with similar research interests.

Twinset - Yes, I know what you mean. But I was (at the outset of this post, anyway,) quite hopeful. This was down to an anecdote: The Pope responsible for Vatican II (and I am indecently bad at names - Leo?) read the files on himself when he became Pope, which suggested that he might be a dangerous subversive and he wrote in the margins "Yes. But now we are infallible." So I just wonder how much of the previously heretical thinking was, in fact, incorporated in one form or another.