Syllabus of Errors

In 1864, Pope Pius IX issued Quanta cura ("with great care") to address and respond to errors and heresies that were prevalent in his day (and today), most of which constitute "modernism" and which were used to attack the Church.

Attached to the document was an appendix, "Syllabus of Errors," cataloged previous Papal statements on them, and servied to put them together into a single document. Such errors include the ideas that,

1. ... God is identical with the nature of things, and is, therefore, subject to changes.

3. Human reason, without any reference whatsoever to God, is the sole arbiter of truth and falsehood, and of good and evil; it is law to itself, and suffices, by its natural force, to secure the welfare of men and of nations.

5. Divine revelation is imperfect, and therefore subject to a continual and indefinite progress, corresponding with the advancement of human reason.

6. The faith of Christ is in opposition to human reason and divine revelation not only is not useful, but is even hurtful to the perfection of man.

12. The decrees of the Apostolic See and of the Roman congregations impede the true progress of science.

16. Man may, in the observance of any religion whatever, find the way of eternal salvation, and arrive at eternal salvation.

17. Good hope at least is to be entertained of the eternal salvation of all those who are not at all in the true Church of Christ.

18. Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion, in which form it is given to please God equally as in the Catholic Church.

The Syllabus offered nothing new on Catholic doctrine, as it was a response to the present age based on age-old Church doctrine. As his biographer observed,

On the 8th of December, 1864, he published the Encyclical Quanta Gura condemning a host of erroneous doctrines which he had from time to time censured, and of which a summary, or syllabus, was appended. There was nothing new to Catholics in this; but when modern liberalism and infidelity were confronted by this mass of sound Catholic doctrine, which struck at some favorite crude theory of the time, all rose in arms.

Yet, the biographer notes, the "summary" of prior statements was recieved with outrage:

The Pope whose declining power made him but yesterday one of whom they spoke with a kind of pity7 became sud�denly the great enemy of human progress, a man of boundless power and influence.

Pius IX overway tremendous change in the Church and in the world, which was hastening its way towards self-destruction in two great World Wars and communist revolutions. Then loser to those events, in 1907 Piux X issued a decree, Lamentabili sane exitu which responded to sixty-five propositions of Modernists.

** article under construction **