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Review of Book: Transcendence and Immanence

Transcendence and Immanence. A Study in Catholic Modernism and Integralism by Gabriel Daly, O.S.A. Pp. XII +254 (Clarendon Press: Oxford University Press) £12.50. IN his short Introduction Dr Daly begins by referring to 'what the encyclical [Pascendi 1907] regarded as the basic errors of modernism, namely agnosticism and vital immanence'. He then tells us that the book is 'an investigation into the substance of this charge'. Fortunately it is much more than that. After mentioning 'the changed atmosphere of the Roman Catholic Church after Vatican II', he goes on to say: 'The anti-modernist documents have been rendered obsolete as canons of orthodoxy by the Roman Catholic magisterium itself'. This is broadly true. It is correct to say: 'It is high time for Roman Catholic theologians to cease making ritual obeisances towards the myth of a concerted modernist threat to the unity, orthodoxy and stability of the Church', but it should be added that such behaviour is well on the way out. The next sentence reads: 'To invoke the term myth in this context is not to imply that there was no substance to the charges brought against modernism by the Roman authorities'. So it is not wholly true to say that Pascendi is obsolete. This may seem a quibble. But it has its importance in view of the fact that Daly, a little earlier, has been undiscriminatingly contemptuous of those who defended Blondel and von Hugel from charges of unorthodoxy, as though there were no substance in any of these charges: 'It is the contention of this book that these exercises in beleagured discipleship, never seemly, are now unnecessary .. .' (this theme recurs occasionally, but no particular instances of such exercises are given). Daly decides to use the word 'modernist' of 'any Roman Catholic writer whose thinking and methodology led him to challenge the all-over philosophico-theological schema, or any significant element therein, of the then prevailing neo-scholastic conception and method ... '. Some of these make strange bedfellows. These initial reservations must not be taken to mean that the book is unwelcome. On the contrary, it is an account of the 'modernist crisis' that concentrates in a very valuable way on the most important issues at stake between early neo-scholasticism and its critics; it abounds in illuminating or challenging comments and is impressivelydocumented. Some rough indication of its contents will now be given. The first chapter, on Roman fundamental theology at the end of the last century, is a convenient summing-up of the official attitude to any attempt at connecting cognition with human experience. The second chapter, on Blondel, announces: 'Today's Roman Catholic theology of revelation and tradition owes infinitely more to Blondel that to Billot and his disciples' (p. 29); anyone who still doubts this should become convinced of it if he reads on. Loisy is the main subject of the two chapters which follow. The first traces his views up to 1904: 'His disillusionment with the Church was almost total, and this had the effect of leaving his beliefs, including his ideas on transcendence, in disarray' (p. 61). In the second of these chapters Daly turns to Blondel's