Bp Fellay: "I didn't mean to say Pope is a Modernist in theology, but in action"

[Geremia]

I've never known any of them to be much enamored with, or even interested in, theology.

Talk to them about how some priests deny miracles. You'll hit a nerve of their sensus Catholicus; trust me. Even if they've never read Pope St. Pius X's Oath Against Modernism, they'll agree 100% with how it says that Catholics must

accept and acknowledge the external proofs of revelation, that is, divine acts and especially miracles and prophecies as the surest signs of the divine origin of the Christian religion and ... hold that these same proofs are well adapted to the understanding of all eras and all men, even of this time.

The whole credibility of our religion rests on miracles, especially the Resurrection.

It's not so much that they're keen on heterodoxy; I think overall they do not question, at least directly, doctrine/dogma.  I just think they have little use for it.  They treat doctrine and theology, both, as if both are largely irrelevant to their personal lives.  Prayer is relevant; devotion is relevant; and personal needs are important to their religious sensibilities.

Think about it:  Any major mainstream Catholic theologians (not "liberation" theologians) come out of Latin America?

Brazil's Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira (TFP's founder) is the closest I can think would come to that.

[JuniorCouncilor]

I think this is the distinction that Bishop Fellay is getting at when he distinguishes between modernist theology and modernist actions.

I rather doubt the distinction he's trying to get at exists.

You are setting this up as a false dichotomy in which a person is either a Catholic or a modernist. 

Fair enough.  Replace 'Modernist' with 'heretic' or (more in line with Mortalium Animos, as I read it) 'apostate.'  That's the core of my issue.  I don't really care if he's a Modernist, or a Pelagian, or a solipsistic agnostic... and I have great difficulty bringing myself to care if he's just so utterly clueless that he can't tell violations of the 1st Commandment from fidelity to the Great Commission.

I agree that we need a definition of Modernist, one that is at least generally agreed upon.  Too much of Pascendi, as I recall, is purely descriptive, and I'm not sure whether or where the exact definition is nailed down.  Still, if Francis isn't a modernist, I have a hard time imagining what one would look like.

Here's a thought.  Let me ask it another way.  Do you think there's ANY CHANCE AT ALL that Francis would not have been condemned of Modernism by Pope St. Pius X?  Equidem ego non video quomodo factum non esset.

[Geremia]

Too much of Pascendi, as I recall, is purely descriptive, and I'm not sure whether or where the exact definition is nailed down.

Humani Generis is much more focused than Pascendi, but Pascendi does identify the root cause of Modernism as agnosticism (which leads to relativism):

Modernists place the foundation of religious philosophy in that doctrine which is usually called Agnosticism. According to this teaching human reason is confined entirely within the field of phenomena, that is to say, to things that are perceptible to the senses, and in the manner in which they are perceptible; it has no right and no power to transgress these limits. Hence it is incapable of lifting itself up to God, and of recognising His existence, even by means of visible things. From this it is inferred that God can never be the direct object of science, and that, as regards history, He must not be considered as an historical subject.

And he identifies the philosopher as the root of the Modernist heresy:

Who is the author of this history [of Christ, the Church, Bible etc.]? The historian? The critic? Assuredly, neither of these but the philosopher. From beginning to end everything in it is a priori, and a priori in a way that reeks of heresy.