"Religious experience" in Catholic modernism

Since the 19th century the Catholic Church has been facing conflicts regarding her relationship to the modern world. One major conflict that has affected Catholic theology right up to the present day is the modernist controversy. A group of theologians from all over Europe became the focus of attention of the Roman authorities at the beginning of the 20th century. The Curia finally condemned some of the theologians involved, while denouncing their theories as modernist. Through the introduction of an oath against modernism in 1910, different reform proposals were subsequently suppressed until the oath vanished as part of the reforms of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). Despite the importance of this conflict for Catholic theology, research on the modernist controversy remains lacking. The general focus lies on the French exegete Alfred Loisy, a key protagonist of the controversy, and his quest to reconcile the truth of the Christian faith with insights of the modern historical sciences. By contrast, a largely neglected aspect, especially in German-speaking research, is that the theological appeal to experience as a foundation of religious belief and practice is essential for many modernist theories as well as for the Roman rejections of modernism. The project seeks to clarify the concept of religious experience with regard to its sources in the sciences of religion and its function within the modernist controversy. Up to now, research has usually located the origins of the concept within theological sources. However, it was hardly noticed that the concept played a major role in the contemporary scientific discussion on religion outside theology. In the thriving sciences of religion around 1900, the concept of religious experience was part of different endeavors to determine the genuine character and function of religion under the conditions of advanced modernity. The project analyzes the relationship between Catholic modernism and contemporary sciences of religion based on the cases of George Tyrrell and Friedrich von Hügel, the main protagonists of modernism in England. Both theologians were crucial for the modernist movement and its connections to the scientific discussion about religion and experience outside Catholic theology. The results of the project will not only further elucidate the discussion on the point of contention of the modernist controversy, but will also shed new light on the complex process of self-modernization of Catholic theology in the 20th century. Right up to the present day, the modernist controversy still affects how experience is referenced or not referenced within Catholic theology. The project therefore also contributes to the theological discussion of theories today that like the widely received approach of Hans Joas draw heavily on the scientific innovations around 1900.

The project was dedicated to Roman Catholic Modernism (RCM), a theological movement throughout Europe at the beginning of the 20th century whose condemnation by the Roman authorities affected Roman Catholicism for decades. The research on RCM has mainly been focused on the branch of the movement that was interested in the methods of Biblical criticism and modern history. The other branch of the movement, which can be labelled "mystical" or "experiential", was neglected at least in the German scholarship. Where research on this branch was carried out, e.g. in the English and French speaking world, it was focused very often on its traditional theological sources. The aim of the project was to shed light on the non-Catholic and non-theological sources of this branch of RCM from the case of the English modernist Friedrich von Hügel, a leading protagonist of the modernist movement. Drawing on archive material in the "Loome Collection on Catholic Modernism" at the University of Notre Dame, two studies on von Hügel's intellectual profile were made, both following a transdisciplinary approach that includes perspectives form Theology, Religious Sciences, Church history, and Modern History. The application of these perspectives to a central figure of the Catholic modernist controversy was able to show that RCM cannot be understood in the terms of Catholic theology alone. Neither, it is to be conceived primarily as an internal conflict of modernization within a separate Catholic intellectual word. Rather, RCM was part of a non-denominational and non-theological setting of a new scholarly engagement with religion around 1900. In this setting an experiential understanding of religion became highly relevant. This view on von Hügel has implications for the way RCM is seen historically. But it has also consequences for the understanding of the intellectual situation of Catholicism today. If von Hügel and other protagonists of RCM were part of a discussion that lasts until today, as the strong interest of modern theology and the sciences of the religion in figures like William James or Ernst Troeltsch suggest, Catholic theology is pointed here to a possibility to re-engage authors from a Protestant or non-denominational background. In the last decades the works of Hans Joas have stressed that here lies a promising field for Catholicism in order to modernize its own intellectual instruments and to contribute to a field where Catholic scholars are still underrepresented. The studies I was able to carry out during my project show that there are resources for such an engagement in the modernist crisis.