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[German Version] (Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti; born May 13, 1792; pope Jun 16, 1846 – Feb 7, 1878). The family of Pius IX were minor provincial nobility in the Papal States. Epileptic seizures forced him to ¶ interrupt his education at the Piarist College in Volterra (1803–1809), and he convalesced at home. In 1814 he began looking for a career in Rome and in 1816 he decided on the priesthood. In 1819, after rudimentary study of theology, he was ordained at the Roman College; his illness required him to obtain a dispensation. A…

[German Version] (Jan 6, 1813, Münster – Dec 14, 1895, Rome) came from a merchant family. He studied law, and in 1833 entered Prussian state service, which he left as a result of the “Cologne Troubles” ( Kölner Wirren) (Prussian church dispute). After studying theology and being ordained priest in 1841, the stricly ascetic Melchers followed a career for which he was predestined because of his talent for administration and family connections. In 1852 he became vicar general in Münster, in 1857 bishop of Osnabrück, in 1866 archbishop …

[German Version] (name in religion: Henri-Dominique; May 5, 1802, Recey-sur-Ource – Nov 21, 1861, Sorèze), OP, preacher. After studying law in Dijon and brief legal practice in Paris, Lacordaire experienced a conversion and entered the seminary at Issy in 1824 (ordained to the priesthood in 1827). During the July Revolution of 1830, together with C. de Montalembert, he joined H. de Lamennais to found the newspaper L'Avenir with the motto “God and Freedom.” Its ideas were condemned in 1832 in the encyclical Mirari Vos. Lacordaire submitted, and broke with Lamennais. With his 18…

[German Version] Formed in chronological proximity to cultural Protestantism, cultural Catholicism first occurred in 1910 in progressive Reform Catholicism as a polemical term for the group centered around the journal Hochland (Highland) and its editor K. Muth, which was moderate in terms of church policy, and for the “reconcilication of the (Roman Catholic) church and modern culture” in view of Catholic “inferiority” desired by H. Schell and A. Ehrhard and also popularized in the series “Kultur und …

[German Version] (Feb 28, 1857, Ambrières, Marne – Jun 1, 1940, Ceffonds, Haute-Marne), biblical scholar and philosopher of religion. Following seminary studies at Châlons-sur-Marne from 1874 to 1879, he was ordained to the priesthood; at the urging of L. Duchesne he went to the Institut Catholique in Paris in 1881 as instructor in Hebrew, Assyriology, and exegesis. He also pursued further studies, including work with E. Renan at the Collège de France. After 1899 Loisy devoted himself to the great project of a critical history of the Bible. After the encyclical Providentissimus Deus (1…

[German Version] I. Terminology Reform Catholicism was described by the Catholic theologian and man of letters Joseph Müller in his Der Reformkatholizismus, die Religion der Zukunft (1899), which combined conspicuous orthodoxy with criticism of Neoscholasticism and demands for disciplinary reform (including synods, vitalization of the laity, social work, an end to confessional polemic, modern training of the clergy, reform of the Index, and keeping political Catholicism at arm’s length). The book was placed on the Index in 1891, and the pope commended the polemic of Pa…

[German Version] (Feb 28, 1850, Freiburg im Breisgau – May 31, 1906, Würzburg), Catholic apologist and theologian. After studies in Freiburg and Würzburg and ordination to the priesthood in 1873, Schell had a lengthy pastoral ministry, interrupted by a study leave at the Anima in Rome from 1879 to 1881. Against the wishes of the conservative majority of the faculty, he was appointed associate professor of apologetics, history of Christian art, and comparative religion at Würzburg in 1883; in 1888 …

[German Version] (Count; Apr 15, 1810, London – Mar 13, 1870, Paris), spokesman for liberal Catholicism (III) in France; son of a Scottish (Presbyterian, later Catholic) mother and a French émigré; after the Restoration, an envoy of Louis XVIII. In 1830, together with H.F.R. de Lamennais and ¶ J.B.H. Lacordaire, he founded the journal L'Avenir, in which he supported the Catholic nations of Ireland, Belgium and Poland in their fight for freedom. From 1831 he was a member of the French House of Peers. Using the slogan “A Free Church in a Free State,”…

[German Version] (count; Aug 30, 1880, Kronwinkl Castle, near Moosburg an der Isar – Dec 21, 1950, Berlin). In 1908, Preysing decided to follow the priestly calling (in the archdiocese of Munich and Freising), after having studied law and worked briefly in the Bavarian diplomatic service; in 1928 he became cathedral canon, in 1932 bishop of Eichstätt, and in 1935 bishop of Berlin. In confronting National Socialism, Preysing emerged as the keenest critic of Cardinal A. Bertram’s “policy of petition…

[German Version] (Gian Pietro Carafa, born Jun 28, 1476, Capriglio; pope May 23, 1555 – Aug 18, 1859), one of the most significant champions of the intransi-¶ gent wing of Catholic reform and the Counter-Reformation. He was descended from an aristocratic and influential Neapolitan family. Cardinal Oliviero Carafa, his uncle, advanced his curial career and in 1505 relinquished the diocese of Chieti in the future pope’s favor. Following diplomatic missions in Naples, England, and Spain, in 1518 he was also given the archdio…

[German Version] (Sep 13, 1843, Saint-Servan – Apr 21, 1922, Rome), a church historian, studied at the seminary in Saint-Brieuc (Bretagne) and at the Collegium Romanum. Ordained a priest in 1867, he studied in Paris from 1871, was a member of the École française de Rome (1874–1875), traveled to Greece and Asia Minor, took his degree from the Sorbonne with a dissertation on the Liber Pontificalis (1877), became professor in the Institut Catholique in Paris, moved to the École des Hautes Études in 1887, and was di…

[German Version] Leclercq, Henri, OSB (Dec 4, 1869, Tournai, Belgium – Mar 23, 1945, London, England), church historian and historian of liturgy. After briefly serving in the French army, he entered Solesmes Abbey in 1893 and transferred to the daughter house of Farnborough in Hampshire in 1896. With the superior there, F. Cabrol, he edited, from 1902, the Reliquiae Liturgicae vetustissimae and from 1903 the (initially unnamed) Dictionnaire d'archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie. The career he had thus begun as lexicographer and editor – which was connected with th…

[German Version] I. Syllabus Errorum (1864) The Syllabus errorum is a list of modern errors, published on Dec 8, 1864, as an appendix to the encyclical Quanta cura of Pius IX. It consists of 80 statements taken from earlier addresses and writings of the pope. In general terms, the background of the condemnation was the Curia’s intensified campaign against liberalism since 1849, especially its struggle against the liberal Catholicism (III) of figures like C.F. de Montalembert (speech at the 1863 Catholic Congress in Mechel…

[German Version] I. Church History – II. Catholicism – III. Practical Theology – IV. Art History I. Church History 1. General The word modernism, derived from the adjective modern (Modernity), has often been used pejoratively. In 1524 Luther called the representatives of the nominalist via moderna (Nominalism) “modernists,” who have nothing to offer (WA 15, 52f.). In the 18th century, the opponents of traditional Protestant orthodoxy were sometimes tagged with the same label. Modernism in the strict sense served as a polemical categori…