After commenting on the unholy alliance between sceptic and scholastic
against the prostrate defender of a via media, Father Tyrrell indicates the disastrous effect which the Encyclical will have on the prospects of Catholic Universities and of Catholic education in general. He cannot withhold admiration for the honest recklessness of the Pope, but declares that not even the extreme theologians will pretend that an Encyclical of this kind has the slightest claim to be considered an ecumenical and so far " infallible " utterance. Hence Father Tyrrell maintains the right of the "modernist" to remain within the Roman Communion. " To secede would be to allow that his calumniators were in the right ; that Catholicism was bound hand and foot to its scholastic inter- pretation and to its mediaeval polity; that the Pope had no duties and the people no rights." He concludes by lamenting that the enthusiastic hopes of reunion quickened by the " modernist " movement should be so rudely dashed by Pius X., who has alienated the educated classes wholesale. The fearless attitude assumed by Father Tyrrell, who argues with the Pope as an equal, has not unnaturally provoked the wrath of the Osservatore Romano, which denounces his "audacity, insolence, and want of learning."
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