Italian Catholic Modernism and Relations with Protestant Culture, ed. by Mark P. Hutchinson, Daniela Saresella, and Paolo Zanini

Both liberal Protestant theology and the Catholic modernist movement can be considered expressions of the theological debate over the redefinition of the experience and the content of faith, which took place from the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. At the base of the two phenomena, though in different ways and measures, was a sense of the need for renewal, which encouraged contact (and sometimes genuine collaboration) between individual Protestants and Catholic modernists. In an attempt to synthesize those developments, this essay will address three main aspects which emerge from this framework: the point of view of Catholic modernists who sought help, support, and comfort from the Protestants; the attitude of some Protestants towards modernists and the modernist phenomenon in general; and the reading by the ecclesiastical magisterium of the relationship between Catholic modernism and Protestantism, essential for understanding the fading of hope among Catholic reformers.