Jansenism - Legacy

Legacy

Unigenitus marks the official break of toleration of Jansenism within the Church in France, though quasi-Jansenists would occasionally stir in the following decades. By the mid-18th century, Jansenism proper had totally lost its battle to be a viable theological position within Catholicism. However, certain ideas tinged with Jansenism remained in circulation for much longer; in particular, the Jansenist idea that Holy Communion should be received very infrequently, and that reception required much more than freedom from mortal sin, remained influential until finally condemned by Pope St. Pius X, who endorsed frequent communion, as long as the communicant was free of mortal sin, in the early 20th century.

On the other hand, Pascal's denunciation of Jesuit casuistry and its "relaxed morality" also led Innocent XI to condemn (in 1679) sixty-five propositions which were taken chiefly from the writings of the Jesuits Escobar and Suarez. They were said to be propositiones laxorum moralistarum, and Innocent forbade anyone to teach them under penalty of excommunication.

Several Jansenist teachers also proposed a radical reform of the Latin liturgy.

Jansenism was also a factor in the formation of the independent Old Catholic Church of the Netherlands from 1702 to 1723, and is said to continue to live on in some Ultrajectine traditions, but this proposition began with accusations from the Jesuits.

In the Canadian province of Quebec, the widespread rejection of the Catholic Church and secularization of its institutions in the mid 1960s, was justified frequently by charges that the church in Quebec was "Jansenist."