It seems obvious to me that the notion of God has never been anything but a kind of ideal projection, a reflection upward of the human personality, and that theology never has been and never can be anything but a more and more purified mythology.

Loisy argued that Jesus lacked a conscious understanding that he was consubstantial with God the Father and therefore Jesus did not know how the Catholic Church would "transform". Loisy disagreed with the idea that the organized church was unnecessary but the nature of his disagreement brought him controversy. In July 1907 the Holy Office (after Vatican II renamed as Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) issued a decree signed by pope Pius X entitled Lamentabili Sane Exitu (or "A Lamentable Departure Indeed") which formally condemned sixty-five modernist or relativist propositions concerning the nature of the Church revelation biblical exegesis the sacraments and the divinity of Christ.

But for all his claAlfred Loisys with the Roman Catholic hierarchy Loisy did think that Jesus intended to form some sort of society or community. In 1893 he was dismissed as a professor from the Institut Catholique de Paris.