Blessed Pope Pius IX … Pray for us!
At the time of the Pope’s death in Rome, a Belgian child, dying from an undiagnosed illness, told his mother he had a vision of Pius IX being crowned by the Virgin in Heaven. The child was instantly cured. Since news of the Pope’s death had not yet reached Belgium, the mother sent a telegram to Rome. The answer indicated the child had been cured at the very moment of the Pope’s death.
Read more about Pope Pius IX here – and note this remark:
“They write that I am tired,” said Pius IX five weeks before his death. “They are right. I am tired of so much iniquity and discord.”
Now, of course, much of the “iniquity and discord” is being caused by a Pope – and wouldn’t Pope Pius IX be surprised to learn that it is the beleaguered faithful who are “tired” of it all.
This thread is to help us recall the holy popes of days gone by and to share our favourite stories of these, their major contributions to the life of the Church and their fidelity in passing on the Faith through their teaching office, encyclicals etc. A trip down Memory Lane, so to speak, with perhaps some thought given to what the contents of an updated Syllabus of Errors might include…
Comments (34)
We will have to pray Blessed Pius 1X for our present pope and the clergy. I really don’t know a lot about our popes of the although I have read various books about the much maligned Pope Pius X11.
I especially like the book about him called , I think, ‘The Pimpernel of the Vatican’ by and Irish author.
Forgotten his name.
The book “The Scarlet Pimpernel of the Vatican” is written about Msgr. Hugh O’Flaherty, head of the Holy Office in Rome during World War 2. This saintly Monsignor, an Irishman, was instrumental in saving many jews from the holocaust. He did this by hiding them in various locations in and around Rome with the help of friends and people of influence who objected to what was going on. Pope Pius XII was aware of this, but could do little as he did not want invite more trouble by compromising on Vatican neutrality, which might endanger more people. I am stating this in Pope Pius’ favour, not being critical as so many others are. I believe that the Pope did the best that he could do under the circumstances; he could probably be rated as the last of the saintly popes to date.
Spiritus,
I pay no attention at all to the critics of Pius XII. He was revered by the Jewish leaders on his death (one said that Israel had never had such a good friend) and the Chief Rabbi of Rome converted to the Catholic faith due to the Pope. He even called his son Eugenio after Pius XII.
I agree with you totally that he is probably the last of the saintly popes to date. It’s ironic that he’s the one not yet beatified or canonised.
Thanks Spiritus for the info about the book. I appreciate what you said about the Pope and agree that he was saintly
I’d never heard that story about the Belgian child’s miracle before – how wonderful!
Blessed Pius IX was obviously a wonderful pope – if only we had one like him now.
As for what should be in an updated Syllabus of Errors, the problem is where to start.
I think the next Pope will have to publish something withdrawing all the V2 statements in favour of ecumenical events because these events contradict the Church’s traditional teaching outright, and the same with religious liberty, so called, and the whole of Nostra Aetate will have to be condemned.
Until today, I didn’t know that much about Pope Pius IX, so would have said Saint Pius X contributed most, among the modern popes, to the Church in our times, mostly because of Pascendi, but also because reading his life story made me see how saintly he was in his life.
It’s good to have this positive thread today when the news has been covering the report into child abuse in Scotland and the bishops’ neglect in that regard. I can’t imagine either Pius IX or X having behaved in such a neglectful way. The story is told in the life of Pius X, when he called into a parish around the time the priest was supposed to be giving a catechism lesson from the pulpit and was late. When the priest eventually turned up, he met with a stern pope and an appropriate form of rebuke, enough to let him know he was out of order. So I imagine priests guilty of abusing children would have been wiped the floor with. Maybe it would be an idea to offer a prayer to both of these saintly popes for true remorse for these abusing priests and church workers covered in the report published yesterday, and for help for the victims not to blame the Church as they seem to be doing but to blame the individual priests and bishops who are guilty of abuse and neglect of duty. Blessed Pius IX, Saint Pius X, pray for them.
Does anyone think there is a similarity in looks between these two excellent popes Pius 1V and Pope Pius V
I meant Pope Pius the ninth and the tenth don’t know what I was thinking writing four and five
Morgana,
I sympathise – my grasp of arithmetic is on the same level as the child in the following conversation:
Father: If I had five coconuts and I gave you three, how many would I have left ?
Child: I don’t know.
Father: Why not ?
Child: In our school we do all our arithmetic in apples and oranges.
Father: If I had seven oranges in one hand and eight oranges in the other, what would I have ?
Child: Big hands !
And just to make you feel even better, I noticed, just in time, that I had typed Pius XI instead of Pius IX throughout the introductory article, including the headline, and had even selected a picture of Pius XI. Only noticed the gaffe at the last minute and I’m only telling you to make you feel better, so don’t go broadcasting it all over the place or my enemies will have a field day on Facebook and other (anti-social) media places… twits that they are! 😀
PS get it? “twits”? “Twitter”?
Editor – enemies? Then say it with flowers – give them a Triffid! arf,arf.
Apparently, after I was born, the nurses in the hospital told my mother that I reminded them of Pope John XXIII – which is a bit strange really as he’d been dead for a number of years. Maybe my colouring was a just a touch out of the ordinary. Anyway, so give a guess who is my favourite pope? Yep, you’re right, it’s St.Peter. O.K., he might have caused Jesus a bit of aggravation during His earthly ministry (I suspect he might have held a grudge from when his mother-in-law was cured) but he became the rock that was faithful to the end which is what ultimately counted. May his powerful intercession come to the aid of his Successor and the whole Church!
My favourite Pope of all time has to be Pope St. Gregory the Great.
Pope Saint Gregory the Great not only saved the Church, in times so frightful that the men who lived in them were sure that the end of the world was come, but he founded the great civilization which has lasted down to our day and of which we are part, Western Civilization. All alone, in the midst of famine and pestilence, floods and earthquakes, endangered by Greeks and barbarians alike, and abandoned by the Emperor, Pope Gregory, frail and ailing in body but strong and undaunted in spirit, succored and saved his people, his city, his country, and the whole of Christendom.
Full article here:- http://catholicism.org/gregory-great.html
If he lived in our times I don’t think he would be ignoring the persecution of Christians by Muslime while hobnobbing with their Grand Mufti in the Dome of the Rock and addressing them as ‘My dear brothers’. And I can’t imagine that he would say ‘Who am I to judge?’, or admire the heretical writings of a Cardinal Kasper or give free reign to those who would destroy the Church from within. Men in his times thought that the end of the world has come; how much more reason have we to think the same?
Shock horror please all pick yourselves up off the floor he wasn’t a favourite or anything like that and he most certainly carried out his pontificate by offending our Lord on many occasions and off course he was thoroughly modern but every time he appeared on TV he always genuinely seemed to exude a holiness that I can’t see in Pope Francis.Pope john Paul the second.
Morgana.
Who are you talking about?
Pope john Paul the second
Blessed Pius IX started his Pontificate a fairly liberal Pope. Thanks to divine grace, however, he soon had his eyes opened to the Luciferian origin of modern liberalism, especially in religion, and very quickly made himself its fiercest enemy.
His famous Encyclical Quanta Cura and his Syllabus of Errors are a must read for anyone trying to understand the present crisis in the Church and in the world of our time. What becomes immediately obvious upon reading these prophetic documents is that our modern Popes and bishops have adopted many of the errors condemned by Pius and his predecessors. Vatican II was the great liberal revenge against the post-Trent Pontiffs, the window that opened the Church to the “smoke of Satan”.
As his funeral cortege passed along in front of the Tiber, Pius’ enemies, the enemies of God and the Catholic religion, attempted to push his coffin into the Tiber, so great an opponent and exposer of their evil machinations had he been in life. Their descendents today have no such cause for revenge in relation to the post-Conciliar Popes, whose Modernist mindset and liberal folly has done more damage to the universal Church in just 50 years than all external enemies together have managed in 2000 years.
Athanasius
That’s really interesting – I didn’t know that Pius IX was a liberal to begin with.
Yes Fidelis, this Pope started off quite liberal, his election being hailed by prominent Protestants around the globe who saw him as a great reformer of the Church. Little did they know how staunch a Traditionalist he would turn out to be.
Lest we forget, Pope St. Pius X, the great Hammer of Modernists as I call him, fought against Modernism and warning us of the times we are living in. He is my favorite Pope. He did not menace words and told the full truth, ever so courageously, for his one desire was to see the restoration of all things in Christ, a dream that has yet to be realized this century later.
My post from today:
https://damselofthefaith.wordpress.com/2015/08/19/modernism-threatens-the-world/
DOTF
Yes, there is no question that St. Pius X was a very specially gifted Pope and saint. He has no comparison since the great Pope-saints of the early centuries of the Church. It is the tragedy of all tragedies that his Conciliar successors disregarded his wisdom and warnings in regard to Modernism. God reward Archbishop Lefebvre for adopting him as Patron of his Priestly Society.
I hope this isn’t the wrong thread to post this shocking news but I couldn’t help thinking when I read it, that any one of the great pre-Vatican II popes would have acted on this information without delay and would never have let these abuse cases get to the stage where a Protestant minister (Mr McLellan) had to lead an independent enquiry to set a process in motion to sort it out. This is very shocking indeed – this case was mentioned on the TV news the other night and I was amazed that they only mentioned it in passing, didn’t make more of it because it is absolutely mind-blowing:
“McLellan said the particular case “which stuck with me” involved one woman repeatedly locked in a darkened room as a child by a nun who was her carer. “The same nun sexually abused me. I told the priest in confession, the priest told the nun and together they raped me,” she said. “I was still only eight years old.”
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/18/catholic-church-in-scotland-must-support-abuse-survivors-review-says
I thought I would post it here because, although what has been going on in the Church has been just terrible, I’ve never heard of any case of the seal of confession being broken. This is why this case shocks me to the core and I thought I would post it here because I want to suggest that we all pray very hard to Blessed Pius IX and the other great pre-Vatican II popes to somehow make sure that these scandals do not keep anyone away from the truths taught by the Church, and that the victims/survivors, get all the help they need to get over their scandalous abuse at the hands of those who they should have been able to trust the most.
While there is no doubt that many in the clergy have been involved in the dreadful sexual abuse of children, and may God forgive them, I can’t help but see how easy it is for people to make false allegations. I would need more than Mr McLellan’s word before I accepted its authenticity, especially as the media aren’t making more of the horrendous case he mentions.
As to breaking seal of confession, if a priest has gone so far down the road of losing his soul as to conspire to rape a child, I cannot think he would baulk at that.
Michaela,
I saw that report on the BBC TV news the other night and my first thought is did McLellan check out that child’s story? Perhaps she told the priest and the rest is, shockingly, true, but how to be sure it was told in confession?
I’m really not convinced that just because people recount these memories, they ARE necessarily true and I know I’m risking the wrath of the lurkers because that’s not the PC attitude today, which is always to believe these allegations. Sorry, but I still hold to the old fashioned view of justice that the alleged perpetrator must be given a fair hearing. Having said that, I do appreciate that some, perhaps even many, of the allegations made are genuine and my sympathy is wholeheartedly for those who have suffered such abuse. I just think it’s important to remember that children do lie, do get confused, and do not, for one reason or another, always tell the truth. I think, too, we ought to remember that there are good priests who have been falsely accused. There’s one I know of in South Lanarkshire who, I’m told, will never recover from a false allegation that was made against him, although it did not involve child-abuse, despite the fact that the police investigation was dropped. “He’s finished” / “on verge of a breakdown” are the sort of opinions expressed by friends of his in conversation with me, only a couple of weeks ago.
So, I’d want McLellan to tell us that he spoke to the priest concerned and that the priest admitted the crime and the shocking breaking of the seal of confession. Unless he does that, or provides other irrefutable corroborative evidence, I’m going to stick to my firm belief that, while a minority of priests have, shockingly, betrayed their trust by abusing children sexually, and while there may well have been sadistic nuns like those described by McLellan in his report (happily, I’ve only met kind and compassionate Sisters in religion) still, it would be a very hard pill to swallow that even the worst of clergy has broken the seal of confession. Maybe I’m being naïve, but I’ll stick with it, in the absence of solid evidence to the contrary.
Therese,
“As to breaking seal of confession, if a priest has gone so far down the road of losing his soul as to conspire to rape a child, I cannot think he would baulk at that.”
Maybe you are right and I am wrong. It’s so difficult to get into the mind of such a priest… On reflection, you are probably right and I am (at last!) wrong. Had to happen one day 😀
Finally, Michaela, given your rationale for posting this information on this thread, that’s fine. I have responded and I don’t mind if others respond, but let’s not depart, in essence, from the thread topic.
Blessed Pius IX, pray for priests.
I know it’s a different pope but this really surprised me. Straight from an article on Archbishop Lefebvre on CFN:
Shortly after, the French government pressured Pope Pius XI to “tone down” the French seminary’s counter-revolutionary program. In one of his worst decisions — along with the suppression of Padre Pio and the decision that led to the slaughter of the Mexican Cristeros — Pius XI yielded and dismissed Father Le Floch: despite the fact that he was a model Rector since 1904; despite the fact that he was revered by students and former students who were now eminent Churchmen; des-pite the fact that an independent probe showed Father Le Floch to be faithful to Catholic doctrine without crease.[5] This occurred around the same time Pius XI condemned Action Francais, an anti-liberalism organization ad-mired by Pope Saint Pius X[6] that Pope Pius XII sought unsuccessfully to resurrect.[7]
Helen,
“… along with the suppression of Padre Pio “
I wonder what that means? In what way did Pius XI “suppress” Padre Pio?
I think that it may have been forbidding Padre Pio to offer Mass and the Sacraments in public. will check it out and get back…
From “Fatima Crusader”, Issue 60, Summer 1999. This is taken from an interview with Fr. Gruner titled “The Secret of Padre Pio” .
“Yet even before the 1969 reform, he was persecuted for his attachment to the unchanging Mass of Always. Padre Pio was silenced and isolated by the Vatican under Pius XI because of doubts concerning the authenticity of his wonders and miracles. The persecution stopped under Pius XII who once asked: “What does Padre Pio do all day?” The response of the Archbishop of the blessed monk, “He takes away the sins of the world.” The persecutions started again under John XXIII.”
With certainty we can say that, at a time of God’s choosing, the restoration of His Church will begin. Until the time of deliverance, the faithful remnant clings to the immutable Catholic faith and looks forward to the time when, in the words of Archbishop Lefebvre’s 1974 Declaration, the “true light of tradition dissipates the gloom, which obscures the sky of the Eternal Rome”. It is not unreasonable to hope that when the pall of masonic and modernist revolution is lifted, the Church will be blessed with a successor to Peter who will follow the example of Pio Nono, a Pope who stood firm in the face of the enemies of the Social Kingship of Christ, both inside and outside the walls, a Pope who rightly earned the title, “Scourge of Liberalism”, the Pope who declared the infallible doctrine of the Immaculate Conception and convoked the First Vatican Council which affirmed papal infallibility when speaking ex cathedra on matters of faith and morals.
The great Pope’s labours in Lord’s vineyard also resulted in great expansion of the Church’s missionary branches and its organisation in the New World, the creation of nearly 50 new dioceses in the US and the re-establishment of the hierarchies of England and Wales, and the Netherlands. The longest reigning Pope in history also gave tangible recognition of the importance of imbuing future priests with a true Romanitas by setting up Colleges for foreign seminarians in Rome, established the Feast of the Sacred Heart universally throughout the Church, and declared Saint Joseph Patron of the Church.
Pope Pius recognised very early in his reign that a policy of appeasement towards the secular enemies of Christ was worse than useless. The fact that he was forced to flee Rome, after his prime minister was stabbed to death, and one of his secretaries who happened to be standing next to the Pope at the time was killed by a stray bullet, left little room for doubt as to the nature of the forces opposed to the Christ and His Vicar on Earth.
Since the sixteenth century faithful Vicars of Christ have opposed the diabolical, revolutionary pestilence of heresy, freemasonry, naturalism, pantheism, rationalism, laicism, liberalism, socialism and communism, stirred up by Luther’s Protestant rejection of the Church’s divinely instituted authority, the masonic French revolution’s declaration of all authority coming from man, and the Bolshevik plague’s fanatical, atheistic, materialistic war against even belief in God, and the divinely instituted social order. Well, in a world “seated in wickedness” (I John v. 19), the truly prophetic Magisterium of the Pope who gave us the Syllabus of Errors leaves those claiming to be members of the Mystical Body of Christ with no room for excusable ignorance concerning the enemy. Pope Pius stated matters very clearly: “The Revolution is inspired by satan himself. Its goal is the destruction of the building of Christianity, to reconstruct upon its ruins the social order of paganism.” (Alloc. Nobis et nobiscum, quoted in La Revolutiuon expliquee aux jeunes gens, by Monsignor Louis-Gaston de Segur)
Those words of a true shepherd reflect the wisdom of the Angelic Doctor, written six centuries previously:
“The end to which the devil aims is the revolt of the rational creature from God. Hence, from the beginning, he tried to get man to break away from obedience to the divine precept. This revolt from God is conceived as an end, inasmuch as it is desired under pretence of liberty.” (Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, IIIa., P. Q. VIII. a. 7)
In these days when the Church Militant appears to have been replaced by the Church of milksops and cream puff Catholicism, Pius IX’s fortitude in the face of the enemies of Christ is worth recalling. Can one imagine a conciliar Pope using the words employed by their predecessor to describe Bismarck: “a modern Attila”, “satan in a helmet”, “the great sorcerer”, and “the boa constrictor” of contemporary diplomacy? There is a least one rather obvious prototype of the Antichrist at large on the world stage today. And yet, Obama is reportedly on very good terms with Pope Francis. Is there any need to mention the Castro thugs?
Prophetic is not a misplaced word when discussing Pope Pius IX’s exercise of the Petrine ministry. In his first encyclical, he gave very clear warning against the greatest secular evil in history.
“The infamous doctrine of so-called Communism which is absolutely contrary to the natural law itself, and if once adopted would utterly destroy the rights, property and possessions of all men, even society itself.” Qui Pluribus, #16, 1846
Likewise, nobody can deny that the great Pope warned us of organised naturalism’s ongoing, and very much current, diabolical encroachment on the family. Remember, the following words were written over 150 years ago:
“Not content with abolishing Religion in public Society”, the enemies of Christ, “desire further to banish it from families and private life. Teaching and professing these most fatal errors of Socialism and Communism, they declare ‘that domestic society, or the family, derives all its reason of existence solely from civil law, whence it is to be concluded that from civil law descend and depend all the rights of parents over their children, and, above all, the right of instructing and educating them’”. Quanta Cura, #4, December 8 1864
Rightly indeed was Pius IX called the “scourge of Liberalism”, that “fatal root of discord…this insidious error, much more dangerous than an open enemy because it hides itself under the specious veil of zeal and of charity” (address to the Confederation of the Catholic Circle of Belgium, May 8, 1873). On separate occasions the great Pope described Liberalism as a “perfidious enemy”, “a hidden poison”, a compact between justice and iniquity” and “a most pernicious enemy”. How times have changed indeed.
The resolute papal defender of the Social Kingship of Christ unambiguously opposed liberalism in all its manifestations, whether it was the separation of Church and State, the right to legislate without regard to God, secularisation of education, religious liberty, false ecumenism, or indifferentism. Aggiornamento and Cult of Man were most certainly not on his agenda.
Pope Pius reiterated his predecessor Gregory XVI’s condemnation of the “insanity” of “liberty of conscience and worship” and that of the right to “manifest openly and publicly their ideas, by word of mouth, through the press, or by any other means”, describing it as the “liberty of perdition” – Quanta Cura #3, December 8 1864
He warned the world of the dangers of rejection of Divine Revelation and authority, and that by which “will of the people, manifested by what they call public opinion, or in any other way, constitutes the supreme law, independent of all divine and human right” and pointed to the inevitable conclusion that Society, “freed from the bonds of Religion and of true justice, can certainly have no other purpose that the effort to obtain and accumulate wealth, and that in its actions it follows no other law than that of uncurbed cupidity, which seeks to secure its own pleasures and comforts?” (Quanta Cura, #4)
Each passing day brings greater vindication of that warning. Nobody who isn’t in a third degree coma can honestly deny that the world is in open revolt against God. What exactly, we might ask, does it take for the human element of the Church today to openly recognise and act on that? The prevailing novus ordo intoxication, cowardice, and flat refusal to admit error are the conciliar bastions that actually do require immediate demolition, bastions that never had any divine planning permission.
The most succinct summary of Vatican II I have heard came from a Society priest, who described it as “human respect ‘dogmatized’”. It is hardly open to debate that the magisterium of Pope Pius IX should reduce adherents of the “hermeneutic of continuity” (or should we say the imposition of contradiction) to silently looking at the ground. The conciliar errors of false ecumenism and religious liberty, as well as the unprecedented mania for dialogue with those who reject Christ stand convicted by the teaching of Pius IX.
“The true Church is one, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic and Roman; unique: the Chair founded on Peter by the Lord’s words; outside her fold is to be found neither the true faith nor eternal salvation, for it is impossible to have God for Father if one has not the Church for Mother, and it is in vain that one flatters oneself on belonging to the Church, if one is separated from the Chair of Peter on which the Church is founded.” Singulari quidem, #4, March 17, 1856
“Also perverse is that shocking theory that it makes no difference to which religion one belongs, a theory greatly at variance even with reason. By means of this theory, those craftly men remove all distinction between virtue and vice, truth and error, honourable and vile action. They pretend that men can gain eternal salvation by the practice of any religion, as if there could ever be any sharing between justice and iniquity, any collaboration between light and darkness, or any agreement between Christ and Belial.” – Qui Pluribus, #15, 1846
Or take the view of one of most influential liberal theologians/revolutionaries at Vatican II on the issue of continuity:
“It cannot be denied that the affirmation of religious liberty by Vatican II says materially something other than what the Syllabus of 1864 said, and even just about the opposite of propositions 16, 17 and 19 of this document” (Yves Congar, La Crise de l’Eglise et Msgr. Lefebvre, p.54)
While talk of Pope Benedict’s “hermeneutic of continuity” becomes fainter by the day, any discussion of Pope Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors should bring to mind the rather candid and revealing words published in 1982 in a private work of the then Cardinal Ratzinger, words which to my knowledge have never been retracted.
Considering the great Conciliar manifesto of aggiornamento, Gaudium et Spes, the Cardinal stated that “we might say that (in conjunction with the texts on religious liberty, and world religions) it is a revision of the Syllabus of Pius IX, a kind of countersyllabus…an attempt at an official reconciliation with the new era inaugurated in 1789” as well as expressing his disturbing opinion of “…the one-sidedness of the position adopted by the Church under Pius IX and Pius X in response to the situation created by the new phase of history inaugurated by the French Revolution…” – Principles of Catholic Theology, pp. 381-382
The Cardinal later reinforced the fact that he was a willing participant in the great conciliar march forward into the novus ordo desert, away from the Social Kingship of Christ, with no going back.
“…there can be no return to the Syllabus, which have marked the first stage in the confrontation with liberalism and a newly conceived Marxism but cannot be the last stage.” Ibid, p. 391
When presenting Vatican’s 1990 Instruction on the Theologian’s Vocation to the press, Cardinal Ratzinger threw down his infamous version of ringcraft in attempting to justify the contradictions of previous constant Church teaching which have become the conciliar norm. The Cardinal claimed that certain teaching of the Magisterium were “not considered to be the final word on the subject as such, but serve rather as a mooring in the problem, and, above all, as a expression of pastoral prudence, a kind of temporary disposition” (L’Osservatore Romano, July 2, 1990, p. 5). As examples of those “temporary dispositions” the Cardinal cited “the statements of the Popes during the last century on religious freedom, as well as the anti-modernist decisions at the beginning of this century…” ibid. “Mooring”? Right. So previous unambiguous, constant magisterial teaching can be reduced to nothing much more than prudential policy for a given time and set of secular circumstances, while the novelties, ambiguities, contradictions and errors of the neo-modernists must be accepted under all sorts of dire and increasingly ridiculous warnings, threats and arguments from authority about “living tradition”, “obedience”, and of course, how could anyone forget, “full communion”.
When exactly, we might ask, will the errors of Vatican II be buried under a stone bearing the inscription “temporary dispositions”. Then the restoration will have begun.
Finally, while the toxic pall of masonic and modernist fumes hang heavily over the occupied Church, the following words of Pope Pius IX bear constant repetition. It is altogether reasonable that the great Pope, the “scourge of Liberalism”, would repeat them today in encouragement and affirmation of the work of this blog, as well as that of other defenders of Catholic Truth such as John Vennari, Louis Verecchio, Christopher Ferrara, and Michael Matt.
“We cannot do less than to praise the design expressed in this letter, which we know your journal will satisfactorily fulfil, the design to publish, to spread, to comment on and inculcate in all minds all that the Holy See teaches against the perverse or at least false doctrines professed in so many quarters, and particularly against Liberal Catholicism, bitterly striving to conciliate light with darkness and truth with error.” -Brief to the La Croix, a Belgian journal, on May 24, 1874
Leo,
I’m so glad to see you back here again and to read your great post packed with fantastic quotes. This one, especially, chilled me, coming as it did from Cardinal Ratzinger and never been retracted, as you say:
“Considering the great Conciliar manifesto of aggiornamento, Gaudium et Spes, the Cardinal stated that “we might say that (in conjunction with the texts on religious liberty, and world religions) it is a revision of the Syllabus of Pius IX, a kind of countersyllabus…an attempt at an official reconciliation with the new era inaugurated in 1789” as well as expressing his disturbing opinion of “…the one-sidedness of the position adopted by the Church under Pius IX and Pius X in response to the situation created by the new phase of history inaugurated by the French Revolution…” – Principles of Catholic Theology, pp. 381-382
The quotes in there are just too astounding for words.
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us all!
Welcome back, Leo! How nice and edifying to read you. I hope your return is permanent!
Thank you very much Margaret Mary and Helen for your kind words. You’ll have to excuse me for the delay in replying.
As for that quote from Principles of Catholic Theology, Margaret Mary, if anyone wants to read something equally chilling, they should turn to page 334, where Cardinal Ratzinger gives a candid expose of the influence wielded at Vatican II by one of the most dangerous Jesuit crackpots of the twentieth century.
We are informed that even before the Council, “…theological knowledge seemed to promise a new possibility of faith, new ways for the Church. The impetus given by Teilhard de Chardin exerted a wide influence.”
Cardinal Ratzinger admits that Gaudium et Spes “took the cue” from the notorious purveyor of pseudo-scientific quackery: “Teilhard’s slogan ‘Christianity means more progress, more technology’ became a stimulus in which the Council Fathers from rich and poor countries alike found a concrete hope that was easier to interpret and disseminate than was the meaning of the complicated discussions about the collegiality of the bishops, the primacy of the pope, Scripture and tradition, priest and laity.”
The minds of faithful Catholics cannot but be boggled on reading such words. Revealing and disturbing in equal measure; just more evidence that modernist lunacy went well and truly wild at the “pastoral” Council.
Returning to the question of what Cardinal Ratzinger referred to as the Church’s “official reconciliation with the new era inaugurated in 1789” the supreme issue is not one of some prudent pragmatic working accommodation between the visible Church and the temporal powers, or some version of the Americanist “free Church in a free Society”, but rather the submission of those secular rulers to Christ the King, whose Mystical Body is the Catholic Church, the permanent and continuous Incarnation of God in the World, the external visible hierarchical society founded by Our Lord.
For four and a half centuries, the Church’s shepherds fully recognised, and had no hesitation in calling out, the horror of Luther’s attack on the Visible Body of Christ and the consequential proclamation, in the political realm, of the supremacy of naturalism by the French Revolution.
Pope Pius VI had no hesitation in condemning the Declaration of the Rights of Man as “contrary to religion and to society”.- Encyclical, Adeo nota, 23 April 1791. Para 13
The spirit of both Luther’s revolt and the French masonic revolution was not a novelty. It goes back to satan’s temptation of our first parents: “You shall be as Gods.” (Genesis iii. 6). In the words of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Man fell “by desiring in some way to be the equal of God in so far as he wished to rely on himself in contempt of the order of the Divine Rule.” (Summa Theologica IIa, IIae, Q. 163, a. 2)
When confronted with talk of reconciliation between the Church and the pantheistic deification of Man, the following memorable words of Bishop Gaume, which to Archbishop Lefebvre “seem completely to characterise Liberalism itself” (p. 29 of the They Have Uncrowned Him) should dispel all misplaced or naïve ideas about “sharing between justice and iniquity, any collaboration between light and darkness, or any agreement between Christ and Belial.” – (Pope Pius IX, Qui Pluribus, #15, 1846):
“If tearing away its mask, you ask it (of the Revolution): “Who are you?” it will say to you, ‘I am not what is thought. Many people speak of me, and very few know me. I am neither carbonarism, nor rioting, nor the change from monarchy to republic, nor the substitution of one dynasty for another, nor the temporary disturbance of the public order. I am not the howlings of the Jacobins, nor the furies of la Montagne, not the battle of barricades, nor looting, nor arson, nor the agrarian law, nor the guillotine, nor the drownings. I am not Marat, or Robespierre, or Babeuf, or Mazzini, or Kossuth. These men are my sons, they are not I. These things are my works, they are not I. These men and these things are transitory facts, and I am a permanent state.
“I am the hatred of all order which man has not established and in which he is not king and God altogether. I am the proclamation of the rights of man without care for the rights of God. I am the foundation of the religious and social state upon the will of man instead of the will of God. I am God dethroned and man in His place. This is why I am called Revolution, this is to say, overthrow…” – Bishop Gaume, The Revolution, Historical Researches, 1877, Tome I, p.18.
Pope Pius IX understood this very well. And so did the enemies of Christ. The well-known Freemason, Ferdinand Buisson, once declared: “A school cannot remain neutral between the Syllabus and the Declaration of Rights of Man.” – (R.I.S.S., April 1, 1933, p. 210)
The Syllabus of Pius IX set out precisely for Catholics the errors by which Christ the King is betrayed. It sets out the landmarks of the two cities, the city of God and the city of satan, that Saint Augustine memorably wrote of, and which Catholics are reminded of at the opening of Pope Leo XIII’s magnificent encyclical, Humanum Genus. The Syllabus calls to mind the two standards, that of Christ, and that of Lucifer, which Saint Ignatius of Loyola writes of in Spiritual Exercises, n. 136.
Two years after the publication the Principles of Catholic Theology, Cardinal Ratzinger gave another insight into the spirit of aggiornamento:
“The problem of the 1960s was to acquire the best expressed values of two centuries of ‘liberal’ culture. These are in fact values which, even if they were born outside the Church, can find their place- purified and corrected- in the vision of the world. This is what had been done.”- Conversation with Vittorio Messori in the monthly Gesu, November 1984, p. 72
“Purified and corrected”? Really? While the smoke of satan has continued for five decades to billow about Church. And what exactly are the “best expressed values of two centuries of ‘liberal’ culture”? Revolt against the Social Kingship of Christ is at the very heart of the crisis in world today, particularly in the those societies whose roots lie Christendom, and who are now submerged in a tidal wave of contraception, divorce, abortion, sodomite “marriage”, euthanasia, pornography, atheistic indoctrination of innocent souls through the education system, and the general repudiation of any moral order.
In forming his judgements, Cardinal Ratzinger might have been wiser to dwell on the words of Pope Pius XI, words which are become ever more relevant:
“…Hostile forces, impelled by the spirit of evil, do not content themselves with mere clamour, but unite all their strength, on order to carry out at the first opportunity their nefarious designs. Woe to mankind, if God, thus spurned by His creatures, allows, in His Justice, free course to this devastating flood and uses it as a scourge to chastise the world.” – Caritate Christi compulsi
How many Catholics are aware of quite how woefully conciliar Churchmen have refused to follow the example of the great Cardinal Pie of Poitiers, who like Pope Pius IX understood fully the supreme importance of the battle to uphold the Social Kingship of Christ, and from whom Pope Saint Pius X took his motto, “to restore all things in Christ”? On March 15, 1856 the Cardinal boldly told Emperor Louis XVIII of France that:
“It is the right of God to govern over the States as over individuals. There is nothing else that Our Lord came to look for on earth. He must reign here by inspiring the laws, by sanctifying the morals, by enlightening education, by directing the councils, by ruling over the actions of the governments as over those of the governed. Everywhere where Jesus Christ does not exercise this rule, there is disorder and decadence.”
We’ve have had Cardinal Ratzinger’s view of Gaudium et Spes, “in conjunction with the texts on religious liberty, and world religions”, as being a “kind of countersyllabus”. One wonders what the resolute and unyielding defenders of Vatican II would have to say if confronted with following evaluation coming from the dark workshops:
“The Christians must not forget, for all that, that every path leads to God…and continue in this courageous idea of freedom of thought, which-one can now speak of revolution, setting out from our masonic lodges- has expanded itself gloriously above the dome of Saint Peter’s.” – Yves Marsaudon, Ecumenism Viewed by a Traditional Freemason
In passing, it’s worth recalling that Helen has drawn attention to the unjust treatment of Father Le Floch at the French seminary. Archbishop Lefebvre made very clear that his grasp of the critical importance of the Church’s doctrine on the Social Kingship of Christ was very much due to the instruction he received as a seminarian from Father Le Floch.
On the question of this doctrine, Bishop Tissier de Mallerais’s biography of Archbishop Lefebvre (see p. 548) gives a revealing account of a meeting at the Holy Office, July 14 1987 with Cardinal Ratzinger, in which the Cardinal argued that “the State is incompetent in religious matters”. Later on in the encounter, the Archbishop boldly stated that:
“For us, our Lord Jesus Christ is everything. He is our life. The Church is our Lord Jesus Christ; the priest is another Christ; the Mass is the triumph of Jesus Christ on the cross; in our seminaries everything tends towards the reign of our Lord Jesus Christ. But you! You are doing the opposite: you have wanted to prove to me that our Lord Jesus Christ cannot, and must not reign, over society’.
“Recounting this incident, the Archbishop described the Cardinal’s attitude: ‘Motionless, he looked at me, his eyes expressionless, as if I had just suggested something incomprehensible or unheard of.’”
Archbishop Lefebvre was of course supported by the teaching of all the pre-Conciliar Popes. In Quas Primas, Pope Pius XI pointed out that laicism, organizing society without any reference to God, leads to mass apostasy and the degradation of society, on account of its complete denial of Christ’s Kingship. That encyclical, which was discarded and buried in the conciliar madness, was a very short, readable and instructive summary of constant Church teaching, based on the teaching of the Pope’s predecessors.
“Besides, this thesis (the separation of Church and State) is an obvious negation of the supernatural order. It limits the action of the State to the pursuit of public prosperity during this life only…and it occupies itself in no fashion (on the plea that this is foreign to it) with their ultimate object which is man’s eternal happiness after this short life shall have run its course.” – Pope Saint Pius X, Vehementer Nos, 1906
“Every civilized community must have a ruling authority, and this authority, no less than society itself, has its source in nature, and has, consequently, God for its author. Hence it follows that all public power must proceed from God. For God alone is the true and supreme lord of the world. Everything without exception must be subject to Him, and must serve Him, so that whosoever holds the right to govern, holds it from one sole and single source, namely, God, the Sovereign Ruler of all. “There is no power but from God.” (Rom. 13:1)” – Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, 1885
Far from advocating an approach suited and confined solely to the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries, in stating the rights of Christ over temporal rulers, Archbishop Lefebvre and the pre-Vatican II Popes did no more than reiterate constant Church teaching, the teaching of Fathers and Doctors of the Church such as Saint Augustine, Saint Ambrose, Saint Leo the Great, Saint Gregory the Great, Saint John Chrysostom, Saint Thomas Aquinas.
Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani is quoted most often, understandably, on discussion of the new Mass fabricated by Annibale Bugnini. What the Cardinal wrote in the American Ecclesiastical Review in May 1953, three years after neo modernism had already been condemned by Pope Pius XII in Humani Generis, serves as a warning against those who attempt to bypass certain Church teaching on the grounds that it was applicable only to the historical circumstances which prompted it:
“The first fault of these persons consists precisely in their failure to accept fully the arma veritatis and the teachings which the Roman Pontiffs during the past century, and particularly the reigning Pontiff Pius XII, have given to Catholics on this subject in encyclical letters, allocutions, and instructions of various kinds.
“To justify themselves, these people assert that in the body of teaching imparted within the Church there are to be distinguished two elements, the one permanent, and the other transient. This latter is supposed to be due to the reflection of particular contemporary conditions.
“Unfortunately, they carry this tactic so far as to apply it to the principles taught in pontifical documents, principles on which the teachings of the Popes have remained constant so as to make these principles a part of the patrimony of Catholic doctrine.”
After summarizing papal teaching on the question of Church and State, Cardinal Ottaviani concludes:
“These principles are firm and immovable. They were valid in the times of Innocent III and Boniface VIII. They are valid in the days of Leo XIII and of Pius XII, who has reaffirmed them in more than one of his documents . . . . I am certain that no one can prove that there has been any kind of change, in the matter of these principles, between Summi pontificatus of Pius XII and the encyclicals of Pius XI, Divini Redemptoris against Communism, Mit brennender Sorge against Nazism, and Non abbiamo bisogno against the state monopoly of fascism, on the one hand; and the earlier encyclicals of Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, Libertas, and Sapientiae Christianae, on the other.”
I have gone way over “budget” with this post, but it’s worth including the words of a sainted Pope on what the “official reconciliation with the new era inaugurated in 1789” should rightfully look like:
“The Church…had been the first inspirer and promoter of civilisation…The civilisation of the world is Christian civilisation; the more frankly Christian it is, so much is it the more true, more lasting, and more productive of precious fruit; the more it withdraws from the Christian ideal, so much the feebler is it, to the great detriment of society.
“Thus by the intrinsic force of things, the Church becomes again in fact the guardian and protector of Christian civilisation. This truth was recognised and admitted in former times; it even formed the immovable foundation of civil legislation. On it rested the relations of Church and State, the public recognition of the authority of the Church in all matters relating in any way to conscience, the subordination of all State laws to the divine laws of the Gospel, the harmony of the two powers, civil and ecclesiastical, for procuring the temporal well-being of the nations without injury to their eternal welfare.” – Pope Saint Pius X, Il Fermo Proposito, 1905
Leo,
Add moi to the list of those glad to see you back – I’ve been fighting with my emails all afternoon, and only now back in working order, so I’ll read your post later or probably tomorrow – looking forward to it immensely!
Leo,
“Cardinal Ratzinger gives a candid expose of the influence wielded at Vatican II by one of the most dangerous Jesuit crackpots of the twentieth century.”
And Heaven knows (literally!) that he must have been spoilt for choice. “Jesuit crackpots” are plentiful on the ground now as then.
As for your “going way over budget” with your latest post – the bank of Catholic Truth has put a huge overdraft in place attached to your name, so keep ’em coming! 😀
As and when, of course, as we know how busy you are. As and when…
Editor
Too true about “spoilt for choice” concerning the “Jesuit crackpots”. Talk about picking berries from a bramble.
Immediately defrocking at least 10,000 of them might be a useful start to a return to sanity. Failing that, a couple of battalions of thoroughly scholastic medieval Dominican Inquisitors could provide a great service to the Church. If only. Dream on we must. If nothing else, that’s a fair cue for the Dominican/Jesuit jokes.
Maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise that the cancer of Modernism in the Church as a whole, mirrors, or rather is intertwined with, the descent of the Jesuits in particular. No doubt satan concentrated especially heavy fire on what was one of the best units in the Church Militant’s army.
Indeed, along with its rejection of its magnificent history of service to the Church, it hardly constitutes a surprise to find that a Superior of the Company of Jesus has asserted a rejection of its military character. In February 1989, Fr. Peter-Hans Kolvenbach told the 30 Days periodical that:
“Any military connotation in relation to the Society and its Superior General must be eliminated…In this process of renewal (proposed by Vatican II), a certain way of being of the Society of Jesus has died. This explains why a theologian said in this magazine that the Society ‘was dead’…”
Opinion on Malachi Martin certainly appears to vary wildly amongst Catholics faithful to Tradition. That said, his book on the order entitled, The Jesuits is an absolutely riveting read, particular in dealing with the period from Tyrrell and early Modernism onwards. It explains much concerning the Conciliar crisis, as well as helping greatly to understand the words and actions of Pope Francis.
As for the “huge overdraft”, Editor, there’s no need. Don’t tell anyone else, but just for Catholic Truth, I’ll take IOU’s. Or else you can pay me in Irn-Bru.
Saint John Bosco, who was in Rome at the time, noted on the day of the Pope s death, Today was extinguished the supreme and incomparable star of the Church, the Pontiff Pius IX. Within a very short time, he will most certainly be on our altars. After Pius death, many prayed to him for special favors.
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