Post by Deleted on Aug 21, 2023 6:32:52 GMT
I posted this on Facebook and thought I might as well post it here too....
"Instaurare Omnia in Christo" - "To Restore All Things in Christ". This was the constant motto and ideal of POPE ST PIUS X, whose feast day the Church celebrates today.
Pope Saint Pius X, who reigned from 1903-1914, is also the patron of the Guild of altar servers at my parish, hence the particular importance of the feast day for me.
Pope Pius X was born Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto in northern Italy in 1835, in abject poverty. He was ordained in 1858 and consecrated a bishop in 1884, eventually becoming the Patriarch of Venice, in 1893. He would continue in this role until his election to the See of Rome in 1903. When he was elected Pope, he refused to let his brothers and sisters gain any advantages, such as being named Counts and Countesses, believing that this would lower the dignity of the papacy.
He was known for his view that modernism - which he defined as the greatest of all modern heresies - had seeped into the Church and was attacking it constantly. As such, he spent most of his pontificate fighting modernism by writing encyclicals and never hesitated to punish priests and bishops he deemed to have fallen into the heresy of modernism. Modernism, Pius X held, views religion as nothing more than man's response to a desire to believe in God and holds that as such Christian beliefs can be doctored over time to suit changing mankind. This was the "synthesis of all heresies" in Pius X's mind.
In 1964, Pope Paul VI vindicated the fight against modernism, calling it "an error which is still making its appearance under various new guises, wholly inconsistent with any genuine religious expression." Unfortunately, modernism still attacks the Church more than ever more.
The anti-modernist oath, instituted was Pius X, was required to be taken by all priests until 1967.
He was also a fearless preacher at a time when homilies were not always common in the Catholic Church. He made Saint John Chrysostom the patron of preachers.
He had a simple catechism authorised and began the writing down of Church laws in a collated form - after his death it would become the first Code of Canon Law.
Like his two predecessors, he refused to accept the legitimacy of the new Italian State, but he did relax certain restrictions prohibiting Italian Catholics from voting.
He was deeply concerned with ensuring the rights of Polish and Ukrainian Catholics in the Russian Empire. He also founded the Russian Greek Catholic Church, which still exists today, on the principle that "nothing may be added and nothing taken away from" the Russian Orthodox liturgy and traditions for it to be in communion with Rome.
Pope Pius X was dismayed by the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. He referred to the fact that his "Poor children" - the Catholics of Europe - were fighting on opposing sides and killing each other. He died at the age of 79 on the 20th of August, 1914, his last words being "The Almighty in His inexhaustible goodness wishes to spare me the horrors which Europe is undergoing."
In 2020, our former Archbishop, His Eminence Cardinal John Dew, stated that the "answer" to the phrase "Restore All Things in Christ" is found in the writing of the saintly Pope himself: “In order that…Christ may be formed in all, be it remembered that no means is more efficacious that charity…it is a vain hope to attract souls to God by a bitter zeal…”
Pope Saint Pius X's prayers are especially needed to today, when the Church is suffering greatly due to threats from within and without.
✝ Sancte Pie Decime, ora pro nobis! ✝
"Instaurare Omnia in Christo" - "To Restore All Things in Christ". This was the constant motto and ideal of POPE ST PIUS X, whose feast day the Church celebrates today.
Pope Saint Pius X, who reigned from 1903-1914, is also the patron of the Guild of altar servers at my parish, hence the particular importance of the feast day for me.
Pope Pius X was born Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto in northern Italy in 1835, in abject poverty. He was ordained in 1858 and consecrated a bishop in 1884, eventually becoming the Patriarch of Venice, in 1893. He would continue in this role until his election to the See of Rome in 1903. When he was elected Pope, he refused to let his brothers and sisters gain any advantages, such as being named Counts and Countesses, believing that this would lower the dignity of the papacy.
He was known for his view that modernism - which he defined as the greatest of all modern heresies - had seeped into the Church and was attacking it constantly. As such, he spent most of his pontificate fighting modernism by writing encyclicals and never hesitated to punish priests and bishops he deemed to have fallen into the heresy of modernism. Modernism, Pius X held, views religion as nothing more than man's response to a desire to believe in God and holds that as such Christian beliefs can be doctored over time to suit changing mankind. This was the "synthesis of all heresies" in Pius X's mind.
In 1964, Pope Paul VI vindicated the fight against modernism, calling it "an error which is still making its appearance under various new guises, wholly inconsistent with any genuine religious expression." Unfortunately, modernism still attacks the Church more than ever more.
The anti-modernist oath, instituted was Pius X, was required to be taken by all priests until 1967.
He was also a fearless preacher at a time when homilies were not always common in the Catholic Church. He made Saint John Chrysostom the patron of preachers.
He had a simple catechism authorised and began the writing down of Church laws in a collated form - after his death it would become the first Code of Canon Law.
Like his two predecessors, he refused to accept the legitimacy of the new Italian State, but he did relax certain restrictions prohibiting Italian Catholics from voting.
He was deeply concerned with ensuring the rights of Polish and Ukrainian Catholics in the Russian Empire. He also founded the Russian Greek Catholic Church, which still exists today, on the principle that "nothing may be added and nothing taken away from" the Russian Orthodox liturgy and traditions for it to be in communion with Rome.
Pope Pius X was dismayed by the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. He referred to the fact that his "Poor children" - the Catholics of Europe - were fighting on opposing sides and killing each other. He died at the age of 79 on the 20th of August, 1914, his last words being "The Almighty in His inexhaustible goodness wishes to spare me the horrors which Europe is undergoing."
In 2020, our former Archbishop, His Eminence Cardinal John Dew, stated that the "answer" to the phrase "Restore All Things in Christ" is found in the writing of the saintly Pope himself: “In order that…Christ may be formed in all, be it remembered that no means is more efficacious that charity…it is a vain hope to attract souls to God by a bitter zeal…”
Pope Saint Pius X's prayers are especially needed to today, when the Church is suffering greatly due to threats from within and without.
✝ Sancte Pie Decime, ora pro nobis! ✝