St. Pius X
Sound familiar? Pope St. Pius X was prophetic. Faced with so many problems in his day and throughout his papal rule, there is no situation this world poses that one cannot take a lesson from this great saint. Indeed the bishop of the Diocese of Camden would do well to try and follow the example of St. Pius X!
Pope 1903-1914
"There is no surer or easer way than Mary in uniting all men with Christ...
It is necessary to recognize that upon Her, as upon the noblest after Christ,
is built the faith of all ages..."
"There is no surer or easer way than Mary in uniting all men with Christ...
It is necessary to recognize that upon Her, as upon the noblest after Christ,
is built the faith of all ages..."
Pope St. Pius X, hungry for souls, is best known for his strong desire to bring all people to the Lord and His Church, from the youngest of children to the elderly. A man of humble beginnings (his dad was a mailman) and a truly humble soul (called the "reluctant pope"), he was generous to the poor, victims of natural disaster, and persecuted Christians. He became a learned priest, lover of the angelic doctor St. Thomas Aquinas, and eventually he codified canon law. As pope (in 1905) he lowered the First Holy Communion age to seven and encouraged frequent reception of Holy Eucharist. He was a lover of sacred music and promoted Gregorian Chant. He was a great Marian priest and pope, writer of catechesis, and even teacher of seminarians. Ever concerned for the increase in and proper formation of priests in the seminary, the number of priests in the Church greatly increased during the saint's papacy. One wonders, was there anything he did not do? (Here is the Catholic Encyclopedia entry on Pius X.)
Truly the Church was blessed with a great pope and we continue to be blessed with a tremendously powerful saint. It is a comfort to all faithful Catholics to know they can call on him in Heaven. Pope St. Pius X ought to be a true role model for all priests and bishops. Here are the things this great saint stood for:
- Marian devotion
- teaching the Truth of the Faith to all people and restoring piety among the faithful
- promoting dignified and legitimate Catholic liturgy worthy of the honor and glory of Our Lord
- insisting upon objective Truth and combating the heresy of Modernism
- loving the pure and undiluted Catholic Faith
- demonstrating true charity for God's children
- building up the priesthood and religious life
- encouraging frequent and early reception of Holy Eucharist:
Like today, Pius X was faced from attacks on the church from within. The following paragraphs are from a biography of the pope from the publication From the Housetops,Volume XXIV (see also this excellent article):"Holy Communion is the shortest and surest way to Heaven.""Children from their tenderest years should cling to Jesus Christ, live His life, and find protection from the dangers of corruption."
An indefinitely greater danger than the open persecutions against the Church were the attacks from within. This war against the Faith by subversion was waged under the banner of Modernism, described by the Pope as "the seed plot of errors and perdition" which "broods like a poison in the bowels of modern society, alienated from God and from His Church."
Modernism can be described as an ostensible "desire to modernize the Church, as if ithad become senile, adapting Catholicism to the needs--intellectual, moral, and social--of the new times....And the inevitable result would be to make of Catholicism "a sort of Protestantism: a mere noisy religious opinion, to be modified from generation to generation, to be changed from person to person, resolving itself at length into a system of natural ethics."
Sound familiar? Pope St. Pius X was prophetic. Faced with so many problems in his day and throughout his papal rule, there is no situation this world poses that one cannot take a lesson from this great saint. Indeed the bishop of the Diocese of Camden would do well to try and follow the example of St. Pius X!
Pope St. Pius X, ora pro nobis!
Giuseppe Sarto (Pius X), even when he was Cardinal Patriarch of Venice,
as in this photo, did not fear hard work. In fact, he said,
"The priest is a man obliged to work hard;
'priest' and 'hard work' are synonyms."