October 2005 Print

TITLE: Pope Pius IX: The Man and the Myth

AUTHOR: Yves Chiron

REVIEWER: John Dredger

SUMMARY: This new book from acclaimed French author Yves Chiron covers the life and pontificate of Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti, Blessed Pius IX. He was born during the French Revolution and lived through some of the greatest social upheavals in relatively recent history. The book also covers the proclamation of the dogmas of the Immaculate Conception and papal infallibility, the convocation of the First Vatican Council, the publication of the Syllabus of Errors, the beginnings of Catholic Action, and the development of the foreign missions.

When most Americans hear the name Pius IX, there is most likely a pause, then a moment of hesitation, and finally an embarrassed, "Well, he was a pope, wasn't he?" Even with the recent declaration of Pius IX as Blessed by John Paul II in 2000, this is sadly still the case, and one may reasonably ask why. The most plausible answer is the fact that there have been very few biographies of Blessed Pius IX published in the United States. The results of a brief research are that the latest book to be found about the life of Pius IX was published in 1955, and that of course is now out of print. So what was an American to do for the past fifty years in order to find out about the greatest pope of the nineteenth century without having to obtain a foreign language biography? Obviously the American reader isn't entirely at fault for not knowing much about Pius IX, but happily the dilemma has been solved with the publication of Yves Chiron's book entitled Pope Pius IX: The Man and the Myth from Angelus Press.

What is it then that makes the life of Blessed Pius IX so worth knowing? These are just a few of the events which took place during his pontificate, which still remains the longest in the history of the Catholic Church: the Revolution of 1848, during which Blessed Pius IX was forced to flee into exile; the unification of Italy and the theft of the Papal States by Communists and Freemasons; the unification of Germany headed by Protestant Prussia and its chancellor Otto von Bismarck, who initiated the anti-Catholic Kulturkampf throughout Germany; the Crimean War (1854-56), the Franco-Austrian War of 1859, the Seven Weeks' War (1866), the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71). As one can see, there were very few peaceful times during Pius IX's long reign.

This list does not even include the events which took place during Pius IX's lifetime before he became pope. Born in Italy in 1792, Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti, the future Pope Pius IX, would have many encounters with the enemies of the Church. While still young and trying to follow his vocation to the priesthood in Rome, Giovanni Maria had to abandon his clerical attire because of the anti-clerical edicts of the French government under Napoleon Bonaparte, who had annexed the Papal States in 1809. This was only the first of many trials that Giovanni Mastai would have to face on the path towards his election as pope in 1846. As a result of the anti-clerical French edicts, Giovanni was not ordained priest until 1819. He next encountered the enemies of the Church in South America in 1824-25 while on a mission to Chile to inspect the state of Catholicism there after the recent revolution against Spanish rule. This adventure shows the true situation in South America due to these revolutions, which were for the most part opportunities for the Freemasons to try to control the Church and the population through the State and not the winning of freedom and liberty for the people, as it is portrayed by most modern historical accounts.

Not long afterwards, as Bishop of Spoleto, Msgr. Mastai had to undergo the Revolution of 1831, during which a "provisional government" of revolutionaries kicked out the authorities appointed by Pope Gregory XVI, and thus Msgr. Mastai deemed it prudent to leave Spoleto. This revolution was quickly suppressed, but it was a signal of the growing liberalism which had been spreading so rapidly throughout Italy in the wake of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Era, and which would plague Pius IX's pontificate from its beginning to its end. As mentioned before, Pius IX would have to flee Rome in 1848 due to the takeover of the papal government by anti-clerical Italian revolutionaries. This flight was not without its share of suspense and ruse, complete with a disguise for the Pope himself:

On the evening of November 24, the Duc d'Harcourt, French ambassador to Rome, went to the Quirinal to be received in audience by the Pope. He was introduced and, following a plan prepared in advance, he helped Pius IX to divest himself of his white papal robes and put on the simple black soutane of a priest. Then the Sovereign Pontiff left the Quirinal on foot...by a secret door, and went to the carriage of the Bavarian ambassador, Count Spaur, which was waiting for him some distance away. When the Due d'Harcourt came out of his supposed 'audience' with the Pope, he told the personnel not to disturb the Sovereign Pontiff, as the latter had retired to his private apartments. So it was not until the next day that the revolutionaries learned of the Pope's flight; by that time he was already far away, on the territory of Naples. (Pp. 114-115)

As it is so often the case, true history is more exciting than fiction, if only because true history really happened, whereas fiction is a concoction of some sort based on reality. However, it must not be assumed that Blessed Pius IX's life was merely one revolution after the other; while this is true to a certain extent, it must be seen that Pius IX found the time for great acts of spirituality and faith.

Long before becoming Pope Pius IX, Giovanni Mastai showed signs of a deep spiritual life. Whenever he was about to make a very serious decision or embark upon a new task in his life, he would make a retreat according to the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, during which he would write notes on his faults and how to correct them. It is also in his youth that we can find him giving much time to various devotions, especially those of the Sacred Heart and of the Immaculate Conception. Thus the definition of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, which was promulgated by Pius IX in 1854, was not something new either to the Pope himself or to the Catholic people, but rather the culmination of a belief long held and well-known by many.

In pronouncing the dogmatic definition of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin on December 8 that year, Pius IX was conscious of the temporal context of such a definition. He was not simply giving the sanction of his authority to a very ancient belief that was now an article of faith, but also equipping the Church with an additional weapon. In the spiritual warfare he and the whole Church had to wage against philosophical and theological errors, against laicism and anti-clericalism, the invocation of the Virgin Mary was a powerful aid. (p. 112)

The shrewdness of Pius IX along with the care of his flock are obvious from this great work of defining the Immaculate Conception as a dogma of faith. However, Blessed Pius IX did not stop there; he called the First Vatican Council (1869-70), the first ecumenical council in modern times, during which another dogma of faith was defined: Papal Infallibility. Again, another widely held belief was used to serve as a weapon during a time of great crisis for the Church, for soon after the dogma was defined and the council ended, Pius IX was stripped even of his rule over Rome and was confined as "The Prisoner of the Vatican."

In addition to defining dogmas, Pius IX, during his whole pontificate, made reform one of his greatest priorities. This reform was not the reform of the modern world, that of liberalism and change for the sake of change. All of Pius IX's reforms, both spiritual and political, had the good of his subjects in mind. Due to his vast efforts, the monastic orders were imbued with fresh vigor (the Jesuits doubled their numbers within thirty years); the Church's hierarchy was re-established in England, Holland, and Scotland, where it had been missing for several hundred years because of Protestantism. In the temporal sphere, he tried to use some of the newer social improvements, such as railroads, to improve the communications, commerce, and efficiency of his government. At the same time he made attempts to placate the liberals who wanted more political reforms by granting an amnesty to political prisoners, setting up commissions to reform the judicial system and other parts of the papal government, and even allowing some laymen to participate in the government. However, these reforms did not placate the radical liberals, who proved yet again that they were not laboring for better governance, as they publicly proclaimed, but rather for the end of all clerical rule.

Ironically, it is because of these reforms, especially the amnesties, and the fact that Pius IX, even before becoming Pope, always stayed aloof from any of the political factions of the day, including the supposedly conservative ones, that he gained the reputation of being a liberal. This myth began in his own lifetime and, despite all proofs to the contrary, it has come down even to our own times. Those historians who do mention Pius IX usually do so with a reference to how he used to be a liberal but suddenly made a complete turnabout to 'ultra-conservatism' when he was forced to flee into exile in 1848. While this may be the more romantic interpretation of history, it does not conform with the facts as presented to us by Yves Chiron.

Perhaps Blessed Pius IX made some miscalculations in his attempts to placate the liberal parties in Italy, but this came not because of sympathy for their ideas, but rather the desire of the Pope to bring them back to the fold of the Church. About the examination of conscience which he made during his exile concerning his failed attempts at conciliation, Chiron says:

Pius IX recalls that the concessions made (amnesty, press freedom, etc.) "failed to produce the fruits we had desired, nor could they even take root, because these skillful artisans (the revolutionaries) only used them to prompt further agitation." The allocution also contains a justification of the papacy's temporal power. (p.123)

These are not the thoughts of a converted liberal, but instead those of one who has realized that any attempts to win over the more moderate liberals will always be ruined by the anti-clerical radicals. It must be recalled that Pius IX, previous to his election, had already received trouble from the revolutionaries in Spoleto and in South America, and thus, it was not as an embittered yet wiser former liberal, but rather as an ever staunch defender of the Church and its doctrines that Pope Pius IX issued a condemnation of modern philosophical and theological errors in his encyclical Quanta Cura and the Syllabus of the Principal Errors of Our Time in 1864.

As with Pius IX's other works, these two documents were long in the making as well. There were many errors which were being spread not just among the intellectuals of Europe but even within the Church itself. It is not merely in our own time that infiltration of the Church has been attempted; in the 19th century, there were many liberal priests and religious who were doing untold harm by publishing their fallacious ideas. Thus, the need for a condemnation of all the prominent errors of that time was seen by the Pope and many of his cardinals. The 80 propositions condemned in the Syllabus are well worth our notice, for they apply as much, if not more, to our own times as they did 150 years ago, because many of them are generally accepted today as true. For example, errors concerning Christian marriage, civil society, ethics, modern liberalism, and many others are condemned.

One error especially noteworthy is that of religious indifferentism, that: "Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true" (Proposition 15); and, "Man may, in the observance of any religion whatever, find the way of eternal salvation, and arrive at eternal salvation" (Proposition 16). These condemned propositions are particularly interesting for our present time, as they have been spouted by modern theologians, including John Paul II, so prominently in the recent past. That is what makes the declaration of Pope Pius IX as blessed by Pope John Paul II so ironic; here we see a liberal pontiff solemnly stating that a pope who condemned indifferentism and latitudinarianism is on his way to canonization. Of course, there may be various political reasons of the Vatican for declaring Pius IX blessed, and who can know all the reasons involved in such decisions, but surely we can see that the Holy Ghost still has ultimate control over the Church, even in these times of apostasy.

Just as there was great opposition to Pius IX in his own lifetime, there was great opposition to his being declared blessed, and this is to be expected because of his great defense of the truth in the face of so many errors. However, one cannot argue in the presence of miracles, such as the state of his almost perfectly preserved body when it was exhumed in 2000. This was by no means the first miracle which God worked for Pius IX, for in his own lifetime he was cured of epilepsy which had plagued him for many years. Without this miracle, Pius IX would never have become a priest and the Church would never have had such a great pope in its time of need.

As can be seen, the life of Pius IX was not quiet and peaceful, although he would have preferred it that way for the sake of the Church. It had wars and invasions, political intrigues and revolutions, miracles and declarations of faith. And in addition to all this, it is the life of one whose process for canonization is in progress, the life of one who can give us strength and encouragement for our own time of crisis.

Who would be better to write the life of Pius IX than the historian Yves Chiron? Having been given access to sources usually reserved only for members of the Congregation for the Cause of Saints, Chiron has produced a well-documented and masterful work, not just for those with an interest in history but also for those who desire a greater knowledge of this little known pope who played such a prominent role in the Church and the world of his time, and who still has a great effect even now.

 

Mr. John Dredger has an Associate of Arts and a Bachelor of Arts in Education from St. Mary's College and a Master of Arts in Classics from the University of Kansas. He teaches Latin and History at St. Mary's Academy and College, St. Mary's, Kansas, and is the father of four children.