March 2022 Print

By Dr. Louis Shwartz

A liminal figure, and the first canonized pope after a nearly 350-year hiatus, Pius X clung tenaciously to sacred traditions while stretching forth to grapple with daunting modern problems. His very motto: Instaurare omnia in Christo, “to renew or restore all things in Christ,” indicates a willingness to adapt time-honored teachings to the impending challenges of a decadent new secular era. During the eleven years of his pontificate (1903-14), Pius X focused on liturgical, disciplinary, and educational reforms, relying on sound doctrine and solid tradition as the basis of his many new initiatives. He prioritized Gregorian chant, supported frequent reception of the Eucharist, standardized Church law, encouraged renewed zeal and vigilance in education, catechesis, and priestly formation, and endorsed traditional approaches to philosophy and theology. In doing so, he developed an antidote—even a vaccine—against the modern errors and callous worldliness which would infect the entire civilized world during the first half of the twentieth century.

To the mind of Pius X, a renewal of Christian life in general would spring from a restoration of liturgical purity, a reality which could only be accomplished by clearing away abuses which had accumulated over the ages. During the first year of his pontificate, Pius X issued a motu proprio which insisted upon the restoration of Gregorian chant to its rightful place of primacy in liturgical worship throughout the Universal Church. He argued that, by drawing on this ancient source of sanctity, the faithful would flourish. The pope then stressed that, thanks to recent zeal and study, the treasures of Gregorian chant, faithfully preserved from the vicissitudes of time in liturgical codices, had been rediscovered and restored to their pristine dignity and integrity. Finally, he imposed these ancient liturgical forms as the worldwide standard of Catholic worship, thus intending to counteract the profane and secular trends then infecting sacred music.

Later in his pontificate, Pius X corrected another liturgical abuse—that of denying to children access to the Eucharist—by recalling the traditional norms laid down by Church law. Citing the greatest ecumenical council of the Middle Ages, the pope noted that all Catholics who had attained the “age of discretion” were bound to confess their sins and receive Holy Communion at least once a year around Easter. The pope argued, invoking many theologians including St. Thomas, that since children could generally distinguish between good and evil around the age of seven, at that point they too were bound to annual Confession and thus also to Communion. By fixing a standard age for reception of the Eucharist, the pope explicitly sought to correct “deplorable abuses that have crept in over the course of time.” Once again, in the plan of Pius X, a renewal of Christian life would spring from a reliance on tradition and the correction of modern abuses.

Fixing an age for First Holy Communion was simply part of Pius X’s grander plan for standardizing and clarifying ecclesiastical discipline. Early in the second year of his pontificate, the pope established a commission tasked with organizing into one Code the sprawling mass of canon law. He noted that, over the centuries, some laws, which were once suited to the difficulties of their age, had grown obsolete; others had been rescinded or were unknown and unapplied, hidden in obscurity within a growing heap of legislation; others still had become less well suited to the common good of souls. To resolve these infelicities, the pope imitated the efforts of medieval canonists and the actions of his papal predecessors; like them he would bring together and up-to-date the law of the Church. Consulting with select cardinals, he himself would oversee a pontifical commission tasked with addressing this pressing need for legal clarity, uniformity, and utility. The 1917 Code of Canon law, promulgated by Benedict XV, was the eventual result, a code which manifested to the Church and to the world the precise disciplinary norms guiding the Mystical Body of Christ.

One of the most ancient and sacred traditions in canon law addressed the proper relations between spiritual and temporal authorities, between Church and State. Medieval theories on this crucial topic guided Pius X in his approach to the secular governments of twentieth-century Europe. For example, he refused to acknowledge as legitimate the despoliation of the Papal States by the new Republican government in Italy, and he openly and vocally opposed legislation which sought to curtail the liberty of the Italian Church. Similarly, when the French Third Republic passed laws effectively confiscating all national church property, placing it directly under secular control and proclaiming France devoid of any official religion, the pope denounced this injustice and condemned, on principle, the complete separation of Church and State. In an encyclical written to the French bishops in 1906, he rehearsed traditional teachings on this subject, ones echoed previously by his predecessors Pius IX and Leo XIII:

That the State must be separated from the Church is a thesis absolutely false, a most pernicious error. Based on the principle that the State must not recognize any religious cult, it is in the first place guilty of a great injustice against God; for the Creator of man is also the Founder of human societies, and He preserves their existence just as He preserves that of individuals. We owe Him, therefore, not only a private devotion, but a public and social worship.

Besides, this thesis is an obvious negation of the supernatural order. It limits the action of the State to the pursuit of material prosperity during this life only, which is but the proximate object of political societies; and it occupies itself in no way (on the plea that this is foreign to it) with man’s ultimate end which is eternal happiness after this short life shall have run its course. But as the present order of things is temporary and subordinated to the acquisition of man’s supreme and absolute blessedness, it follows that the civil power must not obstruct its attainment, and must even aid in promoting it.

The same thesis also upsets the order providentially established by God in the world, which demands a harmonious agreement between the two societies. Since both the civil and religious authorities, although each in its own proper way, rule over the same subjects, they must have means of resolving disputes which will inevitably arise. Remove agreement between Church and State and the result will be that from these disputes will spring the seeds of most bitter conflicts, conflicts which will obscure the truth and cause great distress to souls.

Finally, this thesis inflicts great injury on society itself, for it cannot either prosper or last long when due place is not left for religion, which is man’s supreme guide and sovereign mistress for the sacred preservation of law and order. Hence the Roman Pontiffs have never ceased, as circumstances required, to refute and condemn the doctrine of the separation of Church and State.

In this powerful and lucid summary of traditional Catholic political theory, Pius X anticipated and perhaps even inspired the great work of his successor, Pius XI, who 20 years later would proclaim the social kingship of Jesus Christ in the famous encyclical Quas Primas.

Involvement in high affairs of state did not distract Pius X from the more humble but also more essential matters of catechizing the youth and forming seminarians. Indeed, the pope recognized that a renewal of the Church depended on the sound education of the next generation of Catholics. In an encyclical published in 1905 concerning the importance of religious instruction, the pope lamented that “it is hard to find words to describe how profound is the darkness in which some Christians are engulfed and, what is most deplorable of all, how tranquilly they repose there. They rarely give thought to God, the Supreme Author and Ruler of all things, or to the teachings of the faith of Christ.” In consequence, Pius X urged his Italian bishops to invest heavily in catechesis. For instance, he commanded that on every Sunday and Holy Day, one hour be set aside for the instruction of the parish youth. The pope himself even developed a concise catechism for use in Italy which later spread in translation to other nations.

Another practical initiative undertaken by Pius X involved the reform of seminary life and instruction. Again writing to the Italian bishops, the pope acknowledged that he had received “letters full of sadness and tears from several of you, in which you deplore the spirit of insubordination and independence displayed here and there among the clergy. Most assuredly, a poisonous atmosphere corrupts men’s minds to a great extent today . . . and what is even more serious is the fact that such maxims are being more or less secretly propagated among youths preparing for the priesthood within the enclosure of the seminaries.” To combat this dire threat to priestly sanctity, Pius X insisted that bishops exercise much greater vigilance over their seminaries, expelling all who are unworthy. He added that, in seminary studies, the traditional courses of philosophy, theology, and scriptural exegesis must hold pride of place. Yet in the pope’s broader plan, this focus on obedience and respect for traditional teachings would extend far beyond the walls of Catholic seminaries.

Perhaps the greatest combat undertaken by St. Pius X involved the suppression of a whole network of heresies conveniently labelled “modernism.” In his 1907 encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis, the pope identified the defining feature of modernism: an emphasis on subjective religious experience leading to a rejection both of objective truth and of an integral vision of reality. To counteract this proud modern subjectivism which submits even the most sacred realities to the private judgment of the individual, Pius X encouraged the study of traditional scholastic philosophy and theology, particularly the realism and dogmatic precision found in the medieval writings of St. Thomas Aquinas.

However, three years after the publication of Pascendi, the pope recognized that, in general, the bishops of the world had not taken his warnings about modernism very seriously. He even complained that “this plague of modernism has spread through those parts of the Lord’s field whence we expected to reap more abundant fruit,” that is, among the very households and dioceses of the world’s Catholic bishops. Therefore, in order to lend force to his condemnation, Pius X demanded that, in addition to the traditional profession of faith, every ecclesiastical superior, including all priests and seminary professors, take an anti-modernist oath before assuming their duties of office, “lest the integrity of divine revelation suffer any loss.” This oath included an explicit rejection of religious subjectivism:

I hold with certainty and sincerely confess that faith is not a blind sentiment of religion welling up from the depths of the subconscious under the impulse of the heart and the motion of a will trained to morality; but faith is a genuine assent of the intellect to truth received by hearing from an external source. By this assent, because of the authority of the supremely truthful God, we believe to be true that which has been revealed and attested to by a personal God, our Creator and Lord.

The pope thus insisted that divine revelation—unimpaired and uncompromised, in its integral fullness as the unerring Word of God, received from above and passed on through sacred Tradition—is the only sure foundation from which to attempt an authentic renewal or restoration of Catholic life amidst the intellectual and spiritual confusion of the modern era.

Pius X’s emphasis on the sacred Liturgy, Gregorian Chant, the Mass, and the Eucharist; on clerical discipline, seminaries, and priestly formation; on the social reign of Jesus Christ; on education, doctrinal integrity, and Tradition—are these not also the hallmarks of Archbishop Lefebvre’s vision for his own work? Indeed, St. Pius X provided the good archbishop with a clear plan for the great task of restoring all things in Christ, of renewing and reinvigorating the Church in a modern world where, according to the words of St. Matthew’s Gospel, “iniquity abounds and the charity of many grows cold.” In this way, the first saint-pope of modern times prophetically laid out the very path which leads to a resolution of the crisis in the Church, a path which Archbishop Lefebvre’s spiritual children continue to follow with confidence.