Today is the Feast of Saint Pius X who was pope from 1903 to his death in 1914 at the age of 79. Among his many towering achievements, Pope Pius notably condemned the heresy of Modernism in two formal documents, Lamentabili and Pascendi, both published in 1907. But what is modernism? And why is it so bad?
“Modernists held that dogmas – including the divinity of Christ, and the redemptive value of his death – were the products of an evolution in Christian thinking over time, and so could be completely changed,’’ explains Michael Andrews, Chancellor of the Diocese of Lansing, “Saint Pius X rightly judged that modernism is at its root, essentially an atheistic error.”
Michael Andrew’s article giving a full overview of the life, work and legacy of Pope Saint Pius X is published below. Michael writes:
The first pope of the twentieth century, Pope Saint Pius X was elected to the papacy in 1903 and served until his death eleven years later. The bright and cheerful second born of ten children, he aspired to the priesthood from a young age.
Following his ordination at age twenty-three, he showed himself to be a zealous priest, filled with good sense and genuine care for souls. So the praise of God might resound, he trained the parish choir to a high degree of excellence in Gregorian chant. He arranged for the instruction of old and young in the fundamentals of the Catholic faith. He was a diligent brother to the poor. Though he would later serve as a seminary professor, bishop, and as Cardinal Patriarch of Venice, he would remain a country priest at heart.
Pope Saint Pius X took as his motto, “To restore all things in Christ” (Ephesians 1:10). His program as pope was a continuation of the priorities that he set forth early in his priesthood: the sacredness of divine worship, the promotion of the Faith in its fulness, and generous service to the poor.
In his instruction on sacred music, he stated: “Filled with a most ardent desire to see the true Christian spirit flourish in every respect and be preserved by all the faithful, we deem it necessary to provide, before anything else, for the sanctity and dignity of the temple.” He went on to establish that “Gregorian chant has always been regarded as the supreme model for sacred music, so that it is fully legitimate to lay down the following rule: The more closely a composition for church approaches in its movement, inspiration and savor the Gregorian form, the more sacred and liturgical it becomes; and the more out of harmony it is with that supreme model, the less worthy it is of the temple.”
To promote the faith, this holy pope was concerned that ordinary parishioners have a simple, brief Catechism for their use. For this purpose, he issued the Catechismo della Dottrina Cristiana, popularly called the Catechism of Pius X, and mandated that each parish establish the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine (CCD) to provide for religious formation. He underscored the worthy reception of Holy Communion, which he made available to the faithful on a frequent, even daily, basis. He is perhaps best known for lowering the age of First Communion from twelve to the age of reason.
As a safeguard to the faith, he condemned the heresy of Modernism in two formal documents, Lamentabili and Pascendi, both published in 1907. Modernism is a theory about the origin and nature of Christianity, reducing it to a matter of subjective experience. Modernists denied any objective revelation from God to the human race, nor any reasonable grounds for credibility in the Christian faith, based on miracles or the testimony of history. Faith, for the modernists, was uniquely from within, a merely natural instinct belonging to the emotions, which cannot be expressed in words or doctrinal formulations. Modernists did not seek so much to abandon any of the traditional statements of Catholic teaching, but to redefine their meaning according to a new, rationalistic interpretation. Thus, they proposed that divine revelation and the teachings of the Church are only an expression of the subconscious, subject to continual evolution. Modernists held that dogmas – including the divinity of Christ, and the redemptive value of his death – were the products of an evolution in Christian thinking over time, and so could be completely changed. St. Pius X rightly judged that modernism is at its root, essentially an atheistic error.
With regard to the poor, Pope Saint Pius X wrote Fin Dalla Prima, an instruction highlighting major themes from his predecessor, Pope Leo XIII, in his landmark encyclical, Rerum Novarum. This is the first of a century of papal writings commemorating and putting that encyclical into action. Saint Pius X wrote: “It is an obligation for the rich and those who own property to help the poor and the indigent, according to the precepts of the Gospel. This obligation is so grave that on the Day of Judgment special account will be demanded of its fulfillment, as Christ Himself has said (Matthew 25).”
In his own lifetime, reports of several miraculous cures were attributed to this holy pope’s intercession. Many others were verified after he surrendered his soul to God in the early morning hours of 20 August 1914, just as the First World War was breaking in Europe.
At his death, even a French Communist newspaper eulogized: “His … agenda was very simple: to restore all the values of the Faith with apostolic firmness. He could fulfill this agenda with authority, given the simplicity of his soul and the sincerity of his virtues, which are unquestionable. Whichever way one looks at him, one must agree that he was a great pope.”
The inscription on his tomb captures the main features of a life well spent in the service of God: “Born poor and humble of heart, undaunted champion of the Catholic faith, zealous to restore all things in Christ, he crowned a holy life with a holy death.”
Pope Pius X was beatified in 1951, and he was canonized in 1954. His incorrupt remains lie under the Altar of the Presentation in Saint Peter’s Basilica, Rome.
