Sunday Meditation: A few words of wisdom from Blessed Pope Pius IX

But first a fake meme. Pope Blessed Pius IX never warned about a future pope. The quote above is all over the internet, but there's no evidence that the pope ever said it. And in view of his statements on papal infallibility, it immediately raised question marks when I saw it. Serious Catholics need to check, check, check! Don't pass along incorrect information. Whoever's doing it are the Joseph Goebbels of the Church.When you see things on the internet, it's wise to check them, especially if a quote has no attribution. We don't need fake quotes. Pope Blessed Pius IX was a zealous shepherd totally committed to defending the faith and how he suffered for it!

Pope Pius IX was, in fact, direct and zealous in his attempts to root out heresy. His encyclical Qui Pluribus minces no words in describing the modernists attacking the faith. Here's a sample of his plain-spoken teaching from the encyclical:

Each of you has noticed, venerable brothers, that a very bitter and fearsome war against the whole Catholic commonwealth is being stirred up by men bound together in a lawless alliance. These men do not preserve sound doctrine, but turn their hearing from the truth. They eagerly attempt to produce from their darkness all sorts of prodigious beliefs, and then to magnify them with all their strength, and to publish them and spread them among ordinary people. We shudder indeed and suffer bitter pain when We reflect on all their outlandish errors and their many harmful methods, plots and contrivances. These men use these means to spread their hatred for truth and light. They are experienced and skillful in deceit, which they use to set in motion their plans to quench peoples’ zeal for piety, justice and virtue, to corrupt morals, to cast all divine and human laws into confusion, and to weaken and even possibly overthrow the Catholic religion and civil society. For you know, venerable brothers, that these bitter enemies of the Christian name, are carried wretchedly along by some blind momentum of their mad impiety; they go so far in their rash imagining as to teach without blushing, openly and publicly, daring and unheard-of doctrines, thereby uttering blasphemies against God.[1] They teach that the most holy mysteries of our religion are fictions of human invention, and that the teaching of the Catholic Church is opposed to the good and the prerogatives of human society. They are not even afraid to deny Christ Himself and God. 

5. In order to easily mislead the people into making errors, deceiving particularly the imprudent and the inexperienced, they pretend that they alone know the ways to prosperity. They claim for themselves without hesitation the name of “philosophers.” They feel as if philosophy, which is wholly concerned with the search for truth in nature, ought to reject those truths which God Himself, the supreme and merciful creator of nature, has deigned to make plain to men as a special gift. With these truths, mankind can gain true happiness and salvation. So, by means of an obviously ridiculous and extremely specious kind of argumentation, these enemies never stop invoking the power and excellence of human reason; they raise it up against the most holy faith of Christ, and they blather with great foolhardiness that this faith is opposed to human reason.

6. Without doubt, nothing more insane than such a doctrine, nothing more impious or more opposed to reason itself could be devised. For although faith is above reason, no real disagreement or opposition can ever be found between them; this is because both of them come from the same greatest source of unchanging and eternal truth, God. They give such reciprocal help to each other that true reason shows, maintains and protects the truth of the faith, while faith frees reason from all errors and wondrously enlightens, strengthens and perfects reason with the knowledge of divine matters.

Catholics need to be educated in the faith and what a source of wisdom we have in the documents from holy popes. Pope Blessed Pius IX and Pope St. Pius X offer tremendous teachings against the modernist heresy that is so prevalent today even within the Church, perhaps especially within the Church. 

Let us all commit to knowing the faith and teaching the faith to our children and grandchildren. Ignorance of the faith is one of the reasons so many abandon it. 

Come, O Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of Thy faithful and enkindle in us the fire of Thy love!