Pius Xi Quotes

Your job then, should you choose to accept it, is to keep searching for the metaphors, rituals and teachers that will help you move ever closer to divinity. The Yogic scriptures say that God responds to the sacred prayers and efforts of human beings in any way whatsoever that mortals choose to worship—just so long as those prayers are sincere. I think you have every right to cherry-pick when it comes to moving your spirit and finding peace in God. I think you are free to search for any metaphor whatsoever which will take you across the worldly divide whenever you need to be transported or comforted. It's nothing to be embarrassed about. It's the history of mankind's search for holiness. If humanity never evolved in its exploration of the divine, a lot of us would still be worshipping golden Egyptian statues of cats. And this evolution of religious thinking does involve a fair bit of cherry-picking. You take whatever works from wherever you can find it, and you keep moving toward the light. The Hopi Indians thought that the world's religions each contained one spiritual thread, and that these threads are always seeking each other, wanting to join. When all the threads are finally woven together they will form a rope that will pull us out of this dark cycle of history and into the next realm. More contemporarily, the Dalai Lama has repeated the same idea, assuring his Western students repeatedly that they needn't become Tibetan Buddhists in order to be his pupils. He welcomes them to take whatever ideas they like out of Tibetan Buddhism and integrate these ideas into their own religious practices. Even in the most unlikely and conservative of places, you can find sometimes this glimmering idea that God might be bigger than our limited religious doctrines have taught us. In 1954, Pope Pius XI, of all people, sent some Vatican delegates on a trip to Libya with these written instructions: "Do NOT think that you are going among Infidels. Muslims attain salvation, too. The ways of Providence are infinite." But doesn't that make sense? That the infinite would be, indeed ... infinite? That even the most holy amongst us would only be able to see scattered pieces of the eternal picture at any given time? And that maybe if we could collect those pieces and compare them, a story about God would begin to emerge that resembles and includes everyone? And isn't our individual longing for transcendence all just part of this larger human search for divinity? Don't we each have the right to not stop seeking until we get as close to the source of wonder as possible? Even if it means coming to India and kissing trees in the moonlight for a while? That's me in the corner, in other words. That's me in the spotlight. Choosing my religion.

In 1954, Pope Pius XI, of all people, sent some Vatican delegates on a trip to Libya with these written instructions: "Do NOT think that you are going among Infidels. Muslims attain salvation, too. The ways of Providence are infinite.

However we may pity the mother whose health and even life is imperiled by the performance of her natural duty, there yet remains no sufficient reason for condoning the direct murder of the innocent.

A tyrant remains a tyrant no matter how benevolently he may philosophize and smile,

Let us thank God that He makes us live among the present problems. It is no longer permitted to anyone to be mediocre.

a leading humanist scholar and occupied many public offices, including that of Lord Chancellor from 1529 to 1532. More coined the word "utopia", a name he gave to an ideal, imaginary island nation whose political system he described in a book published in 1516. He is chiefly remembered for his principled refusal to accept King Henry VIII's claim to be supreme head of the Church of England, a decision which ended his political career and led to his execution as a traitor. In 1935, four hundred years after his death, More was canonized in the Catholic Church by Pope Pius XI, and was later declared the patron saint of lawyers and statesmen

Sir Thomas More (7 February 1478 – 6 July 1535), also known as Saint Thomas More, was an English lawyer, author, and statesman. During his lifetime he earned a reputation as a leading humanist scholar and occupied many public offices, including that of Lord Chancellor from 1529 to 1532. More coined the word "utopia", a name he gave to an ideal, imaginary island nation whose political system he described in a book published in 1516. He is chiefly remembered for his principled refusal to accept King Henry VIII's claim to be supreme head of the Church of England, a decision which ended his political career and led to his execution as a traitor. In 1935, four hundred years after his death, More was canonized in the Catholic Church by Pope Pius XI, and was later declared the patron saint of lawyers and statesmen. He shares his feast day, June 22 on the Catholic calendar of saints, with Saint John Fisher, the only Bishop during the English Reformation to maintain his allegiance to the Pope. More was added to the Anglican Churches' calendar of saints in 1980. Source: Wikipedia

Conscientious parents, aware of their educational duties, have a primal and original right to determine that the children which God has given them should be educated in the spirit of true faith.

26. Above all other reality there exists one supreme Being: God, the omnipotent Creator of all things, the all-wise and just Judge of all men. This supreme reality, God, is the absolute condemnation of the impudent falsehoods of communism. In truth, it is not because men believe in God that He exists; rather because He exists do all men whose eyes are not deliberately closed to the truth believe in Him and pray to Him.

There is no past, memory paints it,’ ” the pope recited. “ ‘There is no future, for hope shapes it. There is only the present, but it is always escaping us.

Thus, I repeat, anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism are spiritually destructive and stupid. In the words of Pope Pius XI: “Spiritually, we are Semites.” You cannot be a good Catholic until you've fallen in love with the religion and people of Israel. WALK

Vatican’s secretly composed message to all of Germany’s Catholics. On Palm Sunday, 1937, the letter had been read by every priest, bishop, and cardinal across Germany to their congregations and three hundred thousand copies had been disseminated. Drafted by Munich’s Cardinal von Faulhaber and Pope Pius XI, it told German Catholics in carefully veiled terms that National Socialism was an evil religion based on racism that stood contrary to the church’s teachings and every man’s right to equality. It made reference to “an insane and arrogant prophet” without naming Hitler.

Vatican city is an independent state created by the Lateran treaty of 11th Feb 1929 which was signed by Pope Pius XI, the holy see and the Italian government.  It covers an area of 108 acres on the hill west of the Tiber river. It is separated from the rest of Rome by high walls on all sides except at the Piazza of St Peter. 

A man had better study what a human being is, because he's marrying one - assuming that merely being one has not been sufficient stimulus to that study.

There is but one way in which the unity of Christians may be fostered, and that is by furthering the return to the one true Church of Christ of those who are separated from it; for far from that one true Church they have in the past fallen away. The one Church of Christ is visible to all, and will remain, according to the will of its Author, exactly the same as He instituted it.

I never want to see umbrellas around me," he [Mussolini] once said. "The umbrella is a bourgeois relic, it is the arm used by the pope's soldiers. A people who carry umbrellas cannot found an empire.

It was as if my whole life, in God’s plan, had pointed to this moment. I could remember vividly that day so long ago, during the second year of my noviceship at St. Andrew’s in New York, when our novice master read us a letter from Pius XI asking for volunteers to join a new Russian mission just opened in Rome. Even as he read the letter, something within me stirred. I could hardly wait for the conference to finish so I could go to the novice master and volunteer for this new Russian apostolate.

That false opinion which considers all religions to be more or less good and praiseworthy, since they all in different ways manifest and signify that sense which is inborn in us all, and by which we are led to God and to the obedient acknowledgment of His rule. Not only are those who hold this opinion in error and deceived, but also in distorting the idea of true religion they reject it, and little by little. turn aside to naturalism and atheism, as it is called; from which it clearly follows that one who supports those who hold these theories and attempt to realize them, is altogether abandoning the divinely revealed religion.

33. . . . Both men and civil society derive their origin from the Creator, Who has mutually ordained them one to the other. Hence neither can be exempted from their correlative obligations, nor deny or diminish each other's rights. The Creator Himself has regulated this mutual relationship in its fundamental lines, and it is by an unjust usurpation that communism arrogates to itself the right to enforce, in place of the divine law based on the immutable principles of truth and charity, a partisan political program which derives from the arbitrary human will and is replete with hate.

30. Man cannot be exempted from his divinely-imposed obligations toward civil society, and the representatives of authority have the right to coerce him when he refuses without reason to do his duty. Society, on the other hand, cannot defraud man of his God-granted rights, the most important of which We have indicated above. Nor can society systematically void these rights by making their use impossible. It is therefore according to the dictates of reason that ultimately all material things should be ordained to man as a person, that through his mediation they may find their way to the Creator.

18. A third powerful factor in the diffusion of communism is the conspiracy of silence on the part of a large section of the non-Catholic press of the world. We say conspiracy, because it is impossible otherwise to explain how a press usually so eager to exploit even the little daily incidents of life has been able to remain silent for so long about the horrors perpetrated in Russia, in Mexico and even in a great part of Spain; and that it should have relatively so little to say concerning a world organization as vast as Russian communism. This silence is due in part to short-sighted political policy, and is favored by various occult forces which for a long time have been working for the overthrow of the Christian Social Order.

Domestic society being confirmed, therefore, by this bond of love, there should flourish in it that "order of love," as St. Augustine calls it. This order includes both the primacy of the husband with regard to the wife and children, the ready subjection of the wife and her willing obedience, which the Apostle commends in these words: "Let women be subject to their husbands as to the Lord, because the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the Church." This subjection, however, does not deny or take away the liberty which fully belongs to the woman both in view of her dignity as a human person, and in view of her most noble office as wife and mother and companion; nor does it bid her obey her husband's every request if not in harmony with right reason or with the dignity due to wife; nor, in fine, does it imply that the wife should be put on a level with those persons who in law are called minors, to whom it is not customary to allow free exercise of their rights on account of their lack of mature judgment, or of their ignorance of human affairs. But it forbids that exaggerated liberty which cares not for the good of the family; it forbids that in this body which is the family, the heart be separated from the head to the great detriment of the whole body and the proximate danger of ruin. For if the man is the head, the woman is the heart, and as he occupies the chief place in ruling, so she may and ought to claim for herself the chief place in love. Again, this subjection of wife to husband in its degree and manner may vary according to the different conditions of persons, place and time. In fact, if the husband neglect his duty, it falls to the wife to take his place in directing the family. But the structure of the family and its fundamental law, established and confirmed by God, must always and everywhere be maintained intact.

Bannon, more synthesist than adherent, brought to Guénon’s Traditionalism a strong dose of Catholic social thought, in particular the concept of “subsidiarity”: the principle expressed in Pope Pius XI’s 1931 encyclical, Quadragesimo anno, that political matters should devolve to the lowest, least centralized authority that can responsibly handle them—a concept that, in a U.S. political context, mirrors small-government conservatism.

In the upper echelons of the Church, the authoritarian and anti-liberal elements within fascism resonated with those – and they included Pius XI – who had come to see the turmoil and conflict that had convulsed the world in recent decades as symptoms of the deep moral malaise that had afflicted Western society since the time of the Enlightenment, with its corrosive doctrines of rights and popular sovereignty.

, Mussolini “adopted an unnecessary degree of pose and manners which can only be described as Napoleonic.

Everyone can understand how salutary it [the rosary] is, especially in our times wherein sometimes a certain annoyance of the things of the spirit is felt even among the Faithful, and a dislike, as it were, for the Christian doctrine. ~ Pope Pius XI

It is fashionable today to praise the Church of the first four centuries, to extol primative practice. How would the Church of the first four centuries have regarded Archbishop Whealon? Anyone who is remotely acquainted with Church history can give one answer and one answer only. Archbishop Whealon would have been regarded as an apostate; he would have been anathemized, and every true Catholic bishop would have broken off communion with him. I believe that the Church of the first four centuries was right. I believe that Archbishop Whealon is at least a de facto apostate. It seems a harsh thing to say. It may make me appear harsh and intolerant - but nonetheless it is the truth. Cardinal Newman has a magnificent sermon upon this very point, "Tolerance of Religious Error". He castigates those who concern us not to uphold truth but to avoid the appearance of being intolerant. Once again I must repeat, those who possess the truth, those who love the truth, cannot tolerate error . . . Furthermore, I submit that Archbishop Whealon's conduct would have been considered incompatible with Catholicism not only by the Church of the first four centuries - it would have resulted in his immediate excommunication by every Roman Pontiff up to and including Pope John XXIII. I accept that what I am saying will make me appear singular, intemperate, and extreme in the ecumenical climate of the Conciliar Church but the viewpoint I am putting forward would have been accepted by 99% of Catholics up to Vatican II. Read the encyclical Mortalium Animos of Pope Pius XI, read the relevant encyclicals of Pope Pius XII. If Archbishop Whealon is right, the the Church has been wrong for 2,000 years. (chapter 8)

I never want to see umbrellas around me." he [Mussolini] once said. "The umbrella is a bourgeois relic, it is the arm used by the pope's soldiers. A people who carry umbrellas cannot found an empire.

Nicolaus Steno, who later became an archbishop and was canonized by Pope Pius XI in 1988—

When a form of government is legitimately constituted,” Rosa now wrote, “even though it may initially have been defective or even questionable in various ways … it is one’s duty to support it, for public order or the common good requires it. Nor is it permitted to either individuals or to parties to plot to defeat it or supplant it or change it with unjust means.”22

Pope Pius XI called for a world-wide day of prayer, to be held on 16 March 1930, on behalf of the persecuted believers in Russia. This action led Stalin to suspend temporarily the antireligious campaign, according to Roy Medvedev

Gandhi had also wished to see the Pope, Pius XI, but the pontiff did not grant him an audience. The reason officially stated was ‘other pressing engagements’, but in truth it was ‘the Indian leader’s scant raiment’ that put him off. The king of England had relented in this matter, but the Bishop of Rome would not.

Make no mistake about this: destroy the liberty of the least among us and you destroy the principle that guarantees liberty to all.

Shocking, or at least upsetting to many people, the Reign of Christ the King is not the theocracy so dear to the hearts of many. Neither is it merely a religious conversion so that Jesus reigns individually in the heart of every person. Instead—and this was Leo XIII’s goal—the Reign of Christ the King involves restructuring the entire social order to establish and maintain an institutional environment providing the opportunity and means by which every person can become more fully human—that is, to grow in virtue. As Pius XI explained, the goal of his social doctrine was “the restoration of [the social order] according to the principles of sound philosophy and to its perfection according to the sublime precepts of the law of the Gospel, Our Predecessor, Leo XIII, devoted all his thought and care.

Catholic social doctrine is natural and is for the restructuring of the social order. It is for every human being, regardless of faith or philosophy. In Quadragesimo Anno, Pius XI stated many times explicitly and by implication that natural law-based Catholic social teaching is for everyone.

Within the framework of the philosophy of Saint Thomas Aquinas, social justice as developed by Pope Pius XI has a precise meaning. It is the particular virtue directed to the common good. Its purpose is the reform of the institutions of the common good to enable people to practice the individual virtues more effectively. Not unexpectedly, that requires explanation. This is especially so since most people today do not have the background or training to understand the terms with the necessary precision or in the sense they were originally meant.

Pius XI realized Aquinas’s notion of legal justice in the Summa Theologica was radically different from the usual understanding. For eight hundred years, people had assumed Aquinas was simply repeating Aristotle, and legal justice was a general virtue that did not look directly to anything.

Here was Aquinas talking out of both sides of his mouth and saying that legal justice both is and is not a particular justice! Investigating further, however, Pius XI would have seen the statement, “Legal justice directs man to the common good directly, but to the good of the individual indirectly.”51 Another contradiction!

The Church thus wonderfully instituted could not cease to exist with the death of its Founder and of the Apostles, the pioneers of its propagation, for its mission was to lead all men to salvation without distinction of time or place. "Going therefore, teach ye all nations" (Matt. 28:19). Nor could the Church ever lack the effective strength necessary for the continued accomplishment of its task, since Christ Himself is perpetually present with it, according to His promise: "Behold, I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world" (Matt. 28:20). Hence not only must the Church still exist today and continue always to exist, but it must even be exactly the same as it was in the days of the Apostles. Otherwise we must say - which God forbid - that Christ has failed in His purpose, or that He erred when He asserted of His Church that the gates of hell should never prevail against it (Matt. 16:18)l;

Personalism enables us to evaluate a philosophy to see how well, or if, it conforms to the particular, even unique needs of every human being as a human person and special creation of God. Wojtyła’s personalism brings together the concrete, objective reality of each human person and the abstract, theoretical-moral plane of metaphysics (that is, the natural law) to reconcile the actual to the ideal and bring them together to mutual advantage.64 Combining Pius XI’s social doctrine with

common good: that vast network of institutions within which individuals realize their particular good. As Pius XI explained in Quadragesimo Anno and Divini Redemptoris, the purpose of social justice is not to substitute for the individual virtues—that is, to make direct provision for individual good. Instead, the purpose of social justice is to make the practice of individual virtue and the realization of individual good possible.

In section 53 of Divini Redemptoris, Pius XI noted that individuals are frequently helpless when confronted with socially unjust situations. That being so, it would seem a bit much to insist that every one of us is personally responsible for the whole of the common good. That, however, is the “Fourth Law of Social Justice.

With Pacelli’s help, Pope Pius XI issued an encyclical in German, Mit brennender Sorge, which condemned Nazism as inhuman and pagan in ideology.

For all their obvious differences, the pope and Mussolini were alike in many ways. Both could have no real friends, for friendship implied equality.

It took a lot of nerve, De Vecchi added—broaching a taboo topic—for the archbishop to accuse the Fascists of being savages when at the same time the Vatican expected the government to keep silent about widespread cases of priestly immorality. One of these days, the ambassador warned, the pope would go too far. He would not

There is no past, memory paints it,’ ” the pope recited. “ ‘There is no future, for hope shapes it. There is only the present, but it is always escaping us.’ ”12