Pius Xiii Quotes

Dermot found me; bad news inexorably does. Let me reiterate, bumping into Pope Pius XIII would have surprised me less. In fact, His Infallibility would have blended in better

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.

Pope Leo XIII, in his encyclical Divinum Illud Munus, spoke beautifully of the invocation of the Divine Paraclete,

How could it be that Theophilus, one of the earliest Christian apologists, wrote nearly 30,000 words about Christianity without once mentioning Jesus Christ? How come the name "Jesus Christ," in fact, doesn't appear in any Greek or Latin author until after the Council of Nicaea? Why was it that the only near-contemporary account that mentioned Christ, a suspiciously precise paragraph known as the Testimonium Flavianum, in Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews, had been proved to be a patent insertion into that historical narrative? How could Jesus have been born in 1 A.D. when the Gospels say he was born before Herod the Great died — and King Herod's death could be pinpointed to 4 B.C.? Even Philip Cardinal Vasta, now known to the world as Pope Pius XIII, had lamented that the greatest obstacle for spreading the Catholic faith today was that the historical existence of Jesus could no longer be made credible.

In 1879, the English theologian John Henry Newman addressed “liberalism in religion” in his so-called “Biglietto Speech,” given in Rome on the occasion of his being named a cardinal by Pope Leo XIII. His analysis of the subject—the “one great mischief” that he had resisted for fifty years—remains unsurpassed.4 The directness of Newman’s assault on liberal religion surprised many people. He had been seen as ill at ease with the Catholic Church’s direction during the pontificate of Leo’s predecessor, Pius IX, and his misgivings about the opportuneness of the definition of papal infallibility by the First Vatican Council (1869–1870) were well known. But those who had followed Newman’s thought over the course of his career would have recognized the opposition to liberalism that had been there from the beginning. In his Biglietto Speech, Newman identified a number of doctrines of liberal religion: (1) “that there is no positive truth in religion,” (2) “that one creed is as good as another,” (3) that no religion can be recognized as true for “all are matters of opinion,” (4) that “revealed religion is not a truth, but a sentiment and a taste; not an objective faith, not miraculous,” and (5) that “it is the right of each individual to make it say just what strikes his fancy.

You ask if St. Dominic was really the institutor of the Rosary, you declare yourselves perplexed and full of doubt upon the subject. But what account do you make of the decisions of so many Sovereign Pontiffs of Leo X., of Pius V., of Gregory XIII. , of Sixtus V., of Clement VIII. , of Alexander VII., of Innocent XL, of Clement XL, of Innocent XIII., of Benedict XII I., and of many others, who are all unanimous in declaring the Rosary to have been instituted by St. Dominic himself?

The question weighed on him and continued to weigh more heavily on him: Should he consecrate bishops? The Archbishop prayed for a sign. Admittedly, Our Lord had spoken clearly that a corrupt generation asks for a sign, but this request was out of necessity and of a different kind. The sign would have to be this - the corruption has become so widespread, the Church is in such a perilous state, the episcopacy is so cowardly and inert that no one else is willing to act. Should action be taken? Then the sign came, clear to those with eyes to see and ears to hear. The Sovereign Pontiff's modernist brain percolated with thoughts of a panreligious peace hootenanny prayer jamboree, a staged event with such media appeal that the Holy Father's thespian heart must have beat wildly against his rib cage in anticipation. Over 130 religious leaders, Christian and non-Christian, would gather at the Basilica in Assisi on October 27, 1986, to pray, each to his own god, for world peace. For such an ecumenical extravaganza, the First Commandment could easily be overlooked. For such a display of earthly brotherhood, the solemn decrees and specific teachings of Pope Leo XIII, Pope St. Pius X, and Pope Pius XI, all of whom had condemned such gatherings and forbidden Catholic participation in such gatherings, all of their words could easily be disregarded. Besides, that was way back then and this is NOW! Mother Church herself, in the person of an ecumaniac pope, would organize the event and send out the invitations, in defiance of God, in defiance of His holy Popes.

The gifts of eternal salvation can only come from Calvary and the redeeming work of the Saviour and Mediator (cf. Jn 19:26). Mary has been granted the task by Almighty God of “bringing us the gifts of eternal salvation”, and is thereby rightly “invoked by the Church” as the “Mediatrix.”211 The footnote to the term, “Mediatrix” in the Council document Lumen Gentium refers to the several official teachings of the Magisterium of Mary’s role as Mediatrix of all graces as previously taught by Pope Leo XIII,212 Pope St. Pius X,213 Pope Pius XI,214 and Pope Pius XII.215 The Council does not diminish, but rather assumes and confirms the rich and repeated papal tradition of the ordinary Magisterium about the Mediatrix of graces that has preceded it.