Pope Ix Quotes

the Catholic Church not only didn’t oppose abortion but actually regulated it until the mid-nineteenth century. It was made a mortal sin mostly for population reasons.8 Napoleon III wanted more soldiers, and Pope Pius IX wanted all the teaching positions in the French schools—plus the doctrine of papal infallibility—so they traded. Also,

Divine revelation is perfect and, therefore, it is not subject to continual and indefinite progress of human reason.

Quickening was crucial, because most people believed that the fetus did not receive a soul until the time when it could be felt moving (Hull, 1996:105). This understanding of ensoulment didn't change until the nineteenth century, when Pope Pius IX decided that souls entered the embryo at conception (Simon, 1998:2).

The civil liberty of every mode of worship, and full power given to all of openly and publicly manifesting their opinions and their ideas conduce more easily to corrupt the morals and minds of the people... The Roman Pontiff cannot and ought not to reconcile himself or agree with, progress, liberalism and modern civilization.

During the investigation, he tried a brief defense of his medical practice on the grounds that he had once assisted a vivisectionist in Tampa, Florida; and when this failed, he settled down to sullen grumbling about the Jews, earthly vanity, and quoted bits from Ecclesiastes, Alfonso Liguori, and Pope Pius IX, in answer to any accusatory question.

Dayananda’s contemporary, Pope Pius IX, had much more conservative views about women, but shared Dayananda’s admiration for superhuman authority. Pius led a series of reforms in Catholic dogma and established the novel principle of papal infallibility, according to which the Pope can never err in matters of faith (this seemingly medieval idea became binding Catholic dogma only in 1870, eleven years after Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species).

In order to conquer panic or some tenacious anxiety, there is nothing like imagining your own burial. An effective method, readily available to all. In order not to have to resort to it too often in the course of a day, best to experience its benefit straight off, when you get up. Or else use it only at exceptional moments, like Pope Innocent IX, who, having commissioned a painting in which he was shown on his deathbed, glanced at it each time he had to make some important decision.

Globalization has shipped products at a faster rate than anything else; it’s moved English into schools all over the world so that now there is Dutch English and Filipino English and Japanese English. But the ideologies stay in their places. They do not spread like the swine flu, or through sexual contact. They spread through books and films and things of that nature. The dictatorships of Latin America used to ban books, they used to burn them, just like Franco did, like Pope Gregory IX and Emperor Qin Shi Huang. Now they don’t have to because the best place to hide ideologies is in books. The dictatorships are mostly gone—Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay. The military juntas. Our ideologies are not secrets. Even the Ku Klux Klan holds open meetings in Alabama like a church. None of the Communists are still in jail. You can buy Mao’s red book at the gift shop at the Museum of Communism. I will die soon, in the next five to ten years. I have not seen progress during my lifetime. Our lives are too short and disposable. If we had longer life expectancies, if we lived to 200, would we work harder to preserve life or, do you think that when Borges said, ‘Jews, Christians, and Muslims all profess belief in immortality, but the veneration paid to the first century of life is proof that they truly believe in only those hundred years, for they destine all the rest, throughout eternity, to rewarding or punishing what one did when alive,’ we would simply alter it to say ‘first two centuries’? I have heard people say we are living in a golden age, but the golden age has passed—I’ve seen it in the churches all over Latin America where the gold is like glue. The Middle Ages are called the Dark Ages but only because they are forgotten, because the past is shrouded in darkness, because as we lay one century of life on top of the next, everything that has come before seems old and dark—technological advances provide the illusion of progress. The most horrendous tortures carried out in the past are still carried out today, only today the soldiers don’t meet face to face, no one is drawn and quartered, they take a pill and silently hope a heart attack doesn’t strike them first. We are living in the age of dissociation, speaking a government-patented language of innocence—technology is neither good nor evil, neither progress nor regress, but the more advanced it becomes, the more we will define this era as the one of transparent secrets, of people living in a world of open, agile knowledge, oceans unpoliced—all blank faces, blank minds, blank computers, filled with our native programming, using electronic appliances with enough memory to store everything ever written invented at precisely the same moment we no longer have the desire to read a word of it.

Globalization has shipped products at a faster rate than anything else; it’s moved English into schools all over the world so that now there is Dutch English and Filipino English and Japanese English. But the ideologies stay in their places. They do not spread like the swine flu, or through sexual contact. They spread through books and films and things of that nature. The dictatorships of Latin America used to ban books, they used to burn them, just like Franco did, like Pope Gregory IX and Emperor Qin Shi Huang. Now they don’t have to because the best place to hide ideologies is in books. The dictatorships are mostly gone—Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay. The military juntas. Our ideologies are not secrets. Even the Ku Klux Klan holds open meetings in Alabama like a church. None of the Communists are still in jail. You can buy Mao’s red book at the gift shop at the Museum of Communism. I will die soon, in the next five to ten years. I have not seen progress during my lifetime. Our lives are too short and disposable. If we had longer life expectancies, if we lived to 200, would we work harder to preserve life or, do you think that when Borges said, ‘Jews, Christians, and Muslims all profess belief in immortality, but the veneration paid to the first century of life is proof that they truly believe in only those hundred years, for they destine all the rest, throughout eternity, to rewarding or punishing what one did when alive,’ we would simply alter it to say ‘first two centuries’? I have heard people say we are living in a golden age, but the golden age has passed—I’ve seen it in the churches all over Latin America where the gold is like glue. The Middle Ages are called the Dark Ages but only because they are forgotten, because the past is shrouded in darkness, because as we lay one century of life on top of the next, everything that has come before seems old and dark—technological advances provide the illusion of progress. The most horrendous tortures carried out in the past are still carried out today, only today the soldiers don’t meet face to face, no one is drawn and quartered, they take a pill and silently hope a heart attack doesn’t strike them first. We are living in the age of dissociation, speaking a government-patented language of innocence—technology is neither good nor evil, neither progress nor regress, but the more advanced it becomes, the more we will define this era as the one of transparent secrets, of people living in a world of open, agile knowledge, oceans unpoliced—all blank faces, blank minds, blank computers, filled with our native programming, using electronic appliances with enough memory to store everything ever written invented at precisely the same moment we no longer have the desire to read a word of it.” ― John M. Keller, Abracadabrantesque

To think that animals were once merely our dinner, or what we wore to dinner! Fifteen thousand years ago, certain wolves became domesticated and evolved into dogs. One thing led to another, and, notwithstanding some moments in history that dogs and cats would probably not want to bring up (like the time Pope Gregory IX declared cats to be the Devil incarnate), pets have gradually become cherished members of our families.

Pope Pius IX promulgated the dogma of the immaculate conception of Mary in his bull Ineffabilis Deus (December 8, 1854), and Pope Pius XII promulgated the dogma of the bodily assumption of Mary in his bull Munifi-centissimus Deus (November 1, 1950). The result of this view of divine revelation is “that the Church does not draw her certainty about all revealed truths from the holy Scriptures alone.

One thing led to another, and, notwithstanding some moments in history that dogs and cats would probably not want to bring up (like the time Pope Gregory IX declared cats to be the Devil incarnate), pets have gradually become cherished members of our families. According to “Citizen Canine,” a book by David Grimm, sixty-seven per cent of households in America have a cat or a dog (compared with forty-three per cent who have children), and eighty-three per cent of pet owners refer to themselves as their animal’s “mom” or “dad.” Seventy per cent celebrate the pet’s birthday. Animals are our best friends, our children, and our therapists.

Introduction THE TRUTH of the Second Coming of Jesus at the end of time has proved to be difficult for many Catholics to relate to. It is an area of theology that many find irrelevant to their everyday lives; something perhaps best left to the placard-wielding doom merchants. However, the clarity of this teaching is to be found throughout the pages of Sacred Scripture, through the Tradition of the Church Fathers, notably St. Augustine and St. Irenaeus, and in the Magisterium of the popes. A possible reason for this attitude of incredulity is the obvious horror at the prospect of the end of the world. In envisioning this end, the focus of many consists of an image of universal conflagration where the only peace is the peace of death, not only for man but the physical world also. But is that scenario one that is true to the plans of Divine Providence as revealed by Jesus? In truth it is not. It is a partial account of the wondrous work that the Lord will complete on the last day. The destiny of humanity and all creation at the end of time will consist of the complete renewal of the world and the universe, in which the Kingdom of God will come. Earth will become Heaven and the Holy Trinity will dwell with the community of the redeemed in an endless day illuminated by the light that is God—the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. I suspect that the ignorance of many stems from the lack of clear teaching coming from the clergy. There is no real reason for confusion in this area as the Second Vatican Council document, Lumen Gentium, and the Catholic Catechism make the authentic teaching very clear. With the knowledge that the end will give way to a new beginning, the Christian should be filled with hope, not fear, expectation, not apprehension. It is important to stress at this point that it is not my intention to speculate as to specific times and dates, as that knowledge belongs to God the Father himself; rather the intention is to offer the teachings and guidance of the recent popes in this matter, and to show that they are warning of the approaching Second Coming of the Lord. Pope Pius XII stated in his Easter Message of 1957: “Come, Lord Jesus. There are numerous signs that Thy return is not far off.” St. Peter warns us that “everything will soon come to an end” (1 Pet. 4:7), while at the same time exercising caution: “But there is one thing, my friends, that you must never forget: that with the Lord, a “day” can mean a thousand years, and a thousand years is like a day” (2 Pet. 3:8). So let us leave the time scale open, that way controversy can be avoided and the words of the popes will speak for themselves.

Pope Pius IX, the very same pope who declared papal infallibility,

There were plenty of men who had received the Papacy and weren’t worthy of it. There were men such as Stephen VI, Benedict IX, John XII, Clement V, Sixtus IV, Leo X, Alexander VI, and others. These were men who had taken the throne of Saint Peter and turned it into a couch of corruption, greed, dissipation, blood, violence, incest, and heresy.

Pope Innocent IX, who, having commissioned a painting in which he was shown on his deathbed, glanced at it each time he had to make some important decision.

okay as long as there was a chance it wasn’t sinful; this was condemned by Pope Innocent IX in 1591. Others advocated for “rigorism,” where something was forbidden if there was any chance at all that it was sinful; this was condemned by Pope Alexander VIII in 1690.73 A great number of other competing theories weighed the probability of a rule being correct or the percentage of reasonable people who believed it. “Probabiliorism,” for instance, held that you should do something only if it was less likely to be sinful than not; “equiprobabilism” held that it was also okay if the chance was perfectly even. The “pure probabilists” believed that a rule was optional as long as there was a “reasonable” probability that it might not be true; their cry was Lex dubia non obligat: “A doubtful law does not bind.” However, in contrast to the free-spirited laxists, the probabilists stressed that the argument for ignoring the rule, while it didn’t need to be more probable than the argument for obeying the law, nonetheless needed to be “truly and solidly probable, for if it is only slightly probable it has no value.”74 Much ink was spilled, many accusations of heresy hurled, and papal declarations issued during this time. The venerable Handbook of Moral Theology concludes its section on “The Doubting Conscience, or, Moral Doubt” by offering the “Practical Conclusion” that rigorism is too rigorous, and laxism too lax, but

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.

Bayezid I’s conquests alarmed the rest of Christian Europe, and Pope Boniface IX called for a new crusade to stop Ottoman

(Gal.4:4) which will be revealed at the second coming of the Lord. The exhortation “Be not afraid” (Jos. 1:9) is also accompanied by a similar message “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; for his mercy endures for ever!

Tradition was rejected, leaving Sacred Scripture as the sole source of divine Revelation; the fact that the teaching magisterium was also rejected meant that anyone was free to interpret Scripture as they wished.

vast extent of our territory,

misery, sorrow, and tribulation, which are the portion even of those who seem most prosperous.

In an ironic sense, the more the world goes away from God, the closer he draws it to himself; preparing in a decisive way, its complete renewal at the end of time.

sine macula et sine ruga

there is no need for a defense, only the strength to bear the sufferings to come.

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

And the Apostle suggests the main line we should follow: “Be not overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

The Council came from God, of that there is no doubt.

Advocate

Pope Benedict IX was elected pope at the tender age of 11.

This was to continue until 1866 when, as we have seen, the Holy Office under Pius IX still declared that slavery as such was not against human or divine law. What was wrong with these Church leaders? Were they heartless creatures who were not moved by the plight of helpless slaves in so many countries? The answer is that they were caught by their misguided awe for this solid 'tradition', which we know to be a cuckoo chick, but which they saw confirmed in the writings of the Fathers, the decrees of Church councils, the sanction of previous popes. They did not stop to think, 'What is the basis for all this?

Pope Gregory IX endorsed the accusations of Nicolas Donin: If what is said about the Jews of France and of the other lands is true, no punishment would be sufficiently great or sufficiently worthy of their crime. For they, so we have heard, are not content with the Old Law which God gave to Moses in writing; they even ignore it completely, and affirm that God gave another Law which is called “Talmud.” . . . In this is contained matter so abusive and so unspeakable that it arouses shame in those who mention it and horror in those who hear it. Wherefore . . . this is said to be the chief cause that holds the Jews obstinate in their perfidy.24 Several decades later his words

A Catholic family had hidden a Jewish boy from the Nazis, and had learned that the Germans had murdered the child’s parents. They brought the youngster to Wojtyla and asked him to baptize the child. In contrast to Pope Pius IX and his abductions and forced baptisms of two Jewish boys, Wojtyla refused. The boy should be raised Jewish in the tradition of his parents, Wojtyla told the parents.

Dominicans and the Inquisition The order took a significantly more militant stand after the death of their founder. Saint Dominic’s vision of converting heretics—particularly the Cathars—through sermons and by leading an exemplary life proved too slow for the church. In 1231 Pope Gregory IX issued a bull condemning heretics, calling on secular authorities to punish them with the “appropriate penalty.” At the same time, the Holy Roman emperor Frederick II announced that the appropriate penalty for heretics was “to be burned alive in the sight of the people.

It went on to purport that Constantine – then based in the later Empire’s eastern seat in what would become Constantinople – had decided to site himself there because it would not be right for him to be located in the city where the head of the Christian faith reigned. The supposed donation was not revealed publicly until the mid-700s when it was used in 754 by Pope Stephen to negotiate with Frankish King Pepin about the division of lands between the two rival authorities. It was wheeled out again in 1054 when Leo IX was in dispute with the patriarch of Constantinople over the rights and powers of Roman rule. It became an essential document in later years as popes reacted to challenges against their authority in the growing post-Dark Age Europe in the 10th and 11th centuries. It was, though, entirely fictitious. Thought now to have been concocted by the papal chancery to provide retrospective authority for the increasingly strained church, it was not until the 15th century, nearly 700 years after its appearance, that scholars began openly questioning its veracity. It was finally debunked in 1518. It should have been easy. One of the giveaways to the forgery was Constantine’s apparent bequeathing of his own city to papal spiritual control. Although supposedly written in 315, Constantine did not in fact found Constantinople until 326, 11 years after his apparent donation.

For those who are sceptical about such events as the wives of clerics and other religious being sold into slavery with the sanction of Rome, I have to point out the following: during the time of Pope Leo IX (1049–54), the pontiff did sanction the rounding up of the wives of priests to become slaves in the Lateran Palace. Moreover, it was when Urban II (1088–99) was elected to the papacy that he reinforced celibacy not only by decree but also by force. While attending a council in Rheims he gave approval to the Archbishop of Rheims to order Robert, Count of Rheims, to abduct all the wives of priests and

The greater part of Europe became the scene of the cruel execution of many of its best citizens. Records of burnings abound. In 1391, 400 persons were brought before the courts in Pomerania and Brandenburg accused of heresy; in 1393, 280 were imprisoned in Augsburg; in 1395, about 1000 persons were “converted” to the Catholic faith in Thuringia, Bohemia, and Moravia; the same year 36 were burnt in Mainz; in 1397, in Steier, about 100 men and women were burnt; two years later 6 women and one man were burnt in Nüremberg. The Swiss cities suffered similar atrocities. During this time Pope Boniface IX issued an edict ordering that all suitable means should be used to destroy the plan of heretical wickedness. He quotes from a report in which those whom he calls his “beloved sons the inquisitors” in Germany, describe the Beghards, Lollards and Schwestrionen, who call themselves “the Poor” and “Brethren” and say that for more than 100 years this heresy has been forbidden under the same forms, and that in different towns several of this obstinate sect have been burnt almost every year. In 1395 an inquisitor, Peter Pilichdorf, boasted that it had been possible to master these heretics. Bohemia and England were places of refuge for many who fled to them, the teaching of Wycliff in England and of Jerome and Huss in Bohemia having powerfully influenced those countries.

Pope John Paul I spoke of the greatness of matrimony to a group of newlyweds. He told them the following story: Last century there was in France a great professor, Frederick Ozanam. He taught at the Sorbonne, and was so eloquent, so capable! His friend Lacordaire said: ‘He is so gifted, he is so good, he will become a priest; he will become a great bishop, this fellow!’ But no! He met a nice girl and they got married. Lacordaire was disappointed and said: ‘Poor Ozanam! He too has fallen into the trap!’ But two years later, Lacordaire came to Rome and was received by Pius IX. ‘Come, come, Father,’ the Pope said, ‘I have always heard that Jesus established seven sacraments. Now you come along and change everything. You tell me that He established six sacraments, and a trap! No, Father, marriage is not a trap – it is a great sacrament!’[425

The fall of Montségur represented one of the dying gasps of Catharism, but what really destroyed it completely was the Inquisition. In 1233, Pope Gregory IX decided that the Dominican order, founded by a Spanish priest named Domingo de Guzmán partly in response to the Cathar threat, would be the perfect tool to root out the heretics. The Dominican inquisitors were judge,

...writers gave up the essential idea of the Enlightenment: freedom of thought, speech, and communication. Not all of them were so outspoken as Comte and Lenin; but they all, in declaring that freedom means only the right to say the correct things, not also the right to say the wrong things, virtually converted the ideas of freedom of thought and conscience into their opposite. It was not the Syllabus of Pope Pius IX that paved the way for the return of intolerance and the persecution of dissenters. It was the writings of the socialists.