Pope Leo Quotes

Once the demands of necessity and propriety have been met, the rest that one owns belongs to the poor.

Nothing is more useful than to look upon the world as it really is, and at the same time to seek elsewhere...for the solace to its troubles.

The world has heard enough of the so-called 'rights of man.' Let it hear something of the rights of God.

No human law can abolish the natural and original right of marriage, nor in any way limit the chief and principal purpose of marriage ordained by God’s authority from the beginning: “Increase and multiply.

The socialists, therefore, in setting aside the parent and setting up a State supervision, act against natural justice, and destroy the structure of the home.

Having a false and absurd notion as to what liberty is, either they pervert the very idea of freedom, or they extend it at their pleasure to many things in respect of which man cannot rightly be regarded as free.

Christmas Day 800, Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne “Holy Roman Emperor” in the Basilica of St. Peter. The congregation acclaimed him as “Augustus,” and Leo prostrated himself at Charlemagne’s feet.

Inadequacy of his own strength, learned from experience, impels and urges a man to enlist the help of others.

I, Hasan the son of Muhammad the weigh-master, I, Jean-Leon de Medici, circumcised at the hand of a barber and baptized at the hand of a pope, I am now called the African, but I am not from Africa, nor from Europe, nor from Arabia. I am also called the Granadan, the Fassi, the Zayyati, but I come from no country, from no city, no tribe. I am the son of the road, my country is the caravan, my life the most unexpected of voyages.

it is the glory of philosophy to be esteemed as the bulwark of faith and the strong defense of religion.

Pope Agatho: “Nothing of the things appointed ought to be diminished; nothing changed; nothing added; but they must be preserved both as regards expression and meaning.

seventeenth century, Pope Leo XIII

the death of the soul is worse than freedom of error,” as Augustine was wont to say.14 When all restraints are removed by which men are kept on the narrow path of truth, their nature, which is already inclined to evil, propels them to ruin. Then truly “the bottomless pit” (Apoc. 9:2)

it has served us well,this myth of christ

We have said that the State must not absorb the individual or the family; both should be allowed free and untrammeled action

From a mass of conclusions men often come to wavering and doubt; and who knows not how easily the mind slips from doubt to error?

what Cyprian detested may come to pass, that what was a divine thing “may become a human church.

Sacrosanctis was in fact the public face of a corporate conspiracy between the leading men of three powerful European families: the Medici (in the form of Pope Leo); Jakob Fugger, head of the Augsburg banking and mining dynasty and a man often said to have been the richest in human history; and Albert, archbishop of Mainz, a member of the politically influential Hohenzollern dynasty and (not coincidentally) the man to whom Luther mailed the first copy of his Theses.

To refuse any bond of union between man and civil society, on the one hand, and God the Creator and consequently the supreme Law-giver, on the other, is plainly repugnant to the nature, not only of man, but of all created things; for, of necessity, all effects must in some proper way be connected with their cause; and it belongs to the perfection of every nature to contain itself within that sphere and grade which the order of nature has assigned to it, namely, that the lower should be subject and obedient to the higher.

Charlemagne, however, was predictably furious. He had grown up with the filioque; if the East refused to accept it, the East was wrong. And who cared about the East anyway? He was the emperor now; the pope should nail his colors firmly to the Western mast and leave the heretics in Constantinople to their own devices. When Leo ordered him to remove the word from his liturgies, he took no action and sent no reply; and when, in 813, he decided to make his son Louis co-emperor, he pointedly failed to invite the pope to perform the ceremony.

The foremost duty, therefore, of the rulers of the State should be to make sure that the laws and institutions, the general character and administration of the commonwealth, shall be such as of themselves to realize public well-being and private prosperity. This is the proper scope of wise statesmanship and is the work of the rulers. Now

28. It is a capital evil with respect to the question We are discussing to take for granted that the one class of society is of itself hostile to the other, as if nature had set rich and poor against each other to fight fiercely in implacable war. This is so abhorrent to reason and truth that the exact opposite is true; for just as in the human body the different members harmonize with one another, whence arises that disposition of parts and proportion in the human figure rightly called symmetry, so likewise nature has commanded in the case of the State that the two classes mentioned should agree harmoniously and should properly form equally balanced counterparts to each other.

In Philadelphia, the Pope told the story of the Pennsylvanian Saint Katharine Drexel, who had a private audience with Pope Leo XIII in 1887. She told him of the challenges faced by Native Americans and African Americans back home. She asked him to send Catholic missionaries to come help these people. The Pope asked her: “What about you? What are you going to do?” The question made her think about her own contribution to the Church, and she made a decision to change her life. She took her vows, founded the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, and devoted her life to speaking out against racial injustice and helping and educating American Indians and African Americans. Saint Katharine Drexel was canonized by Pope John Paul II in 2000. “What about you? What are you going to do?” The question goes deep. What can you and I do to make our communities better, more compassionate, kinder, and more caring? What can we each do to care for our common home?

Lastly, hee bringeth for argument, the testimony of two Popes, Innocent, and Leo; and I doubt not but hee might have alledged, with as good reason, the testimonies of all the Popes almost since S. Peter: For considering the love of Power naturally implanted in mankind, whosoever were made Pope, he would be tempted to uphold the same opinion. Neverthelesse, they should therein but doe, as Innocent, and Leo did, bear witnesse of themselves, and therefore their witness should not be good.

Leonardo da Vinci, was brought to the Vatican in 1513 by the new pope, Leo X, and given a list of commissions to create for the greater glory of the pope and his family. After three years of living in the papal palace and exploring Rome, the great Leonardo had produced almost nothing. The furious Pope Leo decided to have a surprise showdown with the capricious artist and intimidate him into completing some of his commissions. In the middle of the night, surrounded by several imposing Swiss Guardsmen, the pope burst through the door to Leonardo’s private palace chambers, thinking to shake him out of a sound sleep. Instead, he was horrified to find Leonardo wide awake, with a pair of grave robbers, in the midst of dissecting a freshly stolen corpse—right under the pope’s own roof. Pope Leo let out a nonregal scream and had the Swiss soldiers immediately pack up Leonardo’s belongings and throw them and the divine Leonardo himself outside the fortress wall of the Vatican, never to return again. Shortly afterward, Leonardo decided it was probably healthier to get out of Italy and move to France, where he spent the rest of his days. This, by the way, is why the great Italian genius’s most famous oil paintings, including the Mona Lisa, are all in Paris, in the Louvre museum.

Sacrosanctis was in fact the public face of a corporate conspiracy between the leading men of three powerful European families: the Medici (in the form of Pope Leo); Jakob Fugger, head of the Augsburg banking and mining dynasty and a man often said to have been the richest in human history; and Albert, archbishop of Mainz, a member of the politically influential Hohenzollern dynasty and (not coincidentally) the man to whom Luther mailed the first copy of his Theses. The nature of the agreement between these three was broadly thus: Albert, who was already archbishop of Magdeburg, had been permitted by the pope to become archbishop of Mainz at the same time – which made him the most senior churchman in Germany, and meant he controlled two of the seven electoral votes which determined the identity of the German emperor. (His brother already controlled a third.) Vast fees were due to Rome as a tax on taking office as an archbishop – but Albert could afford these, thanks to a loan from Fugger, who advanced the money on the basis that he would have the Hohenzollern and their electoral votes in his pocket. Albert, for his part, promised Leo he would do all he could to make sure that German Christians bought as many indulgences as possible, partly because his share of the proceeds could repay his debt to Fugger and partly so that funds would flow rapidly to Leo in Rome for the completion of St Peter’s. For the parties involved this was a neat arrangement by which they all got what they wanted – so long as the faithful did their part and kept pumping money into pardons.

The human race, after its most miserable defection, through the wiles of the devil, from its Creator, God, the giver of celestial gifts, has divided into two different and opposite factions, of which one fights ever for truth and virtue, the other for their opposites. One is the kingdom of God on earth, the other is the kingdom of Satan. That, by accepting any that present themselves, no matter of what religion, they gain their purpose of urging that great error of the present day, that questions of religion ought to be left undetermined, and that there should be no distinction made between varieties. And this policy aims at the destruction of all religions, especially at that of the Catholic religion, which, since it is the only true one, cannot be reduced to equality with the rest without the greatest injury. But, in truth, the sect grants great license to its initiates, allowing them to defend either position, that there is a God, or that there is no God.

Mas, além da injustiça do seu sistema, vêem-se bem todas as suas funestas consequências, a perturbação em todas as classes da sociedade, uma odiosa e insuportável servidão para todos os cidadãos, porta aberta a todas as invejas, a todos os descontentamentos, a todas as discórdias; o talento e a habilidade privados dos seus estímulos, e, como consequência necessária, as riquezas estancadas na sua fonte; enfim, em lugar dessa igualdade tão sonhada, a igualdade na nudez, na indigência e na miséria. Por tudo o que Nós acabamos de dizer, se compreende que a teoria socialista da propriedade colectiva deve absolutamente repudiar-se como prejudicial àqueles membros a que se quer socorrer, contrária aos direitos naturais dos indivíduos, como desnaturando as funções do Estado e perturbando a tranquilidade pública. Fique, pois, bem assente que o primeiro fundamento a estabelecer por todos aqueles que querem sinceramente o bem do povo é a inviolabilidade da propriedade particular.

If the claims of the papacy cannot be proven from what we know of the historical Peter, there are, on the other hand, several undoubted facts in the real history of Peter which bear heavily upon those claims, namely: 1. That Peter was married, Matt. 8:14, took his wife with him on his missionary tours, 1 Cor. 9:5, and, according to a possible interpretation of the "coëlect" (sister), mentions her in 1 Pet. 5:13. Patristic tradition ascribes to him children, or at least a daughter (Petronilla). His wife is said to have suffered martyrdom in Rome before him. What right have the popes, in view of this example, to forbid clerical marriage?  We pass by the equally striking contrast between the poverty of Peter, who had no silver nor gold (Acts 3:6) and the gorgeous display of the triple-crowned papacy in the middle ages and down to the recent collapse of the temporal power. 2. That in the Council at Jerusalem (Acts 15:1–11), Peter appears simply as the first speaker and debater, not as president and judge (James presided), and assumes no special prerogative, least of all an infallibility of judgment. According to the Vatican theory the whole question of circumcision ought to have been submitted to Peter rather than to a Council, and the decision ought to have gone out from him rather than from "the apostles and elders, brethren" (or "the elder brethren," 15:23). 3. That Peter was openly rebuked for inconsistency by a younger apostle at Antioch (Gal. 2:11–14). Peter’s conduct on that occasion is irreconcilable with his infallibility as to discipline; Paul’s conduct is irreconcilable with Peter’s alleged supremacy; and the whole scene, though perfectly plain, is so inconvenient to Roman and Romanizing views, that it has been variously distorted by patristic and Jesuit commentators, even into a theatrical farce gotten up by the apostles for the more effectual refutation of the Judaizers! 4. That, while the greatest of popes, from Leo I. down to Leo XIII. never cease to speak of their authority over all the bishops and all the churches, Peter, in his speeches in the Acts, never does so. And his Epistles, far from assuming any superiority over his "fellow-elders" and over "the clergy" (by which he means the Christian people), breathe the spirit of the sincerest humility and contain a prophetic warning against the besetting sins of the papacy, filthy avarice and lordly ambition (1 Pet. 5:1–3). Love of money and love of power are twin-sisters, and either of them is "a root of all evil." It is certainly very significant that the weaknesses even more than the virtues of the natural Peter—his boldness and presumption, his dread of the cross, his love for secular glory, his carnal zeal, his use of the sword, his sleepiness in Gethsemane—are faithfully reproduced in the history of the papacy; while the addresses and epistles of the converted and inspired Peter contain the most emphatic protest against the hierarchical pretensions and worldly vices of the papacy, and enjoin truly evangelical principles—the general priesthood and royalty of believers, apostolic poverty before the rich temple, obedience to God rather than man, yet with proper regard for the civil authorities, honorable marriage, condemnation of mental reservation in Ananias and Sapphira, and of simony in Simon Magus, liberal appreciation of heathen piety in Cornelius, opposition to the yoke of legal bondage, salvation in no other name but that of Jesus Christ.

IT HAS SERVED US WELL, THIS MYTH OF CHRIST                                                                                        -  POPE LEO X  - 

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

We are not a fortress Church. We are a Church of witness. What we do and say must be done in the light. ...We are therefore vulnerable to misquotation and misinterpretation... It is in this spirit of openness and charity and with prudent care, that I propose to examine all the functions of the decasteries.

It is with a similar motive that efforts are being made by some, in connection with the New Law promulgated by Christ Our Lord. Assured that there exist few men who are entirely devoid of the religious sense, they seem to ground on this belief a hope that all nations, while differing indeed in religious matters, may yet without great difficulty be brought to fraternal agreement on certain points of doctrine which will form a common basis of the spiritual life. With this object, congresses, meetings and addresses are arranged, attended by a large concourse of hearers, where all without distinction, unbelievers of every kind as well as Christians, even those who unhappily have rejected Christ and denied His divine nature or mission, are invited to join in the discussion. Now, such efforts can meet with no kind of approval among Catholics. They presuppose the erroneous view that all religions are more or less good and praiseworthy, inasmuch as all give expression, under various forms, to that innate sense which leads men to God and to the obedient acknowledgement of His rule. Those who hold such a view are not only in error; they distort the true idea of religion, and thus reject it, falling gradually into naturalism and atheism. To favor this opinion, therefore, and to encourage such undertakings is tantamount to abandoning the religion revealed by God.

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.

It is quite unlawful to demand, defend, or to grant unconditional freedom of thought, or speech, of writing or worship, as if these were so many rights given by nature to man

In this true liberty consists: being free to live according to right reason.

It was truly absurd to maintain that the laws of previous Pontiffs become obsolete, if they are not confirmed expressly by one's successors.

the church’s approach to scripture underwent a fundamental transformation with the 1943 encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu. The document was issued in the fiftieth anniversary year of Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Providentissimus Deus. In that letter Leo XIII had emphasized the need for critical methods in the study of the scriptures. The letter is described as “the supreme guide in biblical studies.

Outside the Church of Christ there is no salvation. Vatican II, for all its legion flaws, did not deny this. Nothing in the 1962-1965 Council condemns the Catholic who adheres to the teachings of Pope Leo III and the 1215 statement of the Fourth Lateran Council, "There is but one universal Church of the faithful, outside of which no one at all is saved." At the end of the twentieth century, the Church did not forbid belief in what she believed at the beginning of the fourteenth century, when she infallibly taught through Pope Boniface VII's Bull, Unam Sanctam, "We declare, say, define, and pronounce that none of those existing outside the Catholic Church, not only pagans, but also Jews and heretics and schismatics, can have a share in life eternal; but that they will go into the eternal fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels, unless before death they are joined with her; and that so important is the unity of this ecclesiastical body that only those remaining within this unity can profit by the Sacraments of the Church unto salvation, and they alone can receive an eternal recompense for their fasts, their almsgivings, their other works of Christian piety, and the duties of a Christian soldier. No one, let his almsgiving be as great as it may, no one, even if he pour out his blood for the Name of Christ, can be saved, unless he remains within the bosom and the unity of the Catholic Church." No more did Vatican II warn the faithful against those earlier Vicars of Christ in this dogmatic teaching than they themselves departed from the very first Vicar of Christ, Pope St. Peter, who insisted that Jesus Christ is "the stone which was rejected by you the builders, which is become the head of the corner; neither is there salvation in any other; for there is no other Name under Heaven given to men, whereby we must be saved." (page 408).

Picture, for example, in 1077, the humbled Henry IV, supreme head of the Holy Roman Empire and heir to Charlemagne (whom Pope Leo III had crowned emperor in 800), crossing the Alps and forced to wait, in penitence, barefoot in a haircloth shirt in the snow outside the castle at Canossa to make his peace with Gregory VII! Claiming to be "King of kings," Gregory, because of a quarrel with Henry, had declared: "On the part of God omnipotent, I forbid Henry to govern the kingdoms of Italy and Germany. I absolve all subjects from every oath they have taken and I excommunicate every person who shall serve him as king." Henry had no defense against that superweapon of the popes. Thus was established that magnificent "whore" portrayed by John in Revelation 17—headquartered in a city located upon seven hills (verse 9) and which "reigneth over the kings of the earth" (verse 18). One eighteenth-century

since the foe of the human race was vanquished not as by God but as by man, as Pope Leo says

the most important document of Leo’s pontificate, his bull Rerum novarum, issued on May 15, 1891. The subject of that bull was one with which few popes had dealt before: the proper relations between laborers and their employers. In the bull, Leo shows that he is aware of the inequities that have resulted from the contrast between “the enormous fortunes of a few individuals, and the extreme poverty of the masses.” Therefore, he writes, the time has come “to define the mutual rights and obligations of the rich and the poor, of capital and labor.” Such relations have become all the more tragic since labor organizations have disappeared in recent times, and “a small group of very rich people have been able to throw upon the masses of poor laborers a yoke that is little better than slavery itself.” Although it is an error to believe that between the rich and the poor there can only be class war, it is true that the defense of the poor merits special attention, for the rich have many ways to protect themselves, while the poor have no other recourse than the protection of the state. Therefore, laws should be such that the rights of the poor are guaranteed. In particular, this refers to the right of every laborer to a salary sufficient to sustain him and his family, without being forced to work beyond a fair limit. All this is to be done because “God seems to lean in favor of those who suffer misfortune.

In the West, castrati are known to history not for their political influence but mainly for their vocal peculiarities. In addition to removing the power to procreate, the castrating operation retards the deepening of the voice, and leaves the eunuch a soprano. From Constantinople the practice spread of using eunuchs in choirs. In the eighteenth century Handel’s operas featured castrati, who then began to dominate the opera scene, sometimes requiring composers to write in parts especially for them. Until the early nineteenth century castrati sang in the papal choir in Rome. The Italian practice of castrating boys to prepare them to become adult male sopranos did not end till the reign of Pope Leo XIII in the late nineteenth century.

in May 1518 he wrote an expounded version of the Theses and sent them directly to pope Leo X for perusal. At

Pope Leo Xth is reported as saying, “The fable of Christ has been quite profitable to us.

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.

That theory, Father James Keogh of Pittsburgh explained in 1862, elevated ‘the principle of private judgment’ above ‘the one power on earth that has the right to decide whether the civil law be in accordance with, or in opposition to, the law of God. That power is the Church of Christ.’ So damaging was this false theory of authority that Pope Leo XIII felt the need to speak out against it in 1899. The word he used to identify the false theory was ‘Americanism’. Manifested in everyday life, Americanism consisted of ‘the passion for discussing and pouring contempt upon any possible subject, [and] the assumed right to hold whatever opinions one pleases upon any subject and to set them forth in print to the world’. Such freedoms, Pope Leo insisted, ‘wrapped minds in darkness’ and fostered a climate of individualism that was dangerous because it caused people to ‘become unmindful of both conscience and of duty’.

In 1878, Bosnia and Herzegovina were liberated from the Turkish yoke, and came under Habsburg rule. Three years later Pope Leo XIII issued a bull establishing the authority of the secular clergy, and a new hierarchy was set up, with the Franciscans of Bosnia and Herzegovina losing their privileged position. This is the modern origin of the disputes between the Franciscans and the secular clergy, which have dominated Church life in Bosnia-Herzegovina in recent years, the so-called “Herzegovina problem.

As I recall, it was that notorious sexual reprobate Pope Leo the Tenth who revealed the Church’s grand stratagem when he boasted that “It has served us well, this myth of Christ.

Pope Leo XIII, who taught that once the demands of necessity and propriety have been met, everything else that one owns belongs to the poor.

It has served us well,this myth of Christ

He was also a poet, but of less merit than pretensions. His Chrysopeia, in which he pretended to teach the art of making gold, he dedicated to Pope Leo X., in the hope that the pontiff would reward him handsomely for the compliment; but the pope was too good a judge of poetry to be pleased with the worse than mediocrity of his poem, and too good a philosopher to approve of the strange doctrines which it inculcated; he was, therefore, far from gratified at the dedication. It is said, that when Augurello applied to him for a reward, the pope, with great ceremony and much apparent kindness and cordiality, drew an empty purse from his pocket, and presented it to the alchymist, saying, that since he was able to make gold, the most appropriate present that could be made him, was a purse to put it in. This scurvy reward was all that the poor alchymist ever got either for his poetry or his alchymy. He died in a state of extreme poverty, in the eighty-third year of his age.

1891: Pope Leo XIII’s historic encyclical Rerum Novarum affirms the right to private property while condemning Communism and criticizing the excesses of capitalism.

In 1825, on the occasion of the jubilee, Pope Leo XII. struck a medal, bearing on the one side his won image, and on the other, that of the Church of Rome symbolised as a "Woman," holding in her left hand a cross, and in her right a CUP, with the legend around her, "Sedet super universum," "The whole world is her seat.

Every civilized community must have a ruling authority, and this authority, no less than society itself, has its source in nature and has, consequently, God for its author. Hence it follows that all public power must proceed from God. For God alone is the true and supreme lord of the world. Everything without exception must be subject to Him, and must serve Him, so that whosoever holds the right to govern holds it from one sole and single source, namely, God, the Sovereign Ruler of all. "There is no power but from God." (Rom. 13:1)

Men living together in society are under the power of God no less than individuals are and society, no less than individuals, owes gratitude to God, who gave it being and maintains it, and whose ever-bounteous goodness enriches it with countless blessings. Since, then, no one is allowed to be remiss in the service due to God, and since the chief duty of all men is to cling to religion in both its teaching and practice - not such religion as they may have a preference for, but the religion which God enjoins, and which certain and most clear marks show to be the only one true religion - it is a public crime to act as though there were no God. So, too, is it a sin in the State not to have care for religion, as a something beyond its scope, or as of no practical benefit or out of many forms of religion to adopt that one which chimes in with the fancy; for States are bound absolutely to worship God in that way which He has shown to be His will. All who rule therefore should hold in honor the holy Name of God, and one of their chief duties must be to favor religion, to protect it.

popes, kings, who have not renounced power, and instead of true Christianity have put on what is simply a mask of it." Helchitsky teaches precisely what has been and is taught in these days by the non-resistant Mennonites and Quakers, and in former tunes by the Bogomilites, Paulicians, and many others.

But unfortunately we have lost the sense of the great gift of the faith, the sense of what the Church is and the sense of Tradition. I was very much inspired by the Address of Pope Benedict XVI to the Curia, on the occasion of the Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord in 2005. In it, he explained how to interpret the conciliar reforms by using two formulas, contrasting “the hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture” with “the hermeneutic of reform in continuity”.

Yes, I agree and say, with Pope Benedict XVI, that relativism—the loss of a sound metaphysics and, consequently, of a sense of an objective reality—is the greatest danger in our days. It leads to so many errors that profoundly destroy persons and society. It hinders a just relationship with God that helps us to behave responsibly toward others and in the world.

He also sent messengers to Pope Leo III., with the request to sanction the insertion of the clause in the Nicene Creed. The pope decided in favor of the doctrine of the double procession, but protested against the alteration of the creed, and caused the Nicene Creed, in its original Greek text and the Latin version, to be engraved on two tablets and suspended in the Basilica of St. Peter, as a perpetual testimony against the innovation.

Leo did not depend only on this letter to establish his authority. He appealed to the throne, and in 445, Valentinian III (still dominated politically by his magister militum Aetius) agreed to make a formal official decree that recognized the bishop of Rome as the official head of the entire Christian church. Leo the Great, the bishop of Rome, had become the first pope.

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

Everyone should avoid familiarity or friendship with anyone suspected of belonging to Masonry or to affiliated groups. Know them by their fruits and avoid them. Every familiarity should be avoided, not only with those impious libertines who openly promote the character of the sect, but also with those who hide under the mask of universal tolerance, respect for all religions, and the craving to reconcile the maxims of the Gospel with those of the revolution. These men seek to reconcile Christ and Belial, the Church of God and the state without God. — Pope Leo XIII, Custodi di quella fede

the “Parliament of the World’s Religions.” At the conclusion of the meeting, Pope Leo XIII disapproved of the participation of Catholics in such meetings and forbade future activities of a similar nature.

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.

The Church is not something dead: it is the body of Christ endowed with supernatural life. As Christ, the Head and Exemplar, is not wholly in His visible human nature, which Photinians and Nestorians assert, nor wholly in the invisible divine nature, as the Monophysites hold, but is one, from and in both natures, visible and invisible; so the mystical body of Christ is the true Church, only because its visible parts draw life and power from the supernatural gifts and other things whence spring their very nature and essence. But since the Church is such by divine will and constitution, such it must uniformly remain to the end of time. If it did nor, then it would not have been founded as perpetual, and the end set before it would have been limited to some certain place and to some certain period of time; both of which are contrary to the truth. The union consequently of visible and invisible elements because it harmonizes with the natural order and by God's will belongs to the very essence of the Church, must necessarily remain so long as the Church itself shall endure.

Whether it is popularly emphasized much or not, Catholic teaching in the famous encyclical Rerum Novarum by Pope Leo XIII tracks Thomas Aquinas’s quote above very closely: “Private ownership, as we have seen, is the natural right of man, and to exercise that right, especially as members of society, is not only lawful, but absolutely necessary” (22). Immediately after this passage in Rerum, the famous encyclical repeats Thomas’s above words. Taken together, all this underscores the Catholic call to public aid, not by heavy taxation but by private charity instead. The same paragraph in Rerum Novarum refines this concept even further: “Whoever has received from the divine bounty a large share of temporal blessings, whether they be external and material, or gifts of the mind [which cannot be taxed!], has received them for the purpose of using them for the perfecting of his own nature, and at the same time, that he may employ them, as the steward of God’s providence, for the benefit of others.

Leonine Prayers after Low Mass going back to Pope Leo XIII (three Hail Marys, the Salve Regina, the prayer to Saint Michael, and prayer for defense of the Church).

The branch has the same form when it has been cut off from the vine; but of what profit for it is the form, if it does not live from the root?

Experience shows, even from earliest times, that cities renowned for wealth, dominion and glory perished as a result of this single evil, namely, immoderate freedom of opinion, license of free speech and desire for novelty.

Every law condemns deliberately doing evil simply because there is some hope that good may result. Is there any sane man who would say poison ought to be distributed, sold publicly, stored and even drunk because some antidote is available and those who use it may be snatched from death again and again?

by the example of teachers, the minds of the youth are corrupted and a tremendous blow is dealt to religion and the perversion of morals is spread. So the restraints of religion are thrown off, by which alone kingdoms stand. We see the destruction of public order, the fall of principalities and the overturning of all legitimate power approaching. Indeed this great mass of calamities had its inception in the heretical societies and sects in which all that is sacrilegious, infamous and blasphemous has gathered as bilge water in a ship’s hold, a congealed mass of all filth.

St. Cyprian wrote: “He who abandons the See of Peter on which the Church was founded, falsely believes himself to be a part of the Church.

It is the papal responsibility to keep the canonical decrees in their place and to evaluate the precepts of previous popes so that when the times demand relaxation in order to rejuvenate the churches, they may be adjusted after diligent consideration.

These beautiful examples of the unchanging subjection to the princes necessarily proceeded from the most holy precepts of the Christian religion. They condemn the detestable insolence and improbity of those who, consumed with the unbridled lust for freedom, are entirely devoted to impairing and destroying all rights of dominion while bringing servitude to the people under the slogan of liberty.

Even the Catholics, the most devout among them who wore scapulars and said their prayers, were strongly tinged with Pink. They would cite the encyclicals of Pope Leo XIII dealing with the rights of labor and the evils of inequality of wealth—those same authoritative documents which F.D.R. kept on his desk to read to archbishops who came to protest against this or that New Deal extremism.

The trade in indulgences financed not only the rebuilding of Saint Peter’s but also the wealth of paintings, altars, and frescoes that prettied the face of the old whore that was Rome. Leo thought back to the day he had ascended the papal throne. The procession alone had cost a hundred thousand ducats—a seventh of the pope’s possessions. But it had been worth it.

In 378, the emperor Valens confronted roving war bands of Germanic Goths at Adrianople near Constantinople. With a massive cavalry charge, the Goths shattered Valens’s army and killed the emperor. It was a disaster of the first order.28 The capital managed to shut its gates against the German invader. However, the price of the Eastern Empire’s survival was the loss of the West. One Germanic tribe after another—Goths, Vandals, Franks, Allemanni, Burgundians—shot westward through the Balkans, overrunning the Rhine frontier and the Roman provinces on the other side, including Italy. The basic framework of imperial government, like the Roman road system dating back to Caesar Augustus, collapsed under the strain. So did law and order. Only the Church held firm. In virtually every town, starting with Rome itself, its leaders became symbols of resistance. Like the young Genovefa (later canonized Saint Genevieve) in Paris, they rallied citizens to stand fast and defend their cities; like Pope Leo I with Attila the Hun, they struck deals with the invaders to spare their congregations. When negotiations failed they organized humanitarian relief for the devastated areas and offered words of comfort and hope when everything looked its bleakest. The Catholic bishop became the one upholder of a social and cultural order to which the people living in his diocese, including pagans, could still cling.

They were a devout family to whom religion was a source of comfort and hope, not anxiety. Their religious feelings did not instantly reform Martin’s own thoughts, but they must at least have intrigued him and given him some notion that religion might be something other than frightening.

After Piero died, the cardinal abruptly changed the Medici tactics toward Florence. He and his other brother, Giuliano, decided, as Francesco Guicciardini wrote, “that the best way to facilitate their return was not to use force and violence, but to show love and benevolence, benefitting the citizens and never offending them either in public or in private. They never overlooked an opportunity to do a favor to any Florentine citizen, whether he lived in Rome or was just passing through. . . . Soon it became quite clear that the entire house, possessions, resources, and reputation of the Cardinal were at the disposal of any Florentine who cared to use them. The effectiveness of all this was enhanced by the fact that the greedy and self-seeking Cardinal Soderini [also a Florentine] never did anything for any Florentine. By comparison with him, the liberality and generous deeds of the Medici

When the great conqueror Charlemagne was crowned Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Leo III on Christmas Day 800 CE, the pact between warrior kings and the Latin Church was cemented, and by the eleventh century Christianity—in the West at least—was a religion happy to embrace those who killed and maimed, so long as they did so with respect for the liturgies—and the property—of the Church.

When modern critics say that Julius Caesar did not believe in Jupiter, or that Pope Leo did not believe in Catholicism, they overlook an essential difference between those ages and ours. Perhaps Julius did not believe in Jupiter; but he did not disbelieve in Jupiter. There was nothing in his philosophy, or the philosophy of that age, that could forbid him to think that there was a spirit personal and predominant in the world. But the modern materialists are not permitted to doubt; they are forbidden to believe.

On the death of Leo X. in 1521, Adrian, the inquisitor general was elected pope. He had laid the foundation of his papal celebrity in Spain. "It appears, according to the most moderate calculation, that during the five years of the ministry of Adrian, 24,025 persons were condemned by the inquisition, of whom one thousand six hundred and twenty were burned alive.

To my mind, governments are bound to provide against unemployment so far as they may, and then to provide for the unemployed. It is very poor consolation to tell a man that when employed he has a right to a living wage, if at the same time he is starving for want of work. If, as Pope Leo says, the inherent dignity of man's nature entitles him to a living wage when he is at work, the same requirement of his nature should imperatively demand for him a decent sustenance when he is willing to undertake, but, through no fault of his own, is unable to find work. If the right to work and the right to support during unemployment were recognized, as I think they ought to be recognized, I promise you that governments and capitalists would try to find work for all. I know that people will say that I am playing fast and loose with property. Of course, I am putting upon the State, and upon society, duties which they are naturally reluctant to undertake" [Daniel Mannix, Archbishop of Melbourne, Catholic Times, March 18, 1918].

It was the last time in history that a pope was to crown an emperor; on that day the seven-hundred-year-old tradition, which had begun in ad 800, when Pope Leo III had laid the imperial crown on the head of Charlemagne, was brought to an end.

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 State is acting against the laws and dictates of nature whenever it permits the license of opinion and of action to lead minds astray from truth and souls away from the practice of virtue.

Pope Leo X once sang the praises of science (in his brief to Beroaldo18): he called it the most beautiful ornament and the greatest pride of our life and a noble occupation in times of happiness as well as unhappiness;

on October 31, 1517—just at the time when, in the aftermath of the Petrucci conspiracy, Pope Leo was appointing his thirty-one new cardinals—that Martin Luther nailed his notice to the church door at Wittenberg,

We are disciples of Christ, Christ goes before us, and the world needs his light. Humanity needs him like a bridge to reach God and his love.

V信83113305：The Catholic University of America (CUA), located in Washington, D.C., is the national university of the Catholic Church in the United States. Founded in 1887 by the U.S. bishops and Pope Leo XIII, it is the only higher education institution established by the U.S. Catholic bishops. CUA offers a wide range of undergraduate, graduate, and professional programs, emphasizing the integration of faith and reason. Its campus features iconic architecture, including the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. Known for its strong theology, philosophy, and canon law programs, CUA fosters a vibrant intellectual community rooted in Catholic tradition. The university also engages in significant research and public service, reflecting its commitment to social justice and the common good. With its prime location in the nation’s capital, CUA provides unique opportunities for students to engage with policymakers, cultural institutions, and global leaders.，办美国天主教大学毕业证TCUOA-university, 美国The Catholic University of America毕业证仪式感|购买The Catholic University of America美国天主教大学学位证, fake TCUOA diploma transcript, 购买TCUOA毕业证, 美国The Catholic University of America美国天主教大学毕业证成绩单在线制作办理, 美国The Catholic University of America毕业证仪式感|购买美国天主教大学学位证, 美国天主教大学文凭复刻