Pope Pius the Tenth

by F. A. Forbes

"The erring will of man has need of a guide who shall show it the way . . . this guide is the mind. But if the mind itself be lacking true light . . . it will be a case of the blind leading the blind, and both will fall into the ditch . . . . Only the teaching of Jesus Christ makes us understand the true and wondrous dignity of man . . . and is it not the teaching of Jesus Christ again that inspires in proud man the lowliness of mind which is the origin of all true glory? From it we learn the prudence of the spirit whereby we may shun the prudence of the flesh, the justice whereby we may give to everyone his due, the fortitude whereby we are made ready to endure all things and may suffer with gladness for the sake of God and eternal happiness; and the temperance by which we may love poverty itself for the kingdom of God, and may even glory in the Cross, despising the shame . . . . Since then such dire evils flow from ignorance of religion and . . . the necessity of religious instruction is so great, because no one can hope to fulfil the duties of a Christian without knowing them, it remains to ask whose duty it is to destroy this deadly ignorance in people's minds and to teach them this necessary knowledge."

The answer is obvious—that duty falls on the priesthood, and this the pope clearly points out. "There is nothing nearer or dearer than this to the heart of Jesus Christ," he continues, "who said of Himself through the lips of Isaias, 'to preach the Gospel to the poor He hath sent me'."

Having laid down in urgent words the duty of the shepherds to feed the flock committed to their care, the pope expounds the mission of the catechist, and its power for good. He quotes the words of St. Gregory the Great on the Apostles of Christ. "They took supreme care to preach to the ignorant things easy and intelligible, not sublime and arduous," ending with the saying of St. Peter, "as every man hath received grace, ministering the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God."

To Pius X the Divine Office had always been a work of predilection. It is said that as a child he had often seen Cardinal Monico with his Breviary in his hands, and had wondered vaguely what beautiful stories there could be in the book that so engrossed his attention. And when in later days he opened it for the first time himself his childish dreams found their fulfilment. For the Breviary is the story of the Church and her saints, and the whole Psalter enwraps it like a glory. It was to the treasures of that great book that he went all his life for his morning meditation until he knew it as one knows the heart of a friend. And loving it with the love of a true friend, and seeing faults amidst its beauties, he would let it also share in "the restoring of all things in Christ." For over four hundred years a redistribution of the Psalter throughout the week had been sighed for, but every scheme had failed. Pius appointed a commission to deal with this problem, giving certain general lines on which to base the reform, and in a few years the new Breviary was issued. The rearrangement secured the recitation of the whole Psalter once a week, the length of the office on Sundays and ferias was reduced, while the complexities of the calendar were simplified.

"No one can fail," wrote the pope, "to be stirred by those numerous passages of the Psalms which proclaim so loudly the immense majesty of God, His omnipotence, His unutterable justice, His goodness and clemency . . . . Who can fail to be inspired . . . by those thanksgivings for God's benefits, by those lowly and trustful prayers for benefits desired, by those cries of the penitent soul deploring its sins? Who is not kindled with love for the picture of Christ the Redeemer so lovingly shadowed forth, whose voice Augustine heard in all the Psalms, praising or mourning, rejoicing in hope or longing for accomplishment? With good reason was provision made in past ages by decrees of the Roman pontiffs, canons of councils, and monastic laws that both sections of the clergy should chant or recite the whole Psalter every week." The pope spoke of the many pleas that had reached him that the old custom might be restored, and of the work that had been done to this effect, which was but a prelude to a further emendation of the Breviary and the Missal.

The reform of the Roman Curia was another undertaking, which did much to simplify the government of the Church. The various Roman Congregations were founded by Sixtus V to study questions submitted to the decision of the pope and to deal with any legal questions that might arise; and as persons of experience and mature judgement alone should deal with these matters, various committees were formed, each of which attended to its own particular branch of business. But the organization of the different congregations needed to be adapted to the requirements of the present day. Pius X, with the practical spirit which distinguished all his undertakings, completely remodelled the curia, fixing the number of congregations at thirteen, and defining clearly the work of each. The constitution "Sapienti consilio" on this matter instituted also many other important reforms in the tribunals and offices of the curia.

The purchase of the Palazzo Mariscotti, assigned to the Cardinal Vicar of Rome, enabled Pius X to carry out another long-cherished plan, for the thorough reform of his own diocese, inadequate in its organization to the needs of the present day. Want of space, which had been the chief difficulty in the way of reorganization, having been thus supplied for, the necessary reforms were at once set on foot. In many other important matters the needs of modern times called for the simplification and amendment of methods that had become obsolete. The reform and codification of canon law was another laborious work carried on by the pope for eleven years, and brought to a conclusion under his successor Benedict XV.

With affectionate interest the pope watched the progress of Catholicism in England. "If there is any Church in the whole Christian world," he wrote in January 1912, on the occasion of the founding of the two new ecclesiastical provinces of Birmingham and Liverpool, "which merits the special care and forethought of the Apostolic See, it is certainly the Church of the English, which, happily founded among the Britons by St. Eleutherius[*] and still more happily established through apostolic men by Gregory the Great, was subsequently made famous by the numbers of its children distinguished by the holiness of their lives or by the martyr's death courageously suffered for Christ."

[*] History scholars seem now agreed that the story of a mission sent to Britain by Pope St. Eleutherius in the later second century rests on a misunderstanding. Christianity was certainly introduced into Britain during the Roman occupation, but the circumstances are not known.

"It is with the greatest pleasure that I greet you, my dear children of Great Britain," he said at an audience given to four hundred English pilgrims presented to him by Cardinal Bourne, Archbishop of Westminster, "worthy descendants of your Catholic forefathers who during ten centuries remained constantly faithful to the Church and the Holy See, and who by the purity of their faith and by personal holiness gave many saints to God. And although through the blind passion of an unworthy king your country fell into schism, the Faith is still alive in her midst, for are you not the children of those valiant Christians . . . who gave their lives for the truth, and won for Great Britain her title of the Island of Saints?"