Glimpses of Church History

Peasant becomes Pope Pius X

Giuseppe Sarto, the son of an Italian worker who swept the local town hall, was born in 1834, ordained priest in 1858 and became Bishop of Mantua in 1884. In 1893 he was made Patriarch of Venice. Sarto was one of three candidates to contest the election at Pope Leo XIII’s death in 1893 and won at the third poll. Pope Pius X was a total stranger to Rome. His was a peasant mentality which included an unshakeable belief in the supreme authority of the church. He was shocked to find that the Italian State (less than 50 years old) was prepared to act independently and there were people who questioned the autocratic ways of the church. He wrote: “When we speak of the Vicar of Christ, we must obey... Society is sick... The one hope, the only remedy, is the Pope.”

Pius X wrote 17 encyclicals. In the second one, commemorated the 50th anniversary (1904)of the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception, he wrote with medieval piety:
“Adam perceived Mary crushing the serpent’s head. Noah in his Ark looked forward to her. So did Abraham...likewise Jacob. Moses saw her in the burning bush, David sang of her... Elias saw her in the little cloud rising out of the sea...”

Pius was a Bible fundamentalist. He replaced all the liberal consultors on the Biblical Commission set up by Leo XIII with reactionaries. Between 1906 and 1914, the Commission made a series of rulings that were binding on Catholics. Catholics had to believe that Moses wrote the entire the Pentateuch (the first five books of the BIble) and that the first three chapters of Genesis was historical truth. The first woman was formed from Adam’s rib and it was the devil in the form of a serpent who tempted Eve. The four gospels were written by the four associated with the gospels: Mark, Matthew, Luke and John. Paul was the author of all the pastoral epistles, including the one to the Hebrews.

Attack on Modernism
Catholic scholars came under intense scrutiny and several were persecuted. The root of Pius’ concern was the growth of independent thinking and democratic decision making. In 1864 Pius IX had issued his Syllabus of Errors and in 1907, Pius X followed with his own Syllabus (list) of 65 Errors of the Modernists which were roundly condemned. He had compiled this list randomly from the writings of theologians and teachers. Piux X followed this encyclical (called Lamentabili) with another called Pascendi three months later in a similar vein. He was disturbed that the scientific method could provide convincing answers to old questions whereas all the Church did was arbitrarily claim monopoly of interpretation and demand an act of faith from the faithful. In 1910, Pius ordered all clergy, pastors, preachers, religious heads and professors to take a formal Oath Against Modernism. Here’s some extracts from the oath: “I submit and adhere with my whole heart to the condemnations... contained in the encyclical Pascendi and the decree Lamentabili... I also reject the error that the faith held by the Church can contradict history... I firmly hold and shall hold to my dying breath the belief of the Fathers in the charism of truth... The absolute and immutable truth preached by the apostles may never be understood in any other way...”

Latin America’s Natives

By 1800, millions of Europeans (mostly of Latin origin) had settled in Spanish America. The Creoles, as the Euro settlers were called, had taken possession of vast swathes of land and enjoyed their new found prosperity far away from cramped Europe. However, the Spanish ruling elite remained the most privileged. Afer the American Declaration of Independence in 1776, Creole ambitions grew and in 1808 they declared Argentina independent from Spain. Other territories followed such as Chile (1810), Peru (1821), Mexico (1821), Equador (1822). By 1825 Spain had lost all its continental possessions and was left with just Cuba and Puerto Rico. One of the goals of the the newly independent countries was to hunt down as many Native Indians as they could. In 1832 Argentina decided that the Native Indians who still controlled the Pampas had to be exterminated. It was the year in which Charles Darwin arrived there. General Rosas and his bandits were in charge of the operations. The plan was to kill all stragglers and drive the larger groups into a small area and then eliminate them. Darwin witnessed how the Indians were smothered in blood and vomit, how their eyes were gouged out and so on. He wrote: “The Indians are so terrified that they offer no resistance ... all the women who appeared above 20 years are massacred in cold blood. When I exclaimed it was inhuman. the commander answered: What can be done - they breed so. All are convinced that it is a just war because it is against barbarians. Who would believe in this age such atrocities could be committed in a Christian civilised country...” When Darwin published The Descent of Man (1871), Native Indians were still being hunted down in Argentina financed by a bond loan. When all the land was cleared of Indians, each bondholder was rewarded with 2500 hectares of land. As in North America, this was the European way: murder the natives and grab the land. Such brutalities were repeated elsewhere by the European settlers and continued for decades later.

The Popes from time to time asked the Spanish Catholic rulers to show compassion on the Natives but to no avail. In 1912, Pius X also wrote to the Bishops of Latin America. Here are extracts:

“Being greatly moved by the deplorable condition of the Indians in Lower America, our predecessor Benedict XIV pleaded their cause in 1741...

“ When we consider the crimes and outrages still committed against them, our heart is filled with horror. What can be so cruel as to scourge men and brand them with hot iron, often for the most trivial causes or to slay hundreds or thousands in one unceasing massacre or to waste villages and slaughter the inhabitants, so that some tribes have become extinct in the last few years.

“We are ashamed to mention the outrages they commit - seeking out and selling women and children, they have surpassed the worst examples of pagan wickedness.”

Later in this same encyclical, Pius commends the clergy for their “zeal for spreading the Gospel among the barbarous nations... ”. Note how Pius X, like previous popes, cannot resist calling non-Europeans ‘barbarous’. Are his fellow Europeans any less barbarous? Is it right to murder indigenous people and grab their land? Did Pius just moralise or did he recommend repentance and reparations in this matter?

Pope Benedict XV (1914-22)

Benedict XV (1914-22) was pope during the First World War (1914-18). During the conflict he tried to remain neutral and in 1917 his plan for peace was rejected by the warring nations. This was also the year in which a revised code of Canon Law came into effect. Benedict tried to open up the diplomatic front. When he canonised Joan of Arc in 1920, France resumed diplomatic relations. Britain sent a charge d’affaires to the Vatican in 1915, the first after 300 years.

Benedict XV set about repairing the damage done by the papacy's opposition to the anti-clerical governments of Italy and France and reversing the opposition to the labor union movement, as well. He stopped the "anti-Modernist" crusade, which had enforced "integralist" Catholicism in the previous papacy, and he suppressed the secret organization, "The Society of St. Pius V," which his predecessor had used to spy on suspect theologians. Benedict XV was "as explicit a reaction against the preceding regime as it was possible to get."

He wrote 12 encyclicals, none of them outstanding. he was unable to settle the status of the Vatican within the state of Italy and, on the whole, was not well regarded by the major European countries.

Pope Pius XI (1922-39)
Regarded as a scholar , linguist and palaeographer, this pope lost no time in extending the papal remit to the Sciences: he re-organised the Vatican Library, transferred the Vatican Observatory to the Castel Gandolfo palace and founded the Pontifical Institute of Christian Archaeology, and in 1936 the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. It was during his reign that the Vatican’s relationship with Italy was resolved. By the Lateran Treaty of 1929, signed after after long negotiations with Mussolini, the Holy See recognised the Kingdom of Italy and in turn the Vatican became an independent state.

He wrote 30 encyclicals of which we will comment briefly on two of the popular ones. In 1930, the Anglican Church convened the Lambeth Conference and a major decision taken was the sanctioning of birth control. In response, Pius wrote his encyclical Casti Connubii (On Christian Marriage) putting forward the traditional Catholic position - namely, opposition to any form of contraception. In 1931, he wrote Quadragesimo Anno on the 40th anniversary of Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum.