Mistakes of Pius X

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Mar 21, 1907

Mistakes of Pius X

POPE PIUS X is the subject of a severe criticism in the North American Review. The writer, who signs himself “A Catholic Priest,” pronounces Pius X to be “as terrible a disappointment as Pius IX was,” and says that “one will have to turn back to some of the most despotic papal reigns to find parallel to the bigotry, cruelty, hatred of truth, and defiance of civilization which characterize the papacy at this hour.” The criticism of the pope concerns mainly his attitude toward France and Italy in relation to the union between

Catholic theology and modern criticism appeared in Italy, and the Jesuit general, assuming that Tyrrell was the author, demanded that he repudiate the authorship of the pamphlet. Tyrrell was suspended from the society upon his refusal, and was denied the right to exercise priestly functions or receive sacraments. A sympathetic continental bishop finally took up his case and asked the Vatican if he might not restore the Englishman to his priestly status. The answer from Rome was that the restoration might take place on condition that the deposed priest would submit his future epistolary correspondence to ecclesiastical supervision. The writer in the Review says of this demand:—

“This infamous proposition called forth a letter from Father Tyrrell to Ferrata which must have struck shame into the curia, if shame had not long since ceased to dwell there. The English priest addressed the Italian cardinal in the language of an outraged freeman, to whom servitude is not a virtue, but who holds liberty, truth, and justice as supreme. The Englishman reminds the Italian that the condition imposed by Rome disgraces the tribunal from which it proceeds, and tells him categorically that the condition is rejected. . . . Rather than fling his manhood beneath the heel of a Roman despot, he will live and die without his privileges and rights as a priest, trusting to God for vindication.”

The severity of ecclesiastical discipline under Pius X is indicated by the treatment accorded within the past year to the Italian bishop of Cremona, who, in his Lenten pastoral, declared strongly against the union of church and state. The pope chastised the bishop for holding an opinion which the church had condemned and could never tolerate; and to emphasize his displeasure, when the bishop of Cremona went to Rome, the pope refused to see him. This episode throws light upon the general attitude of the rulers of the papacy at this present time toward the question of the relation between church and state.

The writer in the Review strongly condemns the course of the pope in protesting to the powers against the visit of President Loubet of France to the king of Italy, and in intimating that the pontiff would not receive the head of the French nation as a visitor to the Vatican. “Thus by a haughty pertinacity in clamoring for temporal power,” says the writer, “Rome pushed France further down the path of national apostasy.” In his criticism of this action of the pope, the Review writer is entirely justified. It is not surprising that the French government resented this insult. Had a secular power acted in such a manner, war would in all probability have followed. The attempt on the part of Roman Catholic ecclesiastics to convince the world that the controversy with the Catholic Church is an attack upon religion and Christianity will not avail. Primarily it is designed to end the interference of the Vatican in the political affairs of France, and secondarily to remove church property in France from the domination of a foreign power—the Vatican. The question now at issue is one of property, not of religion. Had the pope been willing to follow the advice of the majority of the hierarchy in France and permit the property of the church to be held by local trustees, as was provided for in the law, not a single congregation would have been disturbed in its possession of its church property. Had the Vatican been in a conciliatory mood, the trouble, at least so far as the property was concerned, could easily have been adjusted.

The pope’s greatest mistake, however, was made when he insulted the French nation by insulting its head, and authorizing his secretary of state to communicate that insult to the other governments of Europe. A child in the knowledge of public affairs should have known better than to commit such a blunder. Pius X is apparently a good man, but he is not a statesman, and he is not in sympathy with the spirit of the age in which he lives.—Northwestern Christian Advocate.