CARDINAL PIE – I
Cardinal Pie (1815–1880)
was a great churchman of 19th century France, one of the great defenders of the
Faith against that liberalism which was eating up the world from the French
Revolution (1789) onwards. Pope Pius X kept his works by his bedside and read
them constantly. No doubt the Cardinal’s profound grasp of the key ideas
driving the modern world played a major part in enabling Pius X to obtain a
50-year reprieve, say from 1907 to 1958, for the doomed Catholic Church.
Doomed? But the Catholic
Church cannot be doomed! True, by God’s protection it will last to the end of
the world (Mt. XXVIII, 20), but at the same time by God’s Word we know that by
then the Faith will scarcely be found on earth (Lk. XVIII, 8), and that it will
have been given to the forces of evil to defeat the Saints (Apoc. XIII, 7).
These are two important quotes to bear in mind in 2014, because everything
around us today tells us that the followers of Christ must be prepared for one
seeming defeat after another, e.g. the fall of the Society of St Pius X. Here
is what Cardinal Pie had to say on the matter, some 150 years ago:—
“Let us fight, hoping
against hope itself, which is what I wish to tell faint-hearted Christians,
slaves to popularity, worshipers of success and shaken by the least advance of
evil. Given how they feel, please God they will be spared the agonies of the
world’s final trial. Is that trial close or is it still far off? Nobody knows,
and I will not dare to make a guess. But one thing is certain, namely that the
closer we come to the end of the world, the more and more it is wicked and
deceitful men who will gain the upper hand. The Faith will hardly be found on
earth, meaning that it will almost have disappeared from earthly institutions.
Believers themselves will hardly dare to profess their belief in public, or in
society.
“The splitting, separating
and divorcing of States from God which was for St Paul a sign foretelling the
end, will advance day by day. The Church, while remaining always a visible
society, will be reduced more and more to dimensions of the individual and the
home. When she started out she said she was being shut in, and she called for
more room to breathe, but as she approaches her end on earth, so she will have
to fight a rearguard action every inch of the way, being surrounded and hemmed
in on all sides. The more widely she spread out in previous ages, the greater
the effort will now be made to cut her down to size. Finally the Church will
undergo what looks like a veritable defeat, and the Beast will be given to make
war on the Saints and to overwhelm them. The insolence of evil will be at its
peak.”
These are prophetic words,
coming truer by the day, not at all pleasant to admit, but anchored in
Scripture. A wise Anglican Bishop (Butler) said in the 18th century, “Things
are what they are. Their consequences will be what they will be. Why then
should we seek to deceive ourselves?” Notice especially how the Cardinal
foresees the impossibility of defending the Faith on any larger scale than just
the home. Not everybody agrees that we have already reached that point in 2014.
I might wish they were right, but I have yet to be persuaded that with
disintegrated people one can make an integrated society. Contrast with us
democratic citizens of today the Roman centurion in the Gospel who understood a
chain of command and recognized naturally the authority of Our Lord (Mt. VIII,
5–18) – how Our Lord praised him!
Patience. See next week how
the Cardinal himself reacted to what he foresaw. He was no defeatist!
Kyrie eleison.
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