Pius IX: The Vicar of Christ Cannot Collaborate with the Modern World

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The Vicar of Christ Cannot Collaborate with the Modern World

TIA | November 24, 2023

When we see Pope Francis doing everything possible to collaborate with the modern world, it is opportune to recall the teaching of Pope Pius IX on the distance the Vicar of Christ must maintain from modern civilization.

These strong words by Pius IX give us the criterion to evaluate how far away the Conciliar Popes – who all preached the adaptation of the Catholic Church to the modern world – situated themselves from the True Church.

Pope Pius IX

In fact there is on earth but one sole true and holy religion founded and established by Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself; this religion, which is the fecund mother and nurturer of all virtues, the enemy of vice, the savior of souls and the mistress of true happiness is called Catholic, Apostolic and Roman. What one must think about those who live outside this ark of salvation, we have already declared in our consistorial allocution of December 9, 1854, and we confirm here the same doctrine.

Now, to those who, for the good of the religion, invite us to extend our hand to the present-day civilization, we would ask this: Could the Vicar of Christ, divinely established by Him to guard the purity of His celestial doctrine and to feed and confirm the lambs and sheep in that same doctrine, associate himself with the contemporary civilization without assuming a very grave danger of conscience and causing a very great scandal to all? For indeed, it [the modern world] generates so many evils, as well as proclaims so many disastrous opinions, errors and principles that are extremely opposed to the Catholic Religion and her doctrine, that they could never be sufficiently deplored by us.