Wednesday, August 20, 2014

A feast of a pope

There are two things the feast of Pope St. Pius X - which we celebrate today - brings to mind from my Catholic past. One is the late 19th and early 20th fight against the heresy of Modernism which very few contemporary Catholics remember. The other is the significant liturgical changes which that pope made and which most Catholics today take for granted.

Concerning the so-called Modernist heresy that means little to Catholics in practical terms nowadays, I have one recollection. The year I was ordained I was required to take the Oath against Modernism which the seminary rector was required to administer to those of us about to be ordained. I clearly recall his being somewhat embarrassed after we were called in to his office as a group and advising us just to do it. By 1969 the Oath had become somewhat laughable and seemed to us as well as to him and the faculty a remnant from a less enlightened time. It was no longer taken seriously, a rule that had lost all meaning.

As far as the Eucharist is concerned, what Pope Pius X did was probably farther reaching. Msgr. John Doyle, former head of the philosophy department at Marian University, told me that when he was an eighth grader at Holy Cross grade school in 1910 every student there made their first communion. Before that time Holy Cross and other Catholic school students made their first communion in the eighth grade. Reception of the Eucharist was not permitted on a daily basis. Frequent communion meant monthly or possibly weekly but not daily. The pontiff encouraged more frequent reception as a better understanding of the theology of the sacrament came to be.

The feast of Pope Saint Pius X reminds me once again that Catholic practice changes as time passes by. We can never assume that the way we do things is the way it always was.



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