This biographical sketch is long, and individual sections can be
accessed as follows:
Pope Pius X was born Giuseppe
Sarto in the
As a young priest, Father Sarto devoted his
energies to the poor in a number of small parishes. In
In 1884,
Father Sarto was appointed bishop of
Bishop Sarto set about renewing the diocese of
In 1893, Giuseppe Sarto was appointed a
Cardinal and Patriarch of Venice, where he continued the same reforms as at
For many centuries, starting in medieval times, the average Catholic had
received communion once a year at Easter time, and occasionally at a few other
major feasts. This practice of infrequent communion by the laity, which perhaps
had its origins in an exaggerated sense of unworthiness, had a number of
distressing consequences. For one thing, all too many people in Catholic
countries came to believe that they were free to commit mortal sins at will,
with no serious consequences, as long as they confessed and received communion
at Easter each year – and (with luck) were able to receive a visit from a priest
shortly before dying. The Council of Trent in the 16th Century tried to
change things by urging more frequent communion; but old habits were entrenched,
and by and large the Council’s exhortations fell on deaf
ears.
Pius X has been called the Pope of the Eucharist, and he more than any
other person was responsible for changing the eucharistic practices of Catholics. By lowering the age of
First Communion to seven years, instead of 12-14 as had been the previous
custom, Pius X sought to inculcate a devotion to the Eucharist and foster the
practice of frequent communion. He urged frequent communion for all the
faithful, and due to his influence eucharistic
practices changed dramatically over the first half of the Twentieth Century; as
a result practicing Catholics began to receive the Eucharist weekly or even
daily. Eucharistic congresses, starting with the one held in
Pius X devoted considerable energy to the reform of the liturgy. He had a
lifelong interest in sacred music and encouraged the use of Gregorian Chant in
every parish. However, he made it clear that he thought the attempt to replace
all other forms of Church music with Gregorian Chant was not practical or even
desirable. He encouraged the use of modern compositions in the liturgy, as long
as the latter lived up to the standards of dignity, beauty, and universal
appeal. Pope Pius also revised the Liturgy of the Hours, the daily prayer of the
Church.
Given the anti-Catholic bias of many governments in his time, Pope Pius
realized the need for Catholics to “unite all their forces to combat
anti-Christian civilization by every just and lawful means. He saw an energized
laity as the key to this struggle “of which Catholic laymen are the principal
supporters and promoters.” Improved catechetical instruction was necessary to
empower the laity for social action.
Perhaps the
most famous crisis of the papacy of Pius X was that of Modernism. Pius X used
the term “Modernism” to define a very insidious heresy or set of heresies that
denied the supernatural origin of the Christian religion, placing the origin of
all religious concepts in a purely subjective experience. As a consequence, the
modernists questioned the possibility that immutable truths can be found in
either the Scriptures or Church dogma.
The views of the Modernists, which Pius himself identified with “a broad
and liberal Protestantism,” are still with us today. The Catholic faithful are rightly
disturbed by the persistence of such ideas in “dissenting” circles within the
Catholic Church. But many Catholics may not realize that the leaders of
schismatic movements, though calling themselves “traditionalists,” are infected
by some of the same errors.
Because Modernism, like extreme forms of Protestantism, places the source
of all religious truth in the subjective experience of the believer, it rejects
the teaching and governing authority of the Church. In his great encyclical
Pascendi Domini
Gregis, Pius X characterizes the attitude of the
Modernists as follows: “For in the same way as the Church is a vital emanation
of the collectivity of consciences, so too authority emanates vitally from the
Church itself. Authority, therefore, like the Church, has its origin in the
religious conscience, and that being so, is subject to it. Should it disown
this dependence it becomes tyranny.”
The
logic described here is very similar to that used by “traditionalists” who
reject the authority of
Pius
X was deeply distressed by the outbreak of World War I in 1914. About a month
after the war started the Pope came down with influenza. Unable to fight the
infection, he died peacefully on